For the Musically-Oriented

#56, PG: "Born to Run."

2006-08-04T16:31:03Z

Title: Born to Run
Author: phinnia
Content: Final Cut (schuyler)
Rating: PG
Challenge: #56, "Counting Flowers on the Wall" (296 words, under an hour)
Notes: He's really the only one of my headpeople that can do proper justice to this song. You'd think it was written with him in mind. :-)

The year before I moved to L.A. I spent a lot of time walking. I would sneak out and wander the canals at night, just walking for hours; watching the trams rattle by and the boats drift silently through the yellow-spotted night.
It's harder than you'd think to sneak out in a house with three observant parents and a handful of assorted relatives, because someone's always awake somewhere, but you learn; you learn to lie about where you're going to avoid handfuls of awkward questions, which branches on the tree outside the window are strong enough to hold your weight and which ones creak like the bones of a thousand walking zombies.
Not that they wouldn't let me go out. I just didn't want the questions. Where are you going, when are you coming back? Because I couldn't answer them. I didn't know. 'When' supposed that there was actually going to be a return trip, and I couldn't guarantee that.
One night I didn't bother coming back - I called my mother from the other side of an ocean instead, and got bitchslapped for it, and it didn't hurt any less for the distance.
The year after Jenny left I spent a lot of time driving. You can't really walk around L.A., at least not where I live - it's a bunch of suburbs crawling desperately toward each other for warmth - so I upgraded to driving.
It's the same and different. Haven't come to any conclusions. No windows to climb out of. No one bitches me across oceans these days - just from across town when my alimony check is late.
Is it time to leave again? I don't know. Too many questions.

Challenge #59 - Strange and Beautiful

2006-07-31T01:00:57Z

Challenge #59 is Strange and Beautiful! (Original by Aqualung.)

To me, you're strange and you're beautiful
You'd be so perfect with me
But you just can't see
You turn every head but you don't see me

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #58 - Run

2006-07-10T17:58:06Z

This week's challenge is Run! (lyrics by Snow Patrol.)

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #57 -- The Walk

2006-07-03T19:13:57Z

Challenge #57! This week's theme is -- The Walk! (Original by Imogen Heap.)

No, it's not meant to be like this
Not what I planned at all
I don't want to feel like this
So that makes it all your fault

Red alert this vessel's under siege
Total overload
All systems down
They've got control
There's no way out
We are surrounded
Give in, give in
And relish every minute of it

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #56 -- Counting Flowers on the Wall

2006-06-26T22:21:48Z

Challenge #56 is-- Counting Flowers on the Wall, by the Statler Brothers

Last night I dressed in tails
Pretending I was on the town
As long as I can dream
It's hard to slow this swinger down
So please don't give a thought to me
I'm really doing fine
You can always find me here
Having quite a time

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #55 -- Four Walls

2006-06-19T06:58:53Z

This is usually where I'd put an MP3 post, but they're not terribly popular. We'll think of something else! In the meantime.

Challenge #55! This week's theme is -- Four Walls! (Original by Charlotte Martin.)

Don't think I'll talk
Yeah, I don't think I'll breathe
And I don't think I'll think
What you're thinking

All that I know of us is what was there
In the longest of stares
We were sinking

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #54 - Dignity

2006-06-12T05:07:57Z

Challenge #54 is Dignity! (Original by Solas!)

So many roads, so much at stake
So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of a lake
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #53 - The Dumbing Down of Love

2006-05-29T19:28:36Z

Challenge #53 is The Dumbing Down of Love! (Original by Frou Frou.) (Suggested by gatafairy!)

No, no -- I'll get this
I want to treat you
You're still not famous
And you haven't struck it rich

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #52, "This Year"

2006-05-23T01:50:23Z

Challenge #52 is: This Year, by Chantal Kreviazuk!

January, I'll learn to fly
February, love's gonna find me
March, April, May, I'll get carried away
This year is gonna be incredible

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #51, "Born Under A Bad Sign."

2006-05-15T03:48:34Z

Challenge #51 is Born Under A Bad Sign! (Original by Cream.)

Born under a bad sign.
I've been down since I began to crawl.
If it wasn't for bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all.

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

#50, PG: Soft Serve (The Ice Cream Truck of the Damned)

2006-05-14T19:49:41Z

Title: Soft Serve (The Ice Cream Truck of the Damned)
Author: phinnia
Content: west end tales
Rating: PG
Challenge: #50, "builder looks for the rotten hole"; less than an hour, 263 words
Notes: This is just ... weird. Yeah. It's a long story behind it.

Zoe was not prepared for Death.

No one was really prepared for death, of course, but in Zoe's case Death had forsaken his pale horse for a aging ice cream truck with a swirling cone on the roof, and she was of the opinion that no one could really ever be prepared for that.

Death had taken his cowl down; yellowed lights from the passing streetlamps sprayed erratically through his empty eye sockets. He turned to look at Zoe, and his skull glowed with an eerie ambient light. "I was like you once. And look where I am today."

"What do you mean?"

"I was like you once." he repeated. "Not exactly, of course - in my time they didn't have as many subcultures as they do now, so I was just the weird kid in the corner with the glasses and the pocket protector -"

"What's a pocket protector?"

He had no eyes, but managed to roll them anyway. "Kids these days. Next thing you're going to tell me you don't know what an eight-track is."

"A what?"

"Oh, for God's sake." Death's head fell into his skeletal hands; bone clicked and shuddered against bone. The ice cream truck changed lanes, swerving around a silver Lexus. "Never mind. The point is, I was like you - just trust me on that. The kid that everyone picked on."

"And now you're dead."

"And now I'm lord and master of the dead. Instead of picking on me, everyone fears me. Believe me, it's a distinction worth making."

Challenge #50: "A Builder Looks for the Rotten Hole"

2006-05-08T05:09:32Z

Challenge #50 is another poetry challenge: "A Builder Looks for the Rotten Hole" (original by Rumi)

I've said before that every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft.

A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water-carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.

Find a way to take this excerpt and apply it to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #49 - Devil's Dance Floor

2006-04-24T11:25:19Z

This week's challenge is Devil's Dance Floor, by Flogging Molly (lyrics here).

The color of her eyes
Were the color of insanity
Crushed beneath her wave
Like a ship, I could not reach the shore
We're all just dancers on the Devil's dance floor

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

#48 // Firebrand

2006-04-16T14:58:22Z

Title: Firebrand
Author: maladaptive
Content: Debunking Theology
Challenge: #48, Little Wing
Rating: PG
Notes: These two are just fun to write. I wanted to get the vaguely random, stream-of-conscience narrative with this, but I'm not sure how well I did it without losing the proper narrative itself. Noah really is that charismatic, though it's partly helped by the fact that many angels tend to be naturally well-liked. He is also liberal hippy scum. With a MD.

Firebrand

Noah couldn't remember where they were that morning. Somewhere in Africa, in some place, providing medical services. It wasn't quite becoming a famous surgeon in the states, but he preferred the poor-with-funny-accents to the Americans-with-entitlement-complexes. He wondered if this would somehow predicate a career change in regards to eventually becoming a famous surgeon.

Then he decided that he didn't want to think about it and stumbled out of bed. He was, he reasoned happily, in a real building, with a wooden floor. Things were looking considerably up for the day.

He only took long enough to find a pair of pants before wandering out of the room. He located the hallway, then the bathroom, then he explored.

There wasn't much to explore, and in roughly ten steps he found himself in a small kitchen, in the presence of an angel.

She hadn't noticed him, and he crept up behind her to wrap his arms around her waist and buried his face in the feathers of her wings. "Morning, ducky."

"Mumble mumble to you too, sunshine."

He turned, just enough to make his speech intelligible. "And what shall we be doing today?"

She twisted around in his arms, revealing that she had been mixing something and was armed with a wooden spoon. "I'm on to you," Damacia warned, aiming her weapon at his face. When he looked back at her blankly, she jabbed the spoon at his nose, leaving a cold glob of batter behind.

He didn't give her the satisfaction of wiping the batter off. "About?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm on to you, you sneaky bastard." She menaced him once more with the spoon, forcing him to let go and back away.

She turned back to her mixing bowl and he surreptitiously cleaned his face off with his arm, which wasn't much better. "What are you making?"

"Explosive putty."

"You're going to blow my face up?"

She twitched her wings, and the trailing feathers brushed against him, tickling over his skin like some fiendish tickling... thing. "I'll be doing the world a favor."

Noah bit his lip to keep from laughing as he inched to the side, away from her wings. "Looks like explosive waffles."

"They're my patented Doom Waffles."

"Fantastic. I'm starving. Where are we?"

Damacia grunted, waving an arm at him. "On vacation."

He glanced out the window. There was little to be seen aside from a large stretch of savannah, a sight he'd become well-used to. "Where?"

"Nairobi."

"Ah."

Somewhere in Africa. He'd been right after all. "So what're you going to do when we go home?"

The question drew his attention away from the view of the African prairie and back to Damacia. Or at least, Damacia's back. He watched her braid swing between her wings, black, frizzy and completely at odds with the downy white feathers. "Become a professional firebrand."

She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Come again?"

"I'm going to roam the country, rousing the rabble and wrapping them around my pinky, because I'm just that damn charismatic." He leaned back against the wall to strike a dramatic pose.

Her black eyes narrowed on him, speculatively. "What about becoming a doctor?"

"Maybe later. You want to join me?"

"Become your partner in firebrandery?" Amusement colored her tone, and he knew he had her.

"Yes."

"Do you want waffles for breakfast?"

"Sure."

"Then I suppose I'll help you rouse the rabble. You finish here. I'm gonna go sit down." She immediately abandoned her waffle making duties and brushed past him on her way out, hard enough to make him stagger.

He waited until she was sitting down in the other room before pouring out the batter into the waffle iron. It was the first time he'd experienced electricity in nearly two weeks. "Why do we have a waffle iron while in Kenya?"

"Borrowed it from the neighbor."

If there was anything that challenged his sheltered American worldview, it was Kenyans making waffles.

Noah thought nothing of doing his own domestic chores around Damacia. Other women, he would contrive to have them do such chores for him. She wouldn't fall for it, and he didn't want her to.

"What're we rousing the rabble about?" she asked from around the thin wall.

"Haven't decided yet."

That answer seemed to satisfy her. Noah rarely planned things out in advance, anyway, because things just naturally worked out.

Challenge #48 - Little Wing

2006-04-11T03:37:44Z

Challenge #48 is 'Little Wing'! (Original by Jimi Hendrix, although I'm mostly familar with Sting's cover, but the lyrics are the same.)

When I'm sad she comes to me
With a thousand smiles
She gives to me free
It's alright, she says, it's alright,
Take anything you want from me.

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

#46, PG: "Just Another Tequila Sunrise."

2006-04-06T03:02:29Z

Title: Just Another Tequila Sunrise
Author: phinnia
Content: two pair
Rating: PG
Challenge: #46, 'leisure suite' (feist) - 293 words and a ridiculously long time
Notes: I seem to be perpetually running one week behind. Eventually I might even catch up.

The first night of their supposed family vacation the twins drank cognac in the resort lounge and talked about the parental detente between themselves. Well, Sander drank cognac, and Tieunis drank that peculiar brand of Greek ouzo he'd developed a taste for when he was loafing around Athens, and occasionally they got their glasses mixed up for a swallow or two - an event which usually left Tieunis happier than Sander.

The whole thing was unplanned, of course; they just happened to be in the same place more or less at the same time, with empty glasses and overflowing minds, and the inevitable flow of conversation drifted toward their parents' momentary reconciliation. Sander would have said it was psychic twin flashes, but he knew better.

"They've been doing this kind of shit for years, I don't see why they're worried about us." Tieunis crunched an icecube between his teeth.

Sander unbuttoned his cuffs and loosened his tie, leaning back in his chair. He looked, Tieunis thought, like a queer mafioso with his feet up on the edge of the table; Thom had woven a rainbow ribbon through the bumps and tucks of his braid, and that more than anything was proof that his brother had mellowed. "Because Mom is Mom and she worries about everything. If she didn't, she wouldn't be Mom."

"True."

They sat quietly for a while, watching the sun sink into the ocean. A dark pair of familiar shadows trailed across the beach.

"Aww, they're even holding hands again, like they did when we were little." Tieunis marvelled. "Aren't they cute? Just like one of those diamond ads."

"It won't last." Sander shrugged. "It never does."

"I know. But they're cute anyway."

Challenge #47 -- My Skin

2006-04-04T21:54:52Z

Freetalk goes here.

Challenge #47! This week's theme is -- My Skin! (Original by Natalie Merchant.)

I’m the slow dying flower
In the frost killing hour
Sweet turning sour anduntouchable

Your face-saving promised whispered like prayers
I don’t need them

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #46 - Leisure Suite

2006-03-28T07:25:40Z

This week's challenge is Leisure Suite. (Original by Feist.)

Sometime
I feel the room surround me
With possibility

Build fires to stoke them
Let's fix what's been broken
Words have been stolen
But silence is golden

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

#44, PG: "peaks, valleys and knots"

2006-03-22T19:29:44Z

Title: Peaks, valleys and knots
Author: phinnia
Content: timeshifter, second gen (anthony)
Rating: PG
Challenge: #44 (your ex-lover is dead) - 495 words, over an hour
Notes: Another first-person Anthony bit. Don't read it if you're the least bit phobic about planes. :-D

The risk of sudden death is inevitable in our line of work; there are safeguards built in, of course, such as the panic button on our dog tags, but eventually any shifter that does any real amount of field work dies. It's unsettling, but it's almost never permanent.

I remember the first time. I was flying a small plane over the Swiss Alps - which is a beautiful experience, and I strongly recommend it. It was a day so clear that the combination of snow and sky seared itself into the back of my brain.

There was something wrong with the fuel gauge, I guess, or maybe it was one of the engines - I'm not sure, and it's not like I had much time to find out, because something sputtered and died.

There's nothing quite so terrifying as the asthmatic cough of an aircraft engine at 3,500 feet. Your heart literally leaps into your throat and tries to claw its way out of your mouth.

No, I lied. The only thing more terrifying than one engine dying at 3,500 feet is two engines dying at 3,500 feet - which is what happened next.

There was a second of cold, clear silence - maybe two seconds - maybe as much as a minute, and then gravity decided I'd had long enough and started to kick in with a certain amount of earnest.

What happened next was pretty much entirely dumb, stupid luck. I hit the panic button, of course - we have a panic button built into the dogtags around our necks, which opens an automatic gateway to home - and the gateway opened, everything was kosher. Throw myself out of the chair -

And I tripped. Can you believe it? Tripped over my own goddamn shoelaces. And of course, that was that, and I died, of course, because the plane crashed into a mountain and I guess the fuel tank hit a rock or something and the whole thing exploded.

I don't remember anything after that until I woke up in the Guildhall infirmary. Poor Audra was white as a sheet, and Fabe was pissed as hell because he was the one that had to go after me, of course. Serves him right, I say - I mean, how many times have I had to bail him out of jail - or in one notable case, away from a firing squad - after he got caught consorting with some leader of some revolution in some banana republic somewhere? And besides, what's the use of having a brother if they won't reverse your death for you? That's the way I look at it, but I guess we don't see eye to eye.

But I double-knot my shoelaces now, just in case. They might not be so charitable next time.

Challenge #45 -- I'm Stupid (Don't Worry About Me)

2006-03-21T01:22:58Z

Challenge #45! This week's theme is -- I'm Stupid (Don't Worry About Me)!

(Original by Prime STH.)

Download the MP3 uploaded onto my webdomain (right-click and select save as) and listen to the song, following along with the linked lyrics if you like. Pick a segment of lyrics that inspires you, or follow the mood of the song as a whole, and write something that relates back to the song. This is an experiment; let me know what you think about it!

Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

#44 : PG, "That Final Flame"

2006-03-19T15:24:39Z

Title: That Final Flame
Author: terredancer
Content: The Graduates; Maxwell Carlisle
Rating: PG
Challenge: #44 - Your Ex-Lover is Dead
Notes: The last week or so has had the remnants of the old Max-angstbeast rearing its head again, but this is one bit that I don't think I've written about. It still counts, though. Besides, with Max and Birgit, fire symbolism is just too fitting.

He'd done it; the actions he'd taken were irrevocable.

This final countdown had begun nearly a month earlier. When he could have done something shameful like throw himself at Jeremy's feet and ask him to take him back, instead he had looked at his best friend turned lover turned whatever he was now in that empty space between losing one and trying to reclaim the other and muttered something. He only dimly remembered telling Jeremy to go back to his wolves. That was one of those little statements that hurt both of them all the more because only between the two of them did it have any meaning.

Of course, the next morning Max had woken with a hangover for the first time as a college student.

All the same, he tried to keep it together. The lengths of shattered sanity he tried to weave back together were like feeble DNA-strands from a species in the middle of an evolution (or a death, but he tried not to think about that). All the while there were more exams, more pressure, lab-work and more classes than he could really keep track of. The bridges between himself and his friends in the city were burning faster the harder he worked, and at night when he should be sleeping, Max lay awake kindling those flames ever higher.

Distance from Nicole and Jeremy was the easiest to justify. They were a new couple, and they needed time alone to kindle what they had until it would stay alight without any help from either side, and Jeremy didn't need to hear from his old lover anyway. He and Alex had maintained a certain space since Clarice had run away from home at fourteen, and it was almost too easy to let it spread. After all, he had his own fires to put out before they could really start. He and the London-Bunch had never really been close, and maybe Birgit wouldn't notice if he started disappearing more and more...

(...to the top of the library he'd go, avoiding Birgit, avoiding classes and lab-work and too much pressure in too many directions and he thought he was going to explode. At least this way he could hide in old books, get lost somewhere between Jung and Yeats and those books on theoretical physics that were taken out so seldom that they'd developed a fine layer of dust.)

Days later, weeks later, he was alone in his apartment with nothing more than the television blaring out white noise and static for company when he came to his decision. He'd burnt all the bridges down to the ground, so there was only one last thing left to burn. It was almost easy to set everything up in the centre of the living room, and he nearly had it done when the pounding and shouting started.

If I ignore it, she'll go away.

But there was a reason Max always called Birgit Fire Incarnate. Before he could set that final flame alight, she burst through the door, her fear and anger another fire he didn't know how to put out.

#44 // The Shadow's Wake

2006-03-15T18:30:29Z

Title: The Shadow's Wake
Author: maladaptive
Rating: PG-13 for Big Issues
Content: 99.9% Less Voodoo
Challenge: #44, once again, way over the word limit
Notes: Believe it or not, the overarching theme of Warren's universe is identity. Magdalena shows up in the novellas, older, more stable and less bitter, but she's still exemplifies "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." I really just wanted to write Warren raising something and getting into the how tos. Yes, I know, my writing has been really weird lately.

The Shadow's Wake

"I haven't found another sane necromancer since my cousin died. You're a godsend."

Isaac, the golem builder, talked too much, but that wasn't anything Warren was uncomfortable with. He had long since learned to tune other people out, leaving Isaac to babble inanely to his heart's content.

In front of them lay the figure of a woman, supine over the intricate circle he'd drawn on the concrete floor. Not even her body had been able to get in the way of the confusing tangle of lines, and he'd drawn them right over her with a Magic Marker. Isaac had wanted her brown hair to be loose, but Warren had braided the waist length hair and carefully arranged it so that it didn't interrupt any of the lines. She was nude, but there was no help for it.

"--always did make really timid golems. I loved her to pieces, but I just know that you can make golems with a little more initiative, a little more fire--"

Her name was Magdalena. He would have to sear that name, the identity attached to it, into her soul. He wasn't sure how he would, because no matter what the books said, souls were just souls, you couldn't attach a name or aspirations to it.

"--and your work with the police! Why, you should have a perfect golem in no time--"

Warren knew souls. He knew answers to questions that humanity had puzzled over for generations. It was innate knowledge, like breathing, an understanding that he'd been born with. The nature of the soul had been laid bare before him, as naked and helpless as Magdalena. The most powerful force in the universe, and it bent to his will like a puppy trying to appease a stern master.

No wonder necromancers were so often executed. No wonder necromancers were so often insane, and sometimes he wondered if any necromancer had a firm grasp on reality, or at least, the reality the rest of the world shared. If only they knew, but it wasn't his place to tell them.

"--Mr. Lanser?"

"I'm thinking." Thinking of the best way to approach this. She was different from zombies. Zombies already had an existence, bringing them back to life was like filling a dry riverbed. Magdalena had no such place inside where a soul could latch on and grow, it would require carving one out. Not into her flesh, there was no little cavern in the body where the soul resided, even if Warren felt them to be as physical as flesh and blood. The soul lived in the breath, constantly evaporating with the friction of living, only to heal over and be drawn in again. Its dwelling place was between actions, at the birth and the death of thought itself.

The physical manifestation of the self, as invisible and intangible as the wind. A kind of energy that science had yet to find.

It was an excellent secret to keep all to himself. He cherished it with the same zealous jealousy that he had guarded his hoard of toy airplanes when he was a child.

"It's going to pass midnight," Isaac pressed.

Warren barely glanced at him. "Irrelevant." Most if it was irrelevant. He could do more work with less props and rituals than most necromancers, and all he needed were the lines. The design itself could have been in any myriad of patterns, he just needed something to keep his attention anchored in the here and now.

At last, with a plan in mind, he set his hands down on the outermost line, smudging it slightly. Didn't matter. It was just a representation of something to hold on to. He closed his eyes, imagining himself flowing down the lines like water in channels, filling them up and moving closer, at a uniform pace, toward the golem.

That was the necromancer's secret. Like people had power over their arms and legs, Warren had power over souls. He felt it rise up from some inner pool and rush outward, as willing and as pliant as any limb. He could feel the gritty chalk brushing against him with a finer sense than any number of nerve endings could give him. He could feel the golem, cold, desolate, a desert starved for water.

The emptiness pulled him in, drawing on more than he was willing to give. He could hear himself, in the way souls hear-- a thrumming, senseless vibration-- murmuring a mantra under his breath, anything to keep his attention focused. He noted, almost absently, that he was singing Fly Me To The Moon.

He felt Isaac too, even as he as being rushed away, even more of him came rushing in, so he wasn't sure if he was moving or holding still in a torrent. The man's discomfiture tasted of licorice, filling the space around him in the same way the noxious candy tainted anything it came into contact with. Design. Shape. Make, he reminded himself sternly, but every attempt he made at creating an indentity for the golem was swallowed up by the greedy emptiness, this hollow glutton that he couldn't even get to recognize the name Magdalena.

Peripherally, he was aware of pain. He could practically draw in more soulstuff from the air, losing his reserves was of little concern. But a body was not made to have its soul drawn out in such volumes, and every inch of him was afire with strain.

Don't go back, his own voice said, from somewhere in the golem.

I'm not staying here, he told it, philosophically.

There was only a moment's hesitation: but it hurts out there.

For now, he agreed.

Then stay here.

No. This is your place, not mine.

There was laughter, bitter and hysterical. He wondered, numbly, if that was how his laugh sounded. What's the difference between us, sport? Besides me being a phony, and all.

Sport, sport. He tried to recall, but remembering himself wasn't easy without his brain to do the remembering. He was just a soul, here, and souls clung to only the most formative of memories. Then he remembered: his mother used to call him that. You're not a phony.

I'm as phony as your shadow.

My shadow is just a trick of the light, he explained, patiently. Talking to his own cynicism was disconcerting, when that cynicism had a life of its own. Even the comfortable detachment of thinking without the body was marred, the perfect experience ruined, by this voice that urged him to higher self-awareness. Taunted him into actually thinking.

His voice pressed on: What's the difference between a man and his shadow?

Plenty, in the dark. He drew himself back, following his own scent like a bloodhound. Witches were in constant danger of losing their body if they wandered too far astray, but Warren could never lose his body. It was there, the north star in his miniature cosmos, always, and it would always welcome him back with the blind desires of its biological functions. It wanted to live, and it needed him to do that.

The pain that he'd only been partly aware of exploded through him as he fell back into place. He felt himself flood through the pathways in his brain and course through the nerves of his body, every second so agonizing that he fell over, shuddering. It was a senseless sort of hurt, the kind with no biological cause. He'd read a book once that called the pain 'heartbreak': when the body cannot stand to be separated from its soul and teeters on the edge of death due to a broken heart. It was silly and romanticised, but suddenly, he believed that it was the exact reason. His body was like an angry lover, chastising him for staying out too late.

He decided to laugh about the revelation. Later. When he felt like laughing.

The golem stared at him with her arrogant black eyes. At some point, she'd turned her head, with her cheek pressed to the floor, much like his was. He wasn't sure when that internal voice had connected to the body around it, or when it had severed itself from him so completely. "Hey there, sport."

He knew that look of sardonic triumph. He'd seen it in the mirror.

#44 -- "Bridges"

2006-03-13T23:09:27Z

Title: Bridges
Author: paradoxhorizon
Rating: PG
Song: #44, Your Ex-Lover is Dead (The Stars)
Content: Stranger Than Fiction; Alec
Notes: I rarely post here, but the lyric grabbed me and next thing I knew: story. Most of this is an extended metaphor so it's quite short for once.

Building friendships was like building bridges, Alec had thought in one of his more philosophical moods. Gaping chasms existed between everyone, making each man a island, mysterious and unknowable until a connection could be made. These first connections were tentative and shaky, a rope and plank bridge cast hopefully across the divide. You had to hope it would catch somewhere. You had to trust that the other person wouldn’t cut the ropes while you were trying to cross the bridge.

Introductions and first conversations took place in the middle of the bridge -neutral territory- with the howl of the void all around to remind you of the dangers and to encourage you to connect. As your friendship strengthened, so did the bridge. More planks were added as you learned about the other person. Slender supports of wood reached down into the surrounding blackness. The bridge stopped swinging wildly as you crossed back and forth, but it still creaked and groaned ominously, reminding you that your friendship was still fragile. An unexpected wind could cause disaster. A wrong step could snap a board under your feet.

Later your bridge would change further, reflecting your friendship. Swooping suspension bridges supported by points of common interests. Graceful arch bridges for strong friendships carefully built. Covered bridges for shy new romances. Cantilever bridges for those who only reluctantly admit they need friends. The more beautiful the bridge, the longer and stronger the friendship. But over and under all bridges, the void still whistles, reminding you that, in time, all things decay. Time leaves no bridge standing.

Alec had burned all his bridges. Why wait for inevitable decay when you know you’ll never need a friend again? Now he was alone on his island. Standing on the edge, all the warm lights of other islands seemed far away and cold. The network of bridges stretching across the void seemed like a spider web, as if he could reach out and brush them all away with a sweep of his hand. He knew how easily bridges could be destroyed. He’d burnt all his and there was only one thing left to do.

Challenge #44 - Your Ex-Lover is Dead

2006-03-13T20:39:00Z

Challenge #44 is Your Ex-Lover is Dead (original by Stars)

When there is nothing left to burn
You have to set yourself on fire

(Yes, I know, it's short - but I think it's great anyway.)

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!

Challenge #43 - Pink Bullets

2006-03-07T20:53:26Z

Challenge #43 is Pink Bullets! (Original by The Shins.)

But you've got too much to wear on your sleeves
It has too much to do with me
And secretly I want to bury in the yard
The grey remains of a friendship scarred

Find a way to take those lyrics and apply them to a situation in your writing. Feel free to suggest your own songs or lyrics here!