Day 20

'Tis the beginning of day 20, and my inspiration is quickly petering out. I know what I want to do, but not how to get there. And so there is a lot of staring at the screen happening.

I've been told that these are the days, exhausted and desperate for any words to write, with bloodshot eyes and that moment when I finally tell myself no more snacks until I write something - ANYTHING - down on paper - these are supposed to be the days when the best, most frenzied writing crawls itself up from the depths of the soul to splatter all over the page in some sort of impression on modern art.

I am hoping this is what will happen.

And if not, December is for editing. And so it shall be done.

Day 11!

It is day 11 on my 2011 NaNoWriMo journey, and I have officially got 50,000 words!!! HUZZAH! *confettis* Now, on to the second half of my journey, getting to 100,000 words....

Last night was wonderful! I got to see some old NaNo buddies and some new ones (In person!). We  had fish and chips and we wrote and it was epic!

To see my progress there's a little calendar on the right. Bright green is days when I did wondrously well on wordcuont. Yellow is above my daily mark. Orange is below my daily mark, and red is "Monumentously poorly". hehe! Hopefully I don't have too many of those days. But I've built up a steady rhythm of doing nearly 4k per day and I hope that carries me through those days when I don't do so well (Thanksgiving break is coming up - that means very little writing and more real-life things. Everything in moderation! [?])

Till later, o readers!

Day 5 of Noveling Madness

I am currently just over 22,000 words and finished with Part I (Of three parts). I'm getting into this sweeping sci-fi much more than I thought I would! (Yes, things are a little hazy on the actual science, but that's what editing in December/January is for, right?) At least I'm super intrigued with the story.

Here's another short excerpt from Master of Nothing, Part I

**

They had been standing there for hours, the boy slowly drawing closer to Ashland in an attempt not to get sold off alone. He looked hungry and just as cold as her. Lan gave them a sort of soggy flat bread and a rounded block of something that seemed to consist solely of herbs, and they ate quietly between moments when various aliens inspected them. It was fascinating to see the different creatures and their garbled languages. Oddly enough, for no reason whatsoever, those who interacted with Lan and haggled spoke in English or an equally Earthen language. Ashland tried to reason this out in her mind but didn’t manage it. But at the very least the concentration on the people around her and their strange cultures kept her mind off the ground a hundred feet or more below, off the fact she was soon to become a laborer for one of them completely against her will. And as much as she wanted to run after hours of being mulled over by potential buyers, she knew there was no place to go.

Eventually a slow, steady creature made its way toward her. It was most humanoid of all the creatures she had seen, with very pale, almost purely white skin covering its lean body. It wore the barest minimum of clothing. But all of this information was dimmed by a fact that made Ash’s heart leap in recognition and hope. The nearly-human creature had no eyes.

He nodded to her, and she smiled despite her weariness. “How much?” he asked politely. His voice rumbled throatily, without being guttural. There was a musical cadence to it that set Ashland’s mind immediately at ease. “For the woman.”

“Hundred ten.” Lan had hiked the price up Ashland notice but the Hume did not seem to notice or mind. He calmly took out the appropriate amount from his pocket.

The human boy beside her started crying unexpectedly, gripping Ashland’s hand. “Please, please buy me too… Please, have mercy…”

Not all alien species understood or took stock in mercy, but as it was the male Hume hesitated, cocking his ear as if listening, and then nodded. He paid for the boy, too, and then gestured. “Follow.”

The boy sniffled and skipped hurriedly ahead, eager to please his new master. Ashland, too, stayed close to him, nervous of all the others who might have had an eye on her. They walked across the sky back to the platform and into the skyscraper, then down the endless amount of rough rubble that stood in for steps. Through a tunnel, and onto the landing strip, at the side of which a small ship, hardly large enough to break atmosphere, waited for them. Not one of three of them spoke, silent and each taking the moments as they came to them. Inside the ship was small but not cramped, and clean. It was a relief after the past weeks. The planet was at best mildly polluted, not to mention the cells for the slaves they had stayed in. Even (SHIPNAME), while never dirty, had not been clean. It had been cold and sterile. But the Hume’s ship smelled like clean mountain air and nothing else. Not even the whirring of the machinery seemed to cause a change in the air.

“Come, strap in.” He stretched a long finger on a long white arm to two seats just behind the command chair. Odd that there were exactly two of them. Ashland sat and the boy followed her lead as they buckled their seatbelts for takeoff. The ship already humming, the Hume turned it down the takeoff strip. He waited a long moment, sitting in his chair. Had he eyes Ash would have thought he was staring. Eventually, with no warning, he fired up the extra engine and they were zooming off the strip up, rocketing with the now-familiar feeling of movement sickness rattling her stomach through the layers of atmosphere and into the evening sky, bright with the light of the turning suns and increasingly darker as they went. Only when things evened out, the ship stopped shaking so violently and the Hume took off his own seat belt, did Ashland do the same. The boy quickly unstrapped himself and went in the back, rushing to find a toilet to be sick in.

There was a moment of silence between them, a slow, easy smile on the Hume’s face. Ashland broke the silence. “You are Hume?”

He nodded slowly. “I am sorry I could not come sooner. Your comrades are well away by now.”

Her parched lips parted a little. “How did you know where we were? We were not scheduled to arrive for another fortnight.”

Again he nodded. “I knew.” Which didn’t answer her question at all. She remembered several chatter conversations she’s listened to in her spare moments, and those few had not made much sense at all. It seemed there was something the pair of Hume plugged into her ear knew, something fundamentally different in the way they thought about things that she simply couldn’t understand. They would have gaps in logic and continue on as though nothing had happened, or randomly change topics for no apparent reason.

Finally, she responded, dropping that subject as long as it was going to be fruitless. “Thank you much for your help,” she said in his language. She’d been practicing. “I am Doctor Ashland Hart.”

“I am Anath.” He smiled a little, leaning back against his chair as the stars hurtled around them. “You have taken time to learn our language, Ashland.”

She blushed a little with the praise, grinning back. “Of course. You are our hosts, I would not think of doing anything less.”

The boy returned from the toilet, a little pale but otherwise looking well. He sat down in the chair again, eyes averted as he cast curious glances at the Hume.

“I am Anath,” the alien said again in French. “What are you called?” There was a tone of politeness in his voice Ash recognized, something similar in the way she had heard the Hume speak to children.

“Luksin.” He looked up, a little hopefully. “Where are we going, sir?”

“Home, Luksin.” He smiled a little gently, and then stood and went to a set of cabinets locked during takeoff. He pulled the lock loose now and opened a drawer, lithe hand opalescent in the clean light as he removed a small jar. He fastidiously closed the door and opened the jar, offering its contents to the young man. “It will help your stomach.”

After only a moment’s hesitation the boy hurriedly emptied the contents of the jar, a strange green flecked paste, into his hands and then licked the thick, stringent texture off his fingers. Anath corked the jar and put it back in its place before returning to his seat. Ashland barely managed to keep from protesting. She should have some of that, too. She shot a look at the young man, but he looked so starved and pathetic she instantly eased her swift judgment of him.

“I must admit,” she said at length, turning to her rescuer. “I am relieved to speak to someone relatively intelligent, after the rest of them.”

“We are all intelligent in our own ways,” he said easily, that loose smile on his face. “But our intelligence is most like yours, so your feeling of familiarity is understandable.”

She nodded, not entirely sure she agreed with him. Ashland had always been able to empathize with human beings, no matter what culture they came from or what strange rituals they attached themselves to. Aliens were different. At least the Hume made some sense…

“I meant to ask you something.”

“You mean to ask me many things,” the Hume replied evenly. “You may ask one before you are tired.”

Ash frowned a little, curious at the way he phrased it. She felt a little tired, but certainly not compared with all the unanswered questions she needed addressed. She cleared her throat, leaning forward a little and speaking carefully in his language. “Luksin said there were more humans here, in this galaxy. How can that be, when we have sent no more from Earth?”

            Anath was still for a moment. She knew that he knew the answer, somehow. It was just that he was deciding whether to give it to her or not. “You have sent none,” he said in that calming voice. “But they have come.”

            Ash yawned, the back of her hand to her mouth. His answer made no sense, much like much of the speech of the Hume. “How?” What day was it, she wondered? How long had they been on that planet, in the marketplace in the air? Several lifetimes seemed to have passed in the course of however many days since they had been abducted from their (SHIPNAME).

            “Ah, that is another question.” He smiled. “You have been awake for very long. There is a bed down the hall and down the stairs.”

            She didn’t bother to ponder at the accuracy of his earlier sentiment. She was tired enough that the mention of the bed was the single best metaphor she could think of for necessary happiness at the moment, and she found her feet following the path of his directions. Her feet clinked lightly against the punctured metal of the stairs and she fell into the bed at the bottom. It was soft but practically so, and she was asleep before she was aware how clean the bed in the hold of a ship was.

Day 2: NaNo Progress and Excerpt

Novel is coming along quite well! Our Halloween party was successful in that for hours and hours after midnight we wrote. We woke, we wrote. We ate, we wrote. We went home, took naps, and wrote. I am currently 1,000 words away from my 10,000 word goal for the night.

To those of you who are curious, here is an excerpt from my work in progress:

***

“You look ridiculous. You know this.” Dice glanced up at Ashland before kneeling beside the bloody pool of the Captain. His eyes stared up, shocked beyond anything he could have expected, at the hot light of the ceiling. The medic took his pulse. It pumped once over the course of two minutes. She shook her head. “Dead.” She took a pen from her pocket and pushed it into his throat, holding aside the gore to look at the source of the death. “Larynx is torn. Jugular also, obviously.” The blood was still pouring out of him.

 “My God…”

"It’s a clean swipe. I wonder if the thing has teeth. Looks more like a knife wound than an animal bite.”

 “No more details, please.” Ashland looked positively pallid, even considering her normally pale complexion. She’d turned away, as far away from the blood as she could manage.

 “I told you!” Marc laughed almost giddily, wildly. “Nobody listened. Please, let’s go home…”
There was a silence then as it sunk in. Their Captain was dead. NASA would be pissed. Who knew what might come of the bad media coverage.

 Then again, NASA might never know he’d died, or that they were now hurtling in an alien ship toward whatever fate said creatures had awaiting them.

 Boris’ machinery buzzed, beeped a little as he blinked and looked around. “If it would help he may have my spare larynx.”

 They all looked at him, uncertain what to say. Dice laughed darkly. “No, I’m afraid that won’t help.”
“It is within easy reach. I suppose we can wait until a proper doctor with replacement parts can look at him.” He shifted, as though he were uncomfortable, frowning slightly.

 “I take offense to that,” Dice said.

 “I meant none,” he replied.

"You know he’s dead, right? He’s not like you. He doesn’t get to have replacement parts.”

 Boris frowned, eyes scanning those around him, and then landing on the body in the middle of the room. They were quiet, letting the facts sink into him, though none were sure just how much he could understand. Did he feel grief like the rest of them? Perhaps they would never know. He jerked suddenly, blinking a little. “There is something wrong near my batteries.” He jerked again, catching himself before he could fall over. “Does anyone have a screwdriver?”

 Hugo did. It was on a small clip in his pocket, among other handy things. He didn’t know if it was big enough to try to fight the wild bird-thing if it came back in, but it could at least do what it was made for. He knelt on the ground next to Boris, lifted the shirt up around his chest, and deftly unscrewed the four tiny screws in Boris’ lower back. The plate, soft and fleshlike to the touch, came off. Hugo reached into the cavern, felt the myriad of wires and compartment of warm batteries, and something soft. And tiny teeth. He hissed, drawing his hand back in surprise, before slowly reaching in again and lifting the ball off furry black fuzz out of the android.

Ashland let out a cry and laughed. Dice grinned, and even Marc was wide-eyed, smiling a little. “Imagine that,” Hugo murmured. The black kitten mewled, digging its claws into Hugo’s vest as it clung to it. He returned the plate to Boris’ lower back and screwed it back in place, before pulling the kitten from his vest and handing it to someone who had a greater affinity for animals. It was Boris who took it, cupping it carefully with both hands.

 “I thought my wiring was a little off.”

 “Mew,” said the kitten.

NaNoWriMo and Halloween

Today is Halloween, and you know what that means - NaNo is tomorrow! (tonight at midnight). I have a little over 12 hours left to finalize my ideas. I've been working on this sci-fi plan (a little out of my comfort zone) for about a month now and I've got all kinds of notes and books.

Tonight, we WRITE!

After our Halloween party we shall begin at midnight.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/superbecca

The Ritual

Behind a pair of glasses his glazed eyes speak words like ‘processing’ and ‘organization.’ I am sure, at one point, he begins to repeat himself. But as I stand he speaks still, staring at the chair I leave, and the record spinning around his kidneys skips a note. “Processing,” he says. “Process-process-process-progress-process-progress-progress.” The heel of my black boot crashes into the broken record, breaking it. Fluorescent lights flicker. Something oily and primal grips my ankle and laughs and laughs and bends my back to its will, saying, “Sex and wine and candles and chants. Now! Chant!” Its fingertips have lit like waxy wicks, spinning hypnotically in cold light. In my next breath my knees are pressed into the stone of an altar, I feel the strains of ritual humming in the pit of my stomach, I breathe the stench of rusted metal and cruel laughter.

Oppression

of heat, thick like fog but hotter

sticking to the inside of wailing lungs 

You kissed

but not to give, a

selfish kiss of taking

breath

like the stealing of

her first 

Apathy

in cold hands that touch

too much

too little, scraping razor-

smooth surfaces 

You cut a little

deeper in every

righteous scream, until

she was a huddled mass

of trembling blood

Hate

is hate. No symbol suits

raw enough

at least

better than

swallowing a rock 

Did you feed

it to her knowing, or

ignorant?  She didn’t

crush her teeth, but

that rock settled in

her stomach and

poisoned her slowly

from the inside

Did you know

she loved you? She

could have mothered you

and you smothered

the rain dance before

it began

Why Not?

sometimes I find myself

thinking

Why isn’t everyone

who is thin

a model

Why if

you can use big words,

don’t you

Why if they have

pairs of lungs

don’t they pull them out

of their throats singing

and strew

them in the gutters and paint

them in the murals on big walls

forever

Why

does she dance african

barefoot on former stained

glass and laugh

when she bleeds, saying,

“you knew this would

happen and you still

didn’t stop me?”

but that only

makes her stomp harder

laugh louder

Why

if I am jealous

don’t I make

love to her and see

if a little bit of her

soul can be in

mine

Painter of Words

(For later consideration in a spoken word piece: )

Oh god, why poetry?

Oh god, you ravaged my insides

You made me bleed and bleed and bleed –

For what? Poetry?

Words don’t mean anything – things mean things,

Like spokes of a gear, like a gleaming sax

Strutting in moonlight

And as far as you are concerned,

Perhaps a parrot, perhaps

A pair of squawking heads would better suit your liking,

Making you laugh and cry easy colors, easy blue and yellow colors

You could dye your shirts with.

Oh god, can’t you understand

Red is a hard color to make,

That is,

Not to make but to keep making. You can bleed

More than once but can you do it while quaking in crippling sighs?

Can you ravage anyone else’s insides

and create till they die?

There are too many types of red.

Oh god, and orange –

Is there anything more infuriating than orange?

Screams acid and massive prisons and madness.

Orange is the color of poets.

I could have done anything else. I could have made skyscrapers ten thousand stories high, I could have gone into politics and lie, I could have solved equations, engineered fluorescent eyes, I could have eaten my fill of hot apple pie, I could have heard screams for my name – I wouldn’t be shy, I could have done any small thing just to scrape by…

No.

Oh, god.

This hill stretches up into the clouds, into the mist of limping, howling things…

Red must be eked on the top of dead peaks that were never alive.

Now all there is left is try, try, try, try, try, try…

The Dangers of Getting Too Literal

Real real real real real real real!

Nonsense Realm

Maybe it's just the archetypal/mythological/dreamlike class called "Social Poetry" I'm taking right now, but I've been thinking quite a bit about not just religion in general, but about our need for it in society. I'll be writing a paper on it soon, though in the more academic realm than I mean to touch on here.

My professor's ideology is this: That there is a serious deficiency in our ability to think 'metaphorically,' in any way other than the literal. This can be evidenced in society's way of finding other ways to see the world alternatively: Altered states.

In an article I read today, Jeremy Taylor says, "Whenever an individual, or a society as a whole, begins to seriously entertain the notion that everything that needs to be known is known and that the only remaining tasks are 'refinements of administration,' that is hubris." (The Living Labyrinth).

I worry for the future of religion. I worry not because I think people are doomed to hell without it. I worry because a vital part of our lives - the subconscious, the metaphorical, the imaginatory - seems to be quite dead.

There seems to be quite a bit of religiosity in my writing, whether I'm aware of it or not. My (not-quite) finished novel from last year was based generally around the search of a demigod for his ancestry, a desperate chase after gods. I hear deities, spirits in thunder and dry spells.

I think we're all looking for religion - not in an organized religion, hell and brimfire, regulation and damnation way, but in a deep-meaning kind of way. Something that'll make us understand the World with a capital W. Not just our world, not just what to get our parents for Christmas, or when we need to get tickets to the concert, or why did the boss move up the deadline, or maybe I can sleep at night if I send 25 cents a day to help a starving kid....

The World. The Cosmos, if you will.

Anyone who's had a precognitive dream will tell you there are things we just can't understand. There are things beyond our experience of the world. Trying to explain this would be like trying to hold water in a funnel.

This does not mean you leave it up to fate. This does not mean that because you can't know things, you don't involved yourself at all with them. This is a defense mechanism: "I don't get it" is not an excuse for "It's not worth my time." Because we live in a logical world is not an excuse to not think on terms of emotions and metaphors.

You need religion. Whether you like it or not.

Janine Fitzgerald (the professor in my first paragraphs) said succinctly what I have only been trying to say to both friends of devout religion and friends without religion. (I paraphrase instead. Theft is the craft of artists). We're wasting our time arguing over whether the Christ story is fact or fiction. It doesn't matter - that's not the point. Breaking things down into logical or illogical parts steals the power from any story. If it moves you - it is real.

Perhaps this doesn't make any sense. That's alright. Lack of understanding is a humbling thing, isn't it? Not only that, but inexplicable things often make more sense in the nonsense realm. After all, who would dare explain why a joke is funny? Once you explain it, doesn't it lose all its humor?

Await: Part II

Coatracks are cold, and rigid, and entirely unfriendly, but there is one thing that can be said about them – they are loyal. Except if a sloppy, distracted hand drops you on the floor.

The wool coat was a family favorite. At least, enough to keep it from going to Goodwill. It had lasted three simultaneous generations. By that I mean ten or so years. The neck of it where it rested on the coatrack for the past three of those strained to hold itself together. White cat hair from the cat that died last year clung to it. Brown wool clung desperately to each other, breaking familial wrists upon the edge of a cliff. You could even see through it in some places. At least, here and there along the tree on the back, there was the relief of red blooms, names inscribed in Sharpie that had long ago faded.

Who knows what poetry whispers in the pockets, what tea stains the front, what overeager dog tore the lower button. In case a hand wants to mend the button, or find the whispers of metaphor, the coat hangs on the coatrack by the front door.

Half

On a knoll separated by a thousand rivers deep, against the sun and knife-sleet rain, he stands. A soft hum he sings, bleakest eyes borne of battle scars. Lies and warnings he sings, singing me to cross. He has seen blood. He had shed it. It is him I fear, this man, the defender and slayer. He calls me again, but he knows no fear, and cannot know the soft thing of woman. He holds his mystery, a sage of turmoil, and whispers the third, a plea. But I cannot move, for the cavern between us is a thousand rivers deep. The scream of cacophonous symphonies tears his throat, and the statue moves, cracking off the rust from the rain. In a flash of lightning, the strong arch of his neck curves and his teeth flash something animal.

Skyscraper

You would think the sirens the shouts the mustard on hot dogs the smoke and steam were collective screams, but really it’s a quiet torture alone. There are lots of sounds, but there is only one sound; fingernails on concrete. The bodies are filled with negative charge, so they pass each other, so close and so repellent. She suffered from extra strong nails and the biggest nail file in the world is a pair of skyscrapers. They scraped through ninety five colors of graffiti, here and there made an m an n or an h an l. There are positive charges, too, like cinema or chocolate or Jesus, and these they rub against, cling to, a ravenous sandpaper standing on end. A man on the corner said no, no no give me your blood and sweat, and she scraped her nails. She was left alone, 24 hours with the windows shut and Sinatra blaring, and scraped her nails. Nobody knew that if someone asked her to wash the dishes once more she would kill them with a broken plate and paint their names on her ceramic. At the end of the skyscraping her fingertips were bloody, and the only graffiti was red ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Manipulatable

Evolution

I am an animal. Deep down in the drum
of my heart I claw through forest mulch and

flesh. Rhythm dragging hooves counter-
beat the earth’s time. Knotted leather drags the

Celtic warrior kicking into me. Her
spear scrapes my shoulder. I bleed.

I snarl. Her spear is mine and there are
hoofbeats, drums shoving blood reverberating

in my veins. And now there is instinct.
I must kill. I must tear my way

to the surface of a dry plain rolling
an ocean of thick wheat, chaos,

truth-sweat. A scream splits my throat and across
time, separated by centuries, a thin fold of halfway air,

Boudicca, snarling red-haired wolf sinks teeth
into my heart, yellow fangs into the world

around me. Drag me screaming. I am an
animal. This world is mine.

Purple

You were always blue. Inevitably elements are discovered, by chance or by science, and it makes your fingertips tingle. At some point everyone blends into their backgrounds. Your background is blue. I trembled to see you. My anxious scarlet quivered, sensing something azure, tender and steadfast. Heartstrings struck a new chord. For so long we were water and oil. For so long we slipped past each other like a deep, gasping thermocline. Inevitably we made purple. At some point I blended into you.

Forever Glory, if you wish it

Do you
Ache?
Do you dream of
Breaking
souls like
bones of men?
Do you dream of
kings and gold?
Things you sold like
chattel
were small price
to pay for
one single sour
hold on me.
There we are, swirling
like soup, like
a dust bowl
in rotting sterling silver
and you
hurling
Power in
milliseconds
per hour.
Do you
Break?
Do you dream of
Chaining
your aching soul to
History,
and wake
to shake stained
shackles on your wrist,
wake to wish
it was a dream,
wake to find yourself
explaining
in words no one believes
that you made a mistake
and it won’t happen again.

New Short Story!

I lie beside my wife. It is always the same. She is going to have a baby and she is going to have a bad dream, a prophecy she says, that I will dismiss as her vivid imagination.

We live in a world with no imagination, which is not to say we are not creative. Science is science, a worthy exploit – the Noble Calling - that answers all questions, given proper time. Poetry and ghost stories are for the historians. We do not have Gods. We have learned from our mistakes, and the historians record them, a brief and filthy stain turned inside-out for shame on the sheer white fabric of our recent successes.

I am on the brink of a breakthrough. The theory is simple. Even our forebears knew of it, to a rudimentary extent. Time has a lesser hold on objects moving faster than light. What if we could free ourselves from time? Imagine what can be done when time is slowed, when one has an infinite amount of time to complete any number of tasks. I am close. It is simple. A vaccine, to rid like a disease the grudge of mortality.

My wife sleeps beside me to the tune of the soft humming of our station and the peace of the wide, empty plains. She hasn’t yet woken me with her terrible dream.
Ghost stories don’t exist. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

Junior woke with a beating, aching heart. He knew, before he woke. It wasn’t one of those things you forgot. He knew his wife was not beside him without even reaching to see if her side of the bed was warm.

Lysea.

That one word, the name, came as a silent prayer meant only for her every morning, the first thing he thought before he stretched and straightened out of bed. And then, for the day, he would forget her. It was as though he had never been married, and there was a kind of pleasant solitude in this life, the life of a bachelor.
It was healthier and more satisfying to eat real vacuum packed apples and freeze dried meats and yogurt cultures for breakfast. But it was faster and simpler to get the required nutrients from a syringe.

His holographic-reflected image told him he looked appropriate for work, although sometimes he suspected high conspiracy to tell him he looked better than he did, to tell him he did not have tired circles under his eyes or a receding, gray hairline.
Back to work.

“Hi, Junior.”

“What’s up, Jake?”

“I’ve got a big proposal to give today.” The broad man crossed his fingers, made a face. That man’s facial muscles could move in the most astonishing ways, like he had his own personal makeup designer for each moment of the year. Junior smiled appreciatively. “Wish me luck.”

“You won’t need it. But good luck.”

He nodded to his secretary, quite humorously named Ask, outside, earned only through years of work and research grants. The secretary smiled back, though it was a strained smile. He reached toward his computer and grabbed the page, scanning through it briefly before handing it to Junior. “Your schedule today. There’s a woman waiting inside who wants to talk to you.”

Junior raised a thick eyebrow. “In my lab? Who is she?”

“Patricia Skelling.”

“ID?”

“Clean. Looks to be. She knows your work well in any case.” The secretary shrugged. “I thought you had an appointment with you.”

Junior quelled words he was about to spit at the secretary before it was too late. He couldn’t afford to fire another one. He wouldn’t get a replacement next time.
“Thanks.” He couldn’t, however, hide the sarcasm in his voice. He stuffed the schedule copy in his pocket. “Lock.” The doors locked behind him as he studied the woman. Her back was too him, red hair locked in a lackluster bun. His heart gave an excited leap – but no. Foolish, how the mind plays tricks on you. It wasn’t her. Upon further examination her shoulder blades stuck out a little in her dark blue jacket coat. Fingers tufted with the dominant hair trait almost delicately held in one hand a computer and in the other hand a vial. One of his vials. His work.

“Can I help you?”

She turned to him, eyebrows raised as she set down the vial. She wasn’t ugly by any means, but otherwise was quite unremarkable. “Junior.” Her voice was inappropriately fond.

He shifted, unused to being dressed so informally. “Dr. Korsev.”

The woman hesitated, and glanced down again at the handheld. “Of course. Excuse me. I’m… Dr. Skelling.” There was too much hesitation, as though she had briefly forgot her own name. Junior gestured to a desk and chairs in the corner.

“Sit down, since you’re already inside.” She didn’t seem deterred by his passive aggressive tone, but held out her hand to shake. Junior politely pretended he hadn’t seen it – who knows what world of disease she’d just come from – and turned to his desk, brushing fingertips over the carefully kept and polished presswood.

She sat. She stared at him.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” He had work to do. He could not sit around to entertain unannounced strangers.

Patricia Skelling met his gaze, but not exactly. It met all the standards for gaze-meeting technically, but with the certainty that she was actually trying to look at him. “I’ve read much of your work,” she said, and the room absolutely did not echo that hollow voice. “But I noticed, for all your work on immortality, you have only briefly, and quite without credit, touched on soul regeneration.”
Junior repeated her words in his head and knew already it was going to be a long day.

“That’s because it’s not scientifically viable,” he answered with as much calm as he could muster. “There is no evidence to support that any life exists outside the brain, or body at all for that matter.”

“There’s no evidence against it, either.”

Junior pressed his fingertips to his temple, but still did not want to seem rude. This woman had a doctorate, a professed doctor of science, and yet she came to him asking the simplest questions freshmen in college found it simple to grasp. “There is quite a bit of evidence, if we take all the research done on it to have been conducted in good faith.” He need not mention Gratz’s famous work on transplant lobotomies or Yen’s historical ‘Death Experiment.’ “And if there was no evidence against it, Dr. Skelling, there would still be no reason to believe in its possibility. Just because something could possibly exist is no reason to believe it does.”

Skelling pursed her lips, her fingertips turning white against each other. “There is no need to patronize me, Dr. Korsev. I know the theories as well as you.”
“Then there is no need to waste my valuable time with these questions when a high school professor could answer them.” His voice was pleasant as he could make it, as usual. He tried. As much as he preferred solitude, he tried.

It was a dismissal, plain and clear. But Skelling did not move to get up. She clutched the computer in her hand, glanced down at it, and then met his gaze again in that carefully technical way. “I’m your new assistant.”

Junior stared. “What?”

“Your new assistant. Kilgan Companies transferred me here.” Her tongue ran over her pale lips, angry or nervous he did not know.

He narrowed his eyes. Kilgan Companies often worked hand-in-hand with Transec Corp., but he should have known about any employee transfer to his division, let along his own lab. Ask should have told him. Somebody should have damn well told him.

“I trust you have papers of recommendation?” He kept his voice cool, like ice just waiting to break.

Skelling reached into her handheld and pulled the papers from it, handing them over. She crossed one leg over the other, and he was a man of logic so he didn’t know what that meant.

Decoy Heroics: Chapter 1

(An unfinished chapter of the new book)

“The king is sick.”

The gathered nobles glanced at any spot on the wall but the speaker. Glanced at each other, uncertainly finding the look in the opposite man’s eyes that echoed, for once, the thoughts creeping into all of their minds.

They felt him move around the table, and when his dark, sure eyes found theirs they looked away, unwilling to commit to the treasonous demand he was about to speak.

“You must have noticed him, in the months following our beloved queen’s death. The rage. The bloodshed.” He didn’t have to mention the incident at Carvelwall. The heads bloodying the block in the bare courtyard, where once flowers had grown. The red, uncontrolled face of their ruler and the signs of slow and inevitable mindloss. The nobles knew all of those things. “The king is unfit to rule. He has quite clearly gone mad.” And after a well-placed pause, the noble whose only voice the chamber had heard this evening spoke again. “I recognize the signs of dark magiks at work.”

The mood shifted. They felt it, and looked to him directly for perhaps the first time. He was smiling. The curve of his thin, cracked lips, the delicately shaded crow’s feet, and the combed dark hair, graying appropriately at the temples: all made him look serious, professional. A man who looked like that always knew what he was talking about.

But dark magiks? Magik of any kind was forbidden on penalty of death, in any case except those of the most desire, solicited under council of law.

And nobody had solicited magikal aid for the king.

Finally, an old, retired knight, given titles by the king himself, broke the icy silence. “How can you be so sure, Rezor?”

Rezor’s fingertips pressed against the table, leaning in to the small gathered group. Begging the challenge. “I have seen it before.”

“Impossible!” the man said gruffly over several surprised and uncomfortable murmurs. He sat forward in his chair. This, too, was a man not to be dealt with lightly. He had seen more battles than the number of years most of these men – and one woman, who had wisely said nothing yet - had been alive. “If you had seen it, you must have irradiated it. Or,” he added, the old battered blue eyes narrowing and making his face a mass of leathery skin and white hair, “taken part in it.”

Rezor straightened at this. The corner of his lip twitched. A smile, or irritation? He more than anyone was aware of the rumors. His comforting brown eyes met the narrowed ones around the table, the raised chins. No one else would have openly accused him, because as much as it seemed improbable – impossible – that (name), a personally appointed member of the Council, was practicing magik under everyone’s noses… All the same. On the slim chance he did… Well. Nobody wanted to take that chance.

“I have seen it before,” he repeated, more firmly, no longer smiling. “Trust me, my lords. My lady.” She in question sniffed, and pretended she wasn’t listening. The pearls on her headpiece glinted dully. “The king is not in his right mind. It is our obligation and our duty to see to the safety of the country.”

“What you are proposing is treason.” A young man with short, fashionably cut hair and a thin, fashionable face and a strong fashionable chin laced with a goatee turned sharp eyes on the man, his back stiff and straight. “What you are proposing is beyond any of us to grant. He is watched too closely. There are laws. There are guards. There is god…”

Yes. Treason and murder. The two laws that must never be broken.

March of the Retreating World

(An unfinished story idea)

Brave men, all. They fought when they should sleep, they fought when they should eat, they fought when they should pray. I was once told that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the facing of it anyway. Whether that’s true or not, didn’t really matter to them. They were brave no matter how you defined it.
It was when the machines replaced them that they were broken.
At first they called themselves Puppets. It was a joke, anything to keep them sane, keep them fighting. It rallied them together, to get the job done they had to get done.
“You’re a goddamn Puppet.”
“We all are.”
And the game became to see whichever Puppet could stretch their strings the furthest without their limbs snapping.
“Hey, Puppet, you’re gonna snap that twine around your wrist.”
“Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
They didn’t.
The population took on the names, and some underground rebellion which never amounted to more than a single great battle at the end – which they lost – called themselves Puppets. They were extremists. Terrorists.
They were snapping strings all over the place.

And when the population grew fed up with them the government took advantage of it. The term “Pup” was always a derogatory curse, and the very sound of it could make mothers bring their children in from playing in the streets. Kids were afraid to call their small dogs by their traditional terms. It had become much like the word used for a female dog. Truly a correct term, but not socially acceptable.
Something was changing.

When the Puppet terrorists had been defeated, and the Puppet soldiers came home, a new connotation became associated with the word. The soldiers had said they were being controlled, like puppets. And those who did the government’s bidding – who refused to stand up for themselves, for anything they believed in – was a Puppet.
It was a vague uneasiness in everyone, even if they couldn’t name it. On a Friday someone threw a brick into a window, hitting the side of a girl’s head and killing her instantly. The note on it read “Leave the neighborhood, damn Puppies.” On Halloween a group of teenagers dressed as puppets in uniforms, parading themselves down the street where children dropped bags of candy and ran home, terrified of the sight and the droning chant they sang. The day the President died someone managed to spray paint in big red letters on the White House – PUP.

Things like this had happened before. The Civil Rights Movement. World War II. World War III. The Civil War. Slavery.

Rotten Fruit

Thoughts of you were mixed when I learned you weren’t a globe. You were more like a pear. A rotten one. Did you remember that you ate my soul? Those hungry teeth fell out a-knawin’, into a green tornado. You were like a tornado, I remember. You made my hair crazy the morning after. You made it hard to breathe. “Your mother is intolerable.” I hate you because you’re always right, and not in a self-righteous way. You’re softly right, all the time, and spherical. I bought a porcelain angel, one of those little round babies with a words to live by inscribed. It broke and you spoke, and I was your Judas thereafter. But still you were a globe – swallowed in a tornado then, maybe, but round. I didn’t notice it at first. You fell off the roof and a bone splintered. I made a joke – a joke! – and you cried in public. A small little chip we thought we could cast in plaster. I bruised you in bed. You were malleable. A harsh laugh was all you gave me when my pride snapped in half, and I realized after days of sunshine, moonlight reflection in irritable silence you were more like a pear. A rotten pear. And long ago you’d devoured me whole.

Laughing Woman

(This poem was written in class, on a picture of an old homeless woman in Chicago laughing despite broken teeth and wild hair)

Comedy was
Eyes and,
you know,
that Window
even in freezing weather.
Professor
slapped a ruler on
the back of
hands
when giggling was heard.
At nine
O’clock sharp
the circus opened,
and from that open hand
with painted tears
were no dreams about
anything but
red tiger grins:
A chorus of souls, light and frightened all at once, but,
Ultimately,
Together –
and ridiculously
colored flowers.
Cameras existed then.
It wasn’t something we could not know.
A picture of me, though…
?!
He asked where I got the pretty flower.
I know, he thought me
off my ever-loving rocker.
I indulged,
he crackled lightning,
and we were a chorus again.

Two Poems

Hold my hand
Mommy
Hold my hand
Give me a square meal and
A shackle called love


**


She was like the city; modern,
Skinny and molded ontoa
A 4x4 block.
Hair cropped short,
Three earrings in each
Eyebrow.
She didn’t believe in tattoos.
An MBA in business told him
She wouldn’t be
outsmarted by
anybody.
The city had an iron gate on it.
Somewhere
a killer had not been caught.
Somewhere
a girl was giving up on love.

His Name and Her Name

At first, his name was Mark and he was the star of the baseball team looking for an easy first kiss and maybe more. But her mother raised her right, and surely he wasn’t going anywhere except a broken collarbone anyway? Next his name was Adam, a quiet, susceptible pair of gray eyes behind square glasses. He was always the first one to try to hold hands, like it was hard to walk without his hand sweating and an easy swing of the collective arm. But he was never enough to handle her, and he was holding on to a breakneck morning horse. Then his name was Antony, and Drake, and Adam again and Jess and Tom. Finally, his name was John, and John was a business major, and John was going places by God. He smiles and he phoned her sometimes and bought her diamonds which weren’t her birthstone, but John would hardly be expected to give his hard-earned money and time on a play or a concert or a bowling drunk. John had never been drunk in his life. He would, though, take her to a fancy dinner invited by his boss.

And then his name was Time, and Flowers and Freedom, and Dirt Roads and Flat Tires. Poetry, Homemade Dresses, Smell of Horse and Smell of Rain and Hot Chocolate. Wind in the Hair. Sometimes they didn’t even have names, but that was okay.

And then his name was Debt, dull and lurking around every single corner. His name was Worry – God, yes, sometimes Fear. His name was suddenly crushing Duty, and she thought of John with sudden, heart-rending longing.

The strip club was small, but relatively prestigious – no gaudy flashing neon signs. Underground of the Marquis, the hotel’s secret secret. Quiet businessmen – if drunk, not yelling to prove it – sat alone, surveying the horse flesh as pounding music oppressed most of the soft grunts borne of the true purpose here. The pole was cold and smelled of biting metal like goldfish. She hardly saw them but heard their breathing above the music. Tonight his name was Pleasure, and she was an actress on an unsteady stage.

“Shortcake, you’re up.”

“Thanks.” Irony had long been shampooed out of her dyed hair.

The private room was small, but it was hers. A chair overly comfortable. A pole on a s mall round stage. This was her domain.

The door opened, and then his name was John.

The only indication was the trembling of the stiletto, a soft click that could mean anything, against the smooth metal. John was oler. He could have worn the same damned business suit she’d ironed a hundred times, except that it was bigger to accommodate his frame. The door closed. His balding head came between her and the “Look. Enjoy. Don’t touch” sign smothered between some carefully chosen erotic art.

“What’s your name?” The chair whined and squeaked.

“Shortcake.” A stage name… A name he’d once called her…

His face shifted, flinching memories behind wrinkles and small folds of fat. Would he match the face of the stripper and win a price greater than or equal to a new Chevrolet?

“What’s your name handsome?”

As if she didn’t know. “John.” As if he didn’t know that she knew.

She danced for him. In the middle was a carefully placed move he used to like when he had the time to like anything at all.

“Amelia.” He said her name like a reprimand and like retribution.

Whatever else it did, it made her stop.

“Fuck… I knew it. Fuck.” A hand brushed through thinning, chocolate hair.

Ameila was beyond words at this lovely point. “You bastard.” Fifteen years in the making.

Either she didn’t deserve a response, or she scared his mouth shut. He didn’t even move to get up.

“I’m paying by the minute. Keep dancing.” What was his voice? Tired? Angry? Defensive? John. Knotty and maddening.

She danced. Her eyes met his like they never had.

At the very least, his name was not Regret.

Art and Soul

All art is perfectly useless. That’s what he told me. I waited b ackstage for my entrance onto a stage where you could set something on fire if you went too close. Applause… minimal. My performance should be for ghosts who had died too young to perform. Or Shakespeare. Or Michael Jackson. Or Mother. I was never going to live up to the expectations of the dead. Or his. This was one night in twenty-thousand. Importance – minimal. I knew it rationally. He wished me good luck because he knew I expected something, some words that would speak to my soul as the one-hundred twehnty hours of rehearsal had. I stepped on stage. Lights. No lasting memory at all but this moment. No words came from my watering mouth and the only thing that was set on fire was me. Silence. A nervous cough from the audience, and then a cough that lasted forever. Goddamnit, someone get the man a honey drop. I don’t remember the performance at all. I turned into some two dimensional riot. I did get applause. That I remember breathlessly. And after, from him, I got a rose, and a late fast food dinner, and updates on the evening’s football game.

Youth and Sunshine Memories

Remember we were dreamers, when –
Remember when we dreamed?
I flew so high in melting fire
Soft synapse, sparked and preened.

 
Remember then the nightmares?
Terror, force and pain?
We breathed so fierce in lung-trapped claws
We never breathed again.

 
Who were we when in darkened youth
Swells tsunami made of cream?
Death and life rolled into one
Chocolate drowning dream.