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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 16, 2011 0:57:10 GMT 1
I decided to enter this month's 100 Words, mostly because I've had ridiculous writer's block for the past two months, and the site / game / contest has really helped me with that in the past. This month I guess I'm making it twice as tough by starting half-way through the month. Going to try to catch up before the end. If you read any, of course any comments are appreciated. 1"It's not a lake," the voice says. "It's an ocean..." For a moment more I'm in that hyper-aware poet's place halfway between the darkness and the surface. Then I'm up. I'm staring straight ahead, remembering the details with a silly look on my face. Like Phoenix Wright might look in the instant before he objects: silently, pompously demanding. Inanimate. I make a fist, just so as I'm not sitting there numb. Why do you always wake up just before the ending? Patting the shelf for the water I finished last night, I forget the whole thing. Where was I? 2If we'd never left Eden, dreams wouldn't be what they are: teasing and muzzy little clips out of David Lynch films, clumsily halting and cut as sarcastic parental warnings, elastic metaphorical taunting from a part of our minds too dumb or too scared to impart what it wants to, to us. They'd be serials. Flashy and marvellous chunks of adventure, no more ethereal visions, conjecture, departure, just cliffhangered, thrilling big-budget six-parters, beginning on Monday and taking a rest for cartoons, cheering us up, making us laugh until in the morning we take a cold bath and complain, 'Aw, dad. Pirates again! I wanted cowboys this week.' 3Lise sits around in the basement, like every night, wearing a soft white dress she doesn't remember ever owning in life. It's like a prison uniform. Stick 'em in a white dress so people know not to talk to them. Just like the angels, eh. Pretty girls in white dresses. What's the damn difference anyway? Except that angels don't curse. Because they're fucking frigid. There is a crack of light and Lise scuttles, spidery and invisible, into the nearest shadow. She hears the usual 'ghost-hunting' chatter. Visitors are always welcome, but... 'Hunters'? Really? Why hunt someone who's already dead?
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 16, 2011 20:46:38 GMT 1
4
I'm watching the police - well three of them - yelling at this hysterical woman who was just being yelled at by a crazy skinhead who said she stole his phone and then lunged at her.
And these police are yelling like you see people yelling at the most tense moment in a movie, within the climax but before someone saves the day. 'HURRY!' That kind of yelling. Veins.
And I'm thinking very quickly about what I should have done to help. The smallest policeman approaches me. 'Are you all right, sir?' Smiling. God, he's confident.
I nod, swallow and stop staring.
5
It took nineteen months before 'colonising other planets' ceased to be a viable solution to the overcrowding problem.
That's five months for everyone to book their places, two months moving in, four months honeymoon period, seven months making movies...
...another week before the exotic views were no longer special, then five nights before the jokes about the Grand Nebula looking like a banana on the 'Tonight' show, and a fortnight before the depression was recognised as a pandemic. Finally, the riots.
I don't think any of us realised that we were volunteering for unstable farming positions. We packed red jumpsuits.
6
Barratar Inglottis was among the most amiable gentlemen in the city, although the others never cared for his company. It was once said by a schoolfriend that if corduroy had been designed with any particular boy as the template, it must have been Barratar: he was all at the same time soft and course, knotted tight but gauzy in a way that made one anxious to brush against his skin in the wrong direction. There was a general, unspoken agreement amongst his friends that he should have been born elsewhere. He thrived in Manchester, but he was never heard laughing.
7
Old age is balancing on a knife-edge until you fall off. I don't mean death, which one rarely even notices; I mean waiting for death. It comes when you cease to be sadly-old and become amusingly-old.
For me, it happened early. It was Cup 'a' Soup. It bothered me that soup was now being drunk in mugs, an act barely a step away from lifting the dish to one's lips. There was dismissive, nervous laughter. I shook my head quietly, as though there were some knowing wisdom in my words that I knew nobody cared to hear.
8
In what will probably be the last moments of my life, I'm oddly cool. I never really wanted to be 'cool'. I guess it's not something that bothered me.
Yeah. Running from these guys' guns at night, in a good suit (I happened to be at the opera) and climbing a pole as if I never aged past ten, I feel petty good. I forget to be afraid or bitter like I should: this will be a great story. Great-grandkids will talk about it.
Whatever I was expecting to rush through my mind, forget it. Now is pretty decent.
9
The sound of the gunshot wakes me. And I hear a man's voice call my name, which is a dead giveaway because there are very rarely men in my bedroom. Dreaming, then.
A... uh.
Spiders on the w... no, hanger things. Hook-som... hooks.
Time. No alarm. Gunshot woke me up. I look around the room for guns, without thinking it silly. No guns. No alarm! Woke up early. If I go to sleep I'll... if I go to sleep again now.
Guns.
What was I... I remember I was cool. Yeahhh! What's the point of dreams if you forg...
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 18, 2011 5:38:03 GMT 1
I'm really plugging away at this - trying to catch up to the current date by writing three or more every day. Normally with these '100 words' things I re-draft everything several times, so this month is a real challenge.
10
Duncan eased her finger over the volume wheel of her old MP3-player, listened to 'We Are All Made of Stars' and looked at her reflection. She recalled that vague thing about the atoms in our bodies always being replaced, and figured that technically she was now a different person. All those awful things from her past had not happened to her.
Those were now someone else's problems, according to Moby anyway. How long this feeling would last, she didn't know. Duncan was not an optimist.
'This is the new me,' she said to her reflection. It raised an eyebrow.
11
- You know I was abused by my dad, don't you? Like, properly abused? Right up the arse, ten years old. That hurt... twice as fuckin' much as it would now, I'm sure. And I have it easy?
- I just meant you've a clear enemy. You fought back, you hated him, you made got competitive, thrived, got happy.
- That's true. Are you your own worst enemy, then?
- Yeah. Who do I fight back against?
- You're making a good start with me, like. But I really don't know. I'm still hitting innocent people who look like my da. Makes me very happy.
12
Writing comedy is tricky. Not the actual joke-writing; that's just swapping nouns around. Really. That's why we always get so full of ourselves and lose our touch when we actually do get an idea. It's hard because we have to either pretend to be everyone's friend, or, if we're smart - pick a crazy identity for ourselves. "That funny guy understands politics but it's okay because he's always drunk and has that shirt."
All right?
How do you confuse Batista? Put him in a circular room and put a gun to his head, and say, "sit in the corner."
13
Natalie Portman, but blonde and with a European accent, is washing her car and giving you an unmistakable look. Yes, that look. You can't go over there because you feel guilty about it, and then your wallet is too light, and sewn into your coat. Why guilty? You look at your impossibly-frozen shoes with sarcastic contempt. Are you married? No, of course not. For a moment you remember your last girlfriend and European Portman gets her real hair without you even noticing. Not allowing yourself to break what's left of the hallucination, you go somewhere else. But why guilty?
14
They call them 'dreams' because you can only truly believe in them when you're alone and exhausted, and because nobody else is interested when you try to explain them in the morning. Ambitions are better, but depressing.
Since I quit drinking last year, my dreams have kind of meandered around, ending up somewhere different every night depending on what movie I'd seen or who I'd been speaking to, whatever had inspired them for a couple hours. And let me tell you, chum, I've been following my dreams, like I was told. It is not all it's cracked up to be.
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 19, 2011 2:46:06 GMT 1
'Nother one. I'm nearly up to speed now. But I seem to have paid in spelling mistakes... 15I made it. I'm a famous film actor. I can pick roles and I've played a major supervillain. I'm widely regarded as talented but not great, handsome but odd-looking. Millions of strangers know me intimately, half of them better people than me, the other half I can't stand. All of them demand I set them a good example on a daily basis. I'm everyone's local hero and town drunk at the same time. I'm not allowed vices or too much charity, but I'm rich. I get offered coke a lot. Could be worse, man! I could be my girlfriend.
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 20, 2011 3:54:42 GMT 1
I'm quite happy with this one. 16Dear dead pigeon in the Longfield car park, you're not looking so good. You're spread-eagle, your head to one side, your deft little wings mechanically unveiled, your collar cracked over, your beak barely perched on the concrete it scratched I don't want to move you. It's cold. I 'm worried about catching your dead pigeon disease, whatever sickness burst your pretty-in-miniature pastel painted entrails. Your swan-song's dashed out and sputtered beside your squat, etched icon body. Dead, bleached, ugly and unremarkable. I don't want to go on. I just came to see if Iceland was open at night.
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 22, 2011 5:02:05 GMT 1
17
'When you go to sleep,' Mum told Underwood while she was tucking her in, 'think about your future, and which side you lie on. If you face your left, all the water in your brain soaks into your left hemisphere, and you become brilliantly creative. And if you sleep on your right, you become... good at maths, and pro-active, I think. Have they gotten to this at school yet? They will.'
Underwood thought about it for hours and eventually snuck into Mum's room. Mum was snoring on the floor, her head face-down on a sandwich.
Some advanced technique.
18
My husband was sixteen years younger than me. He used to really enjoy telling me I was beautiful; never believed it, but loved to tell me.
He died by leaping in front of a motorbike to stop it hitting me. I thanked him, there on the road, but something about his smile made me... not furious, nothing so flashy. What's the word? The kind of anger that's too strong to show off. The kind where your neck hurts from the pressure of not screaming.
I thanked him again in the ambulance. I retracted it at his grave and wept helplessly.
19
Colin was thinking clearly now, and twice as fast as he usually could. It wasn't disorientating. It felt nice, actually, as if he had finally achieved a good measure of control. A managable, satisfying pace. If there's a real-life equivalent of slow motion, this was it: the seconds before an explosion he knew he couldn't escape.
Out of sheer conformity he ran his life before his mind's eye, just like most bad days but faster. He arrived at the usual conclusions. Would he feel himself burning, he wondered. Would he fly up, like jumping on a bouncy castle? Would
20
Whenever I wake up well-rested, I'm desperate to keep that ball rolling. There's pressure to find a good beginning to the day. I need my last dream to have been a good one, and for there to be something about today I can look forward to. Quickly, man. If the radio is playing something too loud, too modern or with a lot of static, I'll be miserable all day. Again.
Today: 'The Power of Love'. Perfect reception.
I've forgotten my dreams, but now I'm mentally re-watching 'Back to the Future'.
I...
I finally got one started right.
Waffles!!!
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 24, 2011 0:39:32 GMT 1
And with these, I am finally up to speed with the date! Trying to come up with 23 interesting things to say is hard for me if I have 23 days. With a week... I'm not a very imaginative writer, damn it - that was bloody hard.
One entry a day from now on. xD
21
This shall be my hundred and fiftieth day at this job, and tonight will be my thirtieth date with James. It... might be time to stop one or both of those activities. They're both working well at the moment, very happy, jolly easy.
Always finish on a high note, I think. Like Mary Poppins, leaving at the kite-flying part, looking out through the window at them all. Mary had rather a sad ending, but not. She wasn't finished yet.
Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.
That will be quite enough of that, thank you. Spit spot.
22
David has read a lot of stories about monsters, and this feels a lot like them. Feels like there's a monster on him. It has no colours so that you can't ever see it.
At night it feels like muscular, clayish blue hands pressing his shoulders, all night, their thumbs rubbing every now and again, not out of boredom, just to find better purchase.
And during the day it's like breath and teeth teasing his neck, just brushing, listening too hard in case he speaks. Staying quiet just makes it breathe harder.
David wonders why it hides, but won't ask.
23
Whenever I get to the Edinburgh festival, I'm briefly reminded how lucky we are to be professional actors. Here we are, bothering people on the street until they follow us to our little room somewhere, and then playing a scripted make-believe game and making them applaud and smile encouragingly at us. Just like the plays my brothers and I put on back home! It's pure here. Unengrossing but fantastic.
When I'm back on the plane and the stewardesses begin their own, more subtle work, and then someone asks for an autograph, I forget. And just like that, I'm rapt.
24
My first partner had a saying about situations like this. Said there were three kinds of cops, regardless of rank. First there were police officers: the ones who pray their life is never on the line.
Then there were asshole cops. Guys who dream of killing some perp, just so they can sleep without jerking off.
And third, you've got movie cops. These are the people who plan for everything, don't enjoy it, and don't let on until it happens. And suddenly they're amazing. Heroic. And they truly save the day. And ninety minutes later, they're dead.
Well let's see.
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 27, 2011 5:44:21 GMT 1
25
Ruthie and I fell in love very quickly. I forget how one event led to another: we were in a bar, then a taxi, then in her bed, then on our holiday, then at the river. I remember it all like a dream now.
I knew she was dying since somewhere between the bar and the bed. She made it clear to me, though she wouldn't have it. She hated the word 'dying'. Semantics, I said. She'd go quiet.
And the fact made me love her much quicker, much more willingly. I guess it was... less commitment?
More than that.
26
Two thirds through a long day, I tell myself I'm just going to lie down for a few minutes. Once my eyes are closed I start picturing the one I love, half from memory and half embellished details, beside me and needlessly make room for her in the bed. For a moment, like every time, everything I am turns to thoughts of sex. I go along with the fantasy until something impossible happens in it, something she'd never do, and I'm forced to come back to reality. She gives me a 'Should I go?' kind of look and I sleep.
27
Poem about an unidentified, tiny, brown, chrysalis-like thing the poet found on his windowsil after a bad day at work and thought would do as the subject for a poem because he needed to write a poem that day for his entry to 100 Words.com, then spent four hours staring at the creature and desperately trying to find inspiration from it, but couldn't think of anything at all and ended up lapsing into depression and decided to pack it in and then it started moving.
What the fuck ARE you, anyway? Now what... are you laying EGGS now?
28
I watch a line of helplessly-grinning sixteen to twenty-two year old girls seek out shiny objects in the hall as they wait for me to tell them which of them has made it into next summer's hottest faux-indie, neo-nerd singing troupe (I will not call them 'girl bands'), Sonic Boom.
I tell them it's all of them. They hug, cry, fan themselves, other things they bizarrely believe are appropriate behaviour at a job interview.
These morons will never know the unleavened rejection Group B are feeling right now. These lucky fuckwits. I remember it very well.
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Post by Mister Buch on Aug 28, 2011 2:41:40 GMT 1
And here are the final three, which follow on from each other.
Thanks for reading! ;D
29
When someone finally did invent a surefire way of predicting the future, it used a method more old-fashioned than his rivals had ever imagined. The machine, nicknamed 'Josef' (the acronym he invented later is so forced that I won't dignify it here) calculated the future by means of mass dream analysis.
Twenty bored tabloid journos comprised the first demonstration group. The resulting report, transcribed below, came true. The world sat quietly to read about it, then exploded with excitement.
The machine was independently funded. It spoke in rhyme. This is why you buy these people out before they patent.
30
"I saw a lake without rivers, stuck in its fate, the sleep-bleared sun still waking, a boy from the village running straight and two-hundred ravens waiting.
"The boy dived smoothly with teeth bared wide, laughing laconic, quietly writhing, whispering, soothing his artificial tide, planning tomorrow, prescribing.
"The lake didn't like the plans it heard but loved the breath it felt. It motioned him down while he heeded the birds, too late for their staring to help.
"The ravens remained, alive now and shrill, squawking the morning's history. The riverless arrowhead water lays still, still sharp, still cold, still a mystery."
31
The boy drowned at Lake Arrowhead eight hours later. Someone's smartphone recorded a mass of crows surrounding the lake. Once the news had hit the internet, the world's press descended upon the soothsaying machine's inventor. We all remember the interviews. He hadn't shaved.
After we'd given the poor child a few hours to be mourned, we wanted a second report. We were told that more precise results might be possible if a larger sample size was used. We could prevent future accidents! We all volunteered.
But that night the synthesised voice only said, "It's not a lake. It's an ocean..."
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