A Slight Change In Plans

Contest. I'm going to keep bothering you about this until you enter (you know which one of you I mean).

I know it's distraction Friday and I had a post up for a while. But then I realized it was the Final Crusader Challenge. Whoops. Guess I've been busy. Anyway, this time, the challenge is to SHOW what's going on, not tell. Okay, let me "show" you the rules:

My Show Not Tell Challenge: In 300 words or less, write a passage (it can be an excerpt from your WIP, flash fiction, a poem, or any other writing) that shows (rather than tells) the following:

• you're scared and hungry
• it's dusk
• you think someone is following you
• and just for fun, see if you can involve all five senses AND include these random words: shimmer, saccadic, substance, and salt.

Since I want to be a good Crusader (well, as good as I can get), here's my piece. I just wrote it five minutes ago, so it's probably not my best work. But! It was fun.

I want to go home.

It’s… I don’t know. Late. An orangey sun dips low in one corner the sky. In another, a few distant stars shimmer against a sapphire backdrop. But the light’s giving away to shadow. It’s dark enough so I can’t see where I’m going.

I keep my eyes firmly on my feet. I can’t afford to be slowed up by a fall. The vial is still in my hand because I’m too afraid to keep it in my pocket. One little crack and a lot of people are going to be dead.

This was a mistake. I stop, wondering if I should go back despite the trouble I went through. My jaw throbs, I might be bleeding internally, the leg I’ve been hobbling on will never be the same.

I finally look at the place I’ve come to. Inside the houses are happy families, not a care in the world, are eating around dining room tables. I sniff the air… are they eating barbecue? I want to join them so bad… my stomach is demanding I knock on the door, who cares about the blood on my face or the strange substance in the vial? No, it can’t harm you, I’ll say with a smile that will elicit screams.

The woman in there has a splotch of sauce on her face. Her kid is shaking salt over an ear of corn dripping with butter—delicious—and look at that cake! Chocolate cake, if I’m not mistaken… Delicious. Not like the copper overtaking my mouth. Might want to see a doctor about that.

Footsteps. Loud. Uneven. Saccadic.

Not mine.

Time to start moving again.

There’s no way out for me.

I squeeze my hand around the vial.

There might not be for the world, either. 

You like? I like.

Perhaps I Gave Up Too Soon—The Second Crusader Challenge

Liz was right. I gave up too soon. Why? Various stressors coupled with my weakness in creating Flash Fiction. So here is my entry for Rach Harrie's Second Crusader Challenge, where we have to start a flash fiction story of less than a hundred words with "the goldfish bowl teetered." I took up the bonus challenge of writing it in my genre, dystopian YA. Even further, it takes place in the same world as my WIP (although a century earlier), where the heat is in the hundred and twenty degree range and water is scarce. So without further ado...

Fish Sticks

The goldfish bowl teetered on the edge of the table, lost its battle with gravity.

CRA-ASH.

I bolted upright. Next to me, Graham slept undisturbed. If a mouse farted, my brother jumped awake, knife ready. The sound was part of the dream.

Just pretend they’re fish sticks.

That’s what he said after knocking the bowl off the table. I cried. Mom gave them to us, “to save the species.” Graham slapped me, told me to stop wasting water. Then he handed me a mangled goldfish. 

Buddy. Its name was Buddy.

Three days since my last meal. I didn’t hesitate long.

The Cake is a Lie

Of course I never deleted the Wikipedia page. That would be wrong. Besides. I’m pretty sure it is one of the password protected pages that can only be updated by approved parties. However, it would be hilarious if it did not and the page just vanished.

I only like jokes when someone else is the one getting in trouble.

Changing subjects. That was a fun challenge. At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it—that’s not unusual. I think that about everything before I have time to ruminate on it. The lie part was what really hung me up. I’m not a fan of lying in any form. I’m not saying be mean or blab everything you hear; but I don’t like deception designed to protect yourself (or under the guise of “protecting someone’s feelings”) or put forth something that isn't true when facts are right there. I think my entry reflected my distaste for it. I couldn’t quite seem to get it right.

Those without experience in novel writing might say that fiction is nothing but a lie. They, of course, are wrong. A story is one thing. It is a dream. There is no supposition that it is real (that would be non-fiction), although one may pretend it is so. I make up stories and characters, but none of them are lies.

Now I’m getting all philosophic again. Booooring. I’m going to go drink beer and play video games.

Okay, that was a lie.

First Crusader Challenge

When Rachel Harrie says challenge, she means it. For our first Crusader Challenge, she wants us to use filuguline in a sentence (no, this one doesn’t count). I looked it up on Dictionary.com and it wasn’t there. That’s like the time I went on Wikipedia to delete its personal Wikipedia page because it makes the universe divide by zero.

Anyone who doesn’t know what that means, I’m sorry, but there’s just no help for you.

Sorry, sorry. I have a problem with foot-in-mouth disease. I try to joke and go too far. It’s especially a problem online because people can’t hear your tone. It’s embarrassing to tell this, but once in a chat, I told someone to “Just ignore the annoying pests!” in reference to her parents (in all fairness, I really meant my parents). I don’t blame her for being insulted. Of course, I apologized immediately—I have the sense to realize when I’ve gone too far, usually right after I hit enter and freeze like a rabbit under a hunter’s flashlight beam because yes, I really did type that. But I still think it came off like I was trying to bloviate like some know it all rather than commiserate (which just makes me think that if you use bloviate in a sentence, it’s impossible to not sound like you’re bloviating). And while water may roll off a duck’s back, humans seem to lack this filuguline feature.

Words cut sharper than any blade. That’s why I love my cats. Words are meaningless to them! It’s odd that I’m compelled to look up the origins of words and go nuts when they are used improperly (or worse, combined into a useless new form—ginormous; ugh), yet my favorite creatures don’t understand the essence of “words.”

Okay, that’s all for me today. But perhaps something I said above isn’t true…