Monday 31 October 2011

Entries for a 100 word Short Story competition

 Mothers Talk

My mother looks me up and down. Bundles me into the car, her friend's in the passenger seat. Starts talking, words I don’t understand. Jobs, money, men. They laugh and smoke. The car gets foggy, I cough. No one notices. They blare music from a cassette, my Mother flicks her blonde hair. The friend turns around, cooing. I reach out my pudgy fingers, tugging and laughing. Happy for her gaze to fall on me. The friend takes the hands back. She speaks “Isn’t he cute?” she asks. My mother snorts her disapproval and shakes her head, dismissing me.

Alive

I noticed the first boy at thirteen. He was short, had features like a mouse. I was taller but he ran faster. He played sports and I played video games, behind the sheds. Hiding my Gameboy in my sleeve. In class, I had a Tamagotchi under my desk. I fed him and put him to sleep. Named it after the short boy. I learned nothing because I kept him alive. And one day, the boy kissed me behind the sheds and he called me names after, told everyone what I was. So I hid like always and closed my eyes.

Gypsies

I met a girl on my street when I was a child. She had chocolate hair and amber eyes. She lived in a van. “She ran with the bad children” my mother said. They all called her names but they called me names too. Her father was gruff and he drank something vile from a flask. Her mother was always crying. She’d call for me and show me all her toys. My Mother said “They’ll take your things”. One day my new bike disappeared. That day the girl was gone, my mother was right. She’s always right.

Human Animal

I was wandering on the bank. The drugs in my system were fading, I groaned. And from the sea, I heard meowing. Faint and small. I took a drink of Vodka and stepped over the wall. On the edge of the water was a bag and in the bag a cat. Small and delicate like a baby bird. I picked her up and carried her home. She grew quickly and had babies of her own. Took broken birds home most days. When I cried, she’d crawl into my coat and lick my chin. So I cried less and less everyday.

Like Gold


His eyes glittered golden, matching his freckles. He ended all his sentences in “eh”. “Moe eh?”. He asked how it was and I replied that it was great, spectacular, fantastic. I kissed his neck softly. We were in a field, in the darkness. The light poured from my house as my Mother shouted.
“You better run” I ushered to him, pushing him away. He tried to kiss me but I kicked him. He was hurt I could see it. I turned my back on him and put on my shirt. I signalled to my Mother, that I was indeed alive.

Speed

The things I did for you, my mistress, my guiding light. I did everything you asked, everything you declared . You sent shivers up my spine when I had you, melancholic bliss. All my friends left because I loved you. Others filled the space, ones who loved you as much as I. I did things I regret but god, you were beautiful. Little white pills,  everywhere. I stopped and lost everything that I had found. My friends crawled back in their holes, my euphoria dissipated, filled up again with cold. I wouldn’t go back but you were magical, darling, magical.

Mary

The school looms over me. The pain, they caused, ripe in my bones. Its dark and I pull up my hood. Jumping the gate and falling over the side onto the wet grass. I see the statue, Mary the Mother, my betrayer. Her judgement obvious in her cold stare. I look through my bag and take out the can. The spray paint, I grasp it and start my work. I go for her eyes and I give her a brand new accessory. A pair of black sunglasses and then I leave smiling. Maybe now, she’ll thinking twice before judging me.

Playing Games

Dragons and dwarves and witches, oh my. I keep losing myself to imaginary lands. Where I’m powerful, where the worries I have can be ignored. I sit on my bed and thumb the buttons. The characters moving in majestic and beautiful ways. I look at myself in the mirror afterwards and I want to redraw myself. Take all those pieces and fix them. A longer jaw, less full lips. My cheekbones are higher than I’d like. My amber eyes a little larger. I turn and play my games again and lose myself forgetting my insecurities and learning to live again.

Sugar

Your name (Your message board name and the name you use to speak in OOC): Etch
Character's IRC handle/channel nickname: Sugar
Character's name: Sugar
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Hometown: Kirkwall

Physical Description: Standing at 5’8, Sugar is a sight to behold. Her clothes are made of black leather and covered in expertly placed tears, to give her customers a look at the wares before they buy. Long brown hair reaching far down her back and large blue eyes make her truly beautiful. But behind the hair, if you look closely you can see the slight point of her ears, matched with her rather pointed chin and tiny hands, you’d know she was half elf.

Sugar was born in an alley in Darktown, all she knows of her mother is that she abandoned her. But lucky for Sugar, her cry was loud and she was quickly picked up my an Elven apostate who’d been hiding in the sewers. The elf raised her, never telling her how she was found but only telling her what she needed to know, that her mother loved her but had died. That her Father was overseas and had never returned.
Sugar accepted this, becoming street smart at a young age as her carer had to work long hours as a potions maker in Lowtown. She learned how to use a sword from a man who lived in a hovel near hers, An ex templar who had fallen to bad times and now killed for money and lyrium.
One day when she was 15, her home was raided by the templars. Her surrogate mother dragged off to The Circle and Sugar left all alone. She quickly fled to the ex-templar, tears streaming down her face to tell him to get her surrogate mother out. When the man told her it was impossible that her Mother was gone, Sugar announced she was getting a boat to Rivain to search for her Father. It was then the man told her the truth, how she was abandoned in the dirt. Only across the way from her own home.
She left for Lowtown then, searching for a way to earn some money. She spent months begging for food and struggling to make enough money to survive at all. Every inch of baby fat was lost, and she looked years older than she was. The ex-templar had fed her but he died soon after of a lyrium overdose and she had cleared his home of all the food it contained, stepping over the dead body of her friend. She had tried to lift him onto the bed or take him out to bury him but she was too weak to move him, so he was left for the worms on the dirt floor of his hovel.
On her fifth month on the streets, she had not received any food for days and dragged herself up some steps into Hightown. Hoping a rich noble might take pity on her, none did. What she received were kicks and insults. She dragged herself through a brightly lit door, the house was filled with people. She walked as quickly as she could into a side room and curled up, exhausted, she went to sleep.
She woke up to a woman shaking her, “My name is Madam Lusine”. “What are you doing in The Blooming Rose?”. Lusine was about to throw the urchin back onto the streets but she saw worth in the girl. The high cheek bones and long legs could make a lot of money. Maker knew the girl needed the job. “Lets get you fed and washed” said the woman. Her eyes bright as her smile was fake. She dragged the girl to the kitchen and gave her a bowl of stew and a lump of bread. Sugar ate it all down, helping herself to seconds and thirds. Lusine then brought out a wash basin and cleaned the girl, putting her in new clothes.
“Oh you are beautiful” smiled Lusine. “Whats your name and where are you from?”
The girl looked up at the saviour and told her she was from Darktown, That her name was Amelia and all that had happened in the last few months. Lusine then offered her a job, not specifying the exact type of work she would be expected to do but before it was made clear, Sugar had signed the contract. “Food and Lodging for a twenty years in exchange for her beauty”. Lusine also gave her a new name, Sugar.
She was trained by Lusine, refusing on a number of occasions but the contract was waved in her face, If she left she was told she'd die, that the guards would arrest her so she stayed and worked but she still shivers every time she leads a new man upstairs.
Her dream is to find a way out, but Lusine makes sure that she doesn’t leave unless on an outside job. She thinks about life back in Darktown and tried many times to see her surrogate mother in The Gallows but to no avail.

On her rest day she is locked in her room. Her windows were glued shut because of other escape attempts and The Harbormaster at The Docks was warned to not let her on any ships. When she was 17, she climbed out her window and fled to a ship to Rivain unfortunately the ship captain had seen her in The Rose before. He tied her hands with rope and dragged her back to Lusine. When her room is cleaned, she is locked in another room so that her nimple fingers cannot steal a key.

Friday 28 October 2011

Vile

The guilt in your eyes reeks
Sniffed by girls in paper skirts
Who wander aimlessly
Here
And there
Looking for answers
When more questions are on the cards

A domino effect in your blood
Your pulse racing
Your breath through me
In
And out
You are the forgotten one
For not knowing who you are

Blue lies and green
Sonnets sung to a baroness
To teach your children
Right
And Wrong
To mask your words
In the vile anger of denial

The Problem With Dragons

I think I have a problem, It may indeed warrant an intervention. I am obsessed with Dragon Age 2.

I have played the game eight times, I could do the quests without the map. I know all the words mentioned in the game of Qunari, Dalish and Arcanum. I could quote dialogue from nearly any quest. I role play online as a character in Dragon Age 2 that I made up. I wrote a poem from my character to a character who also doesn’t exist. I’ve completed the game on Hard Mode and it took me 84 hours. I am now playing on Nightmare which has already took me 40 hours and I’m not even half way through. I bought the game on PC just to see what modded characters look like. I bought a poster and displayed it over my bed, so that when I wake up in the morning the first thing I see is Dragon Age 2. I have deep connections with all the characters to the point that I did a play through where I was friends with everyone, which is really difficult because two of the characters have completely opposite viewpoints. I wear a red bandana round my wrist because my favourite character in the game wears one. I bought a chantry amulet online. I tried to dye my hair white. I have a play list on Itunes that has two songs for each companion character and two for the main character, Also one for each important NPC.  I’m going on a holiday with my friend to a city that’s named the same as the city in Dragon Age 2 and me and him are going to do quests dressed as our favourite characters. I read fan fiction all the time, I watch Dragon age 2 videos on YouTube. My interests on Facebook include Dragon Age 2, THREE TIMES. I’ve got a folder of about eighty odd pictures that are all Dragon Age 2 fan-art. I had a dream last night where I was in love with Varric (A dwarf in the game) and he was dying and I had to find a cure in a land filled with zombies.

There’s something seriously wrong with me.
Dragon Age 2, Festis bei umo canavarum.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

For Meg

We are all made of cold
Glinting in the newly fallen snow
And the icicles dipped in gold
To melt us away
Our troubles laid down in the road
The road to somewhere better
That only the good ones find
So I will be destined to wander
Into the ever deepening dusk
Of my own stupidity and even tempered fate

And at the gates may I find
A girl like this
With grey eyes that have seen more sorrow than I
But in her eyes a need
To believe that one day
The world will be better
For the gifted and the meek
So she may grasp her happiness
With fingers drapped in silk

Saturday 15 October 2011

Ethics and Russians

I keep expecting to wake up with worry lines painted onto my face by sleep. I spend too much time thinking, so much that I can feel myself ticking over. I’d much prefer to be a simpler soul and not debate with myself endlessly over mine and others ethics. My ethics are generally ever changing because they become more refined the more I mill over them.

Here’s a list -

To eat an animal that you have not killed yourself (in the wild like any other animal) is wrong.
-
The reason I came to this conclusion was because animals in essence are innocent. They can’t defend themselves, they can’t reason, they don’t hurt another simply for the sake. Animals are innocent because they lack everything that makes human beings evil. As beautiful as humans are with our poetry and music and stories, you look at that for long enough and all you can see is the mindless gossip, the senseless jealousy and The Daily Mail. Animals are a lot like newborn babies in my eyes. As innocent as them anyway.

-

This is something about myself which I am unsure whether is a flaw or a virtue.

Have loyalty deep in your bones for those you love and destroy with every fibre of your being the ones you hate.

The first part is a virtue in a way but a curse also. I would throw myself in front of a bus to save some people. This is because I see their lives as having more meaning than mine. Its almost like I can see the inner embodiment of just untainted beauty within them. When people hurt them, you have to take their side because with that flawlessness (of a kind) comes unspeakable naivety and trust. I’ve held few people to that status and every one of them has put their trust in most they meet, putting their neck on the chopping block and I feel that it is my place to drag them off it. But it is a testament to their beauty that they always trust.

On the second part when I talk about destruction, I don’t mean in terms of vengeance. I don’t think I’m driven by revenge. I think its to do with my old belief in karma. That eventually something bad enough should happen to them that they understand their wrongs. When I figured out that if you’re only horrible to one person or are clever enough to dodge trouble that you are exempt from the rule. I felt as though I had to make them suffer like I suffered as if I was following the laws of the universe.
I should question myself more on this, its ridiculous.

-

That’s all I’ll say on this, I’d like to say more but my brain hurts and I’ve got True Grit to watch.

I nearly am desperate to ask, why do my hidden followers. All 356 of you to be exact, come here at all? Maybe you’re doing an essay with the title “A Question Of Madness”. (I read that book about the Russians torture techniques when I was 13). Put that in your essay.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Mindness

I keep having these surreal thoughts. Especially when I’m on my own. Then I dwell on them for days because I feel like they’ve got some kind of hidden meaning. That I’m very close to having a philosophical epiphany.
One that is circulating in my head at them moment is about my brain. I’ve seen pictures and videos and stuff about how brains look. And I know if you get shot in the head that you will definitely die. But I feel like although I’ve been told this, that its somehow a lie. My brain is where my thoughts come from, the inner voice behind my ears and when I picture the place where the thoughts come from I picture some type of ethereal pulsating thing full of colours. The kind of thing that nothing could penetrate because its like light or is light. I understand how everything else kills you but head injuries I cant comprehend. Maybe I should study biology. If I got a deeper understanding of brain function then maybe I could accept it. Right now, I feel like I can’t.
When I picture what should be inside my head, I see a cartoon brain like in Futurama and when I actually think about it. The thing inside my head shouldn’t weigh anything or be attached to anything. Or should be something tiny and full of wires and chips.

Monday 3 October 2011

The Day to Day Life of Today or Something

I decided to be a Blues Brother today. I used to do it when I had ingested noxious substances, most famously speed and still do it sober. For the benefit of an audience I am now wholly sure aren’t actually there. Am currently living in my Grandmother’s and she did not seem surprised by this. White shirt + black hat and the cinema’s 3D glasses and now I’m a Blues Brother. The glasses are only really needed to complete the look but I did expect a question from her such as “Why are you a Blues Brother?” But alas none came. Maybe it happened frequently when I was not aware of my surroundings. Maybe she thought I looked suave. I thought I looked suave.

-

There seems to be an insult that keeps cropping up against me. The insult is “you’re not very smart/clever”. It comes in a lot of varieties including my Mother’s now famous “You think you’re a smartarse” and “Do you think you’re smarter than me”. The answer to the first being “No, I’m not a smartarse because I don’t get into the habit of insulting myself” and the second being “Yes, Me being without a second level qualification does not make me stupid, It makes me a revolutionary (not really). I am smart though, I know that much. Generally it crops up when I’ve pissed someone off and my intention to make the peace is refuted with “You’re not clever”. Actually my attempt to not be a cockbag and tell you that I’m sorry and peacefully claim why you’re mistaken, that makes me clever. Maybe they think I’m trying to wriggle out of trouble but then they’re really putting themselves very low in my estimation of them. I’d only ever try and wriggle out of something if I

1. Wanted to receive more or some sexual favours in the future from them.

2. Had done something bad to someone too stupid for me to explain my motivations.

Generally weirdly enough, I actually tell people the truth unless the truth is wasted on them. I’m awesome, trust me on that.

-

A friend of mine/Youth worker of mine/ some guy called John and I keep having these long philosophical discussions. A question I have to pose to myself because of my reaction to some statement he made is “Am I internally homophobic?”. This is because well I basically said “If I was gay, I wouldn’t tell anyone, I’d be ashamed”. I’m not gay that much I know and I feel like I have to dignify that statement with a sentence about how much I love vagina. But I understand overcompensation and that dear Sir is overcompensation. I’ve always been very much for gay rights and thought that gay people were awesome, fighters for personal freedom and I love that kind of gig., always did.  I’ve been in The George (gay bar) way too many times and slept with men and had fun with it. But I still have that feeling that being gay would be shameful to me and I think the reason behind this is that because I’m out to my LGBT group as a big Tranny, I don’t want them to mix me in with the straight girls or the gay guys they know. I always hated the tag lesbian and I think that switching completely would be ridiculous. I do like women and I occasionally enjoy the company of men and I’m going to leave it as that.