Friday, April 18, 2014

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. No reason. Just ending the week in style.

You can write whatever you want in the comments section. You have two minutes. Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. 
So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play. 

Have a good weekend!

It's like a caricature of disaster. My eyes won't cooperate, the bastards - or maybe they know more than me? Maybe there is more humanity in those two little orbs than there is in the whole rest of this fucked up world. What a load of crap. I'll punch myself later.

Me? I just want to look. Just for a second. I want to watch the slow fall that took you so long to build up to. America, you filled my head with bullshit lies and false optimism. Now, the piper gets paid. I may get screwed in the process, but at least now I can see you for what you really are. And no, I don't mean anything crazy - rest easy, CIA. I just mean that we're about to reap what we sowed. I'm afraid it's gonna be rather ugly. You get what you pay for, feel me? I'm just an observer, though. I don't pick sides because every side is populated by sycophants and assholes.


It's a battle, see. The fat, slick, suit and tie bastards have their own agenda and you're part of it, but you don't want to know what part - trust me. The poor folks are too worried about silly things like food and phone bills and getting shot. The people in the middle are just worried about how many brambles they will catch on the way down. They inch their way up, but it's like one of those horrible math problems. A snail climbs a wall 4.3 inches every five minutes, but every 1.3 hours he slips back one inch and loses ground and the world turns and who gives a fuck anyway. I mean, I like snails. Not so much when they crunch under my bare feet. I like them, though. I just don't like their ecosystem.

23 comments:

  1. REAP WHAT YOU SOW
    I spent much of last summer working on a friend's lakehouse. He's getting on in years, but I had a hell of time keeping up with him. The previous summer he had added on five rooms, surrounding the original French log cabin (vertical logs) which was built nearly a hundred years ago. It was he and wife's (who had passed five years ago) first home together. The old log portion is now going to be the dining room, and hanging from the ceiling is the chandelier that he made from the wagon wheel that came off of the wagon that his wife rode to school, so many years ago. When the weather turned cold, we locked it up for the winter and waited for the snow to break so we could finish. His health started to deteriorate over the long cold winter we had. In December, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. They operated in January, and he spent a few months in hospice. He's home now, but half the man sits before me. He started Chemo on Monday, and has slept ever since. It's 39 degrees today, so I went down to the lakehouse and started moving things around in preparation for the drywall texture I intend to spray next week. Then I'll do what I dread most...paint. He is unaware that I intend to finish what we started, with or without his help. If he can last the summer, I want him to do it in the comfort of this beautiful little house on the shore of Lake Superior. I still have to build a kitchen, finish the walls, and flooring, but it's something I'll find the time for. I can only hope that when my time draws near, I have someone around me that'll do the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love this piece, man. Also love having you stop by, as always. Great imagery and the way the prose rolls ... ace, G.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, bro. ~JT still writes non-fiction.

      Delete
    3. Nonfiction but somehow reads like fiction. Like Jo's piece, understated.

      Delete
  2. Jagged, ugly thoughts sparked through her mind when her knocks came back only as hollow echoes. If he wasn’t home, where could he be? Out with that girl, probably, the one from the newspaper photo. The one with the cinnamon curls, the black makeup, the tight shirt with the name of a rock band on it. So much more in common than they had, an accident of location, location, location as the real estate agents would call it. Happened to be going out for cigarettes when she needed cat food, dropped her purse and he picked it up, and that’s where it started. Now it could be over. She knocked again. Nothing. Not even the sound of his answering machine, or maybe it had stopped taking her calls the day he discovered his kewpie-goth-doll groupie girl.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It’s Friday afternoon and I find myself in a coffee shop. Friday can only mean two things. First of all its flash fiction Friday, home of the two minute drill. Flash fiction Friday is also time travel day for me. I receive my coffee from the barista and the two minute clock starts. Today it is set for 1969 and the girl behind the counter isn’t a hipster named Cassy, but a hippie named Carol. Both have long, straight, blonde hair and similar politics. A man recently landed on moon making an otherwise wasted summer seem somehow remarkable. The clock keeps ticking, not caring for the accomplishments of men. What did those news shorts in the theatre say? Time moves on! Mick Jagger sings in my mind, “Time is on my side, yes it is.” Mick, always the optimist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ed, you're getting wistful, mate. :)

      I like this. Jagger thought he found the fountain of youth, and in a way he had. But it still catches up. Dammit.

      Delete
    2. Wistful, sinful... Morrison had his own fountain of youth. He waited just a few years too long though. Common mistake. Richards may have been on to something though. Just mummify yourself so that you look forever older than shit. Really he hasn't aged a day in the last 40 years.

      Delete
    3. Ed, I love the pieces you put up here. :)

      Delete
  4. The Last Damn Thing

    Hell out of Dodge. Made good time, left the jammed highway for the county roads, found a small place, seemed mostly empty.

    Pulled up. Gas station on the corner, rusted pumps, just two of them. Peeled paint. Tractor round the side, once red, now a different red with rust. Old man sitting out front, teeth missing.

    Cranked my window.

    "You open, sir?"

    Old man spit tobacco juice in an arc, like a heron shitting.

    "Look like we are?"

    "Why I'm asking. Can't tell."

    "Don't matter either way, son."

    "Does to me. Need gas."

    "Where you headed?"

    "Away from the city. Far away as possible. Gonna find me a farmhouse. Hunker down."

    Then he says a strange thing. The strangest.

    "Seems every farmhouse got a girl who dreams from a window."

    Crazy old bastard spooked me, he did. Passed on his crazy thoughts like a virus. I got gone, gas gauge flirting with Empty. Gonna find me a farmhouse with a girl in it, dreaming by a window, if it's the last damn thing I do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The whole piece is awesome, G. I love this line: Old man spit tobacco juice in an arc, like a heron shitting.

      Delete
  5. Aw. This is so freaking sad. You evoke it without once going for the easy way.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, that was heartbreaking. Beautiful, though. And who the FUCK doesn't like red onions!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ask him if it took two minutes. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. LOL.

    Wait, hey, mine probably has fewer words than any of the other entries this week. Oddly enough. Brevity is the soul of fuckwittery, etc. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. LATECOMER

    "I'm out on a limb," said Mudangi.

    "Next time get here early."

    Mudangi tossed a few eye spears at Bowatso, the last of his nine brothers, the one with the waggedy ponttail. He hurried to his assigned place on the jungle ground and breathed in deeply the cooking vapors wafting from the giant pot.

    “You know I like the funny bone.”

    Now it was the chief, father of the ten, who squinted and grimaced. “You’re late. When dinner is served, who is here, eats. Latecomers get the leftovers.”

    Mudangi mentally kicked himself in the rear end. There was absolutely no need to dillydally through the green forest. He saw the late-day sun dropping like an orange skull into the far-off acacia karroo treetops but dallied nonetheless.

    “I always get the leg. Even the arm, but you all ––”

    “Shut up and eat,” commanded the chief.

    Mudangi lifted the interloper’s head, stared back at its glaringly dead eyes, and plucking them, shoved them into his mouth.

    “Eat the man’s long nose,” said Bowatso. “Make believe it’s his arm.”

    They all laughed while Mudangi’s sharp teeth ferociously tore away the human meal’s face, vowing to himself he'd be punctual from then on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woah, definitely didn't see the ending coming. Love the orange skull! Thanks for coming by, Sal.

      Delete
  10. Chipped formica table top. Ripped vinyl seat. The diner booth fits me. Worn. Used up. But hey, the bones are still sturdy. Nothing a facelift wouldn't cure.

    I can't really see the outside world through the dirty rain streaked window. It's an impressionist painting, Just as well. Clarity is overrated. My wool overcoat has little droplets of rain clinging to the hair-like fibers. Not sure why that catches my focus.

    Shaky hands slosh the coffee onto the saucer. I hate when that happens.

    Sigh.

    Waiting. Tired. Maybe if I clean my glasses things wouldn't look so hazy

    Fat chance. Anyway, dry napkins are hard to come by these days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow. This is so good. I love diners. That last line is killer.

      Delete

Please leave comments. Good, bad or ugly. Especially ugly.