Story Snippets

Back in 2005, I was digging through my stuff and finding snippets of stories that I wrote alone or collaborated with someone on and posting the favorite bits of those. I believe my exact words back then were "Sometimes I read stuff I wrote and it fits far more smoothly than I had hoped, making it like brand new material to me...then again, that might just be AGE making me forget what I said." Anyway, I've decided to do that again, 'cause I like reeling in the years. Should anyone be interested, I usually have the whole story on file and can send it. Other times, you're ALREADY reading the whole story 'cause I'm great at getting stuff done without getting sidetra....hey, a rerun of Scrubs!

Okay, a Daina & (Big) Josh story snippet (the middle is actually written by him, but I liked the whole section, so I kept it all):


"On a good day, you can see through the space-time continuum...on a bad day, you tear right through the sum'bitch." D. Burke

Teen angst on a string is something that one doesn't ever really think they'll have to deal with again until it rears its Tommy Hilfigered, baggy jeaned, "in" crowded, head-up-its-own-assed head in the middle of a group of normal high schoolers, causing them to erupt into screaming fits, storming-out fits, general hysterics and haughtily whispered snatches of conversation that usually include phrases like, "that BITCH", "if she thinks", "well, I heard from so-and-so that", "we better go talk to her in the bathroom" and my all time favorite, "she bet'not put her hand in MY face, 'cause I WILL beat her ass down!"
All this comes to a heightened point of necessary catharsis, the nexus for all emotional distress and teenage torment, a sort of end all, be all of emotional disturbance and mind boggling acts of insanity...
...the high school drama director.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO DO TO MEEEEEEEE! HAVE YOU NO IDEA WHATSOEVER OF HOW MUCH TIME IS LEFT BEFORE THIS FRICKIN' PLAY GOES UP? WHAT THE FLIP IS THAT???"
All action stopped onstage as every middle and high school head turned to the back row of the auditorium to peer blankly past the spotlights to the empty back row, where I lay on the floor writhing in complete agony.
"But Mrs. Burke..." came the plaintive cry.
"SHUT IT!!!" I screeched to the ceiling. "I...DON'T...WANNA...HEAR IT!!! IF I'VE SAID IT ONCE, I’VE SAID IT A THOUSAND AND ONE TIMES...NO BUTTS TO THE AUDIENCE!!! How'm I doing?" The last part was directed to my assistant director and better half, Nancy, who sat a row ahead of me. As the school librarian and the official adult onsite, she took it upon herself to be the good cop to my bad cop during rehearsal, which just made me out to be even more the sweetheart when I was in a good mood. She was, effectively, the neutral zone to my cosmic chaos.
Presently, she looked back at the cast with a time honored look of withering adult blandness. "I hope you're happy, people," she said in her classic monotone. "She's dead now. You killed her."
"Oh, you're in a fury tonight, Nance," I said, rising up on an elbow sarcastically.
"I save the melodramatics for you, Daina," she replied, a hint of a smirk on her face. "They are, by the way, wetting their pants thinking you're about to rerun Act One from the top again."
"Being an adult rules!" I grinned, giving her the thumbs up from the floor. "Watch this." I raised my voice again so the kids on stage could hear. "Give me ONE GOOD REASON why I shouldn't make us stay until 9 tonight."
The multitude of pleading voices as I pretended to wearily drag myself back into my seat was better than applause.
An hour later, it was NOT enough to make me anymore than tired to the bone when I dragged into the house. Kevin gave me a kiss and a hug when I came in, then babied the heck out of me all the way to the sofa.
"How did it go tonight?" he asked.
"I was evil," I smiled.
"That good, huh?" he grinned back.
"Yeah...I threatened to make them rehearse until midnight, then I...urg." I could see the question on Kevin's face, but the pain just behind my left eye made it impossible to answer him and, after a moment, impossible to see him. It occurred to me briefly that God was probably punishing me for torturing innocent students, so I was probably better off not complaining. I closed my eyes for a second to rub them, then opened them again and was only slightly surprised to find myself in my subconscious bedroom.
I was slightly more surprised to find a large gaping hole in the wall that opened up to a foreboding, swirling darkness that looked remarkably like the tornado scene in "The Wizard of Oz".
The rest of my horror actually came from finding myself lying on the bed next to the one known affectionately as "the boy", but more commonly known as Josh.
In an amazingly synchronized display, we both screamed bloody murder, leapt away from each other to opposite walls, pointed at one another and with all the creative thought we could muster shouted, "What the HELL are YOU doing here?!?!"


Josh's part:

The scene looked like something out of a detective movie. Josephine paced back and forth with the stern look of incredibly deep thought on her face. Hsoj sat steepling his fingers wearing his best poker face. Joe seemed to be moving 90 miles an hour in his seat, the frantic look that ever wrong-doing-child gets on their face.
"Okay, tell me one more time what happened. Tell me everything from the top and don't leave out a single detail. I have to know exactly what happened."
"Well…" Hsoj began.
"And this time I want to hear it from Joe. I have the feeling you aren't being completely honest, even though you know that if we don't find Josh his body will eventually die in the real world."
Joe apparently lost in his own self made world of shear terror, screamed when Hsoj nudged him and told him to tell Josephine everything. Meanwhile...

IRVING, TEXAS: JOSH'S LOCATION

Every one basically ignored the guy asleep in class. Until, of course, class was over. The students filed out, in that hurried manner you find in any institute of learning. Five minutes after the bell rang the teacher noticed the sleeping student was still there. Perturbed that he had the audacity to sleep through the lecture and now wouldn't get up so that he himself could leave, the professor stormed over to the unconscious student's desk. First there was the simple nudge and, "get up!" Then, when the student simply fell limp and lifeless to the floor, the panic set in.
The professor knew that Geology wasn't all that exciting. He knew that he himself hated it, and that his lectures were boring and drawn out, but he never imagined in a million years that he would ACTUALLY bore someone to death!
Panicked, he checked for a pulse. It was faint, but still there. He grabbed his cell phone and began to dial 911, then stopped. If this got out, that with the most boring lecture in the world he had actually killed a student, he would never work in education again. The last thing he wanted was to actually become a geologist, so he pulled the car to the door nearest the class room and loaded up the body. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he began to think of where the largest natural deposit of lime was.
Finally, geology had a real world application...!


MEANWHILE BACK IN THE HEAD:

"Alright, after hearing everything, I can now categorically say...I have no idea what to do." Josephine flopped in a chair exhausted.
"I have an idea," Hsoj said smoothly, "Why don't I take temporary control of the body. And you and the boy can search the link systematically. I'll tell you the safes..." He was cut short by the sudden death grip on his best friend, Mr. Happy. The tears in his eyes let Josephine know she was using just the right amount of pressure.
"Finish that sentence, and plan on peeing sitting down for awhile. Why don't you go hunting, seeing how all of this is your fault. Everyone else around here might think you're a big man and dangerous to boot. But I'll kill you if I have to, understand? You might be the most powerful Dark Elv to ever have existed, and you might have made kings fall to there knees before you, but I'm a woman on the edge with your balls in my hand and my period started yesterday...so, in short, do not fuck with me right now, OK!!!"
"Well, if I leave, who's going to control the body? You need a man so that people won't be suspicious of you and try and lock you away for being a freak," Hsoj squeaked.
"Hsoj, if you aren't off looking for Josh in ten seconds I'm going to rip them off wrap 'em up and give them to you for Christmas." Hsoj cringed and headed for the door, looked in to the swirling darkness the could kill you if not used properly and suddenly had the answer, he turned to tell Josephine but she just looked at him sternly and said," And don't forget to take the boy with you."

My part (again):

"Jinx, you owe me a Coke!" Josh grinned.
I grinned back, pretending momentarily to be with him in this little 4th grade bit of humor. "Yeah, yeah, a Coke, 'cause...SHUT UP!" He looked at me, a bit put out by the sudden change in my attitude, then looked back at the hole in the wall.
"Right...the wall," he nodded. "You're probably wondering about that."
"Ever so slightly," I muttered.
"Well, funny you should ask, 'cause I'm not exactly sure either. I'd LIKE to say it's the link, but then I'd also like to say I enjoy geology class," he said, looking askance as the hole again. "I kinda fell through it."
"Kinda?" I looked back at the size of the hole again, questioning his judgement a bit.
"I got pushed," he added helpfully.
"Ye-esss."
"It, uh...wasn't fun."
I rubbed my eyes...this was frequently how conversations with the boy tended to go...nowhere. "So I'm told. You realize, now, that two REAL humans are now occupying the same body. If I wake up, we have MAJOR problems." I blinked, remembering the head pain that had knocked me out. "Assuming I can ever wake up again. K, you have to go now." I began shoving him toward the hole as he dug his heels in.
"Hey, wait a minute, that's a large gaping hole to nowhere right now...pushing me in is NOT gonna help matters!" he spluttered.
I thought about this a moment. If he disappeared into the nothingness I was looking at, we'd both have a major problem. He'd cease to exist properly and I have this thing with guilt eating at me when I cause the death of others.
I sighed. "Alright, I'll take you home...you just can't stay here."
"What, you don't have TIME for a visit?" Josh joked.
"Not the deadly kind!" I grinned back. "C'mon, let's go."
Ah, yes, famous last words.
"Let's go".
It implies leaving, a sense of travel that really has no definite direction, something that I REALLY needed to remember the next time I stepped into nothingness, with or without a friend in tow...

…fwhooff…

It's the noise you always hear in the movies when an atom bomb hits, that dull air-rushed thud that's even more baffling because the word "bomb" is attached to it. It's almost as if the very fact that it's the most deadly thing you can imagine makes it unnecessary to have all the noise you normally associate with other deadly stuff like dynamite, shotgun blasts, and cannon fire. After all, you're LOOKING at a mushroom cloud by that point, which is the visual symbol of total annihilation, so the "death wrapped in a Kleenex" kind of noise is meant to underscore that, I suppose. The bigger the cloud of death, the more likely you are to get that softer, quieter sound.
Which probably explains why that was the sound I "heard" upon entering the void. In retrospect, I probably heard NOTHING, just like I couldn't actually feel Josh grab my wrist at the last moment and cling to it to make sure he didn't lose me before the point became moot. I didn't "see" darkness, although I recall straining my eyes to the point of actual insanity, desperate to see even a shadow. I didn't "hear" my scream disappear into this blanket of death; I just knew I tried to scream out with all I could. And I sure couldn't have sensed the suffocating darkness pouring into my open mouth and all throughout my body before I felt the Kleenex of death wrap my brain into that softness that I didn't have the presence of mind to be afraid of for more than a second on some universal watch…