Categories
FictionWriting

Burning Love

When Nate came back as a toaster, panic was his first response. He woke up trapped in a tiny metallic box, tethered to the wall and marooned on a vast off-white surface. He was obviously the victim of some cruel joke. He didn’t calm down until his first two slices. The feeling of freshly toasted bread popping up cleared his mind and he was able to take stock of his surroundings.

He was in a high-ceilinged kitchen flooded with morning sunlight. He had fleeting glimpses of a woman bustling around the room, opening doors and rattling dishes. At first he only saw her from an angle that made her nothing more than a looming chin and flaring nostrils, but then she stared down into his slots and he couldn’t help staring right back. Her eyes were shockingly blue and her gaze was piercing. Her hair was dirty blonde, curled in ringlets carelessly tucked behind her ears. When she looked away it felt like all the air in the room rushed back in.

He watched her and noticed that she pursed her lips in a frown if her breakfast took too long. On rare days, perhaps when the coffee was especially strong, she danced lazily around the kitchen, humming tunelessly to herself, singing the odd chorus or snatch of a verse. Most mornings she just blinked her way through a second cup.

One day while admiring the curve of her neck he burnt a bagel black. She snatched it away and swore at him in frustration, furiously scraping off the top layer with a butter knife. The sudden flash of anger made her strangely beautiful, like some Valkyrie just awakened from deep sleep, hair still tousled.

The morning after the burnt bagel, she came to him, raisin bread in hand, and he mentally prepared himself for the task. He focused all of his attention on keeping the burn even. His coils glowed with gentle heat and he listened carefully to the crackle of the bread until it sounded just right. When he popped it up perfectly toasted just a little bit early, he thought he caught a ghost of a smile on her downturned face.

He soon found he couldn’t help but be conscious of the soft touch of her fingertips as she pressed down his lever. Some nights he counted down the hours until morning, waiting for her arrival. On others he dreamed of her face, and in his dreams her nose was a tiny baguette, her ears hot cross buns. She smiled and her teeth were croutons.

Their shared morning routine was the bright spot of his day. Her breakfast usually included a bagel or some toast, and performing his duties filled him with an incredible sense of purpose. When she opted for cereal or a granola bar he worried that some distance might be coming between them, but when she toasted bread for a sandwich at dinner, he was elated at another chance to do his job. He tried to be reasonable, to keep his emotions in check when she was around, but he couldn’t help being jealous.

Nate longed for some way of communicating with her. When the idea came to him, he kicked himself for missing the obvious. He spent the following night coming up with the perfect words. In the morning he focused all of his concentration on the task, carefully modulating the heat of his coils, picturing the letters in careful rows. When his lever popped up with a click, he waited impatiently for her gasp of recognition, but instead she just layered on jam like always.

A week of messages failed to make the slightest impression. He decided to take a bolder approach. The next day he studied her face, lingering over every feature. He held the image in his mind and shut out all distractions while he worked. The result was a too-dark burn in the center and a frown from his muse. Her face was etched in his mind, but he couldn’t seem to burn it onto a piece of bread. Failure only spurred him on, and he rededicated himself to the task the next morning.

After several loaves full of failures, he secretly hoped she would sleep late and skip breakfast, but it was not to be. When he popped up his latest effort, he was surprised to see her stop and take a second look. His heart leapt, but then he realized she wasn’t looking at the toast.

Sparks and smoke boiled out from deep inside him. He’d overworked himself and something had gone very wrong. When she yanked his cord out of the wall and threw him outside he knew that it was all over. He felt his consciousness ebb and reluctantly gave in to spreading darkness. His mission was unfulfilled and his days as a toaster were done.

Some time later he awoke to a roar. He was alive, but something was clearly different. It felt like his face was being rubbed into carpet. Tiny pieces of dirt rattled down his throat and into his stomach. A curtain of blonde curls fell into view and he recognized her touch as she leaned over to switch off the suction.

This, he thought, was going to be a challenge.

This story was originally published in October 2012 by Kazka Press.

Categories
FictionWriting

The Day Riots

Written in response to a flash fiction challenge posted on Chuck Wendig’s blog.

The day riots. When I stumble out the door of my apartment into the mid-day glare, the sun feels closer than it has ever been, and I imagine it burning off the sea in great clouds of steam. I wince and look down at my feet, tears stinging my eyes. That is when I see that I am standing in a pool of rainbow light, broken apart by the air thickening around me. I gasp and dive back through my still-open front door just before a ball of electricity explodes behind me, right where I had just been standing.

I lay on the floor, deafened and shaking, and curse under my breath when I realize that the ringing in my ears is, at least partially, my battered StormAlert shrilling dire warnings from the table where I left it. I stay flat on my back until my heart stops banging around inside my chest and the insistent beeping tapers off into silence.

I drag myself up off the floor and shove the StormAlert into my pocket like I should have in the first place. It really only gives me a few seconds’ warning, but sometimes that is all I need. I’m still standing, more or less. Never mind my attempt at suicide through absentmindedness.

Before I head back out into the day, I grab a sweat-stained baseball cap from the hallway closet and jam it down over my forehead. When I reach the threshold again, I stand there for a few seconds, holding my breath and listening to the strange, shattered stillness of the morning. The only signs of my near-death experience are a few scorch marks on the pavement and the acrid scent of burning ozone. I shut the door behind me, clutch the StormAlert in my pocket like a talisman, and hurry down the sidewalk with my head down against the glare of the sun. First to the store, then to Georgia’s.

At the checkout line, the owner tries to smile at me, but it curdles into something more unnerving than friendly, and I gather up my bags without a word. I’ve been a regular at this store for years, and I remember chatting with him some days. Empty pleasantries, but comfortable. Now the haunted look in his eyes makes me avoid eye contact, and his store is a ghost town. He keeps it open out of some perverse combination of stubbornness and denial, and I can almost believe things are normal again until he bars the door behind me.

Georgia only lives a few blocks away, but any time spent outside is doubly dangerous, so it always feels like miles. I stay beneath awnings and back in shadowed doorways, trying to find what cover I can. Everything smells like burning and it only makes me walk faster.

When Georgia opens the door, her stare is a thousand miles away. Only after I catch my breath and croak her name for the third time does she snap back to reality and let me into the refrigerated darkness of her apartment. I dump the grocery bags on her kitchen table and search for a light switch. When the overhead light sputters on, she blinks and clutches her shoulders, a wan smile fluttering across her face in a pale imitation of her former toothiness.

I do my best to smile in return, and she begins unloading the bags and putting them away. I am watching the curves of her back bend and stretch underneath the material of her thin white shirt when her voice floats back over one shoulder.

“How have you been? Still up to no good?”

She makes it sound airy and nonchalant, like always, and now I do grin despite myself.

“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Keeping my head down.”

We put the rest of the groceries away in silence, then she pours two glasses of iced tea. We sit in the living room, sipping quietly, letting the glasses sweat moisture into our hands, and it feels like we are the only two people in the world.

“Are you staying safe, Joe?”

“Absolutely. I had a near miss this morning, but –” her head snaps up and I rush to reassure her “– but I’m fine, it was nothing, don’t worry about me.”

“I do worry about you, though. What would happen if you…”

She trails off and looks deep into the bottom of her glass, some imagined future tightening the skin around her mouth. Her skin is pale, almost translucent in the reflected light, and her hair hangs limp and unwashed, brown roots creeping further up into the blonde. She looks years older than she did before all this started, but she is still the most beautiful woman in the world.

I look at her and after a few moments I work up the courage to ask again, even though I already know the answer.

“I could stay. If you want me to.”

She shakes her head, no.

“He could be back any time. You know how he…”

She trails off, nothing more to be said. I sit there, drinking my tea, letting the ice clink against my teeth. After a moment I feel her hand, cool and damp and small, slip into mine and I squeeze it gently.

We sit there for a while in silence. When my tea is empty, I set down my glass and she pulls my head into her lap. I fall asleep with her stroking my hair.

When I wake, it is early evening, and I gather my things to return home before dark. We embrace in the doorway, and I press my hands into her shoulders, my nose into the side of her neck.

She stays carefully inside her apartment when I leave. I drink in one last look of her before she closes the door and I turn away to walk back home through the heat still radiating up from the pavement outside.

Categories
Web SeriesWriting

Web Zeroes

Web Zeroes (2009-2010): Big dreams. Small minds.

Web Zeroes follows the misadventures of Nate, Alex, and Ray – three hapless geeks with big dreams of Internet stardom. The only thing holding them back… is each other. Can their friendship survive the trials of making it big in the world of LOLcats and viral videos?

Web Zeroes was produced by Smooth Few Films for (the now-defunct) Revision3. I wrote the following episodes:

Categories
Web SeriesWriting

The Leet World

In The Leet World, a machinima based in Counter-Strike: Source, 4 Counter-Terrorists and 4 Terrorists are placed in a house together and we see what happens when they stop being noobs… and start acting leet!

The Leet World was self-produced by Smooth Few Films. I wrote the following episodes:

I also wrote or co-wrote scripts for the as-of-yet unfinished third season of the show.

Categories
FictionWriting

Eggs

This time it was a puzzle piece.

I watched, fascinated, as its edges began to curl in the crackling oil. I saw, perhaps, the leg of a small dog. Or could it be flowers, ready to bloom? Was this where all the lost puzzle pieces of the world ended up?

I imagined some poor soul assembling this puzzle on their dining room table, anticipation building as everything began to come together, and then… one piece missing, never to be found. The unfinished puzzle, boxed back up and returned to the shelf, ready to mock them whenever they needed a bath towel or decided to play a game of Sorry.

At this point, I realized that I was talking to myself, speaking my thoughts… slowly. Like reading a book to a small child. I was clearly weak with hunger.

I reached down, pulled the piece (now soggy with oil) from the skillet, winced as the cardboard scalded my fingers, and popped it in my mouth.

It was hardly as satisfying as I had hoped, but with some persistent chewing and a glass of water, I managed to gulp it down.

I tossed the pieces of broken shell into the sink and grabbed another one from the carton.

Always the optimist.

Categories
ScriptsShortsWriting

Untitled Dialogue #1

Last night, as I lay in bed preparing for sleep, a bit of dialogue was running through my head, so I decided that I had better write it down to make sure it didn’t go away.

30 minutes later, I had the scene below. Enjoy!

Categories
SEO ContentWriting

Nacq Partners Limited

In 2004, I worked for Nacq.com’s (now-defunct) framed art shop, digital-picture-printing-frames.com, in Georgetown, TX.

I wrote SEO web content and did a little bit of web development.

Here are a few of my posts thanks to the magic of archive.org:

  1. American Art
  2. Animal Pictures
  3. Hudson River School
  4. Orchid Pictures
  5. Space Pictures
Categories
PlaysWriting

Living in Concussion

Living in Concussion was my third full-length play, written in 2004 during the second semester of my senior year of college.

It tells the story of a socially maladjusted young man named Davis who never leaves his apartment. His best friend is a talking severed head. Together they decide to build a robotic woman to help alleviate Davis’ loneliness. This goes poorly.

Categories
FictionWriting

A Sister

I had a sister once. Three years younger than me, with long, skinny arms and legs, and eyes greener than pine needles. I never liked her very much, except when she was quiet, which was hardly ever.

We lived on the beach back then, without neighbors for as far as the eye could see. We owned the whole horizon, and the whitecaps, and all the polished round rocks. My sister and I would play in the sand, making and building and crushing whole worlds that ran through your hands when you tried to pick them up. We used to go just far enough from the house that you could hold up your thumb in front of your eyes and squint at the house and suddenly the beach looked empty as far as you could see, and it wasn’t hard to believe that we were the only people left on the whole planet.

My sister and I never exactly played together. We played in the same spot, but never the same games. I loved to swim and build castles and take great running leaps from the sand to the waves and back again. She would just sit Indian-style, combing her doll’s hair and talking to me as though I was listening.

I have tried to remember what she talked about, but it never seemed as important then as it does now. When I try to listen to those memories, everything sounds like waves and angry seagulls.

One day I was running in the waves pretending to be a fighter plane. I looked up and saw her walking towards me, crying and holding her doll. I don’t know why, but I laughed. I laughed, like I thought something was funny, and when I was laughing, I noticed the way the sun made her hair burn and glow, like everything was on fire. It suddenly hurt my eyes to look at her, and I turned away.

When I looked back, she was gone.

Now, like I said, I never liked her very much, but when she disappeared so suddenly my heart stopped and all I could hear was a rushing sound in my head. I ran to where she had been, kicking my way through the water, and cut my foot on a piece of glass hidden in the rocks and sand.

I swore and fell and grabbed my foot. Then I noticed that there was a hole in the ground where she had been, something dark and bottomless. My head was all stuffed full of cotton because of the pain, and I thought that maybe my imagination was playing tricks on me, but the hole started to get smaller and smaller as I watched, until finally it was just a pinprick in the ground, and then nothing.

I felt something inside my head snap like a rubber band, and before I knew it, I had run the distance from the beach to our house in a panting, stumbling flash. As I ran, I left a zig-zag polka dot trail of gleaming red that floated right on top of all the stones. I ran and I bled myself all over the white of the porch and smeared a streak of horror all down the front hallway. I barreled into the kitchen and grabbed my mother and tried to tell her how my sister had fallen into a hole in the ground and disappeared.

She shushed me and then saw the blood on my foot and picked me up. She carried me straight to the bathroom and held my foot under water, and all of a sudden it didn’t seem to hurt so much because she had wrapped it all in gauze and kissed me on the forehead. Then she asked me again what had happened.

I told her one more time, but slowed it down so that she could understand.

All she said was “Honey… you don’t have a sister.”


Sometimes, when I am walking, I will see a woman out of the corner of my eye who has hair like my sister’s, and I will stop and turn to stare at her. Every time this happens I want to grab the woman, whoever she is, and hug her until her bones creak. Instead I just stand there, motionless, holding my arms out like I expect something. Most of the time I realize soon enough that these women aren’t my sister, but it gets harder and harder every time. I usually have to turn my head and look at them sideways to really be sure.

I want to meet her, like she is now. Like she would be, if she hadn’t disappeared.

We would have so many things to say to each other – I just know it. Every time I think about meeting her again I run our conversations through my head. I’m sure we could talk for hours, just sit in a coffee shop and tell the stories of our lives.

She would live upstate, and have an older husband with a gray patch of hair on one side of his head, and they would have two boys – twins. Their house would be big but modest, and have the kind of driveway that curves through trees and around bends. She would be an archeologist, digging for dinosaur bones, or for pottery from an ancient culture. She would cry a little bit when she saw me, especially since we had been apart for so long. I would realize how much we had in common, and how funny it was that we hated each other so much when we were young. Distance and time would actually have brought us closer.

I just wish my family felt the same way. I used to try to talk to my mother about what happened and why nobody believed me. For a while she reacted like she thought it was a little funny, but when I kept bringing it up more and more, she started to look like she was talking to me from behind a glass wall that got thicker every time. I had to talk to a therapist eventually, but that never really helped anything.

I got older and we moved away from the beach, and all my memories of that place became like watercolors in my mind, great big strokes of blue sky and sand. But I never forgot her. I remembered her even if nobody else did. I could still remember the way the wind coming over the sea made her dress twist and billow, and the way she disappeared without even making a sound.

And then, one night, I had a dream and my sister was in it. This wasn’t like most of the dreams I can remember; I knew I was dreaming, but at the same time things smelled and tasted and felt more real than being awake.

She was the same age she had always been. Her face was frozen in time like the one painted on her doll. She just stood there, playing with the folds in her dress. A few moments passed in complete silence and then she sighed and held out her hand.

“Come on. Let me show you where I’ve been.”


When I woke up, I tried to hold onto the details of my dream, because It seemed like there was nothing more important that I could ever do, nothing that mattered so much, but the longer I sat the more it felt like I had never even dreamed anything after she took my hand, it was all I could do to keep from knocking the back of my own head in, and I felt the memory skipping away, rushing off somewhere else like blood in my veins, so I went downtown.

I went downtown, and I counted the faces of every woman I saw with hair like strawberries and wheat. It was all I could do. I had to get to know as much about them as I could before the light bouncing off the midday concrete burned so bright that I could no longer see anything else.

Categories
PlaysWriting

Sweeten the Punch

Sweeten The Punch was my second full-length play, written circa 2003. It’s the life story of a narrator who is a pathological liar.

There are also scenes where a stereotypical 1950s family deals with life in America. In retrospect, I probably added those to pad the length.