Aboard the Antigone

An excerpt of my newest short story aboard the Antigone. ( I say newest like its complete, but I actually just started it). This is the first story I’ve written that is about aliens. Surprising since I love aliens! 

edit: Totally forgot! I have written another story about aliens. When People Lived on Neptune

The ship was called the Antigone, should probably mention that shouldn’t I. Though everybody’s is still confused as to what aliens would know bout Greek tragedy.

Anyway, if I’m gonna to tell you this story (and the only reason I’m gonna is cuz you keep askin) I ain’t gonna start with the aliens. The aliens is where it ends for most of us in Harthwright, now that half the town is in the loony bin.

Diamond and I met em first we did, along with Ms.Evrett and the tiny Mexican girl.

Yeah I know the whole town saw the aliens, saw em bubbling round in the sky in their mother o’ pearl, walnut shaped space ship. But here’s what, Diamond and I, and Ms.Everett, and Soledad- the tiny Mexican girl. We was on it. We was aboard the Antigone.

As you know, Diamond got pretty messed up by the whole thing. He hangs out with that group, sort of as their leader,  the ones that call themselves the Starswallower’s. You’ve seen em right? Of course you have! The kids who wear a lot of metal, pretty much anything they can find, wire hangers, hubcaps, paperclips, you name it.

They hang out at the rec center and write poetry about the universe. On the weekends they wear giant work boots, the kind that the steel-mill boys used to wear till they were put in the loonie bin too, and stomp down on the grass until they’ve made one giant circle.

Yeah, Diamond is pretty weird now. Coulda made something of his life, coulda played college ball. Coulda gotten outta here. I saw him last Wednesday and he handed me a book of poems and mumbled some philosophical mumbo jumbo. “Your too busy to see them stars child o’ venus child o’ mars” yeah somethin weird like that. Good lord.

But I guess Diamond is lucky compared to what happened to Ms.Everett and Soledad. Theys gone now. Theys gone with the Antigone.

Children of The Deep

*Man! Its been a while since my last short story. But I am working on another one (at the rate its going this one will be a rather long short story) Its definitely not even close to being done, but this is an excerpt. 

If Elijah tells you this story, he will say that everything started when he threw Sukey Plumridge’s training bra into the gone-for-good part of the lake, right before the tap in the kitchen first started to break and C.L met the lady who wore ultramarine. Elijah will insist that he’s right and that I’m wrong because that’s just what Elijah does, but between you and me, it started much before that. I think everything was put in place from the very beginning. But if I had to start somewhere, I would start with the day we went to the grocery store and C.L pointed to the lobsters in the seafood tank and said “Simon, those things are making fun of me”.

“Not all of them”, C.L said a moment later. “Just the one in the corner. The pretty blue one.”

I was about to tell C.L that there was no such thing as a blue lobster when right in the corner of the seafood tank I saw it. Elijah let out a whistle and said the same word that got him a bar full of Lux soap the last time we went to Gran’s so I knew that he saw it too. C.L inched closer and pressed her nose to the seafood tank.

“Well there is no need to say things like that”, she murmured, and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to Elijah or the lobster.

Now let me tell you this. When people hear about blue lobsters without seeing them, they usually have one image in their mind. Usually that image is of a lobster that is sort-of-blue (but not really).

Most people assume that blue lobsters are the same deal as black orchids. Everyone who has eyes can see that a “black” orchid has way more purple to it than anything else, but lots of people like pretending just to fool themselves. A blue lobster is nothing like that. It really is blue-blue. Blue like the ground up powder that people used to put in paintings and call ultramarine. Blue like the skin of one of those foreign Gods with multiple arms and a single red dot in the center of their forehead. Blue like the bottom of the gone-for-good part of the lake when the weather is sort of cloudy and you know that in a few weeks all the tourists are leaving.

“Well if that rotten blue lobster is making fun of you, you tell him that in a day or too he’s going to be enjoying an uncomfortably warm dip in the pot.” Elijah said with the sort of half laugh that usually made people confused as to whether he was being serious or not.

I always know when Elijah is being serious, which is a good thing because if I didn’t I would probably end up like Tony Walters the day he called C.L a nutcase and Elijah said “say that about my sister again and I’ll beat the crap out of you”.

Usually anything involving C.L Elijah takes seriously, probably because she’s practically a genius. Well, not the good at doing math without a calculator type of genius, but the always knowing everything that’s going on before its going on kind of genius. Sometimes mom says C.L has got uncanny intuition, but sometimes she says it like it’s a bad thing…

Pretty much everything else Elijah doesn’t take seriously, including me. I think I started to get the hint when we were younger and Elijah, C.L and I would go outside to play the navy game in the kiddy pool. Elijah was always captain, C.L was always first mate, and I was always reporter.  Usually I would complain and say,

“But navy officers didn’t have reporters”, to which Elijah would reply,

“shut up and stop whining like a little girl or else you’re not playing Simon, “

and then C.L would ask “what’s wrong with being a little girl?”

Which Elijah wouldn’t say anything about but, “first mate, I think our platoon is being attacked.”

Another thing Elijah doesn’t take seriously is school, which everyone knows; since he has to spend an hour in Ms. Felekey’s every Tuesday. Spending time in Ms.Felekey’s is what the school calls remedial learning, which is what adults say when they don’t want to say you’re sort of dumb. Most of the time people are really embarrassed about going to Ms.Felekey’s, but Elijah makes it sort of cool.  To be honest, maybe Elijah has the right idea about remedial learning because Ms. Felekey is nicer than most of the other teachers. She wears pink lipstick and bakes lemon cookies. She’s only ever gotten mad at Elijah once, I know because she called home and I was listening on the other line. Apparently she showed Elijah a bunch of ink stain cards and asked what they looked like but Elijah would only give her bogus answers like: “I see a pig in a suit and matching top hat holding a walking cane. I see a sunny faced man with flowers for eyes and tree roots for lips. I see a woman with her back facing the lake, there is a stone cup in her right hand.”

Only later, when we were both older and most of the business about strange ultramarine ladies at the bottom of lakes had blown over Elijah said to me “My God. She was always there wasn’t she? I saw her. Even before I knew that I saw her, I saw her Simon, in those ink spot cards. Ms.Deep. The lady in the lake.”

I wouldn’t ever say anything to him because I didn’t really like talking about what happened, but of course he continued.

“Man it must have all started that day I threw Sukey plumridge’s training bra in the lake.”

Which of course it didn’t because I already told you were it started, in the grocery store with the lobster that was the colour of one of those foreign gods.

There Once Were Two Lovers

Hey you internet people who read this blog (My estimation is five), here is just a little update on the lovely BIG story that I am writing at the moment. Notice how I don’t call it a book. Yeah I have an issue with that. I’m not even sure what it is that I am writing. Sometimes it seems like a collection of a billion short stories. Sometimes it feels like a novella. And sometimes it feels like a bunch of literary vomit that manifests itself onto a page.

Even though I swore that this story wouldn’t be like grade ten. (Aka the awful time were I ‘tried’ to write awful books about princesses and dragons) even I had my own doubts. To be honest, I didn’t think I could keep it up. Heck! I didn’t even have much of a plotline, just characters that I really liked. Well today I am proud to say that I have impressed myself and defied all of my expectations, because as of this moment my word count for May Be and Al Most is… wait for it…wait for it.

10537

That’s right 10537 big ol’ words. Considering industry standards for the average paperback is 250 words a page that’s….

42 pages

I know! I can’t believe it either. I plan on splitting the story up into five parts.  These parts are called (cronilogically)

How the end began, Tin Soldiers, How they met themselves, How they met each other, How the end ended.

I plan on seventy pages for each part. I’m more than halfway done my first part. EEEEKKKK!!!

As a means of celebration, here is another short excerpt from the story. In context with the book/story/vomit, the main protagonists are being told a fairy tale (simultaneously) by their siblings both named Val if I haven’t mentioned that before ( I refer to the two of them as the collective Val for a lot of the story). It relates implicitly to my last post From the Memory of Conrad Dalton but I think you need to know the big picture in order to get theat. Anywhoo! Here it goes.

.-._________________________________.-.________________________________.-.

The Story as told from the collective Val.

There were once two lovers, but they were thrown into the flames. This is the story. As you know, the things that we call stories are really just an end to something. So, there once were two lovers but they were thrown into the flames. This is a story. It does not have a beginning, or a middle, those things are not necessary. What we often think of as the beginning, is really just the beginning of the end. Motion has already been set in place. Time waits for no one. We think that time will change things. Take away things- sorrow, pain, all feelings. Time-all things in time.

Time is like a lightning bolt, it waits for no one. Time is like a story, only the ending exists.

So- there once were two lovers, but they were thrown into the flames. This is how the end ended. Now listen, let me tell you how it began.

It began with a the words “Look! Tin Soldiers!” as a small boy clasped his hands together on his birthday. The tin soldiers, all five-and-twenty of them, looked around in their boxes and found what the boy said to be true. There were tin soldiers, five and twenty of them, and each one had just woken up from a dream in which they had been casted from a tiny tin spoon.  

One of the tin brothers, the one to open his eyes last, looked a bit different from the others. The tin spoon had been short, and he had been cast last of all. This was the soldier that had only one leg.

He was the last of many things. He was the last brother to be cast, he was the last to be painted, and he was the last to open his eyes,therefore didn’t see the little boy who placed him on a ledge behind a snuff box. What he did see however, was a lovely paper ballerina with a bright sparkle tied to her waist.

These were the two lovers, but they were thrown into the flames.

It began with the words “Look! Tin solider!” From the twisted mouth of a Jack emerging out from his box like a spider. “Keep your eyes to yourself”. The soldier pretended not to hear. He only continued to stare at the beautiful dancer and marvel that she stayed posed on one leg as did he.

“You’ll be sorry” Said the evil Jack.

And he was, in the end. He had been staring at her from his side of the ledge, and she at him.But alas, time is like a lightning bolt, or the flickering orange of a fire place. 

The tin soldier was thrown into the flames with the paper ballerina. She flew like a sylph, straight into the fire, blazed up in a flash, and was gone. Only the sparkle that had been tied to her dress remained. The soldier melted into a tiny metal heart. After all, time waits for no one.

This is how the end ended. With a tiny metal heart and a charred sparkle. Of course I have skipped a great many things, but this is the story, and as you know, the things that we call stories are really just an end to something.

So, there once were two lovers, they never said a word too each other, not once. But they were both thrown into the flames.