creative writing?
rough work in progress...don't comment
Hello empty. The light is turned down low, the candle is dim and the fire is getting tired of dancing. Soon the base of the flame will run out of resources and an upward spiral of a thin less then billowy smoke will be produced, soon there will be no evidence of any light ever existing in my own personal sanctuary, soon the pain will be gone, soon I will have dreams about ex-crushes and current porn stars, soon I will wake up with a stiff discomfort in my shorts, soon, oh so soon. I fall asleep watching the shadows of my figurine collection fighting each other on my wall produced by my vanilla scented candle.
I wake up just the way I had anticipated, so I take care of some business and crawl out of bed. My bones crack and my muscles ache as I tip toe to my kitchen to get some fuel for the day. Mr. Fridge is densely populated with beer, water, baking soda, left over Chinese food, and something that resembles pizza but is probably meat loaf... or perhaps lasagna. I decide to eat out today, so I throw on a cap, a pair of shoes and hit the town. That empty, cold New England air fills my lungs and wakes up the parts of me that tried pretending they were still in bed. The heat of my furnace isn't here to pamper me, I am cold but I am alive. I watch my breath leave my body and it reminds me of cigarette smoke so I reach in my pocket and pull out my pack. I bum a lighter off an innocent bystander that probably wakes up every morning dreading any interaction with a human that doesn't fit their acceptable standards of living. Yes sir I am a fucking low life, yes sir I do not have anything going good in my life, I will cut myself open on this sidewalk and spill my guts like its my stage in my one man show of despair, now may I please borrow your fucking lighter for just a second. I light up. It burns slow and feels smooth in my subpar lungs. I walk by many people, mostly business types, a few families killing time before church, vacations,doctors appointments, divorce court hearings or whatever it is families do together in mid week at 9 a.m
"She cheated on me your honor, lock her up, throw away the key! Make the kids stay with her mother, I can't watch them I am too busy with my new wife. You might remember her, she graduated last year from a local high school. Yes I realize I am a 45 year old man, but I love her for her mind, her personality, not her cheerleader body. What a fuck though." is all I hear when I think about divorce in todays society. I get to a cafe and waste some money on something I am going to shit out in a few hours anyway. Coffee black with two sugars and a bran muffin. I don't like the taste of either, but they give me what I need to stay awake and not go into convulsions from lack of nutrition. I think very low of everyone I see, I know all of their secrets, all of the things they are too ashamed to admit without even sharing a hello. No one is pure anymore, no one cares about anyone but themselves, which is a great incentive to keep to myself. Then again when you're as alone as me its easy to keep to yourself, its too late to be happy anyway. Stuck in a mental limbo. Stuck on her. Moving on, like I have been doing for the last seven years.
I used to know a guy that paid someone to get his wife drunk and take advantage of her at a family party. Thats right he wanted a stranger to fuck his wife so he could keep his earnings and legally "divorce the bitch and the kids." He purposely left with his brother-in-law to get more ice and left his drunk wife passed out in a bedroom, he timed it just right and in his genius plan he was going to walk in on this guy, this second cousin, this friend of the family plowing his wife and file for divorce and win the case, deem her an adulteress and get away scot-free, the house would be his, the 401k would be his, everything would be his, genius, pure genius. When reality struck he noticed his wife was his seventeen year old daughter instead. His wife was passed out on top of the coats on the ground. Seems the open bar wasn't properly guarded by adults, and little Becky got a little crazy with her new friend Jack Daniels, and then she got even more crazy with her new friend we will call John Doe. The husband was furious, he was rip-shit, his temper sparked and he was not in control of his actions and beat the man to death. He was sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder, I miss you pop. The bottom line is we all want newer, less mileage, and more economically friendly. This isn't 1950, oil is scarce and valuable so who doesn't want a young sex vixen to ride? "Buckle up, its the law", or "no glove, no love". It's all the same. Safety first or pay the consequences. This doesn't really mean anything to you, but then again you don't really mean anything to me.
After my dad took the one way bus to Ass Fuck University my mom remarried some Republican, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-everything prick from Connecticut. He tried so hard to be a father figure but it was way too late for me. I was sixteen and I had already lost faith in everything. So make a long story short I packed up one night and stole his car and left him, my mom, and my slut sister for greener pastures and I never looked back, I never regretted it, I never spoke to them again. I found home in New Jersey, I got a job washing cars and found a place I could afford. The job was under the table and the apartment was rented out by my boss so I didn't have much to worry about when it came to legalities. I just kept to my self. I breathed, lived, ate, shit, snorted, smoked, and puked absolute anonymity. I worked hard and started developing quite a little nest egg. All I spent money on was what little food I needed, and my rent so I had wads of cash in no time. Money was never a problem. Everything else has always been a problem however.
Two years later I found myself in a bit of a quandary, I was minding my own business just doing what needed to be done to live when she walked up. That dirty cunt came into my life and made everything more complicated. She made me feel like no one has ever. I'll never forgive her for being who she was, I'll never forgive her for smiling. I never planned on being happy, I never foresaw myself holding a girl, or kissing a girl , or telling a girl I loved her but as soon as Hope showed up my carefree life was gone.
continued...
Hope came the first summer I was here in New Jersey. She wasn't a Jersey girl though, she had a slight New York accent that rolled off her tongue and made me want to analyze every syllable, her sentences were more like songs I could listen to over and over again. "Hey, got a quarter?" is all she said, but it was enough. I always found begging so sexy in a woman. "What?" I said to the plain looking girl leaning on the soda machine. She wasn't dressed to impress, she was just dressed. Her feet were draped in a simple shoe with her trip hazard shoe laces unlaced and ready to take her for a digger. Her jeans were covered in dirt, tattered, and torn which probably meant they cost a fortune and she wasn't a mere servant girl. Her tank top screamed summer, the logo on it looked familiar but it wasn't something I could put my finger on, it was a band of some sort, probably one I had listened to in my previous life. "No, I'm sorry I don't." I lied to her. I wasn't much of a conversationalist so I went back to work. She started checking the soda machines coin release tray for change, something I had done a thousand times before. "There's nothing in there. I already looked." just came out, I didn't want to talk to her but I did, something came over me. I walked away trying to act uninterested, I disappeared into the office where the A/C could cool me off. She followed shortly, I was just looking at my appointments for the day when she waltzed in, setting off the annoying bell tied to the door. "Whats your name? Are you new here?" I lied and told her my name was Jacob. Truth is I lied to everyone I knew in town. They all thought my name was Jacob. Truth is I don't even remember my real name anymore. I told her I have always lived here, but just started work. She looked about my age, seventeen or so, she just stared at me twirling a piece of hair in her finger with a friendly smirk on her face. It was the kind of smirk that could really get me in trouble. I never had much luck with girls back home so there wasn't much Hope for me here so I didn't pay much attention to trying to impress her, "Look do you need anything? I have a lot of work to do, I can't talk." I pushed her away, she left without a trace, no apology, no goodbye she just flat out left, maybe we really did have something in common. I realized I didn't want her to leave when I didn't hear that annoying bell on her way out, I just heard her foot steps, her worn shoes made a slap like sound on the tile floor of the office, the quieter they got the louder the ringing in my ears got, when the door shut behind her all sound stopped and I could hear myself aging, I could hear my blood flowing and my hair growing. Maybe I really had a problem. I pushed away the first person to give me the time of day besides the dirty Italian scoundrel that employs me. I brushed it off, convinced myself I was fine, convinced myself I was better off alone and went back to work.
I had nearly forgotten about her when she came back a week later, with a quarter. She put it in the slot and got a Pepsi. She ignored me, she didn't even look at me this time, she got her soda and started walking towards the shops in town. I didn't pay much attention to her. Who am I kidding, to this day I remember what she was wearing that afternoon, to this day I know she walked into the used clothes store across the street. I could tell you how many steps she took from the soda machine to the door of the shop if I really thought about it. Something came over me and I followed. I waited a few minutes, finished up what I was working on and strolled across the street, and entered. I noticed her in the back so I started browsing without making eye contact, I pretended I was shopping which wasn't that hard to do, I'm no actor but most the things I owned were from this shop so it wasn't hard to look like I was interested to what was in front of me. I looked up again and she was gone, I feared I had lost her again so I turned around and started to leave, immediately bumping into her when I pulled my swift 180. "Following me? No work to do today? Do you always stalk people?" I'd known her a total of three minutes between the two meetings and I already knew she always asked questions in multiples, I liked it.
"What? No I'm on break and I got my shirt dirty so I needed another one. I didn't even know you would be here." I know I didn't sound that convincing by the way she looked at me.
"So Jacob, I'm Hope, and you're shirts clean. Try again." she giggled, her laugh was obnoxious, but cute, something I wanted to hear over and over again.
I grabbed the first shirt I saw off the shelf and walked around her towards the registers. They rang me up at a dollar and twenty five cents. I reached in my pockets and pulled out a dollar, "Thats all I have." I knew what was coming next, and it stung my pride, her voice was like heaven and hell mixed into one sound as she said "Need a quarter Jacob?" Hope was directly behind me holding a shiny quarter in front of her. She was enjoying this too much, I put the shirt on the counter next to my dignity, put my dollar back in my pocket and left the shop. I felt like a fool, I started to realize why I kept to myself, I had always managed to make an ass of myself. Walking across the street back to work I almost got in a fight with two different cars. The screeching of breaks followed by horns and muttering of something from the drivers didn't phase me, I was too fired up to care.
"You know, it wouldn't kill you to be friendly for two seconds. I didn't mean to be a bitch, I was just trying to help you out."
"I don't need your help, I don't need help from anyone." I must of sounded like such a proud independent guy, or an asshole. Chances are I sounded like an asshole. I don't know why she kept trying, I would of given up if I were her but she was determined. I never found out what she saw in myself that I never saw but she was pretty determined to talk to me. After a while she got good at it, blocking out the mean things I said and only hearing what she wanted to hear, the few sincere things that came out of my mouth. I sat on the steps and pulled out a cigarette, and then started searching for a lighter, before I was done checking my second pocket she had a match lit right in front of me, she was like a Swiss Army Girl, she had everything I needed right when I needed it. "I thought you didn't need help from anybody? Got one of those for me?" She sat next to me on the steps, killing herself with me, I know its sad but I felt really close to her, sharing a cigarette, not even talking. Half way through she realized I wasn't much of a conversationalist so she started talking for both of us telling me about herself. She was from upstate New York, her parents were both big shot lawyers with trust funds, bank accounts, checking accounts and stock shares worth a fortune. I've met rich people before, and she wasn't one of them. She didn't care about money, she went to a private all girl school with all the richest peoples beautiful seedlings but she wanted nothing more then to go to public school with normal kids. She told me how much she hated every snobby person she knew back home. She was more and more like me every second. We sat there for a while, her talking and me listening. Before we knew it the sun was going down. I punched out on my time card, I said goodbye and headed for home. "Where do you live? Do you want some company?"
Before I knew it Hope was at my house, sitting on my hand me down couch drinking cheap beer talking about god knows what. She looked good sitting on my couch, I of course was across the room sitting on the floor many beers beyond her being a drunken coward afraid of the opposite sex. She never asked me about my place, or where my family was. I guess she noticed the lack of pictures and drew out some tragic scenes in her head involving all my family dying in a car accident or being shot during a bank robbery. Six beers later I started to talk, not really about my personal life but just general talk. I told her I didn't have much friends and that I generally wasn't much of a people person. We both liked art and shared a few favorite painters. It was a start, she didn't get much out of me but she got more then anyone has in a long while. The rest of that night was blurry, I must have passed out at some point because I woke up the next morning in the same spot I remember being in the night before, and Hope was gone. I remember Hoping she would show up again.
Hello empty. The light is turned down low, the candle is dim and the fire is getting tired of dancing. Soon the base of the flame will run out of resources and an upward spiral of a thin less then billowy smoke will be produced, soon there will be no evidence of any light ever existing in my own personal sanctuary, soon the pain will be gone, soon I will have dreams about ex-crushes and current porn stars, soon I will wake up with a stiff discomfort in my shorts, soon, oh so soon. I fall asleep watching the shadows of my figurine collection fighting each other on my wall produced by my vanilla scented candle.
I wake up just the way I had anticipated, so I take care of some business and crawl out of bed. My bones crack and my muscles ache as I tip toe to my kitchen to get some fuel for the day. Mr. Fridge is densely populated with beer, water, baking soda, left over Chinese food, and something that resembles pizza but is probably meat loaf... or perhaps lasagna. I decide to eat out today, so I throw on a cap, a pair of shoes and hit the town. That empty, cold New England air fills my lungs and wakes up the parts of me that tried pretending they were still in bed. The heat of my furnace isn't here to pamper me, I am cold but I am alive. I watch my breath leave my body and it reminds me of cigarette smoke so I reach in my pocket and pull out my pack. I bum a lighter off an innocent bystander that probably wakes up every morning dreading any interaction with a human that doesn't fit their acceptable standards of living. Yes sir I am a fucking low life, yes sir I do not have anything going good in my life, I will cut myself open on this sidewalk and spill my guts like its my stage in my one man show of despair, now may I please borrow your fucking lighter for just a second. I light up. It burns slow and feels smooth in my subpar lungs. I walk by many people, mostly business types, a few families killing time before church, vacations,doctors appointments, divorce court hearings or whatever it is families do together in mid week at 9 a.m
"She cheated on me your honor, lock her up, throw away the key! Make the kids stay with her mother, I can't watch them I am too busy with my new wife. You might remember her, she graduated last year from a local high school. Yes I realize I am a 45 year old man, but I love her for her mind, her personality, not her cheerleader body. What a fuck though." is all I hear when I think about divorce in todays society. I get to a cafe and waste some money on something I am going to shit out in a few hours anyway. Coffee black with two sugars and a bran muffin. I don't like the taste of either, but they give me what I need to stay awake and not go into convulsions from lack of nutrition. I think very low of everyone I see, I know all of their secrets, all of the things they are too ashamed to admit without even sharing a hello. No one is pure anymore, no one cares about anyone but themselves, which is a great incentive to keep to myself. Then again when you're as alone as me its easy to keep to yourself, its too late to be happy anyway. Stuck in a mental limbo. Stuck on her. Moving on, like I have been doing for the last seven years.
I used to know a guy that paid someone to get his wife drunk and take advantage of her at a family party. Thats right he wanted a stranger to fuck his wife so he could keep his earnings and legally "divorce the bitch and the kids." He purposely left with his brother-in-law to get more ice and left his drunk wife passed out in a bedroom, he timed it just right and in his genius plan he was going to walk in on this guy, this second cousin, this friend of the family plowing his wife and file for divorce and win the case, deem her an adulteress and get away scot-free, the house would be his, the 401k would be his, everything would be his, genius, pure genius. When reality struck he noticed his wife was his seventeen year old daughter instead. His wife was passed out on top of the coats on the ground. Seems the open bar wasn't properly guarded by adults, and little Becky got a little crazy with her new friend Jack Daniels, and then she got even more crazy with her new friend we will call John Doe. The husband was furious, he was rip-shit, his temper sparked and he was not in control of his actions and beat the man to death. He was sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder, I miss you pop. The bottom line is we all want newer, less mileage, and more economically friendly. This isn't 1950, oil is scarce and valuable so who doesn't want a young sex vixen to ride? "Buckle up, its the law", or "no glove, no love". It's all the same. Safety first or pay the consequences. This doesn't really mean anything to you, but then again you don't really mean anything to me.
After my dad took the one way bus to Ass Fuck University my mom remarried some Republican, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-everything prick from Connecticut. He tried so hard to be a father figure but it was way too late for me. I was sixteen and I had already lost faith in everything. So make a long story short I packed up one night and stole his car and left him, my mom, and my slut sister for greener pastures and I never looked back, I never regretted it, I never spoke to them again. I found home in New Jersey, I got a job washing cars and found a place I could afford. The job was under the table and the apartment was rented out by my boss so I didn't have much to worry about when it came to legalities. I just kept to my self. I breathed, lived, ate, shit, snorted, smoked, and puked absolute anonymity. I worked hard and started developing quite a little nest egg. All I spent money on was what little food I needed, and my rent so I had wads of cash in no time. Money was never a problem. Everything else has always been a problem however.
Two years later I found myself in a bit of a quandary, I was minding my own business just doing what needed to be done to live when she walked up. That dirty cunt came into my life and made everything more complicated. She made me feel like no one has ever. I'll never forgive her for being who she was, I'll never forgive her for smiling. I never planned on being happy, I never foresaw myself holding a girl, or kissing a girl , or telling a girl I loved her but as soon as Hope showed up my carefree life was gone.
continued...
Hope came the first summer I was here in New Jersey. She wasn't a Jersey girl though, she had a slight New York accent that rolled off her tongue and made me want to analyze every syllable, her sentences were more like songs I could listen to over and over again. "Hey, got a quarter?" is all she said, but it was enough. I always found begging so sexy in a woman. "What?" I said to the plain looking girl leaning on the soda machine. She wasn't dressed to impress, she was just dressed. Her feet were draped in a simple shoe with her trip hazard shoe laces unlaced and ready to take her for a digger. Her jeans were covered in dirt, tattered, and torn which probably meant they cost a fortune and she wasn't a mere servant girl. Her tank top screamed summer, the logo on it looked familiar but it wasn't something I could put my finger on, it was a band of some sort, probably one I had listened to in my previous life. "No, I'm sorry I don't." I lied to her. I wasn't much of a conversationalist so I went back to work. She started checking the soda machines coin release tray for change, something I had done a thousand times before. "There's nothing in there. I already looked." just came out, I didn't want to talk to her but I did, something came over me. I walked away trying to act uninterested, I disappeared into the office where the A/C could cool me off. She followed shortly, I was just looking at my appointments for the day when she waltzed in, setting off the annoying bell tied to the door. "Whats your name? Are you new here?" I lied and told her my name was Jacob. Truth is I lied to everyone I knew in town. They all thought my name was Jacob. Truth is I don't even remember my real name anymore. I told her I have always lived here, but just started work. She looked about my age, seventeen or so, she just stared at me twirling a piece of hair in her finger with a friendly smirk on her face. It was the kind of smirk that could really get me in trouble. I never had much luck with girls back home so there wasn't much Hope for me here so I didn't pay much attention to trying to impress her, "Look do you need anything? I have a lot of work to do, I can't talk." I pushed her away, she left without a trace, no apology, no goodbye she just flat out left, maybe we really did have something in common. I realized I didn't want her to leave when I didn't hear that annoying bell on her way out, I just heard her foot steps, her worn shoes made a slap like sound on the tile floor of the office, the quieter they got the louder the ringing in my ears got, when the door shut behind her all sound stopped and I could hear myself aging, I could hear my blood flowing and my hair growing. Maybe I really had a problem. I pushed away the first person to give me the time of day besides the dirty Italian scoundrel that employs me. I brushed it off, convinced myself I was fine, convinced myself I was better off alone and went back to work.
I had nearly forgotten about her when she came back a week later, with a quarter. She put it in the slot and got a Pepsi. She ignored me, she didn't even look at me this time, she got her soda and started walking towards the shops in town. I didn't pay much attention to her. Who am I kidding, to this day I remember what she was wearing that afternoon, to this day I know she walked into the used clothes store across the street. I could tell you how many steps she took from the soda machine to the door of the shop if I really thought about it. Something came over me and I followed. I waited a few minutes, finished up what I was working on and strolled across the street, and entered. I noticed her in the back so I started browsing without making eye contact, I pretended I was shopping which wasn't that hard to do, I'm no actor but most the things I owned were from this shop so it wasn't hard to look like I was interested to what was in front of me. I looked up again and she was gone, I feared I had lost her again so I turned around and started to leave, immediately bumping into her when I pulled my swift 180. "Following me? No work to do today? Do you always stalk people?" I'd known her a total of three minutes between the two meetings and I already knew she always asked questions in multiples, I liked it.
"What? No I'm on break and I got my shirt dirty so I needed another one. I didn't even know you would be here." I know I didn't sound that convincing by the way she looked at me.
"So Jacob, I'm Hope, and you're shirts clean. Try again." she giggled, her laugh was obnoxious, but cute, something I wanted to hear over and over again.
I grabbed the first shirt I saw off the shelf and walked around her towards the registers. They rang me up at a dollar and twenty five cents. I reached in my pockets and pulled out a dollar, "Thats all I have." I knew what was coming next, and it stung my pride, her voice was like heaven and hell mixed into one sound as she said "Need a quarter Jacob?" Hope was directly behind me holding a shiny quarter in front of her. She was enjoying this too much, I put the shirt on the counter next to my dignity, put my dollar back in my pocket and left the shop. I felt like a fool, I started to realize why I kept to myself, I had always managed to make an ass of myself. Walking across the street back to work I almost got in a fight with two different cars. The screeching of breaks followed by horns and muttering of something from the drivers didn't phase me, I was too fired up to care.
"You know, it wouldn't kill you to be friendly for two seconds. I didn't mean to be a bitch, I was just trying to help you out."
"I don't need your help, I don't need help from anyone." I must of sounded like such a proud independent guy, or an asshole. Chances are I sounded like an asshole. I don't know why she kept trying, I would of given up if I were her but she was determined. I never found out what she saw in myself that I never saw but she was pretty determined to talk to me. After a while she got good at it, blocking out the mean things I said and only hearing what she wanted to hear, the few sincere things that came out of my mouth. I sat on the steps and pulled out a cigarette, and then started searching for a lighter, before I was done checking my second pocket she had a match lit right in front of me, she was like a Swiss Army Girl, she had everything I needed right when I needed it. "I thought you didn't need help from anybody? Got one of those for me?" She sat next to me on the steps, killing herself with me, I know its sad but I felt really close to her, sharing a cigarette, not even talking. Half way through she realized I wasn't much of a conversationalist so she started talking for both of us telling me about herself. She was from upstate New York, her parents were both big shot lawyers with trust funds, bank accounts, checking accounts and stock shares worth a fortune. I've met rich people before, and she wasn't one of them. She didn't care about money, she went to a private all girl school with all the richest peoples beautiful seedlings but she wanted nothing more then to go to public school with normal kids. She told me how much she hated every snobby person she knew back home. She was more and more like me every second. We sat there for a while, her talking and me listening. Before we knew it the sun was going down. I punched out on my time card, I said goodbye and headed for home. "Where do you live? Do you want some company?"
Before I knew it Hope was at my house, sitting on my hand me down couch drinking cheap beer talking about god knows what. She looked good sitting on my couch, I of course was across the room sitting on the floor many beers beyond her being a drunken coward afraid of the opposite sex. She never asked me about my place, or where my family was. I guess she noticed the lack of pictures and drew out some tragic scenes in her head involving all my family dying in a car accident or being shot during a bank robbery. Six beers later I started to talk, not really about my personal life but just general talk. I told her I didn't have much friends and that I generally wasn't much of a people person. We both liked art and shared a few favorite painters. It was a start, she didn't get much out of me but she got more then anyone has in a long while. The rest of that night was blurry, I must have passed out at some point because I woke up the next morning in the same spot I remember being in the night before, and Hope was gone. I remember Hoping she would show up again.