Go take a nap, wake up with another microfiction idea…
Here’s a taste:-
“Open the door, you son of a bitch!”
Bang. Bang. Bang. The wood on the bathroom door began to splinter.
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Composing a new poem I got an idea for while walking to the Xmas party I’m at…
One verse for you, then:-
Child of dragon,
Child of fairy,
Child of almost every myth that you are told…
Save for those of my people,
Ancient where yours are merely old,
Left to wither and die out in the cold.
Let me in.
(from my novel-in-progress.)
…and sometimes things just, you know… fall into your lap.
It was at my first Flaming Lips concert. And based on what I was experiencing, it wasn’t going to be my last concert.
I was standing near the area in front of the giant television display in Dundas Square; it was an area full of parked and locked bikes, sitting, standing, lounging people, balloons being passed back and forth and loads of camaraderie. I was enjoying the sight of the lead singer crowdsurfing inside a huge ball and was moving closer through the push of bodies to get a better view, and to record what I was seeing, when it happened. I lost my magical protection. I felt it more than saw it happen.
A mild vertigo slid through me.
It was like being in an accident, where everything was speeding up and slowing down at the same time. Things were going so slow that as I looked behind me I just managed to see a figure furtively disappearing into the throng of bodies oblivious to my plight.
Once he cleared the crowd, this person seemed to think that the deed was done, that there was no pursuit, but habits of carefulness seemed to dictate his mostly unhurried actions.
I watched him duck into doorways or alleyways whenever he saw a vehicle approaching, or another pedestrian.
Then in an alley, I saw him look around before approaching one doorway. He passed a hand over a part of the shadows, then seemed to step into them.
So that’s how he eluded people.
He was getting away with my jumbie beads.
No! That could not happen… I dashed forward, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him back into the night.
I grabbed him by the neck. His feet were off the ground.
I slammed him face first into a wall. I think his nose was worse for wear because of that. I breathed down the back of his head.
“Hello there.” I let my voice express its full monstrosity.
His heart raced, from what I could detect. I smelled fear.
“I do believe you have something of mine.”
I could hear him begin to hyperventilate.
“No answer, hm? I suggest you give it back.”
He began to stammer.
“Speak up. Words, boy, words.” I shook him by my grip around his neck.
“I-i-it’s in my back pocket.”
“Ah.” I fished it out. “Thank you.” I let him unceremoniously drop to his feet as I put the jumbie beads back on.
A shiver spread throughout my body as the magic began to take hold. My head lolled back.
Then I eyed him.
From Novel #2 in progress, tentatively titled, “Heathens, Blood and Stone”
===
Mirror’s head tilted, and she leaned to the side.
The person was slouched down on the train seat, but the black sweatshirt was so non-forming that the resulting bagginess left the distinct impression of a curve deeply slouched onto the seat. The knees were no different; the bagginess of the jeans, this shade of navy, left no distinct impression of a knee, it was just part of the curve occurring at that region as well. In fact, there were no distinct impressions of body parts at all; not even a distinct shoulder, even though the person’s hooded head leaned on the pane bordering the train’s doorway. No hands, even, buried into the bagginess of the too-short pants- did they even come up to the guy’s waist?
“What are you doing?” Nancy asked.
“Trying to see if this guy’s made of bone.”
A snicker skipped out of Nancy. “He is kinda like a spaghetti trying to sit on a chair, isn’t he?”
“Can you see his face?” Mirror asked.
The front of a cap protruded from the sweatshirt’s hood, but that was all that could be seen.
500 word piece meant to stand alone by itself, but I plan to expand it to a full-blown short story:-
===
You have terminal, aggressive cancer, and today is the day you are going to die.
And now, you’re not sure if you’re dead dead, or some weird state of being, because your unique Gift that manifested at puberty–like everyone’s does–is that you can make yourself disappear, not be found. That’s how you managed to leave your family behind. The death itself was not what you thought would happen; no going towards the light, no meeting your maker. Instead it’s like as if your essence withdrew into itself, and, muffled from the sensory input of the world, took residence somewhere inside your skull.
And there you stayed.
Until.
I wrote two pieces of Flash fiction tonight!
Just WHAT.
Oh, yeah. Snippet
===
The four men were angry.
Angry, and in the dark.
“Well,” said the first man, named Ed, “Let’s see what we have here.”
“Well,” said the second man, named Jed, “I know where you are, but where am I?”
“Well, said the third man, named Teddy, “You’re to my left, which means…”
“Well, said the fourth man, named Alfred, “I’m to your right. Right where we were. When the lights went out.”
“I know where you are,” said Jed, but where am-”
“Shut up, Jed,” the other men said.
Snippet, “Chronology of a Burn”, current (CanLit) fiction WiP:-
“That body is mine,” she remembered her mother telling her. “Until I say, that body is mine and you don’t have permission to mark up your skin.” Funny how something said slightly in jest in childhood could still mark your mentality, your approach to your own body even as the years tumble on by. She felt like she had failed, yet again, to keep her skin unblemished. After all, she had shared her mother’s sentiment. Why mark up something beautiful?
Words for today…
============
And with the coldest blood, Azlanteca had almost overlaid my mind with a new, dark consciousness, a terrible superhuman logic. It was no wonder these… men had had an Adze puppet to so easily alter and manipulate. Because I had somehow resisted him, my mind had been left to its own devices, free. But I could easily have now been a stranger to myself.
“The old gods,” he pointed skywards, “up there, in space, where it is utterly cold, where there is no air… and me… see this world as full of so much… unripe fruit. You may call them humanity. But every so often one comes across a seed… with so much potential… a seed such as yourself.”
“Are you a god?” I asked him.
“A god regards me as I regard a mote of dust. No,” he said. “And that mote of dust is you.”
“A mote of dust that will not move,” Galibi added. “Stubborn.”
“You will stay in line, and I… we, Galibi and I, shall ensure that.”
It’s like twice this big now, so this is literally a snippet of it.
Thanks to Tade Thompson and a weird pic he posted on Facebook.
===
Somewhere in downtown Toronto, a homeless man had shoes whose soles were flapping. A stranger, seeing this, pointed to them, smiling, saying he had talking shoes. The homeless man didn’t question when the soles started closing up of their own accord. But, then, around his bare ankles, with ashy, dry skin, there appeared teeth. Suddenly fearful, he took them off. There begins the tale of the man who had shoes who could not only talk, but sing for his supper. He started to think this was a sign, and maybe now, this time, it wouldn’t be so hard to move out of the streets… see his grown daughter, who had disowned him, his grandchildren…
I’ve gotten 900 solid Twitter followers at least, so here’s a celebratory snippet.
My protag goes to visit an Obeah Woman, with reservations.
====
As I put on the jumbie bead bracelet, the weight of the air suddenly disappeared.
I fingered the bracelet on my wrist. “So. This would help me?”
“It’ll protect you. But it will also help you have some control over those… dreams, as you call it. Pierce that fog surrounding you.”
“So there’s no way I can rid myself of it?”
The Obeah woman’s mouth widened into a knowing smile. “Yuh bite off more than you can chew, eh? You want to go back to the old monster you were before? Where things were simple? You didn’t have to think about right or wrong, because it didn’t matter to you? Having to care is not fun?”
Her smile faded. “No.”
I could feel my features growing stony. I could tell she saw them growing stony, too. I grabbed her by her forearm.
She took hold of my forearm with the most casual of motions but stopped me as surely as if I’d been suddenly bonded to the earth. I struggled. My arm burned. It’s not my flesh she was hurting, but something bad or broken inside me. Maybe the brokenness and I were so close I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. She let go and I collapsed, falling to my knees but afraid to move for the moment. I was breathing heavy all of a sudden.
Her eyes studied me.
“Try going to someone else to fix it. They’ll probably just tell you you have a loa.”
I got to my feet. I folded my arms. One of them felt bruised. I rubbed my arm unconsciously to soothe the residual burning.
Her expression softened. A hand thoughtfully went to her chin.
“Think of it this way. How else would you be able to trace the way to who sent this Adze to you? If it is in you, a part of you that you can’t consume, then trace its thoughts. It knows. It has an interest in its safety, in its self-preservation. It made its presence felt here today. Use that to your advantage. Work with it?”
My face wrinkled in discomfort.
“But that’s not what yuh want, is it. You jus’ want it gone?”
I stared at this elder long. I nodded. If I have to, I’ll trace the path some other way, somehow, than have this happening.
“Arrite. I have things to do. If you have need of me… come again.” The knowing smile reappeared. She turned away.
I parted the beaded curtain, and showed myself out.
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