Jintor
Didn't Get Temp-Banned
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2004
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Here, have some absolute crap I've been writing. Most of it is unfinished bullshittery. Enjoy.
-----
Some other story entirely
Sometimes, it seemed to Jonathan (his name, as he thought of it, though he was not named that at birth) that the wind spoke messages to him through the trees. Other times, it seemed as though the shrill whistling and the mournful wailing he occasionally heard were the result of nothing more than what his science teacher told him were ?oscillating air molecules?, although what precisely that was he didn?t quite understand yet. Nevertheless, sometimes, to Jonathan, it seemed as though the wind spoke to him.
Today it was bored. I could murder a curry, it said.
Jonathan ignored it. The wind liked to talk, and it preferred others to listen. The wind was really rather selfish sometimes.
You know, you really ought to talk more, the wind muttered. Jonathan continued to ignore it. They?d had this conversation before, and Jonathan always tended to lose, though he was never quite sure what game they were playing. Besides, the wind was lying ? it hated it when Jonathan talked.
The wind gave up on any attempts at further conversation and busied itself fooling around with some leaves a little further down the sidewalk. Jonathan kept walking. He was twelve, and had a home to go to (which his mother never ceased to remind him was a blessing, a blessing, let me tell you) and was hurrying towards it as fast as he could without running. If he ran, he could probably get there in about five minutes, but he?d tried it before, and had concluded that he?d get there in five minutes out of breath and with aches in his sides that would take a further half-hour to disappear. Better to just take the fifteen minutes.
His teachers called him a dreamer, in conversation between themselves and in nice, cursive writing on his fragile report card. ?Jonathan likes to play pretend,? said one such report card (Jonathan had imagined the clipped, fussy little voice of his second-grade teacher speaking as he read) ?and is often off in his own little world?. And this was true, or as true as it possibly could be. Jonathan certainly was in a world of his own, but it was at the same time the same world as everybody else.
It all depends, the wind sighed, on how you look at it.
Yellowish-brown leaves spiralled gently down from the trees as Jonathan walked briskly onwards. It had rained during lunchtime, and all the kids had been made to stay inside. Jonathan hadn?t minded too much; no matter where he was, he spent most of his free time in his head. The sky looked ominously down at him, but Jonathan hurried on.
He was inside his head right now, only marginally aware of where exactly he was, what he was doing. He knew the route by heart, anyway; he?d been walking home for weeks now. Inside his head, the wind was speaking to him, or rather at him, because the wind was very selfish and didn?t like to be talked back to. Outside his head, he was avoiding puddles, stray leaves, and people as he wandered towards home, his thoughts occupied with the wind, and the rain that had gone, and the coming storm...
Jonathan blinked. Was this place along the way back? Dark buildings loomed up around him, less familiar to him than the dark buildings that normally loomed up around him. This was because they weren?t the same buildings. Where exactly was he?
Looking back down the street, Jonathan saw the last of the sunlight fade as a cloud passed over the sun, obscuring its light momentarily. The cloud drifted lazily over the point where the sun had been, glowing a dull, faded silver; and then as it breezed past, Jonathan shut his eyes, expecting to be able to see that red glare right through his eyelids. He couldn?t. When he opened his eyes again, the sun had gone.
Gone?
Gone far away, muttered the wind, but Jonathan ignored it. The wind liked to talk, and would often just say things because it could. This was a more polite way of saying that quite often the wind lied. Anyway, the sun was gone, but this was quite odd (to Jonathan?s inquisitive mind) because the slightly silvery glow that had been the cloud when the cloud was still around was still hanging in the air ? despite the lack of any cloud for the glow to, well, glow from. Strange.
It seemed almost as if the colour had leeched from the world around him, along with the sunlight, and the sun. But, no, that wasn?t quite true ? a dull, muted red there, a pale, unremarkable green here. The colour hadn?t fled, but... the light... had?
That wasn?t right.
That wasn?t right at all...
He turned, and turned, and turned, but the light ? well, ok, not the light, because then he wouldn?t have been able to see, but... well, the vibrant light? The light that made the world more than just a monochrome series of images, devoid of sound and life? ? whatever that was, it had disappeared from the world entirely. It had fled while Jonathan had his back turned, his attention elsewhere, and now he was alone in a place that looked like the way back home, felt like the way back home, but wasn?t the way back home.
Jonathan would have been scared...
...if he hadn?t been so thrilled.
Like his teachers said, and like his parents said, and like most adults in his life thus far had said, Jonathan lived in his head. He also lived in other people?s heads too, the people who shared their thoughts and their dreams and their world through whatever methods were available ? writings, video, language, music, stories. Stories. Stories were the key.
There would be a monster, he decided.
That?s what would happen. That?s what always happened. You stumbled into another land, another world so very different from your nice normal world and there was a monster to slay, or to outsmart, or to hide from, or who would eat you...
That was the wind talking again. The wind wasn?t just selfish; sometimes, the wind was just outright mean.
Anyway. This was a different world. Jonathan knew that. Anybody with any ounce of sense would have known that. Well, maybe not adults, who (as he had read in his storybooks, and had been told in his fables, and, well, knew, in the bottom of his heart) would blither around, unconvinced that this was not their world any longer, believing in logic and rationality and all those things that would do them good until a troll found them and bit their heads right off. If they had their storybooks with them, they would be OK; but adults generally didn?t. They thought stories were stories.
Jonathan knew differently.
?Quite right? said a voice, behind him. Jonathan jumped, swivelling on the spot, but there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.
?There?s no point-? said the voice, as Jonathan turned again, straining to see where the voice was coming from, ?-jumping around like that. You can?t see me. Not yet.?
?What manner of foul beast are you?!? recited Jonathan, with what he hoped was a brave voice. He?d been practising this sort of thing (well, not practising this sort of thing, but thinking about it, anyway) for a few weeks now, ever since that last Moorcock book. ?Be you troll or demon, g-g-giant or gobli-?
?Oh, knock it off, kid? came the voice from the shadows, sounding slightly disgusted. ?That stuff went out of fashion, what - two, three years ago? And a good thing, too. I was getting sick of all that bloody armour in your teeth. Like prawns, you know??
Jonathan lowered his sword (sword? What sword? Why would a twelve-year-old have a sword? He didn?t have a sword. But he lowered it, nonetheless) and stared into the darkness, in vain. ?Where are you? What are you??
The creature (and there was a creature there, somewhere in the corner of his eyes ? always in the corner of his eyes, no matter where he looked) shrugged, spat, spoke. ?I?ve been waiting for you, little gift, little treasure from the heavens. I?ve been waiting here. In this place. Since the day you were born.?
There was something slightly guttural about the voice, yet at the same time, Jonathan could hear ? a voice, soft, pleasant, oddly musical in its own little way. It didn?t sound particularly monstrous. ?Why me??
A burp, a shaky laugh. An impression of a half-shrug, though what had shrugged or how it had been doing the shrugging Jonathan could never, ever have told you. ?Why not you? Maybe I was just lying. It doesn?t matter, little boy. Nothing matters. But I?m going to eat you. I?m going to gobble you all up, and spit out your bones, and saw and carve and make them into knives to slice the sweet flesh of other little boys and girls.?
The boy looked up at the creature, or at where he thought the creature was, unafraid on the outside, even if on the inside he was all butterflies and worry and fear. ?Why??
Because, said the wind mournfully, that?s what they do. They gobble you up and spit you out and make your remains into something useful.
Shut up! the boy hissed sideways into the wind. The wind took the hint, and fled momentarily, dying down, breezing away. The troll-creature hadn?t heard it, or if it had, it couldn?t speak Wind, and so seemed rather taken aback. ?Why??
?Why do you want to eat me?? asked Jonathan, stepping forwards, his innards calming down somewhat. The creature looked ? well, seemed, he still couldn?t see the thing properly ? confused, bewildered. ?I?m small. I?m probably not very good to eat. I?m-?
?Because -? said the creature, trying to maintain mental balance, ? ? because that?s what I do. B-because that?s what I?m... for??
?For??
The troll-thing got a grip, or as close to a grip as was possible in the circumstances. ?Why do you eat lambs, or foxes, or cauliflowers?? it asked, cautiously. ?Because you hunger. And, likewise, I hunger.? It approached another step, darker than the darkness around it, and Jonathan could smell the thing?s rank breath, hideous stench, on the air. It smelt like oil slick, and concrete, and cigarette smoke. It smelt like the city. ?Humans eat other animals. And to me, you?re just another animal.?
?Why do you smell like the city?? the boy asked, standing his ground. The butterflies had taken wing again, churning his stomach into a horrible, terrified mess; but he resolved not to show it. That was part of the story, too. The kids never showed their fear. And, of course, you delay. Ask questions. Expect answers.
Don?t get eaten.
-----
And now the boy is twenty-three, and the wind no longer speaks to him much. It?s not that Jonathan?s now a staid, conformist tool of society; on the contrary, he?s a liberalist arts student back in town only to visit his folks, his mind (well, to him, anyway) considerably freer than that of a mere child. And he believes that he has learned to discern the differences between dreams worth dreaming and worthless fantasies, between the big important dreams like justice and equality and the lesser dreams of the talking winds. And so maybe the wind still speaks to him, but now, he doesn?t listen.
He?s still cold, though.
He?s stumbling home, in the cold winter?s night, the air crisp and chill against his face, biting and nipping at bare skin. It had been a pretty good party, he thought, all things considered; he hadn?t managed to pick up at all though. Well, no matter. There?d always be more parties, different skirts to chase, faces to smile at and warm bodies to press against in the darkness. And now he was very slightly inebriated, a state of mind in which he occasionally delighted; it was like possessing a warm glow inside yourself, a kind of buffer between yourself and reality. Of course that feeling always presents its bill, later, but later was later, and not now and could be safely put aside until later.
Jonathan stumbled onwards through the night.
It occurred to him as he wandered through the streets that this route seemed oddly familiar...
-----
And some other story
I saw her today. Standing at the lights, half her name on her back. Her hair was darker than I remembered, but the face was the same. So maybe she was taller. She was still smaller than I was, lively and yet fragile-seeming. She gave me her smile ? so delicate, so wan. Did she mean it? I don?t know. I?ll never know.
I said hi, and she said hi. We talked. She didn?t look directly at me, but the tone, the words, they were friendly enough. She mentioned she was tired. She probably was tired. And I?m probably paranoid. But I write down what I see, what I felt.
It only takes the smile of a nice girl to mess up what had been a totally good day.
I?ve known her since I was ten, but I never really knew her ever. I?ve always wanted to, but I never have. There?s always been... an invisible barrier. First gender ? the boys don?t talk with the girls, do they? Not at ten. Maybe at eleven. And then there was school, and life, and distance, and opportunity; impossible to surmount. I got a break when I was 14, and so was she ? she?s younger than me, she?ll always be younger than me, and maybe my heart will always feel like this. I don?t know.
She?s beautiful.
Especially when she smiles.
It?s odd. I?ve seen her animated, I?ve seen her really smile before. I haven?t seen that too often, nowadays. I don?t see her too often nowadays. It?s always a delicate, sad kind of smile. That kind of smile at me.
At me.
Do I love her?
No. I don?t think I love her. I want her to like me, as I want a friend to like me, but... I don?t love her. Do I? I don?t know her enough. I said that already.
I wonder what her lips taste like.
I?m a nervous person, aren?t I? I felt self-conscious. Nervous. Scared. What does she think of me? Does she think of me at all? Paranoid. That?s what I am. I?ve said that already, too. I?ve always been. It takes someone more direct to get at me.
I?ve friends who are more direct, and their efforts are generally rewarded. If I?m with someone who stays silent, I stay silent as well. I tend more to shadow them, to hang in the background like a bodyguard than a companion. Well, ok. Not if I?m with someone. If I?m with girls.
I?m not good with girls, not really.
Never have been, have I?
I make friends. Friends are easy. Anything further than that is... oh, I don?t know. There?s always something holding me back.
She?d dyed her hair. She said the morris dancing side of her family had got her too, a while back. And she was taller than I remembered. She said she did it to spite people, to see the expression they wore when they realised she was taller when they remembered.
She smiled at me.
That wan, sad smile.
She said she was going to grow, and grow, and keep growing.
And maybe she will.
-----
Some other story entirely
Sometimes, it seemed to Jonathan (his name, as he thought of it, though he was not named that at birth) that the wind spoke messages to him through the trees. Other times, it seemed as though the shrill whistling and the mournful wailing he occasionally heard were the result of nothing more than what his science teacher told him were ?oscillating air molecules?, although what precisely that was he didn?t quite understand yet. Nevertheless, sometimes, to Jonathan, it seemed as though the wind spoke to him.
Today it was bored. I could murder a curry, it said.
Jonathan ignored it. The wind liked to talk, and it preferred others to listen. The wind was really rather selfish sometimes.
You know, you really ought to talk more, the wind muttered. Jonathan continued to ignore it. They?d had this conversation before, and Jonathan always tended to lose, though he was never quite sure what game they were playing. Besides, the wind was lying ? it hated it when Jonathan talked.
The wind gave up on any attempts at further conversation and busied itself fooling around with some leaves a little further down the sidewalk. Jonathan kept walking. He was twelve, and had a home to go to (which his mother never ceased to remind him was a blessing, a blessing, let me tell you) and was hurrying towards it as fast as he could without running. If he ran, he could probably get there in about five minutes, but he?d tried it before, and had concluded that he?d get there in five minutes out of breath and with aches in his sides that would take a further half-hour to disappear. Better to just take the fifteen minutes.
His teachers called him a dreamer, in conversation between themselves and in nice, cursive writing on his fragile report card. ?Jonathan likes to play pretend,? said one such report card (Jonathan had imagined the clipped, fussy little voice of his second-grade teacher speaking as he read) ?and is often off in his own little world?. And this was true, or as true as it possibly could be. Jonathan certainly was in a world of his own, but it was at the same time the same world as everybody else.
It all depends, the wind sighed, on how you look at it.
Yellowish-brown leaves spiralled gently down from the trees as Jonathan walked briskly onwards. It had rained during lunchtime, and all the kids had been made to stay inside. Jonathan hadn?t minded too much; no matter where he was, he spent most of his free time in his head. The sky looked ominously down at him, but Jonathan hurried on.
He was inside his head right now, only marginally aware of where exactly he was, what he was doing. He knew the route by heart, anyway; he?d been walking home for weeks now. Inside his head, the wind was speaking to him, or rather at him, because the wind was very selfish and didn?t like to be talked back to. Outside his head, he was avoiding puddles, stray leaves, and people as he wandered towards home, his thoughts occupied with the wind, and the rain that had gone, and the coming storm...
Jonathan blinked. Was this place along the way back? Dark buildings loomed up around him, less familiar to him than the dark buildings that normally loomed up around him. This was because they weren?t the same buildings. Where exactly was he?
Looking back down the street, Jonathan saw the last of the sunlight fade as a cloud passed over the sun, obscuring its light momentarily. The cloud drifted lazily over the point where the sun had been, glowing a dull, faded silver; and then as it breezed past, Jonathan shut his eyes, expecting to be able to see that red glare right through his eyelids. He couldn?t. When he opened his eyes again, the sun had gone.
Gone?
Gone far away, muttered the wind, but Jonathan ignored it. The wind liked to talk, and would often just say things because it could. This was a more polite way of saying that quite often the wind lied. Anyway, the sun was gone, but this was quite odd (to Jonathan?s inquisitive mind) because the slightly silvery glow that had been the cloud when the cloud was still around was still hanging in the air ? despite the lack of any cloud for the glow to, well, glow from. Strange.
It seemed almost as if the colour had leeched from the world around him, along with the sunlight, and the sun. But, no, that wasn?t quite true ? a dull, muted red there, a pale, unremarkable green here. The colour hadn?t fled, but... the light... had?
That wasn?t right.
That wasn?t right at all...
He turned, and turned, and turned, but the light ? well, ok, not the light, because then he wouldn?t have been able to see, but... well, the vibrant light? The light that made the world more than just a monochrome series of images, devoid of sound and life? ? whatever that was, it had disappeared from the world entirely. It had fled while Jonathan had his back turned, his attention elsewhere, and now he was alone in a place that looked like the way back home, felt like the way back home, but wasn?t the way back home.
Jonathan would have been scared...
...if he hadn?t been so thrilled.
Like his teachers said, and like his parents said, and like most adults in his life thus far had said, Jonathan lived in his head. He also lived in other people?s heads too, the people who shared their thoughts and their dreams and their world through whatever methods were available ? writings, video, language, music, stories. Stories. Stories were the key.
There would be a monster, he decided.
That?s what would happen. That?s what always happened. You stumbled into another land, another world so very different from your nice normal world and there was a monster to slay, or to outsmart, or to hide from, or who would eat you...
That was the wind talking again. The wind wasn?t just selfish; sometimes, the wind was just outright mean.
Anyway. This was a different world. Jonathan knew that. Anybody with any ounce of sense would have known that. Well, maybe not adults, who (as he had read in his storybooks, and had been told in his fables, and, well, knew, in the bottom of his heart) would blither around, unconvinced that this was not their world any longer, believing in logic and rationality and all those things that would do them good until a troll found them and bit their heads right off. If they had their storybooks with them, they would be OK; but adults generally didn?t. They thought stories were stories.
Jonathan knew differently.
?Quite right? said a voice, behind him. Jonathan jumped, swivelling on the spot, but there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.
?There?s no point-? said the voice, as Jonathan turned again, straining to see where the voice was coming from, ?-jumping around like that. You can?t see me. Not yet.?
?What manner of foul beast are you?!? recited Jonathan, with what he hoped was a brave voice. He?d been practising this sort of thing (well, not practising this sort of thing, but thinking about it, anyway) for a few weeks now, ever since that last Moorcock book. ?Be you troll or demon, g-g-giant or gobli-?
?Oh, knock it off, kid? came the voice from the shadows, sounding slightly disgusted. ?That stuff went out of fashion, what - two, three years ago? And a good thing, too. I was getting sick of all that bloody armour in your teeth. Like prawns, you know??
Jonathan lowered his sword (sword? What sword? Why would a twelve-year-old have a sword? He didn?t have a sword. But he lowered it, nonetheless) and stared into the darkness, in vain. ?Where are you? What are you??
The creature (and there was a creature there, somewhere in the corner of his eyes ? always in the corner of his eyes, no matter where he looked) shrugged, spat, spoke. ?I?ve been waiting for you, little gift, little treasure from the heavens. I?ve been waiting here. In this place. Since the day you were born.?
There was something slightly guttural about the voice, yet at the same time, Jonathan could hear ? a voice, soft, pleasant, oddly musical in its own little way. It didn?t sound particularly monstrous. ?Why me??
A burp, a shaky laugh. An impression of a half-shrug, though what had shrugged or how it had been doing the shrugging Jonathan could never, ever have told you. ?Why not you? Maybe I was just lying. It doesn?t matter, little boy. Nothing matters. But I?m going to eat you. I?m going to gobble you all up, and spit out your bones, and saw and carve and make them into knives to slice the sweet flesh of other little boys and girls.?
The boy looked up at the creature, or at where he thought the creature was, unafraid on the outside, even if on the inside he was all butterflies and worry and fear. ?Why??
Because, said the wind mournfully, that?s what they do. They gobble you up and spit you out and make your remains into something useful.
Shut up! the boy hissed sideways into the wind. The wind took the hint, and fled momentarily, dying down, breezing away. The troll-creature hadn?t heard it, or if it had, it couldn?t speak Wind, and so seemed rather taken aback. ?Why??
?Why do you want to eat me?? asked Jonathan, stepping forwards, his innards calming down somewhat. The creature looked ? well, seemed, he still couldn?t see the thing properly ? confused, bewildered. ?I?m small. I?m probably not very good to eat. I?m-?
?Because -? said the creature, trying to maintain mental balance, ? ? because that?s what I do. B-because that?s what I?m... for??
?For??
The troll-thing got a grip, or as close to a grip as was possible in the circumstances. ?Why do you eat lambs, or foxes, or cauliflowers?? it asked, cautiously. ?Because you hunger. And, likewise, I hunger.? It approached another step, darker than the darkness around it, and Jonathan could smell the thing?s rank breath, hideous stench, on the air. It smelt like oil slick, and concrete, and cigarette smoke. It smelt like the city. ?Humans eat other animals. And to me, you?re just another animal.?
?Why do you smell like the city?? the boy asked, standing his ground. The butterflies had taken wing again, churning his stomach into a horrible, terrified mess; but he resolved not to show it. That was part of the story, too. The kids never showed their fear. And, of course, you delay. Ask questions. Expect answers.
Don?t get eaten.
-----
And now the boy is twenty-three, and the wind no longer speaks to him much. It?s not that Jonathan?s now a staid, conformist tool of society; on the contrary, he?s a liberalist arts student back in town only to visit his folks, his mind (well, to him, anyway) considerably freer than that of a mere child. And he believes that he has learned to discern the differences between dreams worth dreaming and worthless fantasies, between the big important dreams like justice and equality and the lesser dreams of the talking winds. And so maybe the wind still speaks to him, but now, he doesn?t listen.
He?s still cold, though.
He?s stumbling home, in the cold winter?s night, the air crisp and chill against his face, biting and nipping at bare skin. It had been a pretty good party, he thought, all things considered; he hadn?t managed to pick up at all though. Well, no matter. There?d always be more parties, different skirts to chase, faces to smile at and warm bodies to press against in the darkness. And now he was very slightly inebriated, a state of mind in which he occasionally delighted; it was like possessing a warm glow inside yourself, a kind of buffer between yourself and reality. Of course that feeling always presents its bill, later, but later was later, and not now and could be safely put aside until later.
Jonathan stumbled onwards through the night.
It occurred to him as he wandered through the streets that this route seemed oddly familiar...
-----
And some other story
I saw her today. Standing at the lights, half her name on her back. Her hair was darker than I remembered, but the face was the same. So maybe she was taller. She was still smaller than I was, lively and yet fragile-seeming. She gave me her smile ? so delicate, so wan. Did she mean it? I don?t know. I?ll never know.
I said hi, and she said hi. We talked. She didn?t look directly at me, but the tone, the words, they were friendly enough. She mentioned she was tired. She probably was tired. And I?m probably paranoid. But I write down what I see, what I felt.
It only takes the smile of a nice girl to mess up what had been a totally good day.
I?ve known her since I was ten, but I never really knew her ever. I?ve always wanted to, but I never have. There?s always been... an invisible barrier. First gender ? the boys don?t talk with the girls, do they? Not at ten. Maybe at eleven. And then there was school, and life, and distance, and opportunity; impossible to surmount. I got a break when I was 14, and so was she ? she?s younger than me, she?ll always be younger than me, and maybe my heart will always feel like this. I don?t know.
She?s beautiful.
Especially when she smiles.
It?s odd. I?ve seen her animated, I?ve seen her really smile before. I haven?t seen that too often, nowadays. I don?t see her too often nowadays. It?s always a delicate, sad kind of smile. That kind of smile at me.
At me.
Do I love her?
No. I don?t think I love her. I want her to like me, as I want a friend to like me, but... I don?t love her. Do I? I don?t know her enough. I said that already.
I wonder what her lips taste like.
I?m a nervous person, aren?t I? I felt self-conscious. Nervous. Scared. What does she think of me? Does she think of me at all? Paranoid. That?s what I am. I?ve said that already, too. I?ve always been. It takes someone more direct to get at me.
I?ve friends who are more direct, and their efforts are generally rewarded. If I?m with someone who stays silent, I stay silent as well. I tend more to shadow them, to hang in the background like a bodyguard than a companion. Well, ok. Not if I?m with someone. If I?m with girls.
I?m not good with girls, not really.
Never have been, have I?
I make friends. Friends are easy. Anything further than that is... oh, I don?t know. There?s always something holding me back.
She?d dyed her hair. She said the morris dancing side of her family had got her too, a while back. And she was taller than I remembered. She said she did it to spite people, to see the expression they wore when they realised she was taller when they remembered.
She smiled at me.
That wan, sad smile.
She said she was going to grow, and grow, and keep growing.
And maybe she will.
