Prompt 7

Fear:
Something has come unlatched inside of my chest. Something's gotten loose; it's clamouring around in my chest, banging, immitating my heart--but hearts wouldn't dare speed like this, swerve corners and smash erraticly against ribs. It's taken my hands--they belong to someone else, now, shuddering and flinching and waving like I hadn't intended them to.

It's filling my brain with novacane; numb, numb, but I can still feel the 'oh my God what's going on ' flashes, like latex-free surgical gloves and spurts of pain when the drill gets too deep. I think I'm making noise, but who knows, 'cause my ears are filled with the cotton balls that taste oh so creepy stuffed beside your tongue.

Deep breaths, deep breaths--deep breaths like shudders, can't keep that away!--R.E.L.A.X., relax, relax--relax and make the shivers come, can't keep it still!--calm, calm, and it'll all be over soon-----


Love:
Love? Hearing your friend's little sister died in a car accident, crash-boom, on her way to see her sister at college, surprise visit, took her friend with her, both gone instantly. Don't know what to say to her, how to console her, because you're sorry, damn sorry, but you're still so glad it wasn't your little brother gone. (More kids died that year, like some curse--three in one month, four more throughout the summer, all so young, all so like your little sixteen-year-old brother.)

She makes jokes about it, says now she has twice as much space for her room, can read all her sister's books, has the whole house to herself, and you just press on a smile 'cause you know it's all crap, 'cause they never got along but she misses her more than anything. It's not like when your other friend lost her dad over Christmas break, 'cause the thought of losing a parent is like being chained to the rock and having your liver eaten daily, but you can do something, you can take charge and take care of things, you have a purpose to keep away the loss. But a sister dies, a brother dies, and all you can do is keep going to classes and hug your parents and pretend it doesn't hurt to come home and know they're not there.

You were always the mean older sister when you were kids; you were perfect, he couldn't do anything right, and you took your anger out on him and smile for everyone else. Later, you realized he was a person, and a wonderful one, and had great talent and had never deserved to be the target of your anger. And when he avoids your hugs and you 'cause he's a high schooler and too cool for that stuff, it crumples your throat a little, because you're oh so proud of him, of everything he does. And even if he won't admit it out loud, he welds you a coatrack for Christmas, and you know he really does love you back.


Nature:
(This is something I was thinking of working up for my poem. I wrote it in the Arb after a particularly bad day.)

If I come to you properly
in the light of day
through your proper gates
announce myself with the knock
of my feet on the first
cobblestones of your arch
Will you let me in?
Will you let me bask in
your sun and your shade
and your color and your scent?
Will you cover me?
Already the leaves are burning.
Already the crows are shouting
for my removal.

If I come to you illegally
in the dark of night
intruding your boundaries
sneak myself in with the swish
of my feet on the first
wildgrasses of your border
Will you let me in?
Will you let me hide in
your shadow and your moon
and your sound and your feel?
already the leaves are applauding.
Already the paths are cooling
to soothe my aching feet.

I know your rules:
Stay on the path
leave only footprints
Never consume what the
faeries offer.
But sometimes I need to
get away from the laws and
life and walk barefoot
through the gravel.
Will you let me in?
Will you cover me?

Versus Asque

It's a draft! More specific detail needs to go into this, methinks . . .

----

It's not that I'm a mean person, Shin'nen told herself as the first of the toads disappeared into Asque's desk drawer. I'm totally not. It's entirely his fault I'm having to resort to this. In fact, before working with Asque she'd only been party to three practical jokes, two of which had been full-class efforts against a particularily incompetent high school choral instructor, so she considered her work quite admirable, for an amateur.

There were six toads, and it had taken her all morning to catch them, even after she'd enlisted the help of two second graders determined to prove they weren't afraid of such things. She'd have preferred frogs--toads were far too generic--but hadn't quite felt like sloughing around in the wetter areas. Newts would have been ideal--she could give them little signs with Monty Python quotes--but that was most certainly out of the question. Now, in the heat of summer, toads were everywhere, so she was willing to make due.

Week two of the Get Asque to React plot was progressing . . . well, rather terribly, Shin'nen had to admit. She could only chalk it up to her own inexperiences; at least, she could only let herself chalk it up to that. If the actual truth was that the plot itself was flawed, she didn't want to hear it--at least until she'd come up with a better plan.

It wasn't as though there was that much else to do, after all. It had been another of those slow months at the office, which meant there were useful things to do about a tenth of the time and nothing to do but read romance novels and tax returns besides. (Shin'nen had immediately decided that if she ever caught Asque reading romance novels--or herself willingly reading tax returns--she'd consider herself defeated.) It had been when she'd noticed herself considering enrolling in an online university that she realized something had to be done. And since, as she was sure Asque would agree, her boredom was all her coworker's fault, it was only fair that he be the subject of her new hobby.

So far, of course, all her pranks had fallen utterly flat. It wasn't so much that they'd all failed to work, exactly--gluing his pens to the desk during lunch hour had been a particular favorite of her--but none gained any sort of reaction beyond mild annoyance at the inconvenience. Yesterday's crickets had ended up in her jacket by the time they finished for the day, which she would have considered a victory if Asque hadn't ignored their presense altogether. The man, Shin'nen was beginning to believe, was a robot--only less prone to hilarious misinterpretations and completely impossible to reprogram. If the toads didn't work, she was considering just dumping a bucket of water on his head.


Except, she admitted, that wouldn't be nearly as fun. The last of the frogs vanished between a two folders labeled "S-Sj" and "Sk-T", and she slid the drawer shut, scampering to her own desk just as Asque returned in all his sweater-vested glory. Show time.

As well as prompt 4, this is also a continuation of the interaction begun in prompt 1.

---

"You shouldn't be a stitcher," Denyl finally blurted, then dug his gaze into the ground in embarrassment at the outburst. She shouldn't. She wasn't good at it; her stitches were all uneven and crooked, and her seams bunched and stretched. She was so much better at the crops, knowing just when to give the plants water and when to prune them back and just the best time to pick them. If she really wanted to help the village, that's what she should be doing.

Syra's face bunched up in a sisterly huff, hurt and trying not to let her little brother know it. "Here's your kite," she bit off, and handed him the completed motley. He tried not to snatch it it away and stroked his fingers along the joints and seams, wishing he could smooth them with a touch.

"No," she sighed, watching him, "I shouldn't. You should, but then you're going to be a fisher, aren't you?" Denyl glanced sharply at her. "Don't give me that look. I can see you're counting every time I messed up. You've got the fingers for it--all thin and fast and all that--and the eye. But it's not what you want to do, so you wouldn't really be best at it, you know." She reached out and took his small hands in her own and felt clumsy. "And I really love this. So I'll get better, I know I will. And you'll be a good windfisher because it's what you really love. So let's just believe in each other, okay?"

This just sort of kept getting less funny as it got longer. Bleh. I can't seem to think of any situation involving animals that would drive people apart via comedy, I guess.

And skunks are darn cute.

---

"Okay, so 'Mr. Albernon was clueing Mrs. Hagerstad in on the situation.'" Gita paused in her typing. "Crap. How do you spell 'clueing'?"

Shelly shifted her weight on the mattress, leaning to peer at the screen. "'C-l-u-i-n-g', isn't it? Hey, the spell-checker's not underlining it, anyway."

"Yeah, but it looks wrong . . . Huh, 'c-l-u-e-i-n-g' is right, too. What the heck?"

"The English Language is messed up, that's what." Okay, Shelly thought, this isn't going too bad. She's not crazy, she's not obnoxious, she doesn't decorate with skulls or something . . . So far, the new kid wasn't bad. Out of class randomly assigned partner project, not bad. So far.

The house had thrown her at first--immaculately clean despite the country location, with little doilies under the flower vases and an overabundance of Precious Moments memorabilia. Yech. But Gita's room was almost normal, and that was a comfort.

Scritch. Something sounded over by the window, and Shelly puzzled at it for a moment. Gita didn't seem to notice. Skuhscritch-scritch. "Hey, Gita . . . mind if I open your shade?"

"Huh? Oh, you heard that? Sure--it's probably just a chicken--they keep getting stuck in my window well. I was just gonna leave it until we got done."

Shelly couldn't help but look, even if it was just a chicken. Reaching behind the typing Gita, she lifted the ribbed edge of the curtain. "Oh m'God!" she exclaimed, dropping the shade with a clack of plastic and clapped her hand over her mouth.

"What?" Gita demanded, shutting the laptop in a mixture of worry and curiosity. "Is it bleeding or something?"

"Gita," Shelly hissed, setting a finger to her lips, "there's a skunk in your window well!"

"What? Oh, wow!"

Shelly didn't understand why Gita was so casual about this. A skunk! A freaking skunk! As Gita began to raise the window shade, Shelly batted her hand away. "Don't do that! What if it, I dunno, gets mad or something!"

Gita snorted and tugged the curtain up with a smooth movement. "It's just a skunk, Shell. It's not gonna hurt you." She pressed her nose to the glass, peering at the cornered animal with a soft sort of smile. "Look, it's just a baby. It's cute."

"It is not cute. It's vicious. It'll give us rabies, and spray us, and we'll smell for weeks." Okay, Shelly admitted, it was sorta cute. Kinda. Maybe. Like a little striped kitten. But a skunk!

"It will not." Gita pursed her lips, then sighed. "I'll take care of it later. Look, let's just get this thing finished already."

"In here? With it right outside?"

"It's not like it was freaked out by us when we were working before." Mildly exasperated, Gita tugged the shade closed again. "It won't even see us, right? Maybe it'll get out by itself."

Shelly wasn't listening. She gnawed on the edge of her lip. "We gotta get rid of it. Shouldn't we, like, call Animal Control or something? Or the police? Or the fire department? Or your dad? Your dad could take care of it, right? He's home, right?"

"Shelly, it's just a baby! Let it alone, okay?"

"Gita, please can we get rid of it? It's a skunk."

Lifting the edge of her window shade, Gita watched the puff of black and white scrabble at the smooth wood planks of her window well. It was so helpless, so fragile. Just trying to survive and all that. She let the shade drop. "Alright, fine. I'll get my dad. But you gotta help me bury it." She slid off the bed and toward the hallway.

"Wait, what?"

Gita rubbed the tip of her nose. "Well, you're right. I mean, we can't really move it without it spraying, so . . . he'll probably shoot it to take it out. So . . ."

"Oh." Shelly peeked behind the shade for herself. It was so very small. And kinda cute.

"I was gonna see if I could get a plank or something it could climb later, or see if it could get out by itself, since it's got pretty good paws and all, and . . ."

"I guess . . . that's okay. It's . . . not so bad, I guess." She lifted the laptop and opened it on her own lap. "So, clueing, right?"

Gita smiled and climbed back onto the bed. "Sure, cluing."

I'm one of those pathetic sort of people who doesn't watch tv or read much news, so I feel sort of invasive pretending I can write the experiences of a person who's name I barely know. From the first time I saw the prompt for this, I was pretty certain of what I would write about . . . but I still have no idea WHO to write about.

So, although the point of the assignment was probably to write with a certain person in mind and flesh out someone we don't really know . . .


She sprawled on the bed in her day clothes, shifting painfully to find the most comfortable position. The trainer was right: she was discovering muscles she didn't know she had, but only because she was now sore in ways she hadn't know existed. Here, in her own room, with the shades drawn, she could finally squish her face into the unbecoming mush it had been wanting to fall into all evening. "This is how normal people are supposed to feel," she muttered to herself, and she wasn't sure whether her words were bitter or wistful.

She could always, she offered herself, go injured diva on the world, whine and complain about her situation, fire her trainer in a spoiled fury. But it wasn't as if a different trainer would get her ready for the actions sequences in November with any less pain, and although it would be wonderful to let loose like that . . . what came after would only be more frustrating.

Sighing, she raked her fingers through her hair. It had been cut short for the last production, but the directors wanted it longer for the next filming. From the wigs she'd be wearing until her hair caught up, it looked like a dye job was in order, too. Oh, how nice it would be to have a hairstyle and keep it for a year or so . . .

Sometimes she wondered why she was still doing this, why she didn't retire, give up acting and publicity and media frenzies. She could sell books in some out-of-the-way oceanside town, catering to tourists in the warm months and lounging in the winter, enjoying a nice fireplace and the silky scent of campfire wood. "Or draw caricatures," she snorted aloud. "I've always been good at drawing caricatures."

A voice wound up the stairs and through the locked door. "Honey, don't you have that thing at the rink in half an hour? Shouldn't you be getting going?"

"Yeah, I'll be down in a minute!" Somehow, she knew, she wouldn't be complete without this life. The intregues, the drama, the fame made her feel like a member of the court, balancing friends and enemies to get ever closer to the power of the queen. And if she didn't have her acting, where would all those other people she'd been go?

As she stood, stretching painfully, she wondered how long Danny would stay with her, and whether the girlscouts still liked pink or if girls were choosing another favorite color. She made a few faces in the mirror by the bed, imagining each of them on the cover of tabloids with a grimace and a laugh. Moving to the door, she returned a congenial smile to her face, opened the door, and--Lights! Camera! Action!--stepped out into the hallway beyond.

I just realized I still had this sitting as a draft. Bother.

Chores finished, he sat in the edges of the shade and watched his sister work. She dipped her curved needle in and out like a streamer-fish weaving in and out of the clouds, and he wondered if that elegant creature was the first inspiration for sewing. Beneath her fingers, a kite was slowly taking shape, patched in the motley of the scraps she'd saved that year.

It took most of his concentration to avoid squirming and distracting his sister. Each stitch was critical, he knew, a difference between catching the air firmly or tearing in the wind. He scowled in what he thought must be a very manly way as he fought with his infuriatingly child-like body. It still thought he should be running about, chasing his friends, but he knew better. He was nearly ten, and too old for kid games.

What attention remained was dedicated wholly to the kite. It was his, he knew, his very own, his first lure. He was determined to know every stitch. It was a basic beginner's lure, brightly colored to entice the smaller fish, but too unformed to attract too large a flier. Tomorrow Grandfather would teach him the double-string controls and Mother would cut his hair and he would earn the clothing of an apprentice windfisher.

His eyes followed her fingers as each tiny stitch appeared, critically observing their shape and placement. That one was a little too big, he thought. That one too small. It'll give too much, it'll tear too easily. The spine made it inflexible, easy to break in the grasp of a fish. The brindle was too high; it'd dive in a hard wind. It wasn't perfect. But winds, it was his!

His sister glanced up, noting his scrutiny with a skewed smile. "It's almost done," she said. "Do you want to do the last few stitches?"

He shifted his weight from side to side and sat on his hands. "No," he said. She shrugged with her eyebrows, and he watched all the more intently as her needle dipped for the final times.

I recently purchased a new operating system to adhire to Gustavus' new no Win98 policy, a process that required much searching and gnashing of teeth. Ultimately I discovered a company offering academic discounts from which to order the software. The product arrived this morning accompanied by a catalogue wherein I found the following product:

Dramatica Pro 4.1: The Ultimate Creative Writing Partner

Immediately the title was disconcerting. The blurb that followed, however, was far more frightening.

"Dramatica presents a fresh approach to writing your story, one that stimulates you to create a solid structure, deeply dimensional characters, meaningful universal themes, and clearly defined dramatic conflict. And it does something no other writing software can do - it predicts the rest of your story, based on the decisions you've made! Dramatica pro 4.1 writing system is easier to use than ever. "Term Swap" replaces specialized Dramatica terms with plain English. Shorter & simpler paths in the StoryGuide help you quickly turn your idea into a story and begin writing."

More worrying details can be found in this product synopsis: http://www.filmwareproducts.com/WriteBrothers/wb904045.html

I'm not quite sure whether to be disgusted, terrified, or largely bemused. Perhaps all three. This is most certainly one of the more depressing programs I've discovered in my lifetime. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but this seems to be largely an antithesis of creative writing. If this really has been"embraced by writers, reviewers, and over 700 colleges and universities", I'm seriously worried about the future of the creative writing craft.