NaNoWriMo Story
Word Count: 15,811
Goal: 16,000
RetCon: The date that the story takes place has been changed to Friday, November 13th, 2009. I did not want to set it there when I started because it seemed back luck to set this story in the future, but now that date is in the past, so I am safe.
A song comes unbidden into my head. “Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very very fine place to start.”
“You must be fine. You can still remember classic movie toons,” she laughs.
“Thank you, I'll be here all week,” I reply. “But seriously, I was thinking that we might as well try my apartment. Seems the most obvious place to jog something loose.”
“Makes sense to me,” she replies. “Or this is just a trick to get me up to your bedroom.”
I take my hat and place it dramatically over my face. “Oh, you caught me and have exposed my bold scheme. This is just the most elaborate pick up line in history. How am I doing so far?”
“I've heard worse,” she replies wryly.
We continue on, talking about not much in particular for another 20 minutes or so until we reach Sunderland. Amherst Road is the main road through the town. Sunderland is a small town which appears to consist of farms and apartment complexes. Such a peculiar combination, one would only find in a college town, I think. We watch the house numbers count up: 100, 200, 300. We slow down as we come into the mid 300's. We pass a bar which looks like the kind of places that hunters might go after a long day on the hunt. We come to a small shopping plaza with everything a college student needs: 7-11, pizza joint, and liquor store, and just after it is a sign with a large, brightly colored bird, purple wings and orange flames below it. Phoenix Village Apartments it proclaims, and there at the bottom is the number 362 right in the fire. “This looks like the place,” I declare.
The Phoenix Village Apartments are nice enough. They are mostly townhouses in long buildings with about ten apartments in each building. They are scattered artistically, also known as randomly, around the property.
We roam around the complex trying to find apartment 42. They are more or less in numerical order. Numerical enough to make us think that we should be able to determine a pattern, but orderless enough that we basically have to search blindly around the complex for our number. Finally, Allison spots apartment 39, and pulls into an empty parking space in front of it, figuring that this is close enough.
She looks at me, a little nervous. “You ready for this?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say with a boldness I only partly feel. “It's my own apartment, after all. How bad can it be?”
“Better hope you don't have an alarm system,” she offers, as we get out of the car.
On impulse, I give her a playful kiss on the cheek. “Where would I be without your helpful suggestions of all the things that could possibly go wrong?”
She shrugs. “Happier and less anxious, I imagine.”
We reach the plain white door. A black 42 is screwed into the door. I pull out my keys and look at them. They do not look familiar, so I cannot quite tell which one is the right one. Then, I have an idea. Muscle memory. Even if I do not consciously remember which key, perhaps if I just try to go through the door without thinking about it, I will do what I always do.
I take a couple of steps back and then stride up to the door. I pull out my keys, and... nothing. I am standing in front of the door with my keys splayed in my hand, looking confused.
“What's wrong?” she asks.
“I don't know which key to use. I thought I'd try to naturally open the door to see if I could invoke muscle memory, but it didn't work.”
“Hmm,” she says thoughtfully. “Maybe you are trying to hard? Just relax.”
“Sure, might as well.” I walk back to the end of the walkway. “I hope no one is watching. They might think I was peculiar.”
Allison gives me a pointed look. “William, you are peculiar.”
“Yes, but I don't want the whole world to know it,” I reply. “Alright, here goes. Coming home after a long day... or night.”
I stride up the walkway, casually, like someone coming home. I get to the door, reach out naturally, grab the door knob and turn it. The door opens, and I enter. “Unlocked. I did not expect that,” I say dumbly.
Through the door, I find myself in a living room. It is cluttered with pillows and a couple blankets. Other items are scattered in for flavor. There is a television and DVD/VCR plus some video game systems on a coffee table stacked on top of another coffee table. Two mismatched couches with equally mismatched pillows face the makeshift entertainment center. The opposite wall is covered in hundreds of VHS tapes and DVDs in a row of bookcases.
We continue through the living room and down a short hallway to the dining room, which also has that distinctly college student look to it. The table clearly has not seen a family meal in a while.
“Bachelor?” Allison offers.
“Looks like it,” I agree.
We head upstairs. At the top of the stairs is a small landing with three doors leading off of it. The center door is open and leads to a bathroom. The door on the left is closed, and the door on the right is open. Behind the door to the right is a bedroom with the lights on.
“Yours?” she asks.
I peer in. The room is a bit cluttered around the edges, but the floor in the middle is quite visible. The carpet is greyish green, just like the the one downstairs in the living room. The far wall contains a large window with open blinds. To the left of the window are book cases, full of books and board games. The right side of the room has a closet, and a filing cabinet as well as some other storage devices.
Ah, this is my room. Clipped to the sliding doors of the closet are some name badges with my name printed on them. Some of the badges are plain looking, while others have complex fantasy or science fiction imagery on them. Many of them have colorful ribbons attached the the bottom. I approach closer to read them. “Program Participant,” one says. “Dealer,” says another. “Staff”, “Gopher”, “Clue” say others.
“Looks like you are active in whatever that is,” Allison offers.
“Yeah,” I say thoughtfully as I run some of the ribbons through my fingers.
The far left wall of the room has a queen sized bed running along it. An American flag hangs on the wall at the head of the bed. Over the bed on the other wall is a poster of fighter planes of the world. “Unusual,” I comment.
“Agreed,” says Allison, looking around at the walls. “No half naked women. What kind of boy's room is this?” She turns to face me. “Are you gay?”
I laugh, and dramatically look her up and down with an exaggerated leer. “I believe I can say with confidence that I am not.” Looking at her, I am reminded that she is a fairly shapely woman. No Pamela Anderson, but slim and quite pleasant on the eye.
With correspondingly exaggerated motions, she covers herself with her arms. “William, I am shocked and appalled that you would look at me that way.”
I shrug. “Me too. I am also appalled. There we go, we have learned something about me.”
“Yes, we have learned that you are a man,” she proclaims triumphantly.
“Hmm, I think I already knew that.” I return to looking around the room.
The bookcase contains a variety of books. Science fiction novels, motivational books, biographies, and a few how to books. There are also a few books on understanding the Bible, as well as two copies of the Bible itself. On the bottom shelf, there are some binders. I pull one out and look at it. It is full of plastic pages which each contain 9 cards. Each of the cards has fantasy art on the top half and some text on the bottom half. They appear to go to some kind of game. The back of each card says “Magic: The Gathering, Deckmaster.” I put the binder back.
On another set of shelves, there is a shelf dedicated to various toys of fighter aircraft. Some are real modern fighters. Others are science fiction space fighters. Some are models, other are Legos.
Interestingly, I find this shelf familiar. I know these toys. They are mine from many years ago. I recognize little else, but the toys are definitely mine. Why would I remember them and nothing else?
My reverie is broken by Allison's comment. “I love this poem,” she declares.
“What poem?” I ask as I turn around.
“Footprints. You have this piece on the wall.” She indicates a piece of wood with the poem printed on it.
I read it. It is a poem about God taking care of us in our hour of greatest need. “I know this. This belonged to my grandfather. I got it when he died.”
“Are you Christian?” she asks.
“I might be. I have a couple Bibles,” I speculate.
She looks at the flag. “And a big flag. Perhaps you are a Conservative,” she says accusingly.
I think about this for a moment. “I don't think so. I'm not sure why, but I don't think so.”
She places a hand gently on my shoulder. “Don't worry. I'll still help you, even if you turn out to be conservative.”
I grin. “Thank you. That is very comforting.”
Goal: 16,000
RetCon: The date that the story takes place has been changed to Friday, November 13th, 2009. I did not want to set it there when I started because it seemed back luck to set this story in the future, but now that date is in the past, so I am safe.
A song comes unbidden into my head. “Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very very fine place to start.”
“You must be fine. You can still remember classic movie toons,” she laughs.
“Thank you, I'll be here all week,” I reply. “But seriously, I was thinking that we might as well try my apartment. Seems the most obvious place to jog something loose.”
“Makes sense to me,” she replies. “Or this is just a trick to get me up to your bedroom.”
I take my hat and place it dramatically over my face. “Oh, you caught me and have exposed my bold scheme. This is just the most elaborate pick up line in history. How am I doing so far?”
“I've heard worse,” she replies wryly.
We continue on, talking about not much in particular for another 20 minutes or so until we reach Sunderland. Amherst Road is the main road through the town. Sunderland is a small town which appears to consist of farms and apartment complexes. Such a peculiar combination, one would only find in a college town, I think. We watch the house numbers count up: 100, 200, 300. We slow down as we come into the mid 300's. We pass a bar which looks like the kind of places that hunters might go after a long day on the hunt. We come to a small shopping plaza with everything a college student needs: 7-11, pizza joint, and liquor store, and just after it is a sign with a large, brightly colored bird, purple wings and orange flames below it. Phoenix Village Apartments it proclaims, and there at the bottom is the number 362 right in the fire. “This looks like the place,” I declare.
The Phoenix Village Apartments are nice enough. They are mostly townhouses in long buildings with about ten apartments in each building. They are scattered artistically, also known as randomly, around the property.
We roam around the complex trying to find apartment 42. They are more or less in numerical order. Numerical enough to make us think that we should be able to determine a pattern, but orderless enough that we basically have to search blindly around the complex for our number. Finally, Allison spots apartment 39, and pulls into an empty parking space in front of it, figuring that this is close enough.
She looks at me, a little nervous. “You ready for this?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say with a boldness I only partly feel. “It's my own apartment, after all. How bad can it be?”
“Better hope you don't have an alarm system,” she offers, as we get out of the car.
On impulse, I give her a playful kiss on the cheek. “Where would I be without your helpful suggestions of all the things that could possibly go wrong?”
She shrugs. “Happier and less anxious, I imagine.”
We reach the plain white door. A black 42 is screwed into the door. I pull out my keys and look at them. They do not look familiar, so I cannot quite tell which one is the right one. Then, I have an idea. Muscle memory. Even if I do not consciously remember which key, perhaps if I just try to go through the door without thinking about it, I will do what I always do.
I take a couple of steps back and then stride up to the door. I pull out my keys, and... nothing. I am standing in front of the door with my keys splayed in my hand, looking confused.
“What's wrong?” she asks.
“I don't know which key to use. I thought I'd try to naturally open the door to see if I could invoke muscle memory, but it didn't work.”
“Hmm,” she says thoughtfully. “Maybe you are trying to hard? Just relax.”
“Sure, might as well.” I walk back to the end of the walkway. “I hope no one is watching. They might think I was peculiar.”
Allison gives me a pointed look. “William, you are peculiar.”
“Yes, but I don't want the whole world to know it,” I reply. “Alright, here goes. Coming home after a long day... or night.”
I stride up the walkway, casually, like someone coming home. I get to the door, reach out naturally, grab the door knob and turn it. The door opens, and I enter. “Unlocked. I did not expect that,” I say dumbly.
Through the door, I find myself in a living room. It is cluttered with pillows and a couple blankets. Other items are scattered in for flavor. There is a television and DVD/VCR plus some video game systems on a coffee table stacked on top of another coffee table. Two mismatched couches with equally mismatched pillows face the makeshift entertainment center. The opposite wall is covered in hundreds of VHS tapes and DVDs in a row of bookcases.
We continue through the living room and down a short hallway to the dining room, which also has that distinctly college student look to it. The table clearly has not seen a family meal in a while.
“Bachelor?” Allison offers.
“Looks like it,” I agree.
We head upstairs. At the top of the stairs is a small landing with three doors leading off of it. The center door is open and leads to a bathroom. The door on the left is closed, and the door on the right is open. Behind the door to the right is a bedroom with the lights on.
“Yours?” she asks.
I peer in. The room is a bit cluttered around the edges, but the floor in the middle is quite visible. The carpet is greyish green, just like the the one downstairs in the living room. The far wall contains a large window with open blinds. To the left of the window are book cases, full of books and board games. The right side of the room has a closet, and a filing cabinet as well as some other storage devices.
Ah, this is my room. Clipped to the sliding doors of the closet are some name badges with my name printed on them. Some of the badges are plain looking, while others have complex fantasy or science fiction imagery on them. Many of them have colorful ribbons attached the the bottom. I approach closer to read them. “Program Participant,” one says. “Dealer,” says another. “Staff”, “Gopher”, “Clue” say others.
“Looks like you are active in whatever that is,” Allison offers.
“Yeah,” I say thoughtfully as I run some of the ribbons through my fingers.
The far left wall of the room has a queen sized bed running along it. An American flag hangs on the wall at the head of the bed. Over the bed on the other wall is a poster of fighter planes of the world. “Unusual,” I comment.
“Agreed,” says Allison, looking around at the walls. “No half naked women. What kind of boy's room is this?” She turns to face me. “Are you gay?”
I laugh, and dramatically look her up and down with an exaggerated leer. “I believe I can say with confidence that I am not.” Looking at her, I am reminded that she is a fairly shapely woman. No Pamela Anderson, but slim and quite pleasant on the eye.
With correspondingly exaggerated motions, she covers herself with her arms. “William, I am shocked and appalled that you would look at me that way.”
I shrug. “Me too. I am also appalled. There we go, we have learned something about me.”
“Yes, we have learned that you are a man,” she proclaims triumphantly.
“Hmm, I think I already knew that.” I return to looking around the room.
The bookcase contains a variety of books. Science fiction novels, motivational books, biographies, and a few how to books. There are also a few books on understanding the Bible, as well as two copies of the Bible itself. On the bottom shelf, there are some binders. I pull one out and look at it. It is full of plastic pages which each contain 9 cards. Each of the cards has fantasy art on the top half and some text on the bottom half. They appear to go to some kind of game. The back of each card says “Magic: The Gathering, Deckmaster.” I put the binder back.
On another set of shelves, there is a shelf dedicated to various toys of fighter aircraft. Some are real modern fighters. Others are science fiction space fighters. Some are models, other are Legos.
Interestingly, I find this shelf familiar. I know these toys. They are mine from many years ago. I recognize little else, but the toys are definitely mine. Why would I remember them and nothing else?
My reverie is broken by Allison's comment. “I love this poem,” she declares.
“What poem?” I ask as I turn around.
“Footprints. You have this piece on the wall.” She indicates a piece of wood with the poem printed on it.
I read it. It is a poem about God taking care of us in our hour of greatest need. “I know this. This belonged to my grandfather. I got it when he died.”
“Are you Christian?” she asks.
“I might be. I have a couple Bibles,” I speculate.
She looks at the flag. “And a big flag. Perhaps you are a Conservative,” she says accusingly.
I think about this for a moment. “I don't think so. I'm not sure why, but I don't think so.”
She places a hand gently on my shoulder. “Don't worry. I'll still help you, even if you turn out to be conservative.”
I grin. “Thank you. That is very comforting.”