Category: Writing

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Indecision –A Short Story

Posted on by jennrae

She pulled the knife out slowly, wiping the blade on the nearest kitchen towel with gentle, precise strokes. The dead man stared at the ceiling with a look of frozen mock wonder and amazement.

She sighed, carefully carrying the knife and the towel to the back sink, making a futile attempt to rinse the blood out. What would her mother-in-law say when Christmas came without a call from her dear boy? Would she just chalk it up to the growing distance that had been progressing between them? Or would she take it as a sign for an overdue visit?

Either way Carol would have to do something with this corpse on the floor, staring above imploring God to intervene on his behalf. Too late, Darlin,’ she said quietly, still holding the crumpled red rag in one hand, the knife remaining balanced on the sink ledge, forgotten for a moment.

What do do now? She was not a pro at this sort of thing, but she knew from the TV shows that keeping blood soaked items was a no-no. They test for DNA traces in the carpet fibers, hair, and even use bugs. So many things can be traced, and there was always that one guy who never gives up on the case. And the spouse is always the number one suspect. Always.

She started to worry, sweat began to pour slowly from her anxious brow. She knew she couldn’t leave him laying here.  She did know that much. Her stomach started to turn uneasy. She glanced back toward the sink in the backroom. No, she couldn’t bring herself to cut him up. But she had to do something.

She urgently looked around the kitchen. Maybe she could just disappear.  Get a plane ticket to nowhere. Who would think to look for her in some small town in Arizona? Or better yet, she could flee to Canada, or Sri Lanka, or anywhere.

She drew the curtains closed in the small kitchen window, eyeing the outdoors with renewed suspicion. What if a  neighbor had heard him yell? What if someone had called the police all ready? What if they were on their way right now? What if, indeed.

She tried to breathe normally, but found it difficult. She had to make a decision now. But he had always made all the decisions for her. She found herself paralyzed and unable to act. There were too  many details, too many choices. She knelt down next to him, and began to cry.

“Tell me what to do, oh please, do get up, and tell me what I am supposed to do now?” This wasn’t how she pictured it in her head. This whole situation was all wrong and mixed up. She reached for his hand, and held it tenderly despite the fact it was now cold and offered her no comfort or solution. She knew then that she was truly alone.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Timed Write—Between the Cliffs of Venus Part 2

Posted on by jennrae

Adi woke up, her head aching and pounding. The hulking giant beast man leered at her in the copter. Was she dead? Was this some messed up after life? She patted herself down, the plans were gone, as was her lasgun. Damn. Of course they would have stripped her clean. She was a goner for sure.

“Hey, where are you taking me? I don’t suppose there is any use trying to make a deal with you, is there?”

The creature’s face remained the same weird leer, no recognition seemed to enter the thing’s eyes. The person driving the copter remained silent. Was it Harris? Or did she imagine that? This could be her chance to take out the mastermind behind her people’s destruction. This could be it, the only chance to get so close to the villain of her generation.

But, they had removed her weapon, and her head pulsed in agony. She remembered being shot. It seemed ages ago. Her arms were painfully tied behind her back with thick cords. “Okay, you got me, so what now?”

“The silent treatment? Are you Harris, then? Kinda impressive that you came out here to Venus on my account.”

“The silence really gets to you doesn’t it? Must’ve been very lonely out here on your own.”

She heard the voice from the front of the small airborne vehicle. He didn’t turn around. She couldn’t verify for sure that it was him. It would seem strange that someone so important would come in person. But, she could have sworn she saw his face.

“Your father was once a friend of mine, many years ago.”

“You knew my father?”

“Sure. I knew a lot of folks in the early days when we just started to develop this place. I modified that lasgun to stun only. I didn’t want to kill you. Not yet anyhow. I would like to know, what exactly you know. Where the Blue Rim is hiding out, for starters. Or, how about how you survived out here, all by your lonesome.  That is quite impressive.”

“So, you rescued me, to disarm me, and torture me?”

“It doesn’t have to be torture, does it? You gotta be lonely. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a friendly chat, you know, for once?”

She couldn’t gauge whether he was serious or joking. His voice was muffled by the whirring noise of the machine and the wind whipping around them. She would never give up the rebel’s location. She would rather throw herself out of the copter and fall into eternity. The hulking man beast was blocking her path to the door with its crooked smile. Glassy eyes staring at her, not seeming to understand beyond its orders of watching her.

“While we are just chatting, friendly like, why don’t you tell me where we are going?”

“All in good time, Adi. We are almost there.” She felt the copter shudder to a still and land with a plume of dust rising to cover the windows. She squirmed attempting to free herself from the cords, feeling her skin painfully being scraped away in the process.  The pilot got out of the copter, the door shutting behind him. Another man beast yanked the door near her open and roughly grabbed one of her arms, dragging her forcefully from the vehicle into a dusty area that served as some kind of landing pad.

The man she assumed was Harris walked in front of her with an escort of beasts with lasguns. Her beast man dragged her along while her boots scuffed a dust trail behind her. Her mind was trying to figure out where she was. If she could get free perhaps she could tell the others of this place.

“Bring her in, and shut the door.” The man said without turning around. The floor was made out of some sort of smooth laminate. It was smooth and white and a large machine was in the middle of the room with a chair in the middle of it. She dug her heels in.

“Come on, Adi. It is almost time for our little chat.” The man removed his helmet gently, handing it off to a person who seemed to come out of nowhere to take it for him. “Oh you don’t like my little chair. I just wanted you to be comfortable, and in a place where we wouldn’t need to argue or fight, or waste needless time. This handy device records thoughts, and thoughts don’t lie. Oh, they can at first, but after a while, the truth will out. You can’t run forever. I assure you, it is comfortable. And you won’t remember a thing. You will wake up refreshed and be on your way.”

“You are Harris. Why are you doing this?”

“The burden of keeping secrets and of people trying to undermine what I am trying to do here is getting tiresome. Don’t you see, that I am trying to do the best for everyone? Why can’t you appreciate that? That information you were going to smuggle out? Yeah, it just would have sabotaged everything. Set me back a long long way if your little group blows this facility up. Earth is on its way out, the future is here, but it is my future. The future I envisioned. I won’t let you ruin it for everyone else.”

Another man entered with a tray of tools for the machine. He left quickly but not before she caught a glimpse of his face. “Wait, what? That is Harris too? How can there be more than one of you?”

“Same technology as the beast men. All about cloning and technology. It is how and why I, Harris, can personally get you from the sky, all the while another Harris is still running things on Earth, and another Harris is running another laboratory far from here. You cannot stop us. There is, fortunately, only one of you.”

Was it all truly hopeless? Her head hurt, her arms were chafed and raw and bleeding on the white floor.  She had to free her hands. She had to get out of here so she could warn the others.

She looked around the room, it was circular and there were several doors where the other Harris’s seemed to go. The beast men stayed by the door. She watched as the Harris in front of her loaded a syringe with a clear fluid, getting the straps on the chair like device ready.

She somersaulted backwards suddenly aiming for the lasgun in the hands of one of the beast men behind her. She knocked it out of his surprised hands as he grunted confused. His companion looked on moving slowly toward her.

Harris turned around pointing at her but she didn’t wait to her what he said. She had the lasgun in her mouth and and hopped out through the door which she opened by slamming her shoulder into it, running for the copter.

She used the lasgun to shoot the cords sizzling some of her skin in the process as she clenched her teeth in pain. The hulks were coming up behind her. She fired the lasgun at them both which slowed them down but did not stop them as they felt very little pain.

Luckily for Adi, they were pretty slow. She reached the copter first, yanking open the door and shutting it loudly. She locked the doors. Her com and beacons were removed from her jacket by Harris or his goons. How to get this thing started up without a key. She felt the hulks shaking the copter.

She opened the compartment below the main unit and carefully removed some wires, rewiring them and making new connections. She would need to hurry, she heard a crack in the glass and saw it form like a snowflake from her days on Earth. “Father I need your strength about now. Please, guide me to the Blue Rim.”

The copter powered up, lights a glow, and lifted off the ground. One of the creatures was hanging onto the tail and she spun it around to get him off. She noted the coordinates of this place in her mind, the only tool she had left.

She only had so much fuel she noted looking at the gauge, and she had to get away from here. Where were the others? How could she reach them now? She didn’t have her beacon, besides it alerted Harris to her location.

She might be all that was left of the resistance. But she had to hope. Her life had to have a purpose. She set off in a direction away, seeing other figures on the ground shaking their fists at her as she drifted further from the building.

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Timed Write…Like a Mouse

Posted on by jennrae

She scribbled fiercely on the scrap of paper while the pounding on the door got louder and more insistent. Bang, bang, bang! She shivered clutching her sweater closer to her tiny frame.

“Come on, Izzy! I just want to talk! I promise I won’t hurt you.” The voice was all too familiar; slurred and stumbling, a half human half drunken snarl. All promises made by such a beast were lies. She had heard this story before. Promises were easy. As soon as she unlocked the door she knew he would be angry and red faced, and he would hurt her.

Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest causing little painful spasms. She found it hard to gulp down air. She was in panic mode, a survival tactic that would not help her now. She called forth the meditation she did in therapy after her parents’ divorce.

The counting to ten breathing. Her mother was also small and meek, and drank enough to become a fish. She drifted away on a magical boat away into the mists never to be seen again. There weren’t enough unicorns in her room to protect her from the were wolf outside the door. She knew her Dad would be back in the morning if she could only hold out that long.

Her handwriting was not the best but she wanted it legible. Her colored pencil broke with a loud snap. The pounding and pleading had stopped. She looked toward the door. This was too simple, too easy. She knew something was wrong. Quiet wasn’t always good. Sometimes quiet meant bad things were about to happen.

She held really still like a mouse. As still as she possibly could, frozen in time and place, light lavender sweater draped around a t shirt and jeans surrounded by friendly stuffed animal faces. Her eyes stayed focused on the door for a minute and then she breathed out.

The window burst into shards of glass forcing her to whirl around.  She left the note on the table, an all too brief note written in red. She ran to the door, tripped over her untied laces and crashed to the floor.

She felt his strong grip on her ankle and he pulled her toward him with a jerk. She reached out an arm toward the door, nails clawing into the wooden floorboards making an eerie screech and leaving tell tale marks. I was here, I existed. I cannot be erased. But I can be snuffed out like a candle flame she thought to herself quietly.

“The critics and reviewers of a hundred years from now, if they remember any of us at all, may have opinions much different from those of today.”
——Fred Saberhagen
Quote• Posted on by jennrae
Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Writing Prompt — When It All Comes Crashing Down

Posted on by jennrae

Aimee looked out the large picturesque window of trees and vines and rolling hills of grass. It was pretty, it was seemingly solid. But, she knew it was all an illusion. She remembered a boy a long time ago that died jumping off the edge. How much she wanted to follow him even knowing she would not survive. Some days that was all she wanted to do. She was head of the council for the city and they all looked to her for guidance now.

She had no idea how great she had it being a carefree child running about the world without thinking of the future. That boy woke her up.  She recalled all the grown ups whispering in hushed voices. Certain people disappeared and no one would tell her why back then.

Now, she was an adult nearing forty and she knew things now she wish she didn’t. Her neighbor cities in the sky had started having little issues at first. Repairs were becoming more frequent now.

She clenched a paper in her hand, wrinkling it, twisting it. She could throw it in the garbage by the table of the conference room. She smoothed it on the table reluctantly. She straightened her suit jacket, adjusted her collar. Aimee breathed in deeply, letting the air out slowly.

People began to file in with their coffee cups and idle chatter. They took their seats carefully, pulling their small black chairs out and pushing them in. She watched them fill the room slowly.

“Mrs. Hailey, I believe we are all here now. You have the chair.” Ben Howard gestured toward her being the last to take his seat, the rest had their memo pads with stylus looking serious but unconcerned. The typical expression of the community.

The world’s problems were left down on the Earth. Their issues were usually simple ones, who would coach the girls volleyball team or who would replace the technician for the lawn maintenance machines. Aimee kept thinking back to that boy and his backpack. He thought he was saving her world but perhaps he was just putting off the inevitable.

“You are all here because I have been informed of a problem that has been occurring more and more often among our neighbor cities. I am sure you all know we do  not want general panic. So, what you share must be minimal.”

“I’ve heard some rumors. Some cities don’t respond to calls anymore. Maybe a technical issue with the screens?”

“Oh yeah, I haven’t reached Cerberus in days.

“Had that trouble with Nova City, too.”

” Yes, there have been a lot of problems. However, I just got word that it isn’t the screens failing. We have confirmation from a survivor. Someone with their own personal aircraft. The system that allows the flotation devices are failing.It has been failing for awhile.”

Everyone grew silent, looking around the room in quick glances and looking at phones and watches and screens.

“Don’t allow this to leave this room. We do not want panic. However, we need a plan. Our neighbors are all gone with their survivors back on Earth which is a wasteland. They need supplies and we do not know when or how much time we have left here. We are getting more isolated all the time and I am not sure how much supplies we will have left.”

“Mrs. Hailey, what is that paper about?” Rita Tollingford asked pointing at the crinkled paper.

Aimee took the paper again and crumpled it up putting it in the trash. “Nothing. I don’t want you to worry. We just need to prepare. We need to figure out what we can spare. And we need to make sure we have an evacuation plan that works.”

“Where are we going to go? What’s the nearest city?”

“There are no longer any cities nearby, the nearest one is New Bakersfield, and it is in the same condition we are in. We would have to head down to the Earth where the other survivors are.”

“How do we know any of this is real? What if it is some scam to get free supplies from us? The ground dwellers have done this sort of thing before.”

Aimee sighed. “Ben, not everything is a big lie. You are just going to have to trust me.”

“Like we trusted your parents? How many people disappeared? All over what some kid claimed? Some kid from down there no less. My father just gone one day because of some crayon scribbles in a backpack. And, now you are telling me some people down there need help, and that we are in danger. The information coming from earth dwellers can’t be trusted.” Ben got up abruptly walking out. Others watched him leave some reluctantly getting up others remained seated nervously tapping their stylus.

“I guess we are done here. I will try to convene another meeting later today on a plan.” She watched the others go. Some were unconcerned walking out the same way they walked in. Others were anxious.

Aimee looked back out the window. Picked up her glass of water and took a sip, setting it back down on the table. She felt the world tilt slightly. That has happened before and it always rights itself. It was fine, she thought to herself, watching the trees and the grass as a slight breeze started to sweep through.

Her water glass slid from the table and crashed into the wall sending shards of glass out violently. Her hand reached out for the table to grip something but the table also slid against the wall pinning her hand in place. She felt a surge of pain in her hand and felt the blood begin to ooze slowly. The bookcases tilted over next spilling discs and covers onto the floor in a cascade of paper and plastic. An alarm began to blare piercing into her brain as she sat with her hand shoved into the wall by the heavy table.

she knew this would be the end of her, but hoped that her family was aboard their ferry going to safety. Don’t wait for me, she cried out quietly, her voice dimming as the lights flickered and went out one at a time.

” Maybe I will see you again, my friend. Perhaps you knew more than I gave you credit for.” She said thinking of the boy who threw himself off the edge of the world.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

The Need to Write and Upcoming Birthdays…

Posted on by jennrae

There are a lot of  May birthdays for writers. So, I am going to list who is coming up. And of course, there are always some authors whom I have not written down or miss because my brain is imperfect and fallible. But, the ones i have on my handy dandy list are Roger Zelazny May 13th, one of my all time favorite authors. He happens to share a birthday with Stephen R Donaldson who wrote epic fantasy. So, most likely will do a shared post there.

May 27th is the birthday of Harlan Ellison, science fiction writer who also could be quite humorous. May 18th is Fred Saberhagen, another great science fiction writer.

A big oversight for me was skipping Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan the Barbarian. His birthday was on January 22nd in 1906. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs both influenced science fiction and fantasy in their earlier days and would influence the authors that would follow them.

I might deal with him on Burroughs’s birthday because I equate them in style and time period to each other. So, that might be a good place to address Howard.  Much like Tolkien and Lewis, writers of a certain time affect each other and the future and sometimes it is better to comment on them in a joint post anyway.

Part 2–That Need to Write…

I got lucky with a day off in the middle of the week from my day job so I find myself with the desire and time to write. I need to write. If I stop for too long a period I feel like a part of me is missing.

It may be hard to understand to those that don’t write. Although people in the habit of journal-ling I would think could understand, or anyone with a routine that is part of their being. For some it might be running or exercising. For others maybe it is going to the same restaurant at the same time on a regular basis. Whatever is part of your routine, you just feel off sometimes when you aren’t participating in it.

For about a week I got the great feeling of doing what I love to do on a regular basis. Now I am back to work and trying to fit it in around the cracks. I have always had issues finding the balance between work and play, important and not important. But, now I have a sense of urgency in that I don’t want to lose this thread I am on.

I want to continue this writing streak even if it means scribbling on napkins in a spare moment or jotting down ideas in the middle of the night. It is part of who I am and how I see myself. Being a writer is more of a calling than a job. You don’t have to write to survive technically.  But I do get more irritable and agitated the longer I go without it.

It is like listening to the perfect song for the mood you are in. It is work you do for yourself like a good meditation. It is cathartic and soothing. It is like I am letting things out that I have kept trapped in a little cage.

I need to write. It is part of who I am. And, I know I will find a way to keep it going because it means a lot to me.

I appreciate all who come by this way or follow me on twitter or word press because it means so much to a writer to have an audience. It makes it all seem so much more important. It is like the difference between speaking in a mic to a roomful of people or singing in your shower all alone.

Both can be great. No one will judge you in the shower, but it is important if you want to improve to get actual feedback. And as  a writer I am constantly looking for ways to improve. Not just my writing but my health, my life, and how I deal with the realities of a complex world. So, thank you. Thank you so very much. Hugs to all.

JenRae.

 

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Life, Writing

Stream of Consciousness And Why I Sometimes Wish I was a Poet…

Posted on by jennrae

Been reading the news online and it is filled with the usual mayhem and death and destruction, and then I proceeded to stare at an empty screen for a bit thinking about how I should be writing and maybe I should figure out what I am going to write about.

Sometimes things come to me naturally, effortlessly. Just add coffee. Other times I need to coerce myself a little. I guess this is one of the latter situations as I am not really feeling it, but I find myself with the perfect opportunity to write. And I know I will regret not taking this opportunity later.

Then I thought about the term ‘Stream of Consciousness.’ It is a type of writing which I have read and I kinda like. Roger Zelazny uses it in his Chronicles of Amber, usually when his characters are changing their surroundings in some manner. It can be effective. It is perhaps the only way I can do anything poetic. It just doesn’t come naturally to me. I love words, and I love stringing them together in interesting ways. So, I should love poetry.

And, I love reading poetry. But, if I try to write a poem, it ends up either being sappy or depressing or amateurish. Or all three. Perhaps it is because it isn’t something I have worked on extensively. It isn’t something that I have sat and thought I could do. If you don’t believe you can do something, it is usually a self fulfilling prophecy where you will convince yourself to the point where— surprise, surprise, you can’t do it.

So, it might be a mind over matter type of thing. I don’t think of myself as a poet, therefore I am not one. But there is something to be said for finding a sentence that works and is visually compelling. I could probably go through my works and cherry pick sentences and phrases that sound cool to me and create a poem from them. Whether it could have a cohesive meaning I am not sure, but I could take the time to find a meaning and make it work.

Ultimately, if you think you can, you probably can. If you think you can’t, you probably can’t. The power of the mind and how you identify yourself, how you think or perceive yourself as a being matters.

My attempt at stream of consciousness:

New Year’s

Red flowers blooming brilliantly over night time skies

where the stars shine down like little paper lanterns

illuminating the fierce nocturnal eyes of a million raccoons

and cats and weasels and varmints as they scurry amidst bushes and trees

looking for tiny prey that is also scurrying looking for nuts and seeds to eat

so they can continue another day and another night

so that the cycle can start anew another day and another night

as the earth turns slowly in space rewinding time

like a loom of silver thread until one day there will be no more

and some other thread will start spinning

in some other faraway place will begin instead.

Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized, Writing

Que Sera Sera — What Will Be, Will Be, Or How Twisting Reality Can be Fun

Posted on by jennrae

Doris Day recently had a birthday, and of course that reminds me of one of my favorite happy songs. I love the tragic so much, it is nice to like a happy song once in a while since different moods are important to writing for me.

They can make or break a story. I listened to Muse for my last writing prompt, which was depressingly dreary. But, a few years ago I would have ended that story differently.

I wrote a short story that isn’t on here back then about a cool blonde in a cafe, calmly waiting for a bomb to explode. A terrorist without a conscious willing to die amidst chaos because she can, her reasons weren’t explained because she was a cool cold collected character. What made her this way? Hard to say. If I wanted to write a longer version I might delve into her more to see why someone would casually throw away her life and the lives of others.

This time I wanted to explore a would be terrorist that as a kid, would not be fully desensitized to people and could still be ‘saved’ in a sense from being part of the machine of senseless destruction.

I wanted to get into the thought processes and how one makes a decision like this that affects so many people, so many strangers really. We can assume a whole swathe of people is one way or like this or that. But, when we know individuals we realize this is a simplistic way of looking at the world and nothing about reality is simple.

People are not inherently bad or good, they are everything in between, and most people have a rationale for their actions. Whether this rationale is logical or not it is still that person’s rationale for their actions.

A lot of times this is based on personal experience and assumptions, sometimes it is based on information that is readily available via the media. The old adage that if it is on TV it must be true, or the newer version, If it is on the internet it must be true is part of this problem.

Either way, if any of my short stories sparks some thought somewhere, good. Then I have done my job as a writer. To illustrate and propagate ideas and hopefully thoughts that can awaken the minds of the sleepers out there.

Honestly though, I just enjoy getting into the minds of people that are far removed from me, it is like untapped characters are exciting and intriguing. I like to get out of my skin and into another. Same reason I love fantasy and Science-Fiction so much. I like to take normal on its head, and tilt it. I get a perverse pleasure out of skewing reality.

Maybe it is because that is a magical power of a sort. To be able to take something mundane, add in a dash of a little experience and somehow voila; it is something extraordinarily weird. That kernel of truth is still in there, way deep in the center of the acorn hoping the astute reader can get to it amidst the layers of shiny metal and fire breathing dragons.