Friday, June 6, 2014

2 Minutes. Go!

Hey, writer-type folks. Every Friday we do a fun free-write. 

You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). 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. 

I swear it's like we've never met. I see you there, throwing pebbles that tink off my forehead - like a young, midnight suitor. I'll pull the curtains back. You're reaching for it, and I want to tell you that you're right. I want to watch the relief wash over you like cool mountain runoff. Shocking. I want you to know that you're right for once because it doesn't matter that you're not.

It's a slick move, you gotta admit that. She's all over it, and she's looking like Mother Teresa on steroids, but they don't see the marks. They don't recognize the change. It's too late for me to tell you anything.

You sit at the sticky counter and sip on coffee that shouldn't be called coffee. Not by anyone with self respect. The sun drops behind the hills honey-slow, and you sit and watch it. You smell the wet clothes and mildew and that road smell you can never wash off, no matter how hard you try. Wrap yourself in it, no one will be the wiser, let them pass by like a bad wind on its way to someplace new and pure.

Play as many times as you like. Have a good weekend & thanks for stopping by!

31 comments:

  1. Like two charcoal smudges stacked one on top of another, the priest gazed out from the cool of the bell tower, watching the cloud on the horizon. Already ashen from his late night efforts falsifying arson at the local woodworking tool factory, even his collar was grey.
    Carlos Ramada was Viela's appointed small god botherer. A role that had him discrediting the mischief of minor deities. The last thing the Church needed was people believing in demi-gods or anything other than the Holy Father. And so, he had a very varied and sometimes dangerous job, often working outside the law.
    The cloud began to move as soon as he stepped out into the sun's glare, homing in on him like a giant malevolent sheep. Metal tools began to fall, their cast bodies shattering into shrapnel as they hit the cobblestones.

    Ramada groaned. "Damn you," he said, shaking his fist. "The planes in Spain don't fall mainly in the rain!"

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    1. Wow. There are like a million stories in this one, brother. Cheers!

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    2. "...even his collar was grey." Love that. Keep 'em coming, Mark.

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  2. I don't know what you remember of those days, but I quite clearly remember the sunrise orders of tomato juice and rye toast after being up all night. I fondly and often recall the midnight meals of fries with Roquefort dressing which confused new waitresses at the truck stop so badly we finally gave in to fries with gravy. I remember the drives out Coburg Road on mescaline, the blue airport landing lights on acid, and your long golden hair which flowed like a river around your sky blue eyes. You were Reno and I was the biggest little city on the block. You were sister golden hair and I was the four eyed shy boy from the sticks. You didn't so much teach me the ropes as watched me hang myself. I came of age, came in to my own, and came to miss you some two score plus now. I miss rainbow shades and hippies. That is why you moved on and I didn't. Part of me is still there in the steel and stone. Don't remember room numbers, class schedules, or when I got there. But I do remember never leaving.

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    1. Holy shit! You took it to a whole new level, brother. This is brilliant. This line -> You were Reno and I was the biggest little city on the block. - fucking ace. All of it. Bravo.

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    2. Replete with nostalgia. Ed, your pieces keep upping the ante.

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  3. You need to get out of your shell and make friends.

    I have friends. Lots of friends. You are not one of them. My shell is nice. Leave me alone.

    Come on, you’re smart, cute. Too bad you have no confidence.

    Being a blowhard and making small talk with strangers is not confidence. Confidence is quiet knowledge of your own capabilities, your own strengths. Emphasis on quiet.

    Why so quiet?

    Because I’m shy, you idiot.

    Why so glum, chum?

    I’m not glum. Rarely glum. Hardly ever glum. It’s just the way my face looks when I’m not smiling. Thanks for pointing it out.

    Smile!

    Fuck off.

    Boom shakalakalaka….

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    Replies
    1. I relate to this so much. Excellent. Thank you for gracing us with this piece. Stark beauty.

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    2. "It’s just the way my face looks when I’m not smiling. Thanks for pointing it out."

      Yeah! Tell it, sister. :)

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  4. Don’t go there. Not that house. It smells funny. Like last week’s dirty laundry and fried onions. You don’t want to ring that bell. It doesn’t work, anyway. And she might answer, the old lady with no teeth. She’ll smile at you with what’s left of them like you’re lunch and invite you in for tea and ask if you’re lost, because that’s the only time people ring her dysfunctional doorbell. Or salesmen. Or that guy with the white shirt and the Bible. I saw him run from her house, once, fast as those cockroach-stomping shoes would go. No. Don’t go there. Not that house. The one with the broken front window that’s had the same spider web crackles through it since before you were born. Push on it, I dare you, and the pieces will fall inside. But be careful. You might let something out.

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    Replies
    1. This is too good for me to comment on.

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    2. Goddammnit, Laurie, I'm lost for words too. That last line was like a sucker punch.

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  5. When the test came back positive, she left the clinic and bought a bag of day-old muffins and got on the Green Line for Revere Beach. It was November, but she needed the cold lash of wind on her face, the shifting sand beneath her feet, the angry pitch and roll of the waves. She walked across the street from the trolley stop to the wooden gazebo and left her boots and socks. Avoiding the broken glass, cigarette butts, and used condoms, she stepped through the numbing-cold toe-squished sand to find a place to sit and think. A man walked his dog along the beach, too far to see her, and just as well, because that’s when the tears broke free. How could she go home? How could she go home and tell the man who supposedly loved her and only her that he was infected?

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    Replies
    1. You are so good at this, G. Humbling, that's what it is.

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    2. Ouch. Not what I was expecting. A true, bona fide short story in under 150 words!

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  6. It was the first day of the rest of his life. He knew it felt cheesy but it was all he had to hold onto. The fact that he had an alien organism growing in him could have bugged him out - and it had done at first, after he'd been first diagnosed - but he couldn't let it spoil the time he'd got remaining. And the doctors weren't always right...

    But here it was. Another day to be enjoyed. And nobody else ever knew if they'd be alive tomorrow or not, did they?

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    Replies
    1. Such strength in such a short piece. Fantastic. Thank you!

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    2. Wow, stoic resignation or what? Good stuff.

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  7. The bloodthirsty fiends are lurking everywhere. They're easy enough to kill, but the shear numbers are overwhelming. They're hideous creatures. Thin, sort of floppy and just mill about seemingly aimless until they smell the blood coursing through your veins. It's the sort of things nightmares are made of. I tried to run, but it was futile. The slow moving ones I left behind were replaced by the mob in front of me. No escape. I made it to the garage and slammed the door behind me. Maybe, if I don't turn the lights on, they won't find me...SMACK!! Son of a bitch! Right on the neck! Man, I hate squitoes.~JT still writes non-fiction.

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    1. Ha ha! I was all, JT's gonna start writing horror stories, then I got to the end. Okay, then, comedy horror! ;)

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    2. I thought you were talking about an invasion of hipsters. ;)

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  8. Not cheating this week. But the rest of this I'll post to my blog. You all outdid yerselves once agin.
    ______________________

    A field, dimming. Sure enough, the eastbound freight draws night behind it like a rough blanket over the land, a sky that catches and muffles its hoarse lament, holds it heavy and tenebrous within its night promises and vows of rain, all except for a western strip where earlier the sun dropped while we walked away—impossibly distant, a rarefied airless realm of crimson and gold, like blood and treasure.

    We are blood and treasure. Trash and pleasure.

    No, we're worse than that, and better than that.

    The entire world trembles. For a moment, death's-head moths hold the fate of empires between their wings. The train gathers speed for a deep land trek while children are diced unlamented in alleyways and chickens burst like nebulae from rafters in a forgotten barn, dust motes and moths, stars and straw and strands of gold like the lustrous tresses of a fabled princess, cavalier, leaning from the window of her tower, her slender neck arched, waiting. Tempting the axes of ogres.

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    1. "We are blood and treasure. Trash and pleasure.

      No, we're worse than that, and better than that."

      The soul of a never resting poet residing inside the heart of a brilliant story teller which pumps blood to the brain of a master of the language.

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    2. Hey, just glad anyone reads it. And thanks, Ed. Them's some kind words, sir.

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    3. This is a great piece, D. I was gonna call bullshit on the 2 minutes until I got to the dust motes. Now, I believe. ;)

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  9. Just awesome, David. You're a true master of words.

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  10. It was the date I'll always remember, perhaps more readily than my birthday. The family's disgrace. The cause of our banishment from the Free City, a misnomer if ever there was one. The loss of all we had amassed over the years, confiscated by the Oligarks who allowed no elbow room for sidestepping their laws. My grandparents unabashedly held hands as they stood in their pajamas before a firing squad of Oliguards with laserzappers afire. Why couldn't they obey? Why did they lie there in bed committing one of the paramount crimes the Oligarks dubbed "a near occasion of sin"? When serfs of Baltiless questioned us of our grandparents' crime we lied and said, "Murder." It was much easier than telling the truth. They were cuddling in their bed! Grandma in Grandpa's bony arms! Heartbeat to heartbeat. Love words remembered from murky memories of a long-ago romance before the hatcheries, before civility, before the Oligarks pronounced love a taboo forever. And what did Grandpa offer in his defense? "Nobody cuddles anymore."

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    1. This feels like the seed of a vast, sweeping, dystopian novel. Every word matters.

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    2. I agree 100% with David. Like being dropped into the pages of a novel you can't stop reading.

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  11. Thanks, Dave and JD. I appreciate your comments.

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