Day 45!

Already up to day 45!  Ok, I know I'm lacking characters that have real motivations, professions, actually care about things, etc etc.  I am reading a book about that right at this exact moment (not that that really means anything).  Check out my linkedin profile!

Dare to be a Daniel
Dare to stand alone
Dare to have a purpose firm
Dare to make it known

That's from this "Creating Characters" book by Dwight V. Swain.  It's short enough to read in one sitting.  It's not bad but he's got a little bit of an ego problem.

Anyway I know most of you are as sick of this story as I am by now and it's basically just an exercise in futility at this point.  But, if I'm just treading water then I am just treading water.  It's still treading water.  What about those days when I don't tread any water?  That's when I'm really stuck.  We're going to follow it through till the end of the month.

"I want heroines, not victims!"

Oh that cutthroat self-published blog-based writing industry.

Ok this one might kill me today.  It's just not coming out.  I'm completely losing direction.  It's this stupid book about plot that's ruining it.  But, rest assured, I will make it to 50,000 words on this story.  Even if I keep having to change directions in the plot every day just to keep it interesting enough to get to 1,667 words.  Who's not a quitter?

Bonus comment:  Must become obsessed enough with writing to lose sleep over it.  And not only write for one month a year the way you silly people from the website do.  (If that's what you do)

            A blue sedan roared past the building and flashbulb memories flew through Charles mind.  The fishing trip, the summer vacation, the day he left for camp.  He remembered a vague mother figure, a housewife, with floral patterned skirts and rollers in her hair.  He saw himself reading alone in a room at a desk with its lamp projecting down over the pages of his textbook.  The seasons turned, it was fall, he was in full body bubble wrap in the backyard, the leaves fell steadily from a great oaks branches like snow. 

            He scoffed and purged himself of this nostalgia.  His father didn’t deserve to feel proud of him.  Those endless nights of paranoid confusion in his room spent reading, educating himself for a world which he only understood was bitter due to his dads insistence.  It started to come back, there was a reason he didn’t remember.  And he didn’t need to remember.

            The sedan was driven by a man holding a fish.  He had a corncob pipe sandwiched between his mighty jawline, and was steering the enormous iron chariot effortlessly with one hand.  He turned the mahogany steeringwheel, then he was gone.

            Charles rubbed his eyes and pulled the drapes shut, only half consciously watching the events unfolding before his eyes.  Anne folded towels into a laundrybin near the sink in the kitchen.  It was finally the weekend.

            Charles stalked the street in a lucid daze, slightly paranoid but trying to fight back those thoughts.  He passed the butcher shop, listening intently as loading zone slobs stacked slabs of meat in a pile out of the back of their refridgerator van.  All the neighborhood dogs sat at the windows of their residences barking and salivating.

            He cashed his check, bought a new pair of pants, and signed up for a charge card that saved him up to 30% with mail-in rebates.  He did all this on foot, and walked home relieved and self-authorized for the moment. 

He was ready to get out of his job with Mr. Pulp and concern himself with his own career.  It was Monday morning, Charles was having that dream about the demon possessing his soul again.  It reached down his throat, replaced his organs with eternal hellfire, and he was tempted to hand himself over gently into submission.  The sun hadn’t completely risen yet as they approached the parking lot.  The trees that were allowed to grow on the islands in between the masses of corporate sprawl were still covered with the dusk from the night before.  Charles smoked while he drove, and Anne had to reach over and shake him when he constantly bobbed out of consciousness in front of the steering wheel.

“You know, I’m done with this fucking place.”  Charles empowered himself.

“What do you mean?!”  Anne asked in complete innocence.  “Why didn’t we talk about this yesterday?  When I asked you if you wanted to talk about anything, you told me you were fine.”

“Well you know what, I’m not fine.  I’d burn this fucking place down if I could.”  The word ‘fucking’ oozed out of him with an authoritarian swagger from the safety of the car.  He narrowed his eyes and looked over at her as his foot automatically pumped the brake. 

“But you get paid, right?  They pay you atleast as well as they pay me…”  Anne went off in a corporate direction with her speech.  Charles looked up at her like she was an automaton.  She rattled off sales figures using her index finger on her right hand in conjunction with the palm of her left hand laid flat.

Smoke rose in the distance like a native american S.O.S, with clouds of ash decorating it like frosting.    Charles smiled sardonically at himself in the rearview mirror.  A shred of innocence deep inside of him tugged at him, asking whether or not he should feel guilty.  Anne got out of the car the second he stopped it, and ran toward the towering flames like a moth to a flame.

Charles stood by the car, puzzled and scratching his oversized head.  He played the record backwards in his head. 

Fire engines came in a flurry, the siren like an alarm clock.  Charles shuddered and woke up again, even though he was standing up with his eyes open.  A layer of auto pilot was removed from his invisible outer shell.  He loosened his tie and approached the building full force.

Mr. Pulp was shrugging and then raising his hands in the air while hopping in the air, delivering an endless diatribe to a policeman filling out an incident report.  Occasionally the police man would look up, checking to see whether or not he believed this nut job that was standing in front of him or not, and then look back down at the pad with an unnoticeable sneer creeping across his left cheek.  The incinerated portions of the building formed a giant letter N, swaying slightly in the wind like a mast on a ship.

A steady line of generic unfamiliar faces exited from behind Charles.  They must have used the underground tunnel, Charles gathered, relieved that even if he had not been late for work he would have been safe. 

A guy chewing a toothpick with a scar on his face was perched by the tall weeds that surrounded a fountain by the parking structure.  Charles saw him when attempting to avoid gazing at the fire for a second.  He scurried off in the undergrowth, and Charles turned to look back toward the building.  Everyone looked like ants in the distance, there was no way they noticed such a nefarious character.  Charles approached Mr. Pulp who was sulking, punching the ground with his fist as he rested his body on his other hand.

“Hey, uh…”  Firefighters sprayed the burning building with water, and a different tube produced a toothpastey substance that gelled onto the lower levels.  A window dislodged and fell ten feet away from Charles, not breaking on the concrete.  “Let’s move away from here.”

Charles grabbed Mr. Pulp by the hand that was punching the ground and guided him further away.  Policeman immediately barricaded the area with yellow tape, shoving their way through the disenfranchised row of gawkers loafing in a disjointed line. 

“You don’t understand,”  Mr. Pulp began.  “You don’t know what I’ve unleashed.  This fire is only the beginning.”

Charles thought about the man with the scar and the toothpick.  He found it interesting that a science lab that conducted experiments in secret would have enemies. 

“This was Mr. Gordons work for sure.”   Mr. Pulp looked sure of himself, setting his gaze on an object in the distance.  He pulled up a handfull of grass and dirt, and suddenly a new and more vicious look covered his face.  Mr. Pulp was as aloof as he had been all along, not concerning himself with his workforce, a single mindedness to his mission.

Anne approached with a lucid, shocked look on her face, holding a pack of burnt matches.  She handed them to Mr. Pulp, who delivered them promptly to a police officer refusing people entry to the scene.  He put the matches in a plastic ziplock back and sealed it.  “We can’t really do much with matches as far as fingerprints of anything goes,”  The officer said.  “And, it was already pretty clear to us that foul play was involved.”

The matches still sat in the bag, staring up at Mr. Pulp as gusts of heat jumped from the building and the rafters from the top of the structure slid off with a thunk inside. 

“I think I saw a guy over there.”  Charles held a hand in front of his eyes and squinted.  “No, really, he had a toothpick in his mouth and a big scar on his face.”

“There’s no way you could see that far!”  Pulp shouted in Charles’s face.  “Get serious, Mr. Charles!”

“No, I mean, like, a minute ago.  I think I did, anyway.  I’m not sure with the shock and all.”

The policeman put a hand on his hip and looked at Charles, then grabbed his walky talky to call dispatch.  “Suspect on the loose on foot.”

In the car, Anne was silent and had her arms crossed.  A giant boom of an explosion could be heard from a distance.  Charles had a vivid image of red shirted arms and red legged legs flying in different directions, amalgamating with the rest of the red surroundings.  Charles thought this would be a great time to pull into the gas station and get his wits about him.

Inside, an older pale skinned shop keeper and a UPS worker watched the TV.  The UPS worker leaned on a handtruck, and the old man sat back coughing intermittently in an uncomfortable looking chair.  The TV showed a female reporter holding her ear piece in with one hand and attempting to curve her body in a way to resist the heat of the burning building behind her.

“She should just not stand so close to the fire.”  The old man stated matter of factly.  “We kind of get the idea.”

“I heard the guy that ran that place was a real scuzzbag.”  The UPS guy said plainly without looking over at the old man.

“…Back to you at the studio”  The segment concluded.  It switched back to a man in a blue suede suit seated at a desk, with an asian woman sitting at a desk next to him wearing a gold chain. “We here at Channel 4 will be on this story as it develops.  Might not be the best place to have a fire, with all of those chemicals.”  The asian woman added “No, hopefully they’ll be able to contain this fire before too long.”

Charles retrieved chocolate milk from a cooler in the back and shot a furtive glance back at the car where Anne sat, static in a frozen moment of anger with him.  Charles grabbed an icecream bar from the cooler by the desk and begrudgingly reached in for a second one for Anne.

 “Yeah, I used to work there.”  Charles told the old man as he rung up his items.  “I regret not poking around a little bit more.”