Mannequin: Chapter 1.1 – “Ceiling”

It all started on the day I died.

I woke up that morning to the wail of sirens, as I had for the last six months.  Lee Barker Memorial, the oldest functioning hospital in the state, spanned three city blocks and serviced tens of thousands of patients annually within its weathered granite walls.  A relic of grandeur in a city that had been dancing on the edge of disrepair for decades, the hospital stood as a testament to human perseverance and ingenuity.  The hospital processed hundreds of cases every day, from an infant’s stubbed toe to a construction worker’s severed arm to the occasional case of lymphangiomatosis or Antley-Bixler Syndrome.

It also happened to be a stone’s throw away from my kitchen window.

I groaned, sat up in bed, and promptly slammed my head on the low ceiling of my “bedroom.”  After six months of living in the cheapest studio apartment I could find, I still couldn’t remember that falling out of bed was actually preferable to suffering a minor concussion every morning.

Twenty years ago, the building was a story taller.  Sometime between now and then, someone thought it would be a good idea to have a romantic, candlelit dinner involving massage oil, incense, and liberal amounts of petroleum jelly.  This had the predictable result of ensuring that the inhabitants were blissfully unaware when a gentle breeze tipped over an ill-placed candle.  Rumor has it that the offenders survived only because they were able to greasily wiggle  through a stuck window onto the fire escape.

At any rate, the landlord decided it would be cheaper to erect a new roof instead of rebuild an entire collapsed floor.  The result was an odd, slanted number that started out even and tapered gradually to become a wall.  Take a cross-section of my apartment, and you wind up with half of an isosceles trapezoid.  My bed is wedged at the point where the ceiling meets the floor, not due to choice, but because it would double as the centerpiece of the apartment anywhere else.

I groaned again for good measure, and shuffled blearily across the cold tile floor in search for nourishment.

I was halfway through a stale croissant when my world shattered.

Mannequin: Prologue – “Something Missing”

She was nearly complete.

I couldn’t remember when I had stopped referring to her as “it.”  When had she so completely enthralled me, thwarting my senses and sensibility alike?  I had been so careful.  When had she become more than an object, more than a mere sum of her parts?  When had she become my masterpiece?

Looking back, it was all but inevitable.  I knew full well how abominable my task might become when I first started on her.  Perhaps if I had not kept her hidden for so many years, those closest to me would have had a chance to save me, before she had consumed what remained of my sanity.

It was too late for that, now.  I could not be redeemed.  I did not want to be redeemed.

And yet, looking at her now, lying there with a glow that only my gentle, caressing hands could give her, I felt something missing.  Something gone, or something that never was.  One last shred kept her from true perfection.

Eyes.  She needed eyes.  Eyes full of passion, full of intelligence.  Eyes as deep as the ocean and as clear as the night sky.  I needed eyes to give her life.

I felt a slow smile creep across my face.  Eyes.  I knew exactly where to find them.

Swine Journal 2

Tuesday, May 5

Been feeling… tingly… for the past couple of days.  It feels like when my leg falls asleep, except it’s under my skin.  Having a hard time focusing on things, as my eyes also seem to be constantly vibrating.  Seems to be completely internal though; the objects I touch and hold don’t seem to shake at all.  I’m not shivering from cold, either.  I’m just… tingly.

It’s definitely an odd sensation, but it isn’t really unpleasant.  As a matter of fact, I’ve felt more alive in the past few days than I have in years!  I feel like a live wire, ready to snap in an instant.  Guess it’s a good thing I ordered my immune system to be stronger.

Swine Journal 1

Thursday, April 30.

Didn’t think.  Had a bacon and ham sandwich for lunch today.  Feel fine for now, but you never know.  They say you can get infected just by being in the same room as one of the little buggers.  And now, there’s a piece of them in me.  It’s probably nothing.  Probably.

Dull

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work an d no play makes jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jaack a dul lboy.  All work an no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and

No play makes

Jack a dull boy.

All

work and

no play makes

Jack a dull boy.

All work and no

play makes

Jack a

dull

boy.

All

work

and

no

play

makes

Jack

a

dull

boy.

Boy dull a Jack makes play no and work all.

A all and boy dull Jack makes no play work.

Jack makes all a dull boy and work no play.

Benches: Chapter 1.3 – “The End”

“I’ll have to call you back later, some creep on a bench is staring at me.”

Fin.

Benches: Chapter 1.2 – “Deepening Shadows”

“It’s not what you think.”

The voice is faint, barely a whisper over the breeze.  It sounds strangely warbled, as if listening to a phone conversation over a particularly poor connection.  My pulse quickens as I am struck with the distinct sensation of being not alone, of someone else’s presence sharing space with mine.  Imagine sitting in an empty room, completely engrossed in a good novel.  It’s the feeling you get when, for no reason at all, the hairs on your neck begin to prickle, and you realize that someone has been standing in the doorway for quite some time now, watching as you read.  I stiffen, and carefully open one eye.

“It’s not what you think,” the voice repeats.  The voice is tinged with sorrow and resignation.  Out of my peripheral vision, I notice a dark silhouette partially obscured by the shoulder-high hedge, a slightly darker shadow against the deepening gloom.  I focus on the silhouette, and the accompanying voice abruptly sharpens, taking on an almost urgent edge.

“I dreamt of drowning last night, you know.  Just sinking into the depths and never coming back up.  I knew I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t.  A lot of people think that drowning is a pleasant way to die.  That you just float away and never come back.  But it isn’t like that, not at all.  It’s more like… holding your breath while walking past a cemetery, but there’s no end in sight.  You want to take a breath, but you’re afraid of sucking in some poor wandering spirit if you do.  So you just keep holding your breath until your hands start shaking and your face turns blue.  And eventually, despite your best efforts, you gasp for a breath of refreshing, cool air.  Only now someone’s got their hands over your mouth and nose, and a pressure’s building up against your eyes and ears, and you struggle against your captor but there’s nothing to flail against, and all you’re left with is the overwhelming urge to breathe. Now imagine all of this happening while you’re gently floating in the darkness.

“There’s a sense of futility in it all, a sense of your body betraying you, forcing you to take that last killing breath.  I should have been afraid.  I should have been struggling for my life.  I didn’t.  I didn’t because you were there.  Maybe you’ve always been there, and I just never noticed.  It’s like I somehow knew you would be there to save me.”  The speaker’s voice cracks, and I notice a subtle shift in the silhouette.

“But you didn’t, did you,” the voice whispers.  “You let me go.”

The breeze suddenly strengthens, and I can barely make out the rest of the speaker’s tale.

“I guess all I’m trying to say is… Don’t let me float away, not yet.  Please.  Stay here with me, for a little while longer.  I…”

“I…”

“…”

Archetypical

QOTE:

“What’s his type? Wilting flower? Bright and bubbly? Or smoldering temptress?”

- Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge!

Some of the more interesting templates for characters that I personally wouldn’t mind being:

1. The mysterious stranger who cryptically leaves messages and clues, giving the impression that he knows much more than he is letting on.

2. The dark shadow in an alleyway, always one step ahead of the protagonist and an ever present yet unknown threat.

3. The tormented anti-hero, tortured by his shadowy past and haunted by decisions he was forced to make in years past.

4. The starving generic creative mind, thrust from her mere struggle for survival into a journey that may decide the very fate of the world.

5. The genius criminal mastermind, able to elude capture and commit heinous acts of criminal activity through sheer intellect.

6. That girl in the last entry.

Present Predicament

QOTE:

“I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just ‘Crewman Number Six.’ I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is.”

- Sam Rockewll, Galaxy Quest

The other day I was contemplating buying a gift for a professor who’s had to put up with my lackluster performance in semesters past. Then I came upon the unfortunate realization that I didn’t really know anything about said professor’s interests outside of the course material. Now, I’m not above the generic “I-have-no-idea-what-you-like-so-here-is-a-random-stylish-yet-practical-mid-priced” gift, but I generally aim for “specific enough so that you know it’s personalized for you, but generic enough that you don’t think that’s the only thing I know about you”. That got me to thinking: I wish I were the guy in the story who pops up in the very beginning and gives the main character(s) some mysterious and seemingly random trinket, simply stating, “You’ll know when to use it”.

Around this point I asked a friend who happended to be with me at the time what character archetype she would be. She seemed a bit puzzled, so I had to explain the aforementioned train of thought to her. She suggested that maybe I should go ahead and do it anyway (in reference to buying a random gift and then telling my professor a cryptic message).

I never did end up getting anything for my dear professor, but I have thought about the whole character archetype thing quite a bit. You can only have so many combinations of personality traits and plot contrivances, yet somehow new bestsellers and blockbusters are still “created”. Of course, this isn’t due to new stories being told so much as old stories being told in different ways and the size of the budget for special effects. Besides, people don’t really want new stories; they want to see the same thing they’ve seen time and time again (*cough* Kingdom of the Crystal Skull *cough*) and read the same things they’ve before (I’d imagine this probably applies to any book in the romance genre; also, Jim Davis). Curse you, franchises!

Next time: Character archetypes I wouldn’t mind being

Drowzee

QOTE: “Fatigue is the best pillow.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

Yesterday I wrote and presented a report on two hours of sleep. The day immediately prior, I wrote 32 pages of gibberish on three. The effects of this haphazard lifestyle didn’t appear to be catching up to me… until I noticed my cell blazing a trail through the night sky. I then proceeded to spend several minutes waving it across my face just to bask in the afterglow of a screen as piercingly bright as a comet entering the atmosphere, leaving cosmic dust in its wake.

Then I got home, glanced over a text I got, and called someone else because I read in my mind a message I had received three weeks ago. The text I read in my mind told me to call the person up as soon as I got the chance, complete with name and callback number. The real text I got was from someone completely different and only had one word: “Bertha”.

Then I barricaded the cat in the laundry room and ate some three day old chunky peanut butter raisin honey oatmeal. T’was a good night.

Other things happened, but now that I think about it I’m not sure whether they occurred in reality or were pure figments of my imagination. It’s hard enough to tell what’s real and what isn’t without your brain randomly making stuff up and imposing it on your senses.

Andalusia by ~vitrolux on deviantART