This is a spur of the moment short story I decided to write. It might get confusing in parts, but while not spoiling anything, I'll tell you that the Italics are there for a reason.
A Creative Story for Creative Writing
A dim light shimmered across the small obfuscated apartment, the power was out and the only light source came from two or three candles. A small thump emanated around the room, someone was creeping around. The two second thunder of a gun and a squishy splat like water crashing to a floor echoed off of the walls, when all of the sudden...
...click...
“Look, the surround sound is nice, but you need to get off your ass and keep working on that novel of yours.” Zairy Austin, my girlfriend and future Mrs. Stevenson turned on those god awful bright lights right in the middle of a good zombie movie. “Look, you're out of college and I don't know how much longer we're gonna be able to support ourselves when we -both- make minimum wage working full time. Sitting around watching gore flicks while I work my ass off isn't helping.”
We never really have fights, even when she's yelling at me the second she gets home smelling like a grease trap and fake meat for not really doing anything. It's not that I agree with everything she says, but rather, she took a hold of my testicles months ago, and apparently I guess I do agree with everything she says.
Fresh out of college with a bachelors in English and Creative Writing, can you figure out that I'm a writer? We decided to start a comic book together, she would illustrate the book while I create the story and fill in the speech bubbles, but she usually waits for me to write out the story before she illustrates it with her imagination, thus why I have no reason to argue. I haven't thought of anything good recently due to a bad case of writers block; you know, the one where I drink rum and coke while watching crappy movies? In any case, I honestly haven't sat down in a long time to just really hammer out a decent story.
I've got the basics down, a bit of exposition on my character Jason Baxter, you know, family, friends, social and work life, etc. But I still don't have much of a theme to the story. What I mean by that is, is Jason gonna be a superhero or some random guy who gets caught in a somewhat overzealous Gothic plot line? Or maybe I could do a graphic novel in the style of a sitcom, like a family of five trying to struggle through lower-middle class and at the same time having no qualities like the person sitting next to them at the dinner table.
That's probably not going to happen, either the idea has been done so many times I couldn't possibly come up with something innovative, or it's too complex a theme and plot that no human could flesh it out onto paper.
I got myself a couple of cans of Pibb before I sat down at the computer. My cat already decided to use my back as a sleeping place, so that was fun trying to shimmy her claws off one by one from my spine. I sat down, popped the tap and took a gulp as my writing program loaded. I sat their, thinking of what I could do to spice up Jason's life, make him seem appealing but not so much at the start, just enough to kick things off. Maybe I could give him a disorder, nothing complex or just too ludicrous to be real like A.D.D or some pervasive developmental disorder. Maybe a schizophrenic, the kind that might hear voices in their head, or maybe Multiple Personality Disorder like Jim Carry had in that awful horrible excuse for a movie.
Well shit, just thinking about what I could do to one character passed enough time for me to finish a can of Pibb already. Gods I really have to start writing.
So I began free writing, just jotting every single thought that popped in my head with no consent for grammar or organization. I had a lot of ideas down, a zombie graphic novel, you don't see too many of those anymore; a story about a demon prince whose only goal is to get rid of his father so he can assume his tyrannical position; hell I even thought of a parody of the kids show “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and something to do with robot oompa loompas, deleted that a half a second after I typed it out.
A miniature 3D origami human started to walk towards the computer, I just watched it roam right over there and look at the screen as if he was reading what I had written. The paper human looked at the work, then turned and spat a wad of paper at me, and even though it only had a point for an arm, I could swear it gave me the finger. I smashed my hand down on it but had to jerk it back up due to a rather painful papercut it just gave me. “Little bastard, I'll light you on fire...” I threatened as I pulled out a cigarette lighter. Other objects around my desk started to sprout limbs and come to life; a pencil stabbed me, the mouse laser blinded me, the telephone cord tried to strangle me, and my other can of Pibb shook itself profusely and then opened pointing the drinking hole at my face. Either it was really late in the evening and I was exhausted, or for no reason whatsoever parts of my apartment came to life for the sole purpose of inflicting pain and anger upon me.
I erased what I had written on the computer, I have the background of Jason Baxter being a writer in the modern day, having him go insane and think inanimate objects around his house would go nowhere with a story. It was an hour later unless my computer clock decided to screw up again. I looked over at the wall clock and it was the same, an hour had passed since I began seriously writing. I guess time flies when you're caught up in a moment.
I looked at my computer clock, but for some reason it had shifted in time once again, much more furiously this time around. It was now midnight, yet it only felt like two or three minutes had passed. As I stared straight at the computer clock, it began jumping back and forth in random times, and so did parts of my computer. Popups started to spurt out even though this thing doesn't have any sort of internet access or browser installed. A game of pinball just appeared right on my screen and started playing itself, but this computer was never even built with that game, and then the monitor started to flicker a bit, then part of it shut down into a black screen with green lettering and nothing more. The only thing that it said was “Window Y/N.” I wanted to get back to work so without thinking I typed “Y” and hit enter, and my computer started to flicker again. More and more things around this place started to flicker, the lights, all the appliances, the TV and just about everything, including...my cat. My cat, a flesh and blood creature flickered as if it were a hologram on the fritz. My monitor suddenly seemed to have lost the screen, not like it broke but rather it just disappeared. And strangely enough, I couldn't see anything inside, like wires or tubing or something. I leaned in and got a closer look, and a pair of dark hands grabbed my head and started to pull me in, or rather out. As I went into the computer monitor, I had come out in a sort of shock, like being in a coma and waking up for the first time in ten years. My body was cold, it had no clothing on it, I couldn't feel my hair and considering I have long thick hair, that should have been easy, and every time I tried to open my eyes, I couldn't see at all, like if I kept trying to stare into the sun. Before the shock of whatever was going on made me pass out, I heard “It's alright, you're out of the program now.”
Once again, I erased what I had written. A story about a person living inside a computer program being pulled out, as innovative as I could make it, the plot had already been done superhero or not.
After a quick bathroom break, I decided to grab some idea juice, namely the 90 proof kind. I sat back down feeling quite refreshed and went back to typing. I couldn't think though, and not the kind where I just have writers block, but rather I almost immediately began to feel somewhat delusional. That stuff must have been really strong to do this to me in an instant, either that or I just drank a bit too much at one time. Maybe I just need a bit more or something, the first gulp was probably just hard to swallow and now that I'm used to it, the second gulp will help it get down. A few minutes later, my fiancée came out, “baby you should come to bed, it's past midnight and you gotta be up tomorrow.” I told her that I wasn't tired at all, but she kept insisting, so I flat out told her to mind her own business, probably in harsher wording. “Fine then jackass, just sleep on the couch, too tired to deal with you anyways.” So, not to make things worse with that one shred of brainpower I had left, I laid down on the couch, turned the lamp next to me off, and pretty much just dozed off. Next morning was a rather bright morning, as if it were noon. Looking at a clock confirmed that, and my hangover was pounding, what a way to start off the day. I'm once again late to my crappy ass job, and I have a hangover with no money to buy even regular aspirin. The phone rang and I nearly just screamed, but tried not to while grabbing it and answering. “Yeah,” I said so nicely greeting whoever it was. “You know you're 4 hours late right?” I concurred and told my boss I'd be in within the next twenty minutes, but he had other ideas. “Look, this is you're fourth day being late in a row. If you're not gonna bother to show up, bring your uniform and name tag in and start looking for another job, I've already started training someone new anyways.”
Great, it started off a wonderful day and it just got better. And stupid me, to fix the hangover my brain said to get aspirin but my instinct went right for another two or three shots of the you know what. Maybe I have an alcohol problem, but who cares, it's good stuff.
My girl came home later, around five, with a rather pissed off look on her face. “Bad day at work honey,” I asked, and she replied, “Sort of, and combined with yesterday you telling me to fuck off I just don't even want to talk to you right now.” I started to protest, mainly because I don't remember telling her that at all, but also because I tried to help talk her through some of her problems. But with me being inebriated, after fifteen minutes we're in a shouting fight. Next thing I know, she's gone I think she said to her mother's.
Jeez, maybe I am a bit of an alcoholic.
I liked this idea with Jason being an alcoholic much better, maybe not so good for a comic book but if I can make it a novel of some sort, then I might be able to sell it to start off our career. Zairy was asleep already, and I started to edit things. It was a bit strong on the whole drinking problem so I needed to flesh it out more, but hell it was only a bit of free writing anyways, I haven't even started a draft.
