A Hope and Dreams

“As much fun as this was, thank god that it’s over,” she says with a slight smile, and downs the rest of his drink. Right as she finishes speaking, the sun behind her finally falls beneath the long horizon, and the night begins to darken. Her eyes flash for a moment in the light, drawing his gaze back across the table, but it’s only one of the pendants that usually rests in her hair. She’s pulled it forward, so that it now lies across her face, and she’s going slightly cross eyed in the effort to keep it in sight. They both stay sitting like that for a minute, or maybe longer, in perfect equilibrium, before the last rays of the day begin to fade. He reaches across the table to grab her glass. “Until next year then?” he asks, nearly too quietly to be heard over the rising din. “Until next year.” She sets the charm on the table, and its light slowly fades.

As soon as she finishes talking, the room erupts. Everyone begins yelling, so strong are their opinions for or against the theory. Most of them though aren’t talking at her but are asking him if he really endorses her idea. He’s seated next to her, and doesn’t seem to be paying any attention, but the people keep on talking, not quieting slowly among themselves but actually becoming louder as they feel a lack of acknowledgment silencing them. She taps his shoulder, and he glances up. He pulls off his headphones, shakes his head, and begins to address the room.

If you could choose one word to describe yourself, what would it be? If you could choose one thing to take with you on a deserted island what would it be? If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? What’s your favorite book, favorite film, favorite color? I say it depends on my mood, I’ll answer something different every time. You’ll settle down when you’re older, stop obsessing over things for months on end and then dropping them because you’ve tired of them, you’ll become more consistent. You’ll be more comfortable in your own skin, and become a more stable version of you. Maybe 'me' isn’t stable.

Here  is a link to a short interactive murder mystery story that I wrote a while back. I hesitated to post it because I wasn't sure how to get it onto the blog, but I decided to make it simple and just link to a pdf of the original google document, which itself links to some other google documents. Mostly, this was just a pain because I want to stay anonymous if at all possible, and I wrote this originally on my personal email. Anyway, this was a pretty big project for me, so I hope you enjoy!

There were no footprints at the scene of the crime, only small, square prints, those that did not correspond to any kind of shoe that was on record. The only other interesting piece of evidence was a trail of security cam footage that led to the recovery of one name, of one person who might be the next target. Mr John William Wilson (“John to my friends”). --- It was a fairly nondescript, brightly lit room that the two were seated in. The kind of brightly lit room that, over centuries of science fiction shows borrowing ideas, themes, and designs from each other had come to symbolize the future. It didn’t necessarily mean that the two were part of an evil megacorporation, or that they were fighting the oppressive rulers, or that they were millions of miles away from earth. In fact, they were none of these things, but they were in the future. An indeterminate amount of time away from the present, perhaps so far into the future that time had become something entirely removed from everyday...

It seems to be innately human, that once you say that you have to do something, you want to do it less than you ever have before. It’s something about the commitment, probably, he thinks, eyes darting around the room. Remember, you did agree to be here for them , but it’s hard to keep that in mind when the bustle of so many people seems to be pressing in from all sides, except for the left, where the reassuring pressure of the wall up against his shoulder acts to cool him down in the room that seems to be heating up by the moment. Right as he considers stepping out for a minute, the lights dim and the drone of conversation fades as people begin to file into their seats. He sets his book under his chair, and looks up to see the curtain rise, and sees them standing there, announcing the show.

As the daylight fades away, the water trickles through the crumbling latticework. The wind shoves at the sides of the building, and the walls creak yet stand tall. The pebbles funnel down the tube, and so they imagine the water blowing in the gusts outside. They run their hands across the counter, which is so smooth it’s nearly sticky, and then the blankets, from which the fuzz catches on their hands, nearly sharp. The daylight fades away, but they weren’t using it anyway.

I sharpen the pencil, working it to a fine point. I lost the sharpener long ago so now I just use a knife, I left the knife at home so I just scratch at it with my nails. I want the point to be fine, precise, to be able to be more exact than my mind can. Then the tip snaps, I’m back to where I started, so I grab a pen.

The songs they listen to make them out to be the bad guy, but they can’t be everything for you. I can’t be everything for them, for you.  They aren’t anything to me. They’re everything to me. Skintight transparent gloves are. Are a layer between the world and myself. I don’t know where they came from I wish I always had them. They wish they never had them. There’s nothing on our hands. Everything for you could just be a friend and yet I don’t know how to say no. They still wouldn’t be able to say no. With everyone else we can’t stop saying no. Sometimes the gloves are thicker,  as I press my hand against the glass it takes a minute to feel the glass. my reflection. I becomes me becomes they. I don’t know why you say that should change. "I'll think about it," they say.

The good guys always… but I don’t see the point when I’d much rather… I don’t want to be the villain in my own story, maybe that’s why I’ve always been eager to learn about shades of gray. Always having eyes on you like the protagonist would seems exhausting, but I don’t want to disappear for years on end from my own life. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve disappeared from my own life, that I’m a different person than the one who made the choices that led me to where I am today. But not always. I know some of the things that I want to do would burn bridges, but I don’t want to lose anyone. I guess thinking in that way is something I picked up from main characters, but sometimes I worry that the people I leave behind are actually the heroes of the story I find myself in. That shouldn’t be what concerns me the most.

One day, he knows he’s going to look up into someone’s face and realize that he no longer can recognize them at all. What used to be a carefully curated catalog of recognizing hair styles and clothing and eye colors falls onto the floor and scattered into disarray. The pages falling out of the folder, with the carefully determined order now spread haphazardly across the floor. One of these days, he’s going to try to eat something, and find that what strikes him most is not the taste but the texture, the flavors themselves near indistinguishable, all running together into a pale blur, where it had once been a vibrant symphony. But those days are far from here, those days when what he knows to be true begins to fade are far in the distance, at least he hopes they will be. One of these days, and maybe it’s already passed, someone is going to refer to him by his name, by words that he has used his whole life, and instead of the normality that comes with acknowledgement they’ll feel the sti...

Saccharine sickly sweet symbolism filtered through Opinionated optimism constantly pushing in Commendable promises turning into propaganda As people repeat and regurgitate what they want to hear What they wish they had heard  What they want you to hold in your heart I don’t want to be constantly contrary  But the way you push your perspective You won’t let me make up my own mind Leads me to want to laugh in your face When in my heart I might have wanted to agree

It was a bit harder to get in than they would’ve expected, considering what they found inside. The humans had heavily fortified the surrounding area, and as such this led them to assume that whatever the humans had hidden inside was immensely valuable to them. However, the contents of the facility did not reach those expectations. The humans had clearly been experimenting within, before they quickly fled in order to attempt to outrun the encroaching hordes of the invasion, leaving only their automated defenses to protect the facility. But the insides of the facility were not as high tech as all this fuss and protection would have led the invaders to assume, for all that was found inside was toys. Glimmering, freshly manufactured toys, making loud noises and bright lights flash at the press of a button, waiting for the long fled youth to come to purchase them. Toys so small that they would only fit in the hands of the youngest of the invaders, toys that could cause only the lightest of ...

Perfect control is difficult to reach. If you think something is perfect you probably aren’t looking hard enough. Or maybe perfect isn’t always perfectly objective. Sometimes we think something is objective, when it’s subjective. Sometimes, most things can be said to be true, in some sense of the word, in some sense of the world. Wow, doesn’t that all sound smart. And yet it means nothing at all, and wasn’t meant to either. But at least it took up some time to read.

Two men are on opposite sides of the bar. One of them appears taller than the other, but only because he is standing while the other sits on a barstool. The one that is seated removes his coat and scarf, draping them over the back of the seat. The rest of the bar is small, comfortable, and only inhabited by a few, heavily inebriated, regulars. There’s music playing, but it’s faded so far into the background that neither of the men take note of it. It’s a Wednesday night, and the clock behind the bar reads 10:30. It’s 10:42, and both of the men know this. “Doesn’t look like a very busy night... how about a story, Sam?” the one seated asks with a smile, accepting the full glass wordlessly passed to him across the counter, sliding it across the stained wood onto a flimsy paper napkin that is already nearly soaked through with condensation. “What kind of story are you looking for today? I’ve picked up a few good ones in the last week,” Sam pulls out a notebook from one of his pockets, and ...

When I was in 6th grade, my writing teacher had us walk around the school, practicing holding open doors for each other. He was preparing us for a school trip, during which I don’t think I was ever the first one through a door. But he wasn’t everyone’s teacher, so I found myself adapting what he had taught us, so that I could still say that I listened. Years later, someone mentioned to me that everyone likes to stand out in their own way. Or maybe I read it somewhere, or maybe I just got to thinking. Either way, I had been picking up quirks from characters from books and movies for years, but at this point I decided that I wanted to do something small, something that didn’t get in the way of anyone, but some quirk that I knew I had invented. So I changed the way I opened doors, pushing the handle up instead of down. The first time someone asked about it, I realized that I was embarrassed to say that I started doing it as a way to feel like I had created something myself. So I said it w...

So in that moment, I realized that this time was not built for me. That staying in this web of people ignoring science in favor of their agendas of religion and personal gain, armored with thick skin of corruption was wearing me down to nothing. That staying here was killing me, and would do so faster than any potentially dangerous experiments in time travel may. Indeed, time travel is my plan! I, as a man of science faced by this conundrum, decided that I would attempt to travel into the future, freezing myself in stasis in the hopes of waking up in a world better suited to my ideals. As we have seen the trends of history show a greater importance of science, a greater ability to find the facts, I pray that this trend will continue, and that I will be able to awaken in a world which I can better understand. Today I made an incredible discovery. A scientist, one much like myself, that seems to have frozen himself in stasis 500 years ago. To be able to see his reaction to the world of t...

Another normal day on Earth. I woke up at the sunrise, flailed wildly at my alarm clock until it finally took pity on me and silenced itself, and trudged downstairs to struggle with the coffee machine. A little more awake, I went to work, which I cannot detail here due to confidentiality concerns, but I can say that we are making great strides towards successful communication, and hopefully, eventually, cohabitation. So after a long stressful day I returned home, and fell asleep eating KFC on the couch, watching So You Think You Can Dance reruns on my laptop. It was a typical day on the planet of $(&#*$. I awoke as the stars faded into blue in the sky, and haphazardly catapulted my battered alarm clock across the room in an effort to silence it, as I wrapped myself more tightly in my blankets. Eventually I gathered the matter necessary to assume a material form and rearrange my existence into the same space as the covfefe machine. Finally fully formed, I osmosised my way to my job,...

I get lost in my head all the time, telling myself stories of what my life could secretly be. Why do so many of them involve you lying to me? Nothing has happened that could trigger this fear that I can see. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a fear, more of a way that my mind lets my fantasies and what I know to be the truth come to agree. You’ve never done anything in reality like these stories to break my trust before, but in my dreams we’re always entangled in a web of lies, us three.

They were thankful to see us, yet they were also amazed. You see, they too have been searching, perhaps even more vigorously than we have. They have been putting forth a monumental effort to search for anyone else, and had begun to lose hope. There was dissent, sparks of people beginning to doubt that we were even out there. They tell me that millions of years ago, their ancestors had found one of the many objects we launched into space, and took it as the sign that we had intended it to be. A sign that we also exist. And so it all seems to fit, until I realized that we have, in fact, not sent out this record ourselves. So I now find myself writing to you, relieved that those back home will finally stop calling us fools for looking, and surprised that it took me so long to get here. What would you have thought of me now? Perhaps my goal is now won, as I keep them from the same fate that humanity held.

He asks me if I want to talk about it I tell him the color of my hair I tell him what it will become They matter the same, in my mind I’m fairly certain that’s wrong Who the fuck taught me that And why does it have to be true I’m thinking of pink Pale, like the color of the sunrise, Lighter than baby blankets I probably won’t go through with it though I’m not a coward, but I’m not good with people I can’t predict the consequences Maybe I’ll ask her tomorrow I’m liking the idea of pink

She walks across the field, feeling the mud squelch beneath her boots, and the rain pattering down above them. The moisture seeps in from both directions, culminating in a wet sock and cold toes. Fortunately, she’s getting close to her destination, so she doesn’t let it bother her. Instead she wraps her hands around the paper cup that she holds in front of her. It has a lid, yet she still unconsciously slouches forward a bit in order to shade it from the rain. The way she holds it would make any passerby think that it holds a warm beverage of some kind, but instead it holds tea that she made over an hour ago and promptly forgot on her desk, in order to ensure it cooled down to a reasonable temperature. She finally steps off the grass, still lost in her thoughts, but straightening up as she reaches a stretch of path that is protected by an overhang. Her left boot leaves distinctive prints as she continues down the path, while her equally soaked right boot passes without trace. She takes...

Perfect Cabin is a short script in the style of old time radio shows. Cast:  NARRATOR: The narrator ROBERT, leading: A young single father, is fairly reclusive and isn’t very good at social interaction, decides to move his small family because he thinks it’ll be better both for him and for the children SAMMY: Robert’s young daughter, fanciful and naive in the way that many young children are, not afraid to share her opinions BILLIE: Robert’s older child, obsessed with the idea of being the hero of a story, comes up with extravagant stories to explain the most mundane occurrences, Robert’s desire to anchor them more to the real world was one of his motivations for moving CHARLES, leading: The real estate agent showing the house to Robert and his family, secretly a massive nerd for haunted houses, really passionate about his job DANNY: Doctor who lives closer than the nearest town, friend of Robert’s from childhood, not related but is an uncle figure to the kiddos MFX: OMINOUS LEAD I...