Posts published in “Writing”

847 days.  

847 fucking days.  

847 fucking days alone on this fucking spaceship with no one to talk to except the fucking computer.  With nothing to do and the rest of the crew in stasis, Shinji swayed wildly between mania and depression.  Most of the tasks that a mere human could perform on this motherfucking fancy boat flying through fucking space going God knows where were automated so that the scientists aboard could spend their valuable time performing research and testing shit and jacking it to net porn.  Fucking fuckers.  But, at this seemingly interminable part of the voyage into what the fucking politicians called “the great unknown”.  Bullshit.  We knew what was out there: fucking stars and dark matter and planets and giant gas clouds and about 100 gazillion other things that would kill you if you so much as got slightly too close.  Those assholes and their fucking ties and perfect teeth and lying.  Shinji never had understood what draws a man or woman to public office.  They all seemed like patently false charlatans to him.  But that was nothing worth worrying about since 847 days ago they had stuck him and 12 other of the finest minds of their human generation into this glorified metal tube and shot them deep into space to “broaden the scope of human knowledge of the deepest reaches of our universe”.  In other, less stupid words, they were picking up space rocks and space dust.

We were driving down a dusty country road when I noticed that a spider had made a web inside the car.  It had to have happened sometime during the night, for what spider in its right mind would climb inside a car to build a web during the daytime?  None I’d ever met.  

But I was worried about this little spider.  I didn’t want him to get hurt as we drove along.  We badly needed food for our little house in the woods.  I’m sure the spider was thinking the same thing when he climbed inside the car.  I wasn’t going to punish him for trying to get a bite to eat.  There certainly were plenty of flies around for an enterprising spider like him to catch and feast upon.  One less fly in the world wouldn’t bother me.  

I was also afraid that my friend, no friend of spiders indeed, would kill the little guy so I gently cupped him in my hands and said, “Mr. Spider, I know you’re afraid, but I’m not going to hurt you.  You just have to be still for a little while.”

With a faint hum and static crack like the breaking of a mechanical bone, the alien death ray shot a blue colored beam across the field, narrowly missing his brother Ellis and setting a tree alight.  Phil didn’t intend to miss the next shot.  

“Phil, what’re you doin’?!  Y’damn near hit me!” Ellis yelled.  

“Yup,” Phil said.

“You put that thing down now, you hear!  It ain’t safe!”

“No, I guess it ain’t,” he replied and lined his brother up in the sights along the barrel of the strange weapon they’d found in the crater up on the mountain while checking their grouse traps.  Ellis hadn’t wanted to touch it, but Phil knew better.  He recognized it immediately from the pulp novels he read in secret when mama was in town.  She didn’t like him reading them, said they were the Devil’s work, so he had to be pretty sneaky about it.

Finally.  Her head felt so much better now she could hardly believe it.  Standing there, amidst the corpses of fifty or so slaughtered bandits, mages, and rogues, she felt the curtain of discomfort lift from behind her eyes and the world come in to sharp focus.  Perhaps it was just her berserker rage dissipating, but she really felt clear headed.  Of course, who wouldn’t feel clear headed drenched in blood, axe still humming from cleaving through the spines of her enemies?  No one she knew, that’s for certain.  None of the witch’s poultices or concoctions or potions had the same affect.  She didn’t know a single thing in all the multiverse that she found more relaxing than the wholesale murder of bad guys.  And, sometimes, good guys.  Depends on who’s paying.  Mostly bad guys though.  She didn’t always feel good about storming into a monastery and killing a bunch of priests or monks or whatever, unless they were those monks that could fight.  She had to admit that she did enjoy that.  Taking the head off a man who is trying to fight you with his bare hands and crazy dancing with an axe was just too wonderful.

Sigh.  Sheryl had stared at the back of Bobby Eriksson’s head during second period math every day for the whole semester.  Basically forever.  Throughout the seemingly unending trials of sophomore year—geometry, driver’s ed, fighting with her parents over curfew, the looming SATs—the back of his head had been her one shining point of light in the darkness.  His golden locks were the north star as she ventured through the wild, wooly lands of high school beset on all sides by rogues and bandits and beasts of the wood.  Bobby was the perfect boy for her too, she just knew it.  He was kind and handsome and very fit, but he was also sensitive and loved drama and dancing.  He dressed impeccably and never hung out with all those stupid football meatheads at lunch.  And he was such a lady’s man!  Always surrounded by girls after school, singing and discussing fashion.  Cultured, genteel, sensitive, charming, magnificent, Bobby’s name filled her dreams and the inside of her trapper keeper.

“So…uh, what is Morris dancing again?” Layla asked the man sitting in front of her second hand, obsolete, VHS camcorder.  

“It’s a traditional English dance.  My group does it at Renaissance Faires across the country and sometimes as far as Canada.”

“Yeah…cool.  Could you say that again, like, ‘Morris dancing is…’  We’ll edit this video later to get my questions out, so if you could answer my questions by restating them, that would be super helpful, ok?”

“Oh yeah, of course.  That’s good.  It’s like a documentary or something, right?”

“Yeah, sure, something like that,” she said and waited for the pony-tailed man to start again, but he just sat there looking at her like an expectant puppy—well-meaning and confused, but obviously too stupid to survive without help.  “So, what is Morris dancing?” she asked, this time with what she hoped was not too much of an edge in her voice.

“Oh jeez, right, sorry,” he said and cleared his throat, “Morris dancing is a traditional form of English dance.  My troupe dances a border-style morris.  We’ve travelled all over the United States and Canada, performing mostly at Renaissance Faires, but we occasionally will perform at schools or various other heritage festivals.  The real dream of ours is to get over to England to perform with some of the troupes over there.  It would be a real honor since none of us are natives.”