Category: Writers Block
Author's Note:
Just to let you know, this story is completely a game of chance. If you've ever been to Seventh Sanctum, you know there's a link you can click on that connects you directly to a writing prompt generator. I think they call it THE ENVISSIONER. Anyway, each exerpt of this story is inspired by one prompt from the generator. The first prompt I recieved was, "A character lends money." Tell me what you think.
Trevyn Wolf
“Please Randal? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?” How P.K.’s voice could drone and whine at the same time, the skinny boy would never know. “Just twenty bucks till payday?”
“some people don’t get pay days, ya know,” he told her lazily, twirling a strand of white-blonde hair between his fingers. “Some people only have fifty dollars for the whole month.”
“And those people are twelve.” She laughed. “those people have big sisters with jobs who can pay them back with interest on Friday.”
“Interest.” Randal’s ears perked up. “Now you’re speakin’ my language.”
He rifled through the baggy pockets of his baggy jeans and pulled out four crisp five dollar bills. He knew they were fives because before he came to live with the Collinses, he lived with the Jordans. Mickey Jordan was blind. He always folded his cash different so he could tell what bills were what. Randal thought that was wicked cool. Mickey taught him how, and now he did it so no one could see him count his money. Dinae Parker, the younger sister he’d had before going to live with the Jordans, always used to say you could never trust anyone. She was black. She died a week later, run down by a van of drunken white haters. Ironic. Randal had a thing about irony. It was his friend. It was something he hoped to one day hold in his hand, one day tame so it wouldn’t keep biting him. He plopped the bills squarely on P.K.’s palm, and she grinned.
“Thanks bro. I owe you one.”
“One and a half,” he corrected. “Interest, remember?”
“You’re gonna make me pay fifty percent interest?’ she moaned.
“I always do,” he answered, flicking the hair out of his eyes. It fell to his shoulders, and most people said it made him look like a girl. That was okay with him, though. He thought it was awesome. His dad had long hair. Dad hung in a frame above Randal’s small writing desk. In the photo, dad was laughing, leaning back against a 1970 Convertible and holding hands with some pretty blonde girl. His mum? Randal didn’t know. He had never met his mother. She died the night he was born. Not of child birth, but of food poisoning. Dad had gone to her favorite Chineese restaurant to bring her rice and freshly spiced pork. Apparently, he should have settled for the food in the hospital cafeteria. Ironic. There was that word again.
“Hey,” P.K.’s voice brought him out of his reverie. “why do you fold your bills like that.”
“Dunno,” he shrugged. What was the point telling his story to this temporary big sister. All he needed from P.K. were the three compremizing pictures of her in his camera, a ride now and then, and the knolege that if she borrowed money, she always payed him back. She didn’t know about the photos, of course. One was of her eating a plate of nachos in her room. It was a grose habbit, but P.K. had a thing about people seeing her eat. Anarexic probably. Randal didn’t care. They were all anorexic these days, all eager to call him their little brother, and all eager for a permanent address. This was so the colleges could send their rejection letters or scholarship applications.
In foster kid years, Randal Todd, Higgins, Jones, Garcia, Tomashiko, Rhenalds, Hardt, Daniels, OBrian, Gray, Parker, Jordan, Collins was well into his fifties. He felt it, that pressing weight of age so often complained about by the old when they think the young aren’t listening. His muscles ached. His bones creaked in the mornings when he was tired, or when it was particularly cold outside. He was what Colene called a hypo-condriac. Ah, Colene OBrian, the big sister from the deepest bowels of Hell. Her name had been Jessica before, but when the OBrians decided to adopt her, she thought it only fitting to change it to something more Irish. stupid girl. They would have adopted him. Mrs. OBrian told him so, sitting on his bed the night before he was supposed to neatly and descretely disappear from their lives. He had loved that woman. Mrs. Cathy OBrian with her lilting Irish broag, laughing green eyes and elegant red bob had been just like a mother to him.
“It’s what I wanted.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “One little girl and one little boy.” He had thought then that she was going to ask him at the last minute to stay forever. “Alas. It would be perfect if darlin’ Colene hadn’t taken such a fancy to ya. We can’t have two children in love with each other now, can we?”
“But I’m not in love!” He had protested a little louder than intended. “Honest! I don’t even like her!”
She only chuckled. “Hush now. A pretty girl like that always takin’ special time to be with a growing lad such as yerself. Surely ya can’t help it.” She kissed his eyes. “Don’t take it personally, Randal of my heart. It’s just that we must make a choice. Colene needs this more, I think, than you.”
Ironic. The day after her adoption, Colene would turn eighteen. She would be free to go or stay. He, however, was at the mercy of the old. Let the officials in their state cars bat him around like a pingpong ball. Never mind that the paddles they used were slick with the blood of countless other misfortunates who had not survived the constant pressures of uncertainty and relocation. “Kids are resilient.” How many times had he heard that? Always spoken in thoughtful, measured tones. Always the montra of consolation given to all the fosters that crapped out on him for one reason or another.
“Well,” P.K. said briskly, smapping Randal out of his reverie. “Hate to borrow and run, but I’ve got rides to ride and lips to kiss before Mom gets back from that boring pottery show.”
P.K. was a dike. That’s what she called it anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Collins were devout Mormans, and that meant no monkey business with boys, let alone girls. Two years ago, Randal was sure P.K. would have dumped this place in a heartbeat. As it was, she wanted to be part of a family, any family, and so she kept her girl exploits a secret. She had to tell Randal. Everyone had to tell randal. He wished they wouldn’t, but they did. He had learned over the years of super chatty psudo siblings not to nod, ask polite questions or even make eye contact. This only encouraged them. P.K., however, didn’t seem to get the hint. She was used to his bruding silence, a fact about her he found very annoying.
“Bye then,” he said absently.
“See ya!” P.K. pranced between two vending booths and was gone. He was fine with this arrangement, of course. No more pestering until dark. Apart from the relative freedom these Annual visits to Hyde Park gave him, he hated amusement parks. Everything about them set his nerves on edge. He walked to a bench, sitting himself on it with grim determination, resolving to remain there until dark. The Complete works of edgar Allan Poe stuck out of his pocket, and Randal pulled it out.
“From childhood’s hour, I have not been,” he read softly. “As others were, I have not seen.”
Author's note:
Here comes the second one. I warn you, this post refers to sex quite a lot. It's not pretty. My second prompt was: "A character reflects on the past."
Trevyn Wolf
The moans came softly at first, but Randal awoke as if to a clap of thunder. His green eyes scanned the cracked face of his watch. Ten nineteen. Why was he not surprised? Mrs. Collins was thanking Mr. Collins for all the new pottery she had perchased over the course of her afternoon. He was a rich man. Because he was reluctant with his financial favors, his little trophy wife danced for them like a dog for treats. Their bed bumped against his wall, making it rattle, and Randal knew she was wagging much more than just her tail. They would be at it all night, stopping at roughly five-twenty. From ten nineteen to five twenty,,, ticking and gonging like some perverted clock. This, of course, was highly abnormal. Randal knew that from all the other walls in all the other rooms he had laid awake in.
The Higginses had sex only once a year, and that was on Mr. Higgins’ birthday. Mrs. H called it cleaning the attic when she talked about it on the phone to her mother. She had to call it that. At two years old, Randal was the oldest kid on her watch. There were eight of them. The others came and went, but Randal hung on till he was four. The Higginses were doing all the paperwork to adopt him. Then she got pregnant with twins and gave up fostering all together. Ironic.
Looking back, he didn’t blame Mrs. Higgins for being so frigid. That’s what Mr. Higgins called it. Frigid. He told her so every time they’d fight, and that was every Thanksgiving when he’d get drunk. He was a fat man with tiny eyes and a scrawny mustache that looked like an eyebrow on his top lip. Randal hated him for his constant odor of unwash and peppermint. Disgusting. As filthy as her husband was, Mrs. Higgins was the opposite. She kept her skin and clothes so clean and steral, there was a bitterness that wafted from her in vaperous fumes. He had been glad to leave for the house of Jones.
The Joneses were, he supposed, what an average family was supposed to be. Mrs. Jones was Japanese, but years ago, she had gone in to surgically remove the slant from her eyes. Her mother came sometimes, and she would cry, holding her daughter’s face in her gnarled old hands and looking at her eyes. The two women looked nothing alike. Mrs. Jones had even died her hair blonde to match that of her husband. The Joneses had a set time to do everything. Fight on Monday, chicken dinner on Tuesday, kids’ sports on Wednesday, church choir practice for the whole family on Thursday, and quiet descrete sex while standing every Friday. He would put her against a wall and get it over with. She would pad to the livingroom in nothing but a silk nightgown and make herself a cup of special tea. Billy said it was so she wouldn’t have babies. They had adopted three boys from foster care, each four years apart. They were all blonde, blue-eyed and ending in eeee. Randal, while blonde, had a streak of jet black that ran through his hair that unnerved Mrs. Jones. She never said as much, but that was why she hadn’t adopted him. He was glad.
The garcias did sex the way they did everything else. LOUD! They lived in an upstairs apartment with Randal and four other kids, and the neighbours were always calling the manager to complain. When they weren’t sexing, they were partying. Grown-ups came at all hours of the night, sending bleary-eyed kids in to sleep with Randal and the other “money-makers.” That’s what Mr. Garcia called them. His little money-makers. For each kid they took in, the state forked over a nice wad of cash. Randal may or may not have mentioned this to Mr. Travers on his monthly inspection. Woops. It was off to the house of Tomishiko soon after that.
He had loved them. All the kids had. Ben and Reina were the kindest people Randal had ever met.
“I cannot be your father,” Ben had told Randal on the first day he arrived. “I want you to know that so you don’t feel that I’ve mislead you. I want to keep you, boy. I want to know you forever,, but you see, Reina and I are sick.”
Reina chuckled at the look of concern on Randal’s nine-year-old face. “It’s not such a bad thing, little Mr. Randal. There is a place beyond this place, and we are going there soon.”
“How soon?” he had asked.
“Not too soon,” she had answered “but before you are a man.”
“We want kids around,” Ben took up the tail “because kids are the smartest people in the world.”
“But,” went on Reina, giving him a cup of green tea “Only to visit. Children are angels. People with cancer, people like us, are angels in training.”
“So I guess,” went on Ben “we’re all the same.”
“What do I call you?” Randal had asked, making a face at his tea.
“I shall call you Randal, and you may call me Ben,” the man said kindly.
“We are no greater than you just because we hold a few more years,” Reina said, kissing the boy’s forehead. “And don’t worry. You will grow accustomed to the tea in time.”
And he did. Randal came to love green tea, the three cats, and his two friends. The three kids and two grown-ups lived happily together until one day in early spring. “It is time to pack your things, my little visiter,” Reina told him in the morning.
Randal dropped the bunch of wild flowers he had picked for her and stared. “Why?” he asked.
“ben and I must also make a journey,” she explained. “And we hate to leave you with what we cannot take with us.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Randal said innocently, gathering again the flowers and placing them into her hands. “I would hold your hand till it was over and brush your hair. I could dress you and Ben in your best clothes and…”
She silenced him with a cool hand to the side of his face. How pail she was in the rays of morning sun that slanted across the curtains. “Kind as that is, I must decline. No child should be that close to death. Besides, it would not be Ben or me you extended your generosity to. After tonight, we will no longer inhabit our bodies. We are going onward. To the place beyond this place.”
That night, they ordered two large pizzas and feasted in the livingroom. Each person told what he or she was most thankful for in their time together. They laughed, cried, and shared fond memories. Ben took randal for a walk when the little ones and Reina had gone down for the night.
“Are you afraid to die?” Randal had asked.
“Two stones.” Ben looked off in the distance. “Two stones make a porthole. Remember that when the waters come and the ones with control lose it.”
Ben walked slower than usual, and Randal fell behind to keep pace. “I don’t know what that means,” Randal said honestly. “I think you might be talking nonsense. I’ll miss you, though.” An idea struck him. “what if we all died together?”
Ben stopped walking, his partly glazed eyes coming into focus. “Come again?”
“What if we all took poison, or drowned, or burned or something? Then nobody would have to leave.”
The man knelt, looking Randal squarely in the eyes. “Randal Tomishiko, I do not tell you this out of human decency, nor do I say it as an adult to a child. I speak to you as a friend. The greatest thing you can do, greater than any sacrifice, is to live.”
The next morning, Ben and Reina bid them goodbye, and Mr. Travers took them away in his state car. He was angry with the Tomishikos for not telling the department they were ill, saying the department would have never entrusted three children into their care if they had known.
“do you have children, Johnathon?” Reina asked, using Mr. Travers’ first name.
“If you have,” Ben finished for her “you know they are the greatest gift anybody can hope to receive.”
The three of them held hands on the way to the station. This was like losing Dad all over again. People said Randal was just imagining memories for himself. They said he had been only one at the time and too young to form memories, but he remembered. Both losses were as clear to him as the little hands on his watch ticking away the seconds. It was five-twenty now. The cocofany next door had finally died, but sleep was not for Randal this day. He opened his book, flipping again to his favorite poem.
“As others saw, I could not bring,” he murmured “my passions from a common spring.”
This was a very nice story, and very different from the ones that are usually posted. It's kind of sad.
author's Note:
Digressive Distortion, thank you! it is good to know I have at least one reader of this strange story controlled by a computer generator. I have a basic plotline in my head of course, but it changes with each new prompt.
This next prompt is "rain storm."
Trevyn Wolf