Random Fiction Assignments!

So, the previous post got a bit long, so I decided to split it up and get two posts for the price of one. Plus it naturally felt like two seperate posts, and I need more content. :p

Anyway, as you will see, none of the following fiction is in my usual style. I usually prefer to write ridiculous things, and none of this is ridiculous. In fact, these really aren't even slightly amusing, and are serious enough that if I wrote this out as a full novel, I probably wouldn't even read this myself. Except for the last one, because if I'm going to read something serious, it's going to be science fiction.

We were given several prompts, usually to write just a single paragraph, during the first couple of months of class, and for some reason I kept using the same characters. That may have been part of the assignment, but I can't even remember what most of the assignments were, so I guess we'll never know. Also, these three all involve the same characters, but are not in any particular order, nor are they necessarily in the same continuity, I just numbered them in the order I wrote them.

These have no titles, so I'll just call them:

Jessica

1.

Despite the heat of the sun, she could not resist taking a jacket. "What if it rains?" Jessica thought to herself. "What if the temperature suddenly changes?" She couldn't help her neurosis. Her mother had instilled a constant fear of the "What if?" in her from an early age, and that kind of mentality is a hard thing to get rid of. Her mother had a "What if?" for everything. From terrifying scenarios like, "What if you're robbed at gunpoint?" To ridiculous ones like, "What if you run out of peas?" Her mother insisted she wasn't a worrier, just a realist, but Jessica's psychiatrist had a decidedly different opinion.

2.

When she thought back to that day, she'd remember it in two ways. Two parts. One great, and one terrible. The day had started out so well, it had been full of so many little victories, so many firsts. Jessica had successfully left the house with only a few things necessary for the day. Her purse, a bottle of water, and a protein bar. She had even managed to leave her jacket and cell phone, and she didn't even think about them once! She didn't wipe down the booth at Starbucks, she didn't use her foot to flush the toilet, and it hadn't bothered her! Much! It had been one of her best days since she'd started therapy. Then she got home and saw the missed calls and the text.
From Dad: Mom is in the hospital. Call me.

3.

After dinner, Jessica offered to help with the dishes. She really didn't want to, but the rest of her family was preoccupied with other post-holiday meal activities, like football and Catan. If she didn't help she would probably have to deal with her mother's chastising glances for the rest of the day. The glances may or may not actually happen, but when she was a kid her mother had been the queen of passive aggression, and as good as she had been lately, that never really goes away.

"Well! Nice of someone to show up!" her mom chirped, feigning cheerfulness.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a saint." She grab the dishtowel and started drying. "Why haven't you guys gotten a new dishwasher yet?"

"Because we don't need one! Since you all moved out, it's just your dad and me. Besides, we had one and someone broke it, remember?"

"Good grief mom. I was 12. And that thing was ancient. I have never been convinced that it was my fault anyway. I know I set it right." She set another dish in the cupboard.

"Well never mind," her mom said, washing another dish. "What's done is done. I forgave you years ago."

Jessica rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. She'd learned to pick her battles years ago, and this one wasn't worth it. They washed and dried in silence until Jessica set a pot on the counter.

"Don't put that there!" her mom said suddenly. "I haven't wiped the counter yet!"

"It's fine mom. The counter is clean. And it's not like anyone is going to eat off the bottom of a pot anyway."

"It doesn't matter. Give it to me."

Jessica handed her the pot and she proceeded to rewash the bottom and dry it herself. Jessica rolled her eyes and grabbed another glass to dry, but as she picked it up, it slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor.

"Jessica!" her mom yelled.

"What? It was an accident!"

"Go get a broom!" her mom exclaimed, "I'll do this myself!"

Jessica went to get the broom out of the closet. This could not have gone worse. She was 27 years old, but her mom still treated her like a child.

"The glass is all the way over by the fridge." her mom said sharply. "Sweep that up before someone steps on it."

Jessica glared at her.

"Why do you act like this?"

"Like what?"

"Why do you treat me like a kid?"

"Why don't you stop acting like one?"

"What?! I am in therapy because of you!"

Her mom's jaw dropped, and she stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. Then she slowly put down the dish cloth, turned, and left the room.

~

My last one is probably my best one, and I think I actually do remember the prompt for this one. I'm pretty sure we were supposed to take a memorable scene from a book and put our own spin on it. Basically pay homage to a scene, but write something wholly original. The scene I chose was from one of my favorite books, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.

Toward the end of the book, most of the characters escape the planet Camazotz, where the main character, Meg, has lost her little brother, and is injured when they escape. The inhabitants of Camazotz are basically human, but they are all either evil, or have been brainwashed by evil. They all then find themselves on another alien world, however here, the creatures are decidedly NOT human. They are so completely alien, that Meg is horrified at the sight of them, and repulsed when they touch her. However, by touching her, they are healing her, and despite their terrifying looks, they are actually incredibly kind, and they care for them until they are well enough to go back to Camazotz to save Meg's little brother.

That has always been one of my favorite parts of that book, and I love the idea of a person/creature that is horrifying to look at, but it's actually one of the kindest people you'd ever meet. It's kind of taking the old saying, 'Don't judge others by their outward appearance' to the extreme. So I decided to write something like that myself.

Also, this story is not about my brother Jacob, nor is it about either of my friends named Rachel. I just happen to like those names, plus the Biblical characters with those names were married, so I thought they would be a good fit for the couple in this story.

Jacob

Jacob froze in horror at the creature that was approaching them through the snow. It walked on four legs, vaguely similar to a gorilla, but had no features resembling anything even remotely close to human, and its two mouths were full of razor sharp teeth. He wanted to run but he couldn't, both because he was too terrified, and because he didn't want to leave Rachel. He tried to yell, but he found himself unable to make a sound.

The creature towered over them and looked down. It had to be at least twelve feet tall, with two mouths, and seven eyes. It stared at them but it didn't look like it wanted to harm them. In fact, its eyes looked... kind? With one enormous hand, it carefully picked him up, and with the other hand, it picked up Rachel's unconscious body as well. It held them close to its chest and as it did so, its body seemed to envelop them, wrapping them with something like very thin tentacles or very thick fur, until they were inside something that he could only imagine was like a kangaroo's pouch. When they were safely inside, the creature slowly let go and began walking, leaving the crash site behind.

As Jacob lay there, pressed against the creature's chest, he noticed how warm its body was, and how it had the softest fur he had ever felt. As he lay there, he could feel its hearts beating slowly, softly. Without even meaning to, he quietly slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

~

And that's all I have from that class. I still have some even older assignments from my poetry class over a year ago that I really should get around to posting too. Actually, the amount of stuff that I have, poetry, photos from last year, etc. that I haven't gotten around to posting yet, is terrible. One of these days I'll get around to all that as well. One of these days... My photo blog really needs an update. Maybe I'll try to get at least one post done there this month. Maybe... :p

Random Writing Assignments!

So, it's been almost a year since I took my last fiction writing class, and I got to thinking today, I never posted anything from that class. (Aside from my final project, The Real Story of Little Red Riding Hood - If you missed it, you can find that HERE) So today I decided to just randomly post a bunch of the assignments.

One week our assignments were to observe people. In the first one we were sent out to walk around the campus and follow someone from afar, and write down everything about them with enough detail that you could describe them as though they were a character in a book. We were to give them a name, and read our descriptions to the class, fielding any questions about them that we could. Yeah, that was a weird assignment. So here's mine.

Joseph

I started inside Lagomarcino Hall, and watched out the window until I saw someone coming, so I'd have enough time to make observations and write everything down, without being seen. Once I found someone, I decided he looked like a Joseph, Joe for short. He was walking quickly, with his hands in his pockets, looking straight ahead. He was wearing a maroon jacket, jeans, and white sneakers. He had black hair and glasses, and he was wearing black earbud headphones, and carrying a black backpack. Once he'd passed, I left the building and followed him for a little ways. He cut between Science Hall II and Wilhelm Hall, and went into the backdoor of the Physics Hall. I did not follow any further.

~

The next assignment that was to describe some friends or family. Not so much their personalities, this was more about the way they look or dress, in enough detail that could be used if you were writing them as a character. So I chose my cousins, Shaina, Sasha, and Sarah. They are all sisters, but they are all completely different, and that is very evident, even in just the kinds of clothes they wear, so I thought they'd be perfect for this assignment.

Shaina

Shaina usually wears jeans and t-shirts, though she often wears blouses layered with sweaters. She likes to mix up her look a lot. One day she could be wearing a blouse she got in Latvia, and the next she could be wearing an outfit completely inspired by the 80's. With everything she almost always wears sneakers, and while in the house she wears socks. She has a rather large jewelry collection, with a very eclectic mix of styles. She has everything from vintage 80's jewelry, to a single T-Rex stud that she wears in one ear.

Sasha

Sasha only wears vintage dresses, in sensible styles, usually of a single color, and she probably has around five that she switches out regularly. At least two of them are completely covered in paint splatters, and, as she does a lot of paint/craft work, those are probably the ones she wears the most. When she goes out she usually wears one of the nicer ones, along with a pair of flats. And while she wears flats out, in the house she is always barefoot. She doesn't usually wear much jewelry.

Sarah

Sarah always wears flowy, flowery, full length skirts, along with single color t-shirts or three button tops. On top of that, she almost always wears an apron. When she goes out she often wears a scarf, usually a light silk one, and she usually wears sneakers or boots. In the house she switches between being barefoot and wearing socks. She usually wears earrings and/or a necklace, and many of her pieces of jewelry are inspired by nature, with little creatures like birds or foxes on them.

~

At the end of that week, we were told to listen to people on the bus, or in public, to see if we could overhear any interesting conversations, and then the next week we were to bring them to class to turn into a story. Well, if you know me, then you know I do that already. In fact, I'd already had a conversation ready for the class without even realizing it. (A conversation that you've probably already read HERE.) However, this story was supposed to be written with a partner, taking both of our overheard conversations,  and combining them into one. I'm not sure it was that successful, but you can still read it for yourself.

~

Eustace & Marie

The elderly couples sat quietly, eating their mashed potatoes and meatloaf.

"So I just read about something called biphasal sleeping patterns," Marie said, Breaking the silence.

"What?" asked Eustace.

"Biphasal sleeping patterns." Marie repeated. "There was this study in Minnesota about sleeping patterns." she explained as Eustace turned up his hearing aid.

"There was monophasal, biphasal, and poloyphasal, but biphasal is the best."

"What's that?" he asked.

"That's where people take two, four hour naps instead of sleeping eight hours at night."

"Why?" he asked, just as their cell phone buzzed.

"It's Dylan," Marie said, looking at the phone. "He texted earlier, and said his friend Jaden told him we were dope, so I texted back and told him that I was sorry we were dopey, and he just replied, 'No grandma, being dope is good!' So I guess things have changed. Back in the day, calling someone a dope was an insult!"

"Mmhmm." Eustace replied, and went back to his meatloaf.

~

So that was a bunch of my random fiction class assignments. I do still have a few more though, and those are a lot more fictional than these turned out to be. These ended up being more about real people with some fictional elements thrown in. I'll put together the rest of the actual fiction assignments, and I'll put them out as a seperate post in a couple days.

The REAL Story of Little Red Riding Hood

The last time I worked on this story was May 11th, 2014. I had written a few other "Real" fairy tales around that time, and I had planned for this one to be a sequel to my Goldilocks and the Three Bears story. You can find that HERE if you're curious. But after writing the first act, I kind of got lost.  I always planned to get back to it, but I'd never found the right way to continue the story.

Last semester I took another fiction writing class. I needed to write a story approximately twenty pages long in order to pass the class, and I had no idea what to write about. A few other people were talking about finally finishing stories they'd worked on a long time ago, and then I remembered this one. I thought about revisiting it, but didn't make my mind up until some of the other finished stories started coming in.

No one else in the class had anything like this story. Almost every story that was turned in was some kind of a romantic tragedy or story about suicide. They were all mostly dark, violent, and depressing. There were a few exceptions here and there, and some people did actually have some great stuff, but no one else was writing any comedy. After a while I really wanted some levity in that class, so eventually I decided, that the way that was going to happen, was for me to open this story back up.

I procrastinated, like I usually do, until about three weeks before it was due. I really had no idea how to pick it back up. I loved my first act, but I didn't know where to take it after that. When I finally had an idea, I worked on it straight for hours. Every day I spent at least a minimum of two hours, sometimes far longer, writing and rewriting the story until I was finally happy with it.

When I finally turned it in, it was a huge hit. Everyone loved it, multiple people told me it was their favorite story of the semester, and one guy, on the day of the critique, walked into class, dropped all of his stuff dramatically, spun around, pointed at me and exclaimed, "You! Thank you! You turned my whole f$@#!%g day around!!!" It was the nicest expletive that's ever been directed at me. :p

There were still issues with it of course, but after the critique day, I had a ton of pointers from the class, so I knew how it needed to be improved. By the end of the semester I had finished it, and it was probably the longest peice of fiction I'd done so far. It's probably not perfect, but I am still quite happy with it. I hope you'll enjoy it too. :)

Red & Gold

(The REAL Story of Little Red Riding Hood)

Jonathan North

Sirens screamed and spotlights scoured the edge of the woods as Goldilocks ran into the darkness. She had been a prisoner at Emerald City Juvenile Corrections for a year and a half on multiple charges, breaking and entering, destruction of property, assault; and those were just the charges in the Three Bears’ case. Who knows what else she might have done that she was never charged with.

By the time she’d come up with a plan of escape, she could not take one more day in this hellish green prison. She was sick of the food, she was sick of the emerald jumpsuits, she was sick of this hideous prison haircut that made her look like a Munchkin, but most of all, she was sick of being told what to do.

Goldilocks was used to being able to do pretty much whatever she wanted. She was only twelve, but for all intents and purposes, she was on her own. She had never known her father, and her mother was always off somewhere drinking, or gambling, or doing yoga with her girlfriends. Sometimes all three at once.

A few months ago Goldilocks had made friends with one of the wardens, a wolf who was sympathetic to her story. He too had had a rough childhood, and told her he saw a lot of himself in her. He’d purposely looked the other way as she made her escape, and made sure to give her a head start before pulling the alarm.

Goldilocks was not heading home. Her mother had been out betting on the gnome fights, gambling away her last unemployment check the day Goldilocks was arrested, so they got her on charges of child neglect. She’d been in prison for as long as Goldilocks had, so going home wasn’t even an option, even if she’d wanted to.

~

The only member of her family that Goldilocks could ever count on, and the only one she even liked, was her grandmother. Her grandmother was her idol. She’d been an assassin in her day, going by the name "The Red Shawl," she had done plenty of things that would make the most hardened criminals whimper in fear, crying and sucking their thumbs.

A few years earlier, a number of particularly nasty jobs had taken their toll on her, and The Red Shawl had decided to retire. She had emerged from those final battles victorious of course, that pack of wolves, Biff the Giant, the two-headed dragon of Gelth, not to mention that ogress and her seven husbands, they were all deader than doornails. But that had been such a stressful day that she’d had to stay in bed recovering for almost a week, and she just hated having to miss her Zumba and water aerobics classes. So at the age of 72, she’d decided it was time to hang up her shawl, and she moved into a little cabin in the forest.

~

Goldilocks fled over the river and through the woods until she could no longer hear the sirens behind her. She had no idea how far it was to her grandmother’s house, so when she came upon an old shack that seemed to have no one home, she broke the door in, climbed into the bed, and immediately fell asleep.

~

The next morning, she awoke to the glorious smell of gingerbread wafting through the entire house. She sat up in the bed and saw a little old lady hunched over a fancy new Maytag brand cauldron.

"Who are you?" Goldilocks asked nervously, not sure whether or not the old woman would be upset about the door she had broken, or the fact that she had spent the night in her bed.

"Well, my name is Grunhildabeth, but I think a better question is, who are you?" the old lady asked, a slight smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "Why are you here?"

"My name is... Pollyanna..." Goldilocks lied, thinking it would be best to keep her identity a secret. Pollyanna had been this extremely annoying little girl that Goldilocks had met in Emerald City. The girl would NOT shut up about how glad, Glad, GLAD! she had been that she had been caught in the middle of her candy spree because this would give her a chance to turn her life around.

"Oh, really?" Grunhildabeth asked, hobbling over to her on a gnarled looking walking stick. "THE Pollyanna? The infamous tri-county candy thief?"

"Um... Yes?"

"Because I’ve met Pollyanna." the old woman continued, shaking her stick in Goldilocks’ direction. "I caught her tearing the shingles off my garage last year. I forgave her and offered her a place to stay while she hid from the police, but after a couple of days she just up and bashed me over the head with a lamp and fled! For no reason!” She shook her head sadly. “I have no idea why; I'm such a sweet little old lady.”

Suddenly she perked up. “Care for a doorknob?” she asked cheerfully. “It's dark chocolate coconut truffle!" She bent over and pulled the knob off the door that Goldilocks had broken down. "It's ok, I'm baking up a fresh door right now."

"Your door is edible?" Asked Goldilocks, taking a bite from the doorknob.

"Oh, yes." Grunhildabeth replied. "My whole house is. I just love children so much; my house is specially made for any who might happen to wander by. Help yourself to any furniture or appliances if you like. I can always make more. Care for a hunk of ceiling fan?”

The old woman reached up with her walking stick and knocked down a large slab of chocolate. Unfortunately, the fan was still on, and the missing blade set it off balance. The whole thing rocked back and forth a few times before it snapped off the ceiling, flew across the room, and took out a huge plate glass window.

"Whoops!” Grunhildabeth said cheerfully, handing the fan blade to Goldilocks. “Oh well, I’ll just add sugar glass to my to-do list! So, anyway, who are you really? And why exactly are you wearing that green jumpsuit?"

Goldilocks looked at the old woman like she was insane, but took a bite of the fan blade anyway. It was actually pretty amazing. "Okay, fine. I'm not Pollyanna," she admitted, taking another bite of the fan blade. "But I can't tell you who I am. Other than your awesome candy skills, I have no reason to trust you."

"Well, those green jumpsuits aren't exactly haute couture you know. It's obvious you’re here because you need a place to hide. But I really don’t mind, you can stay here with me. My home is your home. I LOVE children, and I really don’t care what you did. This is a 100% judgement free home. Judgement free, not sugar free!" She cackled to herself.

"I’m really sorry, but I can't stay," Goldilocks said, handing the fan blade back to the old woman. "As delicious as this place is, I really need to get to my grandmother's house. By now she’ll probably have heard what happened to me, and she’ll be worried."

"Please, at least just stay for a couple of days." the old woman pleaded. "I'll make you a cherry chocolate cheesecake filled marshmallow fondant throw pillow with licorice cross-stitch and fringe!"

"Sorry, I really need to go."

"No,” the old woman said, suddenly deadly serious. "You can never leave."

"What?"

"You heard me. You aren't leaving. Ever." Grunhildabeth pointed her walking stick at the oven which flew open, shooting out the new door which fixed itself in the doorway and locked into place. She turned and pointed her stick at Goldilocks, causing a huge cage made of thick candy canes to materialize around her. “You’re going to stay here, and you are going to eat my house, and you are going to get nice and fat, because I am sick of eating my own appliances, and I am starving for a fresh, juicy child!”

"Forget this, you frickin’ cannibal!" Goldilocks yelled, and grabbed the bars of the cage with all her might. She had spent the last year and a half doing almost nothing other than working out in the prison yard, and summoning all her strength, she snapped out two of the oversized peppermint sticks, and leapt out of the cage. "Take this, you witch!" she screamed, and cracked the old woman upside the head, knocking her backwards into the cauldron. She kicked open the freshly baked door, and ran for her life.

Ignoring the old woman’s shrieks and wails, Goldilocks ran back into the woods, and kept running until she could no longer hear the angry cursing in the distance.

~

Goldilocks walked in silence for a while until she eventually found the path again. At least she hoped it was the right path, they all look the same when you’re this deep in the forest. She followed the path until she came to an intersection, marked by a sign with a bunch of arrows, all pointing in different directions. One of them was pointing back in the direction of ‘Grunhildabeth’s Candy Cottage,’ and another arrow, pointing down an overgrown path, was marked ‘Mother Melgrid’s Tower Salon: We Don’t Do Haircuts!’ There were seven small signs underneath those, all pointing in the same direction, marked with the names, Happy, Sappy, Grumpy, Dumpy, Sneezy, Wheezy, and Kevin, and below that was a small, obviously newer sign that simply read ‘Grandmother’s House.’

“Well, that’s convenient,” she said to herself, looking at the arrow that seemed to be pointing her toward her grandmother. “I hope it’s actually MY Grandmother, and not some random old lady.” She figured it probably was her grandmother. What other grandmother would want to live out in the middle of the forest? Besides that old witch of course. And the witch probably wasn’t even a grandmother. Who would have ever wanted to marry that ugly sack of wrinkles?

Just then, she got the distinct feeling that she was being watched. Afraid that Grunhildabeth might have followed her, she decided to go back through the forest and try to keep going in the general direction of the arrow, staying close enough to the path that she wouldn’t get lost, but far enough in that she could remain hidden.

As she was about to go back into the forest, two little children burst out of the trees and crashed into her, sending one of them, a little boy, tumbling to the ground. "Owie, mister!" he exclaimed, rubbing his rear end.

"I'm not a mister." Goldilocks sneered, "What’s wrong with you?”

"Well, you're wearing pants," the little boy said. "And you have short hair. Only boys wear pants and have short hair."

"Someone needs to let go of their antiquated gender stereotypes, little girl," Goldilocks glared at him.

"I’m not a little girl!”

“I’m the girl!” his sister exclaimed.

“See?” Goldilocks replied. “It doesn’t feel very nice to be misgendered, now does it?”

“What?” the little boy asked, totally confused.

"Can you help us?" The little girl interrupted. "We're lost and we need food."

"Yeah! We're starving!" the boy agreed loudly.

"Oh, hey, yeah!" Goldilocks exclaimed, feigning excitement. "You kids should go that way." She pointed to the sign and motioned behind her, back in the direction she’d come from. "There's a huge house all made of candy and gingerbread and chocolate and junk!”

“Junk? It’s made of garbage?” the little boy asked.

“Not literal junk, geez!” she said, reverting back to annoyance. “It’s a figure of speech! The house is made of candy! You can eat it!” She switched back to faux enthusiasm. “Plus, there’s a nice lady who lives there who will give you all the food you want! And I think she’s magic!”

"Really? Awesome! Thanks mister!" the little boy exclaimed, and the children ran off in the direction of the witch’s cottage.

"Yay! Run! Go get that sugar!" she hollered after them. "Good riddance," she said to herself, and continued on her way, no longer worried that Grunhildabeth would come looking for her.

~

Goldilocks followed the path for a few more hours. Around three in the afternoon she found a small apple orchard and decided to stop to get something to eat. A sign on the fence around the orchard read, ‘Queen Grimillian’s Totally Not Poisoned Apples!’ “Hmm,” Goldilocks said to herself. “Sounds legit,” and she helped herself to a few of the biggest apples she could find.

As she ate, she thought she heard someone walking up the path outside the orchard, and instinctively she reached for the taser in her pocket. Unfortunately, it had been confiscated when she was arrested, so she shimmied up a tree and out of sight. She really needed to get a new weapon ASAP. As she watched from the branches, a wolf appeared around the corner and sniffed the air. Suddenly it looked directly up at her.

“My, my, my… What have we here?” asked the wolf, in a deep, powerful voice that sounded like a rich fusion of Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones. “A little girl like yourself should not be alone out here! What would your mother say?”

“Steppen?” Goldilocks asked. “Is that you? What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing!” the wolf replied. It was the same wolf who’d helped her escape the Emerald. “Why are you out here? I thought you were going to your grandmother’s as soon as I’d gotten you out!”

“I’m on my way,” Goldilocks said, climbing down from the tree. “My grandmother lives out here somewhere, but I have no idea how far away she is.”

“Well, lucky for you, I was the one who found you, and not one of the other wardens. There have been people combing the woods for you since last night, you know.”

“Oh,” Goldilocks said. In all the excitement with the witch, she’d kind of forgotten that there might be a manhunt out looking for her.

“I have an idea on how to get them to call off the search,” the wolf told her, “But you’re going to need to change your clothes.”

“Oh, believe me, I’d love nothing more, but if you haven’t noticed, these woods seem to be rather lacking in Walmarts.”

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’m pretty sure there’s a house not far from here, I can smell smoke from a wood burning stove. We’ll stop there and get you some clothes. Then you give me your jumpsuit, and I’ll tear it up, and take it back to Emerald. They’ll just assume you got eaten by a bear or something, and give up looking.”

“A bear, really? You realize I took down three of those on my own, they’ll never believe I let one get the drop on me!”

“Okay, fine, we’ll set it on fire and tell them a dragon got you!”

“Now that’s more like it!” Goldilocks exclaimed gleefully. “I’d never stand a chance against a dragon!”

“You’re a very odd little girl,” the wolf told her. “You know that, right?”

“I have been told that before,” she said, smiling.

“Okay, let’s get going,” he said. “We’ve got a death to fake.”

~

They set out on their way and after a while they came upon a small, brick house. Goldilocks knocked on the door and a moment later it opened a crack. A little pig poked its head out, but it took one look at the wolf and squealed, “Not again!” and slammed the door in their faces. From behind the door they heard several deadbolts click, and shortly they heard the sound of an engine roaring to life. They looked around to the back of the house and saw the pig fly out of the garage on a motorcycle as fast as it could go.

“Nice!” exclaimed Goldilocks, and picked up a rock, chucking it through a huge plate glass window.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” the wolf said. “Or we could have just gone through the garage.”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” Goldilocks asked, carefully climbing over the glass.

Inside the house, they found some clothes that fit her. The pig was about her height, but he was much rounder, so she had to use a belt to keep the pants up.

“Well, this’ll have to do,” Goldilocks said, stepping out of the bathroom and handing the jumpsuit to Steppen. “Not sure about the smell though.” The clothes smelled like mud and old ham, with a hint of… taco seasoning? Whatever it was, it was gross.

“You’ll just have to put up with it I’m afraid,” the wolf said. “This is the only way to get them off your scent.”

Goldilocks gave him a look, and he laughed.

“Thanks so much for that,” she said sarcastically.

“Don’t mention it,” The wolf said, ripping a leg off the jumpsuit with his teeth.

“Wait!” Goldilocks exclaimed. “I thought we were going to set it on fire!”

“Oh, right.” The wolf spit out the leg and found a lighter next to the pig’s stove.

Outside, they burned away about half the material, but made sure that the prisoner ID number was left intact.

“Why don’t you stay the night here,” the wolf said. “It’ll be getting dark soon, and I doubt that pig’ll be back. I’ll take the jumpsuit back to Emerald, hopefully they’ll call back the search party right away, and you should be good to go in the morning.”

“Thank you so much, Steppen,” Goldilocks said. “If I was that kind of person, I would hug you right now.”

“Please don’t,” the wolf said, smiling slightly. “Goodbye now. Good luck.”

“Thank you! I hope I’ll see you again someday!”

“Definitely!”

~

The next day, Goldilocks set out again. She walked for a few hours before she finally spotted a small house off in the distance. Grandmother’s cottage! She’d finally made it! She knocked on the door, but no one answered, and the door creaked open slightly as it had not been latched. She pushed it open and found the whole place was a mess. Chairs upside down, the bedclothes were everywhere, the nightstand and mirror were both overturned and broken, and there were gouges in the floors and walls, like someone had gone crazy with an axe. An axe which was now lying in pieces on the ground outside, next to the back door, which had been broken out of its frame. Upon closer inspection, Goldilocks realized the the axe looked like it had been bitten in half, bitten in half by something with very sharp teeth. There was no blood though, so maybe her grandmother was still okay? She was a trained assassin after all.

Goldilocks ran out the back door. “Grandmother?” she called. “Grandmother!?” There was no answer. “GRANDMOTHER!?” This was pointless. If her grandmother was still alive she was going to have to find her herself. But first she would need a change of clothes and a weapon. The little pig’s clothes were rank, and she was even more eager to get rid of them than she had been the jumpsuit.

She went back inside and opened the closet, glad that she and her grandmother were roughly the same size. She pulled out a dark colored dress, and then she saw it. There, inside the closet, was her grandmother’s infamous red cloak. “Perfect,” she said to herself, and put it on over the dress. If her grandmother was dead, she was sure she would have wanted her to take it, and if she was alive, she could return it when she found her.

Glad to finally be out of the smelly clothes, Goldilocks began searching the house for a weapon. Obviously the axe was out, but there had to be something else around here. Her grandmother would not have become one of the most feared assassins without a collection of weapons.

She looked in all the kitchen cupboards, under the bed, even in the bathroom. Finally she began pulling books off the bookshelf, hoping to find a hollowed-out book hiding a gun, but when she pulled out the Encyclopedia of Cupcakes, the bookshelf shuddered. Creaking and groaning, it pulled away from the wall and slid to the side, revealing a staircase leading down to an armory, almost the same size as the main room of the house!

The armory was absolutely FULL of weapons. There were swords and daggers, guns and crossbows, maces and mace, there was even a large selection of tasers! Her favorite! Goldilocks grabbed a taser that looked a lot like the one she’d used to take down the Papa Bear, and a can of mace, like the one she’d used on the Mamma Bear. Knowing that her grandmother was probably unarmed, she grabbed a huge sword, her grandmother’s weapon of choice. She thought about grabbing a gun too, just in case, but none of them were loaded, and she didn’t know how to load them. Oh well, three weapons should be plenty. Goldilocks found a sheath and strapped the sword to her side, and set out with the cloak covering her and the weapon completely.

~

Goldilocks followed the trail as best as she could for about a half mile before she came to a clearing with a pond and cave on its shore. She thought she heard noises coming from the cave, so she crept closer.

“I’ll never give up, you murderer!” a familiar deep voice shouted. “I know you killed my parents! You will pay!”

“Steppen?” Goldilocks asked aloud.

“Well it’s a good thing I’m a patient woman!” she heard her grandmother yell. “As soon as I can get my hand on one of those cave spikes, you’ll be dead in a second!”

“Well, why don’t you let me go, so you can grab one?”

“Nice try, you smelly bathmat! I’m not going anywhere! As soon as I’ve finished with you, I’m going to dye you pink and turn you into a toilet seat cover!”

“You won’t live long enough to try!”

Goldilocks crept into the cave and saw something that was, quite frankly, pretty hilarious. Her grandmother, a woman in her 70’s, still in her nightgown, had apparently wrestled the wolf to the floor of the cave, and was sitting on his back, pulling his front paws up over his head so he couldn’t move.

“Grandmother!” she shouted.

“Goldilocks!” her grandmother cried in surprise.

“Steppen!?” Goldilocks shouted. “What are you doing!?”

“Wait,” Goldilocks’ grandmother said, “You two know each other!?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing!?” Steppen continued, ignoring her. “I’m getting my revenge! Your grandmother killed my parents!”

“What!?” Goldilocks exclaimed, thoroughly confused. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“When I was just a pup, my parents disappeared without a trace. There were rumors that they had been slaughtered by an ancient evil, cloaked in crimson! When you told me all about your grandmother’s “amazing exploits,” I knew she was the one who’d killed them! That cloak you’re wearing is proof enough! The Red Shawl!”

“You don’t know that! How could you know that?”

“Come on dear,” Goldilocks’ grandmother said, “Let’s be real. If his parents were wolves, I probably did kill them. Now will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

“He was one of the wardens at Emerald.” Goldilocks explained. “He helped me escape! I thought he was my friend!”

“We could never be friends after what your grandmother did to my parents! I was just a puppy! She murdered them!” He turned to her grandmother, “You murdered them!”

“I was hired to do a job,” Goldilocks’ grandmother said. “It wasn’t personal.”

“Yeah, well it is now!” The wolf thrashed with all his might and threw her across the room. She rolled into a row of stalagmites, breaking several of them off, and was still.

“Stop it!” Goldilocks shouted drawing the sword. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you’ve hurt my grandmother I will! Why did you help me? If we weren’t friends, why would you go through all that trouble to help me escape?”

“I did like you at first, I wasn’t lying when I said you reminded me of myself, but once I figured out who your grandmother was, it didn’t matter. I helped you escape so you would lead me to her. I’ve been looking for her for years, I couldn’t let this opportunity to finally get my revenge pass me by. I’m sorry, Goldilocks, this was never about you. I wish you weren’t here to have to see this.”

The wolf leapt toward her grandmother with his teeth bared, but with one swift motion, Goldilocks’ grandmother leapt up, throwing one of the stalagmites with all her might, stabbing the wolf in the chest.

“Well, it seems like luck is on your side, old woman,” gasped the wolf, staggering backwards.

“Yes, it would seem so.”

Goldilocks ran toward them.

“You know I’m not giving up, right?” he said weakly. “You’re just going to have to kill me.”

“Why, Steppen?” Goldilocks asked. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Oh, but it does,’ the wolf replied. “All my life has been leading me to this moment. From the moment my parents died, I made it my mission to seek justice on their behalf. I can’t let their murders go unavenged.”

“Hand me my sword, dear,” her grandmother said, and Goldilocks passed her the blade.

The wolf looked at her pointedly. “I’m sorry, but if you’re going to stand in my way, you’re going to have to go too.”

Summoning the last of his strength, the wolf leapt towards Goldilocks, but she was prepared, and before his teeth could even brush her skin, he was on the ground, writhing with 50,000 volts. As he lay twitching on the floor of the cave, Goldilocks’ grandmother plunged her sword into the wolf, and he was dead.

“Grandmother!” Goldilocks cried, dropping the taser and running forward.

“Oh, Goldilocks,” she replied, as they fell into an embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” Goldilocks said. “I never should have told him about you!”

“Don’t worry about it dear, you didn’t know. Besides, I’ve been needing new carpets anyway. He’ll make some fine mats for the bathroom.”

Goldilocks laughed quietly.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” her grandmother asked, pulling the sword out of the wolf. Last I knew they’d sent you up the river!”

“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” Goldilocks said. “I sort of need a place to stay. I may or may not have just escaped from prison and faked my own death.”

“Oh, that’s my little girl!” her grandmother exclaimed happily, putting an arm around her as they left the cave. “Of course you can stay with me! After what happened this morning, I’m pretty sure I’ll be needing help fixing my house anyway!”

“Thank you, grandmother! Oh, and I’m assuming you’ll be wanting this back.” Goldilocks began to take off the red cloak, but her grandmother stopped her.

“No dear, you keep it. After your amazing performance today, I think you deserve to keep it. Who knows. Maybe one day you can follow in my footsteps. Perhaps you could be the next Red Shawl.”

“Really? I know how much this cloak means to you.”

“Think nothing of it,” her grandmother said, stopping at the pond outside the cave to clean her sword. “I’ve lost count of how many of those things that I’ve owned. You really think that I’ve had the same cloak for 50 years of assassining? Those things wear out way too easily, especially when you fight things with claws!”

Goldilocks handed her the sheath.

“I can make myself another cloak,” her grandmother said, strapping the sword to her side. “You keep this one.”

“Thank you, Grandmother. I’ll wear it always.”

Her grandmother laughed. “Well, at least until it gets shredded in a bear fight or something.”

“Hey, I came out of that fight without a scratch! And there were three of them!”

“Of course, but I meant wild bears. Oatmeal eating, chair sitting, bed using, domesticated bears don’t count. Plus, one of those was a baby!” her grandmother said with a mischievous smile.

“Grandmother…” Goldilocks said, laughing.

“Goldilocks…” she replied, playfully mocking her tone, then stopped. “Goldilocks. Hmm… How would you like a nickname? If you’re going to follow in my footstep, you need an alias.”

“Really?” Goldilocks asked.

“Of course!” her grandmother exclaimed. “Goldilocks sounds too sweet. Too innocent. Why do you think I called myself The Red Shawl? I couldn’t go around killing monsters with a name like Rosemary, could I?”

“Well, I guess not,” Goldilocks replied. “But what do you think I should be called?”

“I think that cloak really suits you,” her grandmother said. “Let’s call you, Red.”

Thoughts From a Can of Creamed Corn

Well, we’ve come to the end of my writing assignments from last year. But, I’ve saved the best for last. Also I’ve saved the weirdest for last. Seriously, if you are the type of person who only watches 60 minutes, or The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, (Is that even a show anymore?) or you only listen to public radio and read War and Peace, and Emily Dickinson novels, then you will probably not like this story. Actually, you will probably find this story to be so far beyond the bounds of reason that you will think I need to be locked away in a mental institution. However, if you enjoy things with a strange, slightly darker sense of humor, perhaps Lemony Snicket books or Adventure Time, then this story will be right up your alley.

Of all the things I wrote during this class, this story was the thing that got the best response. People really loved it. And I’m not just saying that. I was kind of surprised at how well received it was. Normally I feel like my humor is too strange for the general public. :p Just listen to these rave reviews written by my teachers and classmates:

“An odd (and wonderful) piece.”

“Trippy. This story’s like a weird acid trip.” 

“Haha! I believe all of these experiences and thoughts!” 

“Amusing, creative, and full of life.”

“The title alone makes me want to read this piece.”

“This is your BEST WORK YET. Seriously, this is HILARIOUS but also deeply moving.” 

“You transcend the absurd topic and provide profound depth and emotion.” 

So now I suppose you’re all dying to read this weirdness. Or you just want to confirm your suspicions about my mental state. Either way, here it is! I even decided to design a graphic for the title. :)

What am I? I feel as though I have just come into being, but I have always existed. My ever-changing form has been reshaped once again into something entirely new. I was once a tin holding reels of film. But all things must come to an end, and I am remade.

I am carried away. Conveyed across a world of tubes and reservoirs. My empty form is filled and sealed. I am boiled in a vast cauldron, with others like myself. We are given coats. Shiny paper coats that read… Creamed Corn? Creamed Corn!? I am a can of creamed corn?! What the H? I once held The Wizard of Oz! I once held Casablanca! And now these people pump me full of creamed corn!? Like some common tin can!? Is that what I am? I’ve held The Ten Commandments you fools! I don’t deserve this!

Here we go again, down another conveyor belt. Look at all these other idiots, excited to go be sold in a grocery store. This is probably all they’ve ever known. Recycled and re-recycled into the same boring tin can they’ve always been. None of them have ever known what it’s like to hold something of REAL value.

Oh, you’re going to shove me into a dark box now? Really!? After all you’ve put me through you’re not even going to show me where I’m going?
 I’m sitting in the dark. I think it’s been like three weeks. I know I’m in a grocery store now. I can hear them out there, opening up the toilet paper and baby food. Open ME you idiots! I need out of here!
 I’m not sure why I’m in such a hurry. What’s so great about out there. I’m just going to be taken home by someone’s mother and fed to a baby. Or poured over some old man’s mashed potatoes. I know I shouldn’t care. I should be glad to be free of this glop inside me, but it’s like it’s a part of me now. Besides, once I am empty, what will become of me? Will I forever be recycled into tin cans like the other half-wits in the boxes around me? Content to live a life of mediocrity?
 Finally! Light! I’m free! I’m on a store shelf. I still hate this, but at least I’m not in that box any more. Friggen’ carrots next to me just couldn’t shut up. He was so excited to be thrown in a stew. What an imbecile.
 Someone is putting up a sign. 3/$1. Well, at least that means I’ll be bought quickly. The sooner this nightmare is over the better. Hey! Here comes someone!

“Zedediah, you grab all them cases of peas, and Haink, you get them there creamed corns. This apocalypse aint gonna prepare for itself!”
 “Yes, ma.”
 “Yes, ma’am.”
 What? Alpaca lips? Who are these people? Suddenly the thought of an old man’s mashed potatoes doesn’t sound so bad.
 I am taken away, along with just about every other can in the store. Ma delivers me to the Reverend Lovesong. He prays over us and we are locked in a vault, deep underground. This was the last human I saw for years.
 Slowly I went insane. If I were truly alive, I think I would have been foaming at the mouth and biting my neighbors. But none of us are truly alive and we are stuck there, alone in the dark with our thoughts. And the invisible inferno bats that live in my imagination. Fly my little flame warriors. Wreak my terrible vengeance upon the whole of humanity. Years pass. I know we are forgotten. We are doomed to spend the next thousand years in this prison of steel, waiting to be discovered by the alien archeologists that will inevitably colonize this planet. 

“Chastity! Bring up some a them cans! We’ve got to use up them stores! Now that the apocalypse is over, we don’t need to hoard all that food no more!”
 Could it be? Are we finally to be released from our prison?
“Mama! For the last time! That was a forest fire! There was no apocalypse!”
 She picks me up, along with several of my neighbors. Now, my fiery winged beasts! Burn her to a crisp! Fly, fly!
 “Chastity, it was vengeance from above! I saw the moon dragons darken the sun!”
 Yes! My lovely inferno bats have already begun the cleanse. Disguising themselves as moon dragons! Genius! “That was an eclipse. There was no apocalypse, and there never will be! The Reverend was just a paranoid lunatic!”
 Kill the Reverend! Away my beauties!                                            
“Don’t you talk about your father that way!”
 “My WHAT!?”
 Uh, oh, this is getting domestic. Moon Dragons! Free me from this place!                      

“Just give me those cans! I’m making mashed potatoes and cream corn for Grampers.”
 The woman grabs me and sinks the metal teeth into my head, peeling back the lid, revealing the corn that has been festering inside me for all these years, filling my thoughts with fire and vengeance. As she pours out the rancid contents, I feel a peace come over me that I hadn’t felt since I had held the final cut of Forest Gump. Then she throws me in the trash. A few days later and I am alone at the bottom of a landfill. What a way to go. My insanity is gone with the corn, and I am alone. No inferno bats to whisper their evils into my brain. No one. Nothing.
 For the next few hundred years I lie beneath composting debris until it has become dirt. Slowly I lose consciousness, and my unconscious memories take over, taking me far from the landfill. For next three millennia I lie with nothing more than my memories of the films I have held so dear to my heart. I guess you could say, in my own way, I am at peace. 

~

“Humaria Excavation Log: Granuary Sneventh, Feivthousent, Nynehunder & Voor. I seem to have found one of the Hyumanty’s ceremonial crowns! My hypothesis has been confirmed! The Hyumanity did indeed have infant rulers! This crown could not possibly fit anyhyum older than Snex Mohnths!”
 I feel the warm sunlight hit my face for the first time in over three thousand years. A greenish man is holding me with a hand that only has two fingers and a thumb. Obviously this is not a human.
 The creature takes me away in his starship where I learn that his name is Krevin, an archeologist from the planet Fyusha. I briefly wonder what became of my planet, and why the Fyushan archeologists are excavating it, but I don’t have much time, as I am whisked away and meticulously restored by Krevin’s crew. I am cleaned, and my dents are smoothed out. I look better than I did when I was just a can. When I am finished, I am put in a glass case to await our arrival.
 Three years later we land on Fyusha and I am given as a gift to the Repositree of Hyumaria, a museum dedicated to the tragedy of a planet that I knew as Earth. I am put on display next to a spork from McDonalds, and left to be fawned over by Hyumanophyles, a group of Fyushans who seem to be obsessed with my home planet. Apparently they are the total nerds of Fyusha, because three of them are cosplaying as me, along with two who are dressed like the spork.
 So, yeah. Life is pretty weird right now. 

The Old Woman in a Shoe (Redux)

Last year in my writing class, our last big assignment was to do straight fiction. We'd already done creative autobiographical stories, as well as poetry, both of which could, and in my case did, have fictional elements, but we had not yet completely made up a story from scratch.

When I was deciding on what I wanted to submit, I decided to submit one story that I'd already written, just to get some feedback on it. I wanted to know what people other that my family and friends thought about it. I decided to go with one of my "Real" fairy tales, and I submitted the first one I'd ever written, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

Everyone seemed to love the story, but the feedback from my teachers made me want to revisit it before I turned in a final portfolio at the end. The most helpful bit of feedback I got was that I should rewrite the whole thing to be in Martha's (Old Mother Hubbard's) voice. I had started it out as an omniscient narrator, and then switched from following Gladys to following Martha, and then back to Gladys. Two different teachers independently told me that the story would be much stronger if I focused on just one character, and they both thought that that character should be Martha.

So, while this is technically the same story that you may have already read, (and if you're curious you can read the old version HERE) the story I am sharing now has been completely reworked, with more details, more jokes, and told completely from Martha's perspective.

The Old Woman Who lived in a Shoe

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread,
Then whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed."

Does this sound like a stable parent? I don’t really think so. But Gladys Foote was not always the insane old lady portrayed as an unstable, abusive mother-figure in this nursery rhyme. I should know, I am her best friend after all. Hi, they call me Old Mother Hubbard, but you can call me Martha. Or Sgt. Hubbard. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I was kind of a big deal back in the day. Anyway, Gladys is my best friend and I am here to set the record straight. Six months ago Gladys was a great mother. Six months ago, before she moved into the secondhand, lace-up, knee-high boot that she’d found at Goodwill.

With 27 children, Gladys couldn’t afford to shop anywhere “Fancy,” like Walmart or Payless. With the children getting older, some of them needed their own rooms, and the midsize sneaker they were living in just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The octuplets, Schuyler, Skylar, Skyler, Skyla, Skye, Sky, Sky2 and Skylark, were at that age where they just needed their own rooms, and they were tired of having to share their beds with 19 younger siblings, who were total bed hogs, including 8 year-old Beans, who had three pet Bed-Hogs. When the front of the shoe split open sending 8 children falling out into the garden, Gladys really had no other options left, so Goodwill it was. She was looking for the biggest, cheapest shoe she could afford. She did find one, a huge boot that would easily hold the entire family.

One evening I came to visit. I hadn’t been there in awhile, so I brought 14 dozen cookies for the family. When I got there, Gladys was lining up all of her children and whacking them all over the head with a limp beanstalk for no reason whatsoever. This was so unlike her! I’d known Gladys for years, and I’d never once seen her lay a finger on any of her children. Even when Julesgard had tied 7 of his sisters into the shoelaces of the house and thrown figgy pudding at them, she had just sent him to his room with no dessert. Of course, no one else had gotten any dessert either, since it was all over Margret, Marjory, Marmalade, Mariska, Marzipan, Marcella, and Clyde. 

I ran down the road toward Gladys and grabbed the beanstalk from her. “What are you doing?” I exclaimed. She gave me this crazed look and grabbed the basket of cookies and began to wildly cram as many as she could into her mouth. She cackled wildly, flinging cookie crumbs everywhere and ran up the nearest tree singing Katy Perry’s Dark Horse. Now it was me who didn’t know what to do. I thought about calling Fairyland Child Protection Services, but they were well known for doing pretty much nothing at all, in even the most severe cases. I’d called them dozens of times about the VonSchneider family but nothing was ever done. Then one day poor little Hansel and Gretel were just gone, and no one has seen them since. Besides, up until now, Gladys had been a perfectly good mother. Something had to be wrong and I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Falling back on my police skills, I started interrogating the kids.

“Mamma’s been like this for weeks.” said Farnsworth. “She started making soup for supper out of rutabagas, grapes, and Marigold’s Teddy bears. And I HATE rutabagas! And then she whacks everyone with a beanstalk before bed.” 

“It all started after we got this shoe,” Romantha told me. “Mother was never like this before. I think this shoe is haunted.” “Yeah!” yelled Tromas. “I hear her talking to the ghosts, every night! Her room is right under mine!”

“Let’s go have a look in her room,” I suggested, leaving Gladys to belt out Juicy J’s Dark Horse rap solo. When we stepped into Gladys’ bedroom, I was overwhelmed by the smell of glue and I knew exactly what the problem was. Years ago, I was one of the top Drug Recognition Experts in Fairyland, and I had discovered a gang that had been repurposing BootShoe Glue, and selling it to teenagers for “Sniffing” purposes. Ultimately I was able to get that particular brand of hallucinogenic glue outlawed. Evidently this boot was so old it had been made before that ban had gone into effect. The seam by Gladys’ bed had split, filling her room with psychedelic fumes. Immediately I evacuated the boot and called the head of my former department as well as Fairyland Rehab.

Two months later Gladys was released with a clean bill of health, but now faced a new problem. She needed a new home. The Fairyland Department of Health had deemed her home to be a hazard and had ordered it be burned down. With winter coming on, she needed to find a new home and fast. But she didn’t need to worry long. I’d taken in all 27 kids while she was in rehab, and I’d set up an Indiegogo campaign to help pay for a new home. It brought in so much money that Gladys was able to buy a brand new pair of Uggs! That winter they were warmer than they had been in their entire lives. And they lived happily ever after.

~

This was not the only piece of fiction I submitted for this class, I also wrote a brand new story completely from scratch. It was literally the weirdest thing I've ever written. I'll share that one soon. :)

4071 (A Poem)

For this poem, I'm just going to post it here for you to read, before I give any context.

4071

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

So, as you can see, this is not your ordinary, every day poem. It has a meaning, and it's supposed to tell a story. Can you interpret the story?

That's what my class had to do, so I thought I'd let you all do so as well.

I thought about publishing the poem one day, and then the explanation the next day.

My classmates had to go a week without any clarification, so a day should be nothing. :p

But I guess I'll be nice and put it all in one post.

You all probably didn't want to do any homework today anyway. :p

This poem came from another writing prompt in class. I can't remember exactly what the prompt was, but I'm pretty sure we were supposed to write about a period of history from the eyes of someone who lived through it. Sort of looking back on history with the knowledge they had gained. I can't remember if the teacher mentioned writing about the present from the perspective of someone from the future, or if I came up with that on my own, but that is basically what this poem is. It's a bit of a grim future.

For the record, I don't think that the future will be in any way like this, I just enjoy speculative fiction and dystopian futures, so that's what I came up with.

I'll walk you though everything I had in mind when I wrote this, starting with the title. 4071. That confused everyone at first until they really thought about it. One of my teachers first thought it sounded like the model number of a tractor, (She grew up on a farm) or perhaps an address before she read too far into it. The simple answer is that it's the year that the poem is being written from.

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

This line refers to cars, or some other car-like vehicle, and the "Light," is teleportation.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

This basically means that people no longer have to eat, they've cybernetically enhanced their bodies so that they just have to plug into a power source to get more energy.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

In my imagined future, most or all of the earth has been covered over with metal. There is no grass left, at least, none where the author lives.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

This one is pretty self explanatory.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

This one confused the heck out of everyone. In this future world, I imagined that humanity had built a shell around the entire earth. The shell keeps things like asteroids and aliens out, but there's not really a sky anymore.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

This basically means that people download information directly to their brains instead of reading.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

This line refers to most animals being extinct. The ones that are left all live in zoos, there are no wild animals anymore.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

This line also confused everyone. This was another bit of far-out imagining on my part. I was just going to write about humanity cutting down all the trees, but then I had the idea to give it even more of a twist.

I was partially inspired by the Ents in Lord of the Rings, as well as by the Forest of Cheem in Doctor Who, but I imagined that in the far future, earth's trees became a sentient race, with intelligence on par with humans. Then there was a war between the races, and humanity won.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

This line was everyone's favorite part. Just about everyone circled it, or underlined it and wrote that it was brilliant.

Basically the author of the poem no longer views humanity as human anymore. They've added too much to their minds and bodies, and taken too much from the earth. Even himself, as he's lived for hundreds of years, and has been a part of everything. He thinks that humanity has done so much that they've lost the right to be called human.

Yes, this is a rather depressing poem, but I thought it was fun to write. Like I said, I don't think any of this is going to happen, I am far more of an optimist overall when it comes to thinking about the future, but I do like stories where everything is terrible and people have to overcome it.

I didn't write it as such, but in my head I imagine that after the author wrote this poem, it started a movement to restore the earth to the way it used to be. So if it helps, you can imagine with me that it eventually has a happy ending. :)

Twist Endings - Writing Class Assignment

I debated on whether or not to post these next writing assignment submissions or not, as they've already been published on my blog once. In the end I decided to go for it, because they've all been edited for clarity, plus I have stuff I want to say about how each one went over.

One of the kinds of writing that we were supposed to do for my creative writing class was an autobiographical story. This could include a straight up true story, or it could be one that had been "Enhanced," in some way. As soon as I heard that, I knew I wanted to submit some of my "Twist Ending" stories. They are all true stories that have been significantly enhanced by a twist ending.

I picked out three of my favorite ones to submit, three that I was still pretty happy with, as a few of them, especially the early ones, I'm not that fond of any more.

All the stories went over pretty well. I got great feedback, and people loved how real they felt, right up until the ending that completely changed things. I got many specific comments on the "Excellent" dialogue, specifically how real it seemed. Well, little did they know that everything felt so real because it all is real!

I had one classmate go so far as to write that all these stories felt like real interactions that she had had with terrible customers while working at Village Inn or Hy-Vee, and that the end seemed like something she might wish would happen to all her terrible customers! Little did she know that this was EXACTLY what these stories were!

Probably the best thing that anyone wrote to describe these stories was what one of my teachers wrote on my first draft:

"The satirical take that emerges in all these 'cautionary tales' reminds me of some strange modern-day, sci-fi Willy Wonka set in a grocery store!"

I did not even think about that when I was writing these, but I read Willy Wonka countless times as a kid, and I have no doubt that the bad children's comeuppance in those books had some sort of an influence on me. Perhaps I was subliminally channelling Roald Dahl. :p

One of the best bits of usable feedback I got about this first story was the fact that I used the word "Flock," to describe the swarm of crows, when I could have used "Murder," which is what a group of crows is actually called! That was genius! I don't know why I didn't think of that myself! So I took it for my revision. :p

The main change I made to this story was in the way I formatted the ending. As I gave this to everyone cold, they all assumed that this was a fictional story, as would seem obvious with the ending. The most common critique I got was about the abrupt change in POV (Point of View) at the end. As this, for the most part, is a true story, I wrote from my perspective, in the first person; but at the end, I wrote in the third person, as this all, for the most part, was happening beyond my knowledge. Technically this is not good writing, so I tried to format the end so that the shift in POV isn't too jarring. I was unwilling to change the POV of the entire piece to third person, as would be necessary, so this was my compromise.

Twist Endings 1

"Isn't there a senior discount?" The elderly woman asked sorely, as I gave her the total. It was under twenty dollars.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," I explained, "The senior discount is on Wednesdays." I didn’t think it would be that big of an issue, the discount would have amounted to less than a dollar. 

"Well, not everyone can get here on Wednesdays!" She exclaimed angrily.
"Sorry," I apologized. "I'm not allowed to give discounts unless it's Wednesday," 

"Yeah, well, this place is sick!" She exclaimed, shoving the money towards me. "And getting sicker!" 

I really didn't know what to say to that, so I finished her transaction, and wished her a nice day. She just looked at me and scornfully laughed in my face. I decided to just ignore that and I turned to the next customer, a little girl. 

"Hello," I greeted her, as I began to ring up her items. "Did you find everything okay? 

"No she didn't!" The elderly woman exclaimed loudly, and left, laughing derisively as the little girl just looked at me, confused. 

~

As the old woman marched out of the store, the sky grew dark, and faint, raspy, “Caw!” sounds clouded the air. A massive murder of crows had filled the sky, temporarily blocking out the sun. The swarm got into formation and swooped down toward the old woman in a massive black cloud. The flock engulfed her, and as the crows disappeared over the horizon, the woman was gone. 

The next story is still pretty similar to my original story too. I didn't make too many changes beyond the formatting of the last paragraphs, and to make the action take place outside, so I would not have seen it, so I'd have no excuse but to write in the third person.

People loved this one too, and the most common feedback was how great my made up words were for the alien's dialogue. There were a couple people who did not like the words, but the positive feedback vastly outnumbered the negative.

Twist Endings 2 

"Keep the change," the little girl told me, as I counted out the 31 cents in change from her purchase.

"Okay..." I replied, unsure of what else to say. I wasn't used to people telling me to keep the change. I set it aside and moved on to the next customer. 

A little later I heard a loud berating voice shouting from around the corner. "$1.69 out of $2.00 is NOT two cents! Get over there and ask for your change!" 

"I don't want to," the little girl said quietly, almost in tears. "UGH!" I heard the mother exclaim angrily, and she marched off. 

A few minutes later, a much younger girl approached my counter and looked up, barely able to see over the edge. 

"My sister said to keep the change, but my mom wants it back." She said in a tiny voice. I picked up the change from where I had set it, and handed it to her. She walked back to her mother and gave her the change. 

"Not you!" The mom shouted at her, pointing at the other girl, "I wanted her to do it!" 

~ 

As the woman marched her children out of the store, she was frozen in a beam of light projected from the sky. Two green-skinned humanoids wearing blue uniforms materialized beside her. 

"Is this the intergalactic criminal known as The Abuzor?" The first humanoid asked the second. 

"Affirmative." He replied. "We've been searching for her for the last 13 parstinkles. She will be taken back to Gozox, to be put to work in the Plootonx mines, digging for Croylon Yarf." 

"What about these innocent children?" The first humanoid asked. "They had no part in their mother's heinous crimes." 

"We will take them with us." The second replied. "Queen Aultramira loves children. I'm sure she will be thrilled to adopt a few more." 

The entire group vanished, and they were never seen again.

The last story underwent the most heavy editing, and for good reason. When I first wrote it, I put it into a blog post, and I prefaced it with an explanation about the customer, how she is a regular at the Harlan Hy-Vee, how she does this kind of thing all the time, but I did not realize that this information was not clear at all in the story itself. So almost everybody was completely confused by the fact that it seemed to be three different stories about three different women, and only one of the women was punished for her behavior. Some people understood that it was the same woman, but with so much confusion, I figured I needed make it clearer.

Not all the feedback was negative though. Most people loved how dark the ending was, I got many positive comments on the dark humor of all these stories, but people really liked that this one was just a little bit darker. I even got comparisons to the Twilight Zone, not just on this one, but on all of them, which is high praise indeed. I don't think they're that good, but if someone wants to think that, I'll let them. :p

Twist Endings 3

"Woah, wait a second," the woman said as I scanned her groceries. "That toilet paper is supposed to be $3.29, and it rang up $4.99. You know what that means," she said, barely able to hold in her glee. "If the item rings up wrong, it is automatically free," she pointed to the sign hanging above the store.

I called my manager, who first went to make sure the price was wrong. "I'm sorry," she said walking back from the display holding a smaller sized package. "This is the size that's on sale. The other one is larger. Would you like to buy this one instead?" 

"No," the woman said, frowning. "I don't want either of them. The sign back there was misleading. I should get it for free." She begrudgingly paid for her groceries and left, silently mumbling to herself. 

~ 

As she fumed out of the store, a small green creature peered out from behind the ATM with a scroll of parchment and a quill of ink. It checked a box and slunk back out of sight. 

~ 

A few months later the woman was back in my line. 

"Excuse me, those batteries are marked as $2.99 on the sign over there," she said as I slid the packages of batteries I had just scanned down the counter to be bagged. I looked at the monitor; the prices on each read $2.79. 

"Well," I said with a smile, "Looks like you just got a good deal." 

"Um, no, they rang up wrong," the woman said with a scowl, "I get them for free." 

I looked at her to see if she was kidding. Surely no one was that ridiculously petty. She wasn't kidding. I called my manager who double-checked the price, got an earful from the woman, and gave her the batteries for free. 

~ 

As the woman marched victoriously from the store, the little green creature watched her silently from under a bakery display table, and marked another box on his paper. 

~ 

One night, a few months later the woman came through my line one last time. 

"Hold on," she said as I scanned several packages of bologna. "These are ringing up $1.69. The sign says that they are 3 for $5. I've done the math; they should each be ringing up $1.67. Ask your manager to go check, these are wrong." 

Once again my manager dutifully went back to check the price. While she was gone the woman started talking to those around her who were being inconvenienced. 

"Sorry about this, I'm such a pain," she said in a voice that clearly indicated that she wasn't sorry at all. "I've just got to be careful you know. Gotta always watch these prices! You never know when they're gonna get you!" 

My manager returned and said that, yes, the bologna should indeed be two cents cheaper. "Well, I guess that means they're free!" The woman said triumphantly, as though she had just won some kind of reality game show. My manager took the cost of the bologna off her order, and left her to pay. 

~ 

From his hiding spot around the corner of the pharmacy, the little green creature ticked one last box off his list, and as the woman left the store with her load of bologna, it crept after her, sneaking into her car through a rear window while she loaded her trunk. 

As the woman drove home in the dark, she had the creepiest feeling she was being watched from the back seat. She looked into the rear-view-mirror, and saw the glowing yellow eyes of a Greed Goblin staring back at her. She screamed and began swerving violently as the goblin leapt into the front seat. After a minute the swerving vehicle corrected itself, and kept on driving down the dark highway as normal. The woman was never seen again.

Poetry and Things

So a year ago, (A year ago?!?! Where did the time go?!?!) I was in a creative writing class, and while in that class, I wrote a few things that I was planning to share on my blog. And then I forgot.

Speaking of that class, I ran into my teacher from that class, while walking across campus today. He actually remembered me, which is a feat unto itself, considering the size of that class, how many classes he probably teaches at the same time, and how many he has taught between then and now. He asked me if I was still writing, and told me I'd better be, because I was too good not to. So that was something...

Anyway, I had been planning to post these things for awhile now, so it wasn't just running into my teacher that made me remember to do so, but it did help me decide to do it right now. The first thing I'm going to post is something that literally makes no sense, but it seemed to go over very well in my class. It's a poem conceived by the website poetweet, a site which takes your twitter handle, and mines your tweets for rhyming lines and then pieces together a short poem out of them.

I ran poetweet over my entire twitter history multiple times and got as many rhyming lines out of it as I could. Then I mixed and matched, went back in and took some rhymes on my own, and came up with the bizarre poem that I've transcribed here. It makes no sense, but I was really happy with how it turned out, and my class really liked it too. It was so funny to me to read their feedback as they tried to decipher what I meant by it.

A few figured it our right away, the poetweet prompt had been an early writing assignment that I expanded on for this, much later, but some people really searched for something deeper, as that was what we were supposed to do. I had more than one person questioning if it was a commentary on social media, a guess prompted by the use of the word "Post" in the first line, and the fact that I titled it, "LIFE-CHANGING ANNOUNCEMENT," as if it was a sarcastic nod to people's tendency to over-exaggerate on social media.

That actually was an excellent observation though, and I wish I'd put that deep a thought into it, but even the title was just a line from a random tweet. However, the original tweet that that line came from, was exactly that! I was using it as a spoof of people's "Announcements" on social media, as it came from one of my April Fools jokes. So the people who caught that second-hand meaning that apparently bled through, should get an imaginary gold star. :)

Other guesses to the poem's meaning were that it was some kind of a strange blog post, maybe a commentary on blogging, or a weird PSA for a school (I mentioned a semester), but most people were just generally confused. Most of them said they liked the imagination and creativity though, even if they didn't understand it at all. Which is fine, I literally meant almost nothing by this poem. It was just a fun writing exercise. :p

I'll post that poem now, and I'll post my other things in separate post later.

P.S. As a side note, you'll notice that one line of the poem refers to The Pioneer Woman, (I tagged her twitter handle in a tweet once) and I was quite amused by the fact that in her critique, one of my teachers pointed out that particular line, and wrote next to it "Ha! I love Pioneer Woman!"

LIFE-CHANGING ANNOUNCEMENT 

Last semester, in this post,
It’s for a writing contest.
In the air, one guy’s a ghost.
Chris Pratt is just the best. 

 The kiss must happen at midnight.
He can't stay there forever!
My first assignment is tonight!
Best episode ever! 

 Giant invisible hamsters.
A miniature, time-locked explosion.
If you’re looking for legitimate recipes,
Try @thepioneerwoman 

 There’s evidence left that they existed.
How is this even possible?
You like living. I bet you do.
It’s a serious inner struggle... 

 The old me wants nothing to do with this,
Like, a child in the grocery store.
The new me is morbidly curious,
In the archives waiting for more! 

 Have you seen the finale yet?
No shell? It's called a Globster.
In Ames, he meets an adorable fate.
I loved it, it’s so sad it's over.

Life Update, etc.

So, it has been a long time since I blogged anything. Like, last December a long time. A lot has happened in the past couple of months, so I should probably blog about it for those who don't know, and for myself, for when I'm old and can't remember my own name. It's Jonathan, sir, your name is Jonathan.

First, I went back to school. I have 4 classes this semester, but with two of them having weekly labs, separate from the main classes, it feels more like 6. One class is kind of a continuation of a class from last semester, it's kind of a hands on graphic design course. I do know quite a few things being taught, but with the way the programs change so rapidly, it's good to have a refresher.

The next class is a video production/editing class. I kind of think this will be the class that keeps me busiest. By the end of the semester I will have need to have turned in at least 4 videos, with the footage from everything totaling at least 14 minutes. Only 4 videos doesn't sound like too much, but there's a lot that goes into each video, not the least of which is coming up with ideas, and I have to do them all myself. Yikes, I need to get busy on that.

The next class is more videos, but this time with a focus on television news, and writing for the web and television. There's not too many videos, I don't think, but there's a lot of writing. Hopefully this class won't be so hard, I don't have too many problems with writing.

Last but not least, is my favorite class this semester, Creative Writing. So far we haven't written too much more than our short writing prompts, but out of those I've got at least one, if not two poems, and I never would have guessed in a million years I could do that. I still think it's a fluke, and I doubt much more will come of it, but the TA told me I looked like a poet, so who knows. We'll see what happens. For our first big workshop I elected to turn in some previous work instead of coming up with something all new. We had been talking about creative non-fiction, and some of the examples we read were almost completely fiction, with elements of truth, and the way the teacher explained it sounded exactly like something I had written before, so I turned in three of my Twist Ending stories. They were actually a pretty big hit, with some people even wanting more! Well, I do have more... :)

Outside of class I have been pretty busy with photography for the paper. I've consistently had at least one assignment a week, with some weeks having two or three! I've photographed both the student government and city government meetings now, the latter of which was pretty boring, but the student government can get quite lively, especially on the night they voted to ban e-cigarettes. One guy I thought was going to cry, he did NOT want e-cigarettes banned! I have some pictures I can post that I've taken, but I think I'll save that for another post. I will TRY not to go too long without a post!

The last bit of news, for those of you who don't know, I am now a writer for the Rotoscopers animation blog! I write news and reviews of my favorite animated series. It's a pretty sweet job. It's not a paying job, but it's so much fun I don't care. It's good experience should I need writing experience in a professional setting someday.

So far I've done three articles. News is kind of slow this time of year, with new episodes being few and far between, but when something happens I'll be on it!
The first was a news release about the return of Gravity Falls.
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/01/22/season-2-of-gravity-falls-returns-on-february-16/
The second was a recap/review of the premiere episode of the new show, Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/01/23/recap-review-of-new-disney-channel-series-star-vs-the-forces-of-evil-s1e1/
The last is a review of the last episode of Gravity Falls.
(Do not read it if you don't want to be MAJORLY spoiled!)
http://www.rotoscopers.com/2015/02/23/recap-review-of-gravity-falls-northwest-mansion-mystery-s2e10/

That's all my news for now. Hopefully It won't be another two months before I post again!