Monday, July 10, 2006

Send your troubles dancing he knows the answer [First part of my longer short story]

Here's the first part of my longer short story, I'll try and post the next part next Monday. I don't think that anyone cares whether or not I actually write anything when I say I will, but I figure it's like shadow-boxing, I have to pretend I have an audience. Click below for the first part of my longer short story, the title of which I am still considering, currently leaning towards "A Plucked Branch," which I think is more pretentious, but less shitty. The story was inspired by this article. Click below, read, then give me a damn suggestion for a title.

Edit: I've gone back and marked the posts with stories in them so that if a new person wants to read them, they're not just The Who lyrics.


Self-murder, "catching the bus,"” "punching out,"” "“blowing oneself away," "topping oneself," "Pushing the cosmic abort button,"” gun in the mouth, gun to the temple, gun against the heart, razor down the block, razor across the neck, rope around the neck, poison, overdose, jumping from building, bridge, or cliff. I knew a lot of ways to say it and a lot of ways to accomplish it. I even had my own term for it: "“joining the forest." I still wasn't sure how, but I knew I wasn't doing it alone, I had done too much alone already. Might as well be sociable for my final moments.

Legionnaire was the last part of our group and he was late, it didn't bother the rest of us, it only mattered that the group was complete. Apparently he was the oldest of us at 56, I was next at 27, then Menaced Fool somewhere over 21, but younger than me, it was harder than hell to get a straight answer from him about anything. Bear was 22, she was sleeping fitfully on the bench seat in the back of Fool's old Pontiac Transport mini-van. She was turning, twisting, and talking nonsense. I was sitting hunched on the back bumper, smoking a little hand rolled cigarette. I would have sat inside, but Bear's ramblings were too creepy.

We were going to meet Legionnaire in the parking lot of this Kum & Go on the edge of town at 5:30pm, it was now almost 6 and Fool was ranting at the clerk inside, I was smoking my fifth cigarette. I saw an old man with a thick curly brown beard step out of a beat uJapanesed japanese-made car, the kind of car that is about a year or a fender-bender from sitting in someone's yard with a cardboard sign in the window with "“$200 OR BEST OFFER"” written on it in black sharpie. With the beard he looked like cross between a statue of a greek god and a retired boxer who grew old emphasizing the drunk in "punch drunk" with cheap beer. He started to walk over to me and the van.

Fool left the store, two cartons of Lucky Strikes sticking from the top of a plastic bag. He looked at the old man walking towards us, a huge grin split his face, Fool waved and yelled to the man "Howdy, wanna grab a drink?" Legionnaire nodded and we went to find a bar.

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