codenamewanderlust | Recent Entries

Stories About the Jersey Devil

You're three thousand miles away from where you want to be so you decide to get drunk.

You wander through the back-streets and back-alleys of San Francisco with the bottle in one hand and the stub of a joint clutched between thumb and forefinger of the other.

You circle the blocks not really paying attention to your turns but it would be pretty hard for you to get lost in this city anymore. You know the neighborhoods by the architecture and can navigate by the weather. The sidewalk never ends here.

You're trying to find a story, chasing an idea:

An old woman passes peacefully in her sleep. At the gates of heaven she's greeted by her husband who had gone ahead of her eight years earlier.

“What took you so long?” he asks, leaning against a chrome and black motorcycle.

She's too awestruck to answer but when he calls out to her again using a nickname she always claimed she hated in life she feels herself laugh and is surprised when it doesn’t become a shuddering, rattling, rasping through her chest.

She leans on her tip toes to kiss him on the cheek, inhales the scent of pomade slicked through his hair.

“One of these for me?” she asks tapping on the pack of cigarettes rolled up into the sleeve of his white t-shirt.

He tucks his aviators into his pocket and pulls out an engraved silver Zippo holding the flame out cupped between hands.

She blows out the smoke asking, “So where's this boat I've been hearin' about for so many goddamn years?”

His grin lights up his eyes and he swings a leg over the motorcycle kick-starting it to life with a growl.

“This road trip's just getting started. It's still miles until we reach the ocean.”

The sound of the engine fades and you find yourself with your forehead against red brick; fist clutching bottle pressed into the wall.

You push yourself up and start walking again, fishing for the Bic in your pocket.

You decide you can't remain objective when recounting the tales of your grandparents who raised you on National Park Stamps and Highway Atlases, gave you a nickname to use over the CB radio, a taste for greasy spoon breakfasts and retro roadside attractions, and the bittersweet curse of wanderlust, that would one day give you the courage to live on your thumb and a prayer.

She was only fourteen when they met in a boarding house and he used to knock on the floor to signal he was home and they should sneak out together. Eventually, there was a shotgun wedding and four more children.

He had a heart attack when he was thirty-six and lived on disability for the rest of his days. He became the neighborhood handyman and an avid fisherman.

They liked to scare you with stories about a woman who gave birth to a monster that still lurked in the Pine Barrens and an eccentric heiress who was so convinced she was haunted that she never stopped adding rooms to her mysterious house in an effort to confuse the spirits.

To you all they ever seemed to do was fight but after he died suddenly and unexpectedly, while patching a hole in their roof, at the ripe old age of seventy-three she was never the same; and you learned that for them “leave me be,” meant you're mine forever my darlingand “why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier,” was I still love you so much my heart might burst from the saying of it.

Three thousand miles away from New Jersey you mourn her death in your own way and hope she knows all the stories you never got to share and stumble drunkenly through through the city of San Francisco thinking that maybe, just maybe, when your grandparents threatened to leave you on the side of the road for the Jersey Devil they were saying: be brave kid, we love you.

_____________________________________
675 Words
Dedicated with love to Robert and Mary (who is not a horse)
*You can take the girl out of Jersey but you can never take the Jersey out of the girl*

Edit: Here's the link to the poll and other entries for this round: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2062272

The Few Will Become Many

To save the people of Earth, The Few must join as one.
The Final City will rise from the ashes of the old world.
All among the few who have survived The Final War and swear allegiance to The Final City will be become a part of the whole and reside in adherence to the Law of Conformity.
This is the Final Great Act of Humanity.

( Continue Reading.... )

Update: Here's the link to the poll for this round: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2061865

TW: Self Harm, Suicide, Childhood trauma, Panic Attacks and Anxiety, If you gave birth to the author you should definitely not read this, you have been warned

( Read Entry )

This Is Only A Test

San Francisco, CA

Outer Richmond District

Tuesday, August 2nd

11:24 AM

( Continue reading... )

Edit: Here's the link to poll for this round http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2060841

My grandmother is standing next to me, looking down at her own grave.

She is pointing to the filigreed bronze lawn marker embedded into the ground. Her birth date on the left, under her own name in block letters, across from the blank space to be filled in; the words Beloved Mother beneath it all.

It doesn’t say Beloved Mother and Grandmother because she’d had it made up ten years ago before the oldest of her beloved stepsons had his children. Six years before she and I were reunited.

I read the stone again and start to slip through time and space as I have done before, existing at all times, feeling all things at once; a vaguely psychic awareness, or maybe just a symptom of a melancholy disposition.

We are here to visit my great grandmother who is interred two spots over. I miss her so much, my grandmother says and I touch her arm gently.

The warm southern winter breeze blows through the low hanging palms.

Some unknowable but surely inevitable future is reaching back to me from a day when I will be standing here and missing both of them.

My grandmother motions again, this time to the grave above her final resting place to tell me that this man never has flowers. They grow up, move away, never make the trip out, she explains.

Again time and space contracts around me. I make a promise to myself to make the journey back to this place when the time comes wherever my tumbleweed life leads.

I take a final look at the stone before we turn to walk back toward the car.

I feel her then, the specter of days yet to be, a thought form who will be born on the day that the blank space is filled in but for a moment I see her clearly, she is holding the hand of a lover; they are just passing through town.

This future incarnation looks younger that I would wish for her to be keeping our vow but then I’m constantly told I look nearly ten years younger then my actual age. I take after my grandmother. She never admits her age but her birth year is engraved in my memory now. I look over at her, dyed red spiky hair and meticulously applied makeup. The woman whose example has saved my life more than she knows.

The car pulls onto the paved road and the early afternoon sun spills over the dashboard. When I catch my own reflection in the passenger side-view mirror I close my eyes until we are back on the highway.

__________________
Inspired by the

therealljidol break week topic: A possum ran over my grave.
Based on a roadtrip I went on with my grandmother yesterday,
I couldn't resist posting it even though I had decided not to enter the break week challenge.

**reposted becasue I totally acidentally deleted the orginal!

The Begining of The End,
or It's All Just a Matter of Time

1am

The words trip over her tongue.

They wash out into the space between them

Hitting her target slightly left of the center.

She’s smiling;

Blowing hot air over her fingernails

and buffing them on her lapel.

It’s a brush-back pitch,

A challenge,

A dare,

A psych out,

She’s redefining their boundaries.

2am

She’s bored and he’s —

Well, not defenseless after all apparently,

but they’ve kept their hands to themselves.

The pain lies (so many lies) in the dust particles

floating on the sound waves

contextualized between them.

She was drawn to him because of this.

A shared history of idle threats.

Because he kindled the fire of her passion,

Because he liked her purple prose;

And kept his own quill sharpened.

3am

He is the black knight

riding across the desert.

She is the sorceress; no, not yet the dragon.

She is not breathing fire but blowing smoke

against the limits of his conviction.

She's still waiting to see
if he’ll sit this one out,

Take a bye,

Call it a draw.

Or, step up to the plate,

Pick up the dropped glove,

Take ten paces and turn.

4am

They both know all the right

buttons to push,

strings to pull,

words to hurl; loaded into slingshots

Constructed out of circular arguments.

Their vows spoken backwards;

A spell,

A trick,

A promise.

Abracadabra!

Alakazam!

The sound of a needle skipped on a vinyl record.

The words trip over her tongue.

She is still smiling when he finally swings.

__________________________

AN: I guess I have a thing for even numbers so this one is 250 words

Down The Road And Back Again

I’m 12 or maybe 14: The screen door slams behind me a second before there is the sound of something shattering inside the house. I run at full speed out of the back door nearly tripping on the wooden steps, so much of me wishing, even then, that I could grow wings and lift off the ground and fly as far away as I could. I settle for climbing a tree.

“Hey jerkface you didn’t come to Girl Scouts,” She calls up to me.

“I didn’t feel like going,” I lie at the top of my lungs.

“Are you going to come down? Or do I have to go up there?”

When I don’t answer She ties her blue and green flannel shirt around her waist and climbs up settling into the V of a branch next to me. She pulls out the pen that was poking out of her messy bun of dark hair and takes my arm; starts drawing on the back of my hand.

“Did you’re mother get the tip I left on her nightstand?” She asks.

“Shut up,” I mumble and try to pull my hand away.

“I’m just saying, it rocked my world.”

“Stop.” I try to interrupt her but She keeps going and I am really tying to pull my hand back now but also laughing and I gasp out. “You’re going to make me fall.”

She looks up then, directly into my lopsided gaze. “I would never let you fall.” She says with a sudden hysterical deadpan and then drops the pen, letting it slip from her fingers to land on the ground.

“Oops,” She laughs and swings down after it.

I’m 16 or maybe 18: I’m hiding in the park this time. She finds me and joins me on the rusted swing-set. She pumps her feet, propelling herself into the air and leaping off the swing before hitting the sand below and then running around and jumping through the chains to land on the black rubber seat.

“You should try it,” She says.

“No.” I say shaking my head. She doesn’t pressure me. Never pressures me, never gets angry that I don’t always make eye contact and that I am afraid all of the time, and somehow makes me feel like I am cool anyway. We hide our secrets under Lisa Frank stickers and She always convinces me to go home.

I’m 15 or maybe 17: I pinky-promise her, sitting on the bathroom floor of the roller rink, that I will wear green to her funeral but tell her She has to promise She will visit me if I make it to California.

“You can’t leave yet, you got a part in the school play…you can’t miss my birthday…the science fair…the battle of the bands,” She says.

Don’t leave…not yet. We beg each other.

She doesn’t come to school for a week and I drive my bike over to her house. We watch South Park and pet her dog. Her mother makes us bagel bites or maybe spaghetti-ohs.

She’s battling her own demons, hiding behind black lipstick, exorcising them in the desecrated dolls hung from the ceiling of her bedroom; spinning on their brightly colored nooses and staring blankly at me with their lifeless shiny eyes through the flickering candlelight as we listen to the new Marilyn Manson album while I write all the words that I like on the toes of my low top converse knockoffs with her red Sharpie. I pretend that if I don’t name the monsters out loud, they aren’t real.

I’m 18 and then 23: I get out of New Jersey for good and never look back but she always tracks me down and when she tells me she is getting married I save all of my pennies to be there before running away again.

I’m 32 when my demons come back to haunt me. She contacts me everyday for a month and we confess our sins to each other through the screen and laugh about how when we were young video phones were science fiction.

I hope she forgives me for writing this because despite being born with flawless comedic timing I know how much she really hates being in the spotlight. She’s the Hilary to my C.C. and if push came to shove I’d be the Louise to her Thelma but it’s the Golden Girls theme song that really tells our story; thank you for being a friend.

_____________

Another flash fiction, this one is exactly 750 words (not including title)

Edit: Here's the link to the polls for this week http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/956559.html

A Pirate's Life for Me

I have this awful habit of jumping on sinking ships.

I end up as an eternal castaway. A diaspora of one; a nomadic lone wolf moving through life with all of my material wealth compacted into the space of a single steamer trunk that I grasp onto for dear life while trying to keep my head above water.

Marking the years by the beds/couches/corners I have slept in.

It’s a curse, I realized eventually, but the thing about this curse is I never know until it’s too late; until it’s time to plot a course through the storm.

I wear out my welcome and I mosey on down the road. Riding out on the very bridges they’d built to bring me in on, letting the fires burn infinitely in my wake.

I keep my eyes on the horizon and never look over my shoulder.

I learn I thrive under pressure and find the most peace in the days it comes down to my basic needs for survival. I keep a bug out bag and carry a water bottle wherever I go. Semper paratus*.

It’s all the same story and I live it over and over again until I am running out of money and vices.

I send out a distress signal.

I wake to 5am alarm clocks for eight hundred days; commuter busses and packed lunches. It begins to wear me down, like sea glass, dulling the senses. I’m squandering time and my own fullest potential.

I’m homesick for moments spent around campfires with guitars and complete strangers and for a time I burned through notebooks like forest fires; pouring whiskey on the ground. My heart beats a bluegrass ballad for the wind under the wheels and miles of Americana passing me by.

I cry out for mutiny.

______________________
* Latin phrase, meaning "Always ready". It is used as the official motto of some organizations, such as the US Coast Guard.

AN: This was my attempt at trying to write "flash fiction" and is exactly 300 words. (Not including the title)

Edit: Here is the link to read all of the entries and vote for your favorites: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/953518.html

Just breathe

She whispers it to herself. It’s a worry stone, a call to mindfulness.

She flicks ash off her fingertips; blows smoke into the air.

She needs a place to hide; thinks the pain in her shoulder is a pinched nerve.

She is given permission to seek refuge in the beat up beige and blue, faded but still mostly functional, Ford Conquest parked along the side of the sprawling corner lot community where she currently hangs her pointed hat.

She tries to remember to introduce herself by the right alias, making sense of her tumbleweed life: The place where she is Sparrow; the place where she is Rebecca, Becca, Bird, Faerie Ann, Wanderlust.

She flips through her latest notebook searching for inspiration.

She feels unoriginal. She is the metallic creak of the step up into the wood paneled and brown carpeted interior of the decrepit caravan.

She catches her reflection beyond the herons etched into a decorative mirror, runs her fingers through the bright purple spikes that took thirty two years to grow in.

She wishes she took more chances when she was younger.

She’s jaded and armed with sharply edged rhetoric but still afraid of the mundane nothingness to which her path could lead.

Who knew it would be the pound sign and not bar codes that would brand us, she speculates as she opens the windows against the oppressive mid day heat.

She’s trying not to forget she has wings and not so secretly wishing for rain; resisting the impulse to run away again.

She is the most at peace when she is in motion.

She reminisces about highs and bad trips. The most expensive thing she owns is her pair of hiking boots. She writes tawdry romance novels that she never lets anyone read. Has let countless cups of coffee grow cold at her elbow. Would almost always rather be reading.

She longs for wild Oregon forests, dusty Arizona truck stops, San Francisco rooftops, her best friend's front porch.

She reaches out across the wires and they trade favorite iconic cinematic introductions:

“Thank you Max, for that marvelous introduction.”
“How do you do? I / See you’ve met my / faithful handyman…”
“When I introduce you, and tell them who you are, I don’t think anyone will stay for dinner.”

She can feel Saturn moving forward again. She has been reborn in the cosmos. She lives in a perpetual state of forgiving and forgetting and not actually giving a fuck.

Surrounded by blood this time she is trapped among palm trees and plastic pink flamingos.

She watches her grandmother conjure bubbling pots of the most delicious food to feed the tribe of lost souls the woman has taken in, and who fill the rooms of the way-station community that have currently sent her into hiding.

There is nowhere for her to write here.

She contemplates the park a few streets over but instead lays down on the flower print pull out couch. The sun slants across her face and she recalls that sensation of waking up covered in sweat as she tries to find a comfortable position for her shoulder.

Just breathe, just breathe, just breath… She whispers to herself.

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go read other entries for this week:
rookies:http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947581.html
Vets: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947738.html

signups are still open (join in the ~~madness~~ ~~fun~~ madness ): http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/945807.html

I got an email notification that therealljidolis starting up again! I am so in!

I only ever got to do the "final" season and it legitimately changed my life. It's returned right as I was trying to get back into a regular writing habit so, you know, it's obviously a sign.

Coming back to this journal feels like entering an enchanted dust covered attic, a long disused place that I used to love; a place where my imagination ran free. I felt challenged and motivated and inspired the last time I participated in LJIdol and I'm excited to be a part of it again.

Charles Bukowsi once wrote “If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it.”

I was totally inspired by the prompt for LJ Idol this week so I’m kind of shocked to be hours away from the posting deadline with about three half-finished stories and a strong desire to take a nap (or just hide under the bed).

I had planned to work up until the deadline hoping to manage a suitable entry but my heart’s just not in it today. I had a bit of a stressful morning at work and I can’t seem to get my writing mojo activated.

I was really enjoying the challenge of LJ Idol and I really don’t want to be out of the game yet but since I will be working and camping at the Faerieworlds Art and Music Festival the whole last week of July and will likely be without internet (and I am all out of BYEs) I might as well bow out now.

At this point I was mostly competing against myself to see if I could stay in the game until I left for the festival anyway. When I signed up I never imagined I’d make it this far and I exceeded my own expectations.

I can honestly say this is the first time I have done anything like this. I hardly ever shared my writing before with anyone ever so the feedback I’ve received during these last few months from friends, family and the LJ Idol community has been unexpected and overwhelmingly encouraging which makes it even harder to admit defeat.

I will Home Game as much as possible, and read and comment, and generally lurk around the LJI community. I truly wish I had found therealljidol before its final season. I don’t think I would feel so sad right now if I could just sign up again next time. Maybe I can try to get back in during the second chance thing I've heard about if it happens.

I would like to take a second to thank the great and powerful Sir Gary who is just kind of amazing to take on this much work so that someone like me could have a reason to be writing and a community to share it with.

LJ Idol has made me a better writer, a bolder writer; someone who actually feels like I can call myself a writer (a poet…a wordsmith).

I leave you with a picture of The Poet’s Chair on the third floor of The City Lights Bookstore one of my favorite places in San Francisco.

TL;DR This is a sacrificial goodbye post. Thank you for making a noob feel so welcomed and encouraged. Gary/LJI is awesome. Oh my gosh I’m a writer.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Greetings From Camp NaNoWriMo,

Cabins were assigned today. There are 11 other participants in my cabin and one of them is writing a horror novel but so far I am the only one who’s posted on the message board.

I am super excited about the live write-ins though! The first one was today and they even read and talked about one of my comments.

It’s an Open Topic for LJ Idol this week which if you can believe it is harder than than having a prompt?! I really hope my muse comes through with something.

That’s all for now unfortunately.

Working split shifts is double edged for me because on the one hand I feel like I am always going back to work but on the other hand I to have a lot of free time during the day. It’s a compromise.

1. There shall be no doubting one's self

2. Write everyday.

3. Remember to drink water and mind the cabin plants.

4. Write the story you would want to read.

5. Editing and Deleting is strictly forbidden

6. Be open to making new friends, go for walks outside, take pictures and send postcards.

7. Everything in Moderation (including s'mores)

9. Be in your bunk by lights out.

10. Be inspired.

*(reposted from the camp nanowrimo forums)

( Here's a bit of the back story to the novel I will be writing for Camp NaNoWriMo... )

note: What is below the cut would all be considered spoilers for the plot of the book.

I signed up for July Camp NaNoWriMo today! I set a Goal of 10,000 words.

I am going to be using one of my entries* from therealljidol as a jumping off point/first chapter.

I worked out a rough outline of the back story but only I know the first sentence of the second chapter. I am not quite sure yet what happens after that.

I am so excited and already inspired. Only two more days until cabin assignments!

Spoiler Alert:

Peeta spends most of the second half of Mockinjay voluntarily in handcuffs because he’s been brainwashed to kill Katniss and pulling on the handcuffs helps him remember what is real and what is not real and Katniss is totally still trying to save him and even treats the wounds on his wrists but lets him keep them on. Is it weird that I find this sweet?

( Read more... )

Sounds Like A Punk Band

I’d been sleeping on Adam and Becky’s couch for about a month when they invited me to Music and Mayhem an annual three day free punk-rock music festival that was invitation only. The exact location is always a secret until only days before the event. Meaning you could only get there if you knew someone else who knew how to get there. Adam’s band would be performing the second night of the festival.

Becky had drawn the art for the promotional flyers. They were hand drawn in black and white. About fifteen band names written in different styles surrounded an intricately drawn but sinister looking pirate. He was standing atop a crumbling pile of skulls and bones and had a graphically scarred face and a decadent looking tail coat that I instantly wanted. The words “FucTup Punks Presents: Music and Mayhem 7” screamed across the top in an electrified font.

We’d left at sunrise stopping only for coffee and to buy jugs of water on the way out of town. I ride squashed in the back with Adam and Becky’s dog Gromit sitting on my lap and enjoying the scenery. I had worn a pinstriped vest with a pocket-watch, the chain threaded through the silver buttons, a pair of grey trousers cut off at the knees and my favorite felt hat with a pheasant feather and the Jack of Hearts tucked into the hat band.

“Tomb Raiders is gonna be there, “Becky says looking over the seat and tossing a granola bar at me. “They were at that last show you went to with us. Adam likes The Damned Children but I’m excited to see Barrel of Monkeys, they've been on tour and this will be their last stop before heading home.”

( Read more... )

Said The Joker To The Thief

“Okay this is officially my favorite album,” Tori says.

Jill snorts, “Yeah that’s what you said about Fire of Unknown Origin last week.”

“No, really this one is my absolute favorite forever,” Tori says still staring at the ceiling.

“Not forever, just until the next time you go to the record store.” Jill says.

They are lying head to head on the L shaped couch in Tori’s new studio apartment. It’s walking distance from their college campus (one of the last women’s colleges in New York) and has a decent pizza place across the street. Jill and Tori had spent every night this week listening to vinyl records from the collection Tori had started over the summer and dedicated an entire wall of shelves she’d dubbed the “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Tonight they’d been listening to Electric Ladyland on repeat for hours taking turns getting up to flip over the record. Jill decided she was in love with the soft white noise of the needle in the grooves during the few seconds before the music kicked in.

Tori passes her a joint and Jill just holds it in her hand for a minute, watches it burn, before passing it back.

“So how was your summer Jilly?” Tori asks rolling onto her side and taking the joint in her slender fingers. “Meet anyone interesting?”

Jill had spent the summer with her Aunt in the mountains of North Carolina where she had no cell phone reception and had only spoken to Tori a few times sitting on a stool in her Aunt’s sunshiney kitchen. Twisting the coiled telephone wire around her fingers she’d told Tori about the honest to goodness town bazar she’d been signed up to volunteer at and complained that her Aunt wouldn’t let her drive the car. “But it really is beautiful here, I wish you could see it.”

“Have you seen that Sydney chick again? Did you hit that yet?” Tori continues.

No. Jill emphatically did not “hit that” yet. Jill had met Sydney last year while giving tours of the campus to incoming freshman. Afterwards Sydney had invited Jill out for coffee and they’d sent each other a few postcards over the summer.

“Did you recruit her for the drama club?” Tori asks.

“You are like the worst friend ever,” Jill’s laughter gives her away.

“You love me,” Tori says with a grin handing the joint back over.

“Only on Thursdays” Jill sighs, blowing smoke into the air.

“Oh!” Tori feigns indignation and moves to grab the joint back. They play a game of keep away that ends with Tori on her knees above Jill’s head, joint in hand. She places it burning end first into her mouth motioning for Jill to lean up and they shotgun the smoke between them.

Jill closes her eyes. Thinks about the night they met, squashed into the backseat of Stacy’s car, whispering jokes to each other; trying to hold in the laughter that resonated between them where their shoulders and thighs were pressed together. Stopping and starting again when they felt the other one; stuck in an endless feedback loop of laughter.

“I can feel you laughing, stop it.”

“You stop it.”

Jill wondered if Tori had been seeing anyone over the summer. If maybe she’d gotten back with Andrea. They’d been “on again off again” all last semester and Jill had listened as Tori talked to her about it while wiping her tears away with her hoodie sleeves. She’d told Jill what a great friend she was and made her pinky promise to always be her friend.

Tori presses a tendril of her bright red hair behind one ear and Jill has the urge to wind her fingers into it. She’d actually done it once. Tori and a few of their other friends had gotten Jill drunk and late that night Jill and Tori had ended up in Stacy’s dorm room alone. Jill had reached up and pushed Tori’s hair off her forehead, let her fingers rest on Tori’s cheek . “Yeah I think you’ve had enough,” Tori had muttered taking the bottle away and making Jill lie down. Jill had woken up alone in Stacy’s room at 3am and decided to stumble back across campus to her own room. She’d loved the stillness and the quiet.

“Alright, alright, I gotta go.” Jill says sitting up and stretching her arms over her head.

Tori looks at her watch, “You should just stay the night dude.”

Jill remembers her freshman year when they lived in the same dorm and Tori’s room was only one floor above hers. On mornings they didn’t have class Tori would quietly knock sing-songing her name and Jill would let her in before grunting sleepily and crawling back under the covers.

Tori would follow without a word and they’d just lie next to each other sleeping for another hour and then get up to walk to the cafeteria. Sometimes Jill would make them scrambled eggs in the dorm kitchenette while Tori sat at the table with her chin on her knees reminding Jill she didn’t like them with any brown on them.

Jill starts plucking her things from the floor around the coffee table and stuffing them into her messenger bag. “I’m not going to be late to any of my morning classes this semester,” she declares retrieving the still burning joint from the ashtray and bringing it to her lips. One more for the road.

“Liar.”

“Stoner.”

“Get out of my house,” Tori snatches the joint back and waves her away.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jill says sliding the bag strap over her head.

“Text me when you get back your room,” Tori calls after her.

Jill rolls her eyes as she closes the door and heads down the hallway.

Outside the early September air is still warm but the leaves have already started to change.

Jill puts a CD into her player and fits the headphones over her ears. She knows Tori hates it when she listens to music when she walks alone after dark but Jill doesn’t care and the campus isn’t that far. She slides her hand into her pocket and holds her key between her knuckles anyway.

As Tori unlocks the door to her room she fishes her cell phone out of her pocket; types out ‘Good night Victoria,’ and hits send. A few seconds later she receives a message back, ‘Sweet Dreams Jilly.’

There’s No Place Like Home

“You will be taken to the court of the Sidhe to stand trial for your crimes.”

The sound of the knives hitting the weather-beaten floorboards snaps her back into the moment. The music from the jukebox comes next and then the cracking sound of the balls on the pool table. Mel has to blink a few times to see clearly and nearly drops the stack of plates balanced on her left arm. She lowers them onto the nearest table and scoops up the silverware that had fallen. She looks up to see Holly, the other waitress, looking at her from across the room while pouring coffee for a couple of seniors wearing fanny packs and conspiring over a map spread out on their table.

Taking a few deep breathes Mel starts to dump the plates and silverware into a grey bus bin and worries with the locket she wears around her neck. Calli. The name echoes through her head and she lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You alright?” Holly asks coming up behind her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. You need me to do anything?”

“Well Free Mustache Rides is whining for more ketchup,” Holly whispers with a grin pointing in the direction of the man in the trucker cap featuring the slogan and a pretty impressive horseshoe mustache.

“Dude,” Mel chuckles.

Holly winks at her and heads back toward the kitchen taking the bus bin with her.

Mel tries pushing her anxiety away. It’s been so long since she’s had a vision of inevitable future events that she’d almost forgotten how quickly it could happen and how hard it could be to shake it off.

She tries to take comfort in her surroundings. She genuinely enjoys working at The Greasy Spoon Roadside Café. It mostly serves truckers and tourists stopping off the highway, people who are just passing through. Mel likes it that way. Holly is really the only friend she’s made in town besides Eddie the cook and Myrtle her eccentric neighbor at the nearby trailer park.

It feels like home now even though it’s vastly different than where she grew up. From the various state license plates on the walls to the old cigarette burns on the cracked Formica table tops, she loves it. She feels safe here. She forgets to throw salt over her shoulder or step over cracks. She forgets that dropping a knife portends a male visitor.

( Read more... )

______________________

* “If you've come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

A quote by Australian Aboriginal Elder Lilla Watson

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Codename: Wanderlust

February 2020

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Page Summary

LJ Idol 10: Week 7: Where I'm From
LJ Idol 10: Week 6: Heel-Turn
LJ Idol 10: Week 5: Fear is the heart of love
LJ Idol 10: Week 4: “I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be."
LJ Idol 10: Break Week Home Game**
LJ Idol 10: Week 3: Brushback pitch
LJ Idol 10: Week 2: That one friend
LJ Idol 10: Week 1: I need the struggle to feel alive
LJ Idol 10: Week 0: Introduction
LJ Idol Is Back
LJ Idol Week 14: Confessions From The Chair
LJ Idol Week 13: Open Topic
Updates from Summer Camp: Cabins and Write-Ins
My Personal Ten Commandments For Camp*
Updates From Summer Camp: The Back Story
Summer Writing Camp
I might regret this in the morning
Week 12: Barrel of Monkeys
LJ Idol Week 11: Recency Bias
LJ Idol Week 10: “If you are here to help me, you’re wasting our time.”*

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Sparrow in Saturn R̶e̶t̶u̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ Reborn

"It’s always exciting living in Fraggle Rock. That’s what’s wrong with the place."

Recent Entries

LJ Idol 10: Week 7: Where I'm From

LJ Idol 10: Week 6: Heel-Turn

LJ Idol 10: Week 5: Fear is the heart of love

LJ Idol 10: Week 4: “I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be."

LJ Idol 10: Break Week Home Game**

LJ Idol 10: Week 3: Brushback pitch

LJ Idol 10: Week 2: That one friend

LJ Idol 10: Week 1: I need the struggle to feel alive

LJ Idol 10: Week 0: Introduction

LJ Idol Is Back

LJ Idol Week 14: Confessions From The Chair

LJ Idol Week 13: Open Topic

Updates from Summer Camp: Cabins and Write-Ins

My Personal Ten Commandments For Camp*

Updates From Summer Camp: The Back Story

Summer Writing Camp

I might regret this in the morning

Week 12: Barrel of Monkeys

LJ Idol Week 11: Recency Bias

LJ Idol Week 10: “If you are here to help me, you’re wasting our time.”*

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February 2020

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