Quick.

It happened quickly.  That’s what would be said.  After it was over.  It happened so quickly. 

Quick.  Too bad those quick moments won’t ever leave.  Too bad they keep replaying.  But they do.  Quickly.

It was raining.  Pouring, really.  And there was lighting.  In the dark of a sky just past twilight, it looked like the strobe light at a dance party.  Except more erratic. 

Driving in the rain is like asking for something to go wrong.  Especially when driving up a windy hill on a road that’s too narrow.  Already know what’s gonna happen, right?

Sure.

But there’s something to be said of accidents.  People just can’t look away.

Work ran late today.  Hurry home.  In the rain.  Tried to beat the rain.  But outrunning weather is like trying not to hit roadkill.  Pointless.  Messy.  And really bad for the car.

So close to home.  But there’s this section of road that goes up the bluff.  That was never designed for the recent influx of traffic.  That’s dangerous enough when only one car is on it.

This part of the drive is always dreaded.  But it’s so close to home, it hardly matters.  Already thoughts of what’s going on at home.  Dinner cooking.  Favorite TV shows to watch after.  A glass of wine and a cozy blanket. 

The song on the radio lulls senses into false security.  The car turns and begins the ascent it won’t finish.  Singing along loudly to the radio.  Drowning out the patter of rain.  Ignoring the bright flashes of the storm.  And trying to ignore the stark light of the oncoming cars. 

Then there’s a pair of lights that’s coming too close.  That’s in the wrong lane.  That’s-

When this part replays, it’s still fuzzy.  Except for the churning stomach.  And the shock that courses through every nerve ending.

There’s a rushing feeling.  And hardness. That’s the glass and steering wheel.  But is the rushing rain or blood?   It’s hard to tell. 

Lights are still flashing.  They soon become red and blue. 

It happened so quickly.

Spit-take

I've been working with this advertising agency and it's been harder than I thought. I'm not an ad copy writer or even a PR writer and it's going to take longer than I thought to adjust. The good news is the guy I'm working for is really sweet and willing to work with me because he really wants to have content creators he can rely on. Okay, it does make me feel like a twelve year old at times (especially because I got this gig because my mom knew him, but I did submit a portfolio and shit, so I deserve it, right?), but I should just take it.

Anyway, we were talking about payment for my first piece. Earlier he had mentioned that their on staff writer makes $40/hour and that another one of their regulars makes $30/hour. They're all older than me and have been in the business longer, so I was kind of hoping to make like $20/hour or something. We had a kind of roundabout discussion about payment today and finally he asked.

Is $30 an hour okay for?

Followed by.

How about I pay you a $200 flat rate for your first piece. (Because with the hourly rate it was less than that.)

Is that okay with me? Is that OKAY with me? Motherfucker, last time I got paid for an article I had to hound the magazine for three months and they sent me a check for $60 in a blank card from Hallmark with a WOLF on the front. A motherfucking wolf. Yeah, that's okay with me.

I realize that I'm woefully under-informed about what freelancers get paid and maybe I'm still being taken advantage of. (Should probably do some research or whatever.) I knew that $60 for my last gig was low, but hot damn.

Maybe it is possible to make it as a writer. Maybe I can move out of my parents house in the next month. Maybe a lot of things. Despite the fact that this is not the kind of writing I wanted to do, and I really don't have the hang of it, but I'm hopeful this place is going to work out for me.

Yeah, baby, we can swing that.

Glee Drinking Game

No, this is nothing creative. I'll try to post something for the last day of FlaFiOcto. I had E and M over last night (it's been a while since I've used the single initial, god do I feel like I'm in  Gossip Girl), and we played a Glee Drinking Game. I thought I'd post it here for those Glee lovers/haters among us. (Sorry Ada, but you can play too if you want.) The bad thing about this game is I end up getting SO MAD at the writers and cursing at the TV with abandon. Oh well!


Glee Drinking Game

Take a drink when . . .

• Anyone starts singing.
• Sue Sylvester insults Will Schuster.
• Anyone fulfills their stereotype.
• Someone makes a bad decision.
• They use the word "sectionals" or "regionals."
• Santana says something mean.
• Will Schuster patronizes his girlfriend.

Watch Glee responsibly! We all know overexposure to Glee can lead to latent rage syndrome.

Zombie Apocalypse Plan - Part 3

Part 1
_ Incubation _
http://padawansofwriting.blogspot.com/2012/01/zombie-apocalypse-plan-revised.html

Part 2
_ Accumulation _
http://padawansofwriting.blogspot.com/2012/01/zombie-apocalypse-plan-accumulation.html


Part 3

_ Aggravation _

FFOct24 - Flash Fiction 7

Girl Meets Mess

There was this man, and that’s always how the trouble starts. There was this man, and I fell from the edge of space to the bad part of my mind where everything always gets so complicated. There was this man, and I didn’t love him.

Well, not exactly.

Love gives you strength. Love is your rock. Love stands by you when you break down at the grocery store and say that the soup aisle reminds you of everything your mother always said was wrong with you. This was not that.

It started innocently enough. He rear-ended my friend. On his motorcycle. Never seen anyone fly over the hood like that, but he got right back up.

“Fuck,” was the first word I ever heard him utter. “What the hell were you doing?”

Standing still at a red light was the answer to that question. It was mostly the head trauma.

My friend, who is good at this type of thing, calmly informed him that he was as bright as a baboon’s rear end and also offered to drive him to the hospital and asked would he please give us his insurance information. He declined, paying us out of pocket with a mysterious wad of twenties, and then speeding off. I would later run into him at the grocery store and then my anarchist book club. God, what’s a girl to do?

Soon it became obvious to me that he was a little unstable. At my anarchist book club (really we just read dystopian sci-fi that you’d find in any top 100 reading list for the American middle schooler) he got into ridiculous fights. He said that JFK was killed by Russian terrorists. He said that Diet Pepsi caused more cancer than cigarettes and that the FDA was a load of horseshit. He also said that car owners were the worst plague to every blight mankind.

Naturally, I was taken with him. That is until later. We started to go out together, my anarchist book club, and he got into three fist fights in less than a week. One was over a stolen parking spot and the second came at the end of a shouting match during a contentious dart game.

The last was with one of our fellow book club members over whether or not the idea of God could be proven true with empirical data. Telling you which side of the argument he was on will not give you a better idea of anything.

I started sneaking peeks at him. Then I started researching him on the internet. Then I started slowly inserting myself in his life, and it was all well and good until he started to notice my interest.

It turns out that the only thing worse than being spurned by an impossible crush is being intrigued by one. He started to ask me out to movies, shows, and bars. I cleverly dodged, but it was hard to keep it up for long.

Then, one night, I was describing the hardships of my ill-gotten amore to the same friend who was present at the time of the rear ending. She was smoking a joint at the time, but still gave me the single greatest insight I’d ever received.

“Do you think it’s possible that the reason you like him is because you don’t think you deserve any better?”

All that time I thought I was torturing myself for fun, but sometimes stabbing yourself in the thigh is just a way of avoiding the fact that your jeans no longer fit you properly.

There was this man, and that’s always how the trouble starts. Then there was this woman, and, for once, that was me. It was only when I realized how awful I was being to myself that I could finally stop staring at his thighs when we discussed 1984. Which was good, because his musings on A Brave New World were pedestrian at best.

Not FlaFiOcto :(

But I'm sure I'll write something on the eight billion hour train ride I'm about to undertake to visit Allya. Until then, I just wanted to leave you with this insane little ditty I came across in the poetry I've been writing off and on.

Pranked

Darling, have you noticed?

I’ve been wearing your skin,
all day.

What madcap
hijinks we get up to
when I forget
to be
human!

Flash Fiction 6

The first time it hurt. The second time was just confusing. The third, well, by then I was getting used to losing myself.

Rage-ometrics. A half joke and half-truth, neither part amusing or factual. My partner used to say that I was more emotion than woman. Not so much human and much more whirlwind of interpersonal destruction.

He was not wrong, but neither was he kind. That friendship would end badly with one of us wielding an ice pick with intention to harm. Telling you which was which would paint an unfair advantage for the other, so I will not reveal it at this time.

It was never my intention to become super human. Here the prefix “super” is defined very strictly by its Latin origins. Above and beyond. More than. Not just a woman anymore. Too many bits to be quite normal.

Once I knew I was no longer like everyone else though, I wore it with style. There are things you don’t let yourself do when you want to blend it. Haircuts that are shied away from. Leather jackets unbought. Body parts unpierced and untattooed. Once I knew I wasn’t normal, I let it all go. I took up three bad habits, but dropped two of them because hard drugs and sex with strangers wasn’t as much fun as I predicted.

I kept the cigarettes.

My partner always used to say I kept the masses nice and safe and ignorant while shielding them from the truth. Never mind that I stopped mass genocide, he had to fixate on the lie. The harm done by untelling.

He always was a cynic, and arrogant to boot. Hypocrite. I was taking on the sins of humanity, not him. It wasn’t him risking his neck. Unkind. As I said. I almost feel bad for going after him with that ice pick. (And here I said I wasn’t going to tell that story.)

In the end though, hollowing myself out was always the hardest part. As much as he made me crazy, he always called me back. Without him, it became harder to hold on to the me-ness. I started wanting to break things all the time, and not just the things I was supposed to break.

But it’s okay, because it wasn’t long after that I discovered the way to keep doing the indispensable task that was eating away at me. This is a universal trick that will surely help not just the above and beyond humans like myself (saving the world one batch of unfelt emotions at a time) but the ignorant masses as well. As such, I will reveal it here.

Every person has the ability to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good, the selfishness to resist, and the good sense to pick when and where we make our final stand. Pick the hill you die on with care. The one I chose is filled with pests and weevils and ingrates. The only reason I don’t abandon it is because I love it so terribly much.

Every time I go, I get a little closer to losing myself, but every time I return I remember why I can’t. Rage-ometrics. Not funny. Not true. But me. At least, for as long as I can hang onto it.