200 words ~ The Listener

Everyone is born with voices in their heads, thousands of them wriggling through the mind. There are voices that tell us to do this and the voices that tell us to do that. These are often given the title of our conscience speaking to us, but there are those people who would define these voices as our crazy side speaking to us. No matter the case, these titles are irrelevant for as far anyone is concerned most people subconsciously block these voices before they really know what they are exactly . And these people have no idea the thousands of possibilities they have shut out. And while there are those sort of people there are also those who are quite the opposite. These people are unable to control the voices and end up the people in the asylums or more harshly known as the loony bins. However there are the very few who learn to control it. Able to focus on a single voice out of the thousands at anytime they please. These are people I like to call Listeners, people who learn from the voices. But anyone can learn to listen and once learned, the Listener has unlimited possibilities.

200 words ~ Utmost Importance

Jake was a boy who loved to read. It kept his mind occupied and entertained, which was where he always found his safe place. Within the mind. But Jake was also terribly afraid of almost anything that involved any kind of fear or danger. However, because its ominous and intangible form took shape anywhere. Shadows, color... night. The thing he feared the most, was the dark. It wasn't so much the dark itself as it was the very things he could not see or even possibly know to be there. Jake noticed that his brother and friends were quickly becoming less and less afraid of things. Animals, heights... the dark. He also noticed they all hated reading and perhaps this was the reason. He was tired of waiting for the monster that was never there at night when he slept, so he followed his friends and quit reading. A year later he found himself being less and less careful. Less afraid. Unfortunately his carelessness would cost him. For late that night while he was sleeping peacefully, the unknown in the dark would strike. He should have chosen his imagination over fearlessness... because at least paranoia can keep one prepared for their own death.

200 Words--Dust and the Devil's Mouth

I was left in the cold dim air between existence and nothing.

“Hera?” I called.

But I already knew she was gone forever, and so I crawled across the cosmos until I found a home, a hundred years later. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. It’s a nebula that towers light years across and millennia can pass from one side to the other along its circumference.

We’re all still there, on a planet I formed from the dust and gas.

It was on one such planet that life formed; a trick Hera never taught me, so I had to wait for it to happen on its own.

You call the place I landed Devil’s Mouth, and I suppose it’s a proper name, for I am a devil, and things do tend to burn once they fall into it.

But do not mistake me for a god. Amber flows through my veins, not blood. I am a being of time, not space. I’ll fall back into the past once I grow tired of the present, or perhaps fling myself into the future as I wish.

I looked far ahead once.

But there was less there than here, so I left.

200 Words--The Amber Elevator

The amber dripping from the holes in my hands scared them, I think. They raised their flintlocks and fired in unison, as though commanded by gods.

I tried to dash to the side. It’s hard to do that when you’ve lost most of your blood.

I fell into the elevator with a soft thud beside Hera’s feet. She looked down at me like a cat to a dead dog, and then dragged my feet inside and hit the button for the enth floor. The elevator ascended like an angel.

“I never wanted it to end this way,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

I could see the redness dripping from her tear ducts and knew that I’d really done it this time.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said. “I told you it makes you sound weak.”

All the while I pulled the knife from its sheath within my coat. “I have to do it.”

She reached into her chest and pulled out her heart, and handed it down to me.

I stuck the knife into the gears and held the heart tightly. My fingers slipped once but by then the universe had stopped.

200 Words--A Mystery

When I stepped into the living room it was with the careful grace of someone trying to avoid hidden piles of animal droppings (this is the most accurate metaphor I could come up with because my pets used to not be entirely trained).

It was the dark of night, the darkest I mean, and the only illumination was the soft orange glow from the streetlights through the shutters. They cast uneven lights on the sofa and loveseat, which fluctuated as the vents blew warm air over the drapes.

I saw a shape move in the kitchen doorway across the room. I had the baseball bat in my hands as I advanced, ready to deal with this unwelcome intruder.

“Son?” He asked as I, now in full swing, realized who it was I was about to kill.

I would have asked him what he was doing in my house, why he’d broken the locks on the back door to get in, why he hadn’t called first, where he’d been for the past three years, but instead, he was on the floor, bleeding from his skull which it turns out I fractured in three places.

The police said they don’t believe me.

adventure friends updates

Figured this is as good a place as any to announce Adventure Friends things:

Thinking that instead of being The Obsidian King, it's The Eventide King. His mythology changes a bit, as he's merely the one that hearkens in the night of the universe, rather than the darkest foe. Which makes for some fear at what waits in the night of the universe.

Adrian is no longer a secret arcane user. He is actually a secret natural user. He has an innate ability to heal, which once he learns, he can use this to heal others. He is really good at swordplay because he's been able to learn from his mistakes instead of just dying from them.

NEW CHARACTER YO: Ty Darko is sort of a prototype character for who Adrian was going to be. She can do the timetravel shenanigans, and is actually like something of a guardian angel. The reason the Adventure Friends have never died is because she goes back in time and fixes things before they get super bad.

Nothing else for now. Thoughts???

(A Tepid Crossing is at 55,000 words right now, so I'm still writing it. Don't be afraid. I feel like it has another 10,000 left in it at least, maybe another 15,000.)

update: a tepid crossing

So, planning this thing out is really hard.

I'm moving up the official "resume" time for August. My original estimate of this book being halfway done is now outdated, I would say it's two thirds of the way done. I realized that I have to get less ambitious about this thing if I want to finish it ever. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to do a cop-out and have it end really terrible. Don't worry about that. I'm trying my hardest to make it finish the way I originally wanted it to.

Don't know if that's possible but sheesh I am going to try, ok?