First thing, my monitor is breaking. So I'm going to have to buy a new computer. On the days I have off, writing takes a lot longer. I dream of a day where I'm actually done before noon. But I didn't sleep at all yesterday so that doesn't hurt.
Now that that's out of the way! Reading a lot of psychology stuff. Apparently memory and imagination are the same thing. I probably shouldn't give this information away for free, but if you try to imagine things through the faculty of memory instead of imagination, it seems more concrete. You can still make it all up as you go along, it's just more real. Pretend it really happened. Or, at least, that's the strategy for the next couple of weeks.
Other news of more note than that! Found some writers group thing in Milwaukee with some old quack writer lady. Or maybe she's not a quack I still have to meet the lady. My apologies for calling you that, lady.
Oh, also, pretty sure I either had a heart attack or slept on my arm weird. but I had this huge extended lucid dream type of sequence afterwards that could have been on par with my "life flashing before my eyes". Except there was no epiphany contained in it. In it, my friend Henry was buying a new house because he had just finished his PhD and was now making $120,000 a year (figure he stated in the dream), and I ended up having to deliver a bunch of money for pizza to an asian man with a million children. The kids climbed all over me when I tried to go up the stairs and yelled at me for being hairy.
This dream made me think about plot immediately, because first I went and did one thing, and later I had a package I was supposed to deliver as a favor. The fact I was doing it as a favor just added another element to plot. I'm sure for someone out there that concept is simple, but for me that was the revelation if there was one.
Next months nonfiction book title ala Ruthy Michals: "How to talk to people so they end up thinking you'll have sex with them"
Quote from me in the future for the day: "I've never read a book I can't put down. The trick is not putting it down." I'm picturing myself with a giant grey beard, a Confederate officer uniform and Teddy Roosevelt glasses.
Alright another tirade. Napoleon Hill's other trick is picturing yourself as the person that you want to be. So, by osmosis, if you create that person by imagining a future version of yourself you're helping the process along. Or, I'll get a lot of words out of it. The point of writing is still to produce writing.
Oh! One other point. I don't care if you know me, or if you even remember who I am, if you don't delete me from your facebook I'm going to comment on your stasuses.
The line at the Shop For Sales! 20 items or more checkout spread beyond the lottery ticket machines. No one looked happy to be there, parents and kids tacitly agreeing not to bother each other with trivialities. An inane Thanksgiving gobbling commercial played on repeat over the stores loud speakers, separating Hall and Oates from Luther Vandross. He rushed back to bandages aisle, filling a basket with different kinds of gauze. He took the time to glance at each package first, compression bandages, gauze bandages, those little triangular ones that look like they wouldn’t stick. I’ll come right back, he had said. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.
Now that that's out of the way! Reading a lot of psychology stuff. Apparently memory and imagination are the same thing. I probably shouldn't give this information away for free, but if you try to imagine things through the faculty of memory instead of imagination, it seems more concrete. You can still make it all up as you go along, it's just more real. Pretend it really happened. Or, at least, that's the strategy for the next couple of weeks.
Other news of more note than that! Found some writers group thing in Milwaukee with some old quack writer lady. Or maybe she's not a quack I still have to meet the lady. My apologies for calling you that, lady.
Oh, also, pretty sure I either had a heart attack or slept on my arm weird. but I had this huge extended lucid dream type of sequence afterwards that could have been on par with my "life flashing before my eyes". Except there was no epiphany contained in it. In it, my friend Henry was buying a new house because he had just finished his PhD and was now making $120,000 a year (figure he stated in the dream), and I ended up having to deliver a bunch of money for pizza to an asian man with a million children. The kids climbed all over me when I tried to go up the stairs and yelled at me for being hairy.
This dream made me think about plot immediately, because first I went and did one thing, and later I had a package I was supposed to deliver as a favor. The fact I was doing it as a favor just added another element to plot. I'm sure for someone out there that concept is simple, but for me that was the revelation if there was one.
Next months nonfiction book title ala Ruthy Michals: "How to talk to people so they end up thinking you'll have sex with them"
Quote from me in the future for the day: "I've never read a book I can't put down. The trick is not putting it down." I'm picturing myself with a giant grey beard, a Confederate officer uniform and Teddy Roosevelt glasses.
Alright another tirade. Napoleon Hill's other trick is picturing yourself as the person that you want to be. So, by osmosis, if you create that person by imagining a future version of yourself you're helping the process along. Or, I'll get a lot of words out of it. The point of writing is still to produce writing.
Oh! One other point. I don't care if you know me, or if you even remember who I am, if you don't delete me from your facebook I'm going to comment on your stasuses.
The line at the Shop For Sales! 20 items or more checkout spread beyond the lottery ticket machines. No one looked happy to be there, parents and kids tacitly agreeing not to bother each other with trivialities. An inane Thanksgiving gobbling commercial played on repeat over the stores loud speakers, separating Hall and Oates from Luther Vandross. He rushed back to bandages aisle, filling a basket with different kinds of gauze. He took the time to glance at each package first, compression bandages, gauze bandages, those little triangular ones that look like they wouldn’t stick. I’ll come right back, he had said. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.
Fat black T-shirted teens in the toy aisle eyeballed him interestedly. A plump toddler tried to sneak shortbread cookies into her moms cart.
“Did you like, you know, is there like, a dead body or something?” The one with the red knit cap asked, scuffing his black bondage pants on the linoleum floor. The one with the skull T-shirt watched from in between a shelf divider.
“Look, kid, this is a private country, I don’t have to tell you what I’m here buying. But, if you must know, it’s for science.” Charles was content with his vague answer, as he pushed his way back to the front of the store, passing ladies hygiene products in Aisle Eight.
The bleeps were taking too long, he thought in the checkout line. The express lane was congested as well. A white afroed old lady in a floral print dress argued how much 15% off of rice pudding was.
“Lady, it says it right on there, it says 3.25 after discount” She insisted he call a manager, he said he was the manager, and finally the manager said that he was not to say he was the manager anymore. They gave the rice pudding to her for free, and Charles watched with eagerness from behind a mother of four with two carts.
“These ones look rotten, hold on, I’m gone go grab a different one!” The lady removed her bananas from the cashiers hands and stormed off back towards produce.
Charles looked at his watch as he walked out, plastic bag full of bandages in his left hand. Extra twenty minutes, can’t lose that much blood in an extra twenty minutes. A man with a facial tattoo wrestled a cart into the back of a row of them.
OK I technically stabbed him, Charles thought, heart racing. He took long strides but never broke a jogging pace, checking the police car across the lot in the rearview mirror as he pulled out of the spot. He thought of removing his sunglasses from the glove compartment and tossing them on, but didn’t want to illicit any suspicions.
The car wound through a series of one way roads and down his alley. He shuttered with a sudden shiver when he got out the car, taking the bag leaning in on one hand. The fire escape was dangling, unleashed from its sheath. He didn’t often enter the building this way, suddenly realizing this was more suspicious than he had planned. He removed the sunglasses, put them in his pocket, and forced a smile across his face.
The building manager passed him in the glass vestibule, and in his nervousness he forced conversation.
“How’s the… uh… building doing today?”
“Charles, is it? Yes, Charles.” He reached out and shook Charles’s hand, confused. “Any problems with your apartment?”
“No, window got fixed, new locks on doors, everything is great.”
They both continued walking, smiling and nodding simultaneously.
Charles pushed his door open, twisting the key and shaking it to get it back out.
“I got the bandages.” He called out. An empty house greeted him. The blood stain was still on the carpet, a hank of hair and flesh matted into it beyond removal. He kicked at it with the sole of his shoe, and it stuck to the front of his shoe. He rolled up the edge of the carpet and looked over at the telephone which was flashing.
He pulled the blinds to his veranda, they were sitting open widely for some reason. He checked the locks on the sliding doors, yanking at it a few times to make sure it wouldn’t budge. The refridgerator kicked in and purred, his novelty Felix The Cat clock ticking away on the wall. He flicked on the TV and cranked the volume up to eight green bars, sighing to himself and looking over his shoulder at the pantry.
As he stepped toward the pantry door, he could smell the faint odor of bleach. I left him in there, stabbed but tied up. He was out, the horse tranquilizer should have knocked him out for days. He expected to swing the door open, and see the body of the Red Robed Man laying there, slumped over in the chair, lifeless with his shoulders propped up against the wall. All of his snacks and canned goods were probably laying around him in a pile, his eyes bulging and his paper thin mask lifeless.
He picked himself up, he was the new Charles, New Casual Charles. He’d do what he had to do, take care of business, if he could handle this he could handle anything. Anything. And it’s just a murdered menace, it was self defense, in the privacy of his own home.
“Get the phone!” A voice from behind the door boomed. Sure enough, the phone was ringing, he couldn’t hear it underneath the TV.
“Doing all right in there? I’ll be back in a minute.” Charles trailed off. He threw the bag of bandages down by the door, pulled his hair back in a pony tail and let it loose.
“Hello, this is Charles,” He picked it up. He heard a series of clicks on the other end, a wobbily noise like a piece of metal being shook.
“Hello, Charles Lattimore here.” He paused a few more seconds and hung up the phone.
“Huh, no one there, Dave!” He called out across the apartment, turning the TV back up. He poured two glasses of water, one for himself and one for Dave, and pushed the pantry door with his foot. It slid open.
Dave sat there, martini in hand, transfixed look in his eyes. The ropes were removed, but the gash in his right arm still dripped blood. The floor looked like a crimson carpet. He let the right arm dangle, his left holding the glass.
“I didn’t even have the fixings for that. There’s no way you made martinis.”
Charles applied the bandages in a slow and deliberate method. He bent over like a field doctor, taking the martini out of Dave’s hand and carefully placing it on the chip shelves above which were still intact. Dave didn’t resist, only breathed deeper when Charles tugged the bandages tighter around the wound. He wrapped it with gauze, realized he forgot to apply the antiseptic first and had to reapply them.
Dave yelled without moving his lips. His teeth serated the words that poured through.
“You can’t keep me here. Maybe you don’t need me anymore, ok, I get it. But I gotta get going. I’ve gotta get to Anne. Gotta save Anne!”
He laughed and let out a demure croak, his head tilting back and eyes going white. Great, Charles thought. The chair fell back and the shelves collapsed, a can of peas striking charles across the temple.
Dave was as light as he had looked, almost literally a bag of bones. It felt like heaving a giant vaccuum bag around when he crabbed him by the legs and wrenched him over his shoulders. Charles saw himself in the bathroom mirror when he walked past it, Daves compliant dead body draped over his shoulder. He didn’t look like himself for a moment, it occurred to him that he could have been a robber that broke into the apartment to steal all of Charles’s dead bodies.
He set him out on the couch and ran to the underground garage to retrieve a garbage bag. The garage door was closed and only a thin slit of light cut through from underneath it, a barrell full of shovels in the far corner and an old broken down Volkswagon with a faded peace sign on the windshield sitting front and center. Charles grabbed a garbage bag from next to the industrial oversized garbagecan and went back upstairs.
“Stay in your room, old man!” Charles pushed the door closed on the rickety old man, who was undoubtedly storming out of his apartment to see what “all the ruckus was about”. Luckily for Charles, it always seemed like the old man was the only person home other than him.
He stomped through the door at the fiercest pace he had ever mustered. Dave wouldn’t just break in half like a twig, no matter how much he wished it’d be that easy. Rigamortis had set in, and he couldn’t even bend the man anymore. Dave’s body had become transfixed, and Charles could swear it was getting lighter as he placed it in a spiderwalk pose under the mantle.
Charles let a day pass where he attempted to ignore the presence of the body. He remembered their being an Anne at the office but couldn’t remember when she went missing, or why. He tried to put together the situation he had stabbed Dave in back together in his mind.
He saw him get out of the car, come up the stairs. He vaguely remembered looking down at his hand, a wooden handled curved knife was in his hand, then it wasn’t, and then it was. Not a material object, just sensory memory. That moment of passion when the knife came down in his shoulder blade, splaying him out over the dining room table, Charles thought for sure the knife would just go right through him.
Dave had become irate after being stabbed, talking with his hands like a Frenchman and pointing at the wound with his other hand. Things had suddenly become serious for him and Dave, he had got his hands on the steering wheel.
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