And please feel free to play along by using the first sentence as a prompt :)
A homeless man, belligerent and obese, has set up his refrigerator-box home in the middle of a narrow one-way street. Any stress, any noise, any mild annoyance sets his temper off like the whirling sparks of a Catherine Wheel firework.
Pedestrians and shop keepers avert their eyes and try to go about their whispered business while he shouts obscenities, kicks garbage cans, and hangs his dirty underwear on street signs.
Cars and delivery trucks bottleneck around his malignant cancer of occupancy.
When security arrives, he throws liquor bottles, screams, and threatens to take hostages.
Two streets over, his slightly smaller, slightly more amiable companion resides, his tiny collection of possessions tucked inside a more modest washing-machine-box, and his dirty underwear (mercifully) out of sight. When his larger friend's antics carry over into his territory, he reacts like an enthusiastic child imitating his older sibling.
All-in-all, he is less angry and less destructive.
Between the two, they can throw the entire city into chaos, one street, one city block at a time.
These men each sit between two ribs around my T5 and T3 vertebrae.
…thankfully, due to my wonderful physiotherapist and his team of related practitioners, these two unwanted residents have now shrunk to the size (and level of delinquency) of surly teenagers, and (hopefully) will soon be reduced to mere toddlers squalling in the candy aisle of the local grocery store.
In other words, the ribs have been out again, but this time it only took two weeks to pop them back in place and convince them to stay put.
Hurray for progress! Boo for stress!
Really though, don't you find it fascinating how different people describe/explain things? Like, one of my massage therapists relates everything to food in some way... fascia tissue work? Well, it's a heck of a lot like combing out cooked spaghetti! Another regales me with odd facts (do you know that people of British Isle background have poor rotation in their hip joints? That's why there aren't any heavy-class weight lifters from that part of the world...)
Seriously though, even if I know about something, I like to hear other people explain it to me, just to hear how they explain it. Always provides interesting fodder for future characters...
...apparently, I personify old injuries as unlikable, unwelcome, and unhygienic people camped out on my spine & ribcage... now what does that say about me? More or less worrisome than a comparison to poorly prepared pasta?
(Had to kill over a hundred words, but made the 500-word mark.)
ReplyDeleteA homeless man, belligerent and obese, has set up his refrigerator-box home in the middle of a narrow one-way street. I figure he’s lucky no one has burned it up or hauled it away for scrap and continue drinking coffee. The street slowly backs up, a snarl of traffic winding back like clogged drain. Jay sits across from me and manages to watch for twenty minutes before going over to talk I use a small scrap of magic, bending air so I can hear what’s said.
Jay is from far Outside the universe though he looks to be a kid of about ten; he sees bindings to a degree even magicians like myself can’t even dream of. The man hurls a bottle at his head. Jay is faster than humans, stepping aside and glaring with a hurt pout on his face. “That wathn’t very nithe! You could have hurt thomeone.”
The homeless man drops f-bombs with all the precision of friendly fire.
“I’m not a magithan,” Jay says. “I can’t thee into you, into why you’re like thith. All I can do is make you thtop doing it becauthe you’re breaking bindingth.”
The homeless man hurls another bottle.
Jay catches it by binding it to his hand, the glass bottle twisting unnaturally do do so. “You can recycle thethe for money,” he explains. “But you’re not tho – tho you’re doing thith for thome other reathon?”
The man calls Jay several more names, mimicking his lisp in doing so.
Jay stiffens at that but doesn’t lose control; partly because he can sense the man trying to bind him to anger with the words and mostly because I’m sure he knows I’m listening in. “Tell me why you are blocking the road we are on,” he says, binding truth into the words, avoided esses so there can be no confusion.
The man spews a rant about his mother and trying to break her back; he’s placed the fridge on a crack in the road and befouled it so it is him and will break her back. He’s not a magician, or even someone with a small talent: he’s just angry and bitter and wants to hurt someone.
Jay grins and the fridge opens and swallows the man whole: he is the fridge, the fridge is him, and Jay makes sure no one else notices the incident as he binds the fridge to the side of a building and off the road. He’s exhausted but grins hugely as he sits back down.
“You locked him in his fridge.”
“I made Thchroedinger'th fridge,” he says proudly. “He’ll be alive and dead until thomeone openth it!”
“And you made sure no one would see it.”
“Yup!”
I don’t ask when he plans to undo it; I’ve done far worse in my time, often with less justification. I just finish my coffee and head out down the sidewalk. I take care to step on a few cracks just for the glares Jay gives me.
Okay, 57 extra points for working Schrodinger's cat into this... (you know I love my nerdy references...)
DeleteLOVE the 'precision of friendly fire' line!
Thanks :) That was my favourite line in it as well. Also reminds me I should do more stories like that in the series, with people attempting magic because they have seen weird shit and nothing at all coming from it.
Delete... I also really like your crazy-detailed personification :) Also a cool point on the ways in which different people describe the same thing.
(Also makes me regret that our writing group never did that nano idea where we all begin with the same opening and see where everyone takes it...)
Yeah, I think I suggested that one line I ended up turning into a story...
Delete"I've never understood why some people are afraid of the dark."
That would have been fun ;)
Haven't decided what I will do this year... guess it'll be like every year... wait until the morning of november 1st and see what the first line in my head brings... a flash fiction, or a novel ;) Ah, the writing love of a pantser...
Actually, there's been a few flash fiction pieces I am toying with the idea of novelizing...
Hah! I might do that line this year, then :)
DeleteFeel free, I deleted the first couple of pages, so I'm pretty sure that line is now gone :D
Delete...by the way, I've been reading entirely too much of your 'Jay', and when I look at my own 'Jay', I'm all confused...
Curse you with your name stealing! ...but I guess I did do it first with Zeth/Seth... so I guess this is your diabolical revenge to hurt my brain.
Good show, Alcar. Good show.
Hah! I'm having fun issues with that in the Miskatonic stuff right now since I stole some of Jay from Iggy in that series [figuring, silly me, that I'd never get back to it] so i find myself having to fix and alter things that feel too much like Jay would say 'em.
Delete... you could always just give in and have Jay cameo in your story :p He's harassed at least one person on tumblr into doing a cameo in their story which leads to some awesomely silly meta commentaries :)
Haha, no, I don't think a 'Jay' cameo would work... that would confuse me even more ;)
DeleteOhhh! The Miskatonic story! Wa-hoo! I'm eager to hear more about the direction you developed Iggy :)