That's it for 2013

The piece I wrote today will be the last one for 2013 because from tomorrow, it's spending time with loved ones until I go back to uni.

I've been writing so so much because of this blog, so I feel good about that.

The only issue I have right now is that some stories could be shorter and I don't feel that they're as 'tight' as they could be.

I've been experimenting with flash fiction (literally less than 50 words) and have found it pretty rewarding, so I might switch it up and do more flash fiction in 2014.

I debated haikus as well, but we'll see how it goes...

Have a good holiday, everyone!

x

#78 - My Imagination

Today’s words: Simile, Prostitute, Oregano, Alabama

Word count: 123

Completion time: 31 minutes

Summary: If my imagination were corporeal

--

If my imagination could talk,

It would have an Alabama accent

For no reason other than

I like how ‘Alabama’ sounds

If my imagination could dress,

It would wear a blood red playsuit

With a black bow at the waist (because)

While lovely, it can also be deadly

And if you could taste it,

Your tongue would be spiked

With the flavour of oregano,

Because it’s my favourite herb

If it had a job, it’d be a prostitute.

It ventures into dark territory,

Stays up late at night,

And sometimes, people take advantage

Its favourite simile would be

‘As sweet as sugar’,

Because if it could drink,

It would have six sugars in its tea

If my imagination were human,

Could you imagine?

#77 - The Man With The Limp

Today’s words: Bedsite, Parsimonious, Occupied, Limping

Word count: 549

Completion time: 37 minutes

Summary: You can never be too careful when helping a stranger out

--

What a cliché. An old guy’s limping along the pedestrian crossing, no-one else bothers to help, so you volunteer because not doing so would cause you to feel bad. It was rush hour, so horns were blazing and people were walking so fast it looked like they were robots trained to avoid any collision or conflict; eyes forward, shoulders back, a parsimonious hold on their bags and purses whenever they walked past the homeless couple on the corner of the street, you know.

Anyway, when I walked up to this guy and took his arm in mine, telling him that I would give him a hand, he smiled gratefully and shifted some of his weight onto my side. He needed me, I was doing him a favour, I was the hero...that’s what ‘selfless’ people say a lot, don’t they? Oh, I’m doing it out of the kindles of my heart, they say. Bullshit. They’re doing it because they all have ego trips, they want to make themselves feel better by doing something generous. I do the same, but I like to think that I’m a good person first and foremost.

When I looked closer at him to make sure he was okay, he looked much younger than I had initially assumed; his attire threw me completely – woolly bobble hat, thick brown Chelsea quilt jacket, light grey soiled trousers that looked two sizes too big...I was sure that he was in his late forties initially.

As we made it to the other side of the street, he thanked me and I smiled modestly. “It’s really no problem,” I added. “You’d probably do the same for me, right? Anyway, I’d better...”

He put a hand on my arm softly. “Are you occupied right now at all?” A slight Scottish accent accompanied his words.

The accent took me by surprise, and he had such a kind look in his eyes that I said that no, I wasn’t ‘occupied’. So he took me to Costa and we had a coffee and some snacks, his treat. When we sat down, he took his hat off, revealing a closely cropped head of dusty blonde hair that was beginning to curl at the ends. It made me feel comfortable, I think; if he had left his hat on, it would have made me feel uneasy for some reason.

“So, what’s your name?”

He asked me several questions about myself like he was genuinely interested, throwing out a compliment here and there about my hobbies and occasionally what I was wearing. My cheeks flushed, but I blamed it entirely on the soy latte.

When we left, he was still limping so he asked if I could walk him home since it was only across the park. I agreed.

His limp was soon gone when we stepped inside and his voice had dropped a little. I knew that I had to get out, but my legs were frozen and I knew that he wouldn’t let me go, even if I asked nicely. I don’t like recalling what happened in too much detail, but afterwards, his makeshift limp had transferred itself to me for real and the bedsite wall had a few bloody scratches on it.

Every day since, I curse myself in the mirror for being too naive.

#76 - Words Left Unsaid

Today’s words: Cat, Sex, Lemon, Colour

Word count: 728

Completion time: 51 minutes

Summary: If you never tell someone what you’re thinking or feeling, you could be worrying over absolutely nothing

--

For one of the first times in her life, Charlotte was glad that her webcam transformed her into a blurry mix of colour; it was like crying when it was raining. She wasn’t crying about the lack of sex, she was crying about the emotional distance that she was feeling between her and Blake. It was true that Blake had never been with another girl before so she’d be nervous, but they had barely even kissed.

“You think she’s gone off of girls already?” Charlotte asked Gary in her thick Brooklyn accent as she readjusted the strap on her dress. He laughed a little, making her look up at him accusingly. “That a yes?” Tears began to sting her eyes, which she quickly wiped away with her index fingers.

“You guys have spent two days together, there’s no way you can tell what she’s feeling yet, give it time.”

“I’ve done everything...I’ve,” she looked up towards the ceiling and counted the list off with her fingers, “rested my head on her shoulder, told her she looks pretty, stared at her a little after we break away from a hug, but I can’t feel any intimacy...”

“Have you tried talking to her about it?”

Inhaling, she prepared to answer but held back before starting again. “I try...but it’s difficult to...you know, get the words out; I don’t want her to think that I’m worrying over nothing.”

Gary smiled sympathetically. “You’re worrying and that’s enough; if something’s affecting you emotionally, it’s never stupid or invalid...she should understand that.”

She whispered “yeah” under her breath and watched as more tears fell onto the skirt of her summer dress, a dress that was yellow like the colour of a bright, cheerful lemon. “I wore yellow today,” she said, touching the hem with her fingers and curling them around the thin material. “Yellow’s meant to be the happiest colour, right? I think I read that once.”

“Probably, I don’t know,” Gary said, trying and failing to study the dress.

“Why am I such a scardey cat?”

“You’re not.”

“Oh jeez, you heard that?” she put the back of her hand in front of her mouth and smiled, blinking away a few more tears.

“You know, she might be feeling the same way...she might think that she’s done something wrong or that you don’t like her anymore.”

She wrinkled her brow and chuckled. “No way, I’m crazy about her.”

“But look at it from her point of view...she might be anxious to get closer to you too, and because you’re the first girl she’s been with, she might not even be able to look at you without freaking out.”

She sat up suddenly. “I get nervous to look at her, too.”

“Yeah, see? And you’re experienced, so imagine how she’s feeling.”

There were a few seconds of silence on both ends before Charlotte said: “Wow...I was too caught up thinking about myself to even...” she put both hands on either side of her and leant forward a little. “You think she might be feeling this, too?”

“You won’t know until you ask, so just go for it.”

Soft footsteps were heard coming up the stairs, prompting Charlotte to say, “Hey, I think she’s done making dinner for us...I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“That’s fine, just remember – be open with her.”

“Got it.”

The bedroom door opened slightly and Blake popped her head around the door. “You ready for food?”

Charlotte’s heart began to take control of her entire body until she could feel every inch pulsing rapidly. “Yeah...um, is it alright if we talk real quick? It’s nothing big,” she hastened to add, “it’s just...something on my mind.”

It took a while for Charlotte to voice what she wanted to say, but eventually it all came tumbling out once the first issue had been dislodged. She found it hard to look her in the eyes as she spoke, but Blake was hanging onto every word.

“To be honest,” Blake began once Charlotte was finished, “I was kind of scared to say or do anything wrong around you...so I was quieter than normal, I’m sorry,” she confessed, taking Charlotte in her arms. “I’m not sick of you at all, not even a little bit.”

Charlotte smiled against Blake’s hair, drying the tears on her shirt that were filled with joy rather than sorrow. “Good.”

#75 - Light

Today's words: Commence, Preponderance, Point, Lamplight

Word count: 161

Completion time:  20 minutes

Summary: This is just how I felt about the person I’m seeing, and I really couldn’t think of anything else right now. I don’t really feel like this anymore, the narrator isn't me.

--

You’re not supposed to look directly at the sunlight

So I’ll substitute it with lamplight and, knowing me

It’ll fuck with my sight regardless

My plight is slight, but it will fuck with my sight

Regardless

So I’ll commence, I’ll

Leave the lamp on all day and

All night, and it will be okay

Because it’s better to be like this

Than to be in the dark

Even though it’s just a lamp like all the others

It seems to have a preponderance amount of light

Which constantly leaves me in shadow

I don’t have electricity flowing through me

So how can I compete with that?

That spark,

That charge,

That perpetual glimmer that made trolls glimmer

I didn’t have it.

But the lamp did.

And it always would.

Because it was built that way;

I wasn’t

So point your light in another direction

At something that can reciprocate

Because I’m just a dull dead weight

No-one could possibly equate

Us

#74 - I'm Not Gay, I'm Dating a Girl

Today’s words: Incarnate, Zest, Troubled, Posture

Word count: 624

Completion time: 50 minutes

Summary: It’s never that easy to hide your sexuality...something’s going to give eventually

--

It wasn’t very fair on her, but they had the same eyes, same relaxed posture when sitting down, same zest for life that encouraged me to try my best; to me they were the same person. Not to mention the fact that they were twins. They weren’t identical, but when I found out that they shared the same womb for nine months, my brain made up similarities that would have remained undetected otherwise. It’s a very exhausted stereotype that twins were two parts of a whole, but I couldn’t help myself...I suppose that the more similar I found them, the easier it was to deal with my troubled mind and fucked up situation.

Jody was bisexual, and he didn’t hide it so most people knew and he didn’t care...that’s what was so attractive about him – his confidence. A few people had made fun of him in the past but it didn’t seem to get to him, he’d just laugh it off and play along because he was secure in his sexuality; that and Kim was likely to raise hell like Satan incarnate if anyone crossed paths with her brother.

Kim. She was the person I originally went for, and it took me a while to realise that I had chosen the wrong gender, let alone the wrong sibling. Don’t get me wrong, she was great and still is, but it was Jody who had a futon reserved in my heart. However, instead of breaking up with her when I realised, I pretended that she was Jody to try and make it work. Now, they didn’t look very similar at all, so my imagination got a bit of a workout and my eyes were closed a lot more often – when we would cuddle on the sofa, when she gave me blowjobs, when she fell asleep on my chest.  And it worked – I got hard, I performed well, and we were both happy, so what was the harm [?] I asked myself.

Dishonesty. I hated myself. I could pretend that everything was okay, but Kim was in love with a lie, a projection of someone she thought she knew. Someone she thought loved her back. Someone she thought wasn’t, could never be, gay. How could a gay man kiss her, touch her, fuck her like that? If someone insisted that I was gay, she wouldn’t have believed them.

Why didn’t I just tell everyone the truth, tell Kim that I didn’t, couldn’t like her anymore because I liked Jody? Then tell Jody exactly what I told Kim? No-one knew that I was gay, and I had only been informed a couple of months earlier when I found myself on the ‘gay’ section of a porn site, wanking through about four videos before noticing that something was up. Liking guys doesn’t automatically make someone gay, but it made me question everything and eventually I concluded that I didn’t feel the same about girls as I did about guys, not even close. But by then, I had already been seeing Kim for five months.

So what did I do about Kim? Furthermore, what did I do about Jody? I had to end it with Kim eventually, I couldn’t keep it up...what if she wanted to get serious? I couldn’t pretend to love her as a serious partner, a husband, a father, all the while stealing glances at Jody and mind-wanking to explicit fantasies at family events. As for Jody, I decided that I couldn’t go there after I’d dipped my nib in the family ink, so I forced myself to move on and find another guy.

I haven’t found him yet, but I know he’s out there and when I find him, I’ll tell him how I feel.