magicstruk

I'm back.... or am I?

2009-12-05T23:12:00.002-05:00

So about a year and a half ago I started this blog and I have let it float alone in cyberspace ever since. Recently I have been reading more from the blogging community and, you know, learning to use the work blog as a noun adjective and verb, even though word spell check refuses to acknowledge. I realised that between the start of school and moving and various lifeages, I have been far away of writing for awhile and I miss it, so here I am again, hopefully with thoughts.
Here’s a little sci-fi something that I have been working on:

When you dream, you are aware of things about the slippery world that you have entered into. It’s like you have some innate knowledge, or someone told you a story over and over when you were in your infancy, so it won’t leave you anymore. You know all the secrets. You can be afraid or happy or anxious in dreams, but you can never really be surprised. You know how the story is going to end, you just have to wait for it.
This is why when sitting on a sand beach in my dreams, my feet wet, and running my fingers deeper and deeper in to the sand I am already aware of the fact that rows and rows of people were massacred and entered here on my dream beach. I am afraid of what will happen when my fingers sift down deep enough, but I don’t stop. I know how this will end, and so my dream eyes look at the little undulations of my dream waves and they conform to my toes. The sun heats up my back. When I finally reach the layer beneath the powdery baked sand, the layer that is all cold and wet, and my fingernail snags on something hard as I look over the water, I am afraid. I know I have hit a bone, specifically my finger has stopped on the front tooth of a skull lacking the lower part of the jaw. I pull my hand up without looking down, seeing that a little bead of blood has formed on my pinky where I touched a tooth. I know it has poisoned me, because something was done to change the people before they were killed.
When I get up and run, I know I am going to die and fall with a swirl of sand and a splash of water, half in and half out of the ocean. My veins will go purple and stand out again my skin before they burst, making me look like I was bruised all over. Tears well in my eyes, I am so afraid.
I’m still not surprised.

I lay still in my bed for a few moments after I wake up combating the cold feeling like the nightmare might be bleeding over into reality surrounding me. My body feels weak from the dream, but I won’t close my eyes for risk of slipping back to sleep and landing purple and gasping on the beach.
My tank top has ridden up to my breasts and I pull it back down to meet my panties as the fear subsides and I go to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, flicking on every light I pass as I go drowning all the shadows.
I walk over and lean my head against floor-to-ceiling window of my apartment. I am on a low enough floor that a tree reaches to my balcony, valiantly tying to make me believe that nature is alive and well here. Through its naked boughs I can see a chunky line of traffic slugging through the streets, dense even in the wee hours of the morning. I squint though the window, rubbing my had across the glass as it fogs from my breath, but despite the city’s perpetual glow it is too dark to see the pock marks that are left on the building across from mine. I don’t know why I look for them still, they only make me unhappy. I am so unhappy here.
I plod back to bed, flicking off all the lights behind me, become conscious that anyone passing probably just saw me gloriously back lit in my underwear.
I stretch my arm across the empty half of my bed as I lay back down, staring at the ceiling. I don’t have much hope of being happy again. Nobody who remembers the war does, I suppose, precious few of us though there may be.
I flip onto my side and open the drawer on my bedside table, pulling out a well-thumbed little pamphlet. It’s a government issue, no images. The title page simply offering euthanasia, rest for all. After that details, addresses, dates, numbers you could call and at the bottom of the page my special call number to report when requesting to be put down like a diseased dog. I shove the pamphlet back in, bitter for considering it again.
Just before the war, there had been a break though in the metal health field. A new kind of psychotropic drug called the Blue Pill that worked the brain over, systematically deleting the memories that caused shock to the brain was invented. No more remembering still birth, no more little children missing the family pet, and, after the war, no more shell shock.
It had been a break though the had put a shattered society back on its feet, except it didn’t work for everyone, a small number of the population was resistant to the effects of the Blue Pill. One hundred and twenty two members of the population if my special call number 47 of 122 was any indication. After the mandatory drug injection we had still been able the remember the secrets we weren’t supposed to, the things we had seen, the things that had been done…
We were offered euthanasia, on the basis that our memories were too traumatic, and integrating back into a society that had forgotten a global war would drive us insane.
I remember sitting in the little white doctors office thinking how clean and fresh in looked by contrast to the outside of the building that was tattooed with bomb scars. An older man with died black hair explained to me how it wouldn’t be suicide, it was just a humane option, a solution to all the pain that was inevitable for me now. I refused, shook his hand, and told him I had seen enough burning in this life, that I didn’t need to burn in the next. I had been escorted to the door and mailed the pamphlet, along with my schedule of daily appointments with a government shrink. The psychiatrist didn’t remember the war either, but he had read one of the five or six copies of the recorded war history so that he would be better able to understand my thoughts, without retaining any real memories himself.
My eyes flutter open, as I fear returning to the nightmares. I wonder if anyone who has had their memories erased dreams about the war, if the drug can really reach into a realm where nothing’s shocking.

I am sitting in the psychiatrist’s office. Like everything else it is beautiful and clean inside, fine new furniture shining. I think it helps people accept what they have forgotten, because how could the buildings with their cracked outsides possibly reflect any horror if the inside is so polished and peaceful.
Thinking about it, it is a lot like my psychiatrist himself. I am struck again by the scar over his eye as he sits down in the chair in front of my couch. I wonder what the Blue Pill has taught his mind about it, and what he sees every time he looks in the mirror. It doesn’t seem to matter as long as his mind is all squeaky clean on the inside.

And here is an alter iteration:

They were all so thirsty, tumbling down the beach in droves. Some where still with their families, huddled together, parents and children and the family pet making their way to the bay, twisted vision of a picnic at the beach, manic looks on their pale faces, sucking the blood out of their own cracked lips and swallowing, desperate for the moisture. When they reached the shore they flopped to their bellies, gulping down mouthfuls of sand and water, wriggling deeper and deeper in, heedless of the waves crashing over their faces, inhaling them into their lungs. Most of them downed in knee deep water, only to be forced aside by dozens of others, eagerly drinking down everything they could, never satiated. The whole mad rush took less then twenty minutes and seven thousand corpses filled the bay, floating with their distended bellies. The waves that had been so heedless of them minutes before nudged the limp formed back towards the shore, trying to send them back home. Their pale bodies like flotsam capping the crests.

I watched

The news reports went on and on, showing the stacked slick corpses at a distance, the flicking of red quarantine tape dancing in and out of the shot. It wasn’t long before people were found all over the city in bathtubs, drowned. A terrorist act, tainted water, magic, an anti-virus gone wrong, there was blame spread everywhere, and as the mass drowning spread so did this blame.

I am a slightly creepy writer I will admit, but I think that makes for the best speculative fiction.

with milk

2008-07-05T22:29:00.002-04:00

this is a poem composed in my writing class last year. I am a little more self-conscious about my poetry than my prose, but this one I liked, so I hope it sits well with everyone in blog land!!

in the winter tree branches snap
splintering like old bones

snap, crackle
they remind me of her
because she reminds me of breakfast cereal
seems like a good idea at the time
but always leaves me hungry later
it’s my fault really
should have had the whole balanced breakfast
but all of her is a pointless dream
like bran muffins and orange slices

my boots are waterproof
but my toes are wet anyways
mostly because labels lie
and a little because they tell the truth
the snow turns to water and leaks in
leaks in like milk with its rolling whiteness

breakfast is everywhere
I’m hungry or lonely
both I suppose
because I hate to eat alone

supposed to be able
to feel winter chill in my bones
but I’ve never felt my bones
not even when I broke my leg
then I just felt the skin all around
swelling up to hug the break
flushed with the love of it
the rest of me all white
like the snow
like milk
like her

snap, crackle again as I cross the ice
she is everywhere
because she is dangerous
but no one puts up warning signs
I might go under
walking on thin ice
or eggshells
all over the counter after breakfast
don’t cry over broken egg shells
they look like spilt milk
all white

like suburbia
all white
all cold
all alone
like wintertime

here I am walking away from it all
from her, snow white
over thin ice

Welcome to the Blog

2008-07-05T00:09:00.002-04:00

Hello and welcome to the blog. I am here avoiding some serious writer's block by, ironically enough, writing. I am trying to work on my summer novel project that I have started up with My Hero, as he is also a writer and we thought it would be a fun and couply thing to do, because that is what writerly nerds do. I, however, am having trouble getting started, the plot is sorted, it's just finding the opening that seems to be the problem. Without revealing the story, I shall tell you that our idea is not to write passages together but rather to trade off between two characters on a chapter by chapter basis, my character a woman and his a man... this is of course a fantasy novel. There live intersect at various points and it is kind of a battle to see which character will end up more sympathetic, given each is a hero in his/her own story and pretty close to a villain in the other character's story. I am excited.... if only I could find out where to being.
In any event, I am going to have to give up soon and jump in bed as I am started a new job tomorrow, not a dream job, but something that will minimum wage my way through the next two symesters.
This was indeed lovely,
Ebon

Yggdrasill's Cradle

2008-07-03T13:50:00.004-04:00

This is my rendition of a Norse myth, please enjoy!

These stories are all old to them, the norns, weaving away at their tapestry. I watch them, but they do not care for me. I am just a tiny rodent, my name Ratatoskr a small stitch in their unfurling battles of giants and gods. Ratatoskr, doomed to run from end to end of the dying trunk of Yggdrasill from the beginning to Ragnarok, poor little red squirrel. I see my life as no such doom at all, my fur still safe from the eagles and the snakes, and my eyes seeing all the nine worlds from Asgard to Niflheim, where as they, poor old fates and their calloused fingers just sit hunched and gnarled as Yggdrasill’s roots. They never really see.
Norns, doomed to report but never to be.
My feet fly me across the notches of the great trunk, the sights familiar, the glittering body of the Midgard Serpent twisting below me and the sprawl of branches above. I feel the familiar wood, but sense something amiss. The vibrations of the wood are wrong, something too large and two legged is trespassing in great Yggdrasill.
I spiral back down the tree, rounding the thick trunk in a moment, and see what has caused the upset.
A man, heavy with the armaments of a warrior is making his way deftly up towards the high sprawling branches. A warrior the Valkyries have led astray perhaps? Some poor soul who cannot hear the call to Valhalla? It matters little, for Hel will surely come and claim him soon.
I turn to leave, but hesitate, watching a moment more. He does not seem so unsteady here, he has some goal, I am sure now. I envy the norns a little in moments such as these, with their old stories, for they already know the purpose and the end of this trespasser.
His face turns up towards me, fair skinned and white bearded. One eye remains closed, the socket empty, while the other stares up blue, wise and purposeful.
I freeze to my place, knowing at once who this is, the eyeless hole in his face marking him. His other eye sits at the bottom of a well, sacrificed for wisdom. What purpose is Odin now trying to accomplish with his wisdom?
I follow out of sight as he ascends further. The eagles surge down to meet him with silvery talons and the snakes rise to hold him down and bite him with silvery teeth, but he cuts trough all with a powerful arm. What are snakes and birds to a man who has slain giants? His sword must barely notice. When his arms raise I see a wound in his side, from whence it came I do not know, but it does not slow the elder god in his climb.
Yggdrasill’s pests soon abandon their attack on one-eyed Odin and he shortly reaches the lower branches of the great World Tree. This seems to be his destination.
He looses a length of rope from around his waist and flings one end over a thick and sturdy branch. The dangling end he ties deftly into a noose, wrapping it around his own neck. I watch, transfixed, as he pushes away from his perch on the trunk and the noose chokes up on his throat.
I have never seen such a thing in all my years. For nine days I keep vigil, cold and still, abandoning my purpose to watch the as Odin dangles still, his feet knocking together as his limp body is pushed by the breeze. For nine days he rocks slowly, suspended from Yggdrasill’s great cradle of branches.
On the ninth day, Odin stirs and at once cuts himself down, latching to Yggdrasill as he falls. He stands still for a moment and I venture close as I dare, seeing new knowledge in his blue eye.
I understand now this was another of his sacrifices, like his eye. This time, he has been granted the power of the runes. Strong old magic.
Odin begins his journey back, resolute as ever. Content to watch him no more, I make my way back to the norns, seeing if this great happening has disturbed them. But still they sit, weaving away. I suddenly think my speculations foolish.
Of course, they already knew.