Chapter 5 – voluntold evolution

Chapter 1 -Scenario green (Part 1 / Part 2); Chapter 2 -Koda Black (Part 3/ Part 4); Chapter 3 -Cricket (Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7) Chapter 4 -Parasitologistics (Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10/ Part 11)

A coughing fit tore me from the dark embrace of unconsciousness and thrust me into an electric grizzly hug. My chest hurt like somebody had a tap dance contest on top of me. The yellow steel grate on the ceiling looked familiar. Roaring and muffled banging accompanied somebody swearing.

I knew that music. Po must be cooking again. Ugh!
A helmet with a spray of red floated in front of my field of vision. Was that mine? It had “Kong” written on the top. Was that a Sharpie or blood? My head was throbbing. It must be mine then. I took a beating? Again? I hoped it was worth it. Somebody handed me my ass. Old habits died hard.
The beeping and booming were getting on my nerves, beaten up or not. I tried to listen. It was- oh, no! This was bad. The noise was a very bad alarm.

April 1st

This is a Friday. Like all Fridays, it is the week’s most adorable and neat potential. Nobody else is to butt in, and I’m thrilled with anticipation.

The moment I finish work, the grey veil of duty lifts, and a part of my mind just starts piling up logs of plans and thoughts lit by impulses like shooting stars. A bonfire of probability emits light at the tunnel’s end, warmth in the dark.

March 19th

Weekend starts with the little kids upstairs howling like sirens instead of my alarms on my phone. 7:02 am. I open my eyes and ponder why they’re running around and why my hands ache again. They have a serious case of zoomies. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thumpthumbthumpthump, thump, thump.

I make coffee and counter noises. Well, I sneeze and that is totally involuntary. Thump, thump, thump, thump. A door slams upstairs. 

February 22nd

There are days, you are relieved that the hours run out, and there isn’t much more time so the day can not throw more atrocities at you. There are days you thank whichever entity you believe in, that day belongs to the past now because you did not see that coming. You did not have that coming. Isn’t your fault.

And there are days -sigh- that do not care for the linear flow of time.

March 17th

I take the call in the garden – not by choice but by necessity. Turns out, my apartment is a dead zone now. No phone signals pierce the walls. I admit I get infrequent calls, sometimes I forget people want to talk to me at all; so I do not really catch on when it happens.

I have been in the garden already and thinking about the cherry tree. Yesterday it has been flowering, and today the flowers are hiding in their buds, not ready to stretch towards the sunlight. It can be a time whim, the cherry tree’s quirk, or me only misremembering. 

March 14th

In my hallway, there is a big mirror above the sideboard. Neatly arranged, candles crowd the space under the mirror. This morning my brain does a double-take and a summersault into involuntary waking up.

I’m usually blind and deaf without my hot coffee, first thing in the morning. My perception of the apartment and the world around me is a habitual one at best. Casually, the world is used to me sleep-drunkenly navigating the space on my way to my morning deeds.

Chapter 4: parasitologistics

Chapter 1- Scenario Green: (part 1 / part 2); Chapter 2 – Koda Black ( part 3 / part 4); Chapter 3 – Cricket ( part 5 / part 6 / part 7); Chapter 4 – Parasitologistics ( part 8 / part 9 / part 10);

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I was running low on air- too low to keep up the volume and length of my scream. These rogue frequencies were going to kill me. My head, chest, and throat burned, but I barely made progress—what a shot in the dark!

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t keep up. The pit of my stomach knotted, and I was about to become part of the problem. This sinking feeling mumbled something about dying horribly, giggled, and ran away to pluck flowers for my grave.
As if it didn’t concern me, I smiled and waved goodbye. But nobody saw that in the darkness.

The infrasound pings were continuous. “We’re leaving together, but still it’s farewell. Maybe we’ll come back to Earth, who can tell.” Big distorted cone-shaped reddish fields zeroed in on Shepherd and me. Final Count-down? It echoed in my head. “Will things ever be the same again?” Was this a count-down?
Tampo was preparing something. If it were a sonic boom, it’d mess with the whole plan. “…We’re heading for Venus…” Hot?
I had to focus.
What to do?
I was running out of time.

cloud eater

 This is a #vss365 prompt that got out of hand.

It wasn’t a magic word spoken aloud,

nor a sweet rush of chemical crutches

that made them stand out in the masses

it was the glint of blue and freedom in their eyes

all that is beyond

inspired by twitter prompt: #vss365

The silver dollar danced up and down the stranger’s fingers, tumbled from his knuckles in a brilliant flurry of bright flashes, cutting light and sticky curses.

Max was suddenly sober for the first time in twenty-three months. More even, the feeling of sleepwalking fell off of him as soon as that silver light pierced his eyes.

The presence of the coin dragged him into this bar and slammed him into that seat near the stranger. It put him back into his place. Fifty-four years old, profusely sweating, diabetic, a man without a home or family or a penny to his name – that was his place, the only one he merited. It brought back the insecurity, the impotence, the numbness in his hands and feet, the inadequacy, the being alone. There was tingling in his crotch. He saw the stains on his pants for the first time.
Finally, the coin snapped him into the present heartbeat, like a bungee cord attached to his bum ticker.

a frame to weave a story, on worldbuilding (3)

Part 1 – crucial & tedious work, on definitions

Part 2 – “X” marks the starting point, or identifying procedures

Part 3 – Genius loci & fabulae, or finding the spirit in the story

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We all consume stories as an organic part of growing up. It is food for the mind, equally important as food for the body. So we should be equally carefully picked and checked for quality like actual food.

Dear reader, dear writer, do you remember what kind of stories you were fed?

What is the blueprint of your world? What do you believe about morals? What is right? What unwritten rules are valid in the world you live in or makeup? How do you cope with the allies/villains of your world? How do you expect them to behave? Remember the goodnight stories your parents, grandparents, or siblings told you? What kind of stories did you imagine, when you were scared at night, when the darkness seemed to move, to breathe?

I’m convinced that stories are our first language to perceive and understand the world around us. We extrapolate meaning and rules from them. Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I know that I used the blueprints of stories, fairytales, history, and family anecdotes to find my place and way in this world. My family knows this hunger and made me the story keeper. Well, I made myself the keeper and collector of the family tales, tree, trauma, beliefs and traditions.