Lucifer_Carroll
GOATS!!!
- Joined
- May 4, 2004
- Posts
- 3,319
I hit 4212 words before I collapsed unconscious next to my laptop. I despise one of the scenes I just wrote but it's 1000 words long and I don't know what I'd end up putting in its place.
So far my work's current level is shite. I only like one chapter of the two. And that's mostly because I really enjoyed writing this one character whom I'm not going to include much in the story.
Excerpt from the chapter I do like:
Chapter 1: Destination
Lester rolled over, landing hard on the grubby subway floor. He groaned and muttered and cursed and all the other necessary actions one does in the first moments of consciousness. Those moments in which any halfway sane man would scream at what he’d allowed his life to become.
Begrudgingly rubbing his aching head, he climbed halfway to his feet, the sunlight blinding against his eyes. His mouth was dying for some caffeine or a cigarette. He patted his pockets for one of his two sins and found a half-crumpled pack in his shirt pocket where his more geeky coworkers kept their pens. He fished a dog-end out from the pack and tried to straighten it while patting his pockets for the lighter. That didn’t turn up, ditto for his wallet. It seemed at least one hoodlum was reckless enough to touch him. He cursed and squinted as the accursed light seemed to penetrate through his half-closed eyelids.
Wait a minute, back up. Daylight? Wasn’t this a subway? What the bloody hell was daylight doing here? He rubbed his head and stood fully to his feet and glanced out the window for the first time. His cigarette fell to the floor and slowly rolled to a halt underneath the bench he had made into his temporary bed.
“Fuck me,” he mouthed silently.
Outside the dingy and graffiti-strewn car, instead of the usual concrete column laden dark forest he was used to was one of those old movie train stations with only a series of benches and a ticket office. It was so deserted, Lester almost expected to see a tumbleweed blow through or for a trench coat-clad stranger to appear from behind a newspaper and address him by his first name.
He found himself walking out of the subway car automatically at the behest of his overactive curiosity. The station was overall clean minus the dirt and dust of accumulated ages. Lester sneezed once. Having lived in the city all his life, his nose was unaccustomed to the smell of dry dirt. He plodded along, weaving through the benches. Each one was pure wood, but had carved into their seats, the letters “N”, “U”, and “I”.
Lester continued his slow exploration, his curiosity battling endlessly with the utter surreality of his situation and trouncing it. He became so enamored with the station that he hardly noticed the world going on around him. Which is probably why he jumped so high when a figure tapped him on the shoulder.
He spun around on his heels, trying to pull of a karate move and grab the figure’s hand, but messed it up and fell back onto the bench. Above him was a cute Goth chick in a low-cut, long-sleeved black dress and wearing an ankh around her neck. As an accoutrement, on her face she wore an expression of polite surprise.
“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” she said hesitantly. “You just looked like you were lost.”
Lester gathered his wits about him and let out a small laugh. “No, no, it’s me who should…ah, fuck it, is this a dream or something?”
The Goth looked at him sideways for a moment and then reached under her skirt for a knife. Lester tried to jump out of the way, but the bench hindered that motion and so all he managed to do was crawl his way to the end. His life tried to cross his eyes, but he hadn’t done enough to be worthy of recollection. She raised the blade into the air and he tried to fumble out a protestation, but no words came out. He was left waving his arms in the air with his eyes closed and waiting for the plunge.
When it failed to come he raised one eye. She had rolled up her sleeve, displaying a long series of cross-wise scars and a fresh red slit where she had just cut herself.
“No,” she said distantly. “I definitely feel that. Want to taste to confirm?” She added the last bit while proffering her arm to him. He should have been disgusted. That’s what normal people are supposed to feel when someone cuts themselves in front of them. He was supposed to wreak verbal abuse upon her and rush her into the arms of uncaring psychiatrists armed with the latest Rorsarch tests and legal designer drugs. He didn’t.
Maybe it was the belief that it was all a dream that drove him to accept and put her arm to his lips. Perhaps it was the surreality of the experience, combining to strip away the societal expectations. Or maybe he was just tired of the bullshit lies and acceptable behavior. Maybe, he had spent his life so long trapped in normal healthy expectation that this experience was to him perfectly bizarre and adventurous.
Who knows? Who cares? The important thing was he took her arm into his mouth and felt the salty, sticky oxidized hemoglobin and plasma flow across his tongue, registering and confirming the reality of the moment. He felt her skin against his, soft and supple and delicate as flowers in moonlight, even smelt of her perfume, added so lightly as to be invisible against the natural smell of her existence. He knew that it was real.
The slap that came for staying too long in that position only confirmed it. He blinked twice and rubbed his cheek while she ran a tissue over the saliva-closed wound.
“Sorry,” he muttered, struggling for something to say to explain away his primal transgression. “I didn’t mean to…er…sorry.”
“Hmm,” she questioned, looking up as if his presence had been the last thing on her mind at the moment. “Oh, that. I was planning on slapping you no matter how long you stayed like that. My ex-boyfriend liked to tarry too. Even called it an aphrodisiac…”
She seemed to drift into memory as her eyes glazed over into the realm of bittersweet. The shoulder of her dress fell a little in the movement revealing faint, yet unhealed bruises. He felt a surge of pity and regret. Then thinking on it, revel, finally, he was beginning to feel again, to have once again those lost emotions, to have again the ability to care.
She shook her head quickly. “Sorry, about that,” she said in what he now recognized as razor-edged kindness, so close to either despair or destruction. Once again, he felt the surge of pity. “I take it you’re new to the city.”
“City?” he asked confusedly.
She sighed thumbing over her shoulder at a dirt path leading away from the station. It seemed to lead around a bend, but it was signed well. He wondered if he had missed it deliberately in his investigations, if he had been holding himself back for fear of treading too far off the familiar. He felt foolish, again thrilling to the emotion.
“Do you even understand where you’ve come,” she asked with her head cocked to one side in disturbing earnest.
Lester looked down in lieu of answering and apologized once again. “Sorry.”
“I should have known,” she said in self-disappointment. “I remember my first time coming here, unsure of everything that was around me.”
“First time?”
She nodded her head. “Uh huh, I’m a day tripper myself, I’ve been coming here off and on since I was in my teens.” She laughed softly into her sleeve. “It’s funny. I’ve always thought about living here full time, but I’m never able to make the move. I guess it’s part of my manic-depressive symptom that I’m never to commit.”
Lester nodded in consent, figuring any more was deliberate intrusion. Besides, he was taking to the crazy Goth chick. For a woman who cut herself nonchalantly, openly discussed private matters with strangers, and giggled nervously on the edge of despair, she held more charm than all the bastards he had wasted his life with in the cubicle rat race. The fact that she was the first woman in a while that had bothered being nice to him in years helped a bit too. He started to feel himself, his true self awaken or some other bullshit like that.
“Come on, follow me, we’re heading to the same place anyway and it’s not all that far.”
Lester nodded. Yeah, that sounded good to him. Real good.
They walked out onto the dirt path together, Lester trailing slightly behind. He started to say something trite and cliché when they reached the bend and he looked up and out.
“Bloody hell,” he said as he looked out at an open gate and the signs of modern city life he was used to just visible inside. Rock music was beginning to become audible through the doors. Lester could recognize it from his youth as the slightly annoying metal track that they inserted into party discs in order to give the appearance of having some music that wasn’t written by overpaid hacks.
As they approached, Axl Rose’s voice began to ring out clearer.
Welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here every day. Ya learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play.
The Goth chick turned towards Lester grinning. “Well-,” she started before slapping her forehead, “I forgot to do introductions, didn’t I?”
“Um, yes.”
“Sorry,” she said solemnly then extended her hand and smiled brightly again. “Name’s Molly Trela.”
“Lester Elpida,” he answered giving her a light handshake.
“Well, Lester, welcome to Nihilist City.”
So far my work's current level is shite. I only like one chapter of the two. And that's mostly because I really enjoyed writing this one character whom I'm not going to include much in the story.
Excerpt from the chapter I do like:
Chapter 1: Destination
Lester rolled over, landing hard on the grubby subway floor. He groaned and muttered and cursed and all the other necessary actions one does in the first moments of consciousness. Those moments in which any halfway sane man would scream at what he’d allowed his life to become.
Begrudgingly rubbing his aching head, he climbed halfway to his feet, the sunlight blinding against his eyes. His mouth was dying for some caffeine or a cigarette. He patted his pockets for one of his two sins and found a half-crumpled pack in his shirt pocket where his more geeky coworkers kept their pens. He fished a dog-end out from the pack and tried to straighten it while patting his pockets for the lighter. That didn’t turn up, ditto for his wallet. It seemed at least one hoodlum was reckless enough to touch him. He cursed and squinted as the accursed light seemed to penetrate through his half-closed eyelids.
Wait a minute, back up. Daylight? Wasn’t this a subway? What the bloody hell was daylight doing here? He rubbed his head and stood fully to his feet and glanced out the window for the first time. His cigarette fell to the floor and slowly rolled to a halt underneath the bench he had made into his temporary bed.
“Fuck me,” he mouthed silently.
Outside the dingy and graffiti-strewn car, instead of the usual concrete column laden dark forest he was used to was one of those old movie train stations with only a series of benches and a ticket office. It was so deserted, Lester almost expected to see a tumbleweed blow through or for a trench coat-clad stranger to appear from behind a newspaper and address him by his first name.
He found himself walking out of the subway car automatically at the behest of his overactive curiosity. The station was overall clean minus the dirt and dust of accumulated ages. Lester sneezed once. Having lived in the city all his life, his nose was unaccustomed to the smell of dry dirt. He plodded along, weaving through the benches. Each one was pure wood, but had carved into their seats, the letters “N”, “U”, and “I”.
Lester continued his slow exploration, his curiosity battling endlessly with the utter surreality of his situation and trouncing it. He became so enamored with the station that he hardly noticed the world going on around him. Which is probably why he jumped so high when a figure tapped him on the shoulder.
He spun around on his heels, trying to pull of a karate move and grab the figure’s hand, but messed it up and fell back onto the bench. Above him was a cute Goth chick in a low-cut, long-sleeved black dress and wearing an ankh around her neck. As an accoutrement, on her face she wore an expression of polite surprise.
“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” she said hesitantly. “You just looked like you were lost.”
Lester gathered his wits about him and let out a small laugh. “No, no, it’s me who should…ah, fuck it, is this a dream or something?”
The Goth looked at him sideways for a moment and then reached under her skirt for a knife. Lester tried to jump out of the way, but the bench hindered that motion and so all he managed to do was crawl his way to the end. His life tried to cross his eyes, but he hadn’t done enough to be worthy of recollection. She raised the blade into the air and he tried to fumble out a protestation, but no words came out. He was left waving his arms in the air with his eyes closed and waiting for the plunge.
When it failed to come he raised one eye. She had rolled up her sleeve, displaying a long series of cross-wise scars and a fresh red slit where she had just cut herself.
“No,” she said distantly. “I definitely feel that. Want to taste to confirm?” She added the last bit while proffering her arm to him. He should have been disgusted. That’s what normal people are supposed to feel when someone cuts themselves in front of them. He was supposed to wreak verbal abuse upon her and rush her into the arms of uncaring psychiatrists armed with the latest Rorsarch tests and legal designer drugs. He didn’t.
Maybe it was the belief that it was all a dream that drove him to accept and put her arm to his lips. Perhaps it was the surreality of the experience, combining to strip away the societal expectations. Or maybe he was just tired of the bullshit lies and acceptable behavior. Maybe, he had spent his life so long trapped in normal healthy expectation that this experience was to him perfectly bizarre and adventurous.
Who knows? Who cares? The important thing was he took her arm into his mouth and felt the salty, sticky oxidized hemoglobin and plasma flow across his tongue, registering and confirming the reality of the moment. He felt her skin against his, soft and supple and delicate as flowers in moonlight, even smelt of her perfume, added so lightly as to be invisible against the natural smell of her existence. He knew that it was real.
The slap that came for staying too long in that position only confirmed it. He blinked twice and rubbed his cheek while she ran a tissue over the saliva-closed wound.
“Sorry,” he muttered, struggling for something to say to explain away his primal transgression. “I didn’t mean to…er…sorry.”
“Hmm,” she questioned, looking up as if his presence had been the last thing on her mind at the moment. “Oh, that. I was planning on slapping you no matter how long you stayed like that. My ex-boyfriend liked to tarry too. Even called it an aphrodisiac…”
She seemed to drift into memory as her eyes glazed over into the realm of bittersweet. The shoulder of her dress fell a little in the movement revealing faint, yet unhealed bruises. He felt a surge of pity and regret. Then thinking on it, revel, finally, he was beginning to feel again, to have once again those lost emotions, to have again the ability to care.
She shook her head quickly. “Sorry, about that,” she said in what he now recognized as razor-edged kindness, so close to either despair or destruction. Once again, he felt the surge of pity. “I take it you’re new to the city.”
“City?” he asked confusedly.
She sighed thumbing over her shoulder at a dirt path leading away from the station. It seemed to lead around a bend, but it was signed well. He wondered if he had missed it deliberately in his investigations, if he had been holding himself back for fear of treading too far off the familiar. He felt foolish, again thrilling to the emotion.
“Do you even understand where you’ve come,” she asked with her head cocked to one side in disturbing earnest.
Lester looked down in lieu of answering and apologized once again. “Sorry.”
“I should have known,” she said in self-disappointment. “I remember my first time coming here, unsure of everything that was around me.”
“First time?”
She nodded her head. “Uh huh, I’m a day tripper myself, I’ve been coming here off and on since I was in my teens.” She laughed softly into her sleeve. “It’s funny. I’ve always thought about living here full time, but I’m never able to make the move. I guess it’s part of my manic-depressive symptom that I’m never to commit.”
Lester nodded in consent, figuring any more was deliberate intrusion. Besides, he was taking to the crazy Goth chick. For a woman who cut herself nonchalantly, openly discussed private matters with strangers, and giggled nervously on the edge of despair, she held more charm than all the bastards he had wasted his life with in the cubicle rat race. The fact that she was the first woman in a while that had bothered being nice to him in years helped a bit too. He started to feel himself, his true self awaken or some other bullshit like that.
“Come on, follow me, we’re heading to the same place anyway and it’s not all that far.”
Lester nodded. Yeah, that sounded good to him. Real good.
They walked out onto the dirt path together, Lester trailing slightly behind. He started to say something trite and cliché when they reached the bend and he looked up and out.
“Bloody hell,” he said as he looked out at an open gate and the signs of modern city life he was used to just visible inside. Rock music was beginning to become audible through the doors. Lester could recognize it from his youth as the slightly annoying metal track that they inserted into party discs in order to give the appearance of having some music that wasn’t written by overpaid hacks.
As they approached, Axl Rose’s voice began to ring out clearer.
Welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here every day. Ya learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play.
The Goth chick turned towards Lester grinning. “Well-,” she started before slapping her forehead, “I forgot to do introductions, didn’t I?”
“Um, yes.”
“Sorry,” she said solemnly then extended her hand and smiled brightly again. “Name’s Molly Trela.”
“Lester Elpida,” he answered giving her a light handshake.
“Well, Lester, welcome to Nihilist City.”
