Still
Still
(not a cheesy monster story, but still bad!)
We lay in bed, stifled.
She was fire, and whiskey, and dusk, and he had loved her with everything he was.
So I have a plot device…
and I have a character, although he is merely a silhouette with an occupation and an opinion on cultural homogenization right now, but I have no idea where to go with it. I’m sitting here in my favorite coffee shop, hoping that Inspiration, that elusive s.o.a.b., will decide to grace me with his favor for once.
So imagine some guy, average in almost every conceivable way, sitting almost anonymously in a coffee shop, just waiting for something interesting to come to him.
It’s a pretty awful metaphor for my life, and I’m tired of it. Let it be known today that I at least recognized the passive, sedentary nature of my existence and found it wanting, even if by tomorrow I still haven’t done anything about it.
On a side note, I think my idea is a really good one, but unfortunately most of my writing experience tends to revolve around cheesy monsters and sarcastic narration, and my new idea is very character driven. I suppose it’s a good thing, as it’ll exercise my ability to portray a fictional person’s emotions and motivations, but it makes the process a slog; any momentum on it seems hard-won and fleeting. But then, I suppose it’ll make its completion all the sweeter.
There’s a vacant lot on South Upper Broadway,
overgrown and neglected,
where the green encroaches upon the gray,
vibrant, verdant, and viridian.
I stood there, a neophyte amidst elder,
nameless boughs,
and a fig tree speckled bright with
fruit.
The sky shrouded cloudy,
teasing blue and Sol-yellow,
and it seemed here that the seconds
dilated, swelled full to bursting,
refusing to be picked until gibbous
and ripe.
There, alliteration seemed a language
all it’s own-
where singing nettles sang siren’s songs,
tempting towards troublesome
touch-me-not trysts.
There, I wondered why I ever lost
sight of beauty, and if she would
ever forgive me.
There, I felt alive.
Goblin
The road closed black on all sides, except for the narrow cone of bright sepia projecting from the headlights. I hated delivering to houses on the outskirts of town for that exact reason. You’d be surprised how quickly a landscape uncluttered by human construction can fade into an inky void, the kind of empty black that your inner child is constantly telling you might not be quite so empty after all. You want to keep an eye on it, but need both for the road; a dichotomy that a crossing deer leaping out of your periphery can quickly justify. Not only are the roads unkempt, but addresses are obscured outside of houses not quite country enough to benefit from starlight. The areas in between are also a kind of collective no-man’s land; the grasses there are left to their own devices, and grow unchecked. Those reaching limbs, while gentle and caressing in the daylight become reaching, clutching fingers in its absence. You could swear that something is trying to grab you from inside the weeds every time you walk by. On roads like these, the extra dollar twenty-five for delivering a pizza just doesn’t feel worth it, tip or no tip.
The name on the ticket was McCulloch, no first name. Large pie, light sauce, pepperoni and green peppers; at least he had good taste. I turned my headlights off, grabbed the warm pizza bag, and stepped out into the cool night air, following the gravel drive-way that led to the darkened home. If there was another house in sight, I would’ve thought I had the wrong place. In fact, without the moon, I wouldn’t have caught sight of it at all. The gravel crunched loudly beneath my feet as I made my way to the porch, passing mirrored rows of prickly shrub and haphazardly arranged wildflowers in between. One of the shrubs stirred as I passed, and a small silhouette dashed out and around to the back of the house before I could tell what it was. After my heart slowed down from being startled, I decided it had to be a jack rabbit, or a raccoon; something mundane made alarming by the darkness. Why was I so jumpy? My eyes found the unlit porch. “Oh, right, I’m about to be murdered by the crazy inhabitant of this pitch-black house, that’s why,” I thought.
Jilted Heavens
It was cool, and dark. The fall was setting in nicely on the community college campus, and we already set our clocks back so the night caught those leaving late afternoon classes unaware, blanketing the horizon with indigo wool and dotting the sky with what few blinking stars the city would allow. I wondered at the stars sometimes. Did they grow angry with us? We had, after all, forsaken them for our newfangled electric marvels. Before, we only kept small, illicit relationships in the darkness with flame; sordid but short affairs. Being giant orbs of celestial flame, I didn’t think they would grow jealous of this. But now?…
I took slow steps from the English building to the parking lot across the long courtyard between the various complexes, drinking in the autumn air and smells. That time of the year always instilled a stirring nostalgia in me; longings for pumpkin spice and the rasping of shed leaves in slithering gusts, for close friends, for endearing family gatherings. Nostalgia for things that I’d never really experienced or valued, but felt I should have been remembered nonetheless. The walkway I followed was lined by numerous cylindrical street lights that illuminated red-orange from the top at about waist height, so that at a distance the entire walkway appeared to be lit by giant, albeit stubby cigarettes, or the dark candles of some nameless occult ritual. They stood amongst each other’s wavering aura defiant of pacts made long ago between men and the burning heavens. My footfalls rang out from the cracked concrete into the evening’s silence as I walked between those candles, a participant nescient as to whether he was the one with the altar-knife or the sacrifice.
Ghoul Shines
Ghoul-Shines
When Luna looks away, dead suns come to play,
ghoul-shines filtering through nescient voids,
striding down upon McCulloch’s monadnocks,
stirring the sleeping Native blood long spilled to an All-Hallows stalk –
skulls cackling down Enchanted Rock rolling
and calling, long skinless, at dread Dabih’s behest,
sockets all singed with will-o-wisp flame.
Constellations clamor amongst the crowds
rattling, raving to the mad midnight gods, sacrificing
upon hills upheaved.
When Luna looks away, dead sons come to play,
lost Sols within stellar winds winding,
ghoul-shines aeons since snuffed away.
Bug
Mike realized the movie wasn’t going to scare him two minutes in, but the popcorn was already popped and it was storming like the wrath of Zeus outside anyway, though rain had yet to fall. Lightning brought the features of his sparsely decorated living room into momentary stark relief, thunder booming afterwards in chase.
He loved the thunder; it was as though the strange forces of the outside were knocking onto the door of the everyday, crashing the party of the mundane – which is exactly what Mike needed, something to break him from the cliché doldrums of his life. He had a desk job in the IT department for Christ’s sake – Tie to work and everything! It was the same thing day in, day out – the sickening laugh of the secretary at the most inane of comments, the overwhelming corpulence and of Ted in the left cubicle, the unnerving stench of Bill in the right (even though Bill clearly takes a shower every morning), and the technologically challenged nature of anyone who happened to be paid more than he was. The company ran like a bad office sit-com, and he was stuck right in the middle of it, Monday through Friday; and sometimes Saturday if his balding boss felt like being an asshole that week. What was it with terrible bosses and balding, anyway?
All in all, there was nothing like a nine-to-five rut to make one feel trapped and alone; that or a really bad slasher flick on a stormy night. He aimed the remote, intending to remove the sad excuse for cinematography from his flat screen – then sudden white light through the window, so bright it filled the room before he could raise his hand or close his eyes, then darkness. Damn, a power outage. Muttering curses and blinking reflexively in the dark, he set down the remote and lurched from the couch – then thunder, so loud he could feel the vibrations in his sternum. It rattled the entire house and knocked down a few pieces of odd paintings from the walls.
He sat in silence for a few moments, trying to remember where he kept the flashlight. The Bathroom? The Bedroom closet, maybe? No – the kitchen junk drawer. He fumbled through the dark, a little shaken by the lightning; it must have been in his own backyard to be that bright. He’d have to check it out once he could see. He waved his hands in front of him as he went, trying to visualize the arrangement of his furniture. He winced as his shin struck a coffee table, hurting far more than it had to from his lack of sight. A little further, a little further – a wall. He slid along until he felt the cool tiles of the kitchen beneath his feet, the smell of slightly burned popcorn still lingering. More fumbling, searching for the right drawer – keys, towels, utensils, ah, miscellaneous! He pulled it open, rifling through unopened straws, various screws, and extra twist ties from bread bags until he found his flashlight. As his hand closed around the cold metallic casing, an odd pitter-patter sounded from one end of the ceiling to the other, like something small skittering across the roof. He disregarded it; probably opossums.
The kitchen led into the backyard, and he walked outside to examine the crater that must have been made from the lightning. He half expected a fire or two, maybe even Zeus himself standing there, pissed off and demanding he sacrifice a goat on the lawn.
No fires, or gods, but billowing smoke rose from a point near his back fence. Lightning still struck off in the distance, briefly gilding the moist grass in silver before fading. He followed the bright cone from his flashlight to the crater, waving away smoke as it rose from the hole in his backyard, almost as wide as he was tall. A long cylinder stuck out from the ground in the center, matte grey and smooth. It had a small reinforced hatch that was open, exposing the darkened inside. Mike’s heartbeat picked up; the lightning strike must have hidden the sound of it crashing down. Was it a weapon? Was it dangerous? Should he call Homeland Security? Maybe he didn’t have to, maybe men in black suits with dark glasses and questions were already on their way.