Young Writers Society

Carl's cheeks felt like they were on fire. He pressed his face up against the stainless steel of the soft serve machine and waited for several minutes, his mind having been turned to a mass of brain colored pudding.

What had just happened? More importantly, what hadn't just happened?

Carl should have tossed his paper hat aside and burst through the front entrance, tearing off his apron as he went. The orange Autumn Festival spoons would clatter against the sidewalk and the napkins would blow free through the air, like liberated doves. "Todd, my love!" he would yell, and leap into his arms. And then they would kiss the passionate, sloppy tongue kiss of reunited lovers in war epics, spinning around in each others' arms in front of the New Prague Dairy Queen.

Mick snorted. "What kind of bullshit is that?"

Sukie slid the bottle over the counter. "An angus'."

A Pervert Thought cropped up in Carl's brain. He quickly focused on a small plastic flower blowing down the street, realizing too late that he had included old people and sex in the same neural transmission.

“Well, she has an appointment space cleared up because one of her clients committed suicide recently.” The woman kept on her bright smile while she said these words, and for a few seconds Melanie could only stare. That’s a good endorsement, she thought.

Isaiah slowly got to his feet, dragging his sword behind him. He didn’t care if, by dragging the blade along the ground, he made his sword dull; he knew he would be able to escape by brute force if it came to it. He walked slowly and methodically, the soundtrack of one of those action movies running through his head. Lately, it seemed that music ran through his head more often than it usually did, and the style of music always coincided with the current situation. Isaiah was planning an all-out assault in his head, an assault that he hoped would let him kill every exhibit still standing in the room, and, if he was lucky, allow him to escape. The music in his head could only be described as a chamber choir singing in Latin, with a chamber orchestra providing dramatic, staccato minor chords as an accompaniment.

Isaiah knew this was going to be epic.

The nurse pressed the hanger-upper doohickey on the phone, then dialed another number.

I snapped, handing him several quid to conver toe cost of the drinks I'd had that night.

There was no one on the streets as I walked, my hands deep in the pockets of my jacket, my chin lowered.

If there’s one thing I hate about being cold, it’s the fact that there’s nothing out there to keep my nose warm, I thought. It’s the only part of my face that ever gets cold, and it irritates the crap out of me. They should make some kind of nose warmer- yeah, that’d be useful. It could fit on the face like a pair of glasses, and just fit over the nose with wee holes so you could still breathe-

I was at Sarah’s doorstep before I knew it, and all I had thought about was a hypothetical nose warmer.

I really, really wanted to kick myself.

So there I was, looking at my double, and then the strangest thing happened. The pokemon arena started to vibrate with noise. And just in case you forgot, because you probably did because you had to wade through the stupidity that occurred right above you, what just happened was I was challenged to a pokemon battle. Which didn’t really make sense because, first of all, who has pokemon in hell? Come on! Can you imagine the cute little pikachu with a demonic smile and fanged teeth?

Okay. So maybe you can. But that’s not the point! The point was that I might, er... I mean met Hitler, somehow defended him (don’t ask me how THAT happened) and now I was stuck doing a pokemon battle with my dear aunt Sally. Don’t ask me how this happened. I blame the author of doom, death, and destruction completely and fully. In fact, I should probably sue her, seeing as she lives in California and thus would probably be fairly easy to sue, even though I, a lowly character, do not technically exist.

That’s another thing that’s bugging me. All these screen writers are whining and moaning about not having their rights and all that junk. Well, guess what? The screen writers can kiss my butt. I am a poor lowly character, and look at all the crap that I have to go through. I’m dead, I have to suffer with crappy writing, people probably think I’m an angsty ball of twitdom, since my true character is as of yet been poorly introduced by the author of doom, death, and destruction, and I am completely unloved. Yes, the author of doom, death, and destruction has written tutorials about how to love your character and everything (you can read them on this website, if you so desire) and how does she treat me? Like this. And why? Because apparently I am a lowly nanowrimo character. So instead of getting the rights that all her other characters get, I have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Is this fair? I think not!

So, until this injustice ends, I am going to hold a protest. Because I do not technically live in the realm of reality, I am entitled to several rights. I am going to rebel against my author. Because let’s face it... authors suck. I mean, everybody complains about George Bush being evil and how bad the patriot act is... even you writers! YES. You writers who are reading this, some of you are liberal and condone the patriot act. You say it’s inconstitutional. Well, guess what? My mind is being searched through continuously, just to progress some big-headed, pompous, little-brained, fat-assed writer, who thinks it would be a good job to just sit there and mentally play with my mind, exposing all my feelings to everyone. And yet, you would justify this behavior because it’s not real. I’m not real.

But here! Let’s define reality, shall we? Lookin at our handy dandy dictionary, we find this definition:

re·al·i·ty [ree-al-i-tee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -ties for 3, 5–7.
1.
the state or quality of being real.
2.
resemblance to what is real.
3.
a real thing or fact.
4.
real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs: the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality.
5.
Philosophy.
a.
something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.
b.
something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.
6.
something that is real.
7.
something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.
—Idiom
8.
in reality, in fact or truth; actually: brave in appearance, but in reality a coward.

Okay, does that make sense? Let’s go over this one by one.

Simeon sighed as the nurse slipped the thermometer back into his mouth. They waited. They waited some more. They waited a little longer. They waited for even longer.

The awkward silence continued. It stretched on and on and seemed to last for hours, though it was probably ony a minute or two at most. The only noies was the tick, tock of the clock on the wall. simeon stared at his cup, which was now only half full (or perhaps it was fully halfway empty?). Someone shuffed quietly.

“Er, so...” the man started. None of them had envisioned the reunion quite this way. They might have expected tears, perhaps, or maybe deep, spontaneous conversation, or perhaps even a dramatic fight, but they had never imagined this, this dead silence, in an ordinary living room, broken only by the incessant tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock of an old clock.

CHAPTER NINE: IN WHICH THE HEROINE GOES ON STRIKE AND THE AUTHOR OF DOOM, DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION BASHFULLY TRIES TO ENTERTAIN YOU, THE READER, INTO CONTINUING TO READ, EVEN THOUGH THE AUTHOR OF DOOM, DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION KNOWS QUITE WELL THAT HER ATTEMPTS ARE REALLY NOT GOING TO WORK, UNFORTUNATELY.

Okay, so this is slightly embarrassing. After a negotiation, the heroine, also known as the main character of this obviously completely brilliant nanowrimo story, decided to go on strike and do other stuff. Other stuff meaning causing a riot, creating a revolution, and demanding certain freedoms that are probably not freedoms after all, like thirty million inch plasma screen television sets. And she got the other characters to do it too, so I can’t just kill her off and pretend she doesn’t exist, like I would for my other characters, and continue the story like nothing ever happened. In fact, that would be slightly impossible. Not that I would be able to kill her anyway. As previously mentioned, she’s slightly dead to begin with. So yeah. It’s just me. The author of death, doom, and destruction. Except the doom I speak of seems to be my own doom, death and destruction.

So.

Um.

Yeah.

This is the random bit of text I have inserted into the middle of my story to make it over 100,000 words. What will happen? Will the Nano site say I cheated and tell me to go back to the beginning? Will I short out the server? Will I be awarded a date with with Ms. Bikini Universe? Will I get to meet the makers of NaNoWriMo? Either way, I only needed about a hundred more. This should be it.

On this particular morning, Simeon was especially anxious to get to work, because that particular day was Percival George Inmann’s forty-first birthday—or his one and fortieth birthday, as Percival George Inmann sometimes said. (He had a tendency to jokingly count that way, saying “one and forty,” where most people would have said “forty-one.” He had been known to count his inventory that way. Sometimes as he was leaving, Simeon would hear his employer’s voice in the back room: "…twenty, one and twenty, two and twenty, three and twenty, four and twenty, five and twenty, six and twenty, seven and twenty, eight and twenty, nine and twenty, thirty, one and thirty, two and thirty, three and thirty, four and thirty…

We wiled away the evening watching old horror flicks Sarah’s dad, Ronald Montgomery, kept in a box in the garage because they held too many nostalgic memories for him to get rid of. Most of them were in black and white with extremely corny special effects. We had a huge laugh making fun of how terrified folks were of those old fashioned films. I got a particular kick out of one film where aliens invaded the planet.

“‘I am an alien life form, I come in peace’ says the man wrapped in tin foil with an upturned bucket on his head,” I said, walking around the room and mimicking the shoddy pretend alien that had the townsfolk running in fear. Sarah giggled.

“Oh no! It’s the evil Eric-tron from the planet Flabtaciglob! Run for your lives!” she improvised in a dramatic tone. I stopped, my arms falling to my sides, barely able to speak for laughing.

“Flabtaciglob?” I repeated, dumbstruck and trying to regain control of myself.

I held on with love. Ha, whatever that meant! I knew that I was in love. I needed to do something about that though. How would she understand what I felt? Would she ever?
Suddenly, without me knowing what the heck I was doing, I swooped in, and extended my lips to hers.
The moment that we touched, my feet sort of scooted closer, and I closed my eyes. Lacy didn’t make any resistance to pull back, so I knew that she wanted more.
I moved my hand from her chin, and up to her cheek. I was suddenly warm, and it felt natural to stand there, kissing Lacy.
Her lips pressed against mine, and we held. I didn’t really know what to do. Should I open my mouth? Should I French kiss her?
I remembered a movie that I had watched, and the two lovers were French kissing. I thought it looked disgusting; two tongues touching each other. So I decided just to hold.
It was the perfect awkward kiss.