My first thought is: I’m too young for dementia, followed quickly by: But I’m not too young to be hearing things. I grab the phone and shove it into the same pocket with my glove. I leave the glove there because I know if I try to take it out and put it on, it’s going to just plop into the snow, guaranteed.
I stand upright and turn around toward South Street to face who or whatever is walking toward me, even though I know there is no way someone could have come from that direction without me seeing or hearing them.
There is, of course, no one there. The footsteps stopped as I turned.
My mind is playing tricks on me. I don’t like this. It’s happened before and it will happen again, but it’s annoying and also I know my great-grandmother actually had dementia, so there’s a history of it in the family and every time something like this happens it terrifies me a little, because it reminds me that the same fate could await me in my later years.
It’s too cold to be thinking about such things. I put the glove on and resume the trudge up to South Street and, hopefully, a firmer entry back into the world where phantom footsteps do not occur.
You know what happens next.
The footsteps resume behind me, coming from the original direction. For a moment this is oddly reassuring. The reassurance is tossed aide quickly and replaced with annoyance. No fear, no terror, just plain annoyance. I’m moving through the five stages of something. I don’t stop. I don’t look back. I just walk. South Street is only a minute away, less if I continue my imitation of The Little Snow Plow That Could.
The wind abruptly picks up and whips in from the east, blasting my face. It’s cold enough to take my breath away. I pull my chin in and adjust the collar of my jacket up. The wind almost sounds like it’s chuckling. Mocking me. And freezing my ass off.
The gust dies down as suddenly as it started and the air is so still and quiet I realize I have stopped moving.
The footsteps have stopped. Not just mine, all of them. Good.
The collar of my jacket flutters. The wind is picking up again. Probably a fresh storm moving in. I seem to recall hearing that on a radio playing somewhere. Time to get moving and get out of here. I resume my seemingly eternal trek to South Street, ignoring the creepy chuckling sound the wind makes. That’s not true, actually, part of my mind is wondering how the acoustics can produce something that sounds so near to a human voice. Maybe the same thing that makes phantom footsteps.
Stupid access road. Next time I’m sticking to the nicely shoveled sidewalks, even if it adds another kilometer or two to my walk. At least I won’t get home sopping wet from the knees down and wondering if my senior years will feature my mind turning into pudding.
I reach the small hill leading up to South Street and begin my ascent, imagining I’m scaling the peak of some mighty mountain. Not Everest, I’d die about ten times on the way up. But still, a mountain of some sort.
I slip and nearly fall. I shoot out my hands for balance and stop to adjust my grip in the snow. I look up and around, flakes are starting to fall again. Even though the rest of the way is plowed and shoveled, home and hot chocolate feel a long way off.
I take another step and this time my foot lands on an ivisible, ice-covered banana peel. My arms pinwheel fruitlessly, though no doubt it would look hilarious to a passerby, then I land hard on my back. Because I’m on a slope the effect is enhanced and I feel that sick whump as the air is knocked out of me. I lay there on my back, flakes gently landing on my cheeks and melting, then make my first attempt to get back up and slide a bit back down the hill. This would still prove hilarious to a passerby, I’m certain.
I’m not hurt, but the disorientation is making it difficult to focus. The wind switches back to roaring and the gentle snowflakes turn on me, pelting into my face.
This is when the chuckling I hear in the wind starts sounding more like a person and less like a byproduct of acoustics. It sounds like it’s coming from behind my head, which is currently smushed down in the crumpled snow made by my footsteps. I see a shadow fall over me. I’m not sure what to think. It’s too cold to pee my pants, so I hold my bladder tight.
Here’s Part 3 of this writing exercise. I have no idea how many parts there will be or how it will end. Or if it will end. Like real exercise, you never know until you get to the gym and start sweating. Okay, that was a terrible analogy.
I am not surprised, but neither am I especially pleased, because I was certain there was someone behind me and the acoustics in the area are not likely to lead me to mistake my own footsteps for those of someone else.
But even as I think this the whole experience begins to muddy in my mind. I am cold and a little tired and in no mood to play games with my own brain. I give in, give up. Yes, I imagined the entire thing. No one was following me. No one was there.
Instead of trudging forward and that much closer to the delicious steaming mug of hot chocolate that would be mine, I pivot around and face the way I came from. I retrace my steps, peering down into the trodden snow, examining my shoe prints and looking for others. There’s not enough light and given that letting my imagination fill in the blanks is quite possibly the reason I am now walking opposite my destination, I stop, pull out my phone and turn on its flashlight function (I wonder if it’s called Torch mode in the UK). I crouch down, my knees creaking unhappily from the cold and the damp, and wave the phone across the path I’ve made. I can see my prints clearly. I don’t see any others.
My imagination, that’s all. Time for hot chocolate and some apparently well-needed rest.
I continue to backtrack just a little more, having not quite reached the point of total satisfaction. It’s kind of like art–I’ll know it when I see it. Or in this case, when I get there.
The not-terribly-impressive beam of light sweeps back and forth from the phone and suddenly it slips through my gloved hand, landing in the snow with a soft plop. It sinks a little. I mutter a choice epitaph, then reach down to scoop it out, but the glove endows my hand with the gift of clumsiness and I instead push it further into the snow.
More cursing ensues. I pull the glove off and stuff it into a coat pocket. I begin fishing with my bare fingers, already numbing from the cold.
It is then that I hear the footsteps coming from behind me.
Part 1 can be found here or if you hate clicking and being whisked away by the internet, it’s also available in the spoiler tag below.
[show_more more=”A Walk in the Snow, Part 1 (click the expand)” color=”#1e73be” size=”110″]
A Walk in the Snow, Part 1
It is very quiet in the snow.
That’s how I hear the person walking behind me. I stop and a moment later the person stops. It is silent again.
I am walking down a service road that’s about two kilometers long. Its main function is to provide access to railway workers and park staff, but there’s little vehicle traffic on it most days. Tonight it’s covered in virgin snow and I’m up to my knees in the stuff after an early winter blast. My breath frosts in front of me, a steamy cloud that drifts up into a clear, dark sky and disappears.
I’m about halfway down the road, heading toward South Street, the main road that runs through my neighborhood. I live a few blocks east of South. I like telling people that, then watch their faces as they try to process it.
It’s bright enough to make my way without a flashlight. There is no artificial light here, just the stars dotting the black above and the snow shimmering around me.
I became aware of the footsteps–more the sound of someone pushing their way through the snow, really–a few minutes earlier. Twice I’ve tested by stopping and the person following has also stopped. It’s hard to escape the sensation that I am prey being stalked. The snow is just deep enough to make a quick escape impossible. The closest things to weapons I carry are my house keys and smartphone. I keep my breathing calm, knowing this person is probably close enough to see the puffs. Don’t show signs of panic. I gaze up at the sky, as if I’m looking for a constellation. Casual. Curious. Inconspicuous.
Maybe.
I resume walking and count one thousand one, one thousand two. The footsteps resume behind me, shushing through the snow. It will take at least fifteen minutes to reach South Street, where the road is plowed, the sidewalks shoveled and regular traffic passes by. It seems very far away. I strain to hear cars but it’s late and all I hear are my steps and the ones mirrored behind me. [/show_more]
A Walk in the Snow, Part 2
It’s nothing, I tell myself. Well, obviously it’s something, but it’s just someone who happened to hit the service road shortly after I did, probably using it as a shortcut in the same way, and the only reason they stop every time I stop is they don’t want to close the gap between us and get awkwardly close, which would be even creepier than simply walking a respectable distance behind.
This is logical enough that my mind clicks over from “stalker with knife will paint the snow with my blood” to “thinking about inane activities to engage in once home and the kettle of water is boiling for a big mug of hot chocolate.” I feel tension is my shoulders and neck ease up, the knots loosening. There’s a long lazy S in the road up ahead and once I’m into the second curve of it I’ll be able to see South Street. If it turns out I’m wrong I can start screaming like a little girl and plunge ahead in the snow, waving my arms frantically to catch the attention of drivers. I can hope the brushed aluminum casing of my phone is more solid than the drop test videos on YouTube suggest if I must brandish it as a weapon.
I enter the midway point of the S and realize my heart is racing and the shoulder and neck muscles have turned taut, but not from fear–from excitement, the excitement of having made it through whatever it was that has been happening on this snow-covered service road. I am likely excited because of an overactive imagination and that produces an actual giggle, one I stifle almost immediately. He might hear it. Or she. Or it.
I pick the pace up a bit, fancying myself an inefficient but determined snow plow. I’m in the bottom of the S now and there it is ahead, the light standard at the entrance of the service road, casting its alien yellow light over the gate that is locked and piled on with snow, looking like a Christmas diorama. Beyond it is South Street. The angle means I can’t quite see it yet, as the service road climbs a short hill where it connects to the main road, but I hear a vehicle go by.
Feeling brave, if not totally victorious, I lurch ahead a little more than stop and dare to turn around and see who has been following me.
I’ve kicked around this story idea for awhile. It uses the same premise as Fade-Out or The Tommyknockers (among other stories). This is Part 1 and I may or may not get finished. For this exercise I’ve decided to tell the story as a series of tweets (it’s a little easier now with the expanded 280 character limit). It’s like a found footage movie, but without the footage.
Tweets from the end of the world
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 3rd
Was riding at Colony Farm, nearly wiped out on something sticking up out of gravel. Something dark, rounded. Dug around a bit with stick, no idea. May come back tomorrow if weather good. Bike & me OK.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 4th
Went back to Colony, brought camping shovel. Tried to dig around object but park worker told me to leave. WTF, they’re never there. Will try again on weekend.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 6th
@RealFrump the name is a Simpsons reference (isn’t everything?) Look it up.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 7th
Back at Colony again. No workers. Dug and wtf, whatever it is, its huge judging from curve. Giant rock? Gravel pit nearby so probably that. Very smooth. Looks like it’s higher out of ground now. Maybe just brain being dumb. #notallbrains
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 8th
Went back to Colony again. YES I AM OBSESSED. Rock is definitely bigger or ground around it is sinking. #notageologist Surface very smooth and cold, almost looks like crystal? No shovel today.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 9th
Brought Liam, we dug for 20 min? Liam: Big as fuckin house. Potty mouth. Surface is translucent. Can almost make out a pattern about an inch or so down. Cloudy so phone pic is crap.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 10th
Definitely rising out of ground. Has pushed up enough to split trail in two. Park workers probably rope off area soon. Better picture of pattern. Just random lines to me. Liam says alien language.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 11th
CAUTION: DO NOT CROSS tape around object on all sides, four posts holding up tape. Looks like boxing ring. No other activity. Object little taller than me, looks like 18-20 feet across (what’s visible). Liam says could be radioactive, stay clear.
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 12th
Temporary fence up now, about 20-30 feet from object. Can go around but off trail very marshy. Object def. taller than me now, maybe 15 feet high. Liam made sketch of hidden part, wrote “alien mothership” underneath. Cute. Like Tommyknockers (shit book but fun) /1
FishBulb @joshuawellons • Nov 12th
Have not lost any teeth yet or built weird energy-saving devices.
A bit of spontaneous writing where Christian (circa Road Closed, when he is 20 years old) talks about his hair and puberty (925 words):
Christian talks about his hair, puberty and jetting blood
What would you think if I told you I’m a redhead? Would you think I have a fiery temper? That I’m a passionate lover?
I’m pretty mellow most of the time. The rest of the time I’m usually asleep. As for being a passionate lover, I kiss like a St. Bernard. Yeah, it’s gross. Usually because I’ve been drinking. I’m the St. Bernard in that Bugs Bunny cartoon that helps himself to the keg around his neck.
Regarding other redhead myths, I’m also not a witch, and the question of whether or not I have a soul remains to be determined. I probably won’t be able to answer that one, at least not without scaring the crap out of you when I return from the spirit realm with a really convincing response.
Puberty arrived shortly after I turned 14 and a couple of things happened, as you probably know from that talk your mom and dad avoided having that you later heard on the street. The first was the growth spurt. I went from kid height to slightly taller than my father in what felt like a span of a few weeks. I swear I could actively hear my bones popping and stretching.
And the hair. Oh god, the hair. It was like I caught a hair grenade just as it exploded. Hair on my chest, hair down yonder–so much and so fast that I almost wanted to ask about it, wondering if it was normal. But who do you talk to about something that? A priest at confession, maybe, but my family didn’t go to church. Besides, it wasn’t a sin, it was just weird.
The facial hair was the biggest surprise. We’ve all seen those high school photos where the guys are sporting wispy My First Mustaches. They look ridiculous, all of them. I didn’t have one of those. I woke up one morning and had five o’ clock shadow, as if someone had pressed it onto the lower half of my face and neck while I slept. It was so thick it might have been applied with a paint brush. By the end of each day I had enough stubble to strike a match on. I hated it. Worst of all, while the rest of my hair was a brilliant red, the facial hair was jet black. I was two-tone. It looked ridiculous. I looked ridiculous.
I taught myself to shave by using my dad’s Gillette razor. He also had a straight razor I’d seen him use once or twice but the one time I picked it up I got the strongest, strangest premonition that involved me staggering around the bathroom, painting the room with the blood jetting from my neck. I cut myself plenty with the Gillette because I had no idea what I was doing, I was just desperate to get rid of the two-tone, because it was entirely too mock-worthy and as we all know, schoolkids are not kindly creatures.
After a particularly bad week of nicks that left my face and neck covered with dabs of toilet paper, I made a trip to the local pharmacy and furtively headed past the shelves of condoms and lubricants to the hair coloring section. I grabbed a box and for a moment considered lifting it. I have one of those YES I JUST COMMITTED A CRIME COME AND SEARCH ME faces, though, so I shuffled to the checkout at the back of the store to pay for the goods.
“Is that for your mother?” the checkout girl asked. She was about 18 but I didn’t recognize her. She was in high school, I was in middle school. We orbited in different galaxies.
I lifted my head, wondering why I didn’t think of that, and was about to proclaim, “Oh god yes! Of course it’s for my mother!” and then she really looked at me and I watched her eyes go from my (red) hair to my face to the box of hair color, back to my face, and then rather too quickly to the till to ring through the purchase.
Dammit.
The worst part is I made a complete botch-up of the dye job. I read the instructions, it didn’t matter. I was sober. Again, it made no difference. I had plenty of shadow but not really enough hair. My attempt left the bottom of my face looking diseased. I shaved off the stubble and scoured the dye that had stained through to the skin with some pumice soap my mom had but never used. It made me smell nice, but left my face looking raw and terrible.
The next day at school was the first time I got mocked for my looks. Of course.
I learned to accept my two-tone hair, but I never learned to like it. I shave religiously now–I say a prayer before each shave that goes something like, “Please God make all of my facial hair fall out and never come back” and then I quickly take it back because I’d probably lose my eyebrows and look like a freak. Also I use an electric razor. Much less nicking and clean-up is easier. For a time I took the shaver with me everywhere, like a companion, and I’d just spontaneously whip it out and make sure that five o’ clock shadow never got past 10 a.m.
I brought it with me to college but one day I forgot it at the apartment, couldn’t find it when I returned, and now I’m apparently growing a beard.
I vowed to write at least 250 words of fiction every day this year, so here’s the first attempt. I tried scouring some writing prompt sites but they left me feeling despair, so I just mulled things over, remembered how much I hate snow and the results are below (352 words).
This is the first part of what could be a scene, a story or a big budget Hollywood production. I can’t say when I’ll write Part 2. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not. It’s a surprise.
A Walk in the Snow, Part 1
It is very quiet in the snow.
That’s how I hear the person walking behind me. I stop and a moment later the person stops. It is silent again.
I am walking down a service road that’s about two kilometers long. Its main function is to provide access to railway workers and park staff, but there’s little vehicle traffic on it most days. Tonight it’s covered in virgin snow and I’m up to my knees in the stuff after an early winter blast. My breath frosts in front of me, a steamy cloud that drifts up into a clear, dark sky and disappears.
I’m about halfway down the road, heading toward South Street, the main road that runs through my neighborhood. I live a few blocks east of South. I like telling people that, then watch their faces as they try to process it.
It’s bright enough to make my way without a flashlight. There is no artificial light here, just the stars dotting the black above and the snow shimmering around me.
I became aware of the footsteps–more the sound of someone pushing their way through the snow, really–a few minutes earlier. Twice I’ve tested by stopping and the person following has also stopped. It’s hard to escape the sensation that I am prey being stalked. The snow is just deep enough to make a quick escape impossible. The closest things to weapons I carry are my house keys and smartphone. I keep my breathing calm, knowing this person is probably close enough to see the puffs. Don’t show signs of panic. I gaze up at the sky, as if I’m looking for a constellation. Casual. Curious. Inconspicuous.
Maybe.
I resume walking and count one thousand one, one thousand two. The footsteps resume behind me, shushing through the snow. It will take at least fifteen minutes to reach South Street, where the road is plowed, the sidewalks shoveled and regular traffic passes by. It seems very far away. I strain to hear cars but it’s late and all I hear are my steps and the ones mirrored behind me.
Writing exercise: It's five minutes before a massive meteor is set to directly impact the Earth. There are plenty of theories on what will happen, but they all share one grim thing in common: the near-certainty that humanity will be extinguished.
Write from the perspective of someone waiting during those final five minutes.
Writing exercise writer's note: I left this for a few months, having struggled to come up with a better ending than just stopping abruptly. I also wanted to make it better fit the parameters of the exercise (spoiler: the exercise goes on after the meteor hits). Instead, I've decided to post it as is because the pursuit of perfection is noble but also dumb when I could be pursuing another imperfect writing project.
I reserve the right to come back to this some day.
Enjoy!
I’m looking at the battery indicator on my MacBook. It estimates I have just over four hours of juice left. That should be enough. More than enough, really.
I’m sitting on a large, weather-smoothed boulder, legs dangling off the edge, the MacBook precariously balanced on my lap. One wrong shift and off it goes, bouncing down a rocky hill to its inevitable destruction. It would cost a thousand bucks to replace but I’m not concerned. Laptops are about to become a relic of the past.
Three days ago an amateur astronomer in Hawaii spotted an asteroid ten kilometers wide.
The boulder I’m sitting on is in a park on the coast, near Vancouver. I look out at English Bay, the water is sparkling and calm, and then look up, trying to imagine the asteroid against the soft blue of the mid-summer sky. I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around a chunk of rock ten kilometers wide, not one hanging up there impossibly in the sky.
Big asteroids blasting the Earth are pretty rare. The last one this size came down 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.
This one was sneaky—if you can imagine a ten kilometer rock being sneaky—in that it came toward us from the sun. It wasn’t until its trajectory curved out and beyond the blinding light of our solar furnace that anyone knew it existed.
I saw the amateur astronomer in Hawaii interviewed twice. The first was on discovery day. He was gleeful, practically bouncing off the walls, unable to contain his excitement. Amateurs don’t make a lot of these discoveries. The second interview was this morning. He was ashen and never looked directly at his interviewer or the camera. He appeared to have lost weight, though I wasn’t sure how he could lose enough for it to be noticeable in just three days.
A sneaky asteroid—that is, one arriving largely unseen because the sun has obscured its path—is not necessarily a bad thing. But in this case it is. Its path is predicted to intersect with our mostly lovely planet with a 99% degree of certainty.
In about five minutes, if estimates are right.
There are ideas on how to deal with these kinds of celestial threats, but that’s all they are–ideas, theories on paper. We have nothing prepared.
The first day was one of confusion, but a growing sense of panic was palpable by nightfall. The second day was confirmation of the worst from many sources. Political leaders made awkward speeches calling for calm, offering reassurances that were naked lies. Then they disappeared. The end of Day Two spun off into bedlam.
People didn’t exactly riot here, but there was a lot of looting. Police initially attempted to keep order but quickly retreated. Then everyone retreated. The city streets filled up as people attempted to get out. The few remaining looters were swept away by crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Violence was inevitable. I managed to pick my way through back yards and alleys to escape unscathed. I came here, to this park, for the end. And for the view.
Fires dot the skyline. When I turn my head to the east I count nine columns of smoke over the downtown core. There are more beyond that. I appreciate the irony that the destruction began before a single speck of meteor dust entered the atmosphere.
The likely point of impact—also with that reassuring 99% degree of certainty—is the Pacific Ocean, which I am looking at. A breeze is picking up, but it’s just a breeze, gentle and refreshing, carrying the cool tang of sea air. While exact angle and speed of impact are yet to be determined—or maybe I missed the report amid the chaos—it’s reckoned that Ol’ Snuffy (my name) is going to leave a dent in the planet roughly 200 kilometers from where I’m sitting. It’s not Ground Zero but it’s close, relatively speaking. I looked up the effects on the internet—also about to become a relic of the past—not because I’m ghoulish but because I like going into situations with my eyes open. You know—give it to me straight, doc, how bad is it?
The good news is I won’t be vaporized.
That’s actually not good news because vaporization would be swift and painless.
I can see it in the sky now. Even this far away, there are streaks descending. They said it would break apart and once again those brainy scientists were right. I suddenly gasp and realize I’ve been holding my breath. My brain is trying to process a lot of things right now. If those internet sites are right, I could be dead and gone in fifteen minutes. Or I might survive. If I do I will find myself living in a world transformed into an unrecognizable hellish landscape. That could be interesting.
I count the streaks. There are eight that I can see, slowly fanning apart from each other. One of these glows bright, too bright to look at directly, almost a mini-sun, the core of Ol’ Snuffy making a beeline.
I look at the clock on my laptop. 3:21 p.m. A sequence of descending numbers, like a countdown.
My first kiss. Should I be thinking of that? It’s one of those first meaningful moments, so I suppose it should come to me swiftly and with fond remembrance. But I’m not sure who it was. Suzanne? Peggy? Jennifer? I don’t want to claim I was some kind of scoundrel, but I had a definite “kiss all the girls” phase and it rolled straight into kissing for real, advancing beyond kissing and running away before finding out what happened next.
3:23 p.m. now. The streaks have vanished over the horizon. I hold my breath again.
It was Peggy. I’m sure of it. I had a mad crush on her. Red hair, freckles. She liked to arm wrestle and she could beat me since I had scrawny scarecrow arms. I have no idea where she is now.
Nowhere safe, though. The scientists told us no such place existed.
I experience it first as a vibration that comes up through the boulder, tickling my bottom. The horizon suddenly changes, the fuzzy white sky is suddenly cast in bright colors—orange, red, mixed with muddy browns and blacks. Ejecta. The fact that I can see this from two hundred kilometers away is impressive. I could be terrified but am fascinated instead. How many people will ever see something like this?
The shockwave hits next. I don’t know how long it takes to reach me. It feels like minutes but is probably seconds. I am swept off the boulder. The MacBook blows away as if made of paper. I tumble onto the ground but am fortunate that recent rains have left it soft, almost spongy. I roll up against a cedar and remain there, unable to move for a time. I hear a loud crack, then many loud cracks, like a series of explosions.
For a moment it gets very hot. I wonder if I will be boiled in my own skin.
The shockwave passes.
I slump away from the cedar and realize it is no longer standing. Most of the trees have been snapped and lay flat. I wonder how none came down on me. The boulder has shifted to the left and looks a little wobbly. It must weigh a couple of tons.
My hair is a mess.
I stand up and see blood on my hands. Rivulets of blood run down both arms. My legs threaten to buckle but I manage to stay upright, for the moment, at least.
Apparently it is more than my hair that is a mess.
The ejecta is spreading out now, an ever-expanding mushroom cloud of debris. Acid rain will start falling soon. I’ll need to find some place to hide…for the next six months to a year.
I laugh. I didn’t expect to survive. This kind of sucks.
The rain shouldn’t be a problem if those internet sites were right, though. Something else will come first. I cup a hand to my left ear and listen. The sound is muffled, like it’s caught in a bottle. Did the shockwave shatter my eardrums? I don’t think so because I definitely hear something.
A distant roar. Is it real? I think it is.
The mega-tsunamis promise to be as tall as skyscrapers. They will be impressive sights.
I don’t swim very well.
I stagger over to the boulder—my right leg hurts like hell, there’s probably a broken bone or two shifting around inside—and set a hand against it to steady myself. That’s enough to start the boulder rolling. It lumbers down the hill, picking up speed before plunging over the edge and landing in the water with a satisfying dunk.
I fall over, too weak to stand unaided, and curl up, leaving the right leg extended. I am facing away from the water.
I want to see.
With pain bursting like bombs in my right leg, I shift until I am propped up on my elbows, looking across the bay. I can’t hold the position, though, and collapse onto my back. The sky above is still hazy blue, as if nothing has happened. As if this is all a dream.
My dreams never have this kind of continuity, though. The roaring is louder, much louder. I loll my head to the left. There is a cedar stump still stuck halfway in the ground. I could prop myself up against it. But even though it is nearly close enough to touch if I stretch out a hand, it looks very far away. I don’t think I can do it.
Instead I lay back again, pushing my head against the soft, spongy ground. I close my eyes.
The roar grows until it hurts my ears. I make feeble motions to cover them but give up. I wait for the tsunami to claim me.
It is geography—the earth itself—that saves me. Vancouver Island absorbs most of the energy of the tsunamis, and the waves that make it through the strait are big but not deadly. I feel water come up around me, nearly buoying me, then I settle back onto the ground as it flows by and eventually retreats. There will probably be other waves but my swimming skills aren’t going to be tested.
The sky’s transformation is hastening, though. The threat of a burning rain draws near.
Free writing is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism.
I’ve never been entirely sold on this technique, though I appreciate its goal to stimulate any sort of writing, which is presumably better than not writing when your goal is to write. I don’t mind having unusable material. I’ve certainly written plenty of stuff that was either cut or buried out round back. It’s not like you can do it wrong. Kittens have never been killed due to free writing, not to my knowledge, anyway. Where’s the harm in giving it a whirl?
And so here’s five minutes of free writing.
Fred always wondered what happened when you died. He figured it couldn’t be good because no one ever came back to say stuff like, “This Heaven place is awesome!” On the other hand, maybe post-living was so awesome that everyone who died was having too much fun to come back and rub it in the face of the living. Or maybe you evolved to a higher plane and ended up with a superiority complex and couldn’t be bothered to speak to lowly organic forms of life.
“Oh, yes, I knew them when I was mere flesh and blood, but there’s no way I could ever communicate with them again. We exist at profoundly different levels. I see the ever-expanding cosmos, they see Walmart flyers and what a great deal ketchup is this week. We have no common frame of reference.”
Fred thought some more. His Uncle Joe died at age 62. A bit young–shy of retirement age–but he couldn’t really picture Joe as evolving to a higher form. The guy could barely dress himself without putting his pants on backward. How could he become one with the cosmic firmament? He wouldn’t even know what cosmic firmament was. “Sounds candy ass to me,” he’d say.
And what if you killed yourself? Would you just snuff out in a ball of negative energy? Would you evolve sideways into something not-quite-cosmic? Fred couldn’t get past the idea that killing yourself was cowardly.
And stop. There it is, five minutes and 241 words of Fred contemplating death, raw and unpolished, just like Fred himself, whoever he is.
(I fixed the typos because typos bug me. Actually, it’s not the typos so much as the angry red squiggly lines underneath them.)
I just checked the CBC site. So far no word of kitten deaths as a result of this exercise. I consider this a win. Now I shall absorb the fruits of my labor to write something magical and exciting.
What better way to conclude an evening of spamming posts to my blog than to provide a summary of my current state of writing or SOW as I like to call it (starting just now).
I have divided my writing into four categories, each more daring and fancy than the previous!
Category 1: Blog and forum posts Status: Firing on all cylinders
I do this sort of writing every day, without effort and often without thought. Whether it’s posting the latest online gaming bargains on Broken Forum or lamenting my inability to float in water on this here blog, this is the one category that is never wanting for output. Each in its own way helps improve my fiction writing, too, by either simply exercising the writing muscles that may atrophy otherwise or through communal efforts like National Novel Writing Month.
Category 2: The Ferry (2009 NaNoWriMo novel) Status: Like a slow ship steaming along a lazy river
I am slowly working through the second draft of my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel The Ferry. My intention is to do some work on it every day and have it self-published with a decent cover before the end of the year. I will start work on another novel sometime this year, as well.
Category 3: Short stories olde and new Status: Like a car that sat all winter and you wonder if the battery’s dead but hey it’s not, so you may actually get somewhere
On the olde side I am working on cleaning up 30+ short stories with the intention of putting them together into a single volume to self-publish. I have no set timeframe on this and the stories vary in terms of work needed from minimal to ‘maybe this should be buried in the back yard if I had a back yard’. I am also working on new stories as I think of them, as long as they don’t distract from my novel writing. Unless the stories are so super-awesome that they simply must be written. Yeah.
Category 4: Writing exercises Status: Uncertain
I have participated in writing exercises on and off since my days as a callow youth in college when I wrote bad poetry (my specialty) right up to having my own website devoted specifically to the task (which started out nicely but collapsed when I could not keep up the silly pace I had set out for myself). As my last few attempts to gather like-minded people to participate has met with middling success I haven’t done anything of late. I’ve decided on a new approach, which is to semi-regularly challenge myself with a particular exercise, complete it, then invite others to do the same and if they do, more to share and if they don’t I’ve already done my bit on keeping myself challenged and engaged.
I have been busy as all get-out and as such haven’t completed this exercise yet — but I will! In a way I’m hoping to get early feedback to see if it helps shape the rest of the story.
When the alarm clock went off at 7 a.m. Paul Benson struck it with such force it flew off the nightstand, bounced off a dresser and tumbled to the floor. Thanks to a sturdy and extra-long electrical cord, it remained plugged in and continued to shriek that it was time to get up.
Paul rolled over and considered the now empty nightstand with a glare. His head was pounding with what felt like the worst headache ever. He had no idea where it had come from, he’d never woken with one before, not when sick, not when hungover. Probably a brain tumor, he thought as his eyes searched the semi-darkness for the clock. He spied it sitting upside down on a pair of balled-up socks. He rose out of bed and as he stood a hand automatically went to his temple and massaged it. This thing hurt good.
He bent down to shut the clock off and its buzzing felt like a physical force, a force that was pushing straight through the skin, bone and flesh of his forehead and drilling directly into his brain. He found himself wobbling on one bent knee, barely keeping upright. He thrust a hand out and felt the plastic casing of the clock. His grip tightened. He wanted to crush it in his hand and for a moment gave an attempt to do just that. No good. He settled on tossing it at the nearest wall but the cord held tight and the clock snapped back, nearly hitting in the face.
Karma, Paul thought. Karma has decided that today is the day I’m going to pay for every shitty little thing I’ve done in the first 29 years of my life. He considered. That would be a lot of things. But all of them little! He realized he was pleading his case to no one and the alarm clock was still doing its hellscream. He traced the cord to the wall and half-expected to find it had welded itself to the outlet in an act of machine rebellion but the plug popped out easily and the room fell into silence.
All the better to appreciate the throbbing in my head, Paul thought. He shuffled to the bathroom, grabbed two Advil from the medicine cabinet (he held the bottle up and saw the expiry date was a month past; fine, he was willing to work with a placebo effect) and washed them down with a glass of water that smelled of toothpaste.
He decided to skip breakfast, the headache had killed his appetite (this was a lie, his stomach was rumbling but there was no way he could go through the ritual of cooking a few eggs with his eyes nearly crossing from the pain). He’d grab a bagel and coffee on the way to the university.
After pulling on a pair of jeans, his trusty faded sneakers and a clean t-shirt he grabbed his shoulder bag and considered his face in the hall mirror. He looked about the way he felt. He tried a fake smile and when the mirror didn’t crack he nodded in mute satisfaction and headed off to the bus stop.
Arriving early he had time to kill and pulled out his phone but the thought of reading through the morning mail was actively unappealing. He needed a new prescription for his glasses and squinting at the small screen would only make the headache worse.
The Advil so far had done nothing. So much for the placebo.
He grateful that for the moment that no one else was there yet. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Clear my mind, empty my thoughts and all that shit, he thought. That will help.
It did not. With his eyes closed the headache loomed larger, a kettle drum being thumped inside his head by some mad musician. He put a hand out to steady himself (how many times had he done this already?) but missed the intended pole by several inches and nearly toppled over. As he straightened up he found himself looking at a boy of about ten. He had a skateboard tucked under an arm like a briefcase and a similarly business-like look on his face.
“You don’t look so good,” he said to Paul, except to Paul’s ears the words were not said, they were shouted with the force of a hurricane. YOU DON’T LOOK SO GOOD. Jesus, no need to yell, he thought.
“No need to yell,” he repeated, aloud. His own voice was a booming echo.
The kid shrugged and headed off.
Over the next few minutes the stop filled with about half a dozen people, two of whom were a young couple, probably headed to the university. They were talking excitedly about dinner plans. Talking very loudly. Paul wanted to glare at them, to tell them to shut up but he knew they would give him the same look as the kid. He pulled the ear buds out of his shoulder bag and stuffed them into his ears. He wasn’t going to listen to music—no freaking way he was piping any kind of sound directly into his head—but these were in-ear and nicely blotted out environmental sound. The voices immediately switched to a muffled roar. This was acceptable.
When the bus pulled in Paul shuffled to the back—he was shuffling a lot this morning—and took a seat in the last row, next to the window, a cubbyhole that served him well for avoiding conversation with strangers. This was an express bus and only made a few stops on its way to the university. Paul chose to deviate from his usual ride routine and simply shut his eyes, the throb of the headache washing inside his skull like a pounding surf. Maybe he’d go to the campus infirmary and see if they had something stronger than his Advil. Or at least not expired.
When he felt the bus lurch forward Paul fluttered his eyes open for a quick survey. There was one row of seats directly in front of him, tow on each side of the aisle and then a row of side-facing seats beyond those, each row three-wide. He hated those seats, you’d sitting there looking directly into the faces of other passengers for the whole ride. It was creepy.
A pair of old Chinese women were sitting in the left side-facing seats, the third and final seat occupied by an insanely large and perfectly square wicker purse that belonged to the woman beside it. They were regulars and nothing about them immediately struck Paul as out of the norm. The one beside the massive purse wore a similarly massive straw hat, presumably to keep the sun off (not a bad idea, early summer was already being cruel and hot) and had a purple scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her pants were green. Always green. Paul called her Greenpants. The other woman was like the parallel universe version of Greenpants. She wore a scarf but hers was green and her pants were purple. She was Purplepants. Greenpants and Purplepants would converse very loudly for the entire trip, never looking directly at each other, shouting their words straight at the people sitting in the side-facing seats opposite them.
He could hear the conversation beginning now, muffled by the ear buds. He couldn’t understand anything they said as they spoke Cantonese and he knew not a word of it. That was fine. He doubted he would gain much by knowing what they said. Ignorance is bliss and all that.
Even with the ear buds the conversation was loud. Again Paul had the impression that the words were a force, a physical thing that hit the buds and then pressed against and around them, looking for purchase, a way to get in and make sure that headache would never leave.
The bud in Paul’s left ear suddenly popped out. This had never happened before and Paul was filled with a sudden unexplainable dread as he watched the bud fall and then rock back and forth on the concave cushion of the empty seat beside him. The volume of the conversation between Greenpants and Purplepants went from about 2 to 11 in the same instant and Paul’s hand shot to his left ear, trying to offer protection from the verbal bullets peppering it. He turned his head slowly to the pair of women. Their chatter often overlapped and he could see both of their mouths going to town. But there was something else.
He could understand what they were saying.
“I am not going to buy the fish today from Ako. I did not like the fish last time, it did not smell right. I think he has a new supplier and he is not very good. Maybe I will tell Ako this—“
“—then he said he was going to fix the roof but ha, I doubt he will do it. He is always a talker but he never does what he says. Maybe if he doesn’t talk so much he will do more things instead.”
The conversation was as banal as he had always suspected but that didn’t change the fact that he did not understand Cantonese and yet he clearly understood every uninteresting thing the two women were saying. Odder still, he was fairly certain they were not speaking English—the only language he knew if you didn’t count a few phrases he had managed to not forget from high school Spanish—but the understanding was there all the same, as if something was automatically translating the words for him.
A dream, Paul thought. This is a dream. That rang false, though. The headache was too real for this to merely be a dream and the details of everything were too accurate. Nothing was off-kilter, everything was exactly as it should be, except he suddenly knew what Greenpants and Purplepants were saying.
Thinking of the headache made Paul realize it had finally started to subside, which offered a small measure of relief even as panic began creeping up to take its place.
He decided to try something.
Her looked to the woman closest to him—Purplepants—and called to her. He didn’t know her name, of course, so all he could do was shout, “Hey lady!” like one of the Beastie Boys. She was oblivious so he leaned forward (the seat in front of him was still empty this early in the ride—the back of the bus was always the last to fill, something Paul relied on) and called to her again. Her constant stream of chatter shut off and she looked to him with opaque eyes.
“Yes?”
Paul opened his mouth. He knew what he wanted to say but didn’t know exactly how to say it. He wasn’t sure what would even come out of his mouth.
“Do you understand me?” he finally said.
She stared with her opaque eyes and said nothing. Greenpants was also now looking at Paul, her expression somewhat less inscrutable. A bit annoyed, if he had to guess.
Paul repeated the question.
Purplepants turned to Greenpants for the first time and opened her mouth but then closed it and looked back at Paul instead. Her eyes now mirrored those of her friend.
“You should not listen to conversations that do not concern you,” she said, pursing her lips together tightly.
“But you’re shouting. You’re right beside each other and you’re shouting! I can’t help but hear you!”
“It is rude to listen,” Purplepants told him. She nodded. The conversation was over.
She turned to Greenpants and her voice dropped down to what Paul considered a normal speaking tone. “Why is he suddenly talking to us?” she said. “He doesn’t even understand.”
Greenpants concurred. “I have always found him strange, sitting there by himself.”
Paul waved a hand. “Uh, I can still hear you.”
“See?” Purplepants shot a half-glance at him. “He still talks! Very odd.”
At which point they resumed exchanging the banalities of their daily lives again, ignoring Paul as they always had up until a few minutes ago.
Paul sat back in his seat. There was a difference when Purplepants spoke to him. Her voice sounded natural, the inflection and accent of the words were those of someone who spoke little English. But when she talked to Greenpants her voice took on that weird translated quality again. He realized they had no idea he could understand every word they said. He was a one-way translator. That didn’t seem very useful.
But it did freak him out.
He fished the ear bud off the seat and screwed it securely back into his left ear. Their conversation became a murmur again. Paul began to think.
This is a story I wrote today for the writing exercise outlined here as part of the All-Purpose Writing Thread. It’s called “Transformations” and because it’s 2,600+ words I’ve hidden it behind one of those jump thingies if you are looking at it on the main blog page.
Putting new lyrics to an established song is nothing new — it’s done regularly for parody but it’s still a fun exercise, especially if you try for a specific focus.
For example, the song ‘California Girls’ (Mike Love, Brian Wilson) takes 2:47 to explain how girls all around the U.S. (and the world) are nifty but what would be the niftiest of all is if they were California girls, presumably because they’d have rockin’ tans and actually be near enough to date/chase/moon over. Not exactly deep stuff:
Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I’m down there
Doing the old gender switch is easy for the chorus since it doesn’t rhyme.
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls
Becomes:
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California boys
Simple! In fact, the rest of the song can easily be switched around, gender-wise, too. This is probably the trickiest verse:
The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a French bikini on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand
What would be the equivalent of a French bikini for guys, especially of that era (mid 1960s)? How about cut-offs? A substitute for ‘dolls’ is tougher. Studs, maybe? Was that in the vernacular back then? I don’t know offhand because I was about one year old at the time and my fashion sense was limited to diapers and pooping in them.
The West coast has the sunshine
And the guys all get so tanned
I dig blue jean cut-offs on Hawaii island
Studs by a palm tree in the sand
Not exactly a masterpiece but hey, if someone ever starts up The Beach Girls, they’re good to go.
How about making the song about music?
Well East coast bands are hip
I really dig those styles they play
And the Southern jazz with the way they strum
They knock me out when I leave L.A.
The Mid-West farmer’s hoedown really make you feel alright
And the Northern cats with their drums and songs
Will keep you grooving all the night
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California bands
Again, not the stuff of genius but we’ve shifted focus of the song while keeping as much of the original lyrics intact, creating a kind of alternate universe version of it.
Giving yourself the freedom to change the lyrics as much as you want, sticking only to the actual meter of the song (‘sung to the tune of…’) makes it both easier (no need to hew to the spirit/theme of the original) and more difficult (what will the song be about?)
I’m still mulling over choices but I’m thinking of something profound and grim to go with the jaunty music. I’ll post an update when I have put together my morose musings. If I can record it via some karaoke thing, all the better*!
