The Grand Conspiracy | Even You

New post from me at TGC this week. Give it a read, love to know your thoughts, as always :-)

The street sees everything. It saw you arriving earlier, hope in your heart and money in your pocket. It sees you stumbling out at closing time, somewhat less hopeful and with a few crumpled wads of soggy cash left to your name. It feels your toes wavering tentatively between your car in the parking lot and the after-hours bar down the way. It lays beneath you all broken glass and crinkled cellophane, with no judgment for whatever you decide. When your shoes invariably carry you in the direction of more alcohol it throws no obstacles in your way, aside from the odd displaced brick—which is really more the sidewalk’s fault.

via The Grand Conspiracy | Even You.

Even You

The street sees everything. It saw you arriving earlier, hope in your heart and money in your pocket. It sees you stumbling out at closing time, somewhat less hopeful and with a few crumpled wads of soggy cash left to your name. It feels your toes wavering tentatively between your car in the parking lot and the after-hours bar down the way. It lays beneath you all broken glass and crinkled cellophane, with no judgment for whatever you decide. When your shoes invariably carry you in the direction of more alcohol it throws no obstacles in your way, aside from the odd displaced brick—which is really more the sidewalk’s fault.

The street sees you later under the harsh yellow glow of its lights, vomiting into a concrete planter full of tangled weeds and other assorted refuse. It sees you even later still, bathed in no light at all as you stand pissing against the side of a brick wall. It does not opine when you splash your own feet with urine and decide that probably no one will notice. Maybe you didn’t notice it yourself.

Tomorrow the street will see you strolling to the grocery store in the bright happy sunshine, shades protectively sheltering your bleary, wearied eyeballs. It sees you picking up cigarettes and comfort foods to nurse your hangover and then silently the street observes you carrying those overloaded bags back home, your feet somewhat steadier than the night before.

The street sees you racing flat-footed to your car at 7:55 on Monday morning for that interview, and feels you peel away with a pang, hoping you come back soon. When you do the street is there for you, though it’s littered with cigarette butts and condom wrappers – that nagging detritus of the weekend’s shame. But it welcomes you home with sun-soaked asphalt, washing you in the one last remnant of a long, hot summer.

The street sees you on Wednesday afternoon, surefootedly leading your prospect into a business lunch, smiling your large, false smile and flashing cash you can ill-afford, hoping to get that commission, get that job.

The street has seen your kind before. It’s seen all you can do. You cannot impress it, you cannot shock it, you cannot make it angry. The street is well-versed in the drunk and the sober, the calm and the frenzied, the hopeless and the hopeful. It has experienced all humanity has to offer. But even so, despite your ubiquity, you are a part of the street’s never-ending, ever-changing story, and to it you now belong.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

How She Got Along in the World

In the end, she grew a thicker skin. It was quite yellow and bumpy and callused, and it protected her by keeping anyone from wanting to be around her in the first place.

In the end she was able to let it go, but then it floated away and she was never able to get it back again.

In the end she was able to laugh it off, but then “it” turned out to be her right pinky finger, and she had been using that.

In the end she didn’t let it get to her, which she accomplished by constantly carrying a plastic riot shield.

In the end she tried to walk it off, but once she got going she decided to never come back.

In the end she let it go in one ear and out the other, and eventually it took most of her brains away with it.

In the end she brushed it off, but was quickly worn out from the physical exertion involved.

In the end she became less sensitive, and then burned herself quite badly in a hot bath.

In the end she decided that platitudes were unlikely to be the answer, and she remained exactly as she was.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

New Post at Grand Conspiracy

So I have a new post at Grand Conspiracy – posted it yesterday. It’s a shortish piece of microfiction, a vignette on one person’s self-destructive reaction to love and loss and obsession. And it’s kind of violent and it’s kind of awful, and even though most of us wouldn’t take the extreme actions of the main character, I suspect that the wish to be able to physically cut all traces of a lost love from one’s life might be universal.

I hope that you enjoy it.

No Longer Required

No Longer Required

She used a knife. It was clean or rusty, jagged with serrated, gripping teeth or cleanly-honed and razor-edged. It was thick and hefty or a sliver of a thing and it really didn’t matter the shape of the tool, it was the job it did that was important. She used the knife to cut out the parts that had anything to do with him. She used it to remove those things that didn’t fit anymore, or seemed ill-suited to the life she wanted to lead now.

A spot on her hip, the place his lips had been, it had to go. The pain burned beyond description or was almost unnoticeable, and she did it swiftly or slowly and with great, deliberate precision. But that part was gone and once it was done some other sections must also be made to go. There was a place on her arm, it had a largish freckle and once he’d stroked her there and so she cut it mercilessly away. Awkwardly she sliced at her back, where his hand had loved to rest, and the side of her face where he’d slid his thumb while he told her she was precious to him.

She threw the old parts into a bucket, and she thought it would be more fitting if it were stainless steel, but it was blue plastic and not fitting at all. The blood ran slickly down the plastic sides in little pools and rivulets, it didn’t stick or stain or smear garishly across a smooth metallic finish. It was too bad. But then another piece slapped into the bottom and joined the growing pile of parts she no longer needed, and she forgot about the material from which the bucket was unfortunately made. The cuts were all-consuming now, and satisfying in a way that she’d never before experienced. Her labia, of course, had to go—that was a given. She debated for a moment but ended up excising one nipple and leaving the other. You always needed at least one nipple, and he’d shown that special preference for the left. So it too slapped wetly against the growing pile of flesh in the blue bucket, and then she shifted delicately across the tarpaulin to reposition herself for the next cut—sliding precariously in her own blood as she moved. It was warm, but beginning to cool. As things had a tendency to do.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

Protected: Dark Night of the Soul

Clean, Clear, Cloudy

New post of mine up at The Grand Conspiracy. Pretty happy with this one, love to know what you guys think!

It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to drink it. She was looking at the bottle and pondering whether she was going to drink it, but really the decision was made and it was going to be drunk. It was already drunk, in the finality of reality, just not yet in the present tense.

The bottle was clear and cold and so was the liquid inside. What it did to her was hot and decidedly murky rather than anything crystalline. But that was afterward. The crisp burn of that initial drink always presented the razor-sharp illusion that clarity would be forthcoming— although that had never before been the case. Maybe this time.

Read more here

Clean, Clear, Cloudy

It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to drink it. She was looking at the bottle and pondering whether she was going to drink it, but really the decision was made and it was going to be drunk. It was already drunk, in the finality of reality, just not yet in the present tense.

The bottle was clear and cold and so was the liquid inside. What it did to her was hot and decidedly murky rather than anything crystalline. But that was afterward. The crisp burn of that initial drink always presented the razor-sharp illusion that clarity would be forthcoming— although that had never before been the case. Maybe this time.

So she was going to drink it. It was inevitable. And yet still she pondered the bottle, the glass, the counter top, debating. He’d only left a moment ago. He could come back. Anything could happen really.

He wasn’t coming back, but he could. There was no law of physics preventing his return. Except the one that declared that it wasn’t going to happen.

She resented the space he left. She resented the silence, not full of his words. Not full of his sounds, his smell, his energy. She resented him for being not-there, for daring to go. She resented herself for her dependence. And she contemplated the bottle, the thing that would fill up the space and blot out the empty house. She was going to drink it. Drink it all.

She fingered the glass, feeling it warm slowly under her hands, seeing it smudge with the oils from her skin. The smudges bothered her. They didn’t fit this tidy picture. She picked up the soiled glass and rinsed it in the sink, drying it with the cloth that hung there specifically for that purpose. She set it, newly pristine, back down next to the bottle and listened for the sound of the unopened door. No, he wasn’t coming back. And she was going to drink this bottle of liquid magic and forget that fact.

She picked it up, unscrewed the lid and inhaled deeply of its contents, which she then poured quickly down the kitchen drain. Yes. She was going to drink it all. One of these days, when he was busy being gone. But apparently not today.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

New Conspiracy Today!

As always, I would love to know your thoughts! :-)

The Grand Conspiracy | A Conversation

It started out as a conversation about curtains, and ended up as a conversation about everything he’d ever done wrong.She didn’t know what business he had opining about curtains, anyway. She’d only asked as a sort of rhetorical silence-filler, more to hear herself thinking out loud than really elicit his judgment. Who knew he’d have anything to say about anything?For his part, he just didn’t like the god-damned curtains, considering them not only ugly, but somehow oppressive and stifling. If part of the money going to purchase them were his, he’d go ahead and say if he didn’t like the fucking things.“It’s not as if you ever gave a damn about this place until five minutes ago.” she bit out spitefully, wrapping fistfuls of fabric into great messy wads and shoving them back into the plastic packaging.“Excuse me for not wanting to live in some kind of crazy funeral parlor-slash-funhouse, all right?” He stood with his arms folded, a bit concerned with where this conversation was suddenly heading, but semi-determined to see it through now that he’d started it.

continued at…  The Grand Conspiracy | A Conversation.

A Conversation

It started out as a conversation about curtains, and ended up as a conversation about everything he’d ever done wrong.

She didn’t know what business he had opining on curtains, anyway. She’d only asked as a sort of rhetorical silence-filler, more to hear herself thinking out loud than really elicit his judgment. Who knew he’d have anything to say about anything?

For his part, he just didn’t like the god-damned curtains, considering them not only ugly, but somehow oppressive and stifling. If part of the money going to purchase them was his, he’d go ahead and say if he didn’t like the fucking things.

“It’s not as if you ever gave a damn about this place until five minutes ago.” she bit out spitefully, wrapping fistfuls of fabric into great messy wads and shoving them back into the plastic packaging.

“Excuse me for not wanting to live in some kind of crazy funeral parlor-slash-funhouse, all right?” He stood with his arms folded, a bit concerned with where this conversation was suddenly heading, but semi-determined to see it through now that he’d started it.

“This is just like you.”

Oh shit. She was hissing the words out now. And it was never good when things were just like him. Or he was just like things. Neither of those were good. Maybe he should back off.

“Look all I said was that maybe…”

“Oh I HEARD what you SAID.” White and red plastic bags crackled violently under her hands as she finished packing the offensive curtains away; and then he watched her stalk out to the hallway, heard the closet door being yanked open, the bags thrown inside, the door slam shut. It couldn’t really slam because of the carpet in there, but he heard how she intended to slam it, all the same.

“What you seem to not consider, what you seem to never consider as you spout your opinions about the things I do, is that perhaps home decorating is not your fucking forte, and you should stick with picking out gatefold LPs or Japanese-only pressings of CDs no one ever wanted to listen to, or overpriced television sets that take up half the motherfucking wall. So why don’t you confine your opinions to the type of goofy game console we need to buy, or what new version of some other time-wasting piece of crap we need to invest money in this week? Maybe those things can be your areas of expertise, hmm?”

She was back in the room and doing some kind of self-righteous straightening up now. Pillows were being forcefully fluffed, this morning’s paper was being viciously tidied into a rigid, angry pile. How could she make newsprint rigid? He couldn’t even square it up again after he read it.

“…and maybe you can leave the curtains to me? Since apparently you were only happy enough to live here with bare fucking windows for more than a year? Letting the neighbors look in? Making it impossible to even sit in this room in the morning?”

Now every sentence sounded like a question, but he knew better than to answer.

“But no. No. Even though you can’t get off your ass to do a damn thing, you can certainly talk some shit about what I take the initiative to do. Although when you’re sitting there in the dirtiest jeans I have ever seen, because you haven’t done laundry in more than a month, I really would suppose you might have something more important to think about. Really.”

Now it was her turned for crossed arms, and they faced off at each other across the room like wary gladiators.

Heh. Wary Gladiators. That would be a good band name. His mind wandered pleasantly away from this angry little room.

“You inconsiderate ass, were you listening to a word I just said?”

Whoops.

“Yes, I heard you. I shouldn’t be doing… things. I should do other things, and leave these things to you.”

“Are you being a fucking smart ass?”

He shrugged ruefully “Not on purpose?”

“Look.” She was quiet and calm now.

Calm was very bad, and set all his skin to prickling.

“I just don’t think this is working.”

Wait, how did we get here? His heart was beating furiously now, his attention laser-focused as all of the blood went rushing either into or out of his head – he couldn’t tell which direction it was going.

“No… sweetheart no. It’s just curtains. They weren’t so bad. I didn’t really look that closely. Let me see them again.” He was all flop sweat and appeasement now. This wasn’t right. This was some weird nightmare argument. Where was the morning alarm? He wanted to roll over and cuddle against her back, to inhale that warm smell at the base of her neck and plan a lazy Saturday in bed together. This was definitely not right.

“It’s more than that. It’s everything. It’s the things you do.” She looked away now, her eyes inspecting the carpet, which he suddenly remembered her asking him to vacuum. A few weeks ago.

“It’s the things you don’t do.”

She looked back at him and he saw a terrifying thing on her face. He thought it might be resignation.

“I’m unhappy here. Being with you makes me unhappy.”

He sat down heavily on the sofa, stunned.

He’d always thought all conversations should have an emergency reset. It seemed he was a little too late to put that plan into action.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

An “Aha!” Moment, and the SOTD

Can’t write this week. Thought it was because I had no time, but I realized it’s more about something else.

I’m happy.

So this week every idea I’ve had to write about is a non-starter because my writing is normally always about misery or pain or confusion, and I don’t feel any of those things right now. I am sure I will again soon, but this week I am glad to be blocked, just a little.

Unicorn – Apoptygma Berserk

You hold the candle I once lit
You shine your light
When you forgive I cry
You run your fingers through my hair
And tell me it’s worthwhile, it’s all worthwhile

Even when I hate myself
Even when I feel your pain
when you cry
Even when my heart is cold
You assure me it’s worthwhile, it’s all worthwhile

You see what can’t be seen
You repair the damage done to me…

The Grand Conspiracy | Countdown

I have a new post up at The Grand Conspiracy today. It would please me greatly if you’d go and read it!

It was seven hours and forty-two minutes until the party started, and so far Cassandra’s day had felt like a series of stops on a low-budget bus tour of a grotesquely humidified Hades.

via The Grand Conspiracy | Countdown.

Countdown

It was seven hours and forty-two minutes until the party started, and so far Cassandra’s day had felt like a series of stops on a low-budget bus tour of a grotesquely humidified Hades.

She squeezed her car into the yellow-striped space closest to the doors and stepped out into a hot swamp of exhaust fumes, festering overfilled garbage cans and fevered consumerism. The stench of it smacked her wetly in the face, but she barely noticed.

The mall was chilled and busy, humming with people who needed things, or at least needed to need something. Her first stop was the clothing store where she hoped to find a dress. It was three hours and fifty-six minutes until the girl working behind the counter was breaking up with her boyfriend. It was three hours and fifty-two minutes before she would come home an hour early and surprise him jacking it on the couch  – having pathetically frantic phone sex with that whore. Three hours and fifty-four minutes until he explained to her quite calmly as he zipped up his jeans that, yes, he’d been seeing that whore on the side —and he really thought they both needed some time to think about things. In the space of those four minutes, in the dirty living room with an empty bag of potato chips on the floor, the last two years and four months would somehow come to mean nothing. But for now the girl smiled, distracted and polite, and asked if Cassandra needed any help. She did not. She found a suitable dress that she bought without trying on.

As she left she saw a young woman sitting on a black lacquered bench, patiently waiting for her husband to exit the video game store. It was three years, four months and a day since they’d been married.  It was four years, eight months and nine days since she had realized that afternoon by the lake that this man was the only possible mate to her soul. It was twenty-six days and two hours until he would be crushed to death in the small blue car that got such great gas mileage. It was twenty-nine days until she would sit on a red overstuffed pew in a cavernous church, numbly listening to a strange man wearing hair spray praise her dead husband, whom the man wearing hair spray had never met. The woman turned as her husband came out of the store, excitedly describing his purchase, but then her phone rang and she shushed him while she answered it. She chatted with a friend as they walked away together, their hands seeking each other out automatically, their steps falling into an easy matched pace.

Cassandra stopped next at the nail salon, and there she chose a color that matched an accent in her new party dress. For twenty-seven minutes she laid back in a vibrating chair while a small dark-haired woman (Three years until her first child was born. Eighty-six years until that child died.) tended to her toes. She looked over at a young girl whose mother was getting a manicure. The girl was seven and wore an outfit almost identical to her mother’s. She swung back and forth in the chair, feet dangling off the ground. It was another seven years, three months, twenty-two days and thirteen hours until a sweet, sweaty boy at a pool party would convince her that yes, everyone was doing it and, no, you couldn’t get pregnant your first time. Turns out you could, actually.

Cassandra’s last stop was the cosmetics counter at the mall. Tapping brightly colored nails on smudgy glass, she waited for the sales assistant to fetch her particular shade of red lipstick. It had been seven weeks and three days since the assistant was told that the lump under her arm was something more than nothing, and it was another seventeen months and nine days until she would be told that, despite her young age, the cancer had spread too quickly and there was nothing to be done. Impatiently, Cassandra waited to pay. She had things to do, places to be. It was six hours and seventeen minutes until the party started and she still had to go to the grocery store. There really wasn’t much time.

———————————————————–

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.

Tomas and the Onions

Tomas was eating an onion. It was his third straight day of eating nothing but onions, and he was beginning to feel the effects.

For one thing, his piss had started to smell like onions. For another thing, he was really sick of onions.

They were only the white ones too, not even a variety of yellow and red and maybe a fancy sweet Vidalia. Just plain white onions. At this point he’d settle happily for a leek, or a clove of garlic. He’d like some dandelion greens, or maybe some chicory. He’d eat any damn thing that grew in the damn yard.

He looked morosely at his fingers, clasped around the plain white onion, and then took another big bite from it. He swallowed the juicy mess down. He pondered his index finger again, gave it an experimental lick and then nibbled at it tentatively. It was no good. He lacked the tenacity to bite it right through. Godverdomme! He thought of hurling the onion away in disgust, but then reconsidered and set it gently down on his plate.

Tomas looked over at the dog. The dog was eating steak tartare. He seemed to be enjoying it, too. The tags on his collar rang merrily against the edge of his white porcelain bowl as he devoured its contents. What an annoying sound! Few things had ever been more irritating.

This really was some bullshit. Narrowing his eyes balefully, Tomas glared at the dog and thought it had some damned nerve. He was no fan of dogs in the best of circumstances, and these were not those. Overall, Tomas figured that dogs were good for only two things: incessantly licking their own balls, and all other types of shenanigans.

Tomas’s stomach made awful gurgling noises as he pondered the dog’s dinner, but his gorge rose as he tried to bring the stupid white onion with two bites out of it back to his mouth.

He was not sure if this whole thing was going to work.

The Grand Conspiracy | The Vial

Hey kids, it’s Thursday, which means I have a new post up at The Grand Conspiracy. I’d love to have your thoughts, critique, words of wisdom etc. Teaser below, check it out in its entirety here.

Sometimes he wished it was just a bit more difficult.

Looking in the mirror he contemplated both the night ahead of him and the head in front of him. It had been a good decision to shave everything off, he thought. The clean-shaven head and goatee made him look meaner, and he’d realized a while back that most girls thought the meaner a man looked, the more protection he offered. Girls’ errors in judgment were not his problem though. In fact, you could say that girls’ errors in judgment were his stock in trade.

He grabbed his toothbrush and set the timer for three minutes. While scrubbing viciously on his teeth he planned his movements. He knew which bars he was hitting first, and he knew where he’d probably end his evening. Any good thing that happened in between was just gravy. Last week had been very special and he was still riding that high.

continued at… The Grand Conspiracy | The Vial.