Friday, October 27, 2017

2 Minutes. Go!

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.


No one knew what was under that tarp. No one except the old man, and you couldn’t get nothing out of him. He was like a rusted trap. Only you can’t use kerosene and mineral oil to clean up an old man. So, folks talked. Folks speculated. Most of us figured it was some kind of car. You had to know that. Probably. It was the right size for a car, but it didn’t add up. The man’s house was like one of them Lincoln Log sets after it’s been smashed to hell by some spoiled toddler. And it wasn’t like he was stranded. He had an old Chevy truck that beat the odds most days like near everyone in town. Nobody had two cars. 

Nobody.

It was one of those things people liked to toy with. End of the day. Everyone on their porches. Kids doped up on sun and fatigue. The men slipping bourbon into their sweet tea. The women pretending they didn’t see. They’d start with the rise in prices. Who was losing what part of their lives. But then they’d work their way around to the old man and his tarp. Tommy Johnson thought it was a spaceship. Lilith Earnest thought it was his sleigh – like he was Santa. A dirty, weird old Santa. Most people thought it was a pile of rusted shit. Or moldy wood. Some kind of trash. Something they could use to chip at the old man and his ways. He was queer. What did he have to hide?

Me? I didn’t have any earthly idea. But I wondered.

Usually, about the time that the first stars were coming out, the kids would be hustled to bed, but they’d go to sleep wondering. The adults would keep talking and eventually someone would have the balls to say it. What everyone else was thinking. “Guess we’ll find out when he dies…”

And then the old man did die. And people waited a few days. No one wanted to be the first. Seemed tacky. And we were willing to be a lot of things, but tacky was the worst thing you could be. It meant low class. Money or not. Chief Emery was the one who finally yanked that thing off, yellowed and dirty and grease-stained. Covered in bird shit. He did the pulling, but we were all in on it. It was like we pulled with one will. And, when the tarp hit the ground, we all covered our eyes.

Underneath the tarp was a bright red Buick convertible. Looked like it just come off the lot. Or out of the factory. And we were gobsmacked. When? How? No rust? Why? The kids wanted to touch it. The religious folks said the old man was the devil. Chief Emery didn’t know what the hell to do, but he was smart enough to keep folks away. Most just shook their heads. Devil or not, it was the nicest car they’d ever seen. And they spoke as one, heads wagging.


“Well, I’ll be damned.”

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

Friday, October 20, 2017

2 Minutes. Go!

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.

The shadows get longer and, still, you sit. You scratch your head and listen to the vast silence that isn’t one bit silent. You watch the herons dip and glide and you wonder if they’ll ever stop. You sure hope not. But it seems like everything is changing so fast. Shit’s on fire; shit’s flooding. The President is huffing and puffing, but really he’s doing nothing. Or doing the wrong things. Because he’s sure doing something. And you don’t like it. And the herons don’t give a shit.

But that’s just because they’re not sentient.

If we could make all the animals sentient, they’d storm the White House in droves. In flocks. In stampedes. In murders. In herds. It would be like the big, white house was Noah’s ark and the floods scared them all shitless.

But they just keep on keeping on. Witless. While we bear witness.

Meanwhile, we take the land and shit on it. We grin and think nothing of it. Didn’t we learn anything from the Exxon Valdez? From the Dust bowl? From the shit we used to spike the global punch bowl.

Your stomach is clenching up, so you watch the shadows creep and try to breathe. You need to get home, but can’t seem to leave. And your throat burns. Your eyes tear up. You try to pretend it’s the smoke, but smoke doesn’t hurt this much. And you feel like an ingrate because you got off easy. And so many are suffering. And at the top of the mountain, the Naked King is blustering.

So, you get on your bike and ride home. You hug small people and get scared. And you’re so grateful they’re small enough to remain mostly unaware.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

Friday, October 6, 2017

2 Minutes. Go!

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.

The room was empty, and he didn’t like it. Walls white; he didn’t like that either. It was too stark a contrast. White room, white walls. Inside the boy’s head there were exploding rainbows of pain and confusion. Inside his skull, every color pulsed. He could hear them. The grumbling blue, the shrieking red. The bright green threatening to split his head. He had been in rooms like this before. He even knew why. It was supposed to calm him down. He could not tell them about the maelstrom of sickness the whiteness created inside of him.

The terror.

He heard the voice, but he told it to shut the hell up. Then another voice.

DON’T CURSE, YOU LITTLE BASTARD.

He wrapped his arms around his body and held himself. He could smell himself.

DON’T BE A BABY! ONLY BABIES CAN’T GO TO THE BATHROOM BY THEMSELVES.

Oh, the colors were awful. Worse than anything. He could feel his face peeling away from his skull. Smooth. One clean sheet of pain.

HERE’S HOW YOU TAKE THE DECALS OFF, YOU LITTLE SHIT. SLOW, EVEN. YOU CAN’T RIP IT! I WON’T GET PAID FOR WORK LIKE THIS!

YOU’RE FUCKING RIPPING IT!!!

He poked his fingers into his eye sockets and watched the bursts of white. They distracted him. His pulse slowed as if by magic. Carefully, he put his fingers into his mouth. All of them. He soaked them and rubbed saliva into the place where his face-skin used to be. Lose some skin and make some more. That’s what the magic spit is for. Rhyming is for kids, what are you, retarded?

ARE YOU RETARDED?!?

Stop it. Breathe. Slow and easy. Like the decals. He could hear that voice, too. A woman. She spoke much more gently than the man. She tried to help him. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. His back felt warm like there was a hand on it. He jumped when he realized that there was. 

He backed into the corner and watched the young woman’s lips move. No sound came out. Or not the right sounds. There was a wailing sound. There were beeps and screeches and his breath in his ears. He could hear himself live. The boy turned his head to the side and vomit poured out of him, his man-mouth.


YOU’RE DIRTY! STOP BEING DIRTY! YOUR MOTHER CLEANS THIS FUCKING HOUSE!

The young woman was moving closer one small step at a time. She had one hand in the pocket of her jacket, and he knew what that meant. He pushed himself into the wall, thinking: I will climb this wall backwards like a spiderShe is small and she will never reach me. The colors started spinning, twitching. Orange, purple, yellow… He knew his colors. He knew them more than anything. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. He knew that the woman’s hand would come out of her pocket, and he would have mere seconds before everything went black. He squeezed his eyes. Her shoes squeaked. White rubber, they were. White floor. When she got close enough…

Black. It would be black. Blank. It scared him, but it was better than the colors. He opened his eyes and smiled. Calm. Very. 

One more time around the merry.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...