outside before the break of dawn

I leave before anyone else wakes up. In my head, this is me: one of the night people, as they slip away at dawn into secret places, pull curtains over windows to sleep until another dusk. Prostitutes and police officers, workers of all kinds, living in the dark instead of day: it almost becomes a poem, almost heroic.

If she was awake, we would have to talk. About hair. Bills. Pills. The college fund. I'm not a night person, not holding back the dark. Not embracing it. I'm a coward, running.

The coffee shop is not open yet, but my feet pull me that way. Maybe he will be there, or she will. Or someone new. A story I can piece together and make wonderful, as if theirs were not as fractured as my own.

No one runs forever, a voice whispers in my head. I think it could be mine.

A prompt and reply

Prompt: quick! you've got 3 minutes of video and 3 characters, What's the story?

Me: An affair :) Steve's dog, Flopsie, likes his ex Rebecca more than him and, when they break up, ends up sneaking to her place for food, spending the night until, in a fit of jealous rage, Steve kills Rebecca so that Flopsie has to return to him.

we are together in how far apart we are

We sleep in separate beds. On the tv, it's a sign of wealth.

"Never have so few owed so much to so many," a voice says over the tv. I wonder if it's one of our creditors.

I want to tell her, "It's not your fault."
I want to say, "I've been distracted. There is this couple at a coffee shop. I think they're us."

But who isn't us, she'd say, dismissing it with cold logic, waving another bill. I've burned through the savings for the kid's college fund, the new car, everything. People don't want 9 to 5, they want Workers. Above and beyond the call of duty, but they won't pay for it. I think I am too honest in interviews. I don't want work to be my life.

I knock on her door, soft. "When I die, I don't want my tombstone to be how much I increased productivity on Line 7," I say.
She doesn't ask what I mean; I take that as a hope. "You have to be able to afford to have one." Shadows gather under her eyes, grey threading into her hair like spider webs.

She's stopped dyeing her hair. I have nothing to say to that. I open my mouth, close it, and leave.

facebook & google+ status updates part VIII

The month of January, in updates. Did a lot more of them in the space of a month than I usually do; doubt the rest of the year will be near as prolific -- or should be.

Sometimes I forget how angry I am at you and a smile slips out. You have to know they aren't real.

We painted our faces the colour of our faces and smiled during the rally.

We all have songs in our head an' we never here anyone else's. That's the tragedy o' life. What? You asked, an' that's what my superpower'd be: to here other people's songs. To not be alone. That's a power, innit?

"I handed in my badge," the Detective said, "by this point in the story you should have returned it to me."

"I know," said the commander. "I think the cleaning people put it in the garbage; I can't find it anywhere."

Once upon a time – last week, actually, just before the bins were collected by the garbage men – Mr. Howard saw the Stilton kids leave the home old old Mrs. Witherspoon covered in flour and blood. He told the police his story, which they labelled as evidence then brought cameras into the home to nail the past down before it could change on them.

This is the story of what followed after.

"There's more than one side to any story and always more than one truth to see it by," the fox said. "For example, I only trick those who deserve it."

"You trick everyone," Bess said.

"Precisely."

The Detective explained the series of clues and connections that let him to catch the Balham Phone box Killer.

"You remembered all that, but you forgot tonight is our anniversary," his wife said. "People ask why I drink while you've been sober for three years."

The Detective waited desperately for his beeper to go off.

If the universe is a science project, what grade was it made for?

The Detective had considered leaving the force to become a PI after the Sponge Cake Fiasco but realized that, as a PI, he'd never be better than Tracer Bullet.

"It would be easier to talk about this if you didn't keep using that scary voice," Boy muttered.

"And what voice would that be?" Bess said.

"The one that says that I'm wrong no matter what I say?"

"That's just my voice," she said.

Spam email are the best way to tell your fortune: look for patterns, repetitions, and how many you get from each country. The first spam you receive will contain the secret code for unlocking all messages that come after it. You *did* keep it, right?

Police officers catch criminals in part by thinking like them. The Detective was so good at this he sometimes was half-convinced he had committed the crimes in question.

They say time travel doesn't exist because no one sees any tourists. But who would travel in time and be a tourist? Consider this: what would you do?

Corollary: How do you THINK Hitler survived all those assassination attempts?

I don't have high expectations of happiness. It could just be this: you and me, a swingset, and forever.

The scapegrace is the opposite of a scapegoat; all good things happen to them, we all wish we were them and love them.

"I don't know why you killed those six men," The Detective said, "but it's people like you who keep us employed. On behalf of the department, I thank you."

The killer just stared back, something deep and human breaking in empty eyes.

The Detective was fired, but the killer never wrote a book about the killings. All told, it was a good ending.

"I didn't mean to fall in love with you," he whispered. "You just needed me so much I couldn't help myself."

This statement is now in the public domain, free to fly into the wild and morph into new forms of linguistic frenzy barely held at bay by dictionaries. Copyright of it has been released: please note this every time you use the statement and cite accordingly.

They told me I can't cut myself beautiful

but they do it all the time on tv

with bigger knives, a smiling actor-doctor, camera crews;

new smiles in old eyes.

I just have a pen knife but – you think –

if I cut myself just right, maybe?

Maybe.

There is a city no one remembers when they think about your country. The real is always like that, slipping away from us.

The real is too solid. We are mired in it, bogged down in ugliness so we flee to the beauty of dreams. There are children in china making most of the things we own; it is only dreams that insulate us from truth.

Every building I set on fire is another ghost I let to free. So many hate me now: the fire department, the police, the exorcists I put out of work.

"It's so frakbajulous," she said, having decided 'love' was too common, inventing her own word for what they shared.

He asked what he meant, she told here it meant, kind of, love.

At the divorce, she used the word and he finally understood.

You hugged me and said, "Shhh. It's okay. I'm here."

Only, sometimes, it's not enough.

"Your apology has been noted," she said, fingering her new scar, "and deemed worthless."

"You didn't pay back the loan," the bank manager says as if that explains everything, face morphing to becomes yours, alien shadows flickering in cold eyes. "We have other methods of recovering debt and you do have a most interesting life."

"We die, and all that is left is memories."

"Would that be such a bad thing?"

"Depends on what you do, I suppose. And who holds them."

He says, "I always wanted to be famous. It was this or be a serial killer."

All the copyright-extension and anti-piracy bills are actually being bankrolled by Disneyworld, which is determined that the Mouse That Shall Not Be Named is never, ever in the public domain.

Have heart, though: even they must run out of money.

Some day.

Surely?

"Why is it so hard to get away from your tears?" he whispers.

The other man smiles, terribly gentle. "I'm not crying."

"Don't you understand? That just makes it worse."

He called last night, from the hotel. Asked about the kids and the dog. But never about you.

What if your life was going to be made into a TV show and you were obligated to make sure you did one thing, each day, worthy of prime time?

Jimmy flushed six goldfish before his mother caught him. He said he wanted them to go down into the sewer, to become mutants and eat pizza. She asked what they would eat it with, how they'd survive out of water, and his imagination was cut down by each word.

He has never become a painter.

There is a pause after we both pick the same bottle of wine, the waiter murmuring, "Very good," over our silence as we wait for each other to speak first, or laugh.

Re-post this if you hate posts telling you to re-post them.

I have always been a deep sleeper. I slept right through the sirens to wake to a newer world.

home is where the heartache is

The dog doesn't wag her tail when I open the door, and all I feel is relief: if she'd barked, growled, treated me as a stranger -- but she does not, just looks puzzled. Waits for a biscuit while I don't remove my shoes. The mirror of the vanity beside the door is uncleaned, a stack of bills sits on it: all red and yellow primaries, final warnings.
"Where have you been?" she says, too tired to not be calm, so empty she almost cares.
"Work," I say.
"Did you bring home money?"
I think of her, and him, and coffee, try to frame epiphanies into dollar amounts, settle on, "No."
She barely looks disappointed this time.

I think of her waiting at the coffee shop, of the man coming in. I wonder if I'm both of them.
"You're smiling," she says, "are you having an affair again?"
"I never, and no." I head up to shower, alone.

wandering in search of something to name

I've stopped buying coffee at the shop; the staff all know me now and I don't want to be a regular, a friendly face.  It's stigmata, in a city, when we all move here to be alone. But I find myself prowling the streets looking for her, for him. Alone, with each other, with other people. I'm living my life waiting for a frisson sparking from their secret lives they think no one has noticed.

I think my family is worried.

Where the writing is at ...

Currently I'm working on two projects. The Book of Going Forth by Night is the modern urban horror story that had a draft finished during nano. I wrote about 20K of the sequel to get a feel for it and then jumped back into this to redo it. I'm only 5 pages into but it's at least taking form again, albeit in present tense. I'm having fun fleshing out the character of Cindi and working on making the MC even more of a jerk since he basically is one at this point in his life.

Boy and Fox (aka Falling Toward The Sky) is on 11 pages and going a bit quicker, mostly because I am keeping a lot of description from previous drafts to use in it and I also have 60 handwritten pages done during travelling that shall be worked into it. (Or, realistically, about 10 of those pages.) I'm having fun fixing and keeping things and looking forward to reaching the point of New Plots vs. reorganizing old plots and concepts and meshing that together as the start. The other project is more fixing up plot and streamlining it; I'm not adding anything new in that sense so I figure it will be slower to write overall.

Beyond these, I'm trying to ignore other novel and story ideas wandering into my head so I can focus on this. How long that'll work is anyone's guess.

the feeling that the feeling you have isn't real

People have entertainment budgets; I have 'discretionary spending'. The USA spends it on wars; I buy coffee at the one local place.

Decaf only; jitters just once.

He comes in some days, late. Tired and thin. Lost. Staring at the table she usually sits at. Is he who she was waiting for? I haven't asked. He doesn't return my smiles either, but I have fewer of them than I used to.

time and slippage

Somehow, I am here when she arrives. Not every day -- the world is too messy for that, but sometimes. She keeps her phone off now, watch gripped in one hand. Her nails are bitten to the quick and she stares at the door, waiting, in defiance.

Whoever she is waiting for never comes in.

She has stopped returning my smiles.

Writing output..

For the day has been delete two pages.

Write one page.

Also delete it.

On the plus side, most of the first page of the second draft of The Book of Going Forth remains. For now.

....

(Make that half a page.)