In Captivity, Chats with a Mad Man: Hard Landing

(To get into the mindset of a crazy fellow [or at least, a different brand of crazy than I already am] can be a trying process. While characters flit to and fro in the brain, craziness is one that you may not want to spend a lot of time with–for obvious reasons. That said, over the weekend I was struck with an idea for a new segment, a series of short stories from the perspective of one of the aforementioned crazies addressing an unfortunate prisoner–though I suppose the real surprise will be that it’s something modern. Pirates may be involved…or I may have said too much.

So I give to you “In Captivity,” an internet exclusive. The following is free flow dialogue.  The images awaiting you will be what your own mind summons from its murky corners. Posting schedule for the additional chains in the story will probably be…whenever they deem it proper to pop into my head. Marvel, hiss, or shake a walker at me–but I hope you enjoy the step outside my usual domain.)

Damn, son. And they thought I was crazy. But there’s no crazy like American crazy, lemme tell you. Whoosh. Just like that. Sea howls and the sky roars and you know what it spits out of that diarrhea-streaked fishbowl? You, like you think you’re some merman or something.

Well the desert isn’t no place for a fishy, boy. Fish boy. Yeah. I like that. You ever think of yourself like a fish, eh? Where’s the rest of your school, fish? What’s that? I can’t hear you. Let’s try again: WHERE’S THE REST OF YOUR SCHOOL, FISH? Oh, you look scared, man. I know. You think I’m crazy. I tell you lots of people think that, you smile or nod your head? Oh, but they don’t say it to my face, so you just remember that.

You want to know where the rest of your school is? Swam, swam away for the summer. That’s what you all wanted to do. Turistas, eh? It’s a funny thing when you think about it. ‘Mama, papa, I just want to be anywhere but with you for a while, and don’t you worry, it’s just me and my cock and a lot of sun. I’m responsible!’ Now that’s love. You don’t get it’s about family. It’s always about family.

And so now where’d all that crazy love get you? Here. Washed up in the middle of the fucking desert. Never saw that coming when you decided to play explorer now did you? Never saw yourself in a cage, no.

But that’s what happens. Americans. You all think the ocean is just like everything else. Manifest Destiny. Some fat old man, he says it’s sea to shining sea but some point came around, and someone else came up and they said sea to shining sea damn well best include the seas themselves and look what happens. It’s one big fucking party!

That is, until you’re two hundred miles off shot, and the world’s all storms, and you’re huddled in the smell of your own piss on your knees praying oh God, oh God, for the sake of the stars and stripes and my fathers and my little semen children save me, I’m a good and faithful shit, and only when the water’s up over your head and the sun’s blotted out of your sky do you begin to finally realize real religion: if there’s a God, he’s one vindictive little shit, or he doesn’t wear a red, white and blue suit.

It’s not all about the shiny but—hey, you know, I like the shiny, so, it’s not all bad, yeah?

I think your friends probably learned that already too. When you hit the rocks, you know, you usually don’t die right away. It takes time. The blood runs out until you can’t move anymore, or the bones break and you can’t move anyway, and all you can do is take this time before the sun or the hunger kills you, wondering, just wondering: what about me? What about my life? Why did I have to be sliced open like a fish?

Wriggle, little man. It’s what fish do. And there’s only so long you can breathe out of water.

But it’s good you’re here, you know? That you let me find you. It’s good. Real good. Gives us time for lessons, see. And it gives me opportunities. There’s a lot of money in the pretty lilies, samaki. Real big. And it’s fun, you know? That’s what we’re gonna have. Real fun.

Now let’s get that gag in. It’s a long way and you stink, little fishy, and we wouldn’t want you to choke.

Passing Fancy

It is a simmering summer in a sweltering land. I sit, somewhere between the fire and the horizon. There is no sound but the rustle of the page.

Deep breaths. I am in the pages. The pages are in me. Drink them in. Names. Faces. Places. They wash over me and I am no longer I.

Nature breathes with me. Wind scatters pages as ashes on the pyre.

There should be anger. Deep breaths. No rage. Deep breaths. Hands once trembling, still.

Child eyes turn from the pages to the sea, the endless blocks of home on home, houses and fences and little green seas that sway in the wind, wood and bricks and the nothing of them all the little flags on the ships proclaiming to the sky: I will defy.

It is a moment of sight. Homes break, reconstitute into something more. Still no sound. I do not hold the breaths, though such fleeting time seems to earn it. The stillness. I notice it for the first time.

Yet still the wind—the caress. Rough pages, frayed by love spill against the flesh and there is a tingle of excitement.

Tiny thing, the voices say. Tiny thing in a big wild world you are alone and there is no one and nothing and this is all there is and all there will ever be. Words. Only words. There is a base between the covers, a trench beneath bare feet and sun lit dreams.

Mother may I, mother may I—where wanders fickle minds?

The child is alone, he knows, but there is no care. The stillness is in all things, the knowing and the drifting and the being all as much a part of the sound as the silence. Little boxes on the hillside—everyone’s all boxed up and the colors change and the words change but the fact doesn’t change. We don’t see. Somewhere between the ships the buoy fences blinded to the perfection of the rowing, the howl.

I will struggle, the boy says, mind drifting to the distant figures, roaring through the lands both dark and unforgiving. There are shapes. I feel them around me as the shadows of the clouds, the faces framed against the dimness of the light. They will move on. Yet they will never go.

The pen stretches long into the darkness between the posts. Waves crash against it and are consumed. Thirsting men surrender to the inky drink. Lead me away. Away, away. Passing black and white—the world, framed, in the brightness of the mind.

Do, the owl chirps. Do, do, do.

Life is in the doing.

Whoever said life is in the reading?

The tremble in the hand. It is there, always lingering. The horror and the beauty of the frame. The mind stretches further than the body can match. Do, do, do. Philosophers laugh in empty graves. Think, is the reply. Look. Breathe.

I am not breathing.

Escape. Flee. You see, you see the world and how can you ever go back I think and I am—blinking. No more wind. The moment slithers and slips away to the crinkle of the page.

It is the first moment truly seen.

Summer comes but once. It never leaves. The rest—passing strange on the road toward that stillness. One will learn to breathe again.

The Unwanted

Today’s post is a recent scribble. A new short story? A new novel? We’ll see how it develops, but know that it’s a touch of sci-fi, and one I do intend to develop further in the future. Outlines and notations are already swimming through my head, apparently moving into the same high-rise apartments as the second novel (in progress) for my Haunted Shadows trilogy…which is a little awkward. For now, though, enjoy the opening to what is presently operating under the working title, “The Unwanted”:

There was a breath of wind before the light went out of Conira. Somewhere beyond, the fires of dying stars burned into the desolation, their flickers like  a dance to someone, somewhere beneath a cloudless sky. But Conira knew only the veil of sunlight, the clouded kiss of the warming.

Before the ships, the Comuratii never knew the shape of a night’s sky–only its cold kiss. Midnight howls.

The wind swept against the frames of pillars carved against a mountain relief. Dust swirled in the roar as artificial fires drew steel to life–the wide, trackless plain, hemmed in by earthen and handmade boundaries alike. It was opaque and red against the pillars and the clouds, a reflective glimpse of color in the ink. The ship’s fires surged against it, bathed in reflections.

Tiny figures slid across the plain’s expanse, in purposed disarray.

Every night, the spaceport came to life as such, even though its walls opened to the celestial ships just ten times a year. Seamless behemoths, broiling with the heat of entry, would descend in threes–miles and miles of metal, welded and made fit to drift the black. Each came hungry, thirsty, and opened themselves to the bosom of this barren earth.

It was 407 days into the cycle, when an eleventh sojourn cracked against the stone.

The Unwanted craned his neck against the chill, and drank the scent of it. Gasoline and death. It settled over the gathered crowd like a frenzied cloud.

Most had stumbled from their homes at the noise of it. It reverberated in the mountain deeps, luring the way but curious Comuratii from their dreams of distant starlight. Most would not guess its purpose, merely stretch their wings and bask in the bizarre moment of the unscheduled. Bask in the heat of other intellects spread beyond their own fair crust.

The Unwanted stretched his long legs, and marveled at the gust of prickled wind on his back, as it slid from the cracked door. Home. He stared out the window and remembered all that had made it so, even as shadows swallowed the world. Bodies scurried down the hall of the ship. The captain swore, in his guttural tongue. But none of it diluted that moment of remembrance.

Success!

Today’s Quotes of the Week (yes, I’m aware I’ve been a bad writer and neglected these for several weeks – apologies!) are a special bunch indeed. Today, kiddies, our topic is “success.” Why Chris, you might ask, whatever prompted you to speak of success? Why, funny you ask assorted internet browsers!

All image rights copyright/reserved to artist and Wolfsinger Publications.

One of my short stories (“The Child’s Cry”) was recently picked up for publication in the November, 2011 edition of Mystic Signals. Mystic Signals is the print-only companion to fantasy e-zines Lorelei Signal and Sorcerous Signals, all products of Wolfsinger Publications, edited by author Carol Hightshoe. The news put a smile on my face the size of Texas for most the week…

The curious thing is, though, most people immediately go, “That’s great – how much did you get for it?” Allow me to preface by saying: yes, there is payment involved. However, I would like to add that such joy is not about the money. Nor, from the publishing perspective, is the money the important part to me. It’s the recognition. It’s the name on the page. It’s getting to now, when submitting other pieces, being able to come at the writing game from the perspective and title of “published author”. It’s a foot in the door, and not one that I had to make myself (e-book self-publishing and the like – don’t get me wrong though, I’m not hating! In fact, my own first novel will be joining that selection soon…).

So without further adieu, I give you a few wise words on success:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” 
~Winston Churchill

“There is no point at which you can say, ‘Well, I’m successful now.  I might as well take a nap.’” 
~Carrie Fisher

“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.” 
~David Frost

* And be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the November edition of Mystic Signals! You can order the individual issue for $12, or (and look at these savings!…oh dear, I think my voice hit car salesman pitch) $15/year for the PDF versions, $44/year for the print edition of magazines. Plus, 75% of that money goes to support your friendly authors and artists you know.  Order for some literary goodness…you know you want to…

Short Story Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from a little story I just whipped up this morning, after a touch of reading on the rather lovely – *cue sad laughter* – state the media’s in. Always good to have a healthy reminder now and then, but in this case, it spurred a touch of the creative in me, and this is the beginning of that result. I won’t claim it’s perfect, nor anywhere near finished – but these are the first 450ish words of the 2,000+ word work I have going at the moment. I’m not even all that pleased, to be honest, with how it’s turning out at the moment…certainly not one of my finer works, and not my usual style, but a little external opinion’s always good to have with these uncertainties.

It’s a modern piece, grounded in my native Michigan. All companies and people and likenesses therein are imagined, not real, so please don’t go hunting around for skeletons in the closet. Any likeness they share with real people are purely coincidental…yada yada. You know that shpeal by now, I’m sure. As for the story itself, it’s a modern piece, supposed to address Media Consolidation, and its detrimental affects on society, as well as some of the little horrors we all-too often have no idea are racing by, right under our noses. This opening section primarily just sets up some of the main figures of our little piece here…

So without further adieu, I give you the introduction to what is ostensibly being called: “When all else fails.”

*

Time never much mattered to Daniel Doriddy. It came, it went, and always there was more besides—the established realization that as one breathed, it was unlikely that, in the next moment, that breathing would simply cease altogether. Life was a steady variable, and it, as time, seemed constant, abstract, intractable.

Death had never meant much to Daniel either, more a concept than a reality. He had never killed, never known anyone who died, and gave no thought to the limitations of his own all together timely existence. He thought in the moment and of the moment, and thought to remove himself as thoroughly as possible from any thoughts of past or future.

Yet at 12:03 p.m., on the first Friday of the fourth month of the year, his name became synonymous with death. Death consumed him, altered him, broke him—and the man, the voice, became the spokesperson of corporate murder. In 2015, more Americans had an opinion of Daniel Doriddy than of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Barack Obama.

Without ever trying, he was a man that changed the world, and neither he, nor they, would ever forget it. For a man that had never worried of the past, Daniel became defined by it.

It all began with a train.

At approximately 11:00 a.m., a train with the letters “BON” inscribed across the side of its cars left its yard outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, bearing with it nearly 400,000 gallons of a thick, greenish compound not so unlike anhydrous ammonia in bearing. Yet this was a new product, a new tool, even, some within the company had argued, a new weapon – or at least, it could be used as such, they claimed, before a defense committee. For the train, it was a trek made on average twice a month, and though the contents changed, the men handling it remained ever the same. Five men were always onboard: two transporters and the conductor, coupled with two additional men that identified themselves as security, answerable solely to the company itself.

Bon, as the company was known, or Bon Chemical, as its stockholders knew it, was an old company, founded in the midst of the Vietnam War. It specialized in chemicals both mundane and military, though it preferred to keep the latter under the table. Unlike some of its competitors, it had kept itself somewhat confined to rather rigid and efficient security protocols, which had long guaranteed a record of safety and reliability in their work.

Yet even the most cautionary cannot account for sheer dumb luck, and on that day, it played its hand, and many people were drawing cards.

*

Welcome!

“Give expression to the noble desires that lie in your heart.”

~Gordon B. Hinckley

Welcome, friends, to the Waking Den–a blog devoted to the hosting, review, and discussion of my myriad works. Who am I? My name is Chris, and I am a Senior Journalism Major, Philosophy minor (former English major) at Michigan State University. I have written hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, and a novel, and am presently working on the first book in a planned trilogy. I am a writer, a reader, and an avid photographer as well. If I could draw, or paint, or do any of the many wonderful skills arrayed along that strata of creativity as well, I would, but this is what I do, and I hope that you enjoy what I have to offer.

As opposed to my other site, “The Shut-in,” which is dedicated to the reviewing of others’ creativity, I have made this site as an expression of my own. I think we all need an outlet, to grow and to flourish in the world, and I hope to make this one of mine.

What you will find here is the full range of the literary world. It is a house of my own fancy. One day I may post a poem, another a short story (or parts thereof), some may simply see extended thoughts of mine, even an essay or two, if the mood so strikes. Other days may herald a glimpse of others’ novels or stories, and an expression of my thoughts on them.

All content on this site is mine, tried and true, and I ask that you not re-use anything without permission from me, and appropriate credit given. That said, I hope to make this site as open as possible to any interested–and I encourage your discussion, your insight, and your commentary.

Vincit qui se vincit.