I never quite knew why grandpa always carried that cane around without a limp. That is, until I kicked it out from under him one day and he spread as a fine powder onto the floor.
His best friend died a while ago. He doesn’t seem to mind (or maybe notice), though. He just sits there talking to her gravestone as normally as he talked to her. As long as it works for him.
"To break writer’s block is a difficult process, but a simple way to put an end to it is to just grit your teeth and begin writing even with a lack of forethought, and let the ideas or feelings come afterward," I read in an article once. Those weren’t the exact words, but I put the idea as accurately. It never really helped, and I tried it a lot. Sure, beginning to write without a thought in your head as to the contents of the next sentence would guarantee a few paragraphs, at the theory’s finest moments even a few pages, but never would I finish a project when I started it in that way.
My usual routine is to let something simmer in my head for a while; days, weeks, months, however long it takes to get the fragile thoughts temporarily together enough to at least begin a story. Finishing a story is a rare occurrence, something I feel I should celebrate, since writing anything is at least congratulatory to me.
I can’t remember the last thing I finished, since it was so long ago, and I doubt I thought it was worth remembering. I’m not being humble when I say this, since my main goal in writing is creating something that is worth remembering, which I wonder might be main goal in everything else as well. Just about all of the things that move me to write something worth writing are too ephemeral to stay even as long as it takes me to begin to write, much less to continue as I write. They’re too abstract for me to put them in such concrete environs as words. The spark of inspiration that creators are said to get seems to be followed by a steady stream of practical materialization. An artist who is struck with an idea for what will become his masterwork still has the creative capacity to go out and buy the right paint, and to plan, and to schedule, and to finish. I have a dread that I’m missing that steady stream; forced to leave the sparks unfulfilled, partially fulfilled, or fulfilled in a way they were never meant to be. I feel like the reason that I always stop writing in the middle of a story and never return is because I know that I have betrayed my initial spark enough and I finally realize, after however many thousands of words, than another few thousand aren’t going to do justice to what I’d initially imagined.
I have a lot of techniques of my own that sometimes work to some extent, if only to keep me hopeful that I can redeem my story by stalling. This is manifested primarily by my reading and re-reading what I wrote. While practical and ostensibly worthwhile, the only things I ever end up changing are typos and arbitrary passages that I disliked, hated, or loathed on a second, third, or fourth reading.
There was a loud crack in the other room that woke the sleeping Victor up. It must have been a gunshot. Afterwards, there was some low-spoken dialogue which none but the speakers could decipher. There was another loud crack from another room. Victor got out of bed and widened his eyes out of confusion, terror, and the inability to see otherwise. He dared not turn a light on lest he give away his position, which, he hoped, was still safe. He heard footsteps outside of his room. It could be the end. He braced himself, and in a last ditch effort to save himself, groped in the dark for the telephone, to call the police.
Before he could, there was a knock at the door. "Oh, Victor…" a female voice sardonically beckoned. Victor recognized the voice as his friend Emily’s. He put down the telephone. Though it was impossible to see, Victor’s pulse slowed and his wide eyes narrowed. Emily had once been a good friend of his, but had since met a man named Walter who, whether he’d meant to or not, changed her for the worse. He remembered her before as being fairly rational and levelheaded, though of a, say, poetic bent when she wanted to be. Since meeting Walter, she’d become steadily less interested in much of anything except Walter, poetry, and a newly acquired tobacco habit.
On the rare occasions that Victor would be around the two of them, it would frequently seem like her main concern was to impress Walter in a number of ways, a common route being the derision of Victor in a humorous fashion. On the still rarer occasions that Victor would be around Emily alone, she reverted to herself, the self with whom Victor was a friend and not the one perfectly alien to him. However, it was safer to assume that she was not alone, when it was in question.
It seemed that, while Emily let herself be changed by Walter, Walter let himself be changed by the changed Emily. They were both poets, and weren’t ashamed of it either. It seemed at that point to Victor that, on some irrational whim, the two of them had goaded each other into madness. They knew where he lived, they’d been inside his home, and murdering his household would be much easier than a stranger’s in a strange house. Victor had become useless to them as a friend, and they were finding use for him as a game.
"Oh, Emily…" he replied in a tone mocking hers. "Is it even worth asking if Walter’s with you?"
"Is it ever worth asking, my dear?" Emily patronized from behind the door.
"How foolish of me," Victor played along. "Come on in."
The door creaked open, but the figures were invisible. "Why don’t you turn on the light?" Victor suggested, awaiting the bullet at any moment, a moment that would only be brought closer by visibility. There was a click, and moments later, the light bulb above sprung into action. Clenching long revolvers in their hands and black cigarettes in their teeth, Emily and Walter stood at the door, the former looking much more amused than the latter, who, as far as Victor could tell, may only have been playing along. The two were dressed from head to toe in black, the better to be concealed. Victor wore only his nightgown.
"Looking sharp, you two," Victor beat around the bush.
"We know," Emily replied brusquely. "Why must you always put on a show?"
Emily would say things like that only in Walter’s presence. "You have to die sometime, Em," he never called her ‘Em.’ "If a couple of dogs want to hasten the inevitable, who am I not to throw them a bone?"
"God, are you even capable of emotion?" Emily feigned exasperation.
"So, who did you kill already?" Victor said, deliberately evading the question.
"Your whole family," Walter informed him casually. "Pets included."
"And to think I only woke up on that second to last shot," Victor replied.
"You’re a clever boy," Emily continued irritatingly.
"I got a million of ‘em," Victor interjected equally irritatingly.
"Don’t interrupt me," she haughtily scolded him. "You think you can stall for time while the police come to your rescue. I assure you, however, that you’ll be dead long before they do."
"I assure you that I didn’t call them. I thought about it, but that was before I knew who it was. What monster calls the police on a friend? Hell, stick around after you waste me, count all the cop cars you see."
"You can’t trap us," Emily scoffed.
"Even if I were, you don’t seem to be trying hard to avoid it," Victor said, making a trigger-pulling gesture with his index finger.
"Maybe we should listen to him, Emily" Walter said reasonably. "If we know it is a trap, it’ll be too late."
"You guys are so paranoid," Victor observed. "I can even make it look like a murder-suicide if you want. You’re not in any danger."
"I’m getting bored with these games, darling," Emily whined affectedly.
"You’re putting this on yourself, you’re the one with the gun," Victor reasoned.
"God, you’re hopeless," Emily rolled her eyes – she never rolled her eyes – and fired a round into Victor’s chest. As he bled, he managed a smirk.
Peter W. Schranz (July 9, 1989 – September 20, 2012) was an infamous but talentless criminal. He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. His aspirations to go to college and study writing and literature were dashed when, in 2006, only months before graduating high school, his Government & Law teacher failed to produce the recommendations she promised. This warranted a three-day suspension, and he had to inform the colleges to which he was applying of the fact. As a result, no college would admit him, and after three years of relentless searching for one that would, even public ones, he gave up, and left in shame on a bus for New York without a moment’s notice. An acquaintance would later note that he grumbled constantly about the fact, saying, ‘Funny how five minutes of thoughtlessness can ruin your entire life, especially when morality hasn’t even been transgressed.’ In 2009 or 2010, Schranz met Johnson Mudde and Debbie Duste, gangsters who offered him a job and shelter. In desperation, he agreed, assisting them in several burglaries and robberies for a few years and getting what Duste assures now was a third of the cut. On September 20, 2012, Schranz met his end, when a bank robbery that he spearheaded went terribly wrong. The three of them entered The Sovereign People’s Bank of America at 7:00 AM with pistols drawn. Schranz’s was defective and accidentally went off, killing Gillard Gulp, a teller. The other tellers immediately alerted the authorities and, due policy, retrieved shotguns from under the counter, firing at the three robbers, and killing Mudde. Duste and Schranz panicked and murdered everyone in the building except each other. A legion of policemen came, and Duste surrendered without a fight. She is currently spending life in prison, that is, life until she’s fried. Schranz retreated into the vault, refusing to come out for fear of shame like that when he was lead onto the road to destruction by being caught with tobacco at school in 2006. The policemen, to coax him out, blasted the ‘latest hits’ right outside the vault door. After forty minutes, Schranz shot himself in the mouth, at 8:06 AM.
Cleaning my room, a spot on my ceiling gave me a real hard time. It was of a clear hue, and I would have to cover it with the checkered paint of the rest of my room if I wanted my opaque window to be the only view of the outdoors in my spotless tiny room. This would be my project for the next few seconds, and I’ll tell you how it was solved, since it’s a very interesting story.
It was beyond me how the stain got on my ceiling, but nevertheless, I made my way towards it. I put the bucket of paint in my pocket, and began to construct a stairway out of the filth and debris I found on the ground of my room. The first few steps were made mainly of dust and lint, but I found it easy to hammer a few feet of toenails into the wall, to further my ascent. Eventually I reached a point that I was too tired that moment to cross. I nailed some yarn into my wall to sleep in, and it was a long, deep sleep. A few seconds later, refreshed and prepared to continue my construction, I climbed the yarn. It was here that I finally arrived at the ceiling. I could almost see the stain, so I tore the yarn from the hole it had made in the wall and swung towards the stain. I let go of the yarn just as it dislodged from the ceiling and plummeted to the ground, echoing a reverberant crash throughout my room. In mid-air, all that I could find to keep myself from the clutches of gravity was the stain that I was combating.
It began to loosen, and the skylight that had been so mockingly tearing through the center of my room became dimmer. This stain was a viscous one, though, and I lost my grip of it, falling into the crater that the yarn had left in its destruction. I ascended to my broken feet, and pondered how I would remove the enemy from my ceiling.
My next idea was to pay the moth that lived in my room to walk up to the stain and paint it over. I entered his home, a great and gilded manse, and asked if he would be interested. We made a deal, and I would pay him some coordinates (82 degrees, 30 minutes, 06 seconds N latitude, 62 degrees, 19 minutes, 47 seconds W longitude) that he had been desiring for some time. With my can of checkered paint in his pocket, he walked up to the stain. To my elation, he successfully painted over the blemish, but then, tragedy struck: he and an airplane collided, and as you can imagine, the plane’s fiery explosion killed my friend. I’ll miss him.
My father died a few months ago, and with him died our only hope of escape. We, that is, my brother Theodore and sister Margaret and I, were all born in the labyrinth, and by the looks of it, we’re going to die here, too. It’s a life we lead. My father teasingly told us the story of King Minos and the Labyrinth when we asked why we were here, but he never answered us. He would tell us that he entered the labyrinth with Mother, but always followed that by warning us never to go too far. Our family holds the part of the labyrinth with the yellow stucco. I’d never forget that. Some of the stucco is crumbling off, and behind it are irregular gray bricks. Besides us, there is nothing but vermin for company. Father warned us never to go past the corridors with the stucco walls. Mother used to by herself on occasion, often bringing back fruit or meat. She and my father would fight about whether they should or not. These are very early memories of mine, and I only know how long ago my parents fought because I know my sister was born afterwards. They stopped fighting about it before I was very old at all.
One day, our mother never came back from another expedition past the stucco walls. We waited for her return, which was habitually punctual and predictable. We indefensibly decided that she would certainly return the next day, but upon our awake, we found her absent. Father was outrageous, wondering wildly whether she’d been injured or killed, or lost, doing so both mournfully and furiously.
Before our mother disappeared, we never knew how much we owed to her. She would gather secret food the origins of which remained a mystery even to father and we would eat to distension. After she disappeared, we would eat fish from an underground stream. I remember her hair as always being dark and long, and being able to play with it when I was small without her slightest protestation. She was always warm, and when the weak fires we managed to build weren’t enough, she always was, always.
Before our mother disappeared, Theodore relayed a message to my sister and me that our parents told him. They confided in him that an abomination prowled the labyrinth, one so unspeakably hideous that a glance would render the glancer mentally incapable. As gullible children, my sister and I believed him, but once we grew, our suspicion did as well and we discredited his tale, despite his affirmations. Once mother left us, we asked father if our brother had been telling the truth. We wouldn’t discredit what our father assured us. We came to the conclusion that the skulking abomination had found our mother.
Father wasn’t ever the same after mother left. The change wasn’t a matter of mood or countenance, but of vigor. He would be terribly happy and terribly angry when mother was around, often needing his wife to remind him not to yell when he got too excited about whatever subject in which he was becoming too excited. After she was gone, his once fiery spirit was extinguished; he would occasionally chuckle or chastise, but we never heard him laugh or yell again. Of course, our father was always a good father, and my mention of his terrible anger should be recognized as a natural reaction to the great danger in which we sometimes put ourselves.
In retrospect, it seems likely that mother’s disappearance contributed significantly to his decline in health and ultimate demise. He died near his fifty-fifth birthday, but was sick for much longer. Mother left four years ago. Each day since he woke up a little later, until we had to wake him up ourselves for fear that he’d sleep all day. When he’d get sick, which was more often that any of his children can remember, it would come on quickly, persist for weeks, and end gradually. The last time started like any other; he would cough and shiver, he would sleep more and more, telling us that he could not get up when we tried to wake him. It began to dawn on us that he might not pull through that one when he wouldn’t eat the fish we’d caught one day. He always ate, always.
The parishioners sat quietly as the Reader’s sermon echoed through the hall. Shelves of dusty books festooned the shadowy walls. Above them a row of windows allowed a certain quantity of daylight to shoot through the room. Rusty firearms of every variety sat in wait on their laps, or rested under their shoulders, as they listened.
"Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain: only the Cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took." As Abednego listened, he began loading a magazine with shells from his bandolier. He glanced downwards to do so, and hauled a lock of his sandy, matted hair behind his ear. Lamech, next to him, listened to the reader intently.
"Then we turned, and went up the way to Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. And the Lord said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand: and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites which dwelt at Heshbon."
The Reader said nothing more, but made the sign of the cross and left the room. A metallic jostling of weapons trumpeted the parishioners’ exit as well, all of whom left through the front doors solemnly. Outside of the building, several battered, ostensibly undrivable cars and trucks had been parked in all directions. The equally directionless skid marks beneath their wheels suggested the same as for the vehicles’ conditions.
The building was falling apart, windows broken, walls moldy, paint splotchy. However, there was no sign of human destruction upon it. It was situated at the crossroads of two partially paved roads on the edge of a forest. Outside, in huge, perhaps useless, letters, the building advertised as "CHURC."
Abednego and Lamech jumped onto the back of a truck, all of whose windows were shot out completely. One other joined them in the back, and two more sat in the driver’s and passenger’s seat.
"My name is Yuval," a tall man with a dark complexion next to Lamech said, offering his hand. "This may be our last moments to shake hands," he explained.
"I’m called Lamech, and this is my brother Abednego." The vehicles began to sputter away, slowly at first, then more quickly.
"The Philadelphians have a much more capable cavalry. I want to take their car-workers," Abednego opined.
"But their weapons are inferior"