More fiction re-posting.
Aug. 11th, 2009 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleNot science fiction or fantasy, for a change.
----
The debris of memories and connections is strewn across the room. The only thing that isn't there is the cell phone, an initial casualty, flung out the window. This is a fifth-story apartment, and the kitchen window looks out over an alleyway. The phone is gone.
The next victim was the photo album. It is perhaps five years old, and the first several pages in it have been torn out, violently, which is not a simple feat. The transparent foil, or whatever it is that covers each page, is not supposed to rip, but it has, stretched well beyond the breaking point. Out from behind it, many photos have fallen, among them several cutesy sequences of pictures, those strips of quadruplicate shots taken behind the curtains in those little automatic booths.
Most of the second half of the photo album is empty; which only made things worse.
There's a mix CD snapped in half, and there are scuff marks on the walls from someone's shoes. There's a broken vase on the table leaking water while the flowers inside shake their heads in the breeze coming in that open window.
In the bedroom all the dresser drawers are hanging open- the white dresser with flowers, not the unwieldy walnut-stain bureau. Clothes have been flung all about the place. The carpet in the closet is uncrimping from where a suitcase sat neglected for a very long time.
The suitcase, messily stuffed, sits out by the front door, which has more scuff marks on and around it.
Back in the bedrooms, one of the pillowcases is wet with tear-stains, and the covers stir, pulled tighter into a cocoon. The bedroom lights get turned off. A minute later, the kitchen window is closed, a cigarette butt flicked out it just beforehand.
The closet by the bathroom has its door slid open, gently, and it stays that way for a long time, until a decision is made about what it will take to clean this up.
McSweeney's Writing Prompts
1. Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man's friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.
----
The debris of memories and connections is strewn across the room. The only thing that isn't there is the cell phone, an initial casualty, flung out the window. This is a fifth-story apartment, and the kitchen window looks out over an alleyway. The phone is gone.
The next victim was the photo album. It is perhaps five years old, and the first several pages in it have been torn out, violently, which is not a simple feat. The transparent foil, or whatever it is that covers each page, is not supposed to rip, but it has, stretched well beyond the breaking point. Out from behind it, many photos have fallen, among them several cutesy sequences of pictures, those strips of quadruplicate shots taken behind the curtains in those little automatic booths.
Most of the second half of the photo album is empty; which only made things worse.
There's a mix CD snapped in half, and there are scuff marks on the walls from someone's shoes. There's a broken vase on the table leaking water while the flowers inside shake their heads in the breeze coming in that open window.
In the bedroom all the dresser drawers are hanging open- the white dresser with flowers, not the unwieldy walnut-stain bureau. Clothes have been flung all about the place. The carpet in the closet is uncrimping from where a suitcase sat neglected for a very long time.
The suitcase, messily stuffed, sits out by the front door, which has more scuff marks on and around it.
Back in the bedrooms, one of the pillowcases is wet with tear-stains, and the covers stir, pulled tighter into a cocoon. The bedroom lights get turned off. A minute later, the kitchen window is closed, a cigarette butt flicked out it just beforehand.
The closet by the bathroom has its door slid open, gently, and it stays that way for a long time, until a decision is made about what it will take to clean this up.
McSweeney's Writing Prompts
1. Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man's friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:22 pm (UTC)and i am very small, and the world is very large, and very mean.
also i will read this later, when i haven't been up for 18 hours on top of significant blood loss.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:31 pm (UTC)This sounds suspiciously like not being allowed to care about feminism because I'm male, or not being allowed to care about gay marriage because I'm straight.
Which is to say, stupid all around. Sadly, stupid things - and people - can be just as threatening, and often more so.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:45 pm (UTC)yeah, it is incredibly made of suck. what hurts most is when the people that i'm trying to *defend* start shouting at me because somehow i'm subconsciously racist/prejudiced/whatever. at this point, the moment someone opens their mouth about a racist/whatthefuckever issue, i close mine and go hide in my cave while their wankfest ensues.
it still seems totally stupid to me that every time i've agreed that the avatar casting is really ungodly uncool, i've been shouted at for somehow subconsciously being disrespectful to the PoC. i just don't get it.
oh well. i'll be over here, under my rock.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-12 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:44 pm (UTC)That's awful, and I'm sorry to hear.
IOW, I agree with
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:52 pm (UTC)I'll look forward to hearing feedback then! Rest!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-12 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-12 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-12 06:36 am (UTC)MORE.
plzthx.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-12 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 01:43 pm (UTC)