28 Oct

Some Seasonal Advice

So it’s approaching midnight on the eve of Halloween and you’ve got a million things going: you’re sewing the arms on to a new voodoo doll; you’re ironing your best black cape; you’re making pentagrams out of sticks; and you’re gathering together your vials of hensbane and dragon’s teeth.

And that’s when you realize you have no eye of newt!

We’ve all been there. You meant to go newt-hunting earlier in the day, but you were just so busy; any number of things may have happened. Maybe your deformed assistant ate your to-do list. Maybe your crystal ball broke. Maybe your sister called asking for the liver of a blaspheming jew. Whatever the case, you forgot all about the eye of newt.

As we all know, newts are a pain in the ass to find. The forests have been picked over by deformed assistants, Witchcraft Depot doesn’t sell them, and the small mom and pop places that you used to rely on are all going out of business. So what can you do?

Well, it turns out there’s an easy solution. All you need is a toad, a drop of bat’s blood, and some corn starch. You simply take the toad (for best results, use one of those really tiny toads that are the size of your thumb), blend it, and add one drop of bat’s blood. This can get pretty messy in a Cuisinart, so we recommend an immersion blender or a good ‘ol mortar and pestle if you’ve still got one stashed somewhere in the house.

Once your toad is liquified, add the bat’s blood and then fold in enough corn starch to thicken it. The goal is to get the mixture thick enough so that you can roll it into a little ball the size of a newt’s eye. The dark spirits can’t tell the difference. Seriously. I once made a potion that called for three parts eye of newt to one part mugwort. When I discovered we were out of newt eyes, I freaked out. Broke a whole set of new wine glasses with my shrieking. But my friend Sandy told me about the toad and corn starch trick and wouldn’t you know it? I sank three sailboats with my potion.

19 Jun

Eviction

In-class exercise from Day Four. The assignment was simply to incorporate metaphor. If we’re getting technical about it, though, I incorporated symbol and simile, but not metaphor. However, I’m inclined to label all comparisons of two unlike things metaphor.

The eviction notice came on the 15th. She didn’t think McCreary would follow through with his threats. But he had, and she was forced to call Mary for a place to stay. In her bedroom, packing clothes into black trash bags, she found two and a half five-dollar bills at the bottom of her underwear drawer. They were ten years old, from the days she’d worked at the diner.

A man – tall, dark, and Canadian – had come in for breakfast on a Tuesday. He was down for a funeral or something equally sad. But his “good morning” was cheerful, and when she took his order, he looked her in the eye. He asked her questions about herself with an accent just slightly different from hers.

After the meal, he’d left a five-dollar bill ripped in half and a note saying, “I’ll bring the rest tomorrow.” They flirted shamelessly all week and then Sunday came; he was gone. She had two and a half bills. He never returned.

Now, back in her half-empty apartment, with a half-empty garbage bag of clothes, she sat on the floor and shuffled the five pieces of torn bills, fanning them out like a sad poker hand.

18 Jun

Men at Work

Exercise from Day 3: Create a dialogue between two characters who want very different things. This was fun. I got to pick on a certain TV show.

Ted tried the bell, hoping no one would answer.

Brian opened the door. “Hey, man. Thanks for coming.”

Ted threw his tool belt on the floor. It thunked against the wood. “Sure. No problem,” he muttered.

“Um, so,” Brian said, glancing at the tool belt. “I was thinking about this space here.” He pointed to a blank wall. “Do-able?”

Ted examined the area and shrugged. “Seems pretty ambitious to me.” He sighed. “But sure. I mean, it’s not gonna be cheap exactly.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem. Carrie wants it this way, so, you know.”

Ted didn’t mind giving up the occasional weeknight to help out a friend, but did it have to be Thursday? He was missing his favorite TV hospital drama.

“So what’s the first step?”

Ted looked at his watch. 7:00. Maybe he could get out of here quick enough. “Well, you want a floor-to-ceiling unit, right? That’s a lot of wood.”

“Oh yeah. I got more than we could possibly need.”

Shit. “All right. Cool.” This was no small project. The space was about 8 by 12 feet, and the floor was likely unlevel. These old houses were nightmares to renovate. He ran his hand along the wall. It too seemed uneven. “You got a level? I left mine at home.”

“Sure.” Brian disappeared into the basement while Ted sauntered into the kitchen. A miniature TV rested on a countertop. Ted turned it on. Pretty good reception.

Brian returned with the level.

“Hey, you mind if we bring this in the other room and turn it on?” Ted said.

“Sure, no problem.”

Ted got to work measuring the space, snapping chalk lines, and framing the shelving unit. An hour passed quickly, and when the opening credits rolled, Ted fixated on the TV.

Brian followed his gaze. “Oh, this show is the worst. Here, I’ll change it.”

“No, no. Don’t.” Had he sounded too desperate? “I mean, the stupider the show, the better I’ll work, you know? I won’t be tempted to watch. You put on that Terminator show, and pretty soon I’ll be eating chips and staring at the TV instead of installing your bookshelf.”

Brian shot him a knowing smile. “Oh, I know. Terminator. That chick is so hot.”

“Which one?”

“You know, the robot. What’s her name? “

“Oh, right. Yeah. I can’t think of her name right now, either. But yeah. She’s a hottie.”

The hospital show was opening with the typical sentimental narration: “Sometimes in life, you’ve just got to buckle down. Whether it’s studying for a board exam, telling your best friend she’s got AIDS, or sitting through your father’s 12-hour surgery to remove his brain tumor, there’s just no way not to get your hands dirty. And other times, you’ve got to eat chocolate.” On the word chocolate, the scene cut to four college girls in their pajamas having a pillow fight.

“Dude?” Brian said. He hadn’t been watching the TV, but he looked now. “Dude!”

The two of them stood transfixed for the next five minutes. At the commercial break, Brian snapped out of his trance. “Well, we’ve got a bookshelf to build.”

“Yeah.” Ted grabbed some boards and a box of screws and completed as many noise-producing tasks as possible in the next two and a half minutes as the commercials aired. Then the show came back on, and he did a lot of measuring. Quiet measuring. He was hoping to buy time till the next commercial break, but it eventually became absurd. So he readied his drill and lined up the next screw. That’s when he heard the main character shout, “He wants a divorce?” He dropped the drill.

17 Jun

Stone Still

My exercise from day two. The assignment was to create a scene that incorporated a flashback of some sort.

People don’t like seeing a living statue walking through the streets. They laugh, shout wise cracks, and point unabashedly. It was almost enough to keep Jeff from venturing out in his grey face paint and toga costume. On the way to the park, he was a freak – some lonesome guy with a weird habit of dressing up like a Roman. He had taken the subway to the 8th Street Station, but all the pointing and laughing made him self-conscious enough that he decided to head for the less populous Washington Square rather than the Liberty Bell. There, he could practice his breathing exercises and try out the self-validation techniques he’d recently read about.

But he also knew a little immobility would help. When you stop moving, the ridicule ends. People still look at you, but they’re looking at something different, not at the DSL installation guy with Social Anxiety Disorder. You become a virtual two-way mirror, safe in your secret room.

He chose a bench near the Walnut Street entrance, struck a thinker pose, and focused on his breath. Not two minutes into his act, a boy entered his peripheral vision. The kid was combing the park for something, crouching occasionally to pick up one of his finds. They were stones, Jeff soon found out – smooth, round stones. The boy approached and set his treasure on the bench. “Hey, you wanna play a game?” he said.

Jeff stifled a sudden urge to cough. Clearly, the kid didn’t know the unwritten code. You don’t talk to living statues. Everyone abided by the rules. Jeff depended on them.

The kid looked to be in middle school – certainly old enough to know better. But he didn’t wait for Jeff’s reply. “When it’s your turn, you can take any number of stones away from any one row. But you can only take from one row at a time.” He began arranging the stones in three rows. “The object is to leave your opponent with the last stone. Ready?”

Jeff knew this game. He’d played it with the children in Changsha on his way back from the wet market every day. He glanced sideways to confirm. One row of three, one row of four, and one row of five. Yep. Same game. There was a secret to it, a sort of algorithm that would guarantee victory as long as you didn’t go first. He waited for the boy to make a move, then, remaining statue still, he reached a gray arm toward the stones and removed one.

The kid stroked his chin like an old chess player before removing his stone. Jeff knew the winning combinations. Leave your opponent with a 1-1-1 or a 2-2 and you couldn’t lose. He’d taught the Chinese kids by beating them every day. He didn’t believe in letting them win. The lesson was stronger when they figured it out themselves.

How bold he’d been in China, striking up conversations with shop owners and neighbors. He’d even paused once in the middle of a busy street, turning his head skyward as bikes and buses passed him by. The pungent smells of urine and freshly-killed poultry mingled with the car exhaust and newly-poured concrete. And under the heat of a dirty sun, all his fear had evaporated. He was a foreigner; he was forgiven his foolishness and his trespasses. They’d parted around him like an island in a river.

And here, on this park bench, some odd middle school boy was inhabiting that same world.

Jeff envied him.

Even as he won each new game, he envied him.

“Wow,” the boy said, finally looking Jeff in the face, “you’re pretty good at this game. For a statue.” And then he gathered his stones and walked off.

Jeff broke form at last, yelling after him, “What’s your name?”

The boy turned around and said, “Jeff.” Then he walked on, leaving a statue frozen and waving goodbye.

15 Jun

Camp Revenge

I just started my week-long writing course today, and the first exercise we were given was to choose a nonfiction article from among 7 or 8 options provided and then work some of that info into a scene. It was an exercise in exposition, the point being that exposition is perfectly fine as long as it’s something the reader wants to read — which is to say that it needs to be relevant to the characters and situation. It wasn’t easy. My article was about how to make timers and tripwires using basic household items. Here’s what I came up with in the half hour allotted. The beginning scenario is inspired by a true story, relayed via my mother-in-law.

Two days earlier, the whole camp had gone to the Lumberjack Log Jam for a day of roller coasters and water slides. Todd was being nice to me until he discovered some slightly older boys standing in line behind us. All charity for his younger sister was tossed aside. “Sadie!” he shouted. “Never touch a boy there!” The entire crowd laughed. All eyes were upon me.

Even as I gazed at the discarded candy wrappers on the ground, willing myself to turn invisible, a new purpose began forming in my small, homesick head, a purpose that made our remaining time at camp bearable. I hatched a plan – a plan that needed to be executed before Todd and I returned home, a plan that needed an audience.

I knew Jason would help me. It’s not that he had anything against Todd. But Jason couldn’t turn down a good prank, so when I told him I wanted to scare the piss out of Todd, he pulled me into the woods and said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll give him a little nighttime visit from Jackie the Red.”

Jackie the Red was the obligatory one-eyed murderer who, according to camp legend, was the butt of a prank 20 years prior. His cabin mates had scared him one night by covering themselves with dyed-red corn syrup and pretending they were all dead. Little Jackie ran screaming and was never heard from again. Except that there were reports of him wandering the woods with a red light, looking for revenge. The red light didn’t make much sense, but it allowed the counselors to scare the bejesus out of the campers on ghost story night, which was just a few days away.

“Bring me an alarm clock, some wire, and some duct tape,” Jason said. “I’ll steal a red flashlight from the counselors’ office.”

I agreed to Jason’s request and went scrounging for the items. The clock had to be a mechanical clock, not a digital one. I found one in the older girls’ cabin. The wire I stole off one of the many “No Trespassing” signs fastened to the fence. And the duct tape I found in the cafeteria.

We met the next day. Jason took apart the light, handing me a battery and the red bulb. We cracked the case of the alarm, exposing the two hands of the clock, and he attached small sections of wire to each hand. One wire ran to the positive end of the battery; the other ran to the exposed red bulb. “When the hands meet,” he explained, “the wires come together and viola! The light goes on. We set it up right by Todd’s bunk and five minutes after he gets into bed, it’s Jackie time!”

It was a great idea, but I wanted to take it further. Sure, it would be fun to scare Todd. But I was more interested in the piss being scared out of him. That is, I wanted him to wet the bed. And I wanted everyone to know about it.