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!