Game On, Day 9, v. 2.0

Apologies for the month-long interlude that unexpectedly happened as Gina and I both moved around our respective towns on our respective coasts. We're buckled in for Fall, and we're going back to the hope of 30 stories in 30 days. Hope you'll join us for the season!

Since we didn't do Smart Pets last time, we'll start with Day 9 again and throw that prompt back into the book. This one just seems appropriate to come back to.

Day 9 (Version 2.0)
111: Home. Use a house in a story fragment. Think about the power of rooms (kitchens, basements, unfinished attics, walk-in closets) on psychology and conversation. In this fragment, make the house a unique, though passive, participant in the unfolding events. The room need not be in a typical house. Think about all the other rooms we become familiar with -- classrooms, office cubicles, public toilets. What are their personalities? How do the more public spaces we inhabit affect our behaviors? You might consider keeping several characters permanently stuck in different rooms in a house, communicating by shouts, cell phones, intercoms, Dixie cups and strings, or telepathy. Ghosts haunt houses, and writers are often ghosts to their own cherished or bedeviling childhood homes. 500 words.

Apologies, apologies.

We will be back to our regularly scheduled updates starting this week.

Day 9

47: Smart Pets. Write a very short story about an animal -- a dog, cat, or parrot, say -- that is used to spending time around humans. Let this pet observe, with familiarity yet bafflement, the way males and females of this other species interact. The animal cannot understand much of our language, so its observations will have to be based on physical behavior and gestures, but it could still be an intelligent observer, with its own built-in biases and clarities humans are incapable of (the sense of smell, for example -- a dog would know when a woman was menstruating or a man just had sex with someone else). A caged animal would have a different perspective than an animal free to roam. 600 words.

On the Vine

She walked across the lawn, damp and trampled by the feet of her friends, her enemies, and people she’d neither met nor ever seen in the past four years. The heat pressed against her body like a blanket, causing pearls of sweat to grow both on and beneath her gown. It was suffocating, but her attempts to free herself from it were as futile as wanting to climb out of her own skin. She took a deep breath, squinted her eyes until the wide expanse of land and sky before her was but a blur, and walked on.

It was graduation day, and the world smelled like sunshine and secrets.

Memories sprang from their hiding places, as if every step set off a nostalgic time bomb. The thin white heel of her shoe sank into the soft ground below her and she remembered dressing up for her first college party, donning a little red dress and shoes much like the ones she wore now. She’d accepted a plastic cup of lukewarm beer from a stranger, had pretended to drink it, had pretended to enjoy herself, had pretended to exist in the midst of new names and faces, books she’d never read and songs she didn’t know. There were many days and nights when she thought she was dimensionless, invisible. She didn’t even think God would notice if she jumped from the roof of a building or dove into a bottomless pool of water. She felt small and imprisoned, as if she were trapped behind glass, denied the experience of both life and death.

But the hand on her shoulder, the gentle, warm greeting was real, as was the smile that accompanied it. All of these things are what had saved her. And suddenly those painfully awkward recollections seemed unworthy of her time, and crawled quietly back into the recesses of her mind.

“How’d you find me?” she asked, her fingers lacing through his. “Everyone looks the same – slightly hungover and absolutely ridiculous in these oversized gowns.”

“It was easy,” he replied. “I stared out into this crazy sea of people and you were the first real person I saw.”

(word count: 359)

Day 8: One Moment.

96: One Moment. Write a third-person fragment of story about one important moment in someone's life. Examine this moment from every possible angle. Think about smell, light, texture, distant and near sounds, and the details that will stick in the memory of the participant. Don't worry about telling a whole story (although you may learn that you can't not tell a story here, when you explain the importance of the moment and tie up some of the threads attached to this moment). 300 words.

*I replaced the Argument prompt for now, because it just didn't seem to be happening for me.

An American Day

Rustling young trees that line the street left puddles of shadows on the sidewalk that dance over the feet of all the fast paced, be-here-now pedestrians. I watch them in slow motion, feeling the lightness of my weightless shoulders, as I spill my hours doing absolutely nothing and going absolutely nowhere. I whittle away the earned time off sitting casually on a bench chained to a tree outside my too-small, too-expensive guest house behind a $16 million dollar cell block. I’m sorry, by cell block I meant junior executive mansion, the kind with rosebush trellises and bay windows that only looked out to other mansions built on Blackberrys and cocaine. This is the kind of city that only high-quality drug dealers and overpaid actors can own houses, at any rate. But enough about them; I took my first day off as soon as the 90 day evaluation period was over and here I am, doing absolutely nothing but enjoying not being at work. Well, I suppose I’m dreading going back to the block tomorrow. A man wearing black slacks and a button down white shirt with short sleeves starts to approach the bench, and he catches my eye warily.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” And I shrug my utter lack of care. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” He offers, not looking at me but leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

“It sure is,” I say, inhaling and exhaling deeply, eyes squinting in the sun.

“I took my first day off as soon as professionally possible,” He continues to talk, “there’s nothing better than stopping to smell the roses.” he smiles, and I concur.

(282 words)

FYI

Just an FYI to all the readers who actually are joining us for the adventure -- Gina is in the process of moving and apartment-hunting, and I've been embarrassingly overwhelmed by life this past week (poor excuse for not writing, btw), so this week will likely not be consistent. I plan on finishing the two prompts below, and then taking a break from this until Sunday.

In the meantime, I would love it if you take the time to leave a comment and introduce yourself -- even if one of us already knows you!

Thanks again, for your interest.