Story #6

The next three stories will use a random article from Wikipedia as their seed. I reserve the right to reject technical things, stubs, and things that otherwise wouldn't offer any meat for a story.

Seed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson's_Theatre

This story is due May 3rd at 11:59PM.

Gym Class

Sitting alone in the cold middle school gym, the afternoon light pools on the hardwood floor. I stretch out awkwardly, and reach my arms as far as they can extend. Exhaling gently, my mind starts to drift to theorems and equations. Everything is still, and my brain is reaching and pulling toward an answer. My gray matter is strong and graceful, and comes quickly and surely to the answer. In my head I climb back down to the starting point, gather another problem, and begin the exercise all over again.

As the ticking of the caged clock grows from mute to thunderous, my mind slows and my hands begin to shake. I hear the approaching herd, and I lean down to tie my shoe; hoping to avoid the stampede that is surely headed my way. The battered doors open, the metal bar slamming loudly against the wood and shaking me finally from the last of my mathematical reverie.

At the head of the herd is the biggest one: the alpha male. He takes no prisoners and if you get close enough to look him in the eyes, you can see the murderous gleam lying there. He is bulbous around the hips and the midsection, his stomach spilling over the top of his gray clad legs. In the middle of his forehead a misshapen lump stands at attention, as if a testament to his ferocity and general meanness. Behind him stumbles his clan, looking strikingly the same as they fill the gym with their grunts. They huff and snort with idiotic delight as their leader makes crude noises resembling the expellation of excrement. It is as if he is showing his soul to the world: loud, expletive-inducing shit.

I huddle into myself, as if a tortoise weary from the general chaos of his surroundings. Despite my gross reduction in size, I do not escape notice. He comes toward me, stupidity incarnate, and nudges me with the tip of his battered shoes. His nudge grows rougher as I keep my eyes down and my body curled into my legs. This is it, I think. He will finally accomplish today what he has been trying for years. He will crush me until the air can no longer enter my lungs; until my fragile and meek heart can’t force one more beat.

And then I am saved as suddenly as I am attacked. I hear the herd back away as a rough voice breaks between their legs and lands like the gentle squawk of a macaw, “Ropes today gentlemen.” For a moment, I have seen my escape only to be cruelly fooled into security. Ropes are almost worse than large mentally underdeveloped middle school jerks; ropes are something that will destroy an already concave reputation. I want to stay on the ground hidden in my shell, but instead I walk to the back of the line and pray for a fire alarm, an F5 tornado, or for one of the herd to fall off of the top of the rope and break a leg.

But none of this happens, and as I get closer to the front of the line I can hear the taunts and jeers echo throughout the gym, each person impersonating the distant ancestors of whom they so closely resemble. I slowly step onto the blue mat, and stare at my tennis shoes. My lace is loose on my left shoe, but it hardly matters anymore. A loose lace won’t hinder me; my scrawny arms and unnatural lack of athletic ability have already laid the course.

As I look up the rope, the gym seems to swirl. The floor is now covered in foliage and the squawks and squeals of my classmates are far away jungle animals. I grasp the rope in my hands, and my mind starts to calculate the distance from one knot to another. I am Tarzan, this is my vine, and immortality through legend is my goal. I start to climb, never looking down.

Weight Loss

It had started harmlessly enough.

Mary had wanted to get in shape. After two years of failing to go to the gym, she knew that she lacked some essential quality which fit people have. In her darkest hours, when she was eating candy bars - plural - from her secret stash above the refrigerator, she imagined that this failing was a lack of willpower. She was twenty pounds overweight, and carried it poorly, in part because she was of the understanding that this was her fault.

So the new year had come, and with another resolution. This time, after having read in one of her magazines that those who exercised with a partner were more likely to stick with it, Mary roped one of her friends into going to the gym with her. Elena was two years younger, and slightly less out of shape, but they both agreed that they had goals in common.

They went to the gym together three times a week, talked about their diets, pushed themselves to finish exercising, and so on. This lasted for about two weeks, until Mary got sick with a mild cold and begged off from exercise.

This coincided with a decision to take a small break for her diet. Mary was no expert on dietary needs, but she had read in a magazine once that cutting sweets out completely was a bad idea, as the body didn't like it and would start to retain fat as a defense mechanism. So Mary, feeling sick, had stopped by the gas station to pick up some cough drops, and saw a small package of bon-bons which, as luck would have it, was on sale. She bought them telling herself that she would reward herself with one after every workout. They were gone by the end of the night, whittled away in weak moments.

Some weeks after that, with Mary now finding excuses to beg off from their workouts nearly once per week, Elena came up with a new plan; they would make a bet between them. After three months, whoever had lost the most weight would win the pot of money. To Mary, this seemed the perfect motivation to buckle down and start in on some hard work. The sum was sizable enough that it would be a real impact if she lost.

Two and a half months later, it was clear to Mary that she hadn't done enough. When they went out to lunch, Elena ate better than her, and it was clear from the look of her, and from the frenzy of her workouts, that she was in much better shape. Mary, meanwhile, had privately weighed herself and found that she had lost roughly a pound - though whether that was true or not depended on how much water she'd had, what she'd eaten recently, whether she stood on her tiptoes, and the weather.

She went online, looking for a way to lose weight fast. It wasn't really about the money - she just wanted to put on a good showing, so that Elena wouldn't think less of her, and so when people asked her about the bet, she would at least be able to tell them that it was close. Eventually she found it; savilica dintari, an all natural herb from the middle east that burned through fat while you slept. She felt guilty after ordering it, but not guilty enough to cancel the order.

It came two days later in a nondescript brown box. There were no instructions, just a brick of leaves. Mary had to go online to find out what to do with it; eventually she settled on making it into a tea, which a number of commenters said would activate the chemicals in it. She let is steep for a few minutes, added some honey, and drank it down the dark liquid in just a few gulps.

She started feeling it an hour later. A cold sweat broke out across her skin, and soon her shirt was sticking to her back. Mary went to sit down for a bit, and began feeling light-headed. She woke up sometime later - it might have been an hour, it might have only been minutes - and noticed blood dripping from her nose. She had the energy to call 911, but dropped the phone and passed out again before hearing anything from the operator.

The next time she came to, she was in the hospital. Elena was there, and it was only with sluggish effort that Mary remembered that she was her emergency contact. Her words came out slowly:

"Did it work?"

Story #5

Seed: "A gym is the location, jealousy is the theme. A plant is an object that plays a part in the story."

Seed six will likely be something different - as in not generated by a machine. Any ideas for what to do can be posted in the comments.

This story is due April 19th at 11:59pm.

Soulmate

When Thomas sat next to me, I shivered. It wasn’t that I was cold, I just felt this shudder go through my body. My mother used to say that this happened when someone walked over the place where your grave would one day be. I wasn’t superstitious, so I had other ways of explaining it; maybe if auras did exist then this body shake happened when yours came in close proximity to another’s that was either completely in sync or completely opposite of yours.

Thomas wasn’t really a man that others would take a second glance at. He wasn’t striking, didn’t have an aquiline nose, didn’t have shiny hair, or perfect teeth. He was just a regular man, who wore regular clothes and presumably had a regular wife and kids playing in a house with a white picket fence.

As he reached above me to place his carryon in the overhead, I barely glanced up. At that moment I was deeply engrossed in the book on which I was writing my thesis. Being afraid of flying, I was trying to leave the areoplane mentally if not physically. I only looked up when Thomas lightly placed his hand on my shoulder, as if to beg my pardon for the interruption.

From the moment he touched me, I was absorbed in him. My eyes lingered on the pages, but my mind wandered, and circled. It dove and spun, and danced. Thomas had created a neurological reaction in me that was akin to an opiate coursing through my veins.

Only when the stewardess came along to offer us beverages did Thomas and I begin to converse. He was polite at first, asking me about my trip and my job. I was quietly responsive, saying more with my gaze than with my voice. It wasn’t long before all conversation ceased, and we held each other in unvoiced contemplation. I’m not sure how I came to understand so much about him, but beneath the brown business suit, battered briefcase and mousy hair I saw an artist’s soul. It was a soul which I recognized, and it mine.

Passing over Toronto, Thomas’ hand grew closer to mine, as if searching warmth from the cold Canadian sky. Our fingers entangled beneath the thin airline blanket, and each touch was electrifying and smooth. Clasped hands eventually become sweaty and sticky when they are holding another’s; ours became as hot and beautiful as dry logs placed in the center of a fire.

By the time we began our descent into Minneapolis, I knew that I would never again be whole without Thomas. I decided with bone crushing clarity that I must stay with him and be close to him. Our energy together was the kind that could make all darkness and evil disappear. If I had been happy before, I now knew that was only because I had no idea of what pure joy was.

The areoplane landed smoothly and the pilot come onto the loudspeaker, “Thank you for flying Eastcoast Air with us today, and enjoy your stay in the Twin Cities.” Thomas released my hand gently, and reached into his right pocket to pull out his cell phone. He flipped it open and held down the power button in one smooth move. As the phone chimed on, he glanced over and smiled at me. “Gotta check in with the old ball-and-chain. You know how it is. Nice meeting you… Andrea was it?”

“Audrey,” I said, and silently put on my jacket.

The Long Ride

The aeroplane shook and shuddered its way through the air, twin engines spewing smoke. Donald's jaw was sore from clenching, but if he stopped he was sure that his teeth would be shaken right out of his head. His seat folded down from the wall, which meant that his back had to follow the curve of the hull.

At the time, he had only been concerned with getting down to South America as quickly as possible, but now there was a tinge of regret. Donald could have lived with a delay of only an hour if it had meant that he were able to get on a standard commercial flight. More often than not though, people took the steamers down to Brazil, which meant that the passenger flights there would cost a huge sum of money.

The call had come from Donald's brother not five hours before. Richard spun a wild story about Brazillian Communists and an overthrow of the military dictatorship there, claiming that he was being held hostage by them, that he needed Donald to come save him. Ever the big brother, Donald had told his secretary he would be out of the office for a week or two, kissed his wife goodbye, and hopped on the first plane going in his general direction.

When they stopped in Cuba for a refueling, Donald got out to stretch his legs for a bit. He felt sick, and ready to abandon his brother to whatever fate laid in store down in Brazil. The trip had been begun though, and Donald was carrying a suitcase with five thousand dollars American, so it seemed a poor time to give up the quest. He used some of his pocket money - not daring to open the suitcase around here - to buy a lunch off of a plane mechanic. He overpaid, but Cuba was Communist these days, and that seemed to mean that everything cost more.

Twenty minutes later, the plane was in the sky again, and Donald was throwing up the last remnants of the burrito he had bought. Afterwards, he regreted that he hadn't throw up in his hat. The vomit was spread across the cold metal floor of the aeroplane, and Donald had to live with the sick acrid stink of it until the next touch-down, which was in Venezula. His pilot, Fillipe, cursed at him in rapid Spanish and made him clean it up. Donald was careful to keep the suitcase out of view.

At first, when he had been trying to find a plane in the Florida airport, Donald had thought Fillipe to be a godsend. Not only was he going straight to Brazil, but he spoke the language, which meant that Donald would have a guide - or at least someone that would be able to help him find a guide. Now though, with more time to think on it, Donald was getting worried. The plane was loaded with anonymous looking crates, but there was still considerable room for more cargo. To Donald, who had been an engineer before going into business, this said that whatever was in the crates was either very valuable or very heavy - especially if they were being flown direct to Brazil.

The landing in Rio de Janeiro was rough, in part because the plane was running out of fuel. Donald was taken aback by how many rifles were pointed at him when he exited the plane; his brother had said that things were bad here, but had given no indication that the military power would be so ready to draw their weapons on foreigners. Fillipe got out of the pilot's seat and quickly started talking to the men in Spanish, seemingly unconcerned with that they had guns pointed on him. After about two minutes of this, they lowered their weapons, and a dialog followed that Donald wouldn't have been able to keep up even if he had studied Spanish. There was some pointing to him, which was worrisome.

"He wants to know what's in the briefcase," said Fillipe finally. His face betrayed no sympathy.

Donald stalled for a moment. "It's just letters. Clothing."

One of the men raised his rifle and pointed it squarely at Donald's chest. He handed over the briefcase, and watched with despair as they opened it. There were smiles and laughing all around. From that point on he was ignored - Fillipe was the only one who could understand him anyway. The men got busy unloading the plane; it was now clear that the crates were filled with weapons.

Donald wandered off of the dirt runway, towards the tall buildings in the distance, hoping to find his brother - and somehow get both of them out of Brazil.

Story #4

From now on, Anni and I will be moving to a five-day deadline.

Seed: "An aeroplane is the location, blood is thicker than water is the theme. A telephone is an object that plays a part in the story."

This story is due April 15th at 11:59pm.

Helga

Helga sat on the park bench and watched the people pass by. She put her hand into her purse, and pulled out a baggie with a somewhat squished sandwich inside. She removed the sandwich from the bag and began to move it slowly toward her mouth. Watching Helga eat was like slowing down just a little too much to stare at the aftermath of a car crash. She didn’t savor her food, she inhaled it. Helga should have probably developed better table-manners considering the fact that she was born during an era in which Emily Post was both well-read and imperatively followed. Unfortunately for anyone who had the misfortune to see her eat, she was from a working class family with a mother who was a chronically depressed alcoholic, and there hadn’t really been social lessons of any kind.

Helga hadn’t aged gracefully. In fact, she hadn’t really had the opportunity to do so. As an ugly baby, she had grown into an even uglier toddler and things only ever got worse from there. At 76, Helga was overweight with cheeks like a bulldog and hair like a balding poodle. Even the kindest of passerby would have difficulty believing that this woman had ever been loved. Despite all of her faults, Helga did have something in her past that no one would have guessed at: she had loved a man as truly as anyone could love.

When Helga was 16, she met Jimmy. Jimmy was 24, headed off to war, and quite drunk upon their initial encounter. After a few words and a quick shag in the back of his Ford Coupe, she was smitten. Even when he was a little more sober (because like her mother, Jimmy was never entirely sober), Jimmy still seemed to find some redeeming quality in Helga. Perhaps it was his kind heart that let him see past her lack of looks and abundance of really annoying qualities, but more likely he knew he could get laid anytime he wished. That being neither here nor there, Helga loved Jimmy wholeheartedly and was heartbroken when he shipped out to Korea.

The night before Jimmy left, Helga had given him a lilac and lime green silk scarf by which to remember her. It was garish and screamed silently for attention, and in that respect would remind him exactly of Helga. She had embroidered with great care “Jimmy and Helga Forever” and upon handing it to him, made him promise to keep it near him at all times so she could be close to him. Helga, though not very bright, was very romantic. Jimmy had died two months later and Helga, though resigned to a life of loneliness, was reassured by the fact that he had died with a part of her next to his heart.

Now, as Helga was an old woman, she would sit on this park bench and think about the only man she had ever loved. She’d watch the young lovers walk by, and remember to the point of pain what that was like. Wiping her hands on her brightly flowered dress, Helga struggled to rise from the park bench and return to her efficiency apartment.

A Day in the Park

Kat and Henry went to have a picnic in Central Park with a wink and a nod. It would, of course, have been entirely inappropriate for people like them to do this earnestly.

Kat had received a sizable amount of money after finishing high school. Her grandparents had bought a long-term bond when she was little, and it matured along with her until she was eighteen and ready to go out and see the world. It wasn't enough that she was now independently wealthy, but it would have been a good start towards paying for college. Instead, she had decided to move away from the Midwest to New York City. The money would be there to ensure that she could settle in before finding a job. Her father was furious, while her mother was just sad. There were long talks about bettering oneself, and about what grandma and grandpa would think if they were still alive.

Kat had met Henry ("Like O'Henry, but without an O", he had explained when she had misheard him) at a record store. This was after she had been moved in for a week, and was starting to feel restless. She knew no one in New York, and found it hard to actually meet people. Before Henry, she had had two conversations with random strangers, but neither of them had said to her, "Say, would you like to hang out some time? Can I have your phone number?" and because they hadn't, Kat didn't push it.

Henry was skinny, with a full beard that partially hid his smirks. He wore jeans that followed the contour of his legs, a T-shirt with "TEH" printed on it, and an overly long scarf that wrapped around his neck twice. He stood there among the vinyl, leafing through the records with a detached look. Their eyes met briefly, and he asked her about what bands she liked, and when he learned that she was new to the city he offered to show her around.

Their first date was to the Statue of Liberty, where he showed her how to make fun of the tourists. On their second date, Henry took her to the top of the Empire State Building for more people watching, and afterwards they went to the Wo Hop Restaurant for dinner, and later to his place where Kat lost her virginity.

This picnic in Central Park was technically their third date, though she'd stopped by to see him at his work in the interim. He had seemed preoccupied, and Kat worried that she had overstepped her bounds. They didn't talk about it, instead enjoying the sunny park, laid back on the checkered blanket after having finished their sandwiches, their hands almost touching. She was wearing his scarf, the one that he had been wearing when they first met. He had given it to her as a gift, and she wore it now as a mark of possession. This had gone without comment by either of them.

While turning over onto her stomach, a gust of wind took the scarf from atop her body, and sent it fluttering through the air. Kat looked to Henry, hoping that he would go after it, but he wasn't watching, and seemed to have fallen asleep. She slowly got up and went after it; the scarf had gone to the trees, and tangled itself in the thick brush.

As she was unhooking the thick wool from the branches, she looked up and saw a man standing not ten feet from her. Her parents would have called him a vagrant; Henry would have called him a bum. His clothes were caked with the accumulated filth of street life, and he was watching her while pleasuring himself.

Kat turned away as quickly as she could, and sat back down on the blanket. Now that she knew he was there, she could hear him panting. She shook Henry awake, and whispered in his ear. He didn't seem shocked at all. He gathered up their things and walked away, and Kat followed behind him, willing herself not to look back.

Story #3

Seed: "A park is the location, bad taste is the theme. A silk scarf is an object that plays a part in the story."

This story is due April 8th at 11:59pm.

The Amateur Detective

Elanor walked down the length of her car, discretely looking through the sliding doors of each cabin to ensure that no vagrants had snuck aboard. It was a pointless exercise really, because she had already checked twice before and felt it quite unlikely that a hobo would leap onto a speeding train on its way to Manchester, but the other option was to go to the luggage car with the other girls and gossip.

Tiffany was the worst of them. During their downtime, after everyone had been brought aboard and settled, but before the dessert trolley was taken from cabin to cabin, Tiffany would instigate a round of talk about the passengers of the day and which particular boy had taken her fancy. There were even times when she would trade cars with another girl to get a look at some of the other passengers. It was galling really, to treat these people - people just trying to go about their business - as though they were animals in a zoo, there for entertainment.

There were plenty of war veterans, of course. At this stage, to get sent home usually meant that a man was far too ill to fight. Elanor had seen men with missing arms, missing legs, and others with bandages wrapped all the way around their heads. It was ghastly really, and she tried her best not to bother them too much, or to look at them for too long. The other men that went by train ... well, Tiffany was of the opinion that any good-looking man must have something wrong with him if he wasn't off to war. Now this was obviously not true, because of course the crown needed all sorts to help at home with logistics and planning and things of that sort, but it did sometimes seem as though the country had disgorged all its eligible men in the last few years, leaving only the old and infirm behind.

Elanor was making her rounds for a fourth time when she noticed that the curtains had been drawn shut on one of the cabins. This happened from time to time, especially on a light load when a person might have the whole cabin to themselves and was desirous of a short nap. Elanor almost passed it, but then remembered that the cabin in question had been occupied by a man and woman. She paused briefly, mulling it over, then went back to have a peek.

Now according to Tiffany, people got up to funny business on the train all the time. According to her, it was practically impossible to walk down the narrow corridors without stumbling across a tangled mess of arms and legs. This was demonstrably not true, as most of the cabins didn't even have both men and women in them. While Elanor might have been able to conceive of people choosing to engage in lewdness on a train, say, a young couple just recently married before the man is to go off to war, it was entirely beyond her imagination to think that her train would be home to, well, buggery.

The curtains hadn't been closed neatly, and only offered notional privacy to begin with, and so the view offered to Elanor told a sort of story. The woman was leaning away from the man, but he was sidled up close to her, talking in a voice too low to be heard, an urgent expression upon his face. This went on for some time, the man making animated hand gestures, as though he needed his whole body to get his point across. Finally, the woman turned to him and snapped something at him, which sounded like but probably wasn't "stagnant". She produced a letter from her purse and brandished it at him, urging him to take it, but he stared straight ahead with a scowl on his face. She laid the letter between them. The couple - if that's what they were - stopped talking completely.

Elanor quickly moved away, feeling a burning shame for having eavesdropped, even if she'd only heard one word, and heard it wrong at that. Her first thought was to tell someone, Tiffany most likely, but she quickly checked that impulse. Instead, she tried to figure out from the clues what it was they were arguing about. The train was on its northern route, away from London, which meant that neither of them were off to the war. Besides that, the man didn't have a military bearing, which meant that he fell under the category of "suspicious men who should be at war, but are not". They were both young, if not as young as Elanor.

She mulled it over until the next stop, when the woman exited the car and the man did not. Elanor snuck a quick peek into the cabin on the pretense of bringing the dessert trolley, even though the girls weren't usually supposed to knock on cabins with the curtains drawn. The man looked a bit dazed, as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him, but the letter remained beside him, unopened.

He got off at the stop after his friend, or girlfriend, or mistress, or wife, or whoever she was, and Elanor completed her duties as quickly as possible so she would be able to go back to their cabin. Inside she found the letter, sitting there on the broad seat, exactly as the woman had left it. Elanor picked it up, muttering under her breath "The kinds of rubbish people leave ..." for the benefit of anyone who might be spying on her. She stowed it under her blouse, pressed against her skin, until a half-hour later when she had the time to lock herself in the lavatory and look it over.

The envelope smelled faintly of lilacs, and was made of higher quality paper than one could normally find in wartime. Elanor opened it gingerly, keeping one eye on the door, and when she finally unfurled the letter, it turned out to be five pages with writing on both sides in a thin, neat cursive. She began to read ...

The Return

Mary rested her head against the train window. Looking out at the trees passing by, she was remembering the last summer she visited Cape Fern. It was a little over a decade ago, and under quite different circumstances: she had been so young and naïve then with her pressed pinafores and plaited hair. Now she was ten years older and felt many decades wiser.

Mary fidgeted with her gloves, slowly loosening each finger tip, and then tugging the glove firmly back into place. She couldn’t exactly explain why she was feeling so agitated, though she though it probably had something to do with returning to a place that brought back so many memories.

Since Mary had last been to Cape Fern, she had gained much more poise and confidence. She was now something of a lady, though she was sure that Mrs. Forester would see the same girl she had hired all of those summers ago. Mary wasn’t exactly sure why she was going back. The letter had arrived a fortnight ago, and she had immediately started planning the trip back east without a second thought.

She begun by packing all of her nicest things and placing them carefully in her travel chest, laying her most fashionable hat in hat box on top. When she was finished, she sat on her bed and sighed, returning to the chest and removing each garment slowly, placing it back into her closet. Mary made the choice at that moment that she would return exactly as she had left; with only two common work dresses, a few books of poetry and no pretentions. She had decided that she needed to get back to a simpler time, and the only way to really return was to return as she had left.

Mary let her mind drift back to the first summer she visited Cape Fern. The train ride had been very different from this one. She had been quite nervous and a little lightheaded with giddiness. It was her first time away from home, and she stared out of the window of the train through the entire three hours, only looking up at the porter to hand over her ticket. Mary had watched the forests speed by, the coniferous trees swaying and dancing like sprites in the wind. As the trees had begun to thin, she saw bits of ocean and sand in the distance, and had raised herself slightly from her seat, eager to catch a longer glimpse. To her, the ocean had represented the endless possibilities. Now, it was just water and sand, and a reminder of the things that she had lost.

As the train pulled into the Cape Fern, Mary looked down from her dusty windows and scanned the waiting area. No one was there, but then again she really hadn’t expected anyone. She rose from her seat, and slowly made her way down the aisle, as if willing the train to move on before she had exited. Gathering her skirts, Mary stepped down the short ladder onto the makeshift platform. Suddenly tired, she took a seat on her travel chest and withdrew Mrs. Forester‘s letter from within the folds of her skirt and begun to reread it once again.