Category: short stories

regrets

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I’m thinking a lot about what’s evil and what is not.

I’ve just written a four issue comic series, a western based on revenge, which begins typically enough for the kind of spaghetti western I’m basing it on, but takes a wild turn at the end of the first issue (unrevealed future plot twist).

I’m a little worried it pushes me into territory I’m not comfortable representing.

That is, like Get Back Again, I’m concerned some right wing fuck is going to take it and construe it as pro-bigotry or worse, in this case, pro-life.

But that’s not what it’s about (and I’m very pro-choice); it’s similar to The Mungk in that it’s about trauma, and how it can shape us for the worse, until the evil that’s been done to us becomes us abusing ourselves, and maybe others, in ways we never would otherwise.

It’s also about whether evil can be used for good, sometimes?

It’s about guilt and remorse and self-hatred.

Because listen, I know more than a few women who’ve been through it, and despite what the right wing would have you think, most of them did not behave as though they were tossing a used Kleenex.

Most of them were genuinely distressed, upset, even traumatized by it. Not one of them didn’t have strong feelings about it, even if they didn’t want to say it out loud. It was clearly visible on their face and in their eyes.

The other thing that I know about it is that not one of them has ever said they would make a different choice. They don’t regret the choice, even if there’s still remorse.

Like putting down a terminally ill pet; it sucks, you hate it, it makes you weep for days, but even years later, if asked, you’ll say it was the right thing to do.

Anyway, thoughts and feelings on this day; I can’t imagine what the poor women go through.

Even if this case, it’s a little more… extreme.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 720 words, comic: Western Cradle #4

Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 57-59, Preacher: Tall In The Saddle 1
Music: I Know What You Did Last Summer Soundtrack, Various

slept in

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Until EIGHT. In the AM!

Crazy, right?

I haven’t had more than about six or seven hours of sleep in months, without being ill.

Of course, I’m ill today, but fuck it. I am using this downtime to push forward hard on the things that I love – writing, reading, comics, with a side of meditation, exercise, cooking and music.

That’s pretty much the sum total, although I think travel, sex, video games, and various other sundry storytelling mediums also play a part.

What else could you possibly need? A greater purpose? People who love you? Righteous vengeance?

I don’t know, but I’m feeling better, anyway.

Still sick, but hell if I couldn’t use eight to ten hours every night.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 2575 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X/Alex Haley
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 1-2, Preacher 17-18
Music: Nowhere Generation I & II, Rise Against

late riser

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Ugh.

Eyes crack in tiny slits. Dark room. Alarm. One hand snakes out from beneath cold linen sheets. Taps a button. Silence returns. Cold air hangs over the bed like black cotton. Presses down heavy.

Ugh. Her legs curl under her, hand clamped between her thighs. She pulls the covers tighter, curled around her shoulders. Across the back of her neck. She feels herself shutting down.

A little while longer.

The mattress tugs. Envelops. Sucks her in, like a smothering friend. She curls into a ball. Trapped between pillow top and the black cotton air, she pulls the linens close. They slither coldly against her naked skin and wrap around her ankles.

The tinny alarm pierces her eardrum again.

God, is it louder now?

Her body turns and one hand rises, landing flat on the snooze. The room is gray now. The edges of the curtain shine with uncertain light.

Uhngh, she cries in silence and pulls the linens hard against her chest. Night air seeps in.

I don’t want to do this, she thinks as she squeezes her eyes shut and prays for sleep to come once more, laying prone. The light at the edge of the curtains teases her. Taunts her. She shifts, but the linens seal themselves around her legs and torso, and she doesn’t get far. She pulls them up to her face, over her head.

The light behind the curtains won’t leave her alone. It grows in intensity. Pokes her. Prods her. Calls her by name. White streaks of sunlight lay flat across the wall and she peeks with one eye out at the white fire outline of the window. She reaches out. Inches back the curtain. Morning light pierces the room, full of promise and potential. A universe awaits outside her windowsill, but the sun is blinding and she can only make out the largest of shapes.

Nope. Not ready for that, she flinches as she lets the curtains fall back again. The room shrugs back on its heavy gray silence. Her hands ball in front of her face.

A few moments more. Not now. Not yet.

She rolls away from the window. The linens constrict more tightly around her naked skin. She plunges, headlong, back into oblivion.

The alarm screams its ruthless tone again. It grates against her insides and fills her head like a spiked pinball ricocheting inside her skull. This time, a hand comes whirling, streaking through the dead filled air. It crashes down.

Off, damn you. It’s not time yet. I’m not ready.

She stubbornly points her back at the lighted window, the linens snapped so tightly across her form that the cold air seeps straight through.

Why is it so cold in here?

She pulls the bedclothes up over her face, over her head. The pillowtop grates at her thighs. Tiny pieces of lint dig into her side. Even the linen itself, once so smooth and so warm, feels like sandpaper that scrapes across her legs and belly.

You have stuff to do, her mind gently reminds her.

I know. I don’t care, she replies. I’m tired.

You still have stuff to do.

Behind her, the window beckons. She can’t see it. Refuses to see it. She squeezes her eyes shut. Spots and flecks dance in her smothered pupils as she refutes the call of the sun.

Ugh. Can’t it wait a little while longer?

She rolls onto her back. One arm drapes off the side of the bed, as she glares at the gray flipping numbers of the old clock. She got this when she was a child and it stayed with her since – her daily tormentor.

Tick tock, comes the back of her head.

Not time. Not yet.

She lays, sheets twisted and coiled around her legs, one arm hanging lazily off the edge of the mattress. Her tired eyes feign focus on the window, outlined in luminescent morning light. The air dances cool across her skin. Black cotton is now gray wool, stiff and suffocating. Beneath her, the mattress scratches.

You should go outside. You know what’s out there.

Thoughts of sky and sun and cars and children dance through her head. Everything so clear and bursting with colour. Violent green grass. The pink flowering cherry blossom beneath the window. The tiny rock garden with its golden sumac and its red rose bush. The tall gingko with bright orange fruit hanging precariously. People. Places. Things. The world. Life.

Ugh. Do I have to?

Yes, comes the soft reply.

I can stay here.

Not forever.

Leave me alone. Let me sleep. Please.

She tries more extreme measures and shoves her head under the pillow. Her breathing stifles. Carbon dioxide builds in the small space before her face. Her own breath, hot and stuffy, singes her eyes and wets her lips. It smells of garlic and ash and doesn’t taste much better. She pulls her knees to her chest, but the linens tighten on her thighs, keeping her from full contraction. She lays, unmoving, uncomfortable, and pulls the pillow down tighter across her face. Sweat beads up on her nose as her exhales raise the temperature. It grows hard to breathe. The room is a hazy gray now, almost white, and still, the light creeps in.

No, she tells herself, the clock.

You don’t have a choice, the clock tells her back.

Muscles relax and her grip on the pillow loosens. Fresh air creeps in through an opening at the pillow’s crease. It brushes against her face, its icy tendrils licking at her nostrils.

Please is the lame reply, the word hanging impotent at the front of her mind.

No choice. Sorry.

Again, she turns to face the window and stares at the clock. The time surprises her.

Already? How did it get so late?

There is no reply. Only silence, still and pale, frozen in the bedroom’s dim haze.

Two fingers gently pull back the edge of the curtain. A sliver of the room soaks in white heat. It bathes her face and she squints, but doesn’t turn away.

Ugh. Just…

No.

A tiny…

No.

One moment…

Not a chance.

She lets the drape fall closed and slides up. She untangles herself from the linens, unweaving the coils from her waist and legs. The air of the room is frigid against her skin and she pulls the sheets up over her naked chest. Her heart sinks as she swings her ankles over the edge and leans on the balls of her hands. For a moment, her stomach churns as vertigo kicks in. She steadies herself against the sinking edge of the mattress.

With a sigh, her feet find the floor, soft and plush, and she grips the centre of the drapes and flings them wide. White light crashes over her. Her eyes adjust and the world convalesces into pure shapes, sharp green and red and gold, full of movement and warmth and light.

Finally, she smiles, a soft and tender thanks, the edges of her lips tipped in the barest of lifts, and she exhales. Her breath waffles against the window pane.

At last.

She casts one last mournful look at the bed with its rumpled sheets and tousled mattress, no longer inviting, merely cold and stiff and sad. She shakes her head and smiles. Farewell, temptress, she says and turns from its cold embrace. Fare thee well. She heads for the door, to greet the day, however much of it yet remains.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 399 words, short story: Late Riser

Read: The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith
Comics: Chew 45-48
Music: No. 4, Stone Temple Pilots

broke down car

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It’s not right, I tell you.

Somewhere along the road, something got broke and it can’t be fixed. The engine keeps failing and no one can figure out why. But instead of replacing the car or the damn engine, we’re stuck with the thing – failing, over and over. Sometimes in the driveway. Sometimes on the freeway. Sometimes on the curve of an icy road.

And no matter the frustration, no matter how often we try to fix the damn thing, it doesn’t get any better.

It gets worse and worse and we know – one day, nothing’s going to start that car again. We’re going to be stuck, wherever we are, in a parking lot or a snowbank or piled up in the wreckage with a dozen other cars enduring the same nightmare, and that’s where we’ll be.

Forever.

Freezing or bleeding or quietly starving to death. We can’t get out and walk. We’re locked in. The car won’t start. We already ate the only granola bar in the glove box and ripped our shirt to tie around the hole in our belly, but we’re still bleeding. Still dying. Still stuck, in motion or standing still, inside this goddamned car, on this goddamned road, that we never wanted to be on in the first place!

We don’t know how we got here. All we remember is getting behind the wheel and the car started moving on its own. It keeps going and going, and every once in a while, there’s a nice place to stop for a cup of tea, or some beautiful body in a car that smiles as we pass, and maybe, if we’re really lucky, a good song on the radio. Something beyond the nightmare newsline or the static rhythm of whatever tired old pablum some generic pop star is regurgitating to the front lines.

Eventually, this car will die, and we won’t know where that is. Will it be in the high country, in Pirsig’s mountains? Or in the desert, those vast plains of dry and dusted skeletons? Maybe in a city, in the run-down parts, where people oppressed by others who know no oppression scrabble for food and shelter and feed themselves on compromise, over and over again, the way we do, when we’re running out of hope. When we’re living hand to mouth and all of a sudden, the goddamn car takes a shit. Again.

This car takes a lot of shits. We take a lot of shit.

Sometimes, all we can do is sit there and cry, glaring at the dashboard with desperation as it flashes its warning lights, pounding on the steering wheel and screaming bloody rage at the insensibility of it all. All the while, the wheel takes us nowhere we didn’t choose to go, in fits and starts, sometimes slow, sometimes beyond any sensible limits.

We could have gone anywhere, if we’d just ignored the directions we were given. Instead, we followed turn after turn, signpost after signpost, going where the arrow pointed, and now we’re here, with everyone else, wondering what the hell went wrong. Wondering why that turn into the green valley looked so pleasing, and why we drove on anyway into the smog and the soot. Why the thing sputters and chokes and makes noises we can’t identify, over miles and miles of busted asphalt and crushed gravel. We wonder why we learn to live with the little imperfections. The tear in the seat where the spring sticks through. The radio that only tunes one channel, poorly. The rearview mirror held up with baling wire and a trunk that won’t quite close. That goddamn muffler.

Yes, someday, this car’s going to die, and nothing will revive it. Someday, this car will cruise or crash to a stop, to its final resting place, its forever home. It’s going to decay and become no more, as will everything around it, up to and including the road itself. A pile of dust it will be, carried on the wind to the desert, mote by obsequious mote, until it’s so far lost, no one would ever know it existed.

That’s where we all go, in the end.

And no hunk of junk is going to stop us.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 152 words, short story: Broke Down Car

Read: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
Comics: Chew 35-38
Music: No Way Back/Cold Day In The Sun, Foo Fighters

since i was eight

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That’s when I wrote a short story for the first time, about a caterpillar who’d fallen into a bowl of popcorn and couldn’t get out.

The sides were slick with butter and he had to dodge the hands that descended again and again, to avoid being eaten.

I guess metaphor was an early love, and an accurate one.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 977 words, short story: Broke Down Car

Read: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
Comics: Chew 31-34
Music: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion, Various

the day after

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It’s time now to rest, to refocus and think about the next thing. In the meantime, it’ll be poems and short stories, maybe a comic or four, a new hip ditty and then…

Then.

It may seem relaxing, but I’m desperate to have had something of an impact. I don’t need to be Jesus or Buddha; I’ll take minor pantheon member. But hell, even though I’ve got so many plans, it still feels like my race is run, like the egg timer is about to go off and my goose will be officially cooked.

You know, the usual hair on fire stuff.

So, yeah. Back to work, back to the work. Downtime, with a side of poetry.

Also, selling The Mungk, but hey, every act of creation has its cross to bear.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 81 words, poem: Roses And Violets

Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 5-8
Music: The No Fun, Local H

nothing finer

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Than to be in a v… wait. No.

There’s nothing finer than a cup of coffee, a mix of David Bowie/Rise Against/Nine Inch Nails in your ears, as you finalize the edits on the fourth draft of your novella.

Thirteen scenes I hope to combine to six.

I know you can’t sell a novella. I’m hoping to package it as The Mungk & Other Bullshit, which I realize will be a tough sell on bookstore shelves, but it’s also an eyecatcher. It was suggested to me to call the book The Little House In The Country, but that sounds fucking boring and generic.

The Mungk is a weird name. And people love swearing.

You see the word Mungk and ask, what the fuck is that (although you might be one of those people who don’t swear like longshoremen, so you might say, “what a strange looking word, perhaps I should inquire as to its meaning” and then drink some tea with your pinky out and adjust your monocle, you fucking weirdo), and then pick it up.

Pick it up and maybe buy it. And then maybe that money goes through the various systems of skimming off the top from the store, the distributor, the publisher, agents, managers and probably some grifting professional organization that claims to advocate for authors, but actually keeps them poor and begging, like the RIAA and MPAA do to movies and music, and then finally, that pittance will arrive in my bank account, where it’s probably already been paid out in an advance and I’ll actually get nothing extra for it at all.

But if enough of you do it…

Well, shit.

Break out the fucking tea.

Target: 700 words
Written: 302 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
Comics: Saga 21-24
Music: Out In L.A., Red Hot Chili Peppers

i guess i shouldn’t write at night

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Maybe late at night if it’s been a not-so-bad day, and I’m all keyed up and need a release.

But writing after a long day of a hard mental slog? It doesn’t leave much to be desired.

I had a thought about writing of wanting to be bigger than you are (on the inside! And not in the squishy, gooey, fatty way), but that’s too big for me now.

I am small.

My words are small. My works are small.

I am a haiku; flash fiction.

A one-shot comic.

A short story.

A novella, bordering on novelette.

What’s a novelette you say?

A book that wears heels and kicks up its legs in a line with its fellow works, all tits and fishnet, grinning to hide the awful realities behind it.

Target: 500 words
Written: 307 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Welcome To Night Vale, Night Valia (I did like it, but the near constant podcast references slowed it waaaaaaaaaaaay down, making me wish time was as weird as they say it is, and thereby I could skim through it a bit faster.  It got to be a bit of a slog.)
Comics: East Of West 5-8 (way, way into this)
Music: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, The Cure (I'd kiss you)

in training

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Back into it. I guess I must be doing okay at work, since they’re offering me extra work most people don’t get (or want, perhaps).

It’s not the greatest job, but as I learn more about who does what in the government and our division, I’m beginning to see that there may be other options.

I mean, as long as this writing thing isn’t paying the bills, which it’s not.

I’ve made exactly zero dollars thus far.

Of course, I don’t expect to make anything off poetry and short stories. Maybe comics. Maybe the hip little ditties if I compile them into a larger volume.

A book of short stories or poetry might work, but I’m a long way from that, and let’s face it – it’s not going to land me on the moon.

That’s the novel prerogative, and even then, it’s dicey. You gotta be good to be great and great to make any cash, which is bullshit.

We massively undervalue art in this world, always have. The absolute cream can make a living; the rest of us are scraping by.

And I don’t believe in the starving artist. I do believe that too much wealth corrupts.

But making a living?

That shouldn’t be something we have to fight for.

Target: 300 words
Written: 176 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: Sex Criminals 5-8
Music: A Jackknife To A Swan, Mighty Mighty Bosstones

so begins canon

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I’ve been poking at it for a while. Haikus and flash fiction are all good, and comic book scripts and thinly veiled political rants are something else, but proof of life, proof of concept, of talent, skill, hard work, dedication, adaptability, open-mindedness, and good old fashioned sex appeal lay in the pudding.

(Or Jello wrestling mud pit, if we’re talking that last thing).

The point is, there’s no me, as I want me to be, without books. Reading is only halfway to completion. It’s the act of creation (which is really just exploration and discovery, connection and understanding), that’s the thing that fills the cup.

(Or Jello mud wrestling pit).

The bottom line is, me as I am now? I’m not happy with that person. That person sucks. That person writes split-sentence haikus and pretentious shit about hats.

(I love them both dearly).

This person that I want to be? He gets dark. He gets into it. He understands subtext and trauma and helplessness in the face of adversity.

He knows how to crush you – your soul anyway.

(He’d likely lose in the Jello pit).

I want to make you uncomfortable; to remember that happy endings are not the only endings, and neither are grand tragedies.

Sometimes, it’s the little tragedies that wreck us whole.

Target: 300 words
Written: 794 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Getting Things Done, David Allen
Comics: Southern Bastards 9-12
Music: Yo! Bum Rush The Show, Public Enemy