Leaves fluttered on the bronzed grass. Hank tightened his grip on the rifle as he crawled into the clearing, his jumpsuit and hat blending into the carpet of Autumn detritus. Thirty yards away grazed an oblivious ten-point buck, antlers almost snarling in the scrub as it chewed the fading shrubbery.
With a whisper of kissing leaves, he sighted the buck in his scope, began to squeeze the trigger...
A howl out of some twisted nightmare tore through the clearing. Hank flinched, fumbling the rifle upward and firing. The deer started, and managed three steps before a giant blur of striped fur enveloped it with a roar. Hank lay prone in the leaves, eyes clinched shut, clutching the rifle to his chest like a safety blanket.
The crunch of deer bone shocked him back to reality. He forced his eyes open, the rest of his body tensed from skin to sinew. His hunter's instinct loosened his grip on the rifle, moved his hand over its action, and kept his eyes locked on the gargantuan cat feasting on its kill, massive canines scything through flesh and bone.
The first click made the beast's ears twitch.
The second made them stand up straight.
The third laid them flat, a low growl emanating from the lowered head still tearing chunks of flesh from its prey.
Hank sighted the striped flank in his scope, praying a .30-06 with a deer load would be enough to bring down the monster.
He wrapped a finger around the trigger, keeping the scope to his eye. He began to squeeze.
The beast reared, a slitted orange eye now filling the scope.
He fired.
The beast charged, sidling left in a blur to catch the bullet near its rear and not lose forward momentum.
Only years of practice guided his hands in that moment, ejecting the spent cartridge and loading another without conscious intervention as thirty yards became three, became none.
Hank threw himself backwards as the great cat leaped.
The shot's report rebounded off trees and rocks and clouds in the clearing.
Hank lay in a mass of moss and fungi at the base of at tree, a single massive paw digging claws into his outstretched boot, its owner dead a few feet away.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
MWA 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 - On The Superhero
In its initial incarnations (especially Superman), the superhero was a powerful form of wish-fulfillment for its creators, mostly young Jewish men escaping from persecution in Europe to a Land of Opportunity across the ocean.
This aspect, combined with the fact that children (read: boys) were the primary audience for comics for decades, led to thousands of stories of black-and-white morality, in which the villain(s) and his villainy were easily identified, and the hero's task was simple: the application of brutality.
A couple punches, kicks, or Batarangs, and justice is served.
No muss, no fuss.
This was good enough for the first twenty years or so, especially when the Nazis were such easily accessible villains for Superman, The Human Torch, or Captain Marvel to beat up again and again.
And of course, the propaganda potential did not go unused, especially in the case of Captain America, which led to the openly-espoused idea, previously just left as a given, that the application of brutality is somehow inherent in the American system of.....government?
Economy?
Geography?
No one took the time to clarify this connection because the country was at war, and no one clarified it afterwards because we felt like masters of the world.
Even so, it became part of our culture, especially as generations of boys and girls ate up the black-and-white morality tales.
As the seventies rolled in, writers at DC and Marvel, the last two remaining comics companies after an idiotic senate subcommittee investigation, began attempting to address deeper issues and more human concepts (and an older audience) than the "punch now, ask questions never" approach of their predecessors.
DC's Green Lantern/Green Arrow explored drug addiction, gang violence, Native American exploitation, pollution, inner city racism, and a myriad of other contemporary debates raging in the halls of college campuses and Congress alike.
Marvel took a different approach, creating more three-dimensional superheroes (beginning with the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man) who had to deal with real-life problems that the whiz-bang characters of the thirties and forties never touched. For example, the Fantastic Four at one point faced bankruptcy because they refused to bank on their fame or inventions.
Spider-Man was and is probably the best example of this shift, being the first true teenage superhero, and being the first example of a comic book character who has a hard life, and that life becomes even more terrible after he becomes a superhero. This would never have been accepted in the two-dimensional morality tales of the previous decades.
But even with these deeper explorations into real-life issues and complexities of the seventies, superheroes remained paragons of the application of violence as a primary means to dispense justice.
It wasn't until 1986, a watershed year in the history of the comic book medium, that anyone set out to truly delve into the inherent nature of the superhero.
The seventies had given rise to the deliberately campy Batman TV show starring Adam West, which had been designed as a deliberately campy satire of the then-current state of the comic: an irrelevant bit of fluff glossing over a truly dark character. Frank Miller saw the darkness, and resolved to bring it to light with The Dark Knight Returns. He started with a Batman who'd started fighting crime in 1939 (when the character was created), and by 1986 was past his prime, living in a Gotham City that had gone to hell in his absence.
This isn't the Bruce Wayne with a smile on his face. This is the guy who saw his parents murdered as a child, something the Adam West show and the comics which inspired it apparently just forgot about. This is Batman walking the streets and seeing a new generation of cold, calculating killers replace the ilk of his parents' murderer, and they're barely old enough to shave. The "hero" is portrayed here as a murderous beast which possessed young Bruce, which was given free reign starting the night of his parents' murder. He does not brutally take down criminals because of some absolute moral duty; he does so because he is haunted, possessed, and in his honest moments admits he loves every minute of it. Especially in contrast to Superman, who is portrayed as a super-sheeple in thrall to a pastiche of Ronald Reagan, blindly obeying orders and carrying out secret wars in Central America.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were hired by DC to craft a story involving several older characters from the then-recently-defunct Fawcett comics. What resulted is Watchmen, a magnificent work of art and a damning indictment of the concept of the hero. Moore created a realistic facsimile of an alternate 1986 America, in which Nixon has remained president for multiple sets of presidential terms by intentionally accelerating the Cold War to the point of walking the razor's edge of Armageddon, and masked heroes are a fact of life.
The comic, a true "graphic novel" (meaning, it contains over 40,000 words, and thus fits the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's definition of "novel"), deconstructs the idea of a person who would put on a mask and fling violence upon those they deem criminals, portraying each of its vigilante characters as socialyl disconnected, impotent, apathetic, sociopathic, and psychotic, respectively.
These are portrayed as the qualities necessary for a person to not only have a black-and-white sense of morality, but to inflict that morality upon others.
Alongside these two books and others came the first ever full-company comics crossover: DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. In what became a fairly regular event at DC, and which Marvel found its own version of, the entire decades-old DC universe was re-written, and much of the light-and-fluffy, easily-digested morality elements were removed in favor of more mature, three-dimensional characters and storylines.
The breakout success of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and the results of Crisis spurred the genesis and development what comic historians now term "The Dark Age of Comics," when the happy-go-lucky punching and kicking and funny gadgets were replaced with grim sociopaths packing heat, a willingness to kill, and a deeply scarred and/or disfigured psyche.
This led to some competition for DC and Marvel for the first time in years as comics publishers like Dark Horse and Image took advantage of the darker-and-edgier trend to market their own characters.
Writers who had grown up with the fluffier versions of the characters eventually rebelled against the trend, resulting in a synthesis of blind traditionalism and superhero psychoses.
This synthesis began in 1996, with Mark Waid and Alex Ross' iconic collaboration, Kingdom Come. In a world filling up with unstable superpowered individuals, Superman and his generation of heroes come into direct conflict with the heat-packing sociopaths of the Dark Ages, all witnessed (and eventually influenced) by Pastor Norman McKay, a completely un-superpowered old man granted visions of a coming superhero apocalypse and guided through them by the Spectre.
As a result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Dark Age concept of the hero, and Waid's humanization of previously-cliched heroes like Superman, the superhero evolved into its current form: individuals with wondrous abilities attempting to make the world a better place, but who are human first, struggling and feeling and able to connect with readers who reach out for some reassurance of stability in an increasingly unstable world.
This aspect, combined with the fact that children (read: boys) were the primary audience for comics for decades, led to thousands of stories of black-and-white morality, in which the villain(s) and his villainy were easily identified, and the hero's task was simple: the application of brutality.
A couple punches, kicks, or Batarangs, and justice is served.
No muss, no fuss.
This was good enough for the first twenty years or so, especially when the Nazis were such easily accessible villains for Superman, The Human Torch, or Captain Marvel to beat up again and again.
And of course, the propaganda potential did not go unused, especially in the case of Captain America, which led to the openly-espoused idea, previously just left as a given, that the application of brutality is somehow inherent in the American system of.....government?
Economy?
Geography?
No one took the time to clarify this connection because the country was at war, and no one clarified it afterwards because we felt like masters of the world.
Even so, it became part of our culture, especially as generations of boys and girls ate up the black-and-white morality tales.
As the seventies rolled in, writers at DC and Marvel, the last two remaining comics companies after an idiotic senate subcommittee investigation, began attempting to address deeper issues and more human concepts (and an older audience) than the "punch now, ask questions never" approach of their predecessors.
DC's Green Lantern/Green Arrow explored drug addiction, gang violence, Native American exploitation, pollution, inner city racism, and a myriad of other contemporary debates raging in the halls of college campuses and Congress alike.
Marvel took a different approach, creating more three-dimensional superheroes (beginning with the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man) who had to deal with real-life problems that the whiz-bang characters of the thirties and forties never touched. For example, the Fantastic Four at one point faced bankruptcy because they refused to bank on their fame or inventions.
Spider-Man was and is probably the best example of this shift, being the first true teenage superhero, and being the first example of a comic book character who has a hard life, and that life becomes even more terrible after he becomes a superhero. This would never have been accepted in the two-dimensional morality tales of the previous decades.
But even with these deeper explorations into real-life issues and complexities of the seventies, superheroes remained paragons of the application of violence as a primary means to dispense justice.
It wasn't until 1986, a watershed year in the history of the comic book medium, that anyone set out to truly delve into the inherent nature of the superhero.
The seventies had given rise to the deliberately campy Batman TV show starring Adam West, which had been designed as a deliberately campy satire of the then-current state of the comic: an irrelevant bit of fluff glossing over a truly dark character. Frank Miller saw the darkness, and resolved to bring it to light with The Dark Knight Returns. He started with a Batman who'd started fighting crime in 1939 (when the character was created), and by 1986 was past his prime, living in a Gotham City that had gone to hell in his absence.
This isn't the Bruce Wayne with a smile on his face. This is the guy who saw his parents murdered as a child, something the Adam West show and the comics which inspired it apparently just forgot about. This is Batman walking the streets and seeing a new generation of cold, calculating killers replace the ilk of his parents' murderer, and they're barely old enough to shave. The "hero" is portrayed here as a murderous beast which possessed young Bruce, which was given free reign starting the night of his parents' murder. He does not brutally take down criminals because of some absolute moral duty; he does so because he is haunted, possessed, and in his honest moments admits he loves every minute of it. Especially in contrast to Superman, who is portrayed as a super-sheeple in thrall to a pastiche of Ronald Reagan, blindly obeying orders and carrying out secret wars in Central America.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were hired by DC to craft a story involving several older characters from the then-recently-defunct Fawcett comics. What resulted is Watchmen, a magnificent work of art and a damning indictment of the concept of the hero. Moore created a realistic facsimile of an alternate 1986 America, in which Nixon has remained president for multiple sets of presidential terms by intentionally accelerating the Cold War to the point of walking the razor's edge of Armageddon, and masked heroes are a fact of life.
The comic, a true "graphic novel" (meaning, it contains over 40,000 words, and thus fits the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's definition of "novel"), deconstructs the idea of a person who would put on a mask and fling violence upon those they deem criminals, portraying each of its vigilante characters as socialyl disconnected, impotent, apathetic, sociopathic, and psychotic, respectively.
These are portrayed as the qualities necessary for a person to not only have a black-and-white sense of morality, but to inflict that morality upon others.
Alongside these two books and others came the first ever full-company comics crossover: DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. In what became a fairly regular event at DC, and which Marvel found its own version of, the entire decades-old DC universe was re-written, and much of the light-and-fluffy, easily-digested morality elements were removed in favor of more mature, three-dimensional characters and storylines.
The breakout success of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and the results of Crisis spurred the genesis and development what comic historians now term "The Dark Age of Comics," when the happy-go-lucky punching and kicking and funny gadgets were replaced with grim sociopaths packing heat, a willingness to kill, and a deeply scarred and/or disfigured psyche.
This led to some competition for DC and Marvel for the first time in years as comics publishers like Dark Horse and Image took advantage of the darker-and-edgier trend to market their own characters.
Writers who had grown up with the fluffier versions of the characters eventually rebelled against the trend, resulting in a synthesis of blind traditionalism and superhero psychoses.
This synthesis began in 1996, with Mark Waid and Alex Ross' iconic collaboration, Kingdom Come. In a world filling up with unstable superpowered individuals, Superman and his generation of heroes come into direct conflict with the heat-packing sociopaths of the Dark Ages, all witnessed (and eventually influenced) by Pastor Norman McKay, a completely un-superpowered old man granted visions of a coming superhero apocalypse and guided through them by the Spectre.
As a result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Dark Age concept of the hero, and Waid's humanization of previously-cliched heroes like Superman, the superhero evolved into its current form: individuals with wondrous abilities attempting to make the world a better place, but who are human first, struggling and feeling and able to connect with readers who reach out for some reassurance of stability in an increasingly unstable world.
MWA 8 and 9
Middle School "Alternative Education" Subbing Thoughts of the Day:
1) Never again.
2) UNO doesn't seem like the best game for the disturbed kids to play.
3) A trained counselor is not a trained teacher. Clearly not all are aware of this fact.
4) Substitute counselor plus substitute teacher plus four socially challenged kids = good thing they like UNO.
5) I'm starting to understand the paradox of adults cursing, but not wanting kids to curse.
6) Of all the classrooms to NOT be equipped with a camera...
7) Today I discovered my ghetto voice. Yes, we all have one. Right Megan Teer?
8) How does one discipline kids who are already at the bottom of the disciplinary barrel?
9) I think the end of the childhood disorder maze is what we've known all along: that each child is unique. But each adult is also unique, and adulthood doesn't care what disorder you have.
10) When student fights can begin life as conversations online, physically separating them in class doesn't seem to accomplish much.
11) At some point you resign yourself to "at least they're quiet".
12) I'm starting to believe that a child's taste in music could demonstrate his/her mental state, at least to some degree. We naturally seek out art with which we connect, so it makes sense for a child wanting to lash out physically to find music which does so verbally.
13) Sometimes my subconscious feeds me what-if images or scenarios that make me tear up in awkward situations.
14) I find it interesting that seemingly none of the people shouting "don't force obedience on children" are parents.
15) Never forget: Robb Stark's child could still be alive.
16) Among my top 10 favorite parts of childhood was that science was all exciting facts and no math.
17) It feels really difficult to be a hard authoritarian when your worst student is named "Duard".
18) It's amazing how easily one becomes offended on behalf of one's wife. Especially if she's a teacher.
19) Someday, I'd like to meet a public school coach who isn't a walking mass of conservative American cliches.
20) Every guy needs at least one male friend who embodies at least two negative male stereotypes.
21) That awkward moment when you find yourself accidentally trying to translate "La Bamba".
22) Remember when we trusted each other enough to have live-fire shooting galleries at the state fair? Remember that it was also the time when only white people were allowed in? Coincidence?
23) Student quote of the day: "I don't get anything for not getting in trouble!"
1) Never again.
2) UNO doesn't seem like the best game for the disturbed kids to play.
3) A trained counselor is not a trained teacher. Clearly not all are aware of this fact.
4) Substitute counselor plus substitute teacher plus four socially challenged kids = good thing they like UNO.
5) I'm starting to understand the paradox of adults cursing, but not wanting kids to curse.
6) Of all the classrooms to NOT be equipped with a camera...
7) Today I discovered my ghetto voice. Yes, we all have one. Right Megan Teer?
8) How does one discipline kids who are already at the bottom of the disciplinary barrel?
9) I think the end of the childhood disorder maze is what we've known all along: that each child is unique. But each adult is also unique, and adulthood doesn't care what disorder you have.
10) When student fights can begin life as conversations online, physically separating them in class doesn't seem to accomplish much.
11) At some point you resign yourself to "at least they're quiet".
12) I'm starting to believe that a child's taste in music could demonstrate his/her mental state, at least to some degree. We naturally seek out art with which we connect, so it makes sense for a child wanting to lash out physically to find music which does so verbally.
13) Sometimes my subconscious feeds me what-if images or scenarios that make me tear up in awkward situations.
14) I find it interesting that seemingly none of the people shouting "don't force obedience on children" are parents.
15) Never forget: Robb Stark's child could still be alive.
16) Among my top 10 favorite parts of childhood was that science was all exciting facts and no math.
17) It feels really difficult to be a hard authoritarian when your worst student is named "Duard".
18) It's amazing how easily one becomes offended on behalf of one's wife. Especially if she's a teacher.
19) Someday, I'd like to meet a public school coach who isn't a walking mass of conservative American cliches.
20) Every guy needs at least one male friend who embodies at least two negative male stereotypes.
21) That awkward moment when you find yourself accidentally trying to translate "La Bamba".
22) Remember when we trusted each other enough to have live-fire shooting galleries at the state fair? Remember that it was also the time when only white people were allowed in? Coincidence?
23) Student quote of the day: "I don't get anything for not getting in trouble!"
Sunday, May 10, 2015
May Write Away 5, 6, and 7
Ya get into a pattern and flake out for a few days, and suddenly you're playing massive catch-up.
Lately I've started becoming more comfortable with the prospect of being a Socialist.
I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment.
Especially after forty-plus years of it being treated like a curse word in my country, and as a result the scales of political balance becoming so UN-balanced in favor of business that they've pretty much fallen off the table.
Unfettered capitalism is nothing more or less than the pursuit of money (capital), without regard for human rights, safety, or the needs of anyone other than the one pursuing the money. Without oversight of an objective, enforcing legal body, capitalism is just a monetary equivalent of bestial eat-or-be-eaten instinct.
Of course, what American corporate capitalists have managed to do is buy out the supposed-to-be-objective legal body, and completely run roughshod over laws designed to protect the average person from exploitation, to say nothing of writing some new laws designed not only to exploit the average person, but prevent any kind of future oversight.
They've used their control of mass media to create a massive chunk of the American population who willingly shoot themselves in the foot again and again by supporting the corporatists, having been convinced that part of being a "real American" is acting against one's own and one's children's best interests, and these people are also indoctrinating their children with this idea.
Which is the truly insidious part.
I grew up in what I thought of at the time as a "very conservative" home.
Adulthood and Internet access has moderated that description to "fairly conservative," at least in the American sense of the term.
The older I get, the more Leftist my opinions become, especially due to the United States not truly possessing a hardline Leftist party.
The Democrats (at least, those who actually hold to their party's original standards and are not simply corporatist toadies in sheep's clothing) are basically Centrist compared to the rest of the world, especially as the Republicans continue to plow toward the cliff at the Rightwing end of the political spectrum.
Between the above state of things and the fact that pretty much everyone in the American federal government is wealthy beyond the dreams of the average person, there doesn't seem to be anyone to represent me and mine at the top of the heap.
And then there's Bernie Sanders.
Bernie's the longest-sitting Independent in the history of the United States Congress.
And he's a self-identified Socialist.
Which kind of confused me at first, being from a notch in the Bible Belt and seeing hundreds of posts online from frothing-at-the-mouth American conservatives swinging the term like a blunt instrument against anyone they didn't agree with.
The more I examine his actions as a Congressman and his stated opinions, the more I find myself agreeing and sharing them on Facebook, even as a voice in the back of my head seems to whisper "But that's really, reeeally Leftist".
But that's okay.
I think the only reason that voice is even still around is because I've spent so many years trying to avoid political labels and examine every issue and argument from as many sides as possible to avoid being pigeon-holed.
...not that it's been completely successful, especially since some people online will try to stamp you with a label of their choosing the moment your opinions clash with theirs.
This is especially true of self-identified "Christians" who can't help but No True Scotsman all over the place the instant they realize that another self-identified Christian is fighting against them.
I've always endeavored to find a balancing point between "Left" and "Right" as we Americans call them, because a great mentor of mine told me that pushing too hard on one side of a scale or the other makes you miss out on something the other side had to offer.
But as a country, we've tried it the hardline "Conservative" way for decades, and we're in a shambles as a result.
Time to overthrow and try it the hardline "Liberal" way for once.
Lately I've started becoming more comfortable with the prospect of being a Socialist.
I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment.
Especially after forty-plus years of it being treated like a curse word in my country, and as a result the scales of political balance becoming so UN-balanced in favor of business that they've pretty much fallen off the table.
Unfettered capitalism is nothing more or less than the pursuit of money (capital), without regard for human rights, safety, or the needs of anyone other than the one pursuing the money. Without oversight of an objective, enforcing legal body, capitalism is just a monetary equivalent of bestial eat-or-be-eaten instinct.
Of course, what American corporate capitalists have managed to do is buy out the supposed-to-be-objective legal body, and completely run roughshod over laws designed to protect the average person from exploitation, to say nothing of writing some new laws designed not only to exploit the average person, but prevent any kind of future oversight.
They've used their control of mass media to create a massive chunk of the American population who willingly shoot themselves in the foot again and again by supporting the corporatists, having been convinced that part of being a "real American" is acting against one's own and one's children's best interests, and these people are also indoctrinating their children with this idea.
Which is the truly insidious part.
I grew up in what I thought of at the time as a "very conservative" home.
Adulthood and Internet access has moderated that description to "fairly conservative," at least in the American sense of the term.
The older I get, the more Leftist my opinions become, especially due to the United States not truly possessing a hardline Leftist party.
The Democrats (at least, those who actually hold to their party's original standards and are not simply corporatist toadies in sheep's clothing) are basically Centrist compared to the rest of the world, especially as the Republicans continue to plow toward the cliff at the Rightwing end of the political spectrum.
Between the above state of things and the fact that pretty much everyone in the American federal government is wealthy beyond the dreams of the average person, there doesn't seem to be anyone to represent me and mine at the top of the heap.
And then there's Bernie Sanders.
Bernie's the longest-sitting Independent in the history of the United States Congress.
And he's a self-identified Socialist.
Which kind of confused me at first, being from a notch in the Bible Belt and seeing hundreds of posts online from frothing-at-the-mouth American conservatives swinging the term like a blunt instrument against anyone they didn't agree with.
The more I examine his actions as a Congressman and his stated opinions, the more I find myself agreeing and sharing them on Facebook, even as a voice in the back of my head seems to whisper "But that's really, reeeally Leftist".
But that's okay.
I think the only reason that voice is even still around is because I've spent so many years trying to avoid political labels and examine every issue and argument from as many sides as possible to avoid being pigeon-holed.
...not that it's been completely successful, especially since some people online will try to stamp you with a label of their choosing the moment your opinions clash with theirs.
This is especially true of self-identified "Christians" who can't help but No True Scotsman all over the place the instant they realize that another self-identified Christian is fighting against them.
I've always endeavored to find a balancing point between "Left" and "Right" as we Americans call them, because a great mentor of mine told me that pushing too hard on one side of a scale or the other makes you miss out on something the other side had to offer.
But as a country, we've tried it the hardline "Conservative" way for decades, and we're in a shambles as a result.
Time to overthrow and try it the hardline "Liberal" way for once.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
May Write Away 3 and 4
The stage felt cold.
The kind of cold that comes from an empty house, even with the lights blazing down from rafters and balcony and a stuffy costume cutting off most of one's breath.
Charlie felt her knees creak as she hobbled onstage to stand on the square of black wood that marked the hidden trapdoor in the middle of the white oak-paneled stage, dust clinging to the octogenarian curtains billowing in the cheap breeze of an oscillating fan somewhere backstage.
She let her eyes trail over the rows of identical red velvet seats covered in plastic sheeting, leap over the cracked movie projector mounted in the front face of the balcony, crawl up the warped paneling along the far wall, and settle onto the fragmented face of a golden statue of a woman seated above a curtained theater box, hands raised ready to applaud.
"Hello beautiful," she whispered, joints popping with her movement.
Down the stage steps, up the center aisle, around the broken ticket booth, up the squeaking, creaking stairs, and huffing and puffing down the balcony's stage-left aisle she strode to stand next to the seated statue.
"How many shows have you seen?" Unthinking, she caressed the cracked cheek with a wrinkled hand, gazed into the unseeing eyes.
"How many dances?" She leaned against the wall next to the broken facade, abandoning her cane to grasp its upraised right hand in both of her own.
"How many of mine? How many of mine did you see?" she whispered, the room's acoustics carrying her words on a whirlwind journey from balcony to stage and over every seat in the house.
"Every last one, sweetheart."
Her eyes opened as her lips pulled into a grin at his voice.
He strode towards her through seats and railing in his red and yellow pinstripe suit and a matching straw hat, holding his dancing cane like a drum major's baton.
"Jim."
"That's right, honey. And now it's time for the finale."
He held out a hand.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh but Jim, I'm not ready! I don't have my costume!"
He grinned a grin to make a grumpy cat laugh.
"Sure ya do, honey! Looks as gorgeous on you as it ever did!"
She looked down, feeling lightheaded.
Fur and lace and a feathered fan covered her from neck to high heels.
She laughed and took his hand, the years falling away from both of them.
"C'mon babe," he said. "They're playing our song."
The kind of cold that comes from an empty house, even with the lights blazing down from rafters and balcony and a stuffy costume cutting off most of one's breath.
Charlie felt her knees creak as she hobbled onstage to stand on the square of black wood that marked the hidden trapdoor in the middle of the white oak-paneled stage, dust clinging to the octogenarian curtains billowing in the cheap breeze of an oscillating fan somewhere backstage.
She let her eyes trail over the rows of identical red velvet seats covered in plastic sheeting, leap over the cracked movie projector mounted in the front face of the balcony, crawl up the warped paneling along the far wall, and settle onto the fragmented face of a golden statue of a woman seated above a curtained theater box, hands raised ready to applaud.
"Hello beautiful," she whispered, joints popping with her movement.
Down the stage steps, up the center aisle, around the broken ticket booth, up the squeaking, creaking stairs, and huffing and puffing down the balcony's stage-left aisle she strode to stand next to the seated statue.
"How many shows have you seen?" Unthinking, she caressed the cracked cheek with a wrinkled hand, gazed into the unseeing eyes.
"How many dances?" She leaned against the wall next to the broken facade, abandoning her cane to grasp its upraised right hand in both of her own.
"How many of mine? How many of mine did you see?" she whispered, the room's acoustics carrying her words on a whirlwind journey from balcony to stage and over every seat in the house.
"Every last one, sweetheart."
Her eyes opened as her lips pulled into a grin at his voice.
He strode towards her through seats and railing in his red and yellow pinstripe suit and a matching straw hat, holding his dancing cane like a drum major's baton.
"Jim."
"That's right, honey. And now it's time for the finale."
He held out a hand.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh but Jim, I'm not ready! I don't have my costume!"
He grinned a grin to make a grumpy cat laugh.
"Sure ya do, honey! Looks as gorgeous on you as it ever did!"
She looked down, feeling lightheaded.
Fur and lace and a feathered fan covered her from neck to high heels.
She laughed and took his hand, the years falling away from both of them.
"C'mon babe," he said. "They're playing our song."
Saturday, May 2, 2015
May Write Away 2
He flicked another gray hair off the razor, trying not to think, trying not to assume, trying not to remember that his thirtieth birthday was days away.
No awards hung on the walls from triumphs of his twenties, except for a bachelor's degree that had taken eight years to attain, and had yet to profit him in his search for any kind of meaningful work.
He looked down at the small cluster of gray in his sink surrounded by the other remains of his beard removal. His phone chimed for the thirtieth time, and for the thirtieth time he ignored its pleading for him to check out the achievements of his peers, now giants in their career fields and/or multi-time parents.
They couldn't help that their successes left him feeling empty inside.
It wasn't there fault the overload of social media left him depressed.
But if they weren't posting their successes on the great digital notice-board, they were posting "inspirational" messages, ostensibly for everyone who wasn't them, that left him feeling pissed on top of depressed.
He set the razor on the sink counter and embraced the touch of burning, searing blue lava erupting from Mount Aquavelva.
At least it made him feel alive, something neither his dead-end job nor his attempts at hobbies could do.
Pain was real.
Pain reminded his heart to beat.
He picked up the razor again, turning it, watching the four blades reflect the dim light of the single remaining bulb.
He set it lightly on his opposite palm, feeling the cold blades against his skin.
He pressed.
And dragged.
Four thin red lines appeared without any of the alarms in his brain telling him he'd been hurt.
No. Not enough.
He reached into his jeans pocket, removing the Buck folding knife she had given him.
Before she'd stepped in front of that truck.
He flicked it open, a click of interlocking steel against itself.
"Yes," his voice choked out.
He drove the point into his palm, the short blade impaling his hand and oozing blood from both sides.
"Yes!"
He drove it into his wrist at the joint.
"I'm alive!"
He closed his eyes, grinning, and slammed it into his stomach.
"I'm alive!"
Taking it in both hands, blood soaking his shirt, he slammed it into his chest.
"I'm ah-"
No awards hung on the walls from triumphs of his twenties, except for a bachelor's degree that had taken eight years to attain, and had yet to profit him in his search for any kind of meaningful work.
He looked down at the small cluster of gray in his sink surrounded by the other remains of his beard removal. His phone chimed for the thirtieth time, and for the thirtieth time he ignored its pleading for him to check out the achievements of his peers, now giants in their career fields and/or multi-time parents.
They couldn't help that their successes left him feeling empty inside.
It wasn't there fault the overload of social media left him depressed.
But if they weren't posting their successes on the great digital notice-board, they were posting "inspirational" messages, ostensibly for everyone who wasn't them, that left him feeling pissed on top of depressed.
He set the razor on the sink counter and embraced the touch of burning, searing blue lava erupting from Mount Aquavelva.
At least it made him feel alive, something neither his dead-end job nor his attempts at hobbies could do.
Pain was real.
Pain reminded his heart to beat.
He picked up the razor again, turning it, watching the four blades reflect the dim light of the single remaining bulb.
He set it lightly on his opposite palm, feeling the cold blades against his skin.
He pressed.
And dragged.
Four thin red lines appeared without any of the alarms in his brain telling him he'd been hurt.
No. Not enough.
He reached into his jeans pocket, removing the Buck folding knife she had given him.
Before she'd stepped in front of that truck.
He flicked it open, a click of interlocking steel against itself.
"Yes," his voice choked out.
He drove the point into his palm, the short blade impaling his hand and oozing blood from both sides.
"Yes!"
He drove it into his wrist at the joint.
"I'm alive!"
He closed his eyes, grinning, and slammed it into his stomach.
"I'm alive!"
Taking it in both hands, blood soaking his shirt, he slammed it into his chest.
"I'm ah-"
Friday, May 1, 2015
May Write Away 1
The air crackled with the oncoming blast of ions. Thera shuddered in her harness, trying to stay focused on the controls, trying to punch in the right command each moment to keep the reactor from going critical, trying to keep the ship on course, trying to avoid the swirl of cosmic dust and gas trying to melt the Stormin Norman in the heart of a star aborning.
"Warning. Emergency evacuation protocol is in effect. Please proceed to escape pod," the main computer's voice chimed for what seemed like the hundredth time.
"Thera, the reactor's fuel balance is nearing total instability. Your training does not include maintaining it and piloting the ship simultaneously." Her suit's A.I. whispered via her cochlear implant.
"I know, Melvin," she whispered, keeping her fingers moving and the rest of her mind focused on the too-many tasks at hand.
A more violent shudder racked the ship.
"Thera, the escape pods are ready. Everyone else is in them. The fleet is on its way to pick us up. There's no reason to continue."
"Yeah, no reason except the look on my dad's face when he sees the other side of this nebula." She couldn't help but smirk, continuing to send commands to the reactor's dueling fuel cores, pumping liquid hydrogen and liquid anti-hydrogen into and out of each as the other's level increased or decreased.
The next shudder felt weaker. She checked the sensor screen.
"Time to nebula boundary?" she thought.
"Two minutes thirty seconds. Mark!" came Melvin's reply.
She allowed herself a moment, a breath, allowed herself a smile now that they were almost out of-
"THERA!" Melvin screamed. "LOSS OF ANTIMATTER CONTAINMENT! SIX SECONDS TO DETONATION!"
She fumbled for her harness, fumbled across the cockpit to the release switch for the other pods. One hand flipped the switch, the other pushed the hatch control for the pilot's pod hatch.
The other pods rocketed away at near-light speed.
The pilot pod hatch didn't respond.
She pressed it again.
No response. The screen had gone dark.
No power. The reactor wasn't providing any more power as it vaporized itself.
No hope.
Fleet Command officially christened the newly-formed star Thera2420.
"Warning. Emergency evacuation protocol is in effect. Please proceed to escape pod," the main computer's voice chimed for what seemed like the hundredth time.
"Thera, the reactor's fuel balance is nearing total instability. Your training does not include maintaining it and piloting the ship simultaneously." Her suit's A.I. whispered via her cochlear implant.
"I know, Melvin," she whispered, keeping her fingers moving and the rest of her mind focused on the too-many tasks at hand.
A more violent shudder racked the ship.
"Thera, the escape pods are ready. Everyone else is in them. The fleet is on its way to pick us up. There's no reason to continue."
"Yeah, no reason except the look on my dad's face when he sees the other side of this nebula." She couldn't help but smirk, continuing to send commands to the reactor's dueling fuel cores, pumping liquid hydrogen and liquid anti-hydrogen into and out of each as the other's level increased or decreased.
The next shudder felt weaker. She checked the sensor screen.
"Time to nebula boundary?" she thought.
"Two minutes thirty seconds. Mark!" came Melvin's reply.
She allowed herself a moment, a breath, allowed herself a smile now that they were almost out of-
"THERA!" Melvin screamed. "LOSS OF ANTIMATTER CONTAINMENT! SIX SECONDS TO DETONATION!"
She fumbled for her harness, fumbled across the cockpit to the release switch for the other pods. One hand flipped the switch, the other pushed the hatch control for the pilot's pod hatch.
The other pods rocketed away at near-light speed.
The pilot pod hatch didn't respond.
She pressed it again.
No response. The screen had gone dark.
No power. The reactor wasn't providing any more power as it vaporized itself.
No hope.
Fleet Command officially christened the newly-formed star Thera2420.
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