Sunday, December 31, 2017

Endings

Wintermoon

Up the stairs into a new time. It'll be difficult, it'll be difficult, I mutter. I know it well. I have climbed many of those stairs, slowly and steadily. I may stumble often, I know I will, as I always do. Sometimes, it will be my fault. Other times, well... But I keep looking at each step and climbing those stairs. I never give up. It's not in me to give up. I would've done it a long time ago, I suppose. But I didn't. And now, I keep looking up and moving forward, from one ending to another beginning.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

The Writer

Il Nido


The writer shuffled and reshuffled the pile of papers on his desk. The sudden urgency in organizing the organized desk was directly proportionate to the growing lack of inspiration. The white screen showed no text whatsoever and his demeanor shifted between utter helplessness and violent indignation.

If he could, he'd steal someone's work, although he would never admit to even remotely considering doing it.

The writer turned to his computer to browse writing sites for new ideas. After several hours, he tripped over a shadow writer offering an unpublished manuscript in a writing forum. He called the man and set up a meeting.

The manuscript was surprisingly fresh and it had it needed to be a worldwide success. The writer took it under his name without changing anything but a few typos. The shadow man took his money, an extravagant million dollars, and disappeared.

When the book was published, a scandal broke out. The manuscript turned out to be an exact translation of a book recently published by an obscure unknown Portuguese writer.

No one ever heard of the uninspired writer again or of the shadow.

The Portuguese became famous worldwide, understandably.

And one could undoubtedly say that this was the best paid translation in the history of publishing.


Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Line

Salt Water


Right across the horizon of two-floor houses and palm trees, the promising blue line stretched as far as the eye could see. Every now and then, the uniformity of that blue vastness was scratched. The seagulls stormed the neighborhood with their impatient shrieks, impatiently looking for impatient babies to feed them impatiently. This was in sharp contrast with the quiet horizon, a line between sea and sky filled with promises of past and future, the present suspended from that blue line. If it were a postcard, no one would believe it to be exactly like that. But it was indeed a blue vastness interrupted only by a white line of seagulls on their way out to sea to fish impatiently, bringing back a line of fish, a line of seashells, or a line of hope.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

The Wedding Was Just a Dance Away

Hattusa City

The dancers shuffled their feet on the rough surface of the dance floor. They were tired. They were grumpy. The sweat scratched their backs mercilessly. They still had a few hours to go until they could get the final prize, a trip to an exotic destination. Joana and her fiancé Mitchell decided to participate in the dance marathon organized by the local tourism agency.

The final bill for the wedding was way over their budget, and no money was left for the honeymoon. The common love for dancing made them think it would be easy to win.

They were young. They were fit. The first few days went by quickly with only a few muscle aches and cramps.

When they got to the last day, things started collapsing. Joana's back was killing her and Mitchell complained about having to hold her body weight in his arms. Mitchell's feet were so heavy he kept stepping on Joana's toes.

By the end of the night, only half an hour to the finish line, they had an argument, a deadly argument. They stopped dancing. They screamed at the top of their lungs. The juries hushed them down, but how could they threaten to disqualify them if they had already disqualified themselves when they stopped dancing?

Joana threw the water bottle at Mitchell and, when Mitchell dodged it, it flew all the way to the table of the head jury, smacking him right on the face and causing great agitation.

The wedding was called off and an annoying couple, the pristine Rogers, won the competition.

If you're about to get married, the advice of this narrator, irony aside... or not, is to enter a dance competition.

Oh, and just for your information, the pristine Rogers got a divorce 2 months after the competition. So, there.


Sunday, December 24, 2017

What do YOU want for Christmas?

Nighthaven

I want to look at the gently rippling water and believe tomorrow will be a better day. I want to be quiet and strong. I want to close my eyes and have peace inside, instead of the constant turmoil I have now. I want to believe that all the “thens” and all the “nows” are just bits and pieces of a bigger picture, and that these pieces will eventually find their rightful places. I want to smile and reach out and take a deep breath to finally find myself. I want to be a lion in a pool of quietness.
100 Word Stories

Real Plot

Asalia House

The detective story promised to be intriguing. Page after page, John followed the highly enlightened investigator and his mellow side-kick.

The problem was when John's dog, in an unacceptable attitude of contempt, decided to rip the book to pieces and wrap things up by peeing on the ruins of the mystery plot.

John was horrified. How could he now find out who the killer of the prestigious banker was? And why was the crime committed? Was it for his fortune? Or was it a crime of passion, considering his wife had found out he was entertaining a voluptuous woman on Thursdays afternoon in their downtown apartment.

The dog sat next to its work of art, huffing and puffing, perfectly content with the final result; the art of destroying the written text was excruciatingly tiring, apparently.

In an incomprehensible frenzy, so the dog thought, John started to rummage through the torn pages to find a sentence, a lost paragraph, anything that would tell him who did it.

John then decided to flatten the pages and pile them up, skimming through the text, until he found one page almost intact. At the bottom, the following sentence jumped out of the page "Mr. Downey looked at the gate, and like a blood hound, he scanned the area, left and right, sniffing the air and kneeling down to place an ear to the ground, suddenly saying "Beware of the Dog".

There was no dog in the story, but the cryptic remark was the answer to the well established culpability of John's dog and the crime committed.

It turned out that the Dog was a hitman hired by the banker's wife.

How the detective sniffed the air and immediately knew who the culprit was, was a mystery to John. But then again, as many say, fiction is nothing but a pack of well fabricated lies, fun lies, but lies nevertheless!

The true certainty in John's life was the fact that he definitely had to take his detective-killer dog out for a walk… and… well, other things.


Friday, December 22, 2017

Relevant Indiscretion

Kats Beach

"Those two are a couple," the man whispered to his wife, rolling his eyes.

The said couple, both in their mid-40s, held hands across the table and exchanged sweet promises of eternal love while waiting for their food. 

The restaurant was packed and no one paid attention to anyone else, but to the ones populating their own tables. Families of six, families of four, and families of all sizes, colors and shapes, probably of all religions or none at all, filled the air with the enthusiastic thrill and shrill of vacation time. The hustle and bustle of dinner provided the perfect cover for an indiscreet conversation.

"Who?" asked the wife, turning around.

"Annie, please, don't!"

Annie, a stout woman of stubborn demeanor, paid no attention to her husband and turned around to check the said couple.

"Oh, my. They are men, Larry!"

By then, despite the cacophony in the air, the guys knew that they were the center of attention of the middle-aged couple, whose almost pathetic surprise turned into a juvenile embarrassment when the guys waved and said hello.

"Why don't you join us," invited one of them, gently tapping the empty chair next to him.

Annie, who was dying to show the gay couple the right path in life, stood up and waved an enthusiastic acceptance, much to the horror of her husband.

"Come on," she said. Larry agreed sheepishly, knowing that it was useless to contradict his wife, a lesson learned the hard way over the course of a few decades, three children, several dogs and a mother-in-law.

"Hello there! My name is Annie and this is my husband, Larry," she said, stressing the word husband.

"Oh, hi! My name is Peter and this is my husband, Tony," said Peter amused, stressing the word husband too. "It seems we both have husbands!"

Annie settled in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position from where she could throw her unending knowledge at the gay couple.

"So I see, so I see," she said, finding consolation in repetition. "But you're not really married, are you,?"

The guys smiled.

Larry violently chewed the nail of his thumb, regretting the lapse of attention on his part when he fatally decided to make the irrelevant comment that triggered this unexpected situation.

"Yes, we are! Married, papers signed and all."

"You should get yourselves some nice women instead," ventured Annie.

"And you should get yourself a nice woman too. No demerit to Larry, of course!" said Peter.

"My husband is only joking, of course," added Tony, when Annie opened her mouth to start a diatribe about right and wrong.

The conversation progressed as irrationally as it had started. The food came to the shared table and it was utterly delicious. They chatted throughout the rest of the evening. The guys lived in the same town as Annie and Larry. They shared how they met, how they fell in love, and their long life plans for adopting a child or even two as a celebration of this relationship of several decades.

After all, it was not much different than his own with Annie, minus the three children, the dogs and the mother-in-law, thought Larry.

Each in a different way, Annie talking and Larry listening, both realized that there was no right way or wrong way.

The night ended with Annie making heartfelt promises to become the godmother of the guys' kids for life and beyond and Larry their generous though silent godfather.

After dinner, phone numbers were exchanged and the two couples parted ways.

A lot had changed in the universe. What was once a certainty was now nothing more than a distant, incoherent, idiotic notion.

"I'll invite them over for lunch next weekend," said Annie.

Larry smiled. The irrelevant comment had proven to be, though accidentally, quite relevant after all.


Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Whisperer

Goth

He whispered up a storm. He didn't want to but he did, stubborn as he was, the old fart. Shame on him.

Painfully aware of that fact, the grandson locked himself and his grandfather up in the old house, ghost and all. 

The neighbors refused to give up, camping outside, right across the street, behind the police line. Yes, the police was there.

They lacked a few TV vans and some nosy reporters asking uncomfortable questions. But the scandal was not big enough; it was local, so local that not even the local media mentioned it in the news.

In reality, it was a street scandal, and there was no street media, unless you count Mrs. Fitz, the one who broadcast the story his grandfather had whispered in her ear, hoping to gain her confidence and access to her boudoir. However, all Mrs. Fitz gave him was a huge headache and a deep sense of regret.

She loved a juicy gossip. And this was indeed a juicy gossip.

How his grandfather came across the story, he dreaded asking. Apparently, the snobbish, self-convinced, prude Mrs. Townsend had, in a previous life, been a... say... famous and extremely well-paid artist of the industry of nightly delights. 

As Mrs. Fitz heard this dumbfounding but extremely interesting story about her archrival, she didn't hesitate to spread it amongst the neighbors. 

When Mrs. Townsend, happily married to an obscure local banker and a usual presence in the local social events, heard that her past had become public, she forgot all about her local high-society manners and strutted over to Mrs. Fitz's house to smack her right on the nose, causing a bloody commotion. 

The police was called after hair was pulled and ripped, nails broken and the neighbors started to gather, applauding enthusiastically to the great horror of his grandfather. 

"Never again," he mumbled to his grandson.

"Yes, Granddad. Never again. Try a nice bouquet of flowers and an invitation for dinner next time, will you? This trying-to-be-unusual-to-catch-their-attention-quickly doesn't seem to work. And please, don't say again that the ghost told you to do it this way, please." 

The grandfather kept quiet, but the ghost did tell him to do it this way. He should have never trusted a grinning ghost with a twisted sense of humor.


Monday, December 18, 2017

A Promise Is a Promise

Kronbelt

Correct me if I'm wrong. This was to be the last day of your life. You confirmed it. And yet, here you are before me, denying everything. I simply don't understand. Drop the hat, lose the coat and move. Yes, move. This is serious. There's no other choice. We don't allow liars in here. And you are a liar, trust me, you are. You may deny it till the end of your life, which was to be today... See what you have done? There's nothing worse than trusting a liar... And you begged and begged and it won't be the last day of your petty, little, miserable life after all. Shame on you. I have honor. When I said I'd kill you, I meant it. And now you are making me go back on my word. You're making me look bad. Pathetic.


Sunday, December 17, 2017

Clutch

Cosmo

He clutched the key in his hand and leaned quietly against the wall.
The room was packed and everyone waited for the announcement on the radio. “And the winner is...”
A general murmur of disappointment swept through the room.
“But our town won,” someone said.
People shook their heads. Then, they looked at him.
“Yes, we did win and I have the key.” He waved for them to follow him.
The key opened the trunk with the prize. The prize was split evenly between all the families.
The organization is still wondering today what happened to the prize.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

A String of Stories


Il Nido

Starting Monday of next week and every other day, I'll post a string of stories, twelve in total. I call them a string of stories because there will always be an element linking them to the previous one. I won't say what it'll be. It's for you to discover and enjoy. Some stories are a bit dark. Others are funny. A few are food for thought. Have fun!

Thursday, December 14, 2017

New Website


I'm not sure what I will do with this yet.
However, it was fun to create a website for my writing persona.

Start
It's simple and clean-looking.
So far, it has three entries. As you click on each entry, scroll down for more.

About
Although my connection to the virtual world Second Life as a writer is still present (to the left, you can see the eyes of my avatar above my name), the website takes a step away from it.

Contact
Virtual reality was the stepping stone to my writing path. I think it will always be an influence simply because I find the resources a virtual world has to offer absolutely extraordinary.


As I progressively go into writing long fiction, I become more withdrawn from using Second Life as a place to write. I attended less inworld writing events this year and writing became more independent from virtual influences. Whether this is good or not, we shall see.

Creating this website was perhaps a subconscious way of mirroring that detachment.

All in all, I'm happy with the result and, knowing myself, I will add bits and pieces here and there to it.


Sunday, December 10, 2017

First

Forgotten City

At the strike of 1am, the majestic structure imploded neatly.
Perplexed eyes witnessed the destruction of the oldest building in town, home to wise men, advisors to many generations.
Suddenly, a voice asked “Why was this done at 1am? I need my beauty sleep.”
The crowd turned to see who had broken the sacred silence. 
An old man holding a crutch waved a crooked walking-stick.
“So, are we done? Lesson number one, life goes on. Get used to it.” And he walked away.The “Welcome” sign slid slowly to the ground, a shy cloud of dust lingering in the air.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

2017 in a Nutshell




The more I write long fiction, the less visible my writing becomes. If you read my blog, it looks like I am writing less and less when, in fact, it's quite the opposite.

It seems that a lengthy learning path is still ahead of me. At the moment, I have great fun improving my writing and focusing on the process rather than on the end results.

A lot changed in my writing routine. Throughout the year, I had to remove myself from a few events. I didn't like some people's intellectual arrogance. It was sad because I did like most of the people. Others, not so much. But that's life. When we don't feel comfortable somewhere, we move away.

As to what was done, I:

* continued to take part in the Weekly Challenge

* tried my hand at plotting and writing an erotica thriller (unfinished) during Camp NaNoWriMo (April and July, 10k each)

* wrote a few bits and pieces about Second Life (published in this blog), among which A Merry Band of Losers

* wrote my Myasthenia Gravis story  (non-fiction) which was published in a book called Hope organized by Donna Whittaker

* and took part in the NaNoWriMo, writing an autobiography of sorts by using the stream-of-consciousness technique.

To the nay-sayers, the hypocrites, the self-centered know-it-alls, why don't you... No, I won't say it. They'll eventually choke on their own venom.

To those who supported me with their care, their attention and their love, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

More in 2018.


Sunday, December 3, 2017

Virgin

Milk Wood

Love is such a complicated matter.
It all started back in Virginia. A few furtive meetings in someone's vine lead up to a number of wild hops, and the obligatory puff, Woodbine, in this case.
Woodbine was discontinued in the 1980s, but then again we are not placing a timestamp on this story, are we?
The problem with love is that it becomes a complete nightmare rather quickly.
As he fled Virginia, all he could recall was her rage. She screamed at him furiously while she held a branch of devil's darning needles that she had plucked in sheer fury.