TBD on Ning
Parts
This thread is for those parts of tales we’ve written – inspired beginnings (or middles and endings) and flashes of brilliance that came out of nowhere – only to mysteriously disappear as quickly as they came- leaving us stranded at our keyboards.
Good writing, but orphaned without a “rest of the story”.
Check your files…show off some of that stuff. Who knows? Maybe now is the right time to complete it.
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Permalink Reply by Bmichael on
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He jumped at the knock on the outside door.
Before turning on the porch light, he pulled back the curtain.
Her back was towards him, long, silver waist length hair shimmering in the weak light of the street lamp below, as she peered down into the alley at the group of kids staring up at her.
She made it.
His order was here.
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Taking the envelope as she passed, he waited until she was seated on the wooden stool in the corner and opened it.
“Thank you for choosing Alice’s Restaurant – where you can always get “anything you want”. Please verify that you have received what was expected.”
Name: G12
Height: 6’2”
Age: n/a
Weight: 112 lbs (or less)
Eye Color: Green, blue, none.
Lips: Pouty
Breasts: Minimal
Toes: None
Tatoos : OK
Smoke: No
Drink: Required
Education: Rhodes Scholar
“Ethics” he said.
“If ethics depends on God’s will, then something is good because God desires it.”
“Something isn’t good because God desires it. God desires something because it’s already good.”
“Ethics doesn’t depend on God’s will.”
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
Wanna beer?
Yes.
Take off your shirt.
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They sat , legs dangling over the edge of the opening in the closet floor, staring as the stairway disappeared into the darkness below.
“I wonder how far down it goes?”
“Can’t tell…but it’s way past this building.”
She finished the beer and tossed the empty can into the hole.
They listened as it clanked down the steps and off the narrow walls for a long time – the racket growing fainter until it disappeared.
“I don’t think it stopped – just got out of range.”
“Woooo…scary!” she giggled.
For a while they sat in silence.
“Let’s go see” she said.
“Huh? See what?”
“What’s down there…”
“Uhh…I don’t know…umm…”
“Aw, c’mon…it’ll be fun.”
“Don’t you have another …er… engagement?”
“Nope. After you, I’m off – three days. Let’s do it!”
“I don’t know…I…”
“Whattya, chicken? “ she teased.
“No it’s just that I…”
“Bock, bock, bock!” she crowed.
H e looked down the hole, back at her, and down the hole again.
“Ok. But first I gotta get some things. “
“Like what?”
“Pants, for one. And so should you.”
“Why?” she grinned.
Ignoring her, he continued.
“And we’ll need a light. And some bug spray.”
“Bug spray? For what?”
“Giant hairy spiders. It’s probably full of them down there.”
“Ya think? Really? COOL.”
“Be right back.”
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Permalink Reply by Westerly_2 on
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Sounds like a guy I dated in high school who was scared on the rollercoaster. looked like he wished death would take him out of his misery.
Keep the spooky stories coming; you're good at it. Dialogue is great: "Bock, bock, bock!" Brilliant.
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They say old people get strange if they live alone too long. Maybe soon I will hire someone to stay with me – a nurse or a housekeeper. I guess I could ask my doctor for his input in taking these steps. I wonder if Horace would stop talking to me in my dreams then, with someone else around. It’s a pleasant time conversing with Horace – it’s mostly listening for me as he is a wound-up nonstop sort of speaker when he gets going. It’s bad when he goes on a rant, but mostly it’s about food preferences or the sorry state of politics and punditry. Horace is a historical whiz, as my late husband was, pointing out the parallels between ancient thens and modern nows.
Horace was my husband’s dog – big and rascally, needy and demanding – of no particular breed, only black lab-ish with a curly tail and lolling tongue. He is always pushing up under my hands to rub his head, and yapping about the ball at my feet.
And who knew it, before he started telling it all, that his muttship was so resentful of so much? Of how they yanked him off his mother’s tit so soon to peddle him off to the first free home. Or that he suffered so from the treatment he received from Fiona the Irish setter from next door who, after bearing his flopsy, roly-poly pups, (and don’t think I didn’t hear bitter words about it from the keepers of Champion Fiona Lyric of Bonnie Princess, or some such thing, I don’t remember), held him at bay with distain, as her handlers held me. He tells me not to think a dog like himself doesn’t care about his pups. I hear him rant and wail about how they disappeared from the yard, one by one, as “free pups,” no doubt, scruffy and funny as they looked.
“That bitch,” Horace has said more than once, and I can’t say I like that language.
(to be continued, if you like)
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Thanks. It does have a middle and an end, all of it pretty strange.
(A metaphor, of course)
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Permalink Reply by Marilyn on
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Great stuff, Westerly! Love the concept of Speaking Dog Language. Keep 'er comin'!
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Just now Horace is reclining in discomfort beside the bonded leather couch – mind you, he’d be on the couch if I let him, and I see him sometimes jumping off when I walk into the room. He is all cramped up from something he ate, it seems. He’s forever gnawing on some strange thing. There is a hole in the back fence too, so I can’t know where he goes or all he does. He tells me he was drawn to some fallen apples on the ground somewhere, and I believe him. He says the apples were wonderfully “spikey,” as he put it, and gave him a “head change,” he says. Honestly, knocked my socks off, this “head change” idea. It was what he needed to get his mind off the Fiona business, he thinks. His breath is foul and he expels a thickly sulfurous gas in his tossing, turning sleep. Trouble always seems to find him; he is my problem child. Yet he can be such good company, a treat when he expounds so smartly on the shows I like to watch – those science shows. He waves aside those jerky Sasquatch videos.
“That’s a human in a gorilla suit,” he says. “Believe me, I can gauge an animal’s stride from the ground up – just like breathing for me. I know its speed, its health, how it feels and what it’s thinking. That video there is a poorly paid actor in an ill-fitting suit who can’t fool this old dog.”
Good to know.
(I have warned him against bad apples, but it's always something new).
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I have warned him against bad apples, and he seemed to agree, but it’s always something new with him. When he’s not breaking the handle off my favorite tea cup with a swish of his fine big tail, he is lapping toilet water, tracking in mud or chewing up pencils. He trots under a cloud of flotsam and jetsam, scattering grime wherever he goes.
Now, tonight he drags in quite late as I doze in my chair. He slinks into the room with his head and tail low and flops at my feet with a sigh. It seems he slipped through the hole in the fence and wandered up the street where a bunch of jovial young fellas lured him into the pub, to the delight of the young ladies. I know that place. I have heard the wild sounds coming from it when I drive past at night – the bass thud of music and the hoots and hollers. There he was petted and stroked and fed sweet salty peanuts and pretzels, one by one from their soft human lady fingers. At some point someone poured what was probably beer into a saucer for him.
“It rocked me just like the apples did,” he says, “and it made me run and chase my tail. But I really am not happy, Ma.” And he nestles his chin on his paws.
“I look at my life and I am not content. What have I accomplished in my nearly 6 years? Where are my golden memories? Who have I saved from drowning? Where are my wins, my ribbons, my precious offspring? I have nothing to leave behind.” He sighs gustily. “I am deeply depressed.”
“Ned and I never had kids, yet our lives were full with our projects, and just being the world to each other.”
Horace snorts. “No offense, Ma. But your circle didn’t ripple out too far. Your world made it as far as your favorite sandwich shop and the estate sales every weekend…a shed full of old chairs with missing seats….I mean if that lifts you up, far be it from me….”
And then he asks me, “Why didn’t you ever take me to the park?” And that is odd; we took him as a pup. One time he fell into the creek and almost drowned because he didn’t know what to do. There he was, in his pre-vocal days, frantically splashing toward shore, his eyes wide.
He shudders and joins me in sleep, and I hear him snuffling and whining off and on all night.
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