Fiction Friday 19 Oct

This Week's Theme: Use this quote as the spark for anything you want. What happens when a character, while cleaning out a house before moving out, finds a roll of film? Frank lifted the last box to the bed of the huge twenty-seven foot rider truck and exhaled a steamy hot sigh of relief. He hated moving. He had only been in this house for about 2 years but the rent was too much and he didn't like the feel of the place. It was an old turn of the century house. Not this century mind you, last century. It was a collasal structure with white washed wood siding. The whole place felt drafty and it seemed the house was missing space in the floorplan. He thought it was a great house when Cindy and him had moved in. They had been extremely happy with the hard wood floors and the large rooms. But it didn't last long. Six months after they moved in Cindy had left. Not much of an explanation. She just grew more and more distracted. Like she was itching to get away. Then one day Frank came home from work and all her stuff was gone. There was a plate of dinner in foil in the oven and a note on the dining table saying she just didn't feel at home with Frank. Frank got over it, but still didn't really understand. That was a year and a half ago though. Frank had moved on but today was moving day. He was glad to be dropping the house now. The last memory could be wiped away and he could truely start fresh. Looking at the truck full of furniture and boxes Frank couldn't help but notice how his life could be captured in such a small space. The haphazzard stacking of boxes, furniture and knick knacks matched his life. Frank went back for one final sweep of the house. Looking for any lost treasures. Looking for any piece of his life left behind. He took and empty box and went along the whole house picking up stray envelopes. He had forgotten the towels hanging in one of the bathrooms. In the master bedroom closet he found an old roll of film. He was puzzled as the last film camera he owned had broken some three years before. Frank rolled it over between his fingers and shrugged his shoulders. It must be from the former tenant. Frank fought a little with himself as he was curoious what was on it, but felt like he was invading someone's privacy. He finally determined that the only way for him to find the owners was to develop it and the pictures might give him some idea of who it belonged to. He dropped the film off at a pharmacy with developing on his way to the new place. Frank was moving into a small apartment. it was Well within his means. He was after the community and friends he would make. Being the single guy in the large house did nothing for meeting the people next door. He was vainly hoping that the apartment co-residents would share a form of solidarity and he would have someone to talk to. Even if just occasionally. He spent the rest of the day moving in and unpacking what he could. He had to drop off all of the never used stuff at a rental storage place. Here he was compartmentalizing a part of his history. By the time he came back and opened it up, he would probably have forgotten completely all what was in here. Frank stopped back after dropping off the truck to pick up the pictures. It was a sizable sheaf of pictures and he paid some eleven dollars for it. He thought the clerk had looked at him accusingly as he left the store. Somehow the clerk knew the pictures weren't his. He got to his car peeled back the top of the envelope and lost himself in the pictures. They were all well focused and almost professional quality of himself and cindy entangled on top of his bed. He went through all of them and in at least half Cindy was looking directly at the unknown photographer...
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Fiction Friday Oct 12

This Week's Theme: Use this quote as the spark for anything you want. "I'm not one for sentimental endings. Not this time." There used to be a time when family was all important to me. I would rush home from work to be with my wife and sons but sometimes this change. I can't say exactly when it changed but I know it did. I stopped feeling lost without my familt. Instead I felt lost with them as well. I don't know if my family made this happen or if it was something internal in myself. I am not sure still if it was completely internal or if in some way something external made me change. But I guess the important fact is that something changed. Something neither good nor bad but something simply alien. I no longer care. It could be that maybe as I got older my view point matured. Maybe it was the inevitable that made it so. After all why would someone who is destined to shrivel up, die and decompose care about anyone else. There is no continuity to maintain. There is no family name that means anything more than historical trivia. This kind of thinking mind you is self defeating. It gets into a never ending loop that you cannot logically attack. If there isn't any thing to an after life, the only logical thing is there is no real pupose to this life. It is very hard to escape that thought. Most people look to the unknowable for the answer to this. They look towards musty old tomes of ramblings of what sound like madmen. The we take this for dogma, and live our lives by this. The people who think they are educated call themselves agnostic and think this means more than atheist. The religious people live through their lives believing in something that is unprovable. And the athiests usually take a gun to their head unless they become shallow and think not too deeply. So I guess it comes down to me asking you to excuse my inability to feel sad or sentimental here as I lay in my deathbed. The cancer has eaten all my innards up. They used to call cancer consumption because that is what it does. But as I look around my bedside at all the family sitting close. Ghoullike watching for the end with tears streaming down their faces. Letting my death remind them that we all await the same fate. Here I lay without a belief in god I cannot find a reason to be sentimental. I look forward to dieing and leaving this life and finding out what is next. If it is nothing...well that is just fitting. If there is something then I am gonna rage for a while and find out why it has to be a big god damn secret....
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Fiction Friday 5 Oct

This Week’s Theme: Use the first line of a nursery rhyme (your choice) to start your own story. "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers" was all the note said. There was no punctuation, address or signature. Just this simple line blazoned accross the face of a sticky note. Sarah came back from lunch to find it stuck to her computer monitor. The yellow standing out in her dark cubby of the corporate machine. She worried what it could mean of course. Was James playing with getting her attention again. James was a habitual flirt. He hung around her desk and would try to start small talk with the most inane subjects. "How is you day? Did you watch any TV last night? Did you read the paper this morning?" Truth be told James was annoying and if it weren't so innocent, Sarah would have long ago complained. This didn't feel like James though. Sarah wondered what it could be. Maybe it was a note for someone else. It was left under a simple guise but contained secret code of a corporate security leak. The people involved passing instructions back and forth in the guise of Nursary rhymes. Sarah felt a cold trickle go up her spine as she let her immagination run away on a trip of intrigue and idustrial espionage. She imagined one of the theives wounded, holding the blood under his coat trying to pass his last message and making a mistake and sticking the note to the wrong monitor. Sarah looked around her cubby to make sure there was no blood drips. Sarah starting giggling a little bit at how she could let her imagination trip her up like this. Laurance came around the corner just then. "Sarah, did you get my note?" Laurance was the new office manager. Sleek and robust, he went about his daily business like a force of nature. Everyone liked him even if he did come off as a bit concieted. All Sarah could say in response was, "your note?" "Yes my note. When I want to talk to somebody I leave a cryptic note figuring youo would come ask me what it meant faster than if I said come see me. Did you get it?"
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