Writing

Writ­ten today, the 29^th of February:

She plant­ed the seed and wait­ed. After a while rain came down from the sky, pelt­ing her skin, chill­ing her. She shiv­ered but did­n’t leave, not yet.

The Sun came out, warm­ing the soil, dri­ving the cold from her bones. She wait­ed. Clouds scud­ded by over­head, in a hur­ry for some rea­son. The moon rose, stars wheeled, and then the Sun rose again.

She did­n’t just wait, of course. She prayed, she sang, she read the old sto­ries, the myths and the leg­ends. On the sev­enth day she snoozed under a cloud­less sky, wak­ing only briefly when a drag­on­fly hap­pened to touch down on her nose. She observed its cathe­dral-win­dow wings, irrides­cent with refract­ed sun­light, and drowsed once more after it left her.

Rain, Sun, moon, stars: she endured them all. The seedling broke the soil with a quest­ing green curlicue, look­ing for all the world like a ques­tion mark in the Old Tongue. She sat on it and wait­ed more: days, months, decades.

A boy came along and asked her why she’d climbed to the top of the tree.

“I did­n’t,” she said. 

One of my recent ficlets, one that I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of:

The Trick

“You want to see a trick?”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “What kind?”

“Like noth­ing you’ve ever seen,” he said, and took a swig straight from the bot­tle. Red wine stained his teeth. “Promise.”

“All right.” She leaned back in the chair as he stood up, crossed to the cen­tre of the room, and did some kind of odd shoul­der-shrug­ging warmup dance. He’d left the bot­tle on the table, and she took it, wrapped her lips around it, and chugged what remained of the wine. She had a buzz going and wasn’t about to lose it.

With­out pre­lude, with­out scream­ing, with­out any warn­ing what­so­ev­er, he burst into flames. In per­fect silence he burned, star­ing into her soul with those intense grey eyes he had.

She dropped the bot­tle. It shat­tered, green shards every­where. She want­ed to scream but could­n’t. She stared as he was consumed.

There was a pile of ash and a black spot on the hard­wood, and no oth­er evi­dence he’d ever existed.

#

The door opened and he walked in. She leapt from the reclin­er, embraced him, and said, “How’d you do it?”

It’s not always easy, fit­ting a com­plete sto­ry into 1024 char­ac­ters, but this time it just sort of happened.

So I cre­at­ed a new ficlet this morn­ing, called “Jen­ny, who is a dog”. For those of you that haven’t run across Ficlets, here’s the idea: You go to the Ficlets web­site, sign up or sign in, and then you can cre­ate a “ficlet”. A ficlet is a short-short sto­ry, or more accu­rate­ly a part of a sto­ry. You have an upper bound of 1024 char­ac­ters* to tell your sto­ry. Any­one can add onto it by cre­at­ing sequels or pre­quels. Every sto­ry on the site is licensed using a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Share­alike license.

So here’s my lat­est snip­pet of fiction:

Jen­ny, who is a dog, came into the liv­ing room, sat down on the floor, and spoke. “What sup­per?” she said, tail thump­ing on the hardwood.

I stared at her. “Beg par­don?” I was shocked enough that I actu­al­ly respond­ed. To a dog. You see the state of mind I was in?

“Sup­per. Food. What?”

“Uh–” I’d been mak­ing my own dog food, these days. Jen­ny was old, and store-brand food was­n’t doing her any favours. “Liv­er and rice, for you,” I said. “I think piz­za for me.”

“Good. Liv­er good,” she said, and trot­ted off to the din­ing room.

I went into the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. As I twist­ed the cap off, my phone rang.

“Y’el­lo?”

“Doug?” It was Lisa, my girl­friend. “Uh, Doug, I did­n’t know who to call–”

“Calm down,” I said. “Deep breaths. What’s up?”

“Mr. Kit,” she said. “He’s–” She could­n’t go on.

“He’s talk­ing?” I said, and there was silence on the line. I knew I was right. Mr. Kit, who is a cat, was talk­ing too.

Jen­ny came into the kitchen and sat on the floor. “Jen­ny good dog,” she said.

And all day it kind of fes­tered in my head. I kept think­ing, what’s next? Where do we go from talk­ing pets?

So I’ve decid­ed to expand it into a short sto­ry (some­thing more like 2,000 or 3,000 words, I’m think­ing). Inter­est­ed? Let me know in the com­ments, and when it’s com­plete, I’ll email you a link to read the whole thing.

____________
* Which works out to about 200 words.

I try to make my ficlets com­plete sto­ries, but not ones that can’t have a sequel or a pre­quel added to them. It’s not easy to make a com­plete sto­ry in 1024 char­ac­ters or less.

Here’s tonight’s effort:

Right on the edge of the world

“Well that’s a fine how do you do,” mut­tered Rubin.

“What you mean, Rubin?” Arnie’s voice always annoyed Rubin, but since the plane crash it had acquired a grat­ing qual­i­ty. It set Rubin’s teeth on edge, it real­ly did.

“We’ve come to the edge,” said Rubin. “See? The crick just flows on over…”

Arnie came up beside him. “So it do, so it do.” He stared down into the dark­ness for a long moment, then looked up at Rubin. His eyes were round and vacant like the moon. A lit­tle thread of drool had escaped his lip and glis­tened on his chin. “What’s that mean?”

Rubin sighed. “It means we turn around. Head upstream, hope we can find help…”

“We’s been walkin’ for days, though,” Arnie whined.

“Dammit, Arnie, don’t you think I know that?” Arnie recoiled from his broth­er’s fury, and Rubin sighed inward­ly. He relent­ed. “Sor­ry, Arnie. There’s no choice.” He smiled. “Know any good songs?”

“Do I!” They turned away from the void, and Arnie began to sing some idiot song. After a cou­ple moments, Rubin joined in.

Not me, but the char­ac­ters in a short piece I’m work­ing on.

The cab dropped them off at Hol­la’s, the night­club’s name writ­ten in white and blue neon on the build­ing’s side. Before they even got in the door they could hear the thump-thump-thump heart­beat of the music pound­ing through the walls and win­dows. Inside the drinks were two-for-one, and the DJ–a woman with a pate shaved down to downy stub­ble, huge black sun­glass­es, and the red­dest lips Peter had ever seen–played tech­no jams that thud­ded like jun­gle drums, call­ing every­one to the dance floor. The club smelled of per­fume and sweat, pheromones and spilled beer.

The beat got to him, got into him, and he let him­self be dragged by the hand to the black-and-white chess­board dance­floor. Ellen was a lit­tle awk­ward at the start–he won­dered how long it’d been since she’d been out dancing–but as the night wore on she found her groove. She pulled her hair free of her pony­tail and shook her head, hard, in time with the pulse of bass and drums. Her hair became a mane, and she was a wild ani­mal, hips shak­ing, hands in the air like she just did­n’t care.

At one point, Peter remem­bered sit­ting at a table with Ellen and a cou­ple they’d just met, a blond col­lege kid with an unlit smoke hang­ing out of the cor­ner of his mouth and a dark-haired girl with a low-cut top and enor­mous breasts held in check by some com­bi­na­tion of good for­tune, mag­ic, and an archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of a brassiere. He could feel sweat trick­ling down his ribcage, down the back of his neck. He picked up his bot­tle of Bud­weis­er and pressed it to his fore­head, and sighed at the chill. His mus­cles ached and he could­n’t seem to stop smiling. 

So does it paint a pic­ture? I sure hope so…

On the MP3 play­er: RV by Faith No More…

Would any­body tell me if I was get­tin’ stupider?

For those of you that are inter­est­ed in writ­ing: check out Ficlets. It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive short-short sto­ry envi­ron­ment where you’re encour­aged to write pre­quels or sequels to oth­ers’ sto­ries, or come up with your own. Have a peek. Maybe you’ll even get inspired.

(Found via John Scalz­i’s What­ev­er post.)

Since I should be writ­ing tonight (I got 6,000 words while we were in Edmon­ton, and not a let­ter since), I’m going to dip into my works-in-progress file for tonight’s 13, and present:

13 snip­pets from works in progress

Hope­ful­ly each and every one of these bite-sized morsels from short fic­tion or nov­els-in-ges­ta­tion will make you slaver to read the com­plete, fin­ished work. Let me know, if you so desire, what works for you, and what doesn’t.

1. Demoi­selle Noir was younger than Riley had expect­ed. Only the pal­lor of her skin spoke of her present con­di­tion; her hair was the col­or of hon­ey, dressed up in ringlets, and her clear eyes were the grey of a storm at sea. Here in her office she wore a dark blouse of some mate­r­i­al that shone like silk and loose flow­ing trousers in a col­or that remind­ed Riley of the foam that crest­ed white­caps. (from Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened)
2. Tom­my, though, his spe­cial­ty was church songs. There were a few that the rest of us would join in on, like “Amaz­ing Grace”, but for most of them Tom­my was on his own. He did­n’t sing them often–he’d get an embar­rassed look when we’d request them, like we were maybe going to make fun of him–but when he did sing one it was unre­al. His voice was a per­fect instru­ment, not some­thing you’d expect from a gan­g­ly kid who spoke with a lisp, and when he’d belt out the cho­rus with the fire­light flick­er­ing across his face, let­ting his voice rise with the smoke, coil­ing upwards past the whis­per­ing trees to the stars them­selves, I’d feel a shiv­er crawl up and down my spine. (from “Three Months and Two Days”)
3. “I under­stand you’re on the way to kill your broth­er,” said the dog. “Sure you’ve got it in you?” (from “The Flood”)
4. A girl met Yak­oub at the door, naked as birth. A gryphon ram­pant marched across her chest, tat­tooed in gold and red and black, its tuft­ed lion’s tail held high, one paw reach­ing for her left breast. Her hair was blonde, falling in soft waves to her bare shoul­ders. (from Salyx)
5. Ghost-cap­tain Muir sum­moned me to his office. The room was a palace of the imag­i­na­tion, floored in pale mar­ble, with ludi­crous columns and spires reach­ing for a ceil­ing lost in mist. Rain­clouds had formed over by the west win­dows, and a slow but steady driz­zle watered his for­est of trop­i­cal bon­sai. (from “Out­side, Look­ing In”)
6. Toi and Chad­ow slept in the roots, twin­ing their sleep­ing bags into the fine white cap­il­lar­ies that branched off from the main sys­tems. Toi lay on his stom­ach, wak­ing to face the tiny dots of light that were uncount­ably dis­tant, unimag­in­ably vast fam­i­lies of stars. Chad­ow pref­ered to lay on her back, fac­ing the dark under­sides of leaves through which, some­times, she would catch a glimpse of fil­tered sun­light. (from The Tree)
7. In a bowl carved from the burl of a cher­ry tree sat a sphere the col­or of cognac, a stone from Earth her­self. Grz­gy picked it up, care­ful not to let his claws scratch its sur­face, and rolled it around in his palm. Its cool heft had a calm­ing effect on him. (from Earth Fleet)
8. Final­ly, in a nar­row shop wedged between a bistro and a book­store, she found a tiny Pekingese hand-carved from a piece of Chi­nese jade. The thing was ancient, and the price made me weak in the knees, but Zdama slapped her cred­it card down on the spot­less glass counter and the clerk care­ful­ly wrapped the tiny dog in stra­ta of white tis­sue paper. (from “Between Heav­en and Earth”)
9. Imry glanced at the cal­en­dar tacked above the eye; Miss Sep­tem­ber, in the best tra­di­tion of men’s mag­a­zines from a pre­vi­ous mil­len­ni­um, had a look about her that was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hum­ming­bird-shy and hard-core slut­ty. “D’y­ou sup­pose it’s Sep­tem­ber? Out there?” (from “The Long Fall”)
10. Overnight some­one had plant­ed a gar­den. It had to have been one of the AIs, or one of the robots, and they prob­a­bly had used time shapers, some­thing Lady Schrone was cer­tain she’d marked down as pro­scribed. But it was hard to be angry, because the gar­den was beau­ti­ful: flow­ers, flow­ers of all descrip­tions, radi­at­ing away from a cen­tral point like the spokes of a great wheel, and at the wheel’s cen­ter a tree reached for the heav­ens. Leaves the size of her body unfurled them­selves at the tree’s top, near­ly twen­ty meters from the ground. They were sharp and green against the blue of the sky. (from “The Parley”)
11. Some­day, he hoped, he’d find a tow­er tall enough to show him the part of the world with­out snow. He was con­vinced it must exist some­where. Sure­ly the whole Earth could­n’t be cov­ered in twen­ty feet of snow. Could it? (from “Fim­bul­vetr”)
12. For nine days the sky itself had burned, and even now, five years lat­er, John did­n’t like sun­sets. But Miko did, and he was­n’t stub­born enough to argue his way around her insis­tences, so they sat on the black­ened con­crete stoop and watched the sky light up all over again. (from “After the Mis­sile Rain”)
13. “I know a great many things. My web of thought spans galax­ies.” She was a group mind, he knew, a galaxy-wide enti­ty that shared a com­mon name and a com­mon out­look. Her thought was net­worked in an instan­ta­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tion web; some­how, though the physi­cists and xeno­bi­ol­o­gists had yet to explain it, what one Yasht knew, every Yasht knew. (from “Yasht”)

Tech­no­rati: Thurs­day Thirteen

Post a com­ment and I’ll add you to the list!

• Doug’s cat­a­log of night­mare foods
• You could be next!