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Fun Stuff => CHATTER => Topic started by: Eris on 17 Aug 2008, 05:22

Title: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 17 Aug 2008, 05:22
It has been a while since we had a writing thread around here (other than the furry smut one), so I figured I might as well start one and try a few things. So to get this off and running I thought there could be a theme for the stories, if people are having trouble thinking of stuff then they can use what I provide as inspiration. I also have a book of writing exercises which I can put up for people to try out if they want.

A few rules, though:
1. No pointless smut. We had enough of that in the other thread.
2. There has to be some effort involved. No rushed 30 second job just for the sake of posting, unless you are really good at that kind of thing.
3. No novels. There isn't a set word limit, but as is the internet, a wall of writing will probably be skipped over, so maybe keep it around the 400 mark?


Ok; Theme! When looking through my new Dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ostentation?r=75) and Thesaurus (http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/ostentation) I found the word Ostentation. Say it, it rolls off the tongue in quite a way that makes you get a feel for the word (The definition and synonyms are linked back there). Use your new found knowledge of a word to write something (at least partially) to it. Here is mine!

     Desiderata

      I always wanted to be on the television. When I was little I would dress up, wearing my mother’s clothes and make-up, singing into the hairbrush along with the popstars smiling out at me. Once I even took the TV apart to work out how the people got in there. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to put it back together. As a teenager I would watch my soaps, like a little old lady, adamant I could do a better job of acting than those on screen. I would perform to the bathroom mirror and reassure myself I was made to be on TV.
      After they finally caught me I embraced the role. My lawyer said I needed to act innocent to increase my chances at trial, so I did. Oh, how I acted the part! It was my only chance to fulfil my dream; I wasn’t going to let it go without showing my full potential. As we walked out of the courthouse the media swarmed around us, pressing in from every side, slowing our progress to a crawl. I shone; I really did. I smiled broadly and gave them my best star expression.
      Of course they found me guilty; we all knew it was going to happen. “Showed no remorse” was what was said. So now I am locked up in this room, away from the rest of them, and only you for company. Can you even see me, all the way up there in the corner of the ceiling? I know you can see me, that’s your purpose. Dear little camera, keeping an eye on me.
      I always wanted to be on the television…
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: fatty on 17 Aug 2008, 05:50
Excerpts from my Blog: http://aka-fatty.blogspot.com/
Just a bit of writing I do. It's not bloggy, but it's not fictional, it's my personal type of expression I guess. Just a few paragraphs, or I'll drown people in text.

In Defence of Architecture

I’ve a lot of thoughts about the nature of the profession of architecture, and the practice of design. In some ways, the study and practice of architecture is a very closed profession, it is not much discussed or understood outside of the profession or academia. I’ve named this ‘in defence of’ not because I think architecture needs to be defended for lack of relevance, but because the mere act of architecture is sorely under-appreciated and misunderstood, that a little bit of insight will clarify this. I’m not sure where to start, but I will start somewhere, starting with my broad ideas over a few posts, before I go into things which are more specialised.

An interesting starting point lies in the semantics of the word ‘design’. For an architect/designer, ‘design’ is an action and a process. It embodies what we do as a discovery or exploration of many things, the eventual honing and narrowing of focus, and finally, a conclusion that is influenced by all these things. But the real pride comes in the process, the act of designing as a means of creating something a machine can not. For a designer’s client, the ‘design’ is a product. Something they can touch and feel and something that is finally finished, when the designer has done all their arm waving and talking. To have a client really understand and appreciate the design process, they must be involved from the beginning and brought along on the journey.

Experience of Art

There is a beautiful place in Sydney known as the Finger Wharfs, near the Rocks. It has beautiful restored wharf buildings, a view of Sydney harbour and the bridge, quaint terrace houses and lovely views. It also has the Sydney Dance Company, where I go to do open dance classes – just for fun and exercise, and the Wharf Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company. It also has a tiny art gallery called ‘One of a Kind’. Inside, are the works of Arie Levit; self proclaimed ‘greatest artist in the world.’ Okay so maybe he is over-confident, egotistical even. But as an artist, I think you need a good dose of self belief to get anywhere.

Art is an experience, it’s something you take in and interpret; you let it take you where it wants to go. You have to open your eyes, see what you can, look harder than you’ve ever looked before. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. But an artist always has a story. He or she pours something into that work, to tell you something. When I see this guy’s work, I see what he’s thinking. He gave me some introduction, guided me through some of them; told me their story. The thing that struck me was that this guy had vision. He had short and long term goals. Art wasn’t his hobby, it was his livelihood. He believed that his art was going to transform Sydney, and that he would be famous. It takes a lot to self-promote; maintaining his own gallery means that he has to be the one there selling his work every day. He even wrote a song, played it twice every day, about how people walked past and never came in. Then he did a painting about that story.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Oli on 17 Aug 2008, 07:30
This is a load of nonsense I wrote a few weeks ago (maybe longer, who knows!), about making a pot of tea. It didn't really fit into the theme very well, but god damn I can make it.


Tea!

The kettle is still warm so I use the remaining water to warm my pot. I quickly swirl the water in my little brown pot with my left hand as I push the spout of the kettle around the tap with my right. Then I set my pot down on the surface and twist the tap, water gushing out into the kettle. I'll need about a litre and a half. After about 20 seconds I stopped the tap, check the water level and move the kettle onto it's base where I flick the switch and instantly I can hear the wooshing sound of the appliance in action. Electric kettles really are the best thing about modern living.

Picking up my pot I pour a little of the hot water into my cup. Warming the cup prior to use is important and I guess this also warms the spout of my kettle which will probably improve my tea immesurably, obviously. Deciding between my loose leaf PG tips, un-named "dust" tea I bought for a pound in egypt and my newly aquired Darjeeling leaf tea that my mother bought me in India is arguably the hardest descion I've made all day, but I opt for the PG tips because I'm in the mood for a strong tea. The Darjeeling is rather fruity, almost herbal, incredibly delectable it must be said. The dust tea is nice in it's own way, although ultimately not too different from the PG tips. I pour out the hot water, through my strainer of course, and scoop two spoonfuls out of my tea caddy, a metal jar with an ornate thistle design, and into my pot. The kettle's nearly boiled now - the steam wooshing out of the spout as a whine fills the air. As the wee red light clicks off I pour the boiling water into my pot, place the lid on it and give it a good shake. Setting it down on my tea-tray and fitting the tea-cosy (knitted by someone's Nana and bought for a pound at a jumble sale) I consider the option of a biscuit. 'No', I conclude, 'there's only a few digestives left.' I open the fridge and pour a dash of milk into my metal milk jug. The bottle's run out so I rinse it under the tap to get rid of the dregs and put it in the bag for recycling. I throw the lid into the bin.

After 5 minutes I pour the hot water from my cup - through the strainer of course - and then place my strainer over it. I pour out the hot hazel coloured liquid and sniff the air. Aromas sweeter than any perfume. The nectar of the Gods. As I splash milk into the cup I gaze, as I always do, at the milky mushroom cloud exploding beneath the surface. The billowing of milk in the bronze deeps. This is the sight that fills my heart with expectant joy. This is a cup of tea.


Then I pretensiously juggled with my tea pot, cup and milk jug in order to impress guests.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: allison on 17 Aug 2008, 09:04
I don't really write for any reason, but sometimes there's a scene in my head and I have the urge to write it down.

--

Eight o’clock on a Saturday night, the pub is teeming with people and I don’t know if I can go through with this. The air is stagnant and stale, and the beer in my hand is warm. I feel somewhat uncomfortable with my choice of clothing, because it seems that my shirt collar is shrinking around my throat. I undo yet another button and quickly check my watch, realizing that my entire body is shaking uncontrollably. I’m aware that I have less than ten minutes before I have to walk onto the stage in front of this crowd, and I suddenly have the urge to vomit.

Suppressing it, I pick up my guitar. Holding it seems to calm me a little, and I take that as a good sign. For the fifth time tonight I tune the six worn, comfortable strings. They’ll have to be changed later tonight. The guy on stage finishes his mediocre cover of an old Lightfoot tune, and says that’s all for him tonight. As he passes me, he puts a hand on my shoulder and wishes me good luck. That doesn’t really help my nerves at all, and so I do my best to but one foot in front of the other and walk out into the pool of light around the tiny stage. Because I have no idea what else to do, I down the last of my pint and put the glass on the floor. It feels like all the eyes in the place are on me, and I think I just might pass out. I pull myself together.

After what seems like ten years, I adjust the microphone and confer with the sound guy. “A little more vocal in the monitor?” I ask, and he obliges. Test, test, checkcheckcheck, one, two, three – my voice resonates through the dimly lit room and I feel cripplingly self-conscious. The sound is fine, and I think I’m just buying time. I squint from the few bright lights focused on me as I lean forward, and I introduce myself because the MC seems to have disappeared. I think I saw him leave with the woman who’d sat all night at the bar. She looked lonely and tired, and a little bit desperate. She needs him more than I do.

I take a deep breath, and I hear someone in the audience clear his throat. A sneeze. Every sound around me is amplified and I do my best to block it out. I give a preamble to my song, one that I thought was quite witty – apparently not, according to this crowd – and I begin to play the intro. My voice cracks on the first note I sing. I play another couple bars on my old Martin guitar, hoping that I can pull myself together. Again, I start to sing. When I reach the first chorus, all I can feel is the chord progression playing itself on my fingers and all I can hear is my own voice, weaving itself into a melody.  I close my eyes and I see the words in front of me.
By the end of my set, the crowd seems pleased, and I think I’ve done a fair enough job. I muster up a smile, and dip my head quickly, then I walk off the stage as quietly as possible. The applause dies away, and the din of conversation buzzes throughout the space again. I let the adrenaline rush die away, and I fade back into the crowd.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 17 Aug 2008, 20:42
It didn't really fit into the theme very well, but god damn I can make it.

You don't have to use the theme if you already have something written. It was just a way to start things off if people wanted to participate but were having trouble coming up with ideas.

Both Oli's and Allison's stories are lovely (I had read Ali's before when reading her blawg) and emotive. I quite like them!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ThePQ4 on 17 Aug 2008, 21:19
Man...I don't think I could write something in the ballpark of 400 words if I tried...

Most already know about my blogger (http://www.authorjaye.blogspot.com) due to some excitement that occured about a year ago... However, I've moved completely past the Harry Potter Slash fiction and most recently have been dabbling in Original Slash (because saying I write gay fiction is weird). BUT, for a fiction contest in a local arts paper (which I think it is keen to point out that I did not win... but I did win 2nd place in a campus arts paper w/ a semi-gay coming of age story...), I did write a short hetero-romance piece. Two actually --one from the POV of a girl, and the other of the guy in the same relationship at different periods...

Anyway, this piece is a LITTLE longer then recommended, but I figured it would be OK.

Edit: I just read over it again...goddamn, that was horrible. I am never writing het-romance from a male perspective again. Ick. ...Also, I think part of it is missing...Hrm.
__

   I walk into the kitchen for a soda. The can makes a cracking sound as I pull the tab forward. I lift the can to my mouth and the envelope on the fridge catches my eye. My eyes narrow. What is this? I wonder silently. I put down the can on the counter, and pull the envelope from the fridge. The paper doesn’t want to come out, but with minimal ripping, it finally comes free.

   My eyes scan over the piece of paper. I can’t help but narrow my eyes.  I knew this was a long time coming…but I hadn’t expected it so soon. I wondered when she had done it. Why hadn’t I noticed her absence?

   It seems she has left me. After threatening it for weeks…even months. She finally pulled it together and left me. She doesn’t say why –just that weak “It’s Me, Not You” excuse that everyone uses. I knew we had our problems, but…why now? Things were just starting to improve, weren’t they?

   My hand moves of its own accord, and suddenly the can of soda I had just opened splashes everywhere. The tin clinks against the linoleum floor and rolls under the cupboards. I feel the dampness soak into my jeans. My knees seem to give out, and I sink to the floor. The paper crumples in my fist, and my forehead presses onto the floor.

   I don’t cry. I can’t. She was just a girl. A girl that I loved. I thought that she loved me too, but if she was so willing to leave me… Why does this hurt so much? My fist aches as I pound it into the floor. The letter falls from my hands onto the floor as I pull myself back together a moment later. I stare at the dirty envelope that fell to the floor somewhere between the soda splattering, and the collapse to the floor. Her handwriting…the perfect formation of the letters to my name. I want to hit her. I want to make her cry. I want to hear her laugh –even if it is cruelly and at my own expense.

   I get up off the floor. The first thing that I think is Shit, I should clean up this mess. But I turn my back on it. It isn’t like it’s going anywhere. I walk back up to my office, and go back to work like nothing has happened.

   I work steady until I simply can’t anymore. I have tried to push the fact that she is gone, from my mind. I walk down the stairs, and throw myself onto the couch. She would usually be home by now…I wonder when she’s going to come and get all of her stuff. I look around the room and see that there are large gaps in the movie collection, a few pictures missing from the walls. Her ottoman is gone. How did I not notice? When did she take them?

   I want to act out. I want to hit something. I want to find her. I want to find her and hurt her as much as she has hurt me.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 17 Aug 2008, 23:14
I guess I will contribute!  I have a thing that i started that I will probably never finish because it is ok buit not very good and I am lazy.  So it is not a full story, just kind of a...beginning thing.

The Whiskey Pit

I was always just one of those kids, you know?  The kind that had their life planned out by everyone else.  Usually that means graduating high school, then university, really making something of your life.  That wasn’t how it was for me.  Everyone who should have been there to encourage me was instead trying to shove me back to where they had decided I belonged.  Apparently there is no place in the world of success for someone of my background.

My family were not the most saintly bunch.  In fact, I came from a rather long line of non-saints and I was expected to follow in their less-than-holy footsteps.  We had no great scandal, no murder charges or dramatic affairs, but we had vices, and that was enough.  The most common was whiskey.  Beer didn’t get them drunk quick enough, too much liquid and not enough substance my father used to say, although it often came out slurred.  The drinking was not so much the issue I suppose, as the results of the drinking.  Broken furniture and bones, bruised faces and spirits.  When I was in primary school I would often arrive with conspicuous injuries which everyone ignored.  Not once did a well meaning teacher ask me if there were problems at home.  It was simply accepted that was my lot in life, that’s what you get for being a Flynn.  As if I had somehow done something before conception that made me deserve being thrown into the whiskey drenched lions den, expect broken bones before dinner.

My mother was a woman with few talents, but the one she utilized most was fucking.  Sex wasn’t her vice, it was her job.  Each night she would go out, screw a few, and return with cash for food and booze.  I didn’t resent her for her chosen occupation, I resented her for distaste of me, the unwanted only child.  I wasn’t an accident, I was a planned baby with parents who had no idea.  It didn’t take my mother long to realize that having children isn’t like owning a dog, and that this planned baby was nothing but a goddamn burden.  I grew up surrounded by resentment, abuse and whiskey.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 18 Aug 2008, 06:13
Immolation

       He wasn’t sure how long she’d had it, the gaping hole in her chest; the edges were puckered and uneven, framing the view into the black space in her chest where her heart should normally reside. It was obviously an old wound, but even though the question pricked at the edges of his mind, he knew not to mention it. She never told anyone about it, covering her chest and pretending everything was normal; he was amazed he had seen it at all. But for all her acting he could still tell that it hurt her. She tried to cover it up, but the little flinches and winces that others didn’t notice were all too obvious to him.
       Nights were the worst. When she was asleep she couldn’t control her reactions, and her whimpering was almost too much for him to bear. He would sit, watching her sleep, and try and work out a way to help her. He couldn’t just let her keep living this way; she deserved more. She deserved to be happy. So he considered his options, unable to sleep, until finally he came up with the perfect idea and newly energised, he went about preparing everything. Of course she had no clue what was going on, but that was kind of the point. It had to be secret, otherwise he knew she would protest and the gift would be ruined.
       She woke, confused, in the middle of the night and wondered what had caused her to stir. That was when she saw him. His hands were resting in his lap, the knife held loosely there. The tears running down his face dripped onto the stained sheets, mingling with the blood seeping from the cut on his chest. He looked into her eyes helplessly and almost pleaded to her.
       “I just wanted to help…” he gulped, shuddering as he sobbed. She bundled him up in her arms, his blood soaking into her nightgown, and murmured reassurances into his hair. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it. It just hurt too much…” The insistent explanation was muffled against her shoulder, but she understood that he had to tell her.
       Using the ruined sheet she cleaned up the worst of the mess on his chest and kissed the tears from his face. He latched himself onto her and as she rocked him, still whispering comforting words, he finally slept.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 19 Aug 2008, 02:30
I like that one Han.
Ok Hannah told me a writing exercise that I decided to give a whirl.  Basically you choose a sentence of something you have written, then use each word of that sentence to start another sentence to make a paragraph!

Mine became somewhat...abstract.  I probably chose a silly line, but I have always liked it.

“I’m God’s most fuckable angel” She’d told me

I’m surrounded by pieces of her.  God’s little black sheep, the lost lamb finding her way with cocaine and cigarettes.  Most of her evenings spent bathed in vodka and smelling of sex, ‘Satan’s Paradise’ she called it.  Fuckable mysteries in smokey bars would chat her up and take her home, another conquest on her heavenly mission.  Angel eyed innocence long since stripped from her, now replaced with a Devil-may-care attitude to rival the big man himself.  She’d had a glimpse of paradise and gave it up for the taste of cigarettes and sweat on skin.  Told by heaven to go their way, she carved her own path through the vices of the city and reached her chosen destination.  Me, left to sit by the window and watch her, descending in flames from the sky.



Now I know why I never got accepted into that creative writing degree so many years ago.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jimbunny on 20 Aug 2008, 01:12
Your prose is beautiful! "She’d had a glimpse of paradise and gave it up for the taste of cigarettes and sweat on skin." Awesome sentence.

Also, I really liked Allison's. I think you paced yourself really well.

I don't have anything just yet, but I don't want this thread to die!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Thomas Edison on 20 Aug 2008, 02:49
Wow, a thread that I actually think is a good idea, and that surely cannot fall into endless quips of a sexual nature.

I might get something typed up at work later and post it up.

Ossstentaaaatioooon. Awesome word.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ThePQ4 on 20 Aug 2008, 09:51
Quote
that surely cannot fall into endless quips of a sexual nature.

Okay, now you're just asking for someone to write some smut. But Eris asked nicely for us not to turn this into a sexy writtin' thread, so I shall ignore this sudden urge... But if it is not so nicely ignored by someone else, just know it's your fault, k! (Note: I'm not being bitchy, I mean that in a cute sarcastic way...I'm trying not to resort to the smilies...)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scrambled Egg Machine on 20 Aug 2008, 10:10
I am a single face in a sea of digital camouflage. Stepping off of the train onto a bullet pocked concrete platform fifty miles south of Denver, I am one more soldier in the meat grinder that is Mid-West Theater, Sector 1. This town was once called Castle Rock, but all it is now is a firebase and supply dump, the rest of it having been pounded into oblivion by artillery. A-10's slam past overhead on their way to the trenches. I follow the crowds, into a bunker with truncated stumps of antennae protruding from the top. A bundle of gear is shoved at me and  am ejected into the trench systems to find my unit. A Chinese-made ground attack fighter rockets overhead, cannon fire tearing into everyone and everything around me. I drop, bisected by a 23mm cannon round. Welcome to the war.

This is a segment of the prologue to a novel I am attempting to write.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Leinad on 20 Aug 2008, 10:17
Well you already shot your main character in half. I for one cannot wait to see how this turns out, if you can make him recover from that in a way that does not turn him into some super-human killing machine. Because we have way too many of them. But if you make the story a gritty, tough place without anyone thing being too over-bearing then you could have something interesting going on. PM me with more stuff, eh?
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Thomas Edison on 20 Aug 2008, 11:40
I sit, idle as my car, outside a building which can only be described as a last desperate bid to re-enact the ‘70s ‘Late Modernism’ architectural movement. The funny thing is that it fails to grasp the monotonous feel that it’s supposed to have captured. Around it, across the streets and throughout the city, the other high rise buildings are bizarre, eccentric and generally a love-or-hate affair. This one, however, stands out like a blank canvas in a gallery of complex artworks. It is tall, as well as bland. Others try to be new, expressive, arty. This one, however, does not. It just is.

I know this because my father wanted me to be an architect.

I tweak through the radio stations as the car motor purrs, the flickering static complimenting the oppressive gloom of the building to my right. The airwaves are laden with news of impending war, of ever rising death tolls and of the new threats that emerge daily. I can’t suppress the curling of my lips as I realize it paints a bleak picture, just like the monolith to my right. As I said, it's a funny thing.

The building itself is the base of operations for a company whose name I choose not to recall. It is fifty eight floors high, and holds a number of workers too large for me to grasp. Maths was never my strong suit.

I am not smart, I am not witty, I am not wise.

I check my rear view mirrors before opening my car door, though I needn’t worry. Rush hour is long gone, and no one drives for the sake of driving anymore. With income decreasing and petrol prices increasing, the only time people drive anymore is when they need to get to work.

In fact, the only time I drive anymore is when I need to get to work.

I cross the road, the security of the building have opened the doors for me already. They’ve observed me coming here, to this building, every now and then for a few months. I am familiar to them. Each time I enter I carry a package made from cardboard and wrapped heavily with that odd brown packaging tape which, I think, smells glorious. The package is usually empty. This time, the package rattles when I shake it.

The men in suits with name tags smile and nod as I enter the building.

Within this building is a man. This is a man with power. Within this man is knowledge. This is the kind of knowledge I could never have. Not many people know it, but this man is one of the main driving forces behind all our problems. This man is sat at the top floor. This man is the head of this company whose name I refuse to recall.

In three minutes, this man will be sipping expensive brandy from a cooled glass. In five minutes, I will be within an elevator, pressing the shiny button for the top floor. In twelve minutes, I will be tearing open the package and assembling the contents. In fourteen minutes, I will check the clip is ready and the safety is off.

In fourteen and a half minutes, the man will be dead.

My father wanted me to be an architect.

__________


Today has been a reeeeallllly slow day at work. We've managed to watch Pulp Fiction, Transformers and that Pixar film with the rat. =/ I even managed to get to mah laptop.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: mat_mantra on 20 Aug 2008, 12:32
Meh, i'm not really in the mood for fiction, might be more cathartic to get rid of some of the stuff bouncing around in my head from work.


       Sometimes i have to wonder if I was meant to be a medic.  I've always been one of those naturally empathetic people, always with a sympathetic ear for a passing stranger wanting to empty their head of whatever ailed them.  I have a bad habit of always taking it farther in my head, however.  I don't just listen, i hear what is really troubling between the outpouring of minor worries.  I don't just read the daily casualty reports, I wonder about the families behind the names, parents outliving their children,  children losing a parent they never really knew.  If i didn't have such a solid hold on what is important in my life, the problems of others would surely suck me down into the murky depths of depression.

       Some cases you just can't seem to let go.  Take a young soldier recently, coming in from an EFP blast while pulling convoy duty.  I sat nearby and listened as this 19 year old single amputee calmly described a short moment of what must have been the closest thing to Hell on Earth that i can think of.  His voice never wavered, his gaze never dropped, he almost seemed to be relating an interesting anecdote remembered from his past.  Despite his outward demeanor, I could imagine the nightmares and and the pain in this poor kids future when the shock wore off and what he had actually experienced finally began to sink in.  People like this one make me wish i truly could do more than just make him comfortable in bed and make sure his pain meds were on schedule.

        But of course with every sad story has it's opposite number.  We had a foreign soldier on our floor for several months lasting through Christmas of last year.  Another amputee, he had lost everything from his shoulder down on the right side, having taken the brunt of an IED blast while riding the turret of a patrol vehicle.  When he first arrived on our floor, I took one look and decided he probably wouldn't make it through the night, let alone the normal 2 days between medical flights.  He surprised me by recovering into a quiet, yet vibrant man, reserved, yet not so much that he couldn't burst into a full bodied laugh at a good joke.

        One night, sitting outside smoking with him, i couldn't help but ask how he coped with the whole incident, missing limb and all.  "This?"  he said, "This is nothing.  I am alive.  That is all that matters.  I have wife.  My wife is strong right arm.  With her, this not a problem. "  And with that, he looked and me and laughed.  "Young man is too serious.  Need to smile more".  And this time i laughed with him.  Because sometimes, it's all you can do
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: SonofZ3 on 20 Aug 2008, 19:48
I’m reading too much. Like a junkie I inject Kierkegaard, Brautigan, Hesse and Shakespeare into my collapsing veins. I’m going to OD, to be so full of understanding that my ego will be pushed crying and cold into the street like an orphan, and when I trace my fingers over the bare skin of her back I won’t feel the currents of electric euphoria, but just stare at my cranes and try again to say “The only thing that bothered me was the poverty of the dead" in a way to make it sound like I invented it.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jimbunny on 21 Aug 2008, 02:40
First person present tense is triiiiiiicky. Why is it so attractive?

Anyway, another bit about music. A tad "chicken soup"-y, but there you go.

Grass shoots up from the ground of our campsite that is the country uncle of the posh grass of our suburban baseball fields - grass that makes wearing your Birkenstocks feel like a bad idea that would have succeeded if only the world weren't so tough and spiny. And campsite is definitely a misnomer; what we have pitched our tents in the middle of is not land meant for sleeping, it is land that has been set aside for the cars of those who did not plan on sleeping anywhere tonight but in their warm beds, far away from here. This is Lot F. F stands for Fitting, and a number of other things besides. We are at a small folk music festival in northern Michigan in the middle of summer, experiencing what life has agreed to throw down, a hardy, four-strong group of college students. At the moment, that which has just been thrown at us is innumerable and wet, and our temporary respite from the rain is peppered with threats of another burst. The night has been long and full of the contemplation of cheap tents. The cheap tent is now full of more than just the contemplation of rainwater. As we painfully greet the day, we wear the dazed looks of the sleep-deprived and deeply uncomfortable. A short conference confirms that this particular life, as it is currently being lived, is obviously unbearable, and that warmth, food, and an escape from the pervading dampness - in just about that order - are all necessary. We require a restoration, and it is not to be found here. However, before we depart, we make the trek to main stage one more time and are rewarded for it with a set from similarly weather-wearied musicians who play in spite of the damp and the chill. After a few moments of tuning, brave smiles, and banter, they start in on their first song. Recognizing it, I grow just an inch taller and lean in just a little more towards the stage. "If you are weary and trying to find your way home,/ don't give up my friend, 'cause you are not alone." These are words I can gladly hear. "In a world full of trouble, you know trouble may find you./ I've got your medicine, baby, this is what you do:/ You've got to rise up, rise up singing./ In time this too shall pass./ You've got to rise up, rise up singing./ You know, this trouble ain't built to last." I sing along.

After the band leaves the stage, we head back to Lot F. We pack our sodden things and throw them into an adorably cramped vehicle, throwing ourselves in on top of them. Pictures are taken, wry smiles committed for later reflection, and we search for a nearby restaurant. We end up sitting around a table in a small-town eatery, above which there has been erected a giant chicken. It is warm, and the food is warm, and the eventual conversation is slow to start but warm nonetheless. We drive for forty minutes and arrive at a home, resting mostly alone along a beautiful country road. Inside is a tumble dryer, a nap, and enough hope for the rest of the weekend.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v69/Jimbunny/n15303240_31059342_2846.jpg)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Jimmy the Squid on 21 Aug 2008, 03:36
I lay on my back and looked up the stars. I had forgotten to bring my glasses and so I couldn't really see much except for a dull yellow circle against a black backdrop spattered with grey. I tried to look like I was counting the stars, or maybe thinking deep, sad thoughts, half hoping that someone would ask me what I was doing, half hoping that nobody noticed me. A rustle of grass and a soft moan alerted me to the fact that there was a couple making out underneath the trampoline I was lying on. I stayed very still and tried not to alert them to my presence. I didn't want to listen to them, I'm not much for voyeurism, I just didn't want to interrupt them; at least someone was having fun that night. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, metal rectangle. I pushed some buttons sunken into it's flat surface, plugged in my earphones and closed my eyes. I tried to be interested in the music, tried to lose myself in the ebb and flow of the songs but it wasn't working and I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that the battery of my mp3 player was dead.
Eventually the happy couple move back into the house, pausing to look at me, wondering if I knew what they were doing. I ignored them, staring blindly into the sky, refusing to acknowledge our awkward moment together, the only time someone will notice me for the entire night. I suppose it's probably better this way though, it's not as if I was invited to this thing.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ThePQ4 on 21 Aug 2008, 09:09
First person present tense is triiiiiiicky. Why is it so attractive?

Why is it tricky?? I prefer first person actually. It helps me keep my characters straight (...that just me smile; I am a horrible person). When I write in a 3rd person perspective, I tend to forget who is where doing what when I have a bunch of them together in a situation. Or not really that I forget, but I just write the wrong thing down and when i read over it later, I'm just like "Whoa, that's not right..."

Anyhoo, here's a little snip of what I was working on last night.

"So, are you going to tell me what's up?"
There was that goddamn look again.
I sighed, "Look guys, if it's good news, it's probably going to brighten my otherwise shitty day. So, just out with it, okay?"
"Well, honey," Mom glanced up at dad with a little smile. I looked down at their folded hands. Obviously they were happy about whatever it was. "While we weren't exactly planning on this..." She started to blush pink, "There's not an easy way to say it, but --we're pregnant!"
I felt like the world had stopped. This was probably the last thing I had ever expected. Out of the dozens of things they could have told me...a baby? I was seventeen and now they were adding to the family? My first instinct was shock and then anger.
"What do you mean?" It was a stupid thing to say. "How?"That was even dumber. I knew how it happened.
"Sweetie, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I shook my head. "Just...wow." I wanted to be supportive, but my inner dialogue was on a rampage --how could they do this to me? But this wasn't about ME. And now I felt selfish."I'll be right back." That dirty feeling just jumped me. They didn't say anything as I made my way through the tables of the restaurant to the bathroom.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: allison on 21 Aug 2008, 12:34
Thanks for the praise on my last piece. As I said, I really don't write a lot...and it's nice to hear that I'm not awful!

--

Emily turns off the television. There are no lights on and without the blue glow of the screen, she is in the dark. It’s refreshing, because she can't see a thing and for once, she isn’t evaluating herself and everything around her. She is alone in her mind and it’s perfect. She is sick of calculating every move, losing sleep over stupid things, pretending to have it all together when all she wants to do is cry. She’s sick of wanting to cry, because weakness is not acceptable. She's never been allowed to be weak. She remembers the only comforting words offered to her. "Things happen. Life goes on."

So she tries to go on with her life. Routine is the best way to make it seem all right. Predictability is her last defense, and she’s sticking to her guns. Some people drink, some people exercise, some people write stories to get away from their demons. Emily has never liked alcohol, or running, and was never very good at poetic imagery, so she just pretends.

Then, of course, something changes. She meets new people and the routine is different. People are not Emily’s thing, because she speaks before thinking, and then thinks for hours about what she said to someone and what they think of her now. She wonders about what her life was like before she forgot how to be a friend. She obsesses about the look she got on the subway this morning. Things like this pick away at her brain and it makes her anxious.

Suddenly, everything comes to a peak, and like Krakatoa, she explodes because it’s impossible to hold it all in anymore. She cries and screams and throws things. She rages for nearly half an hour, the pressure of a thousand things she's never allowed herself to feel coursing through her and she escapes for a few minutes from that shell that she's kept herself in for years.

When she's done, her chest hurts from sobbing and yelling and she collapses onto the couch, breathing slowly and deeply, and it isn't long until she drifts to sleep. Emily dreams every night, but usually it’s not this vivid and most of the time she doesn’t remember it in the morning. This dream is different. She remembers the feeling of his hands as they hold hers, the smell of his leather jacket as she leans against his shoulder, the perfect sound of his voice as he says that he cares.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scrambled Egg Machine on 21 Aug 2008, 12:56
The continuation of my earlier piece.

    The train pulls in at the sole remaining platform at the Castle Rock firebase, and all soldiers aboard are made to depart before the trains reverse and lays tracks back to Colorado Springs. I am one of five hundred freshly trained soldiers. The obvious place to go is a cratered bunker surrounded with conspicuously new air raid sirens, radar trailers and two anti-aircraft emplacements. They neglected to scrub the bloodstains off of the concrete, though. I step inside and am handed a large pack of gear after having my tags scanned, and then step back outside to get a quick look at the area. I get cut short by a few barely audible metallic coughs in the distance. Every grungy looking veteran immediately dives into the nearest shell hole. When the mortar rounds begin to impact, I follow suit. Pronto. The rain of sixty millimeter death abates a little and I get a chance to book it into the trenches to find my unit. Hurtling into the small roll-out that will be my quarters for the foreseeable future, I land on a pissed looking salt holding a flamethrower.
    " Damn FNG, get your act together." He and two others stare at me. "Welcome to Lone Tree."
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jimbunny on 21 Aug 2008, 21:37
First person present tense is triiiiiiicky. Why is it so attractive?

Why is it tricky?? I prefer first person actually. It helps me keep my characters straight (...that just me smile; I am a horrible person). When I write in a 3rd person perspective, I tend to forget who is where doing what when I have a bunch of them together in a situation. Or not really that I forget, but I just write the wrong thing down and when i read over it later, I'm just like "Whoa, that's not right..."

Without implying anything negative about your writing, I meant that it is tricky to sound good using first person present tense. In my experience, it's a whole lot harder to vary your sentence structures and get a good flow. If I could hazard a guess (and perhaps answer my own question at the same time), I'd say that writing that way makes people feel as if they have to constantly account for their primary subject, which leads to an overuse of "I do/think/feel this"-type sentences. It can get a little claustrophobic. At the same time, it's probably what the writer feels most comfortable expressing, which might explain its popularity.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: imagist42 on 22 Aug 2008, 16:18
This is a weird little thing I did for a competition at another forum. I called it "Capturing Truths" but that is a pretty lame title. Also I recognize that I have developed a really nasty habit lately of injecting music the average person (read: not you guys) has never heard of into my writing, but I can't help it.


The digital 2 on the clock morphs into a 3. It is now 6:33 A.M. Voxtrot bursts from the speakers: “I know that you’re in love with her; I can tell by the way you never touch her or look at her.” It incites thought.

Was it wrong to make you love me if you’d never know love on your own?

A soft click wipes her off the screen. It is almost a noticeable progression, as first the sheen of her deep red hair, then the line where her crooked smile meets her dimple, then the mole on her chin fade into a shot of shadow-casting clouds outside an airplane porthole. In reality all is instantaneous, but instants rarely seem “real” in that sense, anyway.

What good is capturing a moment when it’s a posed lie?
If you don’t want the truth, why try remembering at all?


Several more images captured through that narrow window pass by, all with equally fascinating and landless landscapes. One appears as a floating glacial plateau, another as a dark, stormy tsunami overtaking a bright, calm ocean.

We aren’t meant to fly, but when we do, we might as well make the most of it.

Many more are nothing but blurs of light and shadow. In sight they would send a man into a stupor, but in memory they are flat and lifeless. Something of the immediate impression is lost in the eternal incarceration. It is difficult to place.

I always preferred Monet’s take to photorealism anyway.
If I wanted to see how things looked I’d go
look at them.
It’s the impression that lasts long enough to care about.


The skyline of San Francisco from the bay now looms in the distance, with Pier 39 engulfing the foreground like an overgrown gull. The scene appropriately reflects in a half-empty glass of water, the only visible body on the large vacant desk other than the luminous screen itself, as a vague and hazy notion of the city rather than the city itself. Within the reflection is something faint, an almost-echo of the sea lions undoubtedly barking off stage left, but no—it is nothing more than Meric Long's haunting cries as The Dodos’ “The Season” breaks down into its conclusion.

For the sea lions there's a time and place; why can’t we be the same?

The pop of uncapping the bottle, the gulp of swallowing aspirin with a sip of water, the clink of setting the glass back down. The errant twang of a guitar as The Dodos bang out the beginning of “Walking.” A quick succession leading to, “You can fight the fire that’s in your head...”

But it would take hydrant or two...

Suddenly the brilliance of the screen dims as the next shot portrays the city under cover of night—and of fog. The viewpoint is reversed, looking out on the bay from an intersection of roads somewhere nearby, but with the misty, gray veil lying thick, hardly the light from the streetlamps is distinct, much less the flash of fireworks in the distance. Only she is clear; her back turned as she studies the sky in wonder, bundled up heavily in the leather jacket that isn’t hers, her skirt swaying slightly to her right as the breeze complicates the calculations for the show over the water. And something else—a slight gleam to the left, as of light reflecting off metal, a metal that shouldn’t be there in the cordoned-off street.

A car?
Wait...

The car?

The bumper and a portion of the front hood are a blur of motion, but still clearly visible, inching their way into the picture. But with all eyes focused elsewhere, and not even gunfire audible under the din of bursting rockets echoing in all directions, there was no notice that a jet-black sports car had broken the police blockade, and even less chance that its frantic and distracted driver would spot the girl directly in front of him.

Maybe there are some truths worth forgetting, some lies worth remembering.

The digital 5 on the clock morphs into a 6. It is now 6:36 A.M. A dialogue box appears. It warns that to continue with the action of cropping could result in a loss of information. As a dotted line intended for selection outlines a slender portion of the left-hand side of the screen, the dialogue box questions whether this is really the intention. The cursor hovers over the button marked “Yes.”
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Jimmy the Squid on 23 Aug 2008, 04:11
The days crawl past just like they always have but for him every day is a new miracle. He sits in the park every morning, breathes deeply the clean morning air, cold and crisp. He listens to the birds waken before the sun pushes itself past the horizon, their song a sweet greeting to each new day. He walks along the flagstone paths, humming a half remembered tune, wishing he knew how to whistle. He smiles at the early morning joggers but their eyes slide past him, if they look at him at all. Unpertubed he trundles along, enjoying the feeling of the cold in his bones being washed away by the warmth of the sun. He stops to talk to his friend as he has every day since he can remember. He tells his friend of the things he sees and what he thinks about them and his friend listens, patiently, quietly. His friend is very tall and he cannot reach the man's shoulder so he places a hand on his friends knee. Hard. Cold. Unyielding. He pats it by way of saying goodbye and walks away, smiling to himself. Sometimes he wishes his friend would talk back to him. Maybe tell him of what the world looks like from up on his pedestal or whether he minds when birds perch on his shoulders or whether he gets cold, standing in the middle of the park day in, day out. But today he is happy for a kind ear.
In the evening he walks through the streets, feeling like a part of the crowd. Passers-by sometimes stare at him but he doesn't notice. He is too entranced by the flashing neon signs, as if he has never seen them before. If you asked him he would tell you he hadn't. If you asked him.
Once night has properly fallen, once the sky is an inky black peppered with pinpricks of silver light, he goes home. He sits in his favourite spot and thinks. Tiredly he looks down at his hands, his fingernails are dirty, his skin is rough. One day, he thinks, he will clean them. His eyes are heavy and his body aches for he is very old. He breathes deeply as he closes his eyes, drifting into sleep.

In the morning he sits on his bench in the park. The birds sing but today he doesn't listen. The early morning joggers go past, barely turning their heads at the old man but today he doesn't smile. His friend stands alone, unblinking in the morning glare. Eventually someone will notice him. They will bring others to come see him. They will wonder what his name is and if he had a family. They will lie him down, clean him and say a prayer. The days will crawl on as they ever have. The sun will rise and the birds will sing. Life will continue exactly as if nothing was different.

Well, almost exactly.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 23 Aug 2008, 22:34
Jimmy that was sad :(  I liked it alot!  You are good at this!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Oli on 26 Aug 2008, 15:38
I just wrote this, but I'm not 100% happy with it. I will post it anyway I suppose. One bit I am not really happy with is the switch between the first and second paragraph. There's supposed to be a noticeable difference in the writing but I think it is maybe too obvious, or maybe the first paragraph is too short for the difference to be effective. I don't really know.

Title.


When I was eight years old I wanted to be a detective. I set up my own dectective business in my bedroom, with a desk, some pens and a copy of both The Young Detective's Handbook and Secret Codes - the latter came with an incredibly handy invisible ink pen. No dectective's office is complete without a brown detective's jacket hanging from the door so I bought one, easily twice my size, from a jumble sale to hang from the door while I sat and waited for the inevitable crime wave that was set to sweep the countryside.

   And now I write bad poetry and worse stories and I read too much into everything and I don't want to do anything aside from work for myself and live off what I love. Of course you knew that already. I don't think you knew me when I was eight, so maybe you don't know that I wanted to be a dectective. Maybe all you know is that I want to write bad poetry. I probably won't mention it though. Not tonight.

   We're almost ready to leave and I can't help but think; but I don't have time to think because we're out the door and on the stairs and we're out the door and the street is cold. I put on my jacket. The air is sharp. There's a broken corona bottle at the corner of my block. I stop.

"Why is that there?" I ask and you turn, quickly, and say.

"What?"

and I say "it doesn't matter" but it does. There's no lime.

   So we get to the club, which is only a ten minute walk from the corner of my block, and there's no queue. £5, because it's after midnight, and we're in. Another £1 to put my jacket in the cloakroom. The ticket goes in my wallet, I think. I go to the bar and I order a vodka and coke and a jack daniel's and coke. At least, I ask for a jack daniel's and coke and she asks if Louisiana Pride or Mississippi Pride or something Pride is okay and I nod, she pours and I take the drinks. £1 each. I'm walking back to you carrying the vodka and coke and the jack daniel's, but not really jack daniel's, and coke when I see a guy drinking a corona with no lime. He's about my height. a little skinnier and with shorter and darker hair. He's wearing a white polo shirt with a brown stripe, the collar popped up, along with some dark pre-faded jeans and some chunky white adidas shoes. So I sit down next to you, give you your drink and sip mine while watching this guy. The club is fairly dead, but everyone's paid £5 to get in so no-one is quite ready to leave.

Four drinks later I say "When I was eight..." and you say

"Hang on I'm going to the toilet." and I say
   
"Okay" and keep watching that guy.

   You come back from the toilet, via the bar, about 5 minutes later. I've not moved. You hand me a drink and I ask what it is and you tell me it's jack and coke but I know it's not jack and coke. Unless she lied to me, which after all is possible so it might well be jack and coke. You've got a bottle of Corona. There's no lime. You normally have lime in your Corona , don't you? I'm fairly sure you do.

"Don't you normally have lime in your Corona?"

"Uh-huh, but there's no lime."

"Oh." and then "So when I was eight..."

   By the end of the night I've lost my cloakroom ticket so I have to describe my jacket to get it back. I can see it on the rails behind the counter so I point towards it and say:

"It's that long, brown, beat up overcoat."
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: KvP on 26 Aug 2008, 17:39
Paging ZJGent to this thread

ZJGent, to this thread.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Patatat on 26 Aug 2008, 18:23
My hands shook aflutter as I sat there, staring at the food I had previously eaten. The dry sands soaking up the warm liquid as if the land was thirsty. A strangle smell floated through the air, and the stench crawled its way through my nostrils. The vile smell making me recoil back, as I tried to shake it out of me. Snapping forward as I gazed onto the blazing fire, and slowly I crawled back into reality. My hands fell into the sand as I tried to stand, and couldn't just yet. Taking a deep breath, forcing myself to stand. Looking on, at the vehicle I had just been in illuminated the dark night. I stumbled forward towards it. I don't know what guided me forward, or what brought my hands into the flame trying to pull them out. They were ,but silhouettes in the red, and orange. With all my strength I tried to tug them out, not that I hoped I could save them, but I felt like I had to. I kept pulling, and pulling. Till I was pulled, straight back down to the ground, and away. What was dragging me away, why were they dragging me away? I need to be there, I needed to get them out. My body was flung forward, falling hard into a ditch.

"They're dead Corporal!" A large shadow screamed at me. Who was he? Was he death, why was he telling me they were dead. Was I dead too, and just didn't know it. Was this hell?

As more shadows surrounded me, and water splashed my face. I realized this wasn't hell, this was Iraq. I looked down at my hands they were burnt, and some of the sleeves of my uniform were singed and blackened. Slowly the events that had just occurred were piecing themselves together. People were talking to me, but I was lost. It took me a second to realize that the medic was bandaging my hands.

"Hey! Stay with me, man. You gotta snap back into reality." the medic said as he slapped the top of my helmet. Bright lights started flying over the top of us, they were beautiful. Then I remembered what they were.

"Whe...where is my rifle?" I managed to spit out the sentence, as one of my brethren handed me the cold black weapon. I clinched my teeth in pain, as I gripped it, then put the pain in the back of my head. I had to, I had to forget about the pain. I had to keep moving. With help, I stood up and nodded: "I am... I am okay now."

It was a lie.

Three months later, I stepped off the airplane. Family waiting for me elated with joy for me to be back. They hugged me, and kissed me and sung my praises. It was all bullshit, aside from my Mom none of them wrote me. None of them cared how I was for the past year. They probably never even thought of me. My friends were the same, when I met them at the bar later that night. They all talked about how they missed me, and it wasn't the same without me. It was a lie, all of it was a lie. They all told me how sorry they were about Annie, and how it was wrong that she left me. I didn't even know about it till then. To think I had kept her picture with me always to keep me safe, and keep me happy. While she was naked in some other guys bed. That fuckin' whore.

After I left the bar, and a friend dropped me off. I sat in my room, a place I hadn't been in what seemed an eternity. This place hadn't skipped a beat with me gone, in another world. I wonder if it was the same for the guys I left behind in the humvee. Jimmy's family, and friends they cared. They always wrote to him, they always talked to him, his wife must of sent him a million letters. We would always give him a hard time for it. I left him behind in the humvee, just like Carterson, Matthews, and Eric. I am sure their families, and friends missed them. Why was I the one that sat in the rear passenger seat, the one that was flung out of the humvee when the IED went off. I was spared, and they all died in the fire.

There was a loud popping sound, and my Mother rushed in. She was crying, I knew she would be, and I felt bad for her, but I knew no one else would care....


-------------------------

Hm, I just kind of started writing that right on the spot. I kind of started with a basic idea, and it just kind of mutated into something completely different. I kind of like it. I actually wrote a totally different story, and then erased everything up to the "I am okay now" part, and just kind of did something else from there.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Leinad on 26 Aug 2008, 18:35
Hmm, that is actually a nice bit of work right there. I like the general flow and the tempo, while different, is nice. It is something of a used up story line, featured in a lot of writing, but I guess it is pretty damn relevant these days, so it can be excused.

The whole idea of "soldier returns home to family who don't understand" but with a twist, a twist of "no one really cares" is different, in that I haven't read too much of that, and I like this piece. Sure it is depressing, but I have had friends go away, and I can relate to the "this place hasn't skipped a beat with me gone". I noticed that too, people always say they miss people, but humans have a way of separating those feelings from everyday life and moving on, prioritizing and just keep rolling. Sad, and I think you captured that very nicely.

Also the mom caring, crying, writing to her son, but the son still taking his life, that is another interesting element. It suggests that in Iraq he brewed a sense of detachment, not a sense of "no one cares for me." I think a lot of people think "they'll regret it when I am gone" but he knows for a fact at least one person will, yet he takes his life anyways. Maybe this was influenced by his girlfriend leaving him? He feels that women don't really love him, simply use him as a depository for their affection, possibly explaining why he disregarded that his mother wouldn't want him gone, would miss him? He says he felt bad about that, but not bad enough to stay alive, apparently.

All in all it seems like you captured a lot of different emotions in a compact piece of work, good job!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 26 Aug 2008, 19:37
Lionel sat, giving off the upmarket parfum of an Eisner-designed yuppie, on an italian leather sofa shinier than his brilliantined hair. The party carouselled around him - Daily Mail writers doing all the naughty things you read about in, say, The Daily Mail. Evidently, the party's aficionado (a crumpled and decrepit rock orang) had bought in the gross national product of a small South American country... lines of dubious snuff were being cut and tucked and huffed and fucking fucked people were laughing everywhere. Lionel looked at his fake Rolex for a further six seconds than necessary. The hyena cackles cascaded at points too close to the back of his head. He could feel a scotch migraine eating at the pit of his cerebellum. Another six seconds spent staring at the diamante dial of his watch face.

Then, beautifully, she entered. A strip of black cotton teased into the shape of a dress around her - lines curving in perfect prospect - ribbons of chestnut curling about an elfin face. Evilly delicious. Lionel smiled something vulpine. She weaved her body (christ what a body, Lionel thought, utilising that part of the brain somewhere behind the belt buckle) through the debauched and adulterous crowd like a seamstress cutting a regal robe. The party slid about her - a seasick fiasco to which the only sea legs were hers... the legs, Lionel thought... those legs.

Being a patient man, Lionel waited until the hyenas waned and tired, now dripping off the mirrors that fed their cavernous conks in ailing fatigue. He stalked a path through living chaise-longue corpses and they met by the door to the hall.

"I felt I should say something, at least..."

"Shh," she whispered, lazy as a cigarette, "I
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 27 Aug 2008, 02:05
Man Roddy, you fill me with joy.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 27 Aug 2008, 02:10
 :-D
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 27 Aug 2008, 03:41
Lullabys and Lollipops

You were a skeletal wisp with scarred wrists and a lollipop heart.  Fragile candy sucked down by strangers beat on your ribs, leaving only hollow echoes.  You looked at me with lullaby eyes, a nursery rhyme reflection disengaged.  “I’m God’s most fuckable angel”, you’d told me, spread out on the floor staring at the empty ceiling. “I’m counting His heavenly hosts” you said.

When I found you, you were floating facedown in your own bathtub, the dried blood and white powder from your nose dissolving in the soapy water.  I sat on the windowsill curling my toes and wondered if they named stars after you in heaven.



Man, why did I decide to be the one to follow Roddy. To follow Roddy with somethign way below par.  Whatever guys, I'm out of ideas and now I feel lame.  I write too abstract for the real world.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 27 Aug 2008, 03:48
(I have neither the intelligence nor attention span to write prose. However, here is one of the few poems I have written that I am proud of.)

Hands

My hands are full of hands with drinks
and they're dry for once.
My mouth is full of tongues that speak
and all they do is babble, babble,
about my way down.

I'm semi-formed and semi-slurred,
Oh, what am I to do?
Hold my hand and I
won't drop you if you're quiet.
Please don't say a word while waiting
For him? For Why? For What?
We can be in love tonight.

When all ourselves are out to chat,
and looking at the past
can we find somewhere there to live
without someone there to hate?

Some of them remember me.
All forget to ring.
Never get to hear me trying
maybe to sleeping, maybe talking.

Though we know what we won't like
we can't tell what'll come
singing songs and finding rhymes
I've not heard before
but when I close my eyes remind me
I'm never going to know.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: fatty on 29 Aug 2008, 16:14
I picked a song to accompany this post. I think this is better than reading in silence. Maybe I should do this for all my posts. You might get to sample some of my music tastes.
Fat Freddy's Drop - Ray Ray (http://www.divshare.com/download/5249968-196)

I noticed that a number of my favourite albums have a song towards the end that have a few minutes in the middle of a song where the music peters out and it’s just silent. It is an experience which echoes other period of reflection and introspection.


You’ve been listening to this album, letting the music sink into your subconscious. It plays in the background of your thoughts or attention directed elsewhere. Then you realise that the actual music has stopped, and for longer than usual period. The echoes of the music you can still hear, but then they get softer and suddenly you realised how loud the silence is. Of course it’s not actually silence; it is punctured by background noises which you didn’t hear before. Time slows. Soon it is creeping forward like glass sliding down its own surface, pulled by gravity.

By this point, the memory of the music is almost gone, it’s bouncing around but you can’t quite piece it together. Then it returns. Within moments, you are swept back up into the music like no time had passed.


I find travelling home on the train a similar experience. I guess this a very personal response to travel and it is also reflected in other situations.


After a busy day of moving yourself, going places and doing things, you’re now resigned to being moved down an arbitrary route at an arbitrary pace. There is nothing new to look at, nothing surprising or unfamiliar. The comfort of home is in the distance, but you can’t hurry towards it, you can merely sit and wait till you get there.

Maybe the chaos of the day is still bouncing around your head. Even here you can not get a break from the noise and movement, turning thoughts over an over idly until you fall asleep. Other days, you might use music to drown out everything else, something with a strong bass and fast moving, to shut out the rest of the world.

When all the chaotic thoughts die down, collapse from exhaustion much like your body feels like doing, and when the music slows or bores you, you start to hear the loud silence.

You realise that the background noises are deafening. The whir of the air conditioning, the bumpy click-clack of the train over the tracks and the rattle of carriages are cacophonous. Your ears aren’t the only sense being bombarded. The smell of food, McDonalds, coffee, old newspapers, pee, and sweat lingers. The vinyl seat is slightly sticky; the plastic and chrome surfaces are suspiciously smooth. A draft moves around your legs. At each stop inertia pulls you back and forward, the cold dry voice comes over the loudspeaker, and the automatic doors beep as they close.

Don’t concentrate on the landscape; it’s drab and dark, the backs of houses and shops behind chain-link fences. Don’t count the stops, it just makes you realise how many of them there are. Don’t count the minutes, each one slides past slower if you do.

This is when your thoughts turn to the ups and downs of the busy day; you take stock and put things back in perspective. If you were driving or moving yourself, you would have current events and occasions to be concentrating on. When these are gone, you have to listen to the silence for a brief moment.

Suddenly, it’s your stop, you stand up; move quickly into the cold air and off home. Dinner is on your mind and your heavy feet hurry to bring you there. And you’re swept back into the speed of life, barely remembering the trip.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Cartilage Head on 29 Aug 2008, 22:38
 I'm pretty out of it right now, and I am going to try to sum up my most recent wacky-dream.

Basics

Too tired to stand, too tired to sit, too tired to lay. Golden boy throwing pennies in your direction, cackling through reddened lips and crooked teeth. Sitting still, can't concentrate. TV blares cartoons, news station, history channel, mouse advertisement? No roof on the hallway, stretching to the playground. We get soaked on our way to the car. Car is vomit colored, purple and green, then yellow and blue and violet. We get asked to make the centerpiece, we choose a piece of bread. She begs us to please please please pay attention and I just smile and think and sleep and wake and wander down the hall to the office, to the mail room. Fake plants and chairs. She screams that she wants us gone and so we go. We came home. We get soaked on our way to anywhere.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Mobius_Logic on 31 Aug 2008, 14:42
poetry! yes!

    

I want to go to the arboretum

our best features are things we've stolen
from books we liked, send away this heartless generation,
it's photographers are depressing me, i want to get my fingers
dirty and colorful and paint your face so thick
that you can only smile when you really mean it

last night i dreamed we had to send a cat to hell
we buried it by the school and you couldn't stop crying and
i think this says a lot about why we keep some photographs
for so long till they've faded to white again and it's like
a picture of heaven or the ceiling of a hospital

i will only love you until you tell me all of your secrets
and then you will burst at the seams and a thousand tiny birds
will come forth from inside and carry
what is left of your soul to beautiful places
where everyone is afraid to talk too loudly
and i will spend the rest of my life looking for them

i think our lives are mostly lost if we never go
insane i drive past cemeteries and imagine
a thousand decomposing grandmothers and lovers
crying quietly and i lay down on the back seat
and give up on enlightenment and ever having clean skin
and trying to find the heart beat of a thousand tiny birds

newborns make the best poets but accountants understand
god the best, I am a horrible card player because I'm much
too scared to loose anything and I look at the kings and queens
and I wondered how many fractured souls are hiding in the corners
of castles and i go to the beach and count
all of the fatherless princes swallowing gun powder
let us die pointless heroes

we have become creased like the favorite pages of our favorite
books and there are days where none of my pens work
and the paint is heavy on all of our faces and the man in the back
of the bus was giving away cigarettes last night and he used to be
six years old and so did I but sometimes it's hard to remember and sometimes
I just go over the numbers in my head like an alcoholic accountant

and sometimes when i sleep i dream i'm in a space as big as
the house my parents got married in and there are trees everywhere
and you can't hear the cars on the freeway for all the singing of all the tiny birds
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Patatat on 31 Aug 2008, 14:51
Hmm, that is actually a nice bit of work right there. I like the general flow and the tempo, while different, is nice. It is something of a used up story line, featured in a lot of writing, but I guess it is pretty damn relevant these days, so it can be excused.

The whole idea of "soldier returns home to family who don't understand" but with a twist, a twist of "no one really cares" is different, in that I haven't read too much of that, and I like this piece. Sure it is depressing, but I have had friends go away, and I can relate to the "this place hasn't skipped a beat with me gone". I noticed that too, people always say they miss people, but humans have a way of separating those feelings from everyday life and moving on, prioritizing and just keep rolling. Sad, and I think you captured that very nicely.

Also the mom caring, crying, writing to her son, but the son still taking his life, that is another interesting element. It suggests that in Iraq he brewed a sense of detachment, not a sense of "no one cares for me." I think a lot of people think "they'll regret it when I am gone" but he knows for a fact at least one person will, yet he takes his life anyways. Maybe this was influenced by his girlfriend leaving him? He feels that women don't really love him, simply use him as a depository for their affection, possibly explaining why he disregarded that his mother wouldn't want him gone, would miss him? He says he felt bad about that, but not bad enough to stay alive, apparently.

All in all it seems like you captured a lot of different emotions in a compact piece of work, good job!

Thank you! I just started kind of writing, I am happy with how it turned out. I think it could of been a lot better if I actually sat there, and planned it out more.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: WriterofAllWrongs on 31 Aug 2008, 18:52
Proximity Dilemma

A coppertop tired of powering the system
It melts to release these signals
what are run through in the auxiliary channel
overandoverandoverandover
for lack of a computational comprehension
in hopes of boiling down the components
to more compatible lines of digits and faux-phonics
The mechanical dismay in beeps and chirps
For lack of a more articulate form of noise
sounds a subtle alarm to primary
in morse code: ALERT POWER DOWN IMMINENT STOP
That tap dance hits hard on the main monitor
whose facility for interaction drops sharply to keep up the quota
Steam is emanating from the core
The circuitous mess of copper wires and input/output
Shorting in minor faculties and losing the cognizance
and the sensory and the basic orientation
Directional analysis shows basic solitary stations
All umpteen thousand yards away





Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: The extra letter on 02 Sep 2008, 02:24
I find myself floating down a busy footpath, slalom between souls too aware of themselves to be self-aware. I pass men with lightbulbs and cash-registers behind their eyes and women in three quarter length jeans who used to Have Career but became born-again housewives. All the stores I ignore dangle desire in their windows trying to lure you in so they can sell you sex and other people's second hand ideas but you wouldn't be able to find a Clue in any of them. I dodge a beard with a nametag trying to sell a tax-deductible way to help the children in need today or the cancer cure of tomorrow but really to salve a guilty conscience. I stop at the banks of an asphalt Acheron where cars that cost the earth race buses with imported culture pinned to their sides like butterfly wing brooches race taxis driven by the unhygienic and carrying the impolite, never mind the sods that try to wade through at the crossing. I'm finally swallowed by a bus and stammer a destination at the robot behind the wheel. I cross his palm with a fistful of silver coins and a fortune of familiar streets later I'm belched out onto gum studded concrete. I buy a thirst quenching style choice in a greasy spoon from a girl wearing a reliquary locket that could contain the Holy Prepuce or a pinger for Saturday night or are they the same thing?
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 02 Sep 2008, 19:05
Well Diary, today has been… interesting, to say the least.

I felt like death warmed up this morning. I pried my eyelids open only to slam them back closed when assaulted by the ridiculously cheerful sunlight streaming in through my window. I really need to get those blinds fixed. I must have had a bigger night than I realised, if the pounding in my head and fuzzy taste in my mouth was anything to go by, plus I couldn’t remember what actually happened last night. I remembered meeting up to celebrate Richard’s birthday, but other than that there was a big black gap in my memories.
   
Now that generally isn’t a good sign, but I figured I might as well get the embarrassment over with as quickly as possible. I managed to drag myself out of bed and stumble into the kitchen, growling complaints to Amanda who replied with equally suffering mutters, and ate whatever was available in the fridge before making my way to work

I paid no attention to the strange looks people were giving me as I walked down the street. I am sure I looked pretty rough, with my hair all over the place and remnants of my makeup smudged on my face. Plus I hadn’t had a coffee yet, so I didn’t really have the mental capacity to do anything other than shuffle forward and croak out small words. I was more put off by a guy across the street eyeing me suspiciously while resting his weight against a cricket bat.
   
I finally got to the café and ordered my coffee, zoning out while I waited. John commented that I must have had a wild night, and that was when I realised that my clothes were covered in dirt and ripped in places. Playing with a hole in my jeans I tried again to remember what had happened, but still no luck there. I thanked him for the coffee and lurched out of the shop to go get myself some lunch. I had a craving for steak.
   
It was only when I found myself gnawing on a strange man’s skull that I realised that something may not be quite right. Now people’s odd reactions made more sense; it’s not every day you see the undead walking around in broad daylight. I must admit, though, that guy’s brain was delicious.

-----
This was an assessment for my Creative Writing class; I had to read it out to the class. Everyone else had written such serious pieces, so I figured I might as well have some fun.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 02 Sep 2008, 21:52
Heee Hannah, I enjoyed that.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Ballard on 02 Sep 2008, 22:14
This is a segment of the prologue to a novel I am attempting to write.

I really, really like this. Please write more.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scrambled Egg Machine on 03 Sep 2008, 13:49
Wow, thanks. I have more but it smell really bad at the desk right now and can't sit here much longer. Tomorrow I will deliver some more. Thanks though.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 13 Sep 2008, 15:14
Bumping because, hey, writing is pretty cool.
Mobius! I really like your poem. There are parts of it where I'm not crazy about the way you word it, but overall I think it works very well.
I'm trying a new way of writing poems where I write several simultaneously, and go back to them once or twice a day, and do a new draft. I think it's working out pretty well so far! Here is one that I shall call Tenderness:

-

There's a moment of abrupt tenderness when we realise a few too many things
amongst these things we know I no longer love you.
It's you and me and I don't care.
And whatever it was, it's not any more.

I'm indecisive and fake buy when I try honesty
it means arguments beyond my resources and care
I have told myself that I've tried more than enough
I have been told that same fact,
but despite all these efforts once a month we'll give up.

I can't stand being in love with you, even though that's what they say I do.
I tried to explain. I said it. I said it. I said it.       I said it. I said that.
I said that we're through though it's not what I want.
It's a forgone conclusion; we're talking again.

We give more blame and take more blame than either of us is worth.
We give more blame and take more blame than either of us deserve.
You insist I'm wrong. I insist you're not the only reason I'm discontent,
but I hate you anyway.
And you use your fragility as another reason not to work or help me out, just like your insecurity.

Without a doubt we'll forget all our problems we've had.
And if we remember, we'll forget again.
But I'm sick of cursing your name every time.
So I want to try something new. Go somewhere new. Be someone new.
I can't decide for the life of me if it's going to be with you.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: maxusy3k on 13 Sep 2008, 23:57
There's a lot of really nice stuff in here I enjoyed reading, I sort of want to contribute something too but now I am all like "hurrr but my stuff is trash". With that in mind, this is something that was going to be a blog post on MySpaz but I ended up kind of going off on a tangent and it became not really about real life anymore. This is also why it's first person when I pretty much only ever write in third person. I might come back later and post the sort of opening to my current writing project.

--------------------

Everything is about pros and cons. For, against, plus, minus. For me the lack of any kind of 'morning after feeling', at least, no hangovers, sickness or anything to generally ruin the 24 hours after an alcohol fuelled night out has always been the big plus thing. It's like 'why not?'. Most I can worry about is aching from dancing too hard, which is as dependent on the music as it is the amount of alcohol I consumed.

Sometimes though I should think things through more. There's reasons I don't get utterly wasted on a regular basis. Sinking a few shots here and there to supplement my normal progression isn't exactly a world-ending scenario and, the way things have been recently, I'm in no doubt that the warm blanket of alcoholism is one I could wrap myself in to make things so much easier... but still, there comes a point where I should realise enough is enough, it's time to pay for water instead.

I don't remember lastnight. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe not. I remember starting the 'night' at about 2pm. I remember that my drinking buddy only had 3 shots of Jager, yet the bottle is nearly half empty. I also know I was the only other person drinking from it. I think there were cocktails? There was a bar I've never been to, and there were people I didn't know. I think it was mostly fun, but honestly... I can remember snippets, blurred images in the corners of my mind like old graffiti in a bathroom stall... there but infuriatingly impossible to translate. This amnesia worries me, because it calls into question how much I drank, why I did it, and why I didn't think stopping would be a good idea.

It's not like I've ever had a problem before, though. I'm a 'happy' drunk, even if recently I have just been doing it to mask or forget my own problems. It's easier than dealing with it though, it's easier and it's sure as hell a lot better for me to be drunk and blissfully ignorant of my own life, while having fun with my friends, than being conscious of a hundred weight of bullshit bearing down on me like a planet destroying comet, having to constantly mutter excuses and lies to the oft repeated 'are you ok?' sentiments of those around me.

Which leads me to start wondering, do I have a problem? Is drinking to escape the start of a spiral or the end of it? Is it too late or am I being melodramatic? I can't be an alcoholic, not yet, surely. Besides, I don't even end up putting myself in ridiculous places or having unexplained and embarassing black patches afterwards, it's not like I'm ruining my life. I'm young, right? I'm allowed to have some alcoholic fun once a week. Three times a week. The odd drink on a day that ends with a 'y'.

But here, curled beneath the bed of a girl I've never met before, while her father screams about desecration, impurity and being late for church, wearing a pair of painfully tight panties that sure as hell weren't made with me in mind, the taste of lipstick thick enough to know I'm actually wearing it... I can't help but think maybe, just maybe, I could do with laying off the drink for a while.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 14 Sep 2008, 22:00
The tunnel was jet - an electric stain from the building behind me cutting planes from the bare stone corners... and not much else.

Don't assume stupidity, I do understand the multitude of dangers bequeathed upon a lone traveller by dark under-bridge pathways. It hadn't been my intent to cross the railway in quite as poorly lit and nerve-piquing a fashion. A cavernous and sodium-bright route lay a mile or so to my east that night, but my primary concerns tended more towards haste and in a spectacularly dismal decision I opted for the sinister erosion of tunnel that sat darkly before me. It is due to the events that this choice engendered that I am a wiser man today. Wiser... but ten shades more weak of mind and body. Better that I not shed the final chapter early though - as a warning, I urge you, listen closely:

At a mid-point in this labyrinthine blind spot of an underpass, I understood a second tributary to cut away to my left. Noticing a spider's finger more light there than in the direction I currently faced I - foolish as I was - inclined towards this urban will-o-the-wisp like a moth to its own neon cremation. Luckily (though luck is hardly the word) I was not heading to any kind of mortal incandescence. What I found, as this new-found light grew stronger, was a widening architecture. Soon I found myself standing in a reddened cave, before a bebarrelled fire, in the company of a quite singular man. It was quite evident that he was a vagrant of some kind, yet his clothes were, in style, at odds with this assumption. He wore a jewelled waistcoat of an archaic style and his faded and ripped trouser ends held gaudy tidbits of gilding reminiscent more of the aristocratic fashions of our recently passed century than of any street vendor or pavement artist. Nonetheless, this man smelt as rancid as a Parisian sewer - much fouled were his sleeves and shirt cuffs... and the odour of cabbaged fish permeated the cracked brickwork like a viral plague. He beckoned me forth, and I, being at the time an overly curious fellow, approached cautiously.

"I'll sell you my house for a button. A bean! I'll sell it to you."

I was bemused. His accent was remarkably polished. No shred of dialectic twang hung about it. It was, if possible, the voice of a learned man. But how was he in such a state of disrepute? My curiosity grew as the Olympian monolith, so I replied in this way:

"Why so cheap? With so grand a house? Surely not!"

I looked about me in mock marvelment, chortling internally at my immodest waggish wit. The bizarre maverick estate agent before me leaned under a cracked porcelain urn (I recoiled despite myself) and withdrew three pieces of yellowing paper, with printed type scattered cleanly over them (the only cleanliness present, I hasten to add). The writing was some small prose to the effect of natures of contract and such, with demands for the keeping of the house I assumed. I instantly, in my own individual humour, determined to sign and retain this little facet of my evening, if only for its curio value amongst my friends at Crossford's. Leaning again upon my lickerish wit, I asked for the "house's" beneficial features. The diminuitive dealer in habitations before me smiled a terrifically nausea-afflicted grin toward the area of my necktie, and declaimed three words which shrivel my spinal faculties to this day...

"No Questions Asked."

------
(to be continued in Part 2!)
(bonus points to anyone who can guess the inspiration)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 18 Sep 2008, 00:32
He was there when I woke; looking down at me huddled in the corner, his hands in his pockets. A small sigh escaped his lips as I tried to push myself further into the corner; trying to make myself as small as possible.

He crouched down so he was closer to my level and with his hand under my chin he forced me to look at him properly. “Are you hungry?” He asked simply, not letting go as I winced at his voice making the pounding behind my eyes worse. He stood, not waiting for a reply, and walked to the door, waiting as I clumsily followed him.

We walked down an old shabby hallway. There was something wrong with my eyes; the colours were too bright and the details too clear. I stumbled along with my eyes half closed, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. He waited patiently whenever I got distracted by the print of the ragged wallpaper, or the pattern that somehow appeared in the cracked paint on the walls. It was a slow process, but we finally stopped in front of a door. It was no different to all the others we had walked past, but for some reason I knew that I wanted whatever was behind it. I started fidgeting as we stood there, not noticing him place a shackle on my wrist or the chain that led from it to his hand. All I could focus on was the pull I was feeling.

He opened the door casually, the chain stopping me short as I rushed in ahead of him. I struggled against my restraints, my instincts stopping me from thinking clearly. The sound of him clearing his throat made my head throb again, bringing my back to my senses. I spun back to face him, annoyed as he stood there so calmly; stopping me so easily from getting to the food. He had his hands in his pockets again.

He pointed across the room, ignoring me as I strained against the chain. “I caught him especially for you.” He stated, and I looked where he pointed, where I wanted to go.

The man was tied to a chair with his mouth taped over, his eyes wide and unblinking. I could hear his heart beating erratically and see his chest heaving in fear. The urge to go over there intensified. I looked back at my captor and silently pleaded to him. “Do you smell his fear?” He asked, watching me closely. I closed my eyes and groaned with longing as the metallic tang filled my head. I moved as close as I could to the tied up man, the chain stretching taut, but I was still infuriatingly far away.

“Do you want him?” Asked the voice from behind me. The ‘yes’ hissed from between my gritted teeth, making the man’s eyes widen further and his heart beat faster, pumping out adrenaline and making him smell even more delicious. I growled in frustration and scowled at the man holding me back. He raised an eyebrow at me, unfazed by my anger.

“Well go get him then.” He dropped the chain and I was there in an instant. He watched as I devoured my meal, unperturbed by the muffled screams. I drank him dry, feeding long after his heart has stopped beating, until I started sucking air. I was dully reminded of the feeling of annoyance when you finish a drink too suddenly and your throat is still scratchy and dry. I looked at the body of the man I had killed, searching for the blood I could still smell, eventually realising that it was all over me. I wiped the blood off my chin and licked it off my fingers, crouching next to the knocked over chair, eyes darting around for something else to eat. Slowly the urge to kill anything near me lessened, though the back of my throat still burned. I noticed the corpse's eyes were staring blankly into space, which made me laugh. I stood, straightening my bloodstained dress the best I could and looked around for the man who had brought me here.

The room was empty except for me. An impatient sigh huffed out of me and I stalked towards the door, gathering up the chain so it didn't make so much goddamn noise. I threw open the door, ready to storm off until I found the man, but he was leaning again the wall in the hallway, obviously waiting for me to finish. A smile tugged at his face as I stopped abruptly, making me sniff with disdain. He pushed himself off the wall and stood properly, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Are you ready for more where that came from?" He asked, and my slow smile echoed his.

"Definitely."
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: 0bsessions on 18 Sep 2008, 08:10
We join our protagonist, one Frank Johnson, on a day much like any other. The sun is in the sky, the birds are chirping and coffee is brewing in the corner kitchenette of the office. Unlike his typical routine, however, Frank is locked in a battle; a battle he is not sure he can win.

The office is quiet and still, it is yet early in the day, scant minutes past ten in the morning. His coworkers go quietly about their business, barely cognizant of their own duties, much less the drastic struggle with which Frank is wrestling this fateful morning. Wrapped up in their own little worlds, unaware of the stern consequences that could arise should Frank falter in the mighty task before him.

Sweat drips down his brow, yet he feels a sudden chill as he feels the goosebumps tingle upon his arms. He breathes deeply, struggling with what effort he can muster to compel him toward his goal of conquering his ever increasingly powerful foe.

As he fights seeming inevitability, he thinks back on how he could have prevented this. He has no one to blame but himself for the position he finds himself in this morning. After all, everything in life is a choice and was it not his own series of choices that led him down this road? Still silent, the morning calm of the office is unimpeded by Frank's anonymous efforts.

Alas, he feels his convictions waver. He senses his fortitude begin to give. His muscles contort as he feels all hope leave him with a sudden rush of almost uncomfortable warmth and hopelessness.

As the consequence of his failure permeates the air, the silence of the office is broken. All know now of the valiant battle Frank has fought and quite clearly lost. Though none know precisely who fought this battle, it will drastically impair all those who encounter the result.

As the faces of those surrounding the epicenter that is Frank's cubicle contort almost in unison, one oblivious onlooker stands and queries:

"Alright, who cut one?"

Frank sank deep into his chair in a vain attempt to avoid notice and retain his anonymity.

The End!!!

Dedicated to Taylor, for providing me inspiration for this story.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 19 Sep 2008, 01:43
I was watching you at the party.  Wolfish smile as you spotted your target and stubbed your cigarette out on the wall.  She never stood a chance, judgment impaired by the champagne fizzing in her mouth, showing too much leg to be sexy.  I watched you lead her outside, away from the entwining bodies and thumping bass.  I slipped out after you, taffeta skimming my thighs with barely a rustle.  I watched the familiar scene, frenzied gasps dying with the prick of the hypodermic needle.

I stepped into the clearing and you start slightly but soon recover.  Your explanation of too much champagne palpable but unnecessary.  I lit a cigarette and slid towards you, all wolfish smile and swinging hips.  You never stood a chance, judgment impaired by the line of my dress and the red of my lips. I drew you into the shadows, away from her prone body and into cool silence.  I inclined towards you, hair skimming your neck with barely a whisper.  Your shallow breathing ceased with the prick of the hypodermic needle.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 19 Sep 2008, 03:38
Jodie that piece of writing is gorgeous! I love the circular aspect of it - it makes it really tight and snippy. Just enough information but not too much and we are left intrigued and wanting more.

(read as: please write more stuff)

x Roddy
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 19 Sep 2008, 04:26
Thanks Roddy! <3
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: imagist42 on 19 Sep 2008, 09:00
I agree. Was very nice!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: est on 23 Sep 2008, 05:51
Ok, let's play.  I guess this is an exercise in being descriptive in first-person writing?  I dunno.
 

"So," I said, as we sat in that tiny room, the word falling from my mouth like a rock.  Across the unsteady trestle table she flinched back as if I'd thrown it, wide eyes hardening quickly to conceal the tumult within.

"So." she shot back.  She made it an arrow, red-rimmed eyes piercing through me, drawing breath from my lungs.  My hand moved then of it's own volition, a strange beast sliding across a marbled orange and white landscape toward its smaller image.  Her own hand took flight, a mouse whipping back into the cubby-hole safety of her lap as she barked "Dont!" her voice the peal of a hammer on stone, her features drawn and grim as her nervous hands clasped each other tight.

"Ok" I said roughly, letting out a breath I didn't realise I had been holding.  I nodded slowly, rose on unsteady legs and dragged myself out of the room, ignoring her ragged breaths, the glistening on her cheeks.  "Ok" I said to myself as I closed the door behind me, looking about numbly at a lounge room that was no longer mine.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in an effort to calm myself, but through the door behind me I heard her start sobbing in earnest.  So I did too.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 23 Sep 2008, 23:25
Man Ben.  That was pretty much what breaking up with Loxley was like. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME

It was a good little story though.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scrambled Egg Machine on 25 Sep 2008, 14:00
More of a continuation of my earlier stuff.

It's one in the morning, an ungodly hour for anyone to be awake, but I have third watch. I can see across no man's land, a crater pocked landscape illuminated by corpse light. The light of the flares is called such for two principle reasons: all it illuminates are corpses, and if you are exposed by its pale radiance, a PRA sniper will aerate your skull from whatever cramped hideout he occupies. A metallic pop and a shift in the intensity of the flarelight tells me that the mortar crew is still alive and awake, keeping their own watch. There are some faint noises, out of place here.
    "Kelso! Get up!" I whisper, hoping that my eyes deceive me. "What is it, Swing?"
    " Do you hear that?" Before Kelso can ask me what he's supposed to be hearing, my fear are confirmed. A horde of PRA cannon fodder has gone over the wire, charging at us with the mad abandon of a Banzai attack. I fire off three red flares in quick succession and raise up a racket to wake everyone up. The soldiers charging us have opened fire, raining down hot lead on us. I level my rifle at them, climbing up onto the firing step of the trench. I can see one of them in my sights, outdated Chinese and Russian cast-off gear and uniform, with a lethal intent. I can see his face in my sight, and squeeze off three rounds. He drops, and I'm sickened. He's only following orders, just like me.
     Suddenly, we're saved. The new, bulky presence on my right is a Heavy Assault trooper, firing twenty five millimeter cannon rounds into their charge, hefting an auto cannon with ease in his powered exoskeleton. His platoon has reinforced us where we need it most, but it will still be a long night, and dawn's six hours from now.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 27 Sep 2008, 04:02
We mainline each other, leaving track marks on our hearts away from the prying eyes of the world.  They are finding ways to strip back our outer layers and peer into our insides, waiting for the moment they can spout their ‘I told you so’s and rehabilitate us.

We cling to our addiction with a desperate strength, and hope it destroys us before they do.






Mehhhh...I felt the need to write something, but couldn't seem to get anything out.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: onewheelwizzard on 27 Sep 2008, 04:09
I used to have a lover who explained how she felt about me by saying that sometimes what she wanted was to actually be in my bloodstream.  It was pretty endearing the way she said it actually.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 14 Oct 2008, 04:39
Murder on the Dancefloor

She extracted herself from the middle of the tangled mass of bodies, clothes strangely unruffled, and made her way across the room. Her hips swayed as she stalked through the people, keeping time with the beat of the music. His frown deepened as he watched every male follow her with their gaze as she walked past. Hell, their eyes were practically being dragged from their sockets out of sheer eagerness. He sighed impatiently as she smirked at the attention she was getting; she was going to be the death of him, he could tell. She stopped in front of him with her hand on her waist, the grin still on her face. He stayed where he was, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed against his chest. She cocked her head to one side and leant forward a little, making her black hair fall over one shoulder, feigning coyness.

“Why aren’t you dancing, Nate?” She asked innocently, not raising her voice over the noise as everyone else did. “Don’t you like the music?” His muttered curse caused her to smile wider, baring her teeth menacingly. “If you don’t like this scene, then why don’t you just leave already? I don’t need a babysitter.” Nate looked at her properly, glaring at her face rather than the floor, but stayed exactly where he was.

“Until you learn to be a bit more subtle I have to make sure you don’t blow our cover.” Nate growled. “So either stop being so reckless or deal with it, Andrea.” Her eyes tightened at his reply for a moment before her bravado returned. His eyes went back to the floor. “Hurry up and get something to eat already; you’re not the only hungry one here.” He grumbled, causing her to bark out a laugh.

“Oh come on, are you telling me you’re not drooling over those girls there? They are basically naked and shaking everything they can.” Andrea shook her hips like they did, sliding up closer to him in an attempt to get him to loosen up already. When she still didn’t move, she looked up at his face, a slight pleading in her features. ” You could have anyone here; let me have my fun.” Nate wrinkled his nose at the thought.

“Take them, with all the pills they’ve put in their systems? If I wanted the taste of chemicals in my mouth I’d drink a bottle of bleach.” He looked around impatiently and saw someone making their way over to the pair. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, wondering what else could try and make his night even worse that it already was.

The man puffed out his chest as he asked Andrea if there was any problem, trying to make up for the fact that he was six inches shorter than her. Andrea had the act down perfectly, twirling her hair and batting her eyelashes; complaining that Nate was no fun, and she just wanted to dance. The pout was a nice touch; no man could resist her when she pouted those lips. The fool offered to dance with her immediately, just as she had intended. As they walked back across the room Andrea looked back at Nate, unimpressed at her meal. From the look of him it would be greasy and leave her hungry again in half an hour; typical fast food. This time the grin was on his face as she walked off, hopefully to find a dark secluded corner to eat this time.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Jace on 14 Oct 2008, 11:36
And of course it was at this moment, this one clear moment I would realize that I wanted to change.
I'll stop what I'm doing now, I will go out and be a part of this world. This, I know, will make me be the person I've always longed to be. I thought for so long this is what I've wanted, but I can now see how wrong I was. It took such a long time to realize that if I change my hair, and go out at night, I might find someone. Maybe we would have met on different terms, and this would have gone somewhere. We would be more than friends, I'd be holding you close right now, rather than sitting next to you. Maybe not. I'll never have known, if I had not locked myself into such a niche that I was so sure of, I might have you today. Or if all those years ago, I hadn't had that bad day. Then I'd be with her, things would have been nice. We were so alike, but I let it all just drift apart, because I couldn't be bothered to change. I've always wanted everyone else to change... I was the one who should have changed.

He said it aloud, a tear in his eye, though she couldn't hear him above the sound of gunfire and explosions. And then in an instant, he stood and walked outside, into the night sky where bullets flew and young men waged war on each other. She tried to call out and stop him, but realized she couldn't form the words. For after he stepped outside, their sanctuary of rubble collapsed upon her. She could hear the sounds of bullets penetrating flesh above all else, and she knew he was gone.

Perhaps if I'd given you a chance, neither of us would have died alone.
She whispered the words, they came out cold, as she drew her last breath, a single tear fell from her face.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 18 Oct 2008, 03:32
Don't die fabulous thread!  We need you!


You told me you loved me and I
Told you I didn’t care and
That I was leaving.

I packed my things and waited
For you to stop me.

And found myself sitting on my
Suitcase alone listening
To you fuck in the next room.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 18 Oct 2008, 06:14
Here I am.
Depressed and weak and drunk.
Suddenly inside.
My head's a mess. Incoherent.
Throwing words out.
Explanations.
Searching.
Frantically.
Talking to people I think I hate.

It's been a while.
My first day alone.
Talking to people. The ones I love.
I don't know who.
It can't be.
It can't be me.

You've bad taste but you like me
You're sweet but the one I miss
the one I don't mind.
Is only you part of the time.

I do remember when we talked.
I don't remember why we changed.
I'm still lonely. Still alone.
I know the past but I try to look forward.
Honestly I've tried not lying.
But the words keep on coming

Never mind goodbyes,
we're in a place we can't survive,
trying over.
We can't be friends.
My mind changes and I blink.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 18 Oct 2008, 06:23
Oh hey more.  This is not very good, but it is one of the few things I have ever written that is based on my life.  It made me cry to write it because I guess I still am filled with guilt about the breakup!


“We have a deathless love” you told me, as you stared up at the ceiling, eyes following movement only you could see.  I sat by the window and said nothing, but I was peeling your soul apart with my mind, trying to find you.  It shouldn’t be like this, using familiarity and comfort as the thread that stitches our hearts together.  I see us stumbling, and feel the threads pulling and ripping but you just sew us up again.  Jabbing with the needle in your haste, trying not to let me pull away, keeping me as your constant shadow.

“We have a lifeless love” I told you, as I used scissors to cut the messy stitches from my heart, and left you with bloody thread dangling from your chest.  I freed myself from constant misery and in the process bound you to what I was escaping.  I left you to tangle in your heartstrings, lost after so long spent trying to avoid our bleak ending.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Jace on 18 Oct 2008, 06:34
There were countless eyes staring at me. But I felt like I was under the most extremes of pressure. Its just those eyes, bearing down on me, it feels like there is a hole being torn into me, like I am being stripped down to my soul. That passes though, and then we move on. I feel like I am taking advantage of her, because I'm so much more experienced. I don't mean to do this, but it happens naturally. When you've been doing this for a while you start to get a rhythm. You don't always mean to, but it happens and that's good. Thats how you want to live, being able to sink into that groove at any time.

So, here I am, falling into my natural patterns, slinking around, being coy with her, teasing, taunting a little, but not too much, because I try to be tasteful, I go close, but then pull away before she can reach me. I do this a couple times. Twice I feign toward her before going in for the kill. Then it happens, our eyes lock and she is right in front of me. She doesn't know what to do, this is her first time, but I've done this before, I know exactly what I'm doing when I get this close. I know how this game works. I quickly seal the deal and then she's gone. Just another in a long line of people I've fought. She was a fair opponent though. And damn did she have the cutest smile.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 21 Oct 2008, 01:36
Little Red

‘Rehabilitated’, they said. ‘Fit to return to society’. They packed her up, slapped a pot plant in her arms and kicked her out; leaving her to make her own way in the world. Too bad she didn’t know how the world worked any more.

She watered that ugly plant and looked around her apartment, making sure it was tidy. That woman was due any moment to make sure she was eating and washing (she was) and to see if there anything she wanted to talk about (there wasn’t).

Jeremy’s card on the bookshelf caught her attention. ‘Good on you, Red!’ it declared cheerfully in shaky writing. She ran her fingers through her short hair, making the ginger curls stick out even more haphazardly. It was an odd feeling, having hair; on more than one occasion she had thought about taking clippers to it, like they did, but that wouldn’t be a good indication of her ‘dealing’. The woman would click her tongue and write a comment in her notebook. Sure, normal people can shave their heads whenever they want, but we can’t let the nutters cut their hair, oh no!

She glared at the stupid plant as there was a knock on the door. The woman talked at her while she smiled unenthusiastically and slouched in her chair. She said what the woman wanted to hear, knowing better than to mention the whispers from the shadows, or the large dog that stalked her in her dreams on the rare occasion that she actually slept. She may be crazy, but she’s not stupid; those things would surely send her straight back there. She didn’t want to be that much of a failure.

Even as the woman’s shadow started shifting about, her mask of normalcy never slipped. She watched as it changed shape, taking that familiar canine form. As the woman stopped at the front door the shadow-dog grinned at her, showing her all his pointed teeth; his mouth stretched wide, taking up more of his face than should be possible.

It was only once the door was closed that she started hyperventilating. She sank into the lounge, trying to control the panic that was taking over her body. Finally breathing normally she reached over to the phone and dialled the woman’s work. The first three ‘helpers’ had ended badly, but maybe the fourth would actually help this time.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 21 Oct 2008, 02:34
Little Johnny sat in tha garden pickin the scabs on his arm, his Ma always told him not ta - he just did it anyways 'cause that's tha way o' kids ya know.."

"Yes I'm sure that's interesting." I glance at my watch, frustrated. The old sod has continued talk as such since the plane began to taxi.

"Soon as he'd good as remoov'd tha scab he bled rava prafewsally. His Ma came looking fa him hours leighter and thar was a smell-"

He breathes loudly through his nose and I can hear the migration of vast colonies of mucous and dirt, he spits it out onto the seat in front of him. Putrid old man.

"As a rememba it. Sickly 'n' sweet."

I can't keep him out of my head, try as I might. A great pity that my portable cassette deck is broken.

"A roux-ga-roux had gotten to him-"

"Sorry, a what?"

"A roux-ga-roux, we still have 'em cant seem to get rid of them at all. Vish-us munstas."

I'm feeling sleepy, the next seven hours might not be all that bad.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Jimmy the Squid on 21 Oct 2008, 07:04
"No! C'mon baby please! Don't do this. I'm sorry! I'm really fucking sorry. I know it was my fault, you were right it's all my fault please don't go. No, please! Stay with me baby, please. You know it can be ok again, we can make it through this. I'll take you away from all of this, I promise! Just stay with me! We'll go somewhere warm just like you wanted, somewhere with a beach, you'd like that wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? Yeah, because remember you were saying you wanted to go on holiday? We'll take a really long holiday... Fuck work, it doesn't matter we can just go away for a week or two and I promise I'll make it up to you. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, please stay with me! Look at me baby, please just look at me! You know I can't lie to you, you know I'm telling the truth... No! No! Please please please please please stay with me, I'm sorry I'm really fucking sorry. No, c'mon stop it. Please stop it. Just stay with me, baby... Baby? Baby? No, don't do this, don't leave me! C'mon, you promised you wouldn't leave me! You promised, you fucking promised me! You promised me! C'mon baby, wake up...Wake up...please wake up...please wake up...please wake up...c'mon baby wake up...please...please...just stay with me...wake up...please wake up...please wake up...."
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 21 Oct 2008, 20:14
Jimmy. Jesus fucking christ.  I almost cried.

Also, Han, I really liked your last one alot!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 21 Oct 2008, 20:17
Shitdamn, Jimmy.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 22 Oct 2008, 02:00
Awesomsauce
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 24 Oct 2008, 04:11
I wanted to try and write something a little longer and with a little more substance.  I quite like what I came up with, there are parts I am not 100% happy with but I like it pretty well!
(actually now I look at it I realise it is not very long at all. ha fail)

American Dream

He would spend hours sitting in the dark, tapping away at his ancient typewriter.  “I’m writing the great American novel’ he told me.  I wondered how it could be a great American anything if he had never even been there (I asked him once and he stared at me and my words stopped halfway and hit the ground and the crash startled me), but I knew better than to question him.

I took up smoking when we started living together.  It seemed like the kind of thing that should be done, killing ourselves together.  I had heard passive smoking is just as bad (if not worse my mother always said but she was the kind of woman always in the kitchen always with a pie she was the great American mother but we had never even been there), and I considered double suicide more romantic than murder suicide.

He took up drinking to be like his heroes (great American heroes of course stacked in piles by his desk with covers creased and pages worn from constant worship) and I knew better than to question his decision.  Pretty bruises decorating my body there to remind me of (our great American romance great American love great American dream but we had never even been there) how little I mattered.

Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: SonofZ3 on 24 Oct 2008, 08:01
some things from my college notebook from honors Russian Lit (they don't have anything to do with Russian lit, its just what notebook it is)

Technology had failed us. "No Signal" the screen read. We could not see, so we sat in the dark classroom, listening to the waves crash around the hooves of two horses, alone on a cobblestone beach.

Seeing you in the greyness of pre-dawn
Clothed only in your beauty, but wearing
A towel around your damp hair, I, staring
Was sure that I was looking upon
An angel, who, descending through the gloom
Graced my mortal presence with her flawless
Perfection of form, leaving me speechless
To have met the divine, before my doom.
Or did I yet sleep, and did I yet dream?
Were you simply a vision of my still
Resting mind? No you moved with such will,
Such fluid grace. Lit gently by the gleam
Of a small makeup lamp, in my awed sight
You were there, Aphrodite by lamplight

I try to write poetry; lines about emotion, and fields of goldenrod in the evening, but all that fills my mind is the memory of you and I, kissing in a darkened kitchen, and I realize that no words can compare, and no lines can express the beauty I see when you are near.

The sounds and movements of the world are still
In the quiet calm of a late spring rain.
I find it hard for my thoughts to remain
In any one place, they wander at will.
But finally my thoughts on one subject stay
And all of that subject's aspects explore,
Your eyes and your touch, its you I adore.
The feel of your hand or the sound of your voice
The adjectives fail, theres really no choice
Of words I can say to describe the grace
As you move or the sparks that I chase
When you pass close to me, so beautiful.
If all of the world were shades of the night,
Then you are the morning of waking to light.

edit: missed a space between entries when i first posted.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 24 Oct 2008, 15:49
It tears past me
I know it doesn't care for me
I'm just an obstacle
So cold, it bites to the bone
Why does it make me feel alone?

Everything inside is slow
pumping round the ice flow
I've been waiting here so long,
purple and orange with lips of blue
where are you?

It pushes past
I bend with every blast.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 24 Oct 2008, 16:23
We lie together, ignoring the crap that's on TV.
We never really watch it anyway.
You hesitate for a moment,
your hand where we're nervous.
I'm not sure if you meant it, if it was an accident,
or if you even noticed.

I don't really care and I try to act casual.
Maybe if I pretend I know what I'm doing, you'll do the same.
Every time we find excuses and run out of time
too scared of our youth and our inexperience and each other
to ever do anything serious.

All I'm aware of is you and me
and the rapidly decreasing time before I have to go
or you have to leave. Even though there's nowhere else,
we have to be there soon.
So for the moment, at least, we're not in love
but we're teenagers having fun
and let's pretend that's enough for us for now.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 25 Oct 2008, 04:10
Hi writtin thread!  I am trying really hard to write more lately!  I apologise for filling you with my crap like a giant write whore, but it helps keep me motivated!  Anyway, Han was talkign about people in gabbly giving her three random words to use in a story and said that Roddy once gave her 'lemon, tax fraud and mountain' and she had never worked out a way to use them.  I thought I would give it a shot and this is what you get! (thanks Roddy!)




You were that kind of father.  You know the kind, always too busy making money (to give us a better life you said) to spend ‘quality time’ with your children.  I didn’t need your quality time; I got by just fine fucking boys on your bed while you were on your business trips.  ‘When life gives you lemons, fuck in your father’s room’ I used to tell the faceless strangers I invited into our home.  They would smile and nod and pretend to understand while they took off my underwear.  I marked the headboard with a nail file after each encounter, if you noticed you never mentioned it.

The ‘better life’ my brother bought with your money was mountains of cocaine.  He didn’t need your quality time, he got by just fine doing lines on the coffee table while you fucked your secretary in an overseas hotel room.  We buried him in the plot beside my mother; you hadn’t noticed him hemorrhaging on the lounge room floor.  If you noticed, you never mentioned it.

When the police finally caught up with you I toasted their vigilance.  The words ‘tax fraud’ were thrown around and you found yourself out of your depth.  When you were convicted I celebrated in your favourite bar and took home the kind of young business man you hated most.  ‘When life gives you lemons, fuck in your recently incarcerated father's room’ I told him as he lit my cigarette.  He smiled and nodded and didn’t understand
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 25 Oct 2008, 13:22
Charlie woke up to get a coffee and in the gloam he could just make out the tiny little stone wheels and burnt out fire pits on the Kitchen table top. He chalked it up to his body-clock being all hay wire, this was his second night working the graveyard at Richie's. He opens the cupboard and feels around sleepily for some coffee. He finds the foil packet hopping for some real coffee but it's empty. He swears under he breath and stumbles off to shower, crunching something underfoot.

The taps squeak as he turns them on, the water isn't going to get any warmer than luke-warm, it's summer so it doesn't bother him. The pressure is so high that every droplet is like a hailstone. The sound it makes as it hits the floor and walls of the shower recess is loud enough to prevent him from hearing the stray cat on the lawn caterwaul as it gets mortally wounded by a thousand tiny spears and carved up while still barely alive.

He gets changed into his uniform and locks the door as he leaves not wanting to notice the tiny little fire pits are alight.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 26 Oct 2008, 01:10
Jodie marry me or at least write me every now and again

This is fucking ace
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 26 Oct 2008, 01:34
Thanks Roddy

(you owe me writtins)


(I havn't forgotten)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 26 Oct 2008, 04:28
Challenge: Tea, Skipping, Juggle

It was days like this that made me hate my job. I should have taken the hint when I woke this morning greeted by a hangover pounding behind my eyes and called in sick. I probably don't have any sick days left anyway.

I stood just inside the doorway of the dingy room and looked around, taking in the sparse furnishings and tried to not make comparisons to my own apartment. The windows were so completely covered in grime that the sunlight coming in through was heavy and tea-stained, sluggishly making its way through the air. The room was tinted in brown; I was walking in a sepia photo. Maybe on another day I  would have appreciated the effect.

The woman was laying on the threadbare carpet, in the middle of the small space. I examined the scene, eyes skipping over the knife in the victim's back, and decided to have a closer look; hoping the smell of death wouldn't be too much. Stepping around the large patch of blood I knelt next to her head and looked at her face, wondering about her last moments.

Her eyes reminded me of Emily's. Emily, the latest woman in the revolving door of my love life. She made the best pork chops I have ever tasted, but apparently my jaded cynicism was too much for her to bear. I wasn't that surprised; it was the same with all the others.

I have never been very confident in my ability to juggle my various lives - social life, work life, love life. I can never quite work out how to keep all three in the air; it always seems to end with one still moving while the others are left in the dust at my feet. My friends and lovers don't pay the rent, so my job is the single ball spinning from hand to hand as I go on with my days. I could be a better son, a better husband, a better friend, but instead I try and be a better detective. I'm not sure why.

I reached over and closed her staring eyes, muttering a small apology to the person she never was, and walked back outside; away from the sickly stink of regret.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 26 Oct 2008, 05:16
Challenge: Tea, Skipping, Juggle


She was a gypsy girl, with wild red hair and bells on her fingers.  I climbed out my window and followed when she beckoned, tiny waif girl darting through the forest.  She disappeared into the shadows and I followed the sound of her tiny tinkling bells until I found her skipping stones on a pond.

“My name is Starlight” she told me, but I knew her name was Paige.  She led me into a world of dreams, I took off my shoes before I entered.  We drank tea from cups so tiny it was gone in a mouthful, and shared cakes barely big enough for one.  “We’re too big to be here” I told her, but she just smiled and took more tea.

She taught me how to juggle using pomegranates and we ate them after, making our mouths sticky and red.  She talked to the fishes and told me the secrets they whispered to her.  When it got dark she took me back to my world and boosted me up through my window.  I’d lost my shoes. “Goodbye Starlight” I whispered to her shadowy figure as she turned away.

“My name is Paige” she said.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Tom on 26 Oct 2008, 19:28
She said to me, "It's hard to juggle multiple things at once."

"I know but-"

"-all you need is someone to share the burden," she said pouring me another cup of tea. "I've been thinking that-"

"-wait you want to get married?" I'm sitting in her kitchen, we're awash with brilliant shades of light from her stain glass window. The Maddona imposed upon her face.

"Yes, that is exactly what I'm suggesting. The way I see it you need to stay in Australia and we could both benefit financially and Claire adores you." She took another sip from her cup and paused for my response.

"But it'd be a marriage of convenience - we aren't even remotely in love! I'm not ready to be anyone's father let alone Claire's adoptive father!" I'm standing up and shouting, hot tea down my front. In addition, I've just got the attention of an elderly neighbour.

"Don't worry I'll get." She picks up a tea towel, she gets over and sits next to me drying my lap. I sit down again and she leans over and whispers: "Our friendship has been anything but platonic. A marriage of convenievce it is, no messy courting, we can skip it because for all intents and purposes," her hands now within my pants, "we are very much in love Ally."
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: est on 27 Oct 2008, 00:40

She sipped and sat and stared intently across the fine bone brim and out into the world beyond her own.  Beyond the heavy velvet drapes and beyond the half-closed wooden slat blinds (covered, she noticed, in a thin film of dust) small children ran and played in the streets and the yards among assorted discarded toys.  Now yelling and running with small plastic guns, now jumping rope and swinging to and fro on a front-yard swing set, now shuffling along in push-pedal cars, bumping and shouting and pushing about, a jumble of disparate activities glued with rambunction.

With eyes suddenly wide Eleanor put her cup down with a clank, her fingers barely disentangling themselves before the shakes started in earnest.  She sank to the carpet unsteadily, first to knees, then hands and knees, then finally laid onto her side and clutched at her knees, forehead pressed against them.  Curled tightly thus on the floor she held herself comparatively still, and by focusing on the feel of the plush wool rug on her cheek she tried to will herself not to slip away.

Eleanor knew it was a dream because she was no longer shuddering.  She was outside in a yard, sitting on a small stump.  The children ran around her, still caught up in their games.  She wanted more than anything to join them, the small girl with the tawny hair chasing the laughing dumpy boy with no shoes, but she was so tired.  In the yard across the low wooden fence from her an older boy juggled apples for three younger boys all of whom seemed barely able to wait to show off next.  She pushed at the stump, attempting to shove off and up but instead found herself falling backward, sky rolling over and over in her eyes then dimming grey with swirling clouds before fading to black.

The grass against her face felt like thick carpet when she woke, sun in her eyes, her head foggy and her mouth wet with sleepspit.  She rubbed at her face with still slightly shaking hands and then the grass really was carpet, the sun filtering through the window revealing dust motes as they danced gaily above the woolly pile.  She smashed her fist through those motes and screamed, hot fire exploding in her wrist as it struck the floor.  As she screamed again in pain rushed footsteps fell in the hall, growing louder until the door swung open, a woman sweeping in and down to hold her close and whisper in her ear.  "It's ok sweetie, I'm here, I'm here" the woman said as she rocked Eleanor to and fro in her arms.  The woman had kindly features and was soft and warm and smelled of jasmine, but Eleanor knew she was full of lies.  Eleanor was sick of the lies. 

"I want to die, mommy" Eleanor whispered and the rocking abruptly stopped.  "Don't say that sweetie please don't say that, things will get better, I promise"

"They won't mommy, I know it, this is how I am m m m m" Eleanor stuttered, her small frail body again starting to shake.

The woman held Eleanor close.  She knew there was nothing she could do for her when she was like this, so instead she simply cried.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 27 Oct 2008, 02:31
Lin ran through the summersweet tea-fields and danced a butterfly to her father's house. The tannin draped iridescent over the Sylhet plantations made the air hot and thick and wet - and Lin was soon delirious. The cirrus clouds fought wraith wars and dissipated into cowardly absence. Lin's hard and tanned feet thrummed against the hard and cracked mud like the pistons of a steam train. Out in the effervescence of the valley centre, the petulant insects swooned over each other and ate at any moisture left in the topsoil. Up here, at the cup's pocked green lip, only occasional dragonflies disturbed the peace - nibbling at pockets of cool air and pirouetting madly up displaced zephyrs. At the bowl valley's rim, only Lin and dragonflies moved, and with mad haste borne of nothing else to do but enjoy.

Lin, for her part, was skipping so hard and so fast that sweat ran in rivulets down her thin grey tunic, collating her skin and the fabric in clammy wet patches. At the gate to her father's house she finally rested, saying a quick prayer of thanks to her Summer for his copious gifts. Inside, her father juggled the numbers that needed feeding to the business-suited wolves that bayed every month for his money blood. But Lin was too young to hear their ever-angrier call, and too blind to her father's failing health. In asking for dinner, she granted him only a reprieve from his shifting, faceless creditors and his ever-expanding financial nemesis. Still, her father knew real duty when asked for it, and brought down Lin's wooden bowl from the shelf. The duty from father to daughter, from parent to child, bent his shoulders none, and brought this angry summer back a gentle warmth.

---
Hair, Barbarism, Vigour ?
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 27 Oct 2008, 04:13
I especially like the second paragraph Roddy.


Challenge: Hair, Barbarism, Vigour


No more apologies.  The pounding in my head only gets worse when I try to think of words to redeem myself to you.  I am sickened by the groveling shadow of myself I have become, struggling to make you love me with a vigour that disgusts and distresses me.  “Barbarism begins at home” you say.  I think it’s the line from a song but you say it like you created it. You say it like you mean it.

The day you cut my hair was the last straw.  You screamed at me for taking too long in the bathroom and dragged me into the kitchen by my throat.  Using the blunt and filthy kitchen scissors you severed the last remaining tether of my restraint.

I creep into your room while you sleep, stepping around the discarded whiskey bottles that litter the floor.  I see the spittle bubbling on your lips and give a grimace of disgust.  I press the pillow down firmly on your face and hold it there, unwavering, until you cease to struggle.

“Barbarism begins at home mother” I say.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: öde on 27 Oct 2008, 10:37
It was a strange town, the kind where you got stuck if you stayed too long with no money or ambition. During the day cars, bikes, and lorries would crawl along the baking tarmac, slowly covering everything in a fine dust that almost choked the life out of everyone, but not quite. Everything seems slow when the horizon stretches further than imagination in every direction, when the sun stops at its zenith to rain down crushing heat, when the only cloud in the sky is left fettered by the absence of wind. Every day gets longer.

Night, when it arrives, is a curfew for the quaint and the meek, an odd arrangement where the town is surrendered to barbarism. A new vigour fills the streets, now charged with humanity rather than petrol. The swell of people replaces the heat of day, a sweatier, smellier arrangement and the buzz and shouts of conversations and arguments are as disorienting as the rip and whine of engines. Eventually, as the lights spin and the sea of faces fade into one, the streets are empty and waiting for the dawn light to fill them up again. Every night gets longer.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 28 Oct 2008, 05:45
Oh Danosaur, that is rad.

Ok writing everyday etc etc.  Even if it sucks I will still post them because then I am held accountable for writing everyday!  Jimmy so so so badly wanted someone to write a story, so here I am caving to his demands.  It is not very good!  But STRUMPET.




She was staring at me again, looking at me like I didn’t belong.  I certainly felt out of place, surrounded by kneeling figurines and crucified christs.  I could feel the giant suffering Jesus that hung behind me staring accusingly at the back of my head.  I think I was beginning to develop a headache from its gaze.  I caught your eye and you reached out and took my hand, a gesture I appreciated.  The sharp intake of breath I heard from your mother’s side of the room indicated she had also noticed.  Fuck.

I contemplated pulling away, breaking the connection that seemed to disagree with her so, but I decided against it.  We were grown adults, we hardly needed your mother’s permission to touch for god’s sake.  Except we clearly did, or I wouldn’t be suffering this humiliating tea ceremony of awkward murmurs and bitter stares.  I realized she was glaring at my chest in disapproval and I saw my top button had come undone.  Heaven forbid.

I heard her mutter something under her breath and I just couldn’t take it anymore.  “Pardon” I asked as politely as I could, “did you say something”.  I heard you sigh with exasperation beside me as your mother sat up a little straighter, pursed her lips, and spat out one word. “Strumpet”.

Dead silence.

My lips twitched as I struggled to hold back my smile.  I could feel your shoulders shaking as you tried to swallow your giggles.  Well, at least being in your unappeasable mother’s presence hadn’t completely destroyed your sense of humour.  Standing up I turned to the stern, seething woman who was gripping her crucifix necklace oh so tightly in her clenched fist.  “Oh sweetie” I said, “Jesus won’t protect you from catching gay.  You need some hardcore domestic cleaners to get that out”.

We left her to disinfect her house with prayer and supplication, and never mentioned we’d fucked in the bathroom.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ThePQ4 on 28 Oct 2008, 18:34
Note: I'm not sure how I feel about this peice...part of me says it is crap, part of me says it just needs editing, and another part of me says it's pretty OK...
__

   The room is stark and simple. A low hum emits over the entire building like a power-up. Voices and laughter drift around her, broken and distorted through swinging doors and thin walls. She has better things to do –aspires to more than this unprovocative slave labor. These mere fifteen minutes she gets away from the petty consumers are never enough, but she never over extends her freedom. The rewards are too precious. The wages are what keeps her coming back. The wages are what allows her that small bit of fun –the small bit of a semblance of that thing called a ‘life’, that she can find outside the walls of the gigantic supercenter.

   Outside of the stark little room, shelves tower around her. Bright packaging and dollar signs call out loudly to her –appeal to her but she walks past them with a sigh, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to afford it. Not right now anyway. Not with all of her debt.

   The sounds are different outside too. The voices are clear and concise now. The overheard TVs blather ads for products no one ever buys. It seems quiet near the ceiling. No radio, not over-head intercom. Near the floor it is a series of disembodied voices, precocious laughter, beeping, shrill alarms –noise, everywhere like a pollution.

   She steps back to her boxed cage, leaning heavily against the hard metal. The light flip clicks over and the keys tap. Open for business again.

   The consumer’s push through like cattle, but need no prodding. Whores for the colorful packaging and commercialism  America is known to be suckered in for. After awhile, they all start to sound like the bovine they resemble, mooing and hawing over prices and mislabeled merchandise.

   But she deals. It’ll be worth it in a couple of days, she thinks. Her bills will get paid, she’ll buy some new books. She’ll do something to set herself apart from the herd…well, maybe not this week, or even next week, but some day. Some day, she will be great and all of these faces will mean nothing to her. She’ll be able to quit this hum-drum cattle drive. She won’t need the corporation’s paycheck anymore. She’ll live better on someone else’s money. Someday.

   Eventually, the shift ends. The door is quieter now, most of the people are finally gone home and are nestled in bed. That’s where she’s headed at least. To get a few quiet hours out of the barn before coming back to another day of Retail Hell.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 30 Oct 2008, 05:10
Challenge: Hair, Vigour, Barbarism

She stood atop the building, hair flowing wildly behind her as the wind teased it. She surveyed the city, looking for the next person to inflict literary barbarism on another; longing for that situation so that she could fulfil her civic duty with vigour, disposing of the offender before rushing off to keep the street safe once more.

She was Lit. Lady, protector of word geeks everywhere.


*grumble* stupid challenge
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: axerton on 30 Oct 2008, 05:21
Gabbly challenge: Memories, Dark, Blossom

Cherry Blossom

The memories come swirling back to me, I try to block them out, but they rise to the surface like bubbles of poisonous gas rising to the surface of a pool. The bright sunlit day juxtaposes my dark mood, why is it that some die, while I live on. Why of all people should it have been them? They had so much left to give, so much that the world needed to be given. But what do I have? Nothing but these sour memories and tears. So many tears. I wonder to myself, is this how it will always be? Will I ever be able to so much as look at cherry blossom again without being forced to think these things?

Edit: and another quick one while I'm in the mood to write.

Challenge: Juggle, Skip, Tea.

That was it, she had had enough. She was serious this time. She was going to run away to join the circus. At the circus would people like her, at the circus they wouldn’t make her clean her room, at the circus no one ate their vegetables. And she would learn all sorts of wonderful things like how to do card tricks and juggle and breathe fire. She could already skip by herself, and she barely ever fell and grazed her knees, with talent like that they would surely love to teach her. Yes the circus was the only place for her, and she could not wait to get there and meet all her new friends. But … but she was very hungry.  Maybe she’d runaway and join the circus after tea.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 30 Oct 2008, 05:42
Awww the second one was cute.
Ok, I am not happy with this at all. It kind of stalled and I had no way of getting out the words I wanted to.  It's hard to explain, but I couldn't get across the feeling I wanted to.

Challenge: Dark, blossom, memories


The blank spaces bothered me.  Like someone had been moving furniture around in my mind, leaving empty shadows where there should have been life.  Tiny light switches flicking on and off brought brief glimpses of memories my mind would rather forget.  It was infuriating, going months on end blissfully ignorant of the past, only to have some dark recess of my mind illuminated.  But never for long.  The light only lasted long enough to knock the wind out of me and bring images rushing to the surface of my consciousness, snaking shadow tentacles reaching out to grasp my limbs and pull me into the cavernous depths of my memories.  Fear blossoming as the line between reality and nightmares becomes impossible to distinguish.

My mind knows best, I try and forget.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Vendetagainst on 26 Nov 2008, 15:35
I am sort of bringing this thread back to life because today I was in a cafe and spent about three hours writing a poem. It's not particularly long, but I wanted to challenge myself to break my typical format (in which I follow a specific rhyming scheme and it is largely Stream of Consciousness) and I think it turned out ok-ish. First I wrote several paragraphs describing exactly what I wanted to express in the poem, then I found and described the key points, then wrote several crude stanzas, and then the poem itself. There was no rhyming scheme (or rhyming at all, for that matter) and the only format was that each stanza was four lines and each line was eight syllables. It's a little awkward, but if anybody thinks it has potential I'll write a 2nd draft for myself and be happy. Otherwise I'll probably cry and whine about it in my myspace blog (not really).
Criticism reluctantly welcome!

The scholar weeps behind glass wall
The desp'rate want to grasp the soul
That dances vibrantly throughout
That ever-present paradox

How our eyes gleam as they do search
Yet just behind our glassy sight
A view of them they do present
Save for the world they have beheld

For this we search throughout ourselves
We search our ev'ry corridor
But no mirror reveals that glass wall
The eye that is our searching soul

Oft we act without direction
Blindly led throughout existence
We chance upon the puppet's strings
Through which we may retake control

If only we could see the road
On which our conscious mind does walk
Then clearly we would understand
Our eye, our mirror, our very soul

Most intimate of all, our soul
The stream that guides our flowing thoughts
We rest atop its gentle wake
Uncomprehending of its depths

The introtracted mind does hold
Its soul to be its nest, cocoon
Engulfing all, in mother's arms
That which is ev'rything—itself

And thus he may grab hold the strings
Without pervading, blinding doubt
Immersed in that flowing current
A consciousness beyond himself
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: J-cob9000 on 26 Nov 2008, 16:10
I wrote a thing for English at the beginning of the semester. I'm going to go look for it and post it if I can find it.

EDIT: also: http://creativewritingprompts.com/#
Some of them are crap, some of them are okay. Thought you'd like to know.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: allison on 26 Nov 2008, 20:55
I scribbled this down after the commute home from my evening class.

The Subway

The sun has gone out of the sky for the last time. The chill in the air sets into my bones and I pull my old collar closer. I hurry toward the light rising from the ground; me, descending into the grimy underbelly of the city. The air down here is stale but the smell is familiar and its heavy, damp warmth filters into my lungs. I make my way past the throng of people, all hiding like me.

Toward another staircase I go, venturing deeper into the cavernous hollows beneath the surface. I take refuge in the last empty corner, leaning against the wall, pulling myself together. The crowd has thinned. There are a few other brave souls, but they seem vacant, distant, almost empty. We are delicate and as the ceiling above me quakes, I pray it is not as fragile as those under it. I am silently relieved when the thunder stops and the walls cease to tremble.

My hearing is sharpened, acute. The thumping of bass in someone's personal world seeps into mine. It pushes me to near sensory overload, a complete cacophony of muffled rhythm, mechanical voices and then there is a distant rumble that deepens as it approaches. Screeching, squeaking, shuffling to a stop, we rush toward this iron snake that arrives in front of us. It opens itself and we delve into its crowded innards.

There are already people here. They are pushed deep into seats and corners, holding onto the metal bones for dear life. Everyone is staring at the floor or the ceiling; stealing glances at one another but avoiding any eye contact. My gaze darts here and there, never focusing too long on one thing. I hate to draw attention to myself. I can almost feel people looking though, when I turn my head this way or that - someone is always watching. I close my eyes and pretend I am alone. Part of my consciousness is aware of a child crying. I peer out the corner of my eye; a little girl is clutching a woman's leg and crying as if she has lost something dear. At her feet lies a stuffed toy, soaking in a pool of dirty, gritty water. I look away.

Every touch is electric inside the great beast, hurtling toward untold destinations. An old, tired man brushes past me and we both exclaim suprised apologies for how dare two strangers touch - even so briefly. The contact is strange and discomforting; there are people staring now. I feel dirty, claustrophobic and inexplicably enraged. The beast turns along the track and I sway gently, my anger dissipating with the slight rocking. I slip back into comforting isolation, but it is calculated and forced. There are empty seats now, and I slide into one, shrinking back as far as possible from the aisle, from the other people.

Across from me, there is a woman knitting. I forget my own rules and stare, completely enthralled by the way her fingers and the needles move together. It's effortless for her. The needles click against each other again and again and she doesn't even blink. Her face is lined with age and her mouth droops down in a frown so deep it seems almost comical. Though her face is old, her hands are young. I wonder who she is knitting for. I wonder if she maybe made the very sweater she is wearing, deep red with an ivory pattern around the cuffs, and around the neck.

Screeching, squeaking, shuffling to a stop. I burst out into a new world, crowds parting from my path. I am desperate to get away, back into an empty place void of the hundred eyes boring into me. I climb up and up, the chill again seeping into every seam, but I can't lose momentum. I burst out of the ground, free. I can't help but laugh - I've made it out again.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 01 Dec 2008, 05:19
Trying to write agaaaain.  Sorry it is so short, that's how I roll.

Apple, discreet, effulgent


He took me on a whirling carousel ride through his life, making me dizzy with bright lights and carnival music.  The candy apples and playful laughter merging with cocaine and debauchery, the sensational taste of vodka mixed with sex.  We waltzed through a playground at midnight trading bitter mouthfuls from a brown bagged bottle, and I tore my stockings climbing over the fence.  He fucked me in the tube slide, silent and discreet, and afterwards we giggled like children as we renamed the stars.
He seduced me with sugar and the sway of his hips, an effulgent angel buying his time on earth with liquor and lust.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: supersheep on 01 Dec 2008, 11:48
Jodie, I love your stories. Especially ones like that. There's just something about the language that is amazing.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: peach on 01 Dec 2008, 12:22
i love short stories. i apologize if its a bit long
tell me what you think.
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ONLY, PLEASE.


"The Y District"


Delainie, Florida was really a beautiful city. Not for any one reason in particular, it was a beautiful city in the same way most beautiful cities manage to get that title. It lived. The whole place lived, and even if the people who busied their lives away there didn't see it, it breathed even and calm breaths of life. It had it all, all the things that big cities had. The bustling downtown, the busy outskirts, the serene country just outside of that. It possessed the people all big cities need to be called big cities. The lawyer with the wife, two children, and red-headed mistress. The police man with a chiseled past and no patience for punks, the single working mother with the adoring big-eyed son. They were all there in fronds, and they were all what gave Delainie breath. The city was a lovely, blooming metropolis, and though far from a heaven, it was wonderful. Of course though, as it is with all people, the ones who lived there, they couldn't appreciate the city for it's beauty, since it was much easier to dislike it for it's flaws, as few and far between as they were.

There wasn't crime in Delainie, not really. Nothing like other cities. There wasn't a gang problem, there weren't many stores robbed, and the ones that were, were robbed without causalities. It wasn't a crime-free haven, but it was safe there, so crime wasn't Delainie's problem. No, it wasn't crime. The law-enforcement was nice, because there was no crime. There was the plump little mayor with his suit always slightly messy, which made people able relate to him of course, his dark grey mustache always puffed out in his excitement. His bald head, with the crown of hair the same color as his puffy mustache, always reflected the sun when he gave speeches. The people of Delainie loved him, because he was familiar, he was comforting, he was one of them. No, the law in Delainie wasn't the problem. It was actually so much more simple then that, more simple because it was so easy to avoid. So easy to just push out of mind, until one of your relatives turned up there dead from drug overdose.

The problem in Delainie was The Y District.

The Y District wasn't really a district as most would think of it, instead of being composed of a few buildings, a few roads, it consumed Delainie's east side, over one fourth of the city. It was just as thriving as the rest of Delainie, and just like the rest of the city breathed, so did The Y District. But, even though Delainie breathed slow, calm breaths, The Y took in deep gasps and exhaled them with the equal amount of force. It breathed like a dying animal that refused to let go, but that's where the similarities between The Y and something dying ended. It was, if anything, even more alive then the rest of the city. People there knew what they wanted, and they took it. It was simple as that. The whole district was a mess of bars, clubs, strip joints, and apartments. It was a thriving metropolis just like the rest of Delainie, but unlike the rest, it thrived completely on it's own. It was an alien place, a different town, and the people who lived there liked it that way. They liked twelve hookers to a pimp, three pimps to a boss, and one boss every five blocks. They liked falling to sleep to the sound of bass thudding, car alarms, and windows breaking. Well, most of them. The Y was where you came if that was the life you wanted, or if you wanted a break away from the life you had.

The District didn't act as a whole though, just like The Y was cut off from Delainie, a city divided, it was a district divided. There was your drug slum, complete with the dealers, the junkies, and the squatters. Your straight hooker section, equipped with clubs and all the pussy you could ever hope for, and finally your gay hooker section, equipped with a few more clubs then the straight, all the dick and fake pussy you could ever dream of. It was heaven for men cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands. It was a safe haven for men in the closet, and women who couldn't get any on their own. The rest of Delainie wasn't heaven, but The Y District, it was.

That was what The Y was to Sasha. More then anything else, it was his heaven, and there was nothing he would trade for it. The only problem was, The Y wouldn't trade anything for him either. You breathed the air of that place long enough, you lived the life that it offered for so many years, and you became a prisoner to it. That's what Sasha was, he was a prisoner to The District. All though, unlike most prisoners, he loved it, and he breathed in The Y District of Delainie, Florida just as violently as it breathed in him. The smell of sex, alcohol, cheap make-up, and ocean got him through every day, and he was happy living life that was, because it was what he had pushed himself into. Life in The Y wasn't a cruel turn of fate for him, it was a life he choose, and one he had worked hard to perfect.

Sasha's name wasn't really Sasha at all, at least not according to his mother. According to her, and by law, Sasha's name was Shelton Roderick DeVay. Sasha sounded much better in his opinion. At the tender age of eleven, Shelton realized he was unhappy in the way most eleven year old boys living on a farm in the middle of no where in Kentucky shouldn't be unhappy. The house was square, white washed, with high windows. It was a nice house. The yard was fenced in with a white picket fence in the front, there were cows, ducks, chickens, four dogs, everything a young boy could want in the back. There was a pond on their land, a creek, other houses with other boys and even little girls. It was perfect, or would have been for most boys.

Shelton had no friends in his neighborly farmer's boy life. None of the boys wanted to be near him, which was fair enough, he didn't want to be near them either. The little girls had nothing to do with him either, which also suited him. If you laid eyes on him at eleven you couldn't see why all the children in the neighborhood would avoid him, there was no reason for it. He wasn't visually unpleasing, with dirty blonde hair cut evenly just above his shoulders to frame a round face, skin the color of a coffee with just enough creamer, and pale green eyes. He was an interesting boy too, his father had taught him a lot when he was younger, things that all young boys want to know. No, those weren't the reasons the children of the neighborhood avoided him, the only ones who /really/ knew the reasons, besides the children, were the strangers who passed through town.

While other little boys would run down to the creek on the DeVay land and catch craw fish, Shelton DeVay stood on the edge of the dirt road a mile from his house, and waited for strange cars to pass. Once they did, once they slowed down, and asked him what he was doing there, in the middle of nowhere, and once he told them, almost every time they would ask him to get in. Once Shelton DeVay got in these cars, they would drive off into a field somewhere nearby, and by his own freewill, Shelton DeVay, would have sex with the men who picked him up. You would think it would be an easy secret to keep, but Shelton never tried to keep it a secret. The fact that all the children his own age knew about him, it spiced up his boring farm life. He wanted them to know about him, and avoid him, because it made his life easier.

It was when he was almost 12 that Shelton realized the country wouldn't work for him. Waiting on his dirt road, a familiar truck stopped in front of him, and looking in, to the owner of the local feed store, he was confused. The man told him to get in, and he did. They drove to their field, and instead of having sex, the owner of the local feed store called him a faggot, beat the shit out of him, and left him there.

Two weeks later the same man returned after his wife ran out on him, to ask for a hand job.

It was then that he left, promising himself that he would never smell the stink of cows ever again, hitch-hiking with a stranger who came into town, paying him the only way he could. He had wandered till he was almost 14, then somehow ended up in The Y District of Delainie. It was heaven to him, because it was everything he had ever longed for in his life, put in one place. After three weeks on the streets he had enough to pay for a shitty apartment. After three months, he had enough to pay for a better one, and after three years, he had enough to pay for the nicest in the district, which was pretty damn nice, seeing as the rent was nearly twelve hundred dollars a month. But he could afford it, and more, because he had that many regulars, because he was that good.
 

Sasha, standing on a corner, his face lit with the neon of the street, looked nothing like Shelton. The only thing he had retained from his childhood was his skin tone, and his round face. His hair was lighter now, expensively done a paler blonde with undertones of brown, cut touching his collarbones with layers up to his crown, bangs to hitting the middle of his cheeks on both sides. His hair had a sharp, jagged feel to it because it was razored, no one edge cut flat. His eyes had darkened with age, and the pale green of youth had faded, becoming a dark vivid green, that looked black in the neon. The ratty farmers boy clothes had been replaced, black pants that looked more expensive then the club he was standing in front of, knee high fasten up black boots, a purposefully tattered, tight black shirt with an emblem on the front that had long ago lost it's meaning, an interesting looking dark red coat that hit him at the bottom of the thigh, thick, buckles here and there.

Occasionally people stopped, acknowledged him, and he ignored them, drawing on the cigarette he had between his index and  middle finger. He knew the people here, at 19 he had been here long enough just to know, and he didn't fuck trash.

A man in drag passed in front of him and he made a disgusted face, dropping the cigarette onto the cement and crushing it with a soft grinding sound under his boot. Men were men, and that was how it should be, or at least that was what he thought. The transvestites, drag-queens, cross-dressers that roamed the district were so fake to him, it made him sick to his stomach. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned, cocking one eyebrow at the man who was grinning at him, crossing his arms over his chest slowly.

"It's more then you can afford old man."

"Oh, oh I have the money, believe you me," the man pulled a wad of what looked like twenties out of his pocket and Sasha cocked his mouth in a smirk.

"Funny, you don't look like you can afford fifty-seven a half-hour," the man's smile faded and turned into a look of surprise mixed with anger.

"You don't honestly charge that! You must not get to many customers, some whore you are!" It was Sasha's turn to be angry, his face twisting with rage as his body stance changed and he turned to face the man.

"I probably live in a nicer house then you, you god damn perv so why don't you fucking get lost before I facefuck you with my fist! I don't FUCK, TRASH." He jerked his fist back, it was intimidating looking, despite his height of only 5'6, mostly because his fingers were covered in rings, and the man backed up, giving Sasha one more disgusted look before he turned and disappeared around the nearby corner. Sasha sighed, blowing his hair out of his face before he leaned back against the wall. Okay, so he didn't charge that much, but the man still couldn't afford him, even with his wad of twenties.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Siibillam-Law on 01 Dec 2008, 16:59
Here's (one of) mine, folks



The Comedie of the Antichrist Superstar
Basil Baradaran

It was seven oh-six, December one-oh         
About a dozen and thirteen years ago
A woman and man got married that day
And swore semper fidelis, and love come what may

Sadly the wife cheated, had slept with a man
Who she didn’t know was the big guy, Satan
She carried his child but never did tell
And gave birth to him in a five-star hotel

The wife never told her husband the truth
For what she had done was considered uncouth
The child was baptised and they christened him Chris
But the priests seemed to treat him with wanton malice

The couple raised Chris without any clues
That he was a child of satanic hues
Like everyone else his existence was dry
He was an average boy with an average life

Until his first day in education
His mind underwent a transformation
His innocence died and a new Chris was born
It was people, he found, that made his mind so torn

But he made lots of friends and they had a good time
Worshipping Satan and committing wild crimes
They were usually nice and couldn’t guess why
They minds went corrupt when they went near that child

As Young Chris grew older, his mind changed once more
He turned almost saint-like, and never before
Had his friends or his parents see him so kind
So gentle with people, so nice all the time      

For years his moods switched like Jekyll and Hyde
It was like there was a war in his mind
While celestial forces from both sides of the cross
Fought to have Chris as a tool for their boss

But the darkness did win and it hid deep inside
Young Chris; it was waiting for the right time to rise…
At Foodstuffs the lad took a job for some cash
It was there that he met the girl Jennifer Nash

For days Chris and Jen spent their time together
Walking on beaches or rolling in heather
They did all the romantic clichés that they could            
And Chris felt something he had not understood
 
“Love?” asked his best friend, as they walked through the park
“Have you made her a song, carved your names in the bark?
“Have you names for each other? Like honey or pet?”
“Not just yet, my good friend,” laughed Chris, “not just yet!”

Chris arrived home to find Jen on his bed
She gave him a look and sweetly she said:
“Listen, I think we should talk about us
“It’s nothing to fret; I’m not causing a fuss

“I just want to know if what we have is real.”
To which Chris said: “nothing can stop what I feel!”
He and Jen hugged and they kissed for a while      
And when Jen left, Chris went to sleep with a smile

Less than a year passed and it was Chris’s birthday
When his father appeared in a large ring of flames
And Satan decided to tell Chris the truth
In uffish thought Chris stood quite bemused

But he had no time for he heard Satan tell      
“My boy, it is time! Serve the powers of Hell!
Chris was frozen in shock, old Lucifer said
“The time-bomb inside you has detonated!”

“The ineffable end! Armageddon!”
“The film or the nerd-fest?” queried his son
The Devil sighed deeply. “The end of the world.”
“You must bring it about! The flags must be unfurled!”

Demonic thoughts suddenly flashed in his brain
Of angels and monsters and fiery rain
The long-hidden evil had risen at last -
Chris was finally aware of his demonic past!

But a memory rushed back: the face of his Jen
He thought about her, he felt lost and then
Love took over and the evil was drowned
He glared at his father, who replied with a frown

“I cannot do it,” he said, angry and wild
“But you must!” ordered Satan. “’Cos you are my child!”
Chris stepped over his parents, (who had fainted in shock)
He leapt out the door and he ran down the block

Visions of Apocalypse flared in his head
As he ran his brain filled with terror and dread
He knew that the devil would find him straight away
That he could not escape the fate of that day

Meanwhile, far below, in the city of Dis
Satan strolled the floor and he said with a hiss:
“I can sense his damned thoughts! It’s that girl he adores!
“If I can have her brought here, then he’ll play by my laws!”

He asked that an agent be brought to his door
And a few minutes later in walked Valefor
“What do you want?” V asked, in an annoyed tone
”I want you to go out there and capture someone.”

Valefor looked wary and asked who and why
“You must bring me this girl that my boy fears will die      
“When Apocalypse comes, and he won’t do it till
“He knows that she’s safe,” and he sat down, quite ill

Too much love in this boy, it made his head hurt!
But once she is down here, Chris’s mind will convert
So he sent V away to capture young Jen
And he went to office to plan the world’s end

Two days later Chris had no word of his lass
She was not at home or at uni in class
Her phone was unanswered, Chris feared for her life
What was troubling her? What was causing this strife?


But Christopher’s questions were answered just when
His father appeared holding hostage his Jen
“If you want to see her,” Satan said to his son
“Then you’ll do as I say, you’ll do what must be done.”

“If our plan succeeds and we possess the world,
“Then on this new Earth you can live with your girl!”
Chris said “Heaven’s the sole place she can stay in;
“Because Jen is too pure to be kept in this sin!”

His father was shocked at the H-word Chris used
He said “kiss your mother with that mouth, do you?”
“You’ll never see Jen if you disobey me!
“Cos I’ll trap her forever in Purgatory!”

As Satan began to vanish in the air
Chris turned to the Lord in a desperate prayer
And he felt something change inside, deep in his heart
It was Heaven and God, and his soul split apart

And the clouds burst apart with a thunderous roar
And a ray of light flooded and blinded our four
(Valefor had captured Jen’s brother as well
For no real reason, he just thought What the hell)

A deep booming voice emerged from the cloud
You could say it was holy but was simply just loud
It cried: “Let them go, the boy’s heart has transformed!
“He belongs to us now! His beliefs have reformed!”

“He may be of your blood, but his soul is now ours!”
“No he’s not,” replied Satan, bluntly, to the cloud      
“Yes he is!” “No he’s not!” (And it went on like this:
An argument over who really owned Chris)      

The debates continued between both deities
The Lord shouting something at Mephistopheles
And the latter yelled back; it was going nowhere
But there appeared to be no stopping for the pair   

So Chris saw his chance which was staring at him
He snuck up, rescued his girl and her brother Tim
As they all ran away they could still hear the noise
Of the infernal quarrel of the celestial boys

“By the time the two stop it,” Chris laughed as he told
“The world could have ended and restarted ten-fold!”
As the Four Riders landed, clothed in anger and sin
Death asked Chris irately: “When do we come in?”



AMEN
 Thank God for that

Notes:
"nerd-fest" he mentions is the Armageddon Pulp Cultre Expo and the film is the one with Bruce Willis.
Foodstuffs I just invented


http:www.storywrite.com/siibillam for more
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Gilead on 01 Dec 2008, 17:16
Sometimes I write poems.

A Perfect Match
I want to date a girl I don’t love
We’ll go out
To fancy restaurants
Sit across from one another
And make awkward conversation

I will ask her about herself
And while she talks
I will not listen
Instead I’ll be thinking
About a book I read last week

Three months pass and we
Are tolerably happy together
I still don’t know what
She does at her job
Or what colour her eyes are
When I’m not looking at them

We get married after a year
A wonderful ceremony
A beautiful ring
While I read out my vows
I think about how
I have never fled a church
By leaping through a stained glass window

We have three children
I buy their affection with toys and gifts
And when they get older
I realize that they look nothing like me
I don’t mind too much

We grow old together
Sharing looks of quiet resentment
Over long evenings
In front of the television

‘The price is right’
She sneers quietly
In the box’s blue glow
I pretend not to notice
But silently agree

She dies at seventy
When they’re cutting the headstone
The masons ask me
What her maiden name was
I check my phone to recall
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ampersandwitch on 01 Dec 2008, 17:42
 :-D
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: J-cob9000 on 15 Dec 2008, 18:51
I was stuck at home this weekend without internet. Ew. I was bored.

Quote
   Henry was the kind of person who could just sit at his desk and think. Not about anything in particular. Perhaps he would think about his job, perhaps his wife or kids. Perhaps he wouldn't think about anything and he would just stare into space.
   He was happy with his life. He had a beautiful wife and two wonderful kids, Brock and Eileen. They were each 12 years old and twins. They, and his wife, were his favorite thing to think about.
   This desk that he sat at and thought was in his office, which was on the forty-third floor of the Heimlich building. Henry's job was to make sure that all the computers in the building were running and that the network was in good shape. Henry got quite stressed sometimes but just going home and seeing his family calmed him down and let him forget about his job.
   Henry rode the elevator down all 43 floors with no interruptions. He went out the door and used his key to unlock his brand new company car. He turned they key and engine began to hum. He loosened his tie and began the drive home. The radio host was talking about war and about the economy. He changed the channel.
   Pulling into the driveway always cued his two kids to come running out of the house to welcome him home. They wrapped their short arms around his waist and tried to climb up his body like his arms and legs were branches on a tree. Henry had learned to walk while dragging two kids. That's how it was. Gradually, they stopped coming out to meet him. Henry knew it was because they were getting older and didn't find it necessary anymore. They were still happy to see him after his long days at work.
   “Honey?” Henry called for his wife every day when he got home. Every night she answered him with an, “I'm in the kitchen!” or a, “Back here!” And then she would walk out into the foyer and hug him and tell him that she missed him.
   Dinner would almost always be ready when he came home. The family would sit down at the dinner and have a peaceful family meal. They each discussed their day. The kids talked about school and what they learned that day. His wife told him what all she did that day.
   Henry was glad his family was normal.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 23 Dec 2008, 12:44
Don't die, pretty thread!

-

I have been to Italy only once.
Twice more, but three people I will discuss were only together on this trip.
The other two trips were with my family.
One of which was uneventful
and one of which is a story you probably already know.

So, it's the school trip I'm going to talk about.
We went on pseudo-educational sightseeing trips during the day
and at night, we drank, the people I no longer like or never liked at all.
I drank, with one of the people I shall discuss, whiskey:
Jack Daniels and something with what might have been a cockrel on the label.
Though not in exact words, I remember why I drank it,
he's never told me why he did.
I wanted to be one of those cool, handsome, clever, sexy, people
who know all about whiskey or whisky, or even bourbon.
A connoisseur.
Who still doesn't know what the addition or lack of an 'e' means.
I am friends with him, though just barely I think sometimes.
He hasn't changed a bit. And I like to think I've changed completely.
I brought a box of condoms on that trip.
I hoped more than I claimed: "Just in case."
I think he's still focused on that and
though my girlfriend might tell you different, I'm not.
I think he's still using intimacy as a tool
to find love, and I hope he finds it
but I know he won't,
not this way.
He treats sex and drinking and drugs as more grown up than really they are.

Now, the other person I am going to talk about,
I was only starting to realise it then, is amazing.
I was still sort-of-interested-in-her in the way that I always was with new friends
I was apparently the first guy to know about her new boyfriend
who went on to break her heart a few too many times for me to ever forgive him.
But back then I was full of hope for the two of them.
She and a mutual friend were amongst the ones who didn't drink.
They had early nights.
I didn't know how, but they enjoyed the trip.
I was told no guy could get close to her.
I never did, and I never wanted to,
past our initial meeting.
Whenever I think about her she is happy and so am I,
and our lives are almost-perfect now,
and I'm still not quite sure why.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 23 Dec 2008, 21:17
Yaaay sci-fi that has no actual direction! One day I will actually write something that actually goes somewhere. p.s. did I post this on the forum already? I don't think I did, so here you are:
---

The apartment was a grid of fractured half-thoughts on architecture, the bottom level coding borrowing thoroughly from old London maps and half-sketched diagrams of piping. Still, the internal descriptions were a comfort to S Ellis 52*, known better as Sellis by her networkers, and she again decided not to sell the place. She reclined in a barrel of old texts on relaxation, via antique dialogues on bathtub ornaments. There was an old lavender subroutine behind the tub somewhere - dangling over the porcelain-written edge she poked her hand around the tile-code, finally grasping for a cylindrical length of purple numbering. Finding it empty and devoid of thought, she sighed and sank back into the bubbles. Realising relaxation would come easier among company, she dried the idea of her torso (a fairly original one - though modest, Sellis got attention) and slipped into a faded grey discourse on fashionable little numbers from twentieth century pop literature. Dry and dressed, it was a short walk from the apartment to LOL|RICK|ROLL, the new irony bar on the corner of her information street. The bartender didn't recognise her, so she ordered a double meme on the ricks, and sat silent at the stool to the side. A couple of spam lads came up with tawdry offers they'd bought from unoriginal sources, but she sent them on their way. Even with Sellis' modesty, a girl has to stay unique, you know?

I apologise, kind reader. I forget your own uniqueness - but let me let you catch up. Your brain, boggling at these 'abstract notions' of things, is no doubt having a bloody hard time of things. I will attempt, therefore, a little history for you. A touch of... explanation, in as clear and succinct a fashion as is allowed by the current state of... well, we shall get to that in a moment.
In the clattering and grime-soaked dying years of the human race, a solution was required to just about everything. Poverty was rife, disease pandemic, the environment a dirty great fuck-up of catastrophically unhealthy proportions. The further we advanced with our cure-alls and health gadgetry the more our own dirty marks would catch up with us. A pendulous cloud of guilt began to be heaped upon our statesmen and women, our Great Neon Leaders… nothing was working! Where would they find their voter confidence now? Humanity, in its short span aboard the earth, had shat on itself so many times that it seemed there was no hope.
Then, a miracle. It has to be said, whilst your comic-book frazzle-haired mad scientists were hard at work, it amounted to nothing. Yes, a solution did present itself. There were no funds involved, no mutated rodents, no bangs or fizzes. The man behind the escape from our own detritus wasn’t particularly clever, nor did it take him a great time and effort when the solution was formed. Look, the saviour of our race was no electric afro science whiz.
He was Clive, an accountant from Barnstow.




also: Gilly Thunder aka I HATE IT WHEN MY BRAIN COMES UP WITH IDEAS FOR SHITTY ROMANTIC COMEDIES.

Gilly Thunder was chronically single. Not just ‘chronically’, actually: the adjective couldn’t quite cover precisely the scope and width and breadth of all the whirlwind romances and torrid affairs she never really experienced. There was her ‘first time’ which was really no time at all. It had ended rather abruptly with a phone call to her father in shaky pubescent tones, one Valentine’s evening. The phone call was from a young love completely besotted with Gilly. Unfortunately, he had also been beset by nerves. The night of their first and only big date, Stephen Gandley of Class 7B, had stood her up via her father. Her father, being equal parts doting and incorrigible as all good Yorkshire-born fathers are, had only said “Oh well, love, better leave it ’til you’re older, eh?”
This had infuriated Gilly then – why wasn’t she allowed to bonk boys behind the bike sheds like all the other seventeen-year-old girls? Not that it looked particularly fun, and it was exceedingly messy, but the feeling that she was missing out on something hovered over her.
Gilly had hit thirty last year. She had, after the prophetic remark of her father that fateful evening, “left it until she was older”. Then she’d left it a little longer. And then, just to make sure, she had absented herself from the idea of falling head-over-heels entirely.
She wasn’t particularly bad-looking, though…
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Barmymoo on 24 Dec 2008, 12:00
You didn't seem to think it was too much of a good idea last time either, so it's probably fairly masochistic to be trying again. Hey ho. No harm in being optimistic.

I sit across from you and try to make conversation without really knowing what to say. You're not listening anyway. There's another woman across the room, with short black hair and sophisticatedly bare ankles, and she's caught your eye as I never could.

I consider the scene before me. There's a hole in the tablecloth, a single fault in the white expanse between us, and I idly tug at one of the loose threads as my sentence dies on my lips. I've already forgotten what I was talking about. No use asking you.

Suddenly there's movement from the other side of the table and I look up to see that you've finally torn yourself away from the arresting sight in the corner. A smile skips between us, although it doesn't make it past the eyes. And just like that, I've found another glimmer of hope that will keep me chasing smoke and stardust.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 31 Dec 2008, 21:40
I don't want the thread to die so I am posting this unfinished piece of something.  I was trying to write something with substance but I never got past the first paragraph, surprise surprise.  I will maybe build on it one day, but until then, it can be a happy fragment in the thread.


“The past never stays in the past” my mother said, gripping me intently with her eyes across the kitchen table.  I watched as she filled her water glass to the brim with scotch, and grimaced when she drained it in several quick gulps.  “Don’t ever forget Janie, the past is a prick who returns to fuck you up when you’re at your lowest”.  She was talking about my father of course, the king of the mental mindfuck.  Her hand shook a little as she filled her glass again.  “It will always fuck you up Janie”.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 01 Jan 2009, 10:10
I wrote a poem as a sort-of-joke birthday present!

Evey,
I'd hate you for your modesty
if you weren't completely unaware
of your talents for persuasion
and the boys that hump your leg.

So many obsessed, and still you're clueless;
Either you are the great deceiver or something else.
You'll get by, you'll manage just fine.
There exists a boy with such persistence
he will eventually sway your heart.
You will let him in, and you will be fine.

And you will be happy,
and whenever you're not,
choose the right memories to remember
and you will be fine.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Ceiling Cat on 02 Jan 2009, 19:07
You say the road to finding love
Is never very far,
But
What if you're staring back at Earth
Through a spyglass on a star?

-

He's incompetence
Multiplied by an anxious
Facial expression.

Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: mishy on 07 Jan 2009, 10:19
i have nice things to say about the stuff in this thread i have read. (i admit to skimming some of it. it's hard to catch up when there's so much text all put together...) i <3 the detective story on the first page. i will comment more on other things. i don't see much in the way of constructive criticism, mostly just support and "i likes", but i encourage you to swing clubs at my stuff. i can take it like a big girl.

my contribution (for now, more later, i goddamn hope.) this is something unfinished, supernatural fiction broken into scenes. so far there's 10 scenes, but that's a lot, so here are the first two. (it's partially inspired by John Dies At The End (http://www.johndiesattheend.com).) no title yet, working title is "the sparks" or something like that. tell me if you want more. i intend to post it on my under-construction website, but who knows when that'll be.

also, "someday i want to be a writer, like, a published one." i imagine retiring, or maybe baby-making and writing something awesome during mat leave, but i'm having a bitch of a time seeing myself as a writer *now*. i even have a wrist tattoo that says "write life" in courier font, a nagging reminder to myself. i regret the tattoo (i have others i don't regret) because i always have to explain it when someone sees it, and i always end up feeling guilty and stupid because i haven't been writing lately... ever... so someone, puh-lease, give me a challenge or an exercise, cuz i do my best work when it's assigned and the format is constrained. a blank page is my arch nemesis - to me a challenge is a weapon to fight the blank page.

~~~~~~~~~~

#1: The Bathroom Scene

  Expected blurriness. Her contacts? Yes, they were dry. Not surprising. She tried not to rub her eyes, but the blurriness seemed apart from that. Water would help.
  Her legs moved her to the bathroom. A garden of hygiene condiments littered the edge of the blue porcelain sink. This was not her domain. Her tattoo burned against her thigh. She knew peripherally that a mirror was poised for her inspection above her hung head, and that it was a door, slightly ajar, that hid more washroom fauna. She wasn't ready for herself yet, her face could wait.
  Without warning she coughed violently, dark blood painting the blue porcelain. Well, it was better than the alternative.
  Something bright flashed in the liquid and her breath caught, a painful sliver of adrenaline flashing across her shoulders. It’s still there! She hurriedly pulled some toilet paper off the roll and wiped every speck of blood she could find, flushing the mess down the toilet. She flushed again for good measure. The sparks scared her shitless.
  She now felt it necessary to hazard a look in the mirror, expecting to find the sparks in her eyes, the threat of power staining her face into something barely human. She held her breath as she raised her head slowly. But it was only her own deprecation she saw, mascara down her cheeks, eyes puffy after a terrible sleep, the remains of her alcoholic evening making her pores large and her skin grossly sweaty. She exhaled and smiled grimly. It was time to go home.
  And it was time to call Heng again.
  She rounded up her belongings, her clothes and stiletto heels, her cell phone – out of battery. She found the door out of the foreign apartment, and discovered she was at least six floors up a winding staircase. Her hurried descent felt like free fall to her spinning head, but was more likely a series of lucky stumbles. Once outside in the glaring greyness of deep-city streets, she walked to the nearest intersection to determine where she was. Corner of Oscar & Clarke.
  It came to her without effort, her 58-block route back to the Georgian Loft, the home she shared with four roommates. In the same instant she also knew three bus-route options and the higher likelihood of hailing a cab from a location three blocks west of here. The instant knowledge petrified her, another razor of adrenaline swept across her shoulders. The spark was in her, somehow. Something was stirring the wind, stirring up her blood. She had to hurry.
  She hated the source of her instant knowledge, but she recognized the weighted advantage of choosing the cab option, and headed west. She would head straight to Heng's and call the others from there. If she had known eight months ago what would happen to them, that it would change them permanently, she wouldn't be here now. She wouldn't be so used to being scared.


#2: The Bedroom Scene

  He sat up in bed, awakened by the feeling that something terrifying had just happened. He felt like he'd been running for his life and just tripped over a rock, the intensity of panic and danger suddenly doubled. His sheets were drenched in cold sweat and clung to his body. He roughly rubbed his face with the sheet, trying to dry the sweat and get rid of the heavy feeling that pulled at him. Not ready yet to face the day, he let the sheet drop and hung his head, exhaustion creeping at him from behind. Finally, he opened his eyes again, wondering what time it was.
  With a start, he noticed the blood on his sheets. It sparkled at him, like a wink. It was taunting him. "Oh shit."
  He jumped up with the sheet and pulled the red-stained case off its pillow. The white pillow was also red. He grabbed the pillow, too, and ran down to the laundry room. He shoved it all in the washing machine and turned it on to cold water, fullest setting, and slammed the lid shut.
  A cold shiver ran down his spine as he sat down on the stairs. The last time this happened, Jill was... There was so much blood... and the air was so thick with sparks that it hurt to move and all they could see was white. Cold and white.
  He didn't want to think about it. It was time to pack and give Heng a call. He shook his head to clear the mess of memories, took a breath deep enough to fill every crevice in his lungs, and turned to go upstairs.
  There was a sudden bumping sound in the washing machine, and he spun around, feeling the blood drain from his face. But it was only starting the next cycle. He hated being so jumpy.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: mishy on 07 Jan 2009, 12:53
And just like that, I've found another glimmer of hope that will keep me chasing smoke and stardust.

holy shit, i knew a guy who really had that kind of hold on me, and i was pathetic just like that, knowing better but still getting swept up in whatever evil magic it is that gave me hope in an asshole like him.
when writing hits home, it hits like a truck! kudos.  8-)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Gilead on 08 Jan 2009, 04:08
I've been in an amazing and hell of intense week long dramatic writing workshop at NIDA, so I thought I'd post some of the shit I've done, this is a dramatic monologue I did.

My most memorable day? Well mine was a night and a day really, but it didn't start there, it started with a girl.

Her name's not important, and I wouldn't tell you it anyway, what's important is the way we were together. Ever since we met it was like lightning between us, every touch, every word a little jolt and shiver down my spine; It only got stronger over time.

See, luck just wasn't on our side, whenever I was single, she had a boyfriend, when she was single, I'd be going round with some girl, neither of us were the kind who'd break those sort of rules. Instead we'd skirt the line, touching and teasing and flirting and always pulling back just short of the big shock.

Then one day, she moved away.

Slowly I forgot about her. About the love and the lightning, until the night I was out with my buddy Tim and there she was, back in town for the weekend. Instantly the lightning was back, a dancing current of light and tension crackling between us. Tim felt it and knew to stand well back, he's a heck of a guy Tim, the kind of guy that always knows when to step back and when to jump in.

Me and her, we got to talking, about old times and new times and pretty soon we're leaving the club. Outside, a storm brewing, a palpable pressure in the air that felt like it was just for us. A wind swept through, sudden and cold and cruel, she pushed herself in to me.

It was then that I raised her face to mine, pressed my lips to hers, as soon as they touched there was no controlling the current. We were wires torn free, twisting and touching and buzzing as we earther ourselves. I don't even remember the trip home, I just remember pushing her in the door, touching and tasting and smelling her and revelling in the ecstatic crackle of our own private storm.

The next day the air was calm and still. The sky, once thick with portentious thunder now sat silently. We said our goodbyes, kissed one last time. But the current that had danced between us for so long was gone, finally earthed in a powerful explosion of energy. After that, we parted.

I don't regret it, not really, I felt like it had to happen, it was a heck of a night though, and a damn memorable day.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Persona on 08 Jan 2009, 15:29
Something a bit fantasy-ish I wrote for class. Figured I'd see folk thought this was crap or not.

At three o’clock in the morning, he walked over to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of ginger ale, and a bottle of gin, and sat at the table with a pen in his hand. This was to be his proudest moment, his greatest work, and the thing that made him famous. Half a bottle of gin later, a chorus of nauseating sounds eminated from the lavatory as Hudson purged the liquid inspiration from his system. He looked down at the notebook he had set before himself hours ago and read from the first page.
 
 Hudson Freeman
  10-14-2015
  Eng. 394

   What can be said about, “Velvet eyes turning against the tide of coming change”?

   That’s it. That’s all he had.  One sentence, that even at this moment in semi-drunken stupor, didn’t make any God damn sense to him. “Did I even write this?” he asked of himself. His self examination was cut short by the loud rapping of a fist against the kitchen window. Hudson turned to look at the interruption, only to see peering yellow eyes in the darkness outside peering back at him. “Oh no, not going to fall for that one. The ol’ cat-waiting-outside trick, eh? It hasn’t worked for any of your other buddies, it won’t work for you.” Hudson said with a smirk. With but a flick of his index finger against the panel of switches beside him, the large UV lights positioned outside his house jolted to life, basking the yellow-eyed figure in searing light for a good 5 seconds, before the being burst in to flame and it’s ashes crumpled on to the ground. “God damn lurks are everywhere these days.”

   A few miles down the road in a run-down bus-stop covered in graffiti and red etches, a portly man in a crumpled and dirty suit and tie collected his breath and thoughts, hands on his knees. His disheveled hair and wide eyes would make any passerby think the man encountered something horrible just moments ago, and would be right to do so. The man sat upright, looked down at his hands and could see the dirt collected under his nails. As he sat, he could hear a thumping not too far away. He bit his lip. An overwhelming urge to find this sound enveloped his mind. He looked towards the noise as it grew louder. It was getting closer and closer. A maddening, repetitious thumping and gushing, like a faucet washing through a drum. Instinct told the man to hide behind a nearby tree. The thumping became louder still, a marching band bass drum in his brain, and he could hardly stand it anymore. Finally the source presented itself, and he lunged at it with anger and lust. The young girl had no idea what hit her, her iPod crashing against the sidewalk, as her head hit the curb. A sharp pain like that of jagged needles pierced her neck, and soon her consciousness washed away, as the dirty pudgy lurk sucked every last drop of her lifeblood. The first meal of a newly spawned vampire is the most important, after all.

   In the morning the newspapers we aflutter with the reports of another dead body found within the city limits of Ballston Spa, and just like the others, it was drained of every last drop of blood. Worst part was, this time it was a local girl, a living (not so much anymore) high school legend in fact. Everybody had thoughts of what that could mean, but few would vocalize them, save the children. They’d shout it from the hilltops (“Lurks! Just like on the screens!”). Though technology and folklore (and more importantly the disproving of folklore) had come a long way from the days of old when “vampires” were everywhere, the legends clung to life. The death of this poor girl just backed those stories up.
   Hudson put down the paper and exited the coffee shop, muffling the chatter of the townspeople inside as the door shut behind him. “Oh sure, NOW they’ll believe in vampires.” He muttered to himself as he walked to his car. The machine whirred to life, sunlight fueling the cells along the sides and roof of the vehicle, as Hudson did a three-point turn and exited the parking lot at the fastest speed the car could muster: a steady 45 miles-per-hour. School was just letting out for the last time this year, and the herds of adolescents were filling the road with their gas-guzzlers and bikes, both motorized and otherwise. Hudson had hoped to avoid this traffic, but it was inevitable. There nothing to do but wait and listen to the radio. Hudson’s eyes drooped, his head nodded, and before long, he found himself in a place very different than his solar-powered car.

Creaking boards echoed in the halls, a sound like that of a cat being stepped on. A few lights that hadn’t been shattered by raging storms of years gone by, or by hooligan children who liked to break things of old flickered in the night, vaguely illuminating the tattered wallpaper and exposed inner framing where holes were present. Further down the corridor, a lonesome stained-glass window glistened, housing a picture of a lone shepherd missing his flock. The cascading moonlight shone just enough through the dead trees outside to show the disappointed stare of the painted shepherd.
   Looking down that lonely hallway, Alex had held her breath and feared to move, less another chorus of creaking boards respond to her unwelcome presence. Exhaling and inhaling sharply, she raised the walkie to her naturally pink lips, biting her lower lip before pressing the TALK button. “Hudson, it’s still clear up here. There’s absolutely nothing in this damn house. I don’t know why I let you drag me to these places.”
   Hudson chimed in through the crackle of the walkie-talkie, “ It’s cause’ I’m adorable. And convincing. And dedicated.”
“ And you’re also apparently not a fan of complete sentences,” Alex smirked.
“Yet another one of my charms.”   
Alex could feel Hudson’s smile through the walkie. He had always felt he had a talent for comforting her in the most awkward and odd of situations. So far, this hadn’t been one of those situations, but Alex (or Alexis as her parents called her) never was comfortable being by herself in these places. All the same, she still did these nightly “adventures” with Hudson, hoping to find something abnormal. That night, they got more than they had bargained for.
   A flash of Alex’s face, the remembrance of her scream, and a splash of blood against the wall repeat over and over and over until Hudson’s head backs in to the seat cushion. The noise of car horns blaring at him has him return his focus to the moment at hand and he resumes driving home.  This has gone on far too long, Hudson thought. He looked in the rear view mirror, seeing a wooden box with a crucifix carved in to the lid resting on the seat, next to a 12-gauge, sawed-off shotgun, a bag of garlic, and empty shotgun casings. Peering back to the road, Hudson could see the sun retreating in the distance. It wouldn’t be long now before they came out again, and he wasn’t going to sit this out. It was time to get involved, not sit comfortably indoors, writing away his feelings and his lost love. It was time to DO something. He was the only one who could.
   The car drove on into the settling dusk, and Hudson was once again reminded of that fateful night. The smell of dead animals rotting in the basement, strung up by goat intestines, in a circle that perverted a sanctimonious healing star of pagan origins, and the two figures who were in the center of that circle: One alive, one dead. The man with the wire-frame glasses spoke in an odd language, and pulled Alex’s lifeless body up by her hair. Before Hudson could scream, the man slit her throat, spraying the wall and Hudson’s shirt with Alex’s blood as the surrounding circle erupted in flame. Through the crackling fire, Hudson could see Alex was no more, but the man had changed. Large inscissors in his front teeth, yellow eyes, and a crumpled forehead overtook his previous facial features, but before Hudson could charge through the flames, the strange man disappeared, leaving nothing but Alex’s burnt and bloody frame behind.

    Hudson pulled in to his gravel drive-way and grimly smiled to himself as he removed his “groceries” from the back seat of his car. “Time to go hunting,” he said aloud he said, as he walked in to his hous
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: WestEnder67 on 08 Jan 2009, 18:03
Wrote this poem/monologue thing to try and get into a university.

Here I stand, the voyeuristic gaze of the universe upon me. No longer is the mind clear, no longer is the heart still, no longer is the soul intact.
Here I stand, the last man aboard the lonely ship of romance. No band plays on, no young couple embrace, this is the Titanic of my infatuation.
Here I stand, underneath the storms of icy indifference and with the harsh cold surface of rejection beneath my feet.
Here I stand, my one true chance at happiness exploded, like the bombs bursting and rockets streaking above, with that wartime standard fluttering over my drooping head.

Now I only lay still; a spiritless corpse on the frozen and lonely streets of a metropolis, a society, a civilization even, all devoted to the ‘warm embrace’ of Eros.
My stare glazed over by the cruel bitterness of frustration and disappointment, my torso immobilised by the rigor mortis of unrequited love.

Here I stand, faceless and anonymous; like the ranks of office soldiers, marching along the avenues and corridors of commerce and wealth.
Here I stand; limp emotionally, physically and spiritually - like the broken hopes and dreams that come with a young contender’s shattered bones and battered flesh.
Here I stand, no longer with the gait and mannerisms of your typical love-struck adolescent.
Here I stand; incapacitated by that numbing anaesthetic of dismissal, the painful tourniquet used to cure the wound of love’s sweet searing arrow.

Jeff, John and Leonard proclaimed that all they’d learned from love was “how to shoot somebody who outdrew them”.
In my heart of hearts, I sincerely doubt that they ever had to take the bullet.

Naturally I didn't get in.

Also written a load of songs - although mainly the lyrics for now.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Slick on 08 Jan 2009, 21:53
I thought I could love you.
I was looking forwards to telling you how beautiful you are.
In more than just the regular way,
in a way most people don't see.
I still want to tell you but I probably won't have a good opportunity to do so.
I'm sure it would have made you happy but clearly it'll have to wait.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Ozymandias on 09 Jan 2009, 00:05
(Note: I never, ever write. This actually started as part of the conceit for a novel that's been eating my brain for a year now, but suddenly turned into something different.)



Every day of everyone's life, they're aware that it's just a countdown. A ticking clock to the end, the inevitable point where everyone has to succumb to entropy. So many people fear it, feeling like they have to work their lives to the bone to make it all worth something.

I miss that.

I miss when I would lie awake at night, in those minutes that drag before sleep finally comes, thinking about mortality and hoping that it wouldn't come for me. Not this night, not yet.

I miss wondering if I will be judged after I die. If a shining man will tell me I was good or bad. If the weight of my deeds will raise me up into a higher place or sink me into the depths of pain.

I miss wondering if pulling a trigger would really be the end I want. A sad, pathetic life, punctuated with a bang.

I miss you.

!
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ampersandwitch on 09 Jan 2009, 09:19
Corroborating evidence to my objection that 'everyone can write' when people tell me that I can write and should therefore be a writer.  There is some really great work on this thread.

Keep it up, busty babes.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Elizzybeth on 11 Jan 2009, 22:20
A sonnet:

In the kitchen, eating a tomato
I come upon the ending of the world:
Revelation in an old potato,
Apocalypse in coffee, gently swirled.
Up close, he's personal and calm.  He sighs,
"What are you doing after all?" and frowns,
Teeth gray, hair singed--there's salt in both his eyes.
"I'm only throwing out the coffee grounds.
I do what must be done.  How have I sinned?"
He presses up against my teeth, and slides
Against my tongue, so sweet.  "This is the end,"
His dying cry is faint, a whimper from inside.
I swallow fast; I do not dare to wait.
And when I'm done, I do not lick the plate.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: mishy on 13 Jan 2009, 12:57
beautiful. and about food! amazing food.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 15 Jan 2009, 04:09
I watched intently as she sat across from me, looking past me with bright eyes and gesturing excitedly; painting her dreams in the air, talking more to herself than to me. I tried to imagine what she was explaining, but what were bright, vibrant pictures to her were muddy and dull. The hazy scenes in my head didn't incite the same feelings of grandeur, but I didn't mention it to her. I never remembered my dreams, so living vicariously through someone else, even if they were pale imitations of the real thing, was better than nothing.

I wonder where all these dreams come from in that brain of hers; the fantastic images of other worlds or psychopaths torturing innocent people seem so out of place coming out of her mouth. Yet every morning when she mumbles out what she saw, starting half asleep and waking up more as the anecdote continues, it seems like such a natural situation for her to be talking about. It makes me look forward to waking up, even if I can't properly appreciate what she is trying to say.



(argh, I haven't written in ages and I am rustyyyy)
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Siibillam-Law on 15 Jan 2009, 05:05
Here's something I started writing ages ago and stoppec so I realised that I had lots of uni work and other things to write

It's a QC screenplay!
it's a pre-credit prologue where Marten gets a leaving gift from his mummykins to find, omg, that it's Pintsize




EXT. Suburban house - day

A bicycle is squeaks its way to the front of an average suburban house. The rider dismounts and opens the gate to enter. A loud whip crack is heard.

Int. Suburban house - Day

"Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry plays loudly. a web camera and a laptop are set up on a table. On screen we see video playback of a woman in leather bondage gear cracking her whip and wrapping it around herself. A small IM Board next to it is buzzing with activity. The sound of a door opening and closing is heard from downstairs. Looking worried, Veronica Reed turns off the music, and closes the lid of the laptop. She exits the room and hurries down the stairs where Marten Reed removes a satchel and places it on the floor. He looks up at Veronica and sighs.

Veronica

Hey, honey. Home already?

Marten
(annoyed)

Mom, do you have to do this today? I mean, come on. I'm leaving tonight.

VERONICA

I'm sorry, honey. But I have to. It's my job and it's all the time. Besides, someone had to pay for the delivery truck.

MARTEN

There wasn't a lot anyway.


... and thats it
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Oli on 15 Jan 2009, 17:37
Sunlight glides through my window and I blink bleary eyed, my mouth is the desert and this is the first morning. The first morning I've seen in weeks? The first morning. I roll over and God hurls a jolt straight into my brain. I groan.

'What did I do?'

Hazy recollections. Innocence lost. Oh Lilith...you whore.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 16 Jan 2009, 02:44
It's a QC screenplay!

Stop shitting up my thread.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 16 Jan 2009, 03:31
Oh god. I mean, I know it is part of the deal with writing that if you write you don't shit on other writers' writing, because yours is not necessarily any cop itself...

... but Sibillam, old chap, that screenplay was more painful than putting my head in a microwave and deep-frying my synapses.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Siibillam-Law on 16 Jan 2009, 17:43
Yes! Sucess
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: öde on 16 Jan 2009, 17:54
No.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Siibillam-Law on 17 Jan 2009, 03:13
Hehehehe, there is a reason it's been only that for months, after all. I  do have some common sense (honest I do, somewhere). Interestring to see how it fits onto screen though

I think I'll just stick to my norm
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: WriterofAllWrongs on 18 Jan 2009, 12:27
Oh power struggles in every form of relationship
You're right you're wrong your friend his wife
Their problems our problems
Toilet seat up or down
Shouldn't we both try to adjust the thing?
It seems to me like there are so many ways
To incite arguments and
Very few paths to a peaceful resolution
We'll agree to disagree means
"We'll agree to be bitter about the issue"
That's just unfair means
"You aren't seeing it through my filter"
Body language scrutiny
Intonation inquisition
Vitriolic nitpicking and semantics
What do you want from me?
To be an improved you?
To be a devolved I?
How about we be us?
Us seem to get along well enough
And after all it doesn't matter,
this is just senate in-fighting
This is just the two boxers having their match
And then going to a hotel and sleeping together
Ego booster as Self-Deprication as Waves on the Rocks
Loving acid spit
Putting a penny in Cola
We'll come out shiny like minted in a few hours
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 20 Jan 2009, 14:00
Go to a party.
Get drunk.
Talk to strangers.
Be charming. Be funny.
Make sure they don't know your friends
Pick one. Not too pretty.
Seperate from the rest.
Maybe fall in love.
Maybe get a handjob.
Go home. Fall over drunk.
Wake up in the morning
as lonely as you were before the party.
Now you're hungover, too.
Swear you'll never do it again.
Wonder when the next party is.
Where it'll be.
Who'll throw it.
Feel more lonely than ever.
Wonder where you can find decent friends.
Wonder when you'll have a girlfriend.
Wonder who it'll be.
Will you love her?
Will you see her often?
Will you be too clingy?
What'll make her leave you?
Wind up drunk again. This time alone.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: jodizzle on 25 Jan 2009, 03:15
I wrote a little thing to keep the thread alive.  I have started drawing again lately, which has become my creative outlet and as a result my writing suffers epically. I'm much less poetic when I have been spending all my time drawing out my life.


When I first saw you the room was hazy and smelled of cigarettes.  I watched you watching her.  She was falling over drunk, pulling her dress further up her thighs as she struggled to stay steady.  There was something not right about you, something I couldn’t quite place.  You were menacing perhaps, but you sent a thrill through me all the same.  You were dangerous, that much was certain, and you walked with a purpose.  I caught the predatory look in your eyes as you stared at her and I ached for it to be directed at me.  You stubbed out your cigarette and whispered in her ear.  The decision had been made, and the devil didn’t want me.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: WrathandRuin on 25 Jan 2009, 11:48
I had an odd dream the other night and, while I know that (like most dreams) it would make a disjointed, meaningless story, I had a story idea sort of inspired by it.  Here is the first 175 words and I would like opinions on whether or not what I have (mostly setting and tone) is worth pursuing (I see it becoming a medium to long short story).  I have only written two stories (very short) that I have found to be worthy of saving, and I'm definitely out of practice, so if triage is necessary, please tell me.

He trudges through the snow with the soldiers.  His clothes are a mottled white, lined with wool and fur and whatever bits of insulation he could scavenge at the last village they passed through.  The soldiers are as motley as his clothing, their uniforms: not uniform at all, their weapons: scavenged hunting rifles and heirloom revolvers.  Another village looms in the distance, a skeletal remnant of, if not glory, some happiness.  The soldiers pause at a well outside of the village to test the water: no good.  Too exhausted to fan out and surround it, they simply bring their weapons to bear and warily trudge up its single, powdered street.  He and the soldiers follow the spine along a shattered skyline of bombed out buildings, walls poking from the rubble like broken ribs surrounded by gangrenous, puckered flesh.  The road terminates at what was once a mayoral building, now an empty shell twisted into a hideous mockery of a smile; the gaping windows and the once enameled, now shattered, doors arranged in a prizefighter's grin.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Josefbugman on 25 Jan 2009, 14:52
The opening paragraph or so to "A report by Johnathan turaleyon, special ambassador to the German Principate: Or The Black Forest Incident"

So a new dawn begins, having been released from my minor duties within the industrial cities of the North, I found myself once again at my old manor in the town of Sandbach, I had missed the old place and my family that inhabited it. I rushed in and said hello to my mother and father and waited, as one is often forced to, for my brother to stop lavishing his attentions on his intended bride in order to greet him.

That was 6 weeks ago, and after renewing my contacts within the town and its environs, I found myself increasingly disheartened, a kind of melancholy had attached itself to me and I found that whatever I turned my mind to I was ill equipped to deal with. So you can imagine my surprise when, quite unexpectedly a message game through on the telephone. We had only just had one installed and I found it useful, despite its vast size and incomprehensibility though of course I made far more use of the Difference engine in my line of work. I picked up the receiver and was assaulted by the braying voice of Sir Charles Meredith, my immediate superior at the intelligence branch who had a voice like a claxon and the mind of a steam barge. ‘ Turelyon?’ he roared down the line ‘You there?’ I lifted the connected nozzle to my mouth and said ‘Yes Sir Charles, it is me, how are things at Rothoby?’ ‘Capital! But I am not calling you to talk about my house, I have a new job for you’. I grimaced the missions that I was usually given by Sir Charles were usually matched in both time and dullness. ‘I suppose I could do some work if it-’ ‘Capital! Can’t speak about it over the phone but will get it telegraphed to you, see you soon’ and with that he was gone, and I breathed a sigh of regret, just what had I signed myself up for.

What does everyone think? Its only the introduction, and I hope to make a proper upload of it later, but thats the sort of style I am doing it in and am wondering what people think of it.

Thanks
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: phooey on 26 Jan 2009, 21:33
I want to be more a part of this community, so here's little something I wrote to make me feel better about my life. I guess you could call it the beginnings of a character study.

   The man on the first landing in the east staircase of the Saint George hotel in Winchester, the one standing perfectly upright, is a bellhop. He takes his job very serious – to a fault, even, if you ask his mother.  The customer takes priority in his life, and following hotel policy and excelling at his job is paramount.  A polished and painstakingly upholstered smile spreading his rosy cheeks apart, he eagerly awaits his impending tasks and takes each customer’s hand suddenly in a firm, sturdy handshake. When he does this, he first bows slightly, then widens his eyes as though something has gone agley, and nods, unintentionally parodying in the once popular, now kitsch perpetual motion birds.  A little bit of hair peeks out from underneath the flimsy bellhop uniform hat from the vigorous, tense head-shake, and the jagged outline of the slightly damp hair gives his face the odd impression of having stress-fissures at the top.  This odd effect, in combination with his tensile grin and the sheen indicative of a twice-daily skin care regimen, gives him the air of being under an inevitable strain in entirely opposite directions.
   
   His eyes are a frenetic blue and hardly lidded, framed by lashes that are too thin and too dark, widely and sparsely fanning out from his eyelid.  His brows, which fall under a smooth forehead completely free of blemishes, are too narrow and to be masculine, and follow the same general line of a drawn-on eyebrow typically found on abandoned elderly women.   He tends to arch them invitingly towards the ends of his sentences, giving everything he says a crushing sense of pathetic desperation and urgency.  His nose is remarkable in that it is unremarkable save for his constantly flared nostrils.  His lips and cheeks are rosy even with minimal exertion, and he is always the first to turn bright red at the first hint of lewdness or impropriety, the red climbing down his face, down his neck, into the burgundy collar of his uniform.  His cheeks are otherwise totally bare, any hints of a beard shaved off each morning and each lunch break.   His chin is round and juts out slightly, and when he works, the strap for his bellhop’s hat cuts into his soft jaw, though he is very thin in almost every other regard.  His sole insecurity about his appearance dates back to his discovery (via eavesdropping) of the phenomenon titled ‘cankles,’ which made him suddenly and suffocatingly conscious of the aesthetics of his lower legs.  It is for this reason he always wears pants in public and often envisions disaster scenarios that culminate in his crafting new trousers out of dinner napkins.

Try that on for size, 'Writtin' Thread'
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Drambels on 27 Jan 2009, 16:38
They buried Billy today. I went through the service numb inside and out. Only part of it was the valium. I heard one of his aunts say that he looked like he was just sleeping. No he didn't. He looked like a wax doll. No amount of rouge and powder could hide the dead flesh underneath. They had a picture of him smiling next to the coffin. In the picture he was full of life, smiling. It seemed cruel. To remind everyone of what they had lost.

The shrink keeps telling me it wasn't my fault. What the hell does he know? It wasn't him they pulled out of the water. If I lean just a little longer out over the edge of the cliff I can see where it happened. Instead I take another swig of peach apricot brandy and look down at my feet dangling over the edge. Look at a car driving by fifty feet below. Hello little car. Did you know my friend Billy? Seventeen, going sixty, went over the side and sank seven feet. Billy walks among us no more.

I pick up the revolver and raise it to my head. I always thought I would feel some doubt at this point. Some flicker of remorse for my parents and friends. But all I feel as the cold metal presses against my temple is relief. Wait up Billy.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: TheFuriousWombat on 27 Jan 2009, 18:14
A poem! I don't know if it's very good but I do know that Robert Kelley, whom I revere as a poet very much, liked it which does make me quite happy. Anyway:

Cyprian

Upright but rundown,
A girl gleaming with bright-red wine-red lipstick and
Cured leather as social vessels,
Illuminated in the church nook
As boys with clarinets and crossbows,
cabbages and wrenched knives pass.

She receives them, if they bristle at her,
In storage areas and subway entrances:
Gulfs of lost esteem and social limericks,
Trapdoors where Beelzebub might sing,
Where sky sight is blocked by screens of melting ice and acid stains.
At least the winter stays without.

They talk like zookeepers with razor response,
Metallic words like bells of thin metal ringing round-the-campfire,
Having a look-see for the police or figures in calf-length dresses
Who could disturb the coup.
They, eyes opening on the spot, gasping like a smoker’s sound,
(Nothing mechanical there, polite classical training with a scent of
Some musty apparatus), grip barber cut combed back hair with fingernails,

Perhaps a friend there too, a bundle of electric units (all of us), passing
Open eyes over like at a peepshow, thinking about some young goddess,
Some late-night star with a popular bed in some wild place,
But too to watch and sound would-be alarms.

This is her informal auction. Interruptions of necessity.
Pressure against drenched walls from agents, runners, actors, princes.
A waning sea that bruises her arm bone, stitches her foot with lemonlike lettering,
Records etchings of unwound buttons and close clothes for part of the evening,
Until she falls upon the exhausted floor like elephants fall for piano keys.
She views the E.P.A. with approval. Reads Shakespeare. Decorates the commonplace.
On Halloween she wore the make-up of Greek myths. Ate soup by the spoonful.
Designed goals: to beat the traps and nod away the hunters.
But how? She follows orders till knocked off kilter, silently indisposed,
Showing fright to the grinning likeness of bears.
No need to fight as they consume.
She goes home with the air-conditioning on,
Watches the stock responses of TV bands.
Sleeps and dreams of the ocean and being in the waves.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: axerton on 24 Mar 2009, 03:22
Rise from your Grave to do my bidding.
Well I'm doing a creative writing course at uni, so I thought I'd post what I come up with here.

Beyond Hunger

It’s coming tonight. I can feel it. The hunger is building inside of me. No. Not hunger, something different, something more. You can deny hunger, you can fight it, you can ignore it. But not this, I can’t even try to resist this. I’M NOT A MONSTER! It’s not my fault, it takes over I can’t fight it, it takes me over. Literally.

It’s coming faster tonight, why didn’t I get as much warning as I normally do? I have to be somewhere with people. The more the better. It has to be satisfied. There’s no way I’m going through that again. It has to be satisfied or I suffer.

The car. The car. Car. START YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH! Ok – calm. Deep breaths. Where do I go? Somewhere with people. Where are there people at this hour? Oh, just drive! Left here, head to the city. There has to be people. If I don’t… no, it, not me - It. I’m not the murderer, I just a passenger. A host. This thing inside me is what does the killing. I don’t want to do it.

What’s that smell. Car fumes – from the exhaust. sweat – my own. Leather. The seats. Oh god it’s starting. Get out of the car. Paws don’t work door handles well. ARRGGHHH. There’s not a soul in – URGH! Please, let there be someone, somewhere. Not again. Not another month without feeding. I won’t surviARRGHH….

Free.
Power.
Hungry!
... Smoke. Petrol. Beer. Sap. Rubber. 
…Flesh! Distant. Sweet. Young.
This way.
Stronger scent....  Flesh! Two. Both sweet. Both young. One masked. Perfume.
…Close.
…There. Flesh! Two. Inside.  Locked. Window.
Sound - High. Movement. Chase!
Outside.
…Flesh! Sweat. Fear. 
This way.
…Separated. Sweeter. Slower. This way.
…Close. Hiding.  Fear.
Light. Sound - Blaring. Coming closer.
Pain.


Ahhhhh…. Pain. Oh my god it hurts. Arm? Neck? Head? Ribs?  Legs? No, nothing broken. What happened? Last night. Something hit me – it! That noise? That light? A car, it must have been a car. Wait, my car. I was in my car. I changed on the road side. I smelled. No! It smelled! It smelled flesh. No. People, not flesh, people! Two kids, they ran. Then the car came. No! No! No! No! They can’t have got away! It must have fed. It has to have fed. I need to have fed. Those kids can’t have got away. No! I can’t handle it. The hunger, or whatever it is. Damn it! Why did they have to run?  If it doesn’t feed the hunger isn’t sated. Two months in a row now – I was barely able to survive one month without feeding. Oh god. Oh god.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Gilead on 24 Mar 2009, 03:46
The clock flashes 3:27am on the bedside table of the motel room, it is 3 minutes fast. The room is bathed in a sickly green light from a neon sign across the street. In the room is a bed, the table and clock, a reading lamp, a small television which does not work and a couple engaging in intercourse. The word is clinical, it suits the act being observed, they are not making love, not coming together, there is no tenderness and warmth between the two participants, the act is devoid even of the raw animal passion that might inspire one to use a more vulgar term. It is simply a procedure, a strange necessity for both parties.

The woman is a call girl, the man of unknown identity at this point, his method of engagement is mechanical, almost businesslike, he thrusts at a constant even pace, his eyes filled with a kind of grim determination, not on the call girl’s body or face but on a point just past her left ear. The girl looks off to the side, a bored expression paying on her beautiful, gaudy features. She does not moan, there is no need, the unknown man does not care about her pleasure, he is focused only on the eventual goal.

12 minutes after it has begun, the man finishes, he grunts in a kind of half hearted satisfaction and rolls off the girl. He lies there expressionless, eyes fixed unseeing on the cracked plaster of the ceiling. The girl sits up on the edge of the bed, grabbing her clothes, which she has neatly folded on the floor, an idiosyncrasy left over from her childhood.

She turns to look at the man on the bed and requests her payment for services rendered. The man looks at her, meeting her gaze for the first time.
4 hours later she is found dead in an alley, 34 minutes after that I receive a phone call from the detective at the crime scene, an old friend of mine.

“It’s her.” He tells me.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Eris on 24 Mar 2009, 04:01
Saturday morning, trying to sleep in. The light sneaks its way through the gaps in the blinds and pokes my closed eyelids, urging me to pay attention. The day has begun, and I am missing out on all there is to do. Resigned, I peer slowly through my lashes out the window, smiling tiredly at the cheerful clear sky peering over the buildings. The room is quiet, only the sound of the man sleeping next to me. For once even the neighbours are silent; it must be earlier that I thought.

I take a look at the body laying beside me, noting how soft he looks when he is asleep. The worry has gone for the moment, and I am glad of that; he always seems to be thinking in three directions at once, trying to keep up with the world when he is awake. I lay back and relax, looking out the window once more and breathe in time with his sleepy breaths. It feels like we are alone in the world here, and that is an oddly comforting feeling.

A plane flies overhead and brings me crashing back to reality as I wait nervously to make sure it doesn't fall out of the sky. With a small sigh I roll over, away from him, and try to sleep again. The sun touches my face and I know sleep won't return.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: ZJGent on 24 Mar 2009, 04:43
The priest's corpse lies, strangely splayed, over a gravehead in the bowels of Saint-Simon-Just. We are mere metres away from the great sprawling sewer system of New Paris. I glance at the revolver in my hand, whose head seems now blunt and pitted, angled at the floor. I sigh, a sigh for the Simon this cadaverous labyrinth was named after. My recently shellshocked brain struggles with simple facts known once to me. Who was the grey statue turning an icy saturnine glance over the priest and I? Patron of... patron of... no. The pebble of information escapes from the buttered fingers of my mind, and I am lost, chasing my own thoughts down black scarps. A damp sigh turns the cold dead air grey in front of me, and I collapse onto the granite feet of this Simon of Nothings and Nobodies.

November again. I expected it to be different by now, and yet I am still riding on the mouldering coat-tails of older dead. When did I lose myself? Père Luiz does not answer my thoughts, so I ask again aloud. My voice spirals down to the city's sewage where it echoes and marks the walls whose history aches with detritus. It is then that I laugh. My own musings on coat-tails; and the long jacket I wear is now slick from the evening's efforts. The worms in the walls would be proud of my work. Such decay in only one short tussle! Luiz' habit fair reeks with blood and irony. So pure to his congregation. So deserving of the spikes of my armoury. His teeth open madly, as if to bite a brown earth sky. The electrics this far below Paris are none too good, so our father's earth-moon can only flicker dimly above him, an electric light built to scare away old shadows.

I retrieve the pocket-case from its ragged wool tomb, and unclip the tin edging. Inside, a needle's spike gasps glitter and sparkles in the dim light. Christ, I think, as I limply prepare my work. Wherever He sits, he's ignoring me now. The vial of green liquid adds a phosphorescence to the vault around me, seeming somehow to make its own light. Luiz' arm is knotted, and I think of the ease with which - yes, now - the pin of violence in my hand dives into vein. The green spreads up his arm and his corpish pallor is replaced by a shade of something sicker. It is now that I must hurry. The needle must rush quickfast back to its pocket cave, with the vial, and I must escape further. Not up, but down, to the sewers, where Simon and the other saints will catch no sight of me.

It is then that my mind realigns and the facts come together.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scrambled Egg Machine on 25 Mar 2009, 12:11
I'm working on a little steampunk-type thing, but it's going slow. Maybe later.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Scandanavian War Machine on 25 Mar 2009, 13:26
man, i forgot about this thread. i've actually starting writing short stories with the intention of compiling them into a book of some sort and i guess i might as well share one of them.

this is sort of a work in progress. the story is finished but i'm constantly rereading it and changing a word here and there, or adding some extra descriptions or changing sentence structure that comes off awkward. feel free to criticize, this is the first short story i've written since highschool so it's pretty unpolished. i'm working on my second one right now and it's much better (if i do say so myself) and longer.


----------------------

Two guys walk into a bar. The guy on the right says
“What color is my shirt?” and his friend on the left replies
“Um, it’s blue. What color is mine?”
“Well, it’s red” he says, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

Besides these two, the bar is completely devoid of customers so the bartender stands behind the bar and watches while they continue their conversation in a quiet whisper. After several moments they nod grimly, pull pistols out of their jackets, and place them in each other’s mouths. The bartender can’t stand to watch so he starts walking towards the supply closet in the back as they start counting down.
“uhhn”
He opens the door.
“hdoo”
He steps inside.
“hreee!”
He closes the door and covers his ears.
Both guns fire at almost exactly the same instant, filling the empty space with their hollow clapping, sounding not unlike a deadly round of applause.  A second later the bartender emerges from the little closet by the bar carrying a mop and a bucket. He sets them down against the bar, pushes a little red button on the wall that immediately starts blinking furiously, and pours himself a drink. He sits at the bar instead of behind it, sipping his drink slowly with his eyes closed, daydreaming of a far off land that probably doesn’t even exist. Several minutes go by and he’s already on his third drink, this time a whiskey sour, and he can’t help but wonder where we went wrong.
“Oy! Couple’ah colored shirts offed each other, eh?”
The bartender is so shocked by the sudden break of silence that he inhales the whiskey he was about to swallow and nearly chokes to death coughing and sputtering. He almost wishes he had choked to death. His father would have said that that was ironic, whatever that meant. He turns to face the loud transgressor, fully intending to tell him off for sneaking up on a fellow like that but thinks better of it once he realizes who, or perhaps more accurately: what, it is.
“Mighty sorry to have startled ya like that, chappy. I assumed you ‘eard me open up the door. I’ll ‘ave these two outta yer way in a jiffy, chief. Don’t you worry one bit” said the man in the silly accent.
Whether or not he is actually a man or not is unclear. Nobody knows who or what the Suits are, or where they come from. Nobody ever bothers to ask or even to spend much time thinking about it. It’s dangerous to get caught up in such things.
The bartender turns away from the well-dressed man: he’s hovering above the fresh corpses like turkey vultures circling over the head of someone lost in the desert, waiting for him to die. But these two are already dead and this man-thing is far too clean and proper to be a vulture anyway. He finishes his drink, picks up his bucket and mop, and turns back towards the mess. The Suit and the bodies are gone; the only evidence that they were ever here is a couple of dusty footprints in the drying blood and, of course, the blood itself.
He begins to mop.

-----------------------
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: schimmy on 25 Mar 2009, 14:20
I am the happiest child
and you are the loveliest thing.
In any bed we can find, you sleep.
You're at your best and I'm at my most.
You breathe so soft I can't sleep.
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: Ballard on 07 Apr 2009, 23:35
First entry (http://oldlogic.com/tagged/Gene) in a weekly column I'm doing for a friend's up-and-coming music blog. Does non-fiction count?
Title: Re: Writtin' Thread
Post by: SonofZ3 on 08 Apr 2009, 18:31
To _______: Running in Winter

When the air is harsh, and my breath comes ragged and painful in the raw cold, I leave my body behind, and retreat to the warmth of my memories, where all is eclipsed by the thrill of your bare skin and your perfect sillhouette, outlined against the curtains in the half light of my mind. Missing You.