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

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!

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.’

Part One: Frodo Lives!

It’s called Fandom.

It’s basically an addiction at this point.

You are obsessively enthusiastic about certain characters and stories.

You can’t stop even when it affects your well-being.

Even when you know you should.

Even when you are thinking, this isn’t even really making me happy anymore.

Other people doing it too tell you this is how it works, so it’s okay…

But unlike an addiction to hard drugs or hard drinking you can’t really explain it in a way that makes any sort of sense.

You decorate your room with posters and references only you understand and get weepy when a song on the radio makes you think of a certain character.

You spend an entire summer reading almost nothing but male/male slash (that means sex) based on fictional characters rewritten in all sorts of the most amazing and interesting scenarios and realize that it’s truly the Rule #34 of the internet that if you can think of it there is porn of it.

Whenever someone asks what you are reading you say, The Hunger Games and almost get caught in the lie when you have still only read the first chapter over a month later. It’s like candy that will rot your brain but for you it’s a quick and easy fix.

You go for long stretches where you stay away. Sometimes for even months at a time until the night you’re up until two in the morning reading that one “Space Pirates AU fanfic” and are strung out at work the next day and then spend hours reading comments on forum boards when you get home.

You search the internet looking for just the right fan inspired t-shirt to wear in public hoping you might someday run into someone who says, “You do the thing too!”

Maybe you can form a support group. It’s like a book club. A really twisted book club.

You have a dream that you are standing in a giant round room that is like a library of your absolute favourite fan written works in small paperback editions and categorized on shelves. You’re excited and also confused because this is the wing of the gorram akashic records you get to visit?

When you are awake you applaud yourself for resisting digital hoarding and have a pretty good memory anyway and then think, shit if this is what your mind palace looks like you’re screwed.

You resign to read something different and reach for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

You wonder why you immediately start writing your own rule 34 reinterpretation of it in your head. It’s called a plot bunny you’re told. They hide under the bed. Aren’t they cute?

Part Two: Kill Your Television!

I recently started accidently stalking this cute boy who lives in my neighbored; he’s a clerk at the bakery and the deli. I’m sort of doomed. I write a million different scenarios in my head. I long to be Rory Gilmore but I’m much too old now and I was once told by the director of my college drama program that while I was indeed a talented actress I was not pretty enough to play the ingénue.

I am Rajesh Koothrappali with a vagina.

I’m in a relationship with my kindle and my pillow. I don’t have time for cute people.

Did I use the word cute already? That’s bad writing.

It is though. It’s all so damn cute. It’s a meet cute.

It’s chic lit.

It’s wanting to interrupt my best friend when she says she loved the “Shades of Grey trilogy” to tell her that Anastasia Steele was raped and is in an unhealthy and abusive relationship but hey I could email her plenty of links to much better written BDSM erotica if that’s something she’d be like, interested in…or whatever.

I get stoned and invoke the spirit of the beat poets and consider buying a vintage typewriter and taping every damn word I write all over walls of my little room in the boarding house in some sort of fight for authenticity.

Remind me to tell you about the time I was dosed at a party and hallucinated for hours and then ended up in the hospital. At one point I thought I was Jesus, I’m not frelling kidding.

It’s maybe, kind of, sort of, believing in The Matrix forever after that.

It’s reading Vigilant Citizen and listening to Creepy Pasta podcasts.

It’s: how do you feel about gay male love stories being written by women?

It’s all the things you’d never admit to in polite society.

Does that even exist anymore?

It’s writing down everything because there’s a story in there somewhere.

It’s keeping calm and carrying on no matter what happens.

Annabelle, Owen, Mouse

He hears the sound a split second before he hears her gasp awake. The unmistakable metallic snap of the trap he set a few days earlier without telling her.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers into the darkness. “I had to.”

“It’s not me you have to apologize to Peter.” Annabelle says softly.

He knows. He kisses her bare shoulder and hopes she will be asleep again before he has to get up for work.

Later he wraps the trap and the body in three plastic bags and brings it out to the trash bin on the sidewalk on his way to the bus.

When Peter gets home from work she’s wearing a blue waistcoat and grey trousers. She has her back to him and is reaching up to return a book to the top shelf of their consolidated library which takes up an entire living room wall. Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness is on the record player. Peter stands in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen and takes a moment to watch her.

Him, Peter corrects himself. It’s not what he was expecting but he’s not disappointed.

Peter clears his throat and his lover turns.

“Peter you’re home.” He says.

“Owen, it’s been a long time.” Peter steps into the room as Owen leans back against the bookshelf folding his arms over his chest; the sleeves of his collared shirt are rolled up to his elbows.

“Too long. It’s really great to see you. I hope you don’t mind. Annabelle had to smooth things over with Mouse.”

“Do you think she’ll want to talk to me?”

“Mouse?” Owen shrugs before turning back to arranging books. “Who knows? That girl can be so fickle.”

“Well, I’m happy you’re here.” Peter says honestly.

Owen turns his head toward Peter and smirks. He pushes his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose. “You’re just hoping I did the shopping.” He teases.

Peter tilts his head questioningly.

Owen laughs and gestures toward the kitchen. “There’s beer in the fridge and stuff for sandwiches, help yourself.”

Peter turns quickly back toward the kitchen. He can still see Owen as he sets the food and plates out on the island.

Peter watches the way Owen moves with his back slightly straighter than Annabelle and the casual set of his hips; the way he takes wider steps and holds his beer bottle by the neck instead of around the base.

Their long blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Peter has been told that Owen threatened to cut it once and Annabelle threatened buy cat eye glasses instead of the plain silver frames they all share.

Peter takes a long swig of his beer and begins slicing the fresh bread. He feels bad for Owen sometimes but Annabelle sets the rules on body modification.

Peter was confused in the beginning but he decided pretty quickly that he didn’t care how odd it seemed or ridiculous it sounded. Annabelle, Owen and Mouse share a body it was as simple as that and Peter loved them all. He met Annabelle first. Owen and Mouse came later.

He stopped trying to put a name to it anymore. He’s happy and it’s all that matters.

After a while, Owen joins Peter in the kitchen. While they eat they talk about books and flirt like they just met until Owen backs Peter up against the wall and bites gently at his neck. They kiss all the way to the bedroom, laughing as they stumble over each other.

When he wakes up alone in the bed later that night he calls out for Owen and instead he finds Mouse. She’s sitting on the window ledge illuminated by the light from the streetlamp outside. Her hair is almost covering her face and her knees are tucked under her chin.

“I’m sorry,” He says immediately. “I won’t ever do it again. I’ll buy those humane traps I swear and we can set them free together.”

“I know Peter. I just—,” Mouse breaks off and Peter rises from the bed to put an arm around her shoulders.

“I know it’s silly, it’s like my – my spirit animal or whatever.”

“I get it. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forgive me?”

She takes a deep breath before nodding. “Yeah.”

“It’s cold. Come back—Come to bed.” He helps her off the ledge and they settle under the covers.

When he wakes up again the sun is up and Annabelle is smiling at him.

____________________

--Eh, this started out as magical realism and became something else. Feedback appreciated since it’s pretty experimental (and came to me after two days of fever dreams.) I almost took a BYE instead of posting it but I decided to take a chance.