my first half-finished-ish greta story
So, I wrote this awhile ago but I never posted it. It's not technically finished, because it's organized alphabetically, and I only got to K before giving up. If I ever add to this, which I probably will at some point, I'll combine it with this post so I don't have a thousand pieces of one story all over the place.
ANYWAYS. This is inspired by a prompt over at we_are_cities. It's 2,534 words and the longest bandom thing I've ever written. It centers around Greta and how she develops a stealing habit which starts in high school and stays with her on tour.
A) The first thing Greta steals is a dinner plate. The moment she sees it sitting there in her grandmother's china cabinet with its glaringly bright white glaze finish sparkling through the glass doors, she knows she has to have it. She peers in through the gold accented glass as her eyes scan the pink and navy floral pattern that skirts the plate like oceans skirt sand. She tells herself, stop Greta you don't need that plate you've got a bunch of paper ones at home and bonus: you don't have to wash them and you don't need that stupid beautiful breathtaking expensive looking okay just take it your grandmother won't notice she's pretty much blind anyway so she opens the cabinet doors. She reaches a hand out and traces a lone flower with the tip of her index finger, feeling the cold Oberon fine bone china press back against it as if yearning for the attention, and Greta almost thinks the white china turns an embarrassed shade of pink, maybe blushing from being noticed for the first time behind the cabinet's shadowed glass, between the assortment of less fine china organized around it. Greta peeks back over her shoulder to make sure her grandmother isn't rushing in, batting her cane around like it's the Fly Swatting Olympics and she's ready to take the gold. Greta grabs the plate and places it neatly in her messenger bag, somewhat safely between her English and math books, letting words and numbers wrap themselves protectively around the plate like a moat wraps around a castle. And for some reason, after a slight adrenaline rush and the expected short-lived guilt trip, Greta seems happier with the plate there with her rather than on a shelf to be forgotten.
B) The second thing Greta steals is a barrel of apples. She doesn't exactly mean to steal it at first, but all the apples she picks either end up rotten, bruised or inhabited by a happy family of worms and, although Greta would steal a worm, she would never steal a family. Greta eyes the barrel of apples through the weaving branches of a small tree and decides whether or not to take them. She thinks, well it's not very fair that those kids get all those apples and their parents get all those apples plus all the apples they can buy at the store and I can't because I'm kind of poor and apple picking is a rare occasion for me anyway and she looks from her nearly empty bucket to the one filled to the brim about 20 feet away, and those apples should be mine, even if there are a few worms here and there, plus aren't those kids being selfish by not sharing with all the other apple pickers? Greta nods to herself and maybe nods mentally at the neighboring apple pickers, imagining them nodding along and glaring angrily and throwing pitchforks at the apple-hogging family across the field. With a final cheering-on from the crowd of apple pickers in her head, Greta moves stealthily toward the full barrel while the family is near another row of trees facing the opposite direction. Quickly, she switches her barrel with theirs and runs back, staggering and slowing slightly as if the barrel is getting heavier and heavier with each heave onward. After falling completely out of view, Greta smiles to herself, staring happily and hungrily at the barrel of apples slung in her arms. A greedy kind of love pours over her like sunlight as she picks the reddest apple and bites down into it, imagining Snow White's poisonous death as something not-so-bad.
C) The third thing Greta steals is her brother's Hot Fuss CD. She sneaks into his bedroom late at night, looking for something to distract her from upcoming exams and her inevitable future of dismal days. She picks up the CD, thinking, I totally forgot about this band, wow, they still exist? And her mood is suddenly through the roof, and maybe she kind of likes how music can do that to her sometimes. She pops the CD into her radio, presses play and we took a walk that night but it wasn't the same pours through the speakers like absinthe and suddenly all these words are coming at her, attacking her brain, and now she can't get certain verses out of her head. I wanna shine on in the hearts of men nearly punches her in the gut as the drummer boy in her ear beats soft echoes of time truth and heart in the background and Greta thinks maybe she can steal those things, too.
D) The fourth thing Greta steals is a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. She watches her dad walk up and down the halls, pacing back and forth, going crazy looking for his cigarettes but she never says a word as the soft-sharp red corner of the pack digs itself into her palm. She places the pack on the counter in her pink bathroom, making sure to close the door behind her, and she stares at the cigarettes for so long that it's as if time has given up on her and moved on to other important things. She thinks I can totally smoke these, or just one, or two maybe, and I won't die or anything, no, I'll just be living a little as she rip-roars through her cabinets in search of a long forgotten, possibly broken lighter. She finds one, lights a cigarette and takes a long drag, doing all the right things as she's seen Bob do for so long and she wonders why the habit hadn't rubbed off on her much earlier, like losing car keys and picking at eyelashes had. She waits for the foreign feeling of Zen to hit her like a bee sting, but it doesn't. Instead, a crawling fog of no emotion wraps itself around her shoulder and she can almost hear its clouded body rumble and whisper straight into her cerebellum I'm your new friend, Marl. Greta smokes the rest of the pack, merely three cigarettes, in search of that same friendly seducing echo, but all she feels are the remnants of cool calming breath touching at her spine like a long lost lover touches a "good morning" whispered to their one and only by someone else. Greta thinks hard, staring at the now empty pack, and vows never to smoke again. She doesn't.
E) The fifth thing Greta steals is Ryan's favorite fountain pen. Every time she sees it, it's in Ryan's hand-never left on a notebook, never thrown on the counter top. So when she sees it sitting between the cushions of the couch on Panic's bus, she can't help but reach out and touch it. She holds it in her hand, feeling the sharp tip of the pen create creases everywhere it curves into her fingers and Greta nearly falls in love with it right then. She envisions writing with it, writing down phone numbers and lyrics and poetry and directions and ingredients and grocery lists. She studies its gold encrusted cap and its dark blue coat, wondering if Ryan treats it well by writing nice things. She thinks I can probably write nicer things than Ryan can as she sneaks the pen into her purse, making sure to keep quiet about it, look both ways before crossing the street, smile for the camera, remember the golden rule, don’t steal... or, maybe, do.
F) The sixth thing Greta steals is a sostenuto pedal. The Hush Sound is playing in some smaller city in the middle of two bigger cities when Greta notices that her piano does not sound like it used to. It used to play long and beautiful; chords that were not right sounded right anyway. Now the sound clogs up and seems almost nervous and bashful and classic, maybe, but not grand. Greta has this new theory that the more sostenuto pedals she has, the longer the chords she plays will ring out and intertwine with peoples' eardrums and the more time she'll have to win people over through sound rather than charm and beauty. She takes the pedal from some music store in downtown Somewhere before rehearsal and right away, she feels better about it. She can feel the legato already styling its way around the legs of her piano like poison ivy and an articulate sort of poise falls over her. At this point, she could be Ray Charles or Beethoven or Bach or Billy Joel and no one would know the difference. Greta thinks maybe stealing sostenuto is like stealing music and she feels guilty for awhile. But then Bob is smiling and so is Chris and so is Darren and then Greta thinks okay, maybe stealing sostenuto is like stealing a little music but stealing more happiness because Greta is kind of smiling, too.
G) The seventh thing Greta steals is a kiss from Alex Greenwald. It's near the end of tour and everyone's half-sad, half-relieved, except Greta is all-sad and Alex is all-in-love-with-her-maybe. People are all over the place-Bob's in the back playing Call of Duty with Chris, Darren is on Panic's bus, all of Phantom Planet is nowhere to be found, as per usual, except Alex. Alex is sitting on the couch, curled up with Greta's blanket watching Breakfast Club and Greta is sitting there next to him, kind of not paying attention to the movie at all because uh, Alex is curled up in her blanket and she's kind of mad and cold. She goes to tug the blanket away and Alex says, "You try to take away the warmth and I'm crackin' skulls." Greta tries not to smile as Alex sighs and drapes himself and the blanket over her, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling into her neck like he's finally home. They watch the movie like that for awhile, forgetting about tour and the constant haze of dwindling music and drugs and the fact that everything changes. It's near the end of the movie when Greta decides to kiss him and she can feel Alex smile into her mouth as Anthony Michael Hall says you see us as you want to see us in the simplest terms the most convenient definitions. There is really no other reasoning behind it other than the fact that she likes him and Alex likes her and it's tour and no one's around and maybe she didn't even really "steal" the kiss at all.
H) The eighth thing Greta steals is the ocean sound in seashells. It's the last day of tour and everyone is back at the hotel celebrating while she digs her heels into Atlantic coast sand, unwinding the repetitive piano chords and guitar riffs from her mind. A painful sting on the ball of her foot breaks her thoughts into pretty pieces like stained glass. She bends down to pick up the coiled crisp-edged shell and studies it-the way its constellation of pink and white ocean stains seem to give away the idea of it being pulled back and forth between land and sea. She puts the shell to her ear, listening in as the sound waves in front of her echo through it like her ear is the sand and the sound is the ocean. She laughs to herself, thinking, it could be in my pocket, all of those waves, everything they've ever touched, all of it here with me all the time as she runs back to the hotel, the shell clutched to her chest, so close to her heart that it nearly drowns in Greta's saltwater love.
I) The ninth thing Greta steals is Jon's shadow. It's a sunny melted-ice-cream day in June when Greta notices the way Jon slouches over like he's always trying to shrug the world from one shoulder to the other-an information-filled backpack glued to the micro fibers of his t-shirt. She's sitting outside under a tree near a park near the bus near a venue in her white floral skirt, practically perfect with her golden hair cascading like curtains over her back. She's reading T. S. Eliot and thinking about how everything is sweet and simple and she wants to fix everything that isn't, which in this case would be Jon and his Shadow of Doom. She runs over to him, waiting for him to stop skateboarding mindlessly and notice her. He does and she motions for him to follow her back to the cool shade where she was sitting. They run back together and lay down under the tree, both of them quiet and understanding that small talk is not needed. Out of the corner of her eye, Greta watches Jon close his eyelids and brush blades of grass between his fingers, braiding them into patterns without lifting his head to see if they look okay. Greta likes this about Jon, likes the fact that he can just be or not be and have that be the end of it. Greta smiles to herself and lays there next to him for awhile and, before she falls asleep, she hears Brendon call Jon over and as Jon jogs smoothly toward him, she sees that his shoulders are lifted slightly and there is no shadow trailing him, as if maybe it were lost in the pavement somewhere. Greta thinks Jon can do without it anyway.
J) The tenth thing Greta steals is her own sanity. The day Greta tells herself, "The future is mine," well, that's when she really starts to believe it. Greta becomes completely obsessed with this, wants to sleep in sheets made of it and wake up with it pooling in the back of her throat like morning breath. It's in the way Greta explains things lately, like everything could be hers if she could just be everywhere allatonce allthetime. She is brainwashed by the idea of keeping everything she touches, gravity pulling her in all the wrong directions, and the mantra hits her like a goddamn bus: this is mine, this is mine, this is mine. She thinks, maybe some are imprisoned for this, but right now my whole world is free.
K) The eleventh thing Greta steals is infinity. She reaches out and grabs a black hole, fighting and boxing it, folding and pressing it tightly into neat creases until it is a button-up shirt. She ties time into a pretty invisible bow and loops it through her hair. She takes the weather patterns and paints them onto her nails (one nail covered in grey rain, the next in white snow, another in yellow sun rays). She pierces her ears with memory and coats her eyelashes with love like it's war paint. She fastens sine wave bracelets to her wrists and veils her face with lace death, letting the beauty of all things infinite wash over her like a calming gust of eastward wind trailing a cool path up the indents of her spine. And as the universe falls loosely on her shoulders, the world hangs like a keychain from Greta's pocket, somewhat adrift in the jumbled pretentiousness of it all.
ANYWAYS. This is inspired by a prompt over at we_are_cities. It's 2,534 words and the longest bandom thing I've ever written. It centers around Greta and how she develops a stealing habit which starts in high school and stays with her on tour.
A) The first thing Greta steals is a dinner plate. The moment she sees it sitting there in her grandmother's china cabinet with its glaringly bright white glaze finish sparkling through the glass doors, she knows she has to have it. She peers in through the gold accented glass as her eyes scan the pink and navy floral pattern that skirts the plate like oceans skirt sand. She tells herself, stop Greta you don't need that plate you've got a bunch of paper ones at home and bonus: you don't have to wash them and you don't need that stupid beautiful breathtaking expensive looking okay just take it your grandmother won't notice she's pretty much blind anyway so she opens the cabinet doors. She reaches a hand out and traces a lone flower with the tip of her index finger, feeling the cold Oberon fine bone china press back against it as if yearning for the attention, and Greta almost thinks the white china turns an embarrassed shade of pink, maybe blushing from being noticed for the first time behind the cabinet's shadowed glass, between the assortment of less fine china organized around it. Greta peeks back over her shoulder to make sure her grandmother isn't rushing in, batting her cane around like it's the Fly Swatting Olympics and she's ready to take the gold. Greta grabs the plate and places it neatly in her messenger bag, somewhat safely between her English and math books, letting words and numbers wrap themselves protectively around the plate like a moat wraps around a castle. And for some reason, after a slight adrenaline rush and the expected short-lived guilt trip, Greta seems happier with the plate there with her rather than on a shelf to be forgotten.
B) The second thing Greta steals is a barrel of apples. She doesn't exactly mean to steal it at first, but all the apples she picks either end up rotten, bruised or inhabited by a happy family of worms and, although Greta would steal a worm, she would never steal a family. Greta eyes the barrel of apples through the weaving branches of a small tree and decides whether or not to take them. She thinks, well it's not very fair that those kids get all those apples and their parents get all those apples plus all the apples they can buy at the store and I can't because I'm kind of poor and apple picking is a rare occasion for me anyway and she looks from her nearly empty bucket to the one filled to the brim about 20 feet away, and those apples should be mine, even if there are a few worms here and there, plus aren't those kids being selfish by not sharing with all the other apple pickers? Greta nods to herself and maybe nods mentally at the neighboring apple pickers, imagining them nodding along and glaring angrily and throwing pitchforks at the apple-hogging family across the field. With a final cheering-on from the crowd of apple pickers in her head, Greta moves stealthily toward the full barrel while the family is near another row of trees facing the opposite direction. Quickly, she switches her barrel with theirs and runs back, staggering and slowing slightly as if the barrel is getting heavier and heavier with each heave onward. After falling completely out of view, Greta smiles to herself, staring happily and hungrily at the barrel of apples slung in her arms. A greedy kind of love pours over her like sunlight as she picks the reddest apple and bites down into it, imagining Snow White's poisonous death as something not-so-bad.
C) The third thing Greta steals is her brother's Hot Fuss CD. She sneaks into his bedroom late at night, looking for something to distract her from upcoming exams and her inevitable future of dismal days. She picks up the CD, thinking, I totally forgot about this band, wow, they still exist? And her mood is suddenly through the roof, and maybe she kind of likes how music can do that to her sometimes. She pops the CD into her radio, presses play and we took a walk that night but it wasn't the same pours through the speakers like absinthe and suddenly all these words are coming at her, attacking her brain, and now she can't get certain verses out of her head. I wanna shine on in the hearts of men nearly punches her in the gut as the drummer boy in her ear beats soft echoes of time truth and heart in the background and Greta thinks maybe she can steal those things, too.
D) The fourth thing Greta steals is a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. She watches her dad walk up and down the halls, pacing back and forth, going crazy looking for his cigarettes but she never says a word as the soft-sharp red corner of the pack digs itself into her palm. She places the pack on the counter in her pink bathroom, making sure to close the door behind her, and she stares at the cigarettes for so long that it's as if time has given up on her and moved on to other important things. She thinks I can totally smoke these, or just one, or two maybe, and I won't die or anything, no, I'll just be living a little as she rip-roars through her cabinets in search of a long forgotten, possibly broken lighter. She finds one, lights a cigarette and takes a long drag, doing all the right things as she's seen Bob do for so long and she wonders why the habit hadn't rubbed off on her much earlier, like losing car keys and picking at eyelashes had. She waits for the foreign feeling of Zen to hit her like a bee sting, but it doesn't. Instead, a crawling fog of no emotion wraps itself around her shoulder and she can almost hear its clouded body rumble and whisper straight into her cerebellum I'm your new friend, Marl. Greta smokes the rest of the pack, merely three cigarettes, in search of that same friendly seducing echo, but all she feels are the remnants of cool calming breath touching at her spine like a long lost lover touches a "good morning" whispered to their one and only by someone else. Greta thinks hard, staring at the now empty pack, and vows never to smoke again. She doesn't.
E) The fifth thing Greta steals is Ryan's favorite fountain pen. Every time she sees it, it's in Ryan's hand-never left on a notebook, never thrown on the counter top. So when she sees it sitting between the cushions of the couch on Panic's bus, she can't help but reach out and touch it. She holds it in her hand, feeling the sharp tip of the pen create creases everywhere it curves into her fingers and Greta nearly falls in love with it right then. She envisions writing with it, writing down phone numbers and lyrics and poetry and directions and ingredients and grocery lists. She studies its gold encrusted cap and its dark blue coat, wondering if Ryan treats it well by writing nice things. She thinks I can probably write nicer things than Ryan can as she sneaks the pen into her purse, making sure to keep quiet about it, look both ways before crossing the street, smile for the camera, remember the golden rule, don’t steal... or, maybe, do.
F) The sixth thing Greta steals is a sostenuto pedal. The Hush Sound is playing in some smaller city in the middle of two bigger cities when Greta notices that her piano does not sound like it used to. It used to play long and beautiful; chords that were not right sounded right anyway. Now the sound clogs up and seems almost nervous and bashful and classic, maybe, but not grand. Greta has this new theory that the more sostenuto pedals she has, the longer the chords she plays will ring out and intertwine with peoples' eardrums and the more time she'll have to win people over through sound rather than charm and beauty. She takes the pedal from some music store in downtown Somewhere before rehearsal and right away, she feels better about it. She can feel the legato already styling its way around the legs of her piano like poison ivy and an articulate sort of poise falls over her. At this point, she could be Ray Charles or Beethoven or Bach or Billy Joel and no one would know the difference. Greta thinks maybe stealing sostenuto is like stealing music and she feels guilty for awhile. But then Bob is smiling and so is Chris and so is Darren and then Greta thinks okay, maybe stealing sostenuto is like stealing a little music but stealing more happiness because Greta is kind of smiling, too.
G) The seventh thing Greta steals is a kiss from Alex Greenwald. It's near the end of tour and everyone's half-sad, half-relieved, except Greta is all-sad and Alex is all-in-love-with-her-maybe. People are all over the place-Bob's in the back playing Call of Duty with Chris, Darren is on Panic's bus, all of Phantom Planet is nowhere to be found, as per usual, except Alex. Alex is sitting on the couch, curled up with Greta's blanket watching Breakfast Club and Greta is sitting there next to him, kind of not paying attention to the movie at all because uh, Alex is curled up in her blanket and she's kind of mad and cold. She goes to tug the blanket away and Alex says, "You try to take away the warmth and I'm crackin' skulls." Greta tries not to smile as Alex sighs and drapes himself and the blanket over her, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling into her neck like he's finally home. They watch the movie like that for awhile, forgetting about tour and the constant haze of dwindling music and drugs and the fact that everything changes. It's near the end of the movie when Greta decides to kiss him and she can feel Alex smile into her mouth as Anthony Michael Hall says you see us as you want to see us in the simplest terms the most convenient definitions. There is really no other reasoning behind it other than the fact that she likes him and Alex likes her and it's tour and no one's around and maybe she didn't even really "steal" the kiss at all.
H) The eighth thing Greta steals is the ocean sound in seashells. It's the last day of tour and everyone is back at the hotel celebrating while she digs her heels into Atlantic coast sand, unwinding the repetitive piano chords and guitar riffs from her mind. A painful sting on the ball of her foot breaks her thoughts into pretty pieces like stained glass. She bends down to pick up the coiled crisp-edged shell and studies it-the way its constellation of pink and white ocean stains seem to give away the idea of it being pulled back and forth between land and sea. She puts the shell to her ear, listening in as the sound waves in front of her echo through it like her ear is the sand and the sound is the ocean. She laughs to herself, thinking, it could be in my pocket, all of those waves, everything they've ever touched, all of it here with me all the time as she runs back to the hotel, the shell clutched to her chest, so close to her heart that it nearly drowns in Greta's saltwater love.
I) The ninth thing Greta steals is Jon's shadow. It's a sunny melted-ice-cream day in June when Greta notices the way Jon slouches over like he's always trying to shrug the world from one shoulder to the other-an information-filled backpack glued to the micro fibers of his t-shirt. She's sitting outside under a tree near a park near the bus near a venue in her white floral skirt, practically perfect with her golden hair cascading like curtains over her back. She's reading T. S. Eliot and thinking about how everything is sweet and simple and she wants to fix everything that isn't, which in this case would be Jon and his Shadow of Doom. She runs over to him, waiting for him to stop skateboarding mindlessly and notice her. He does and she motions for him to follow her back to the cool shade where she was sitting. They run back together and lay down under the tree, both of them quiet and understanding that small talk is not needed. Out of the corner of her eye, Greta watches Jon close his eyelids and brush blades of grass between his fingers, braiding them into patterns without lifting his head to see if they look okay. Greta likes this about Jon, likes the fact that he can just be or not be and have that be the end of it. Greta smiles to herself and lays there next to him for awhile and, before she falls asleep, she hears Brendon call Jon over and as Jon jogs smoothly toward him, she sees that his shoulders are lifted slightly and there is no shadow trailing him, as if maybe it were lost in the pavement somewhere. Greta thinks Jon can do without it anyway.
J) The tenth thing Greta steals is her own sanity. The day Greta tells herself, "The future is mine," well, that's when she really starts to believe it. Greta becomes completely obsessed with this, wants to sleep in sheets made of it and wake up with it pooling in the back of her throat like morning breath. It's in the way Greta explains things lately, like everything could be hers if she could just be everywhere allatonce allthetime. She is brainwashed by the idea of keeping everything she touches, gravity pulling her in all the wrong directions, and the mantra hits her like a goddamn bus: this is mine, this is mine, this is mine. She thinks, maybe some are imprisoned for this, but right now my whole world is free.
K) The eleventh thing Greta steals is infinity. She reaches out and grabs a black hole, fighting and boxing it, folding and pressing it tightly into neat creases until it is a button-up shirt. She ties time into a pretty invisible bow and loops it through her hair. She takes the weather patterns and paints them onto her nails (one nail covered in grey rain, the next in white snow, another in yellow sun rays). She pierces her ears with memory and coats her eyelashes with love like it's war paint. She fastens sine wave bracelets to her wrists and veils her face with lace death, letting the beauty of all things infinite wash over her like a calming gust of eastward wind trailing a cool path up the indents of her spine. And as the universe falls loosely on her shoulders, the world hangs like a keychain from Greta's pocket, somewhat adrift in the jumbled pretentiousness of it all.