Today I opened a file I hadn’t touched for probably more than three months. I had written twenty pages, but then ran out of ideas and stopped. I really want to try and finish this story, so I’ve decided to go through it and edit it. I’ll be posting bits now and again. Feedback would definitely be appreciated.

***   Joanne Lizzy Robertson   ***

Comments: Rough first draft. This definitely needs to be reworded in places, and it could do with at least some expanding: some more characterisation wouldn’t hurt, a little information about place & time (it’s supposed to be oppressively hot). Oh: and a climax ending that isn’t incredibly lame would be nice, too. Also, I can’t decide whether this bit is more or less enough in itself, or whether it’s just the bare bones of something that’s maybe a page longer. I get the feeling that most of the mood and the contents are there; but are they enough?


Daniel looked definitely the most floral of the three, with his cheap toy crown that was getting too small and a brightly patched bit of table cloth tied around his neck. The hilt of a wooden sword, tucked behind the improvised cape, rubbed uncomfortably against the back of his head. He wished he had brought a belt or a length of rope, or better still, that he’d simply left all of it in the booth of the rental car.

(Background: I watched the film "The War of the Roses" last night—a tragic satire on surrealistically messy divorce, for anyone who hasn’t seen it.  These sentiments could also have come from The Woman of Bath in Chaucer’s "Canterbury Tales," LOL.)

The Savage Tribe

Portsmouth Square

by spiritj

(These are the first of many ideas I have for a poem or short story about aging immigrants.)

I’m asking for feedback if not help, because poetry is not my strength by any means.  This was spun out on the spur of the moment for someone, and it needs some cleaning up. 

All born with a death inside of us,
predestined to survive all the others;
We mourn those whose threads have been broken,
Our mothers and fathers and brothers.

But woven into the bright tapestry,
their threads and ours still intertwine;
What purpose serve the beautiful tangles,
what purpose save theirs and thine?

More distant the colours are fading,
to memory time out of mind;
We come and we go, aweave and aweft,
We make the pattern we find.

And colours mix into images,
the vibrant hues blend together;
The tapestry from above must be subtle,
by design or mistake or whatever.

Your thread is held by others,
whose threads lie entwined in your hand;
Their threads will never unravel,
while yours and your children’s still stand.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to be arrogant?

Just think about it. Remember the last time you joined a conversation with what you thought was a relevant and insightful comment, and the conversation stopped dead? Wouldn’t it be lovely to be arrogant? You could assume that what you said was so logical and brilliant that everyone was persuaded to your point-of-view, rendering further conversation completely unnecessary.

The day I left, I cut up every single piece of clothing she had bought me with his money into little shreds. I cut up my sheets, my pillowcases, stabbed the mattress ‘til the stuffing bled out and all the pillows, too. I even shredded my socks and underwear. My mom was silent and white with anger, but I just felt glad I could get her so mad. She deserved it. I didn’t even care that she made me wear clothes from the attic- packed away 3 years ago when I was 10- that I could barely get on. The shirts were so tight and short, they only reached the middle of my ribs, and the sleeves came to just below my elbows. The jeans were the funniest, because they didn’t fit at all. I got them on but split them up the butt the second I sat down. They made a huge ripping sound, like a giant fart, and I spit out my cereal laughing. My sister just rolled her eyes at me, but I could tell my mother was really mad. And I didn’t care. In fact, it made me feel happy to see her mad. I felt even happier when she made me put on the clothes from when I was 10, because it just reminded her of all the things she had done to make me this way. All the things I could have been, if she had only cared about me instead of him. I also knew it would make Dad really pissed to see me like this. Ha, I thought. Serves her right.

This is a rough first draft of a longer story that’s been poking at me for about half a year now. It started out as a post-apocalyptic story (as if there aren’t enough of those); but the background is not really that important: I just want to have a go at writing about a phobic fear of insects and things living inside the earth. I’ll probably drop the post-apocalyptic thing anyway: plants and ants can be scary enough in themselves, and contriving mutated species just seems like a cheap cop-out.

Fair warning:  Most of this is probably going to change to some extent, but I didn’t want to waste my first scribblings on Ken, because I like the character.  So here’s a little previously-written bit of the story to do with Ken. 

 Â *****

Kenneth Chambers wasn’t happy. No, he was content, and for him that was better than happy. Happy people were always headed for a fall, and then they hit bottom. Ken had already hit bottom and knew what it looked like. It wasn’t as bad as people made out, but it wasn’t comfortable. So Ken had climbed up a little and levelled out where he felt comfortable. He didn’t care what anyone else thought.

It was rent day, and Ken had the money plus a little extra. He’d gotten paid for two repair jobs today, a lawnmower and an old air conditioner. If you knew what you were doing with a compressor and could still get your hands on some freon gas, you could make some money fixing air conditioners. That and the sale of a couple of dime bags of his herbal sideline had provided enough money for the rent and a supper of real food. In Ken’s view, “real food” was anything that you got from a diner or restaurant; then came “food”, which was generally microwaved, and finally the vast majority of his diet: granola, cereal, chips, donuts, etc., under the heading “something to eat”. But tonight it would be real food, after he’d settled the rent with Jimmy Ruger. The rent was always Ken’s first priority and the only thing he accepted as a requirement or responsibility. After all, a man’s home is only his castle until he gets kicked out, which was also why Ken was careful to keep his sideline out of Jimmy’s sight. Jimmy might have a suspicion, but if Ken got stupid enough to make it obvious, then he would deserve to get kicked out.

This man’s castle was approximately the size of a two car garage, but half again as long. Ken lived in the same mini-warehouse where he worked. That was the one thing Jimmy didn’t give him shit about, because he saw it as getting a night watchman for free. Ken got up, picked up the faded beach chair he’d been sitting in and stepped through the open garage door into the first of two rooms, his workshop, where he kept whatever small engines or appliances he was working on. The other was a living area, furnished with a black leather sofa bed and armchair (you could get furniture that looked like new if you went around early enough. It was amazing what some people threw away.) The battered refrigerator in the corner with the portable television on top, however, argued that you can’t get everything for nothing. Ken’s choice of coffee table, an old wooden cable spool three feet wide replied that some people don’t want everything. Contrasting with the decor, however, Ken’s habits were quite neat and he maintained some hygeinic standards. He wasn’t sure whether Jimmy knew that he had plumbed the old cracked sink next to the fridge. Of course Ken had a key to the bathroom at the end of his building, which was also equipped with a small shower. Ken wasn’t surprised by this, he figured either this was Jimmy’s way of avoiding installing emergency eyewash stations, or he may have had some idea of putting a meter on it and charging.

Ken stepped through the doorway in the divider into his apartment and washed up at the sink. His face was well-hidden under his unruly black hair and full beard (not quite so black anymore), revealing only a perfectly triangular nose, two surprisingly lively brown eyes and perhaps a few extra lines. He looked in the mirror of the medicine chest above the sink and thought perhaps he looked like a little like a young Jerry Garcia. Yeah, that wouldn’t be too bad. Again, he didn’t care what anyone else thought. He gave a few half-hearted tugs at his hair and beard with his comb, replaced it in his pocket, and left to go see Jimmy Ruger, Grade A asshole.

Ken didn’t dislike Jimmy, not at all. He figured that the word asshole, like stupid, sometimes wasn’t an insult, it just denoted a fact of life. So while some people were stupid, Jimmy was an asshole. Ken supposed that the biggest symptom of this was that Jimmy liked to give people shit for no reason. He didn’t think he’d seen Jimmy actually mad about anything more than four times in the five years he’d been living there. No, Jimmy was at his happiest when giving people shit, and today was no exception. “You’re just in fucking time, you. One more day and I coulda told you to go find a carboard box. So how are ya anyway?”

“I’m fine, and you oughta stop advertising your competitors like that,” Ken growled amiably. “Here’s your rent. So how’s it going?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, business is good. Or it will be when that dickweed in B-12 gets out, that fucker’s costing me a fortune in electricity. And everything magically fucking breaks in his bay, ain’t nothing his fault. I gotta justify this shit to the old man, and… whoa, d’you feel that?”

Of course Ken had felt it. A tremor in the ground, not much, but enough to make him grab the counter to steady himself. There’d been a few of those tremors in the past month, and lots of speculation. “So you figure we’re gonna get an earthquake or something?”

“Nah, they said in the paper it was something that happens every 10,000 years or something. Here.” Jimmy reached under the counter and held out the paper, topping it with a scribbled receipt, “I’m done with it.”

“Thanks, see ya later.” Ken stepped through the door and looked back. “Hey, you might wanna take a look around, make sure all that shakin’ didn’t break anything.” He grinned. It got the desired reaction.

“Don’t you fuckin‘ jinx me like that, you prick! Of all the f—” The closing door cut off Jimmy’s rant. Always leave ‘em cheerful.

Ken stepped back out into the warm afternoon, sparing a glance for the gigantic entrance sign for Ruger Warehouse and Storage Facilities, and strolled back to his warehouse. Ruger Warehouse of course didn’t mean Jimmy. The complex belonged to his old man, Sol Ruger, who was enjoying a healthy retirement on the profits. He paid Jimmy well enough for managing the place and doing all the work, but Ken gathered from the way Jimmy talked that old Sol wasn’t likely to give him a share of the profits in this lifetime, so Jimmy just had to keep totin‘ that bale as an employee until he got his inheritance. Well, Ken supposed, it wasn’t such a mystery how Jimmy got to be the way he was.

Ken tucked the paper under his arm and set out down the street. If he was quick, he could grab dinner at the diner.

Frank blamed the housing market for the survival of a certain class of widows including the dreaded Mrs Parmigan — if houses were cheaper, more people would be able to afford to drop the odd one on an old witch. These sentiments not being endorsed by the Social Services Transport Office, Frank kept them to himself and calmly parked the minibus in front of the tidy semi-detached that served Mrs Parmigan as her waiting point for the Pearly Gates Express.
 —Iconoclast