The addiction

For this week's writing assignment for the Literary+ group, we were to address "writer's addiction." I'd originally thought to write about my love of coffee, but when I sat down to write, what you see below is what came off my fingertips. While not addressing a writerly addiction, per se, this is an apt metaphor for my relationship with writing. 288 words.
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Light vanished along the edges of my vision, caught in the toxic space of conscious and unconscious. Aware, yet pushed back into the deep shadows where secrets scatter like rats before a scrapyard dog.

I fell. Fell into the abyss that lurks in the depths of the human soul; that place only glimpsed in dreams where the harbingers of strife and destruction, overcoming and conquering, delve willingly. I struggled briefly, but with desperate breath taken in heaving gasps, I cautiously reached out with open eyes to see that which should not be seen. I grasped the stuff of imagination and molded it with callous hands and a critical mind for pleasure or, perhaps more accurately, release.

Struggling with vice and wretched, crippling doubt, I surrendered it to the fires of hell. Waiting. Waiting until the formless shape captured heat to glowing. I peered into that brilliant pit and my eyes melted away as the pieces began to also melt away. Hot liquid tears poured down my face and I yanked it from hell’s fiery clutches. I stared at it resting in my burnt hands, so vivid and stirring.

My soul cried out in a sort of bereaved agony while I placed it on the anvil of my heart and pounded it with all my might. Tiny embers flew and snapped, biting and tearing. Little hunks of flesh sizzled away; I pounded still. I couldn’t stop until the vision transferred to that tangible treasure, sharp as any blade crafted. Steam and froth boiled up to quench the fire. I leaned on the trough. My sweat turning the water to brine.

“Why do you do it?”

I didn’t move. I stared down with blinded eyes. “I don’t know anything else.”

Cast Your Spell

As a get to know you exercise for the Literary+ group over on Google+, we wrote a fun bio about ourselves then were paired up to write a 300 word flashfiction based on our partner's bio. I was paired with the delightful Sanna Caduri and this is what she gave me for her bio:

"Sanna is of the weird kind.
She usually doesn't go into her head alone, because it's scary in there.

Writing is an essential part of Sanna's life. In one way or another she is always writing.
She's a witch and if you think that writing fantasy is a cliché, screw you. :p
In her stories the princesses are most likely to kill you, Beauty and the Beast will find themselves in the same body.

Short stories are Sanna's favorites, but she is also working on bigger projects right now.
Or, should be working on them. ;)"


And here's my flash (297words):

Even deep into the night, the west wind blew hot across the open plain. Her hair danced in a wild tangle that glinted white streaks of moonlight like glyphs floating around her head. She climbed a small rise and cast her gaze across the fields. A smile flitted across her lips as she lifted her arms; eyes shut, head tilted back and palms open to the sky in supplication.

Curled at her feet lay the great feline Dawon, named after the goddess Durga’s fierce mount. The weight of his mighty presence a comfort as she prepared the way.

Her breath slowed in time with the gusting wind. Her heartbeat sped to match the lusty cries of the field crickets. Dawon stood and leaned heavily into her leg; he grounded her even as the earth opened up around them. She screamed as the power pulsed up through her feet and out her palms.

The sweet agony of creation coursed in her veins like icy streams of bitter cold. She opened her eyes. Light glared out from empty sockets scorching the fields within her view. She clapped her hands once overhead. Once at her chest. And once at the lowest reach of her arms.

The place beyond opened with a great tearing of reality, which bled out in anguished cries of sorrow or terrible suffering. The gash grew wide and she laughed. Laughed with joyful abandon at what she had wrought. Dawon nudged her dangling hand with his great head.

“Only out of destruction can there be renewal,” she said calmly, though existence shrieked around them. “Even we must follow at the end of it.”

Dawon’s rumbling purr, like the crashing of distant waves, acknowledged her words. He knew, as she knew, they’d craft another world in due time.

Receding

I caught another PnS! :D I wasn't going to post this submission to my blog, because... because... I don't really know why. Perhaps it's too raw? But the feedback I got on the PnS feed made me feel like perhaps I should.

The rules:
"Prompt-and-Share

Same rules as always apply, all stories must include at least:
- 1 conflict
- 1 resolution
- 1 character
- 1 setting

The "theme" for today is Change . Change can be a lot of things, from the loose stuff that jingles in your pocket, to the big stuff like births and death and there are many places for change in between, so be as creative or uncreative as you like.

300 word max pretty please"

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I've lived a sort of backwards life. All the years of my youth spent concerned for the comfort of my children. The time when all my friends were running all over the map having the time of their lives while they had the energy to do so, I ran around chasing toddlers and picking up messes and wiping little noses and kissing boo-boos.

Then worrying about having enough food and torn jeans and whether or not the homework's complete. My little ones growing beyond my abilities to pick them up into my hugs. Having to watch them run around the smaller map of town. Then one by one leave on their own greater adventures.

My children, don't live your lives backwards. Run while you have legs to carry you. Breathe the wild winds in your hair and dance with as many friends as you will or alone as you will.

I peered into my future. It was an empty house with no where to go. My friends were no longer running the map, but running after toddlers with snotty noses and potty training -- no time their own. I'd already seen those sights. I wanted to gallivant across the loops and lines. Places that inspired me and called me to see, but my old body unable to carry me any more.

Old enough to really feel the heart of a place, but too old now to see it. I can only sigh and dream.

Then the phone rings and one of my progeny pipes down the line, "Mom! Listen to what happened!" And I smile and listen and travel with them where I can't go.

I smile and listen and am content. I can finally rest my bones.

A start of something

The last couple of prompts haven't called me, so today, I listened to some music and contemplated the emotions of the songs- melody and lyrics. As the music disappeared into the background, my mind wandered, then arrived at a scene.

I don't know if anything will come of it, but it's there if I decide to continue.

152 words in the raw*:

He sat alone. The perfect picture of the tragic figure. His profile sharp against the lowering sun, which just kissed the horizon in a spectacular blaze of blinding color. He leaned forward; pressed his forehead against his palm. His dark hair, scrunched between splayed fingers that dug into his scalp, tumbling down his cheek.

What caused such despair? I felt it radiate out from him even at a couple dozen yards. I never knew such sadness myself, but I carried that heavy burden for many years now. The aching familiarity squeezed my guts up through my throat until I choked back a flood of tears.

His anguish, a potent crashing of waves on a tidal break, throttled me until I kneeled before it. Jagged little rocks cut through my jeans - another layer of pain. If I couldn’t crawl that small distance to reach him soon, I doubted my hold on sanity.

*unedited words as they first appeared on my computer

Whether or no...

"Prompt-and-Share A fun little random word prompt for Friday, keeping it short again but a little longer than yesterday:

150 words max
Use the words: time, attitude, clever"

Those who follow me on Twitter will have a decent clue where this came from. ;P
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Time, like the soft sigh of a sleeping babe or a clever turn of phrase in the hush of distant memories; it comes and goes.

Woe that it is so. No matter to which attitude we greet it.

It comes.

Swiftly or slow; it goes.

Would you weep for me? Would you rage with me? Would you laugh at the turning of its wheel?

Or holding hands, leap forth into that deep night where it matters not. Where time cannot grasp at our wrinkling flesh. Or touch strands of silvery hair.

Our stuttering hearts wind down. Would you stay with me? My head bowed in final supplication, with outstretched arms to greet it.

Swiftly, now, it goes.

Gone

 I caught a prompt today! I think I've been missing them in my feed.

"Prompt-and-Share A really short one today, just to get those juices flowing.

100 words MAX
Your story has to start with: I'd expected he'd come after me.

No other criteria required - Write!"

To be upfront about this.... I haven't written anything in probably close to two months now and I only put about three minutes worth of effort into this little flash. I have to say, I've really missed the prompt and shares. 

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I'd expected he'd come after me, but he'd already been. The whispering shadows shifted, lingering where the sun couldn't reach. His scent, I remembered so well. So fondly. It tickled the edges of my awareness. Yes, he'd already come and gone. Long before my dreaming mind fled to reality; the hateful place, but for him.

There, he'd waited, impatiently. Waited, then walked away while I slept. His breath a memory of the wind, now. His sad eyes peering too deeply. His beating heart under warm skin. I'd never know, ever again.

I expected to be first, but he'd gone on ahead.

Running Scared

"Prompt You or your MC has to do something physically vigorous. Take us through the reaction of their bodies and mind as they complete this task.

Just to make it a little more interesting, I would also like a little setting thrown in there.

Word count limit: 300 (it's a tight fit, but I'm betting you all can do it :) )"


Whew!! Talk about trimming! I shaved almost 200 words to get right at 300 exactly! Phone it in, it's a miracle. lol Kidding aside, these exercises really make you look at every single word to gauge its importance and impact to the story.
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Night swaddled the sky in a gown of velvet darkness. Enfolded the streets in swirls and eddies of light and shadow. With it, the loud barks, croaks, and hoots of the wild echoed off the sides of hulking, bulky monsters - eyes lit with the inner fires of flickering fluorescents. Or incandescents. Silhouettes crossing LCDs playing fake realities.

Six blocks. Knees high, stride long; arms pumping. My sneakered feet hitting concrete with audible thumps. Eyes scanning ahead for cracks and buckles. I couldn't afford a fall. I wished for the moon, but it hid its face from my plight.

Sweat gathered on my brow. I went off my pace for a breath to wipe salt water away from my eyes.

Four more blocks. Breath stuck in my lungs, rattling. Refused more air. Like if old Jim, the really over-weight guy on the next block, sat on my chest and cinched a wide belt around my ribs. Air came and went in great huffing, panicked gasps.

Suffocating. No way I would make it.

Two blocks now. My joints screamed; long disused from sitting hours on the couch playing videos games or at my desk mesmerized by the web. Knees popped. Hips stuttered. Each pounding step, my ankles would surely shatter.

Vision pin holing. Steps faltering. Nothing but the slow motion huff, huff of rattling lungs and thump, thump of pounding feet.

Half a block. Almost there, I thought in the back of my mind - the detached part that watched in abstract third person. Labored breath, slipping joints, incinerated muscles - black, fear driven flight.

My house loomed. Gloomy creature with half lidded eyes.

I leaped with final desperation onto the porch; turned toward my pursuers, half crouching. But they were gone.

I stumbled, wheezing, but relieved, through the door to safety.

Six to Nine

"Today's prompt is going to focus on a random word generated Prompt-and-Share centering on plot. The rules will be a little more strict, please adhere to them, they are there for YOU to learn how to work your creativity within certain guidelines.

Remember:
#1 -At least one character
#2 – A conflict AND a resolution
#3 – Give us a setting
#4 – Your story must include the 3 random words chosen
#5 – No more than 500 words please
#6 – Have fun with it! Today’s random words thanks to
http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx

Antique
observe
highjack"

Not sure if I adhered to the rules very strictly, but at past 1am, this is all I got. 386 words.
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"Eddy said to observe the number six when it strikes midnight," Mel said.

"Whaddya suppose that means?" Sam scratched at the beginnings of a pubescent beard.

"I dunno, but doncha think that antique grandfather clock is kinda creepy?"

"Nah." The older boy refuted it, but he kept glancing sidelong at the distinctive piece that seemed to take up the entire room.

In fact, the imposing clock, brooding in the cheery front room, looked much like a stately gentleman overlooking, with pompous disapproval, the frequent comings and goings of the tight knit trio of long time friends.

"Is it supposed to be haunted or something?" Mel asked, hugging her arms tightly about her midsection.

"I guess so, but you know Eddy's constantly joking around. He's probably trying to scare you." Sam elbowed her arm. "Besides, it's hours til midnight"

Mel forced a laugh. "Yeah. You're probably right." She adjusted the wire framed glasses on her nose. "Where is he anyway? He should've been back by now."

"We should've went with him. You know if Casey's working, he'll loiter."

Mel rolled her eyes. "I think I saw her car on the way home from school."

Before Sam could say anything, Eddy's mom emerged from the hall, her footsteps drummed the wood floor in a quick staccato beat. "Hey kids."

"Hi, Mrs. Sellers," they both said in unison.

"Did Eddy hijack the car again?"

"Yeah, he went down to the corner store to get a two liter," Mel said. "But he's taking his time."

"Casey?"

"Yep," Sam confirmed.

"Figures," Mrs. Sellers shook her head.

"I guess we should go ahead and leave," Mel said. "We'll catch him later."

"Before we go," Sam said. "What did Eddy mean about the clock?"

Mrs. Sellers laughed. "About the six?"

"Uh huh."

"I inherited it from my uncle recently. It’s pretty old, so some of the numbers are a little loose and I haven't gotten around to fixing them yet. When the old thing chimes, the reverberations jostle the numbers and the six will sometimes invert or fall off completely. Did he try to make it into a ghost story?"

"Sorta," Mel said.

"I won't tell him I told you." Mrs. Sellers winked then strode to the kitchen.

"We're so getting him back," Sam said.

Mel grinned, walking toward the door. "For once."

Sage Advice

Prompt:
"We all know how important the first sentence is to any story, it grabs the reader and pulls them in. We've been taking the first sentence of famous novels and writing our own little stories with them. Today we are gonna steal from F Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby .

In 500 words or less, write a short story/flash fiction starting with this as your opening line: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

I don't really have much to say about this other than I feel I've written better. However, part of this exercise is in the process and practice of writing under specific conditions that will hopefully, over time, increase quality.

So with that in mind, 480 words:
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Don’t bury a hatchet in a pile of shit.” I recollected his stern, serious face imparting his oft perplexing wisdom.

At 42 years old, I still couldn’t figure out what the hell he meant by those cryptic words any more than my 12 year old self. Wide eyed as if I’d received the secret to life itself, but too afraid to ask for what it meant other than the obvious.

I had my theories, of course. Dismissed them one by one as experience taught me all the really important life lessons. If you fall, get back up. You reap what you sow. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Those truisms that resonate throughout time and circumstance.

I glanced over at Dad. 83 years wore a body down. The man I knew from my youth faded into the skeletal figure hooked up to all the wonders of modern medicine. Wires and tubes sustaining him even against nature and the body’s will. The subtle, yet incessant beeping, a testament that his heart still beat. The soft buzz and whirl and breath of mechanized life creating a helpless cyborg of the person who I always thought invincible.

A marrow deep sorrow cloaked me in a blanket of melancholy so heavy I couldn’t even mourn the loss of such a great man. Tears and sadness could wait until later. I stood and went to the window. The view below offered nothing but the coarse, monochromatic gravel roof of a lower level. The sky above, however, nearly radiated with the purest azure I’d seen in a long time. Or maybe it’d been too long since I noticed.

I turned away from a day so perfect it seemed to mock my heavy heart. I returned to the uncomfortable wood and vinyl chair and reached for Dad’s frail hand.

“Dad,” I started. My eyes focused on the space of nothing between us. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I my whole life…” I swallowed. Closed my eyes.

“Son?” A mere breath of a whisper I almost didn’t hear.

I half stood and bent forward, not believing he’d roused.

“What did you mean?” I asked urgently. “What did you mean by ‘don’t bury a hatchet in a pile of shit?’ I have to know.”

He wheezed and coughed, grimacing; his eyes pinched. I leaned in closer and realized he was laughing. I waited until he settled. I thought for a moment he’d fallen back asleep, but his cloudy eyes reopened.

“What it means…” He took a rattling breath. “…is don’t bury a hatchet in shit.”

“That’s it?”

Only the long steady beep of a flat line replied.

I shook my head in wonderment. Still the same, even at the very last.

Make a wish.

Today's Prompt:

"Everyone has a birthday right? Well, of course they do. So when is your character's birthday? Do their characteristics match their zodiac signs? Take your character through one of their birthday celebrations (Or tell a story about your own), whether it was last month or twenty years ago. 500 word count limit pretty please."

Since I'm working on The Winter of the Birds, (the sequel to The Summer of the Frogs), I decided to use Claire as a guinea pig for this prompt. :) 462 words.
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The thing about birthdays is people use them to mark the passage of time. And time, for me, is irrelevant. It doesn’t flow in a straight line, but splits in a brilliant bursting of many singular possibilities creating infinite universes as each moment skips along.

Though this reality tied me to it most securely, if I closed my eyes, I could see everything. As one might look down into a pool. Or at a shattered mirror on the floor.

But I humored them. The ones that could see and the ones who couldn’t. Mom, Sebastian, Gerald, Tommy, Andy, Mara. All of them.

And me too.

Honestly? No way I was going to pass up a chance at cake. Not when two layers of chocolate-y goodness had my name all over it.

Literally.

It said, “Happy Birthday, Claire!” in my favorite color of green across the top of rippling chocolate icing. The letters framed by a circle of ten white candles that flickered waiting for me to make a wish.

I laughed and smiled as they sang and I blew out tiny flames, then danced around the table, skipping like a child in our small eat-in kitchen while Mom cut the cake into neat triangles. Twirling between my brother and my beloved. Bouncing in figure eights with my friends as poles. They laughed along with me. Happy, I think, that this latest batch of drugs seemed to be working.

When the cake was eaten and everyone long gone, I lingered at the little square formica table. Hesitant to release the festive mood that filled our usually somber house.

My brother, Sebastian, touched my shoulder on his way by. “Good night, sis. Happy birthday,” he said again before trotting up the stairs to his room.

I smiled a crooked smile and heaved a sigh. Pushed away from the table and stood for a moment looking around for all the tiny pieces of evidence of my birthday party. The leftover cake under a tent of plastic sat on the counter. A bit of red and blue paper peeked out from the trash can. Plastic forks in the sink that Mom would later wash and put away.

My gaze landed finally on Tommy who stood patiently, as always, in the shadows waiting for me. I reached out a hand which he took.

“Happy birthday,” he said and kissed the back of my hand before releasing it.

“Thank you.” I said. “But do you have to go?”

“You know I do.”

I frowned and crossed my arms. Looked away so he wouldn’t see me scowling. I huffed and turned back to him once my face straightened out. He was already starting to fade away.

I swallowed hard and smiled bravely. “Next time?”

He nodded and was gone.

Just One Drink...

The lovely Nina Pelletier hosts a prompt and share flash fiction circle on Google+. I hope to participate more frequently this next year. For the prompt on Friday, Dec. 2nd:
"You or your Main Character went out the night before, they remember having one drink, and then nothing else. You or your MC wake up and need to piece together where they are and how they got there."

This was my contribution, (553 words):


I woke. Coughing, choked on the frothy phlegm that spewed up from raspy lungs. Bitter contents from my stomach swirled with it into a potently foul mixture. I folded over and gagged. Steam rose off my too hot skin and from the mucus-y puddle at my knees. A foaming crystal pond on a land of black asphalt. The angry glare of a red street light created rhodolite gems from the bubbles.

I closed my eyes. Leaned into the side of an unforgiving building. Bricks, course and biting, chewed into my bare skin. Chill air sucked the heat away; I shivered. To such a low place I'd arrived. But how? I hugged myself. Nails dug into my arms. Jaw clenched around another wave of futile nausea.

I groaned and squeezed myself more tightly. What the hell had happened? My brain, sluggish, refused to divulge anything. I squinted into the red lit darkness. Halos and strings jumped around dimly shaped objects. Nothing looked right. Where was I?

Panic like the creeping of an easy tide swelled under my skin. Clamped like brutal hands, finally, around my throat. I struggled to stand. Bits of my skin scraped between brick teeth as I clawed my way up to wobbly feet.

"Need help?"

I turned. A shadow monster offered an outstretched hand. I backed up. Nearly fell. The shadow stepped to the edge of the light. I blinked. Blinked again.

The light behind me soaked into eyes that reflected nothing. Soulless pits of endless night. I shook my head. I tried swallowing, but gagged again.

A grin split the shadow face. Gleaming teeth like a neat row of blades. Growing larger as the figure neared. I pissed down my leg. Too scared for humiliation.

"Let's get you home.” It grabbed my arm and pulled me further down the alley. "I can't believe you got so fucked up with just one shot." The creature from the deepest parts of hell, twisted and coalesced as we broke free from the dark. Transformed in an instant into a face I knew well.

I laughed. A hoarse cackling that bounced down the corridor of hungry teeth and hell-spawned shadows. Bursting out into the open where the open sky gathered sound and cast it back in echoes, mockingly.

Just one shot. "No," I sputtered. Slumping finally into a warm cavern of plastic and glass. My head lolled to the side. "Not just."

The familiar face boiled and melted away. Revealing again the demon beneath. I slipped further down as my numb limbs refused to submit to my commands.

"Shit," the demon spat. Venom dripped off dagger teeth. "Someone fucking drugged you! Son of a bitch!" Words like the ringing of metal on metal.

My heart wild in my chest. Beating. Beating. Becoming all I could hear. Fire scalded along every tiny vein. My skin sizzled. Air, shards of glass down my throat until there was nothing left to breath. My arms leaden; I could only clench my hands in a final desperate panic. True dark robbed my vision; I tried to see, but there was nothing. Just the unbearable heat of a thousand fires burning in my gasping lungs, in my swelling eyeballs and finally in the spectacular burst of an exploding sun in my brain.

Just one drink... and I was dead.

Real life conversation; fictional dialogue

For some reason a recent conversation popped in my head this morning. It's a bit of dialogue that would be great in a book. Since I don't write that genre, I decided to fictionalize it in miniature:

"Tom and Janet are getting a divorce." My husband sipped his coffee, peering at me over the rim of his over-sized mug.

I looked up from pouring my own cup of joe. "Really! What happened?"

"She said she wasn't happy."

"That's a stupid reason," I said, going back to pouring and dumping creamer and tearing sweetener packets. "No one's happy all the time. What does she expect?"

My spouse of 21 long years bit into his morning toast, trying to hide a smirk.

"I saw that." I fake glowered at him. "Anyway, just because she's not going around singing The Hills are Alive every day is no reason for a divorce."

"I don't know."

"God knows I'm not happy every day," I continued.

"That makes two of us."

I wrinkled my nose and stuck my tongue out.

It was always that way with us. No, we weren't happy all the time, but we had our snarky sense of humor towards life and each other to carry us forward. Perhaps somewhere along the line, Janet had lost her ability to poke fun and merely misnamed it happiness. Which seemed to me all the more tragic.
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Names were changed, etc. :)