Hey, writer-type folks. AND PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO PLAY BUT DON'T IDENTIFY AS 'WRITERS' - all are welcome here! Every Friday, we do a fun free-write. For fun. And Freedom!
Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! 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.
Don't let them catch ya slipping, boy. They're slick like oil, and they got teeth so white it scares the moon. You'll start looking at them teeth, and then you'll think how ugly your teeth must be. While you're gumming your assessment, they'll go in for the kill. They'll think you won't see it coming because of the soft music, the incense blossoms.
You gotta keep your guard up is what I'm saying. They'll slip it right in through your ear and then you'll never be free. You'll be on the old radio all the time. And they don't say normal shit. You don't want to know the things they say to me.
Are you even paying attention? I'll slap you if I have to. I don't want to. Hate to slap a dead man, but the blood's got me skeeved, and the ear whistle's blowing. Blow, blow, blow the man down. Now, get up and fight. There's plenty of blood in a full grown man.
ATTENTION, I WILL BE GONE MOST OF THE DAY. BREAK THE BLOG FOR ME! AND GIVE ME SOME STUFF TO READ TOMORROW! Get 'em!
#2minutesgo
Sordid sunset shadows slip through the slates of the blinds, anxious. The sky is angry, but you don't know why. You need to stop pinning everything on yourself, though. The sunset ain't about you. The sunset ain't about me, either. Fuck a sunset.
ReplyDeleteAnd long walks on the beach. Fuck them, too. I'd rather sit in the sand and listen to the gulls. The children taunting the waves. I remember, see - what it's like to toy with a power bigger than you can even imagine.
It will always be there. The elephant in the brain. It's always different and always the same. No one escapes. If you don't pay the piper, he'll come looking for you - and he ain't no gentle, musical soul. That's bullshit. He'll bust your teeth out with a bike chain. Trust me.
Damn. And love that first one, too.
DeleteI love the sunset discussion and the beach, and the banality of it all. Also love the first one with the teeth imagery and how it spirals out. Thought provoking class.
Delete"Sordid sunset shadows" is one of my favorite phrases of today... well done...
DeleteSee I'm such a thug I just love the image of the Piper being armed with a bike chain. The first one gave me a case of the heebie jeebies in a good way.
DeleteBoth of these are chilling in their different ways. Yeah, love them. What everyone else said. :)
DeleteBoth are deep and dark. Still digesting!
DeleteOctober’s late afternoon sun transformed the leaves of autumn to stained glass, like in a cathedral or a temple. Except for Roy Umbro’s footsteps on the forest floor, it was still as a church, too. His feet whispered through the piles of scarlet and yellow.
ReplyDeleteA church. Or a graveyard. Shouldn’t there be birds? He slogged on, marking this tree and that outcropping on the map he carried only in his head.
A casual observer might think he was lost, but he saw the route as clearly as if it were flashing on a GPS. When he reached the clearing, he felt the star and the old fashioned drawing of the pointed finger: YOU ARE HERE.
The carpet of leaves was thin in the glade, but the sound of water, a tiny rivulet pouring over a rock into a pool, was a welcome relief from the silence of the walk.
He sat on thhe flat blue rock at the side of the pool. Why did he come back every year? Why this pilgrimage from west coast to east?
A single gold coin, a leaf from a birch tree, floated on the water. Slow as a sailboat whose mast had been broken, it came toward him. He willed it to move faster, and it did.
He lay down on the rock, belly to stone, and he looked closer. On the leaf of gold, an insect—a ladybug—calmly walked from one edge to the other, as if weighing her options. Stay with the known area of the leaf, or jump into the abyss and perhaps find safety?
Roy struggled with the same decision those years ago, the year he brought Elizabeth here. It would have been a comfortable marriage. Her parents had money, and she had class, but she was just too comfortable to Roy, and Roy hungered for the abyss.
His hand found a loose rock, without his having to look. He held it above the leaf for a moment and then dropped it, helping the ladybug face the unknown, to help her break free of that which was comfortable.
Just has he helped Elizabeth, in this very glade, by this very pond, those years ago. The ripples spread across the water and then across the years.
So lovely. The leaves, the single goid coin, the metaphor of helping the ladybug.
DeleteYikes. Slow burn and that ending snuck up on me!
DeleteLove it. I feel like there's 7 novels in this piece. Seriously.
DeleteYikes!
DeleteNice. The imagery and light touch is lovely.
DeleteHer teeth chatter. The mattress on the gurney does nothing to cushion her back, but turning requires help, and at the moment, there is no help to be had. Radios squawk and bodies hustle, barking out orders. Comfort is a secondary task. In the distance, she hears the screams, the popping of gunfire, squeezing her eyes against it as if she could block it out, ignore it like the horror movies she watches between her fingertips. The air then goes still, as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of the big, blue sky. In that vacuum, she grits her teeth and rolls, expecting pain that doesn’t come; perhaps the injections have finally deadened her nerves. Her training has told her not to do this. Run, the computer modules said. Hide. Call someone. But trapped behind a desk, where do you run? And call? Her arm wasn’t long enough to reach the security button in time. Not before he came into her office, so calm the young man with the huge eyes looked as he asked for directions, then pulled a gun. Why he took her colleagues but spared her a killing shot, she didn’t know. Carelessness? Didn’t seem like a threat? Saving his bullets for bigger fish? By the time the guard found her, she’d gone into shock, more from hitting her head on the way down than blood lost. In fact her head continued to swirl, her shoeless feet so light against the concrete pathways of the quad. But she can’t rest now. She sets determined steps toward the source of the commotion. Students run past her. No guard moves to stop her; they don’t even appear to notice, so single-minded they are in their task. She doesn’t know how, but she finds him, swapping cartridges, focus trained on some girls cowering in a corner, begging, whimpering. When she steps between them, he stops. His big eyes widen, and a palpable shiver quakes his body. “Don’t do this,” she whispers, holding out a palm as if to stroke his face. “Don’t—” His hand shakes. His hand shakes as he slowly turns the gun on himself, and fires.
ReplyDeleteWow.... I'm shivering... this is just another example of your amazing ability to put us into a scene and FEEL everything... thank you.
DeleteYeah, I was there! I didn't want to be but I was. Feels like a nightmare, but then again, so do all the real life versions of this sad tale.
DeleteHoly shit. Yeah. What they said. A terrible story REALLY well told. Super strong.
DeleteYeah I was there too. Very well done.
DeleteDitto head for sure!
DeleteIt’s funny how often when I sit down to chronicle my mind’s journey, the one that took a handful of decades to make yet can be read cover to cover in the instant I step off on my imaginary left foot, only a handful of images spring to view. I can only hold that
ReplyDeletefive fingers’ worth of life within this cloudy scene of greensward and foggier memory.
More often than not, there’s this face I once knew hiding just off the margins, or in that park’s oak tree shadows of ever more feeble remembrance. I’d describe it to you, but its edges have become fuzzy with the years and its colors indistinct, like that face in the mirror when I’d shave with lights off and dawn not yet over the window sill.
The other day, I placed my imaginary thumb over that blur of memory, and the remaining images lost the sharpness of their being, smudged as if rain, or even tears, fell upon a fresh watercolor. I pulled back, and everything became sharp again.
Strange that when we try losing sight of one piece of our story, so much of the rest of it loses its focus, too.
Brilliant. Rain, or even tears. I like. :)
DeleteYou had me at greensward. Well done!
DeleteWow. You absolutely crushed it with this one. Humbling. I agree with DA, and he doesn't throw words like brilliant around.
DeleteLoved this.
DeleteSo true!
DeleteNEW AMERICA
ReplyDeleteWe stood in a human circle around the giant cauldron of hot, steaming watered-down soup. Doctors, lawyers, builders –– all equal now before the deflated law of a once-strong democracy. We rubbed shoulders with former wealthies and the witless. The former had lost it all; the latter misinterpreted this get-together, not as the bottom of the rung but the height of a feast, a brotherhood, a sisterhood, a nation of neighborhoods whose cauldron songs were the new anthems sung over concave shards in which the ladled soup trickled down.
And no one questioned the absence of the red-white-and blue flag that not long before rippled in the wind, set hearts thumping to the cadence of proud sighs. This was the world now of the enemy, the usurpers who at least provided soup and molding bread and murdered only those who voiced old ideas, flexed arms without muscle, and challenged the black boots that clopped the pot-holed streets of our cities.
Most of what we at one time believed and vowed to die for was imbedded like stone in the deep crevices of mind. The voiceless. The defeated. The soup liners. The fools who could never suspect the slipping down of America.
Orwellian! Nice writing, Sal.
DeleteYou never cease to amaze... are there any genres you're not good at?
DeleteYeah, for real. The flash chameleon. :) The amazing writing never changes, though.
DeleteNice. Really liked "the former had lost it all; the latter misinterpreted this get together".
DeleteExactly how I feel about the state we are in. Thanks for the voice.
DeleteSomething had made her stay.
ReplyDeleteThe call of her humdrum job cutting lengths of fabric and of two likeable if slovenly roommates in an untidy apportioned suburb had not been loud enough. A relationship not so much on the rocks as fully shipwrecked had not been loud enough. Her one-time companions imploring her to head back east with them had not been loud enough.
This was loud. This place. Painted a safe watercolour veneer over hallucinatory light. Where the beat of life drummed deep within the marrow of the land. This land. This place. With its incessant rush and rumble of tides across mist-draped miles of satin blond sand and the restless receding hiss; its storm-stunted forests whose edges leaned ragged and coerced on promontories; these wispy echoes of a world pre-settled; those scents of tangish salt and sweetish cedar; eddies and flukes, spawn and breach, fat tangerine starfish, driftwood bleach, clustered shellfish; brackish secrets of orca and sockeye, coho and squid, slipping slick through the chuck as skinless muscles; great tawny bays flanked by dark masses of dripping beams trailing mosses like the beards of truant gods; vast spruce posts and struts and torrential canopied ceilings, immense sweatlodge dwellings for bear and raven and eagle and wolf, framed and fashioned by no man and heedless of same.
A poet of sorts, she was humbled to silence by the indigenous poetry of locale.
But now she was isolate. Something had sequestered them here. A fear hush had wrapped them just as the mists became sometime cauls for the trees.
Her beachfire pulsed in the tideborne gusts, and sparks were whipped and buffeted and streamed to join the effervescent stars in the forthright arc of the overbearing sky.
She stood. She was lonely. She was hungry, in truth, and something about that brought her shame. That she was so utterly unwomanned. Diminished. Five feet ten of corvid-black enviable beauty reduced to a hanging jaw and knees that would barely lock.
We are blunted spears riding the pactless gales of a livid world, tumbling enfeebled from stentorian skies into breeding swamps of buzzing unchecked swarms absent treaty or terms. If an ending is in store, and soon, what of hundreds of years of white-skinned settlement and tens of thousands of far kinder years before that? Of carvers and surfers, of fishers and loggers and holy dancers under the greying brows of both lucid and baffling skies. Did the land dream us? Are we part of a long slumber from which greater sleepers are already set to awake?
She'd noticed two men and a woman earlier, and they seemed to her kindly, but she could no longer see them staring so nakedly at everyone on the beach made her urgency more shameful, more needy. Around the closest fire sat three men and she thought they'd been stealing not so benevolent glances at her. Or glances of a different nature. But they were people.
As she stood, a meteor bisected the big spill of the Milky Way above, flashing like mercury from east to west at the speed of an eyeblink. She imagined it hissing into the dark Pacific, some solitary birdless place where our world's face showed nothing but ocean to outsiders, as lonely in its brisk and sudden finale as it was throughout most of its existence, unable to relate its first-person tales that spanned an eon or more, and dying companionless in cold saltwater on this strange convulsing planet orbiting an unremarkable star on some dismal limb of the galaxy.
Enough. She would walk. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream or plead, but she wouldn't. The surf kept rushing, crashing, as if everyone exhaled but no one remembered to breathe in.
She would walk and talk to the men at the next fire, and if that made her a fool then a fool she would be.
Damn. I want to scream and cry too, because this is so good. That beach. It's so vivid, the orca and starfish.
DeleteThese little vignettes keep coming to me, all set on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a place that, quite simply, writes itself it's so beautiful. (I'm annoyed at my lapse in punctuation in the paragraph fourth from the end, though. I need an editor.)
DeleteThat third paragraph is EPIC.... it's like a painting I want to fall into... the whole piece is beautiful....
DeleteWow. I think you outdid yourself. I was right in your head with this one, man. Such magnificent language. If the blog ever does die, this might be it's biggest loss.
DeleteIt won't, it shouldn't, die. The loss would be huge!
DeleteWell. What to say after that? I liked it seems a little pedestrian. How about this? This piece and the way you wrote it reminds me of everything I adore about reading -- where it takes me and how. Fave line: "A poet of sorts, she was humbled to silence by the indigenous poetry of locale."
DeleteLily, thank you. Seriously. I write not because I have anything amazing to say, but because I love the poetry and the music of language, so when someone else hears it too, it's very gratifying.
DeleteOn reflection
ReplyDeleteOn reflection it’s been a while since the butterfly played, since the swarm of life washed the air anew in colour, cloaking the chaos of summer in a shine hitherto unknown, and with it the gust of change; the promise of something higher, deeper, scaring the dust from the outer edges. It cannot seep. The time during our wait should not be in vain. As the locust turns, the ground sways, and the ring of creation will unleash, invigorating this brutal ground, aching with thirst. Above it all, she soars upon the arms of the air, beyond the clutches of the earth, in a race of hue.
It's already evocative and then you reach that gorgeous phrase: "a race of hue." Nice, Vickie!
Deleteyep, race of hue got me, too....
DeleteMe three. I'm glad you could make it. I always enjoy your words.
DeleteHow they loved to dance. Shocking in the raw splendor of it. Bereft of shame. Watched, idolised even. Nothing punctured the air encircling them as they stepped, drifting, innocent as children on the air. You could not spy their feet; they shifted so quickly, hungry for the beat carrying them, passionate for the music to never end. It would not – forever it would wind, the notes crushing the bodies to one another, in vain trying to penetrate the flesh, to be one, as one, only one. Yet they were fated to be two, lost in time, woven together as the seconds spun. Around. In the end only a flicker remained on unraveling film before the dying light lost them to the silent screen.
ReplyDeleteIs this related to the last piece? They feel like they are. Lovely dreamy quality.
DeleteMy mind's eye saw Fred and Ginger tripping the light fantastic... nicely done!
DeleteI'm amazed at the way the staccato rhythm fits so perfectly. Like masonry. Not a crack. Love it.
DeleteThe sky split with a crack and another small scout-ship appeared. That made five in total now, all manoeuvring about each other in an uneasy formation; none of them willing to concede position but none of them prepared to open fire to defend their airspace either.
ReplyDeleteBeneath the interspecies air-show, Hodson stood, his neck aching from his prolonged attention on the ships. The first had appeared over an hour ago and it had took position directly overhead for a while, only ceding its position when the larger Cramellian cruiser had appeared toward the horizon. That'd quickly disgorged two more scout-ships and those had hovered together for a while before the Rontarian's own cruiser had warped in, its pilot choosing to patrol the limits of Hodson's view, forcing the other fleet ship to circle so neither ship could develop an advantage over the other. A pair of fast attack craft had then emerged from the newcomer and both these were now carving their way through the whole dish of the sky, their high speed and resultant lack of manoeuvrability making everybody else more tense and much more wary in case they failed to successfully steer their way between the other ships holding position above Hanoi City.
Hodson was beginning to feel quite self-conscious. If only he'd been able to get off-planet earlier, none of this might have happened.
I'm there. Wanting to know what happens. :)
DeleteYep! tell me more!
DeleteYep. Plus, man you write nicely. It's got such warmth, always.
DeleteMark I've had dreams like this. This guy is a lot more in control than I am. Want to know if he stays that way.
DeleteThere are ghosts that visit on a chill October night. Ghosts that know nothing of Halloween. Ghosts that are of a past that is not Christmas.
ReplyDeleteI gave up nightlights when I turned ten. I didn’t want to be a sissy. Don’t want to be a sissy now, either. The chills up and down my spine will not go away because of light. They come from a darkness that light does not illumine.
It must have been forty years ago, yes, because I remember the shadows cast by the nightlight. Shadows of a door opening, of a specter walking in. Me trying to lie still. Maybe it wouldn’t notice me if I was perfectly still. My dog Max, though, she would not be fooled. Her head lifted from the bed and stared at the ghost.
But its ghostly hands found the quilt my grandmother made. Pulled it and the sheet down. I felt the draft on my skin. I remember wishing I’d worn pajamas that night. I tried to send my mind elsewhere.
Max growled. The specter laughed. Max growled again. When the shape did not stop, Max bounded from her resting spot and bit down on the apparition’s arm. A scream not ghostly shattered the air before the thump of Max’s body hitting the wall. The wraith ran from the room.
I buried Max the next day. Alone. I trusted no one. I never spoke of the ghost to anyone.
And this morning, when the sun’s light shined through the window, some decades after the shadow left my room, I found a single long black hair on my quilt. Max’s.
Excellent Halloween tale! Having written a few for the Boo! anthology, I know how hard these are to write, as it's all been done. But I like this a lot.
DeleteThanks.... I was kinda rushing through it, and sadly, I think that shows. I appreciate the kind words!
DeleteI don't think it was, Leland. It builds well. And I had a totally different read on this. Heartbreaking but imbued with determination. Seems like a pretty realistic ghost too many people see to me.
DeleteIt's good Leland and I know that cause I was creeped out.
DeleteThank you!
DeleteHe sensed that the clues were all there – out in the open – and translating them would be a challenge, albeit a minor one, for him. He was always well prepared and thoroughly trained to shed luminosity in dark, shadowy corners. What didn’t help was having an unruly partner in what was becoming a very complex criminal investigation. What didn’t work right was said partner being comparatively inexperienced in this kind of field operation and it was absurd he and Glenn were letting her do it when she was also a personal loved one of the prime suspect. Seeing Danae chomping at the bit to get in the face of this woman was disturbing. He didn’t doubt Danae was right about the sketchy veracity of her statements. In fact what was most disturbing was he secretly wanted to see Danae confront her. He wanted to make things easier and clearer for Danae and if that meant letting her take a meat hook to the woman’s lies, he was alarmed to know he was willing to help her cleave the woman with it.
ReplyDeleteWow, I love the psychological complexity of this, Lily.
DeleteThis can go anywhere... you've set up a very believable and complex situation... would love to see how it resolves.
DeleteThanks guys. I'm happy that I'm getting a handle on this character even though I'm not happy with the words yet.
DeleteSorry, this one got by me yesterday. Really digging the depth of character.
Delete
ReplyDeleteTyler sat up, a smugly satisfied look on his face, as he smoothed out the sheet and duvet in front of him, waiting for Jeanine to finally come to bed.
He knew she wouldn't take long, this being their big night and all, and he was certain she was as anxious as he was.
His whole time in the hospitals in Afghanistan and Germany, and now finally home, he had dreamed of nothing else but Jeanine, who told him his scars and paralysis meant nothing to her.
Tyler sent the nursing aide home with a wink because they all were pleased--doctors, therapists, shrinks and his family--he was finally ready to spend the night without a medical person in the apartment.
Tyler took the extra Ambien he'd hidden, laid back a few minutes and smiled--the first really big smile since they told him that drunk had killed Jeanine on I-95 while she was driving to visit him in Walter Reed. Tyler tthen pulled the plug on the ventilator and waited, knowing this really was the night they dreamed of and Jeanine wouldn't be long.
Awesome. Really good stuff, Joseph. I love the ones that make me go back and read them again, to see how you constructed it.
DeleteOh wow.... well done, and I never saw the ending coming!
DeleteMan, you're gonna make me second Antrobus again! Awesome.
DeleteHoly crap awesome. Never saw that ending until it smacked me in the face.
DeleteYou have to accept that you are going 80 mph in light armor and a helmet with nothing surrounding you. The bike might as well not even be there. It's you in a squat going fast as hell. That's a hard concept for some folks to wrap their brains around, (worried for the morbid word play trickery). But seriously, some people never can.
ReplyDeleteYou have to be paranoid to the point of psychosis. You never relax, you never lose focus, and you always know who's around you and where you can go. Mentally, it can be exhausting. Even a country road. Hitting a deer is no good.
I could go on but I won't. I just know what's been working for me so far. And, in all fairness, you should know that there are a lot of people like me watching you drive like you're watching TV.
And not all of them are sweethearts like me.
I can feel the wind swooshing by..... it's hard to see because the bug hit my helmet right where I look out... thanks for taking me along on the ride!
DeleteI responded to this earlier but Blogger fucked with me. And now I've forgotten what I said. :(
DeleteA day late and a dollar short never won the race. I think that's how the saying goes. If not, that's how it should go, damn it. I'm fine. I'm doing everything I should. I smile. I make people laugh. I look fine, I act fine, which is good, because I can't take the pitious looks. This time last year I was that girl who never said anything, but cried in hallways and other people's offices. This year they know about my great personality. And it's all still a lie. Life goes on. Bills have to get paid. Work has to get done. I haven't stopped living; I can't. But it's all different. Being happy, being grateful, living in the moment...it all sounds so easy. The problem is that it doesn't feel easy. I can't give up. I can't quit fighting. I can't just lay down my sword. But dear God I wish I could some days, some moments. I wonder how many people feel like this. I hope that number is a lot smaller than I suspect it is.
ReplyDeleteOoh! That last sentence tied it up.
DeleteYeah it did. Unfortunately, I think the number is pretty large. :(
Delete