2016

1/26/16 late night

Belle and Kuzco were her cats Kuzco is the son of Belle and is deemed the fluffy one while Belle has been deemed the fat one since she never quite lost the fat she gained from birthing five adorable kittens Kuzco being one of them Kuzco is sweet and he cuddles with her while she plays video games even though he is too big and fluffy to really fit on her lap Belle stares at you with curious and irritated eyes frequently She loves to pounce on feet under the blanket and she goes for the kill when wrestling a string At night Belle loves to sleep curled in a ball as close to her face as she can get Kuzco doesn’t really cuddle at night he prefers to wake her with a meow every morning and will respond curtly if she meows back Belle and Kuzco are not terribly afraid of water Belle will stand in between the shower curtains while she takes a shower only a millimeter away from one push and getting drenched Kuzco will weave in and out of her legs while she goes to the bathroom and then whine on the outside of a room if she closes the door he essentially has separation anxiety Nobody wanted Kuzco because he was fluffy and would shed all over the place and he does indeed shed all over the place which Matt does not appreciate and grows irritated when hair gets on his xwing miniatures they also have a tendency to not cover up their poop when they go to the bathroom in the litter box which is extremely irritating as it causes the whole apartment to smell like kitty crap matt says that they think she is their mother because when she teases them they don’t hurt her and put up with all of her crap when she scoops them up and carries them like a baby so that she can kiss their noses they just stare up at her like ‘are you done yet?’ and she thinks it’s cute but then will set them down but no matter how long she holds them or teases them they wont scratch or bite her they just blink their big eyes at her as if to say ‘I love you’ they don’t care what she looks like or if she’s making a lot of money or building on her education they love her because she feeds them and cuddles with them at night on the coldest nights Kuzco will crawl under the blankets and sleep with her like a child who just had a nightmare and if she’s chowing down on some sour candy Kuzco jumps in and demands a piece of his own because like her, he loves sour candy Kuzco also loves boxes he jumps into any and all boxes will lay down and then stare up at you with those big eyes as if to say ‘ah yes this is comfy’ he has a huge bushy tail that waps you in the face while you are trying to write when he’s being especially needy and Belle likes to lie on her feet at night and gets upset if she moves even the slightest inch they’ve lived with her for a long time well since Craig bought her as a gift so that she wouldn’t get a dog She wasn’t a cat person back then but then she fell in love with Belle Belle was an adorable kitty She chased plastic bags and slept with her under the blankets but she didn’t get belle fixed and one day belle got out when she was in heat and then 5 kitties happened she was at work when the kittens were born they were adorable and so tiny and belle was such a good mother she had them behind the television on a Sunday morning and then she moved them to the cat carrier by the couch for weeks the kittens just slept and ate then one day they opened their eyes and they were the brightest blue you could imagine bright and friendly they were all eager to explore the world the leader of the pack was a gray tabby he was the first to leave the cat carrier and explore the expansive area around his home he was the smartest too and the first to figure out how to climb the couch but soon they were all climbing the couch but they couldn’t get back down so she placed a pillow at the bottom of the couch the kittens would claw to the top of the couch and then jump off shouting ‘geronimo’ and land on the pillow with a poof and roll off the side like rolly polies they were all cute and had their own personalities but Kuzco was the first to crawl into her lap as she did her homework no bigger than her hand he would snuggle between her legs and fall fast asleep it was hard giving them away but at least she had Kuzco and Belle and now they are a part of her family even if they are super needy

1/27/16 early morning

The dusty wind howled through the air scratching Jacob’s knuckles as they gripped the reins of his horse Honey. Honey neighed as they rounded a tall trash mountain piled high during what some called the Golden Age of manufacturing and others called the most wasteful era of human beings. Jacob believed it was the latter but he had spent the last 20 years wondering the Expanse in search of food and valuables. The piles were nearing mountains and had turned the flat swampy area into a dry dark desert which smelled of rusting car parts and degraded plastic. Miles from the nearest settlement, Jacob guided Honey around the corner of a large trash heap expecting to see yet another trash heap of rotting stench. Instead he saw the remains of the space era that collapsed instantly with the rest of the world’s progression. The space ship reached high into the sky covered with dust and trash it built the tallest pile of junk in what used to be southern Texas. Jacob heard crinkling to his left. In a single swift movement, he pushed himself up and yanked out his samarai sword ready for anything.

1/29/16 early morning

“I fought in two wars, sonny!” Grandpa shouted with his dentures out and cane raised. I nodded. “Yes, you did but I don’t see how that is related to healthcare.” Grandpa paused for a second to consider my point. “oh, is that what we were talking about?” I sighed but shook my head as politely as I could muster. “Healthcare is for socialist and communist!” He said, now shouting about something else outrageous. I slouched in my chair, cursing my family for always leaving me with grandpa duty. “Alright, Grandpa, if you say so.” The old man made a noise something like a gargle and gasp at the same time. “Boy, you best cut that out, I can still whip you if I need too. If I ever hear you talking to a lady like that, I’ll bend you over my knee right then and there with your scrawny legs flapping all over the place too. And then I’ll hold you down and force you to hear all of my stories, it’ll be worse torture than the ol’ japs put me through in ’67.”

2/1/16

I have gloves but they aren’t like any other gloves they are a bright red like the color of a stop sign or the color of my mom’s party jeans. She thinks that they make her look younger when they are bright red. But these gloves aren’t for partying, they are to keep me warm when it’s cold outside. They were knitted by my grandmother and each string is woven together in a tight pattern incasing my cold hands and protecting them from the freezing rain. They are also dirty because I’ve worn them so much. I wear them to school and I wear them on days after the snow has melted but the cold remains. I’ve dropped them in the mud but put them right back on because they are my favorite. My mom tries to wash them but I wont let her because the dirt is a part of their personality. When I pull back the mittens, the red yarn wraps around my fingers to my knuckles letting my fingers move freely so that I can do my homework even if it’s cold and then when it gets too cold, I just cover my fingers back up. I’ve had these bright red party gloves for so long that the yarn my grandmother wove is beginning to come undone so that they look ragged, but I don’t care, I’ll wear them until they fall apart. My friends say that they look like homeless gloves they are so dirty and torn but I say that I don’t care because they keep me warm and make me smile even as their bright red color dinges with the grime. My grandmother tells me that it took her two weeks to sew them and that she put love in every weave. She says that nobody else has gloves like mine because they were her own special design. It’s funny how a pair of red gloves can remind me of her even when I’m cold in my room. I wish that I’d made something for her before she’d died then she could have held onto it and remembered me when she passed. Grandfather says that her last words was “tell Becky I love her” I’m not sure if I believe it though. My grandmother had three daughters and two sons. My mom is her middle child and I have two brothers and twelve cousins, I think granpa told that to all of the kids and grandkids to make us all feel special because that was how my grandmother was, she made everyone feel special. She made lots of things for my cousins and brothers but I was the only one that got bright red gloves for my fingers to poke out of though. How did she know that bright red gloves woven with love would make me feel special? Mom says that she sees something special in me, but how would gloves make my special come out? I don’t have any special, I just feel like I’m special because I’ve got the only bright red gloves slowly browning with dirt in the world. If that is the only thing that makes me special, these gloves and her love, I think that I would be alright with that though.

2/2/16 the perfect writing room

The perfect writing room would be a tall cylinder, the walls lined with books and a little crook for a desk and a computer. Books from every genre, from fiction to historical to dictionaries and thesaurus to advice on how to write. I’d like some music playing in the background that inspires me and then a pull out desk for drawing and coloring so that I can visualize my scenes. And then a portion of the wall without books for a dry erase board so that I can write my ideas and organize my themes on the fly. It would be beautiful.

1000 words about Dallas

The man that saved me was named Dallas Ingrade. He was about 23 back then but acted 15 years older as he quietly shuffled through the city. He was tall at about 6’2” and had dark messy brown hair that he never washed along with a long black jacket that never got washed. His eyes were dark gray except for a few occasions I could have sworn they changed to a deep blue. He stared at you as if he was looking through you as if nobody meant anything to you and when he was mad, it was like Satan himself was unleashing his fury on you. Not because he was loud or mean but because he was calm but those eyes changing to a deep blue would chill you to the bone. I saw him kill many people. He killed all of the people at the pizza parlor and many others. And he did it without any hesitation, making me believe he was the most dangerous man alive. He told me repeatedly that he wasn’t a good guy and for a long time I believed him but even as I say that, I remember when he pulled me out of that bank. Like for a moment, I was the only person that he cared about in the entire world. I held onto that feeling. Nobody had ever cared about me enough to look at me the way that he did when he pulled my eyes to face his. I followed him and pestered him until I saw him feel that way again. But his feelings were guarded. He often asserted that he had none but I saw that tear fall down his cheek when he spoke of his stepsister Caroline. To this day, I don’t know how he felt about me. If I was important to him or if I was just there to pass the time. But he told me and showed me a lot. He told me about his stripper mother, his raping stepfather and his oblivious maid. He told me how his school got shot and he was the only survivor and how the kids at school used to beat him up. But most importantly, he told me about the watch. The watch that can control time but causes debilitating visions from your past and future. They aren’t good visions, they are the most traumatizing visions from your own and everyone else’s life. Slowly but surely the watch caused him to go crazy and I don’t know if he would have killed without the watch torturing him with visions or not but I do know that a part of him was hanging on, fighting the watch by saving people, just like he saved me and he paid dearly for it each time. When he saved the little girl from getting run over, he was so overcome with visions that he cowered in a dark damp alley for hours. In some ways he never grew up, he was still that little boy cowering in the corner and hiding from his stepdad but in other ways, he found the strength to take on the troubles of everyone in New York City. I’m probably the only person on the planet that understood him even a little and felt sorry for him. The rest of the world didn’t know he existed. He was invisible to everyone, and that was how he liked it. Passing through the streets trying to understand those around him and lashing out when he couldn’t take the pain and anger anymore. He disappeared two years after we met, when we found out that the first guy to own the watch had moved to Europe, he left and went after him. I wanted to go too but I couldn’t because he never actually saved me. I was just a vision myself. A dream in his mind that he had saved me and that we’d become good friends. But in reality, I died in that bank with a cold bullet whizzing through my skull. The watch did something very cruel to him. It made him miss someone who had already died. I think he knew that I was dead when he started to see his mother, she had died years before and he knew that but he ignored the signs because he needed someone to listen to him. Sometimes I am angry with him because I wanted to be there with him, I ask myself, Why couldn’t you just save me? I would have been there with you, but you didn’t. But I understand, he thought that he was saving me. One of the worst things about the watch is that it muddles the wearers understanding of time so much so that sometimes they feel like they are doing one action when in reality they are doing another. It’s a terrible feeling because there is no way to prove that what is happening is real. You rely upon realistic responses from the people around you. You kill and watch them scream in fear as you hold a gun to their face and you see their soul light up begging you to free them because they are actually seeing you. And when you are threatening their life you feel alive too. You feel the cold wind brushing past your cheeks and you feel their sorrow. The stillness surrounds you if only for a moment and breaks free of the watches control but then it doesn’t last long. When your adrenaline begins to fade again so does the bright colors and awareness of reality, you begin to feel like a carbon copy of yourself, watching everyone treat the carbon copy like the real you as you hide in the corner hoping that somebody will realize that you are missing. I’ve seen him hide and retreat so many times that it breaks my heart. He sleeps in the rain and in alleys like a drunk man without a home because he is a shadow of himself consumed with worry and the watch that he thinks he needs to keep himself from hurting others. The watch pulls him in and convinces him that he needs it in order to save the world from himself. But then causes his mind to only get worse and to lose even more control, soon there is nothing left of him and there is only his mind swimming in and out of visions that choke his heart. The watch has created Hell on Earth for him.

2/3/16

In the morning, it is difficult to understand why things are the way that they are. We trudge to our jobs and it is all rather exhausting. I was only 16 when they came in and told me that my mother had brain cancer. My Dad and mother cornered me after school and convinced me to sit on the couch. For a moment, I thought they were trying to stage an intervention which didn’t make much sense to me considering I hadn’t done any drugs in my life. But really, they’d cornered me to tell me that my mother wasn’t going to be alive much longer. The complete helplessness that washed over me is indescribable. Because I didn’t want her to go. I loved her more than anything. It didn’t take long for her to go either and then one day, my Dad and I found ourselves staring at each other on the dining room table with nothing to say. We had nothing to say because we already knew everything that could be said. We’d ran out of cheerful words. The only words that either one of us could squeeze out without falling apart was “ok” and “goodnight.”

2/19/16

Dallas had tuned Tasha out and listened to the futures of the people around him but she continued to drone on about the possibilities of time travel as if he hadn’t already thought about them. Of course, he thought about traveling the world, helping people but he knew that it wouldn’t work. Dallas wasn’t a hero, he was the villain. He was a villain with the ultimate tool to never getting caught. And here she sat rambling as if she understood him, she didn’t understand anything. Her presumptions about his character was irritating, he was the one with the watch and he could do whatever he wanted to do with it.

“What exactly did you do to help them?” Tasha asked accusingly. Dallas became instantly enraged. She had idea what she was talking about. He took her head and slammed her forward into the sidewalk. It made a loud crack and blood oozed out onto the sidewalk. His anger slowly subsided as he realized that she wasn’t going to get back up if he didn’t turn back time.

8/13/16

Marriage is unrealistic. Two people say I do to a commitment that is supposed to last their entire lives and how can anyone know that committing to one person for their entire life is a good idea. We have no idea where life is going to take us. We have no idea what decisions we’ll have to make or what life will throw at us. Life likes to throw an assortment of tragedies on our doorstep and most often, we have no idea how to handle it because we’ve never had too. How can you be certain that you’ll be able to take any tragedy with this person. What if they stop having sex or they simple stop talking to you? What if they decide that they want to take a job across the world and you can either go with them or be left behind? Would you go with them? You have all of these dreams and things that you would like to accomplish but I can assure you that some of their dreams and decisions will come into conflict with yours. If you settle and compromise your dreams, you may grow to resent them but there’s nothing that you can do since you’re married for the rest of your life. Or what if you were attracted to someone because they brought out a side of yourself that you didn’t know existed. They helped you grow and become a better person and then all of a sudden you realize that they aren’t helping you grow anymore. They have stagnated and you become miserable. I have a theory that we are attracted and drawn to people for as long as we can learn from them and help them. And I’m talking about the people we choose to keep in our lives. Friends and relationships.

8/16/16

Write about a day you’d like to forget.

Sarah had a lot of bad memories, ones where she was alone as a kid, abused as a teen and broke as a college student. But she never gave up. She pushed through her education, making friends and even trying a couple of romantic relationships. She raised two cats and put herself through an engineering degree despite the problems with abandonment that enveloped her as a child. And out of all of those days that she struggled, including the ones where she had to fight to push herself and pretend that she was happy so that her little brothers wouldn’t be scared, the only day that she wished she could forget was the day that she met Aiden. In her last year of college, she decided to go out for the night with her friend and roommate, Brian. They went to a popular bar in the downtown area known as the Oak Street Drafthouse. Made to look like a constant house party, the bar was a popular location of resident college students. Brian and Sarah ordered a drink and then sat at one of the empty wooden picnic tables on the lawn. Sarah liked her roommate Brian, he was nice and friendly and he meant well. Plus, he’d let her move into the house with him when she’d had nowhere else to go. Which was exceptionally generous of him since they hadn’t known each other very long. She tried to be nice and listen to his stories, but to be honest, Brian irritated her. And she was hoping some other friends would join them otherwise this would look like a date to Brian and she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. She’d just broken up with her ex and she wanted some time to be free and concentrate on having fun her last year of college. She turned around to see if their other friends were entering the lawn, while Brian prattled on. Her friends weren’t walking in and she hadn’t received a message from them. Sarah began to feel disheartened. Was she going to have to spend the entire night with him? She began to think of ways to get out of drinking at the bar alone with him. Maybe she could fake an illness or suddenly remember a huge test that she had to study for in the morning? She looked back at Brian, who was still talking. He was smiling as if this was his night to steal her heart and practically breathing down her neck. Sarah caught some strangers in the corner of her eye walk by her. She turned to look at them and watched for a second as they meandered between the long wooden picnic tables searching for a place to sit. They were out of luck though, there was five of them and it was a Saturday night at one of the most popular bars in a college town Sarah looked at the guys, then back at Brian, who was still talking and then at their table. It was practically empty and it would fit all of the guys searching for a spot to sit. Suddenly it occurred to Sarah, if they sit here, you’ll have a group and Brian wont be able to focus all of his attention on you. So she turned to the guys and said as friendly as possible “You guys can sit here if you want too.” Although she was certain that she’d come off a little too desperate when they glanced awkwardly at each other for approval, they reluctantly shrugged and replied ‘sure’ in unison. Giddy with the opportunity for more interesting conversation, Sarah scooted over to make room for her new companions and they plopped down already laughing over their past shenanigans.  

            One of the guys asked Sarah her name. Another thanked her for letting them sit there and then asked if it was ok that more guys joined them. Sarah smiled politely, told them her name was Sarah and then said ‘Of course not.’ It wasn’t much longer that a couple joined them and wasn’t much longer that Brian and Sarah had joined in on the groups’ antics and laughter. Up until now, it might sound like she had a great time, like there was nothing that she should want to forget especially when you compare it to all of the lonely nights she’d spent without such great company. Since one of the guys revealed that none of them were from Denton and none of them went to school at UNT, Sarah found it appropriate to ask the group of strangers why they had come to Denton in the first place. And then, all six of them at once pointed at Aiden, the man sitting directly across from Sarah and shouted “He just graduated as a nuclear engineer for the navy!” Being her usual blunt self, in one swift movement, she turned to him and said “You make a killing, don’t you?” She mostly meant it as a joke and she was also surprised that she’d even met a nuclear engineer since she knew that they were secretive group. But she never could have predicted the reaction that her heart would have the moment their eyes locked. In an instant, she went from grinning and teasing him to completely taken aback. He shrugged sheepishly, not fond of being called out to a complete stranger. His black rimmed glasses and black form fitting shirt made him look strong and brilliant. And his eyes looked sad but confident at the same time. While his demeanor was intimidating, Sarah wouldn’t be put off, she reacted honestly even though, she was instantly confused about how he made her feel. “Don’t lie to me.” She said curtly but flirty. His head snapped back in mild surprise but he replied while grinning, “yes, I do alright.” She nodded, satisfied. Their eyes had been locked during that entire exchange, she felt like she’d known him before. But she was sure that she hadn’t.

In most stories, this is the part where they fall in love and they live happily ever after. But this story doesn’t go like that. Yes, they did fall in love. And their first kiss was like a full moon on an open prairie. Illuminating everything that had caused her to stumble on the many dark nights before. She stared at the field in awe, wondering how she’d missed this view her entire life and hadn’t wept every night that the moon didn’t shine. But like all full moons, they only last for a night and there was one large glaring problem in their love story. Aiden was already taken. And not only taken, he was about to be engaged. And not only was he about to get engaged but he was moving to Charleston. Over a thousand miles away on the other side of the country. They’d had a once in a lifetime meeting and a once in a lifetime connection but time and circumstances couldn’t change those facts. And that is why Sarah wishes she could forget the day that they met. She isn’t sure why they met and why she fell in love with him. But now that she knows what it’s like to see the moon, every night that she stumbles across the dark rocky plain stifling her tears when the moon doesn’t show, she wishes that she couldn’t remember it, so that she could go back to being happy in the darkness.

8/23/16

Four hundred years ago, we were contacted by the universe’s alien civilizations. They told us that they’d held what we would call a meeting and decided to contact us. The only reason that they hadn’t yet was actually the distance between us. We’d built all sorts of devices in hopes that aliens would be able to communicate with us but our efforts were rather lame in their eyes. In order for our technology to even work they’d have to go to the edge of our solar system which was practically on our front lawn, and if they had to go that far, then they might as well actually land on our front lawn and as they said “It was too much effort.” It makes sense overall, the universe’s leaders must have been really busy and felt that they could just wait until we reached the level that they could simply send a message, without having to travel.

However, when they did finally reach us, the entire population absolutely freaked. Almost 10 billion people instantly panicked. Afraid the aliens might kill all of us or steal our technology or take our children for testing. The truth was, the aliens didn’t much care for us. They sort of looked at us as if we were seven year olds that had finally learned how to read. They sent us blueprints for extremely complicated technology that even our Isaac Newton’s of the day couldn’t decipher. The aliens even claimed that they’d essentially dumbed it down for us. After they sent us the blueprints, they told us that if we could build this technology, then we could send a representative to the Smart Universe Species Convention, at least that was how it was translated from their tongue. It took our smartest and brightest almost a hundred years to build the prototypes that they asked us to figure out.

When they were finished, they were essentially space ships. Well that is as close as you can get to what common humans understood them as. The ships were large time traveling large moons. The engineers that built them had to build them off of Mars in hopes that if something went wrong during construction, they wouldn’t destroy every living thing on earth. Which had added a challenge to the construction since, my ancestors had only sent robots to Mars by this time. But anyways, I’m glossing over a lot details since I want you to get to my story. Almost immediately after the Twins were completed, the aliens sent our world leaders a message that once translated read something like, “Good job, although it took you a significant amount of time to complete the transportation devices, we are surprised that you did complete them at all. You may now choose one representative from your planet to join the Convention of Advanced Living Creatures in the day of your calendar of February 14 next year, use your device to transport the specimen to what you refer to as the supermassive black hole at the center of the universe. We will be waiting for your arrival.” That date was exactly one year and two days away. The Twins would need at least a year to make a journey of that distance, which meant that they had two days to choose a representative. As you can imagine, the entire world panicked, fought, debated and then argued over who to send or even whether they should send someone at all. The engineers argued that what the aliens requested wasn’t even possible. But somehow, the world came to a hasty conclusion and decided to send someone unthinkable. A child. While this child had been one of the top contributors in the building of the Twins, and was therefore extremely intelligent, she also was very well liked by her peers and coworkers. Her contribution in building the Twins was mostly classified and most of the human population wasn’t completely aware of everything that she’d done. Mostly, everyone thought that she was a student, a sort of intern, in reality she’d designed and helped solve a lot of the problems that her predecessors couldn’t fix. And more importantly, she was an orphan. Her parents had died five years before in a car accident making her essentially the property of the state at the age of 8. And while she was young at the time she left for the convention, she was not forced. She actually volunteered. People flipped shit. Almost the entire world protested sending a child to represent their entire race. Although she was smart and capable, she was still a little girl. But the world didn’t have long to deliberate, 16 hours after little Natasha internationally announced that she would be willing to go meet the aliens, the leader of her nation of origin, Russia signed her release. She was afterall, one of the few that were so qualified. Perhaps Russia was biased but when they announced that Natasha would in fact be leaving Mars with a crew large enough to run Luke, the first of the Twins, they gave several convincing points. She was extremely intelligent. She was knowledgeable of Luke, how to run him and how to fix him if anything should go wrong. She could speak, read and write over 30 different languages, including the aliens correspondence, helping with the inevitable language barrier. And she’d already been trained as an astronaut since she was currently living on Mars. She could handle herself, as her strong personality had leaked through to reporters already for several years. And most importantly, she’d willingly volunteered. Those that were qualified were simply petrified of diving into a black hole and others that had volunteered were simply either too important on Earth or not qualified enough. Besides, they could always send a backup crew on Leia if anything happened to Luke.

So, when Natasha left with her 35 chosen companions on Luke on the morning of February 14, hopes were high that she’d represent them well, even though nobody on Earth had any idea what was in store for her.