She made herself breathe. If she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t think and she wanted, for the time being at least, to be able to think. To see a way out. The darkness made her heart seem more present, its beats faster. It always had. Something in its infinite quality frightened her, the way a squeaking wood door in the night did, or the sound of a gruff voice barking her name. She made herself breathe.
Her bare feet rubbed against the cheap carpet square that never meant for anyone to touch it for too long, feeling more like fake grass than fiber. Her toes wiggled against the plastic lining of the trunk.
Her palms were sweaty and paralyzed behind her, facing away from her back, she could reach out an inch and feel along the jagged metal line of something. A bit of rust, a seam in metal. She imagined it was a tool box. No clue to what was next, only facts outlining the mental image of herself.
It was oppressively silent. the physics of the car speeding up, slowing down and pausing was accompanied by no sirens, no music, no voices. She made herself breathe and listened deeper. There was a rattle below her, like a mouse in a can. The car lurched left and the rough sound of gravel crunched below. Occasional pings, like BB gun bullets from Bobby’s rifle, hit the underside of the car.
Her tongue was thick and she thought that fear tasted metallic. She concentrated hard on creating saliva, wanting to wash the taste of it away. She lost the picture of herself in her mind’s eye again and began to hyperventilate.
She knew how to stop a panic attack. In the dark, when she heard footsteps on wooden stairs or felt stale breath too close, she could close her eyes and wait. She could breathe and picture herself alone and safe. When she would open them again she would be fine. But now there was no difference between her eyes open or shut.
She felt like she had to pee and began to cry. Her mind’s eye returning to see herself curled in her pajama shorts and an old stained t-shirt in the dark, worried what people would think if they found out she had pissed herself. She wanted to be out of the dark, where thoughts like that ran round her mind. She wanted to be out of the dark, where she could choose to close her eyes and be fine.
The car finally rolled to a stop, her body felt the slight incline of a hill towards her back. The release of the door but not the sound of it closing a moment later. She expected the harsh sound of work boots, but instead found the softer sound of shoes against the gravel, a cautious crunch, a lightness to them.
The key scraped the metal and she imagined it turning as she heard the cylinders move. The trunk popped. Two inches of light blinding her. She heard the gruff bark of her name and closed her eyes against the light.
Still nothing definite about my life to share. Oddly I’m writing this on a bus for old fashioned reasons: exercising demons. Specifically family type demons.
I wanted my sisters in my life so badly. But that was before this past year, where they’ve gone out of their way to show me that they could give two craps about my family at all.
But basically I’m depressed and angry and self-righteous.
Graduation is quickly approaching and I don’t know what to do.
In good news: blew off homework to start new writing project. Feels like it’ll be a long one. And I know it is what I should be working on because it ties a lot of loose smaller ideas together.
One class this week and than just 3 more weeks of classes. Getting close.
Spring has begun. Homework assignment: put on wilco and take a train or a bus somewhere. Write about it. Send it in.
So I will not be going to Vanderbilt. I am less upset at not being chosen for their MFA program than I am about the information in their rejection that they received over 400 applications for 6 slots. 6 slots. I am kicking myself for not calling to ask how many slots were available in their small fellowship. That’s smaller than Iowa. I’m fairly certain my chances are far better at becoming a member of the house of representatives than they are of getting into Vanderbilt. I’m pissed I wasted an application there, one that could have gone to Alabama or West Virgina.
But I’m also bummed that I’m not already MFA bound. I know it’s competitive and that there are far better writers than me not getting into these programs, but if wanting something really did make it possible than I would have been accepted into MFA programs that I didn’t even apply for. I’ve never wanted anything this much in my life before and it’s disappointing to realize that my hard work to maintain a high GPA and my excellent recommendations mean nothing in the end. I am standing and falling on my writing, which although I’ve been told isn’t bad, is still far from professional in quality.
I try to remind myself, only one place needs to say yes and that King only has a BA and Gaiman is self educated. These are men that I would kill to have their drive, career and attitudes towards the craft on a whole.
Also I try to remember I’m 25. If If twenty years from now I’m still in the same place, it might be time to look for a new career path, but right now I’m probably pretty close to where I’m supposed to be on the timeline of a writer. The wunderkinds, like Brett Easton Ellis and Christopher Rice, seem to write one brilliant book while young, something that they emotionally vomit up that resonates with a lot of people, and then never really hit that mark again. Writer’s who last are often hard-working, practiced and well seasoned with disappointment.
I said by 26 I wanted to have been paid for a story. Done and Done. By 27 I want to have a sizable body of short fiction. I want to have at least ten unpublished short stories that I have finished the first drafts on and are all publishable when completed. Right now I have at least four pieces that could be something, but I’m not happy enough with any of them to count them towards that 10. And some may think that’s a small number and other’s may think that’s an unreasonable number for a year. But I think that it’s a goal and it’s my goal, and furthermore, suck it.
I also want to explore magical realism more, since that seems to be where I’m the happiest with my own work, and the stuff that resonates with me the most.
The world is not without joy however. Today while cleaning my mom found my first UK edition of Anansi Boys tucked under her couch where it has lived since October of 2005. I couldn’t find it anywhere, and I assumed I left it on the customer service counter of Air France while filling out forms about my lost luggage on my way back from Prague. The book itself is amazing because I found it, the only copy, at one of the few english books stores in Prague, several days before it was supposed to have been released. Even though it is a first edition it is a trade paperback, and on the inside page where all the publishing information is listed and, at for US first editions, the numbers 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, instead it only has the number 1 centered on the line.
I literally jumped up and down and hugged my mother and hugged the book and then put it in my increasingly impressive Gaiman collection. I hope to god he keeps winning awards because right now that’s all I have to bequeath to future generations.
Finished the necessary bits of my homework and will have to chip away at the upcoming projects I have due. For now it is back to therapy reading (a trashy mystery) and quality feline time. As much as my cat loves me, she still loves it when I’m depressed because I tend to move less.
Also if you have a strong opinion one way or another about the new site, please email me or leave it in the comments.
So it is not even noon yet and I’ve already accomplished so much.
I cleaned.
I cleaned out my hard drive.
I made a ton of new folders and finally organized all my loose documents into them.
I ordered A Feast of Snakes.
Okay it really doesn’t seem that impressive when I type it out, but my computer and room are so shiny right now. I feel organized.
I want to write, but can’t seem to get started, so I’m doing a blog post to get my hands used to the meditation of typing.
I was typing last night during christmas and my sister commented on how fast I can type, and that was odd because I still feel like it isn’t fast enough. If I could type as fast as I can think I wouldn’t make so many editorial mistakes. It seems sometimes my brain wants to catch up to my fingers so it skips ahead to the place in the sentence that my brain is working on. This irritates me because when these bits are read by other people I’m sure it comes off as though I’m mentally deficient. I swear I’m not, I just can’t type 130 words a minutes or anything like that. I’m actively working on getting faster though, and on typing while reading the screen instead of staring off into space working out future bits of the writing. It’s all process.
I got two books for christmas that will help. I got a new grammar book, something thin and alphabetical which concerns itself largely with common errors and I plan on reading it cover to cover this weekend. I also got a book written by two editors designed to help with editing your own fiction. If it has anything good, you’ll be the first to know.
The highlights of the xmas booty?
Absolute Sandman: Volume 1 (first printing)
Retro T-shirts:
David Bowie (70s)
Poison
Skid Row
I also got a biographical book of essays by Harry Crews, some books on fandom (largely concerning the Whedon fandom) and hot new brown leather boots.
My gifts went over really well this year. And I hope in future years we stick with the price limits. It really makes you look for the perfect gift, instead of just buying crap.
All in all the emotional turrmoil of christmas in my family was largely reduced to me getting a headache and just thinking over and over again on a loop for an hour “Am I really related to these people?”
I can’t believe I have three days off of work. This is phenomenal.
Okay it’s time to at least attempt writing, otherwise I’ll have to get dressed and be a normal contributing member of society.
— warning the following is an utter piece of crap with a half good diea somewhere in it. Couldn’t ever seem to get it right, so here it goes, as is. Please don’t judge me on this shit —
The virus spread like wildfire,
before anyone could find a vaccine,
before anyone could find a cure.
The bodies piled up faster then they could burn them.
And then the bodies stood up.
And then the bodies walked.
They didn’t drink blood.
They didn’t cry for brains.
They didn’t obey a ju-ju mama,
to do her bidding and end her foes.
If they did any bidding it was their own.
Mostly they wandered, like sheep without a shepherd
Until fresh flesh was around for them to rip from the bone.
Almost nothing was the same.
The world had been a hollow shell for more then nine months.
Almost everyone was infected.
Almost.
Billy was nine years old.
Hiding on the top floor of a steel and cement coffin
that had once belonged to hosts of condo-owning yuppies
before the yuppies had belonged to the undead.
Billy didn’t know it was December 24th.
He knew it was dark, and he was sick of eating beans out of cans.
Every time he opened another can of beans,
he thought of Sister Mary Helen
talking about hell.
Now he knew she meant a place much like this.
When he pictured Heaven, he pictured it exactly the same,
but with ice cream that never melted.
For all intensive purposes Billy was the last boy in the world.
But some things in this world
are harder to kill then humans
or even zombies.
And The Man in Red was neither.
He was a thought, or maybe an abstraction of an idea.
Five centuries of belief was more then enough
to keep him through the last nine months.
He was fading, and he knew
that this would be the last Christmas.
But he would ride out,
and he would find Billy.
He strapped his eight mangy mules together and loaded up his cart.
He packed a toy train, an automatic machine gun,
and some ice cream that would never melt.
He headed out to bring joy and peace
to the last little boy on earth.
Billy heard the hooves on the roof
and was sure he was through.
He gathered nine months of tin cans and the scraps
of his biblical bed time stories to protect himself.
He didn’t bother to hide. If the corpses had learned to fly,
even at nine he knew he was screwed.
The man in red wheezed down the fire escape, loose bars being knocked
Thirty stories to a distant clang.
He rested one hand over his old Kalashnikov,
Almost hoping to blast some reanimated corpse.
He hoisted through a window and found a sad sight,
Billy in a corner in soiled pajamas, clutching a can.
“Little Billy Smith, don’t you remember me?
I brought you Tod the Teddy, when you were just three.”
“. . . Jesus?” Billy said.
“ Not quite, Billy. Red suit and reindeer sound familiar at all?
Every corner of the globe I come to children big and small.”
“. . .”
“I guess it’s not important.” The Man in Red lit a smoke
and let it dangle from his cracked and pale lips. He reached down and
pulled a toy train out of his sack, a bowl full of ice cream and two yards of track.
He pulled out fresh pjs and handed them to the boy.
Hours passed, and full of ice cream and tinkering lights
The Man in Red knew that it was time to go.
Billy was curled up asleep, a haggard Teddy in his arms.
The Man whispered good tidings and started for the window.
A tug came on his jacket, and he didn’t need to look down to know.
Billy’s eyes full of fear, pleading up at him.
“I’m sorry kid, I can’t take you where I’m going,
it’s not for living boys.”
“Is there anyone else?”
“No, kid, I’m sorry, but it’s just you and me.”
And off The Man went, back to his rickety sleigh.
As he and his reindeer took up towards the sky,
He was hit with a feeling of dread deep inside.
His swung the sleigh around to pass by Billy’s flat,
And saw the little boy standing on the railing of the fire escape.
He screamed too late and Billy turned as he fell.
Before disappearing into the black the boy smiled.
And old St. Nick reached into the air grasping nothing.
There was no thud, no shudder of earth. But it only took a moment
for The Man in Red to feel his aspect leave him. He knew it was time,
but for what he couldn’t even guess. And the earth didn’t weep
for the loss of either.
Inside a house, not a block away.
A family of zombies, stood around a dead tree.
They moaned and they drooled,
Full of a fresh roast.
The zombie children took carcasses of meals already forgotten
Tied them with string, and placed them on braches.
There was no squabbling, no pushing or shoving.
They hoped if they were good Zombie Santa would leave
Presents to unwrap in the morning.
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