May 27, 2012
A yankee cap, an avocado, and a tear stained shirt.

I get on the train home the other day and it’s pretty empty since it’s late. I sit down and across from me is this boy, probably 9 or 10, I’m not sure. He’s wearing sandals, jean shorts, this shirt that’s three sizes too big for him, and a white Yankee’s cap that’s just turned down so that I couldn’t see his eyes. The kid is sitting there, eating a whole avocado, drinking from this big bottle of Pellegrino, the kind of bottle meant to be poured into glasses; he fumbles with the bottle whenever he brings it up to drink and a little bit spills out each time.

 So he’s sitting there, and he finishes his avocado, and his baseball cap is still turned down and I finally realize the whole time the kid has been crying. He’s there, wiping the tears from his eyes, just staring at the ground, alone on the subway, and I’m across from him, just realizing this. I got on the train at 59th street and my transfer was at Jay Street Metro tech in Brooklyn, which is a good 30 minutes, and I’ll tell you the truth, I spent most of it just looking at this kid crying. I told myself that everybody is entitled to their own privacy, that it wouldn’t be right to ask, but my stomach was wrenching up and twisting around telling me the truth, that this kid was sitting there, feeling just terrible about himself, and I was there across from him, content to watch, to just sit there and see the tears hit his shirt again and again, instead of actually helping him.

I wanted to sit down next to him and ask him what was wrong, if there was anything I could do to help, hell, I figured just talking could have helped, but nope, I’ll tell you what I really did, I walked over and said “You ok, kid?” and he told me “I’m fine.” as he wiped away more tears and seized up in that way when you’re really crying hard, and I told him “ok.” and sat back down across from him. Privacy, that’s what I told myself, he wants to be miserable alone, and that’s his choice. I tried to help, I gave him an outstretched hand, but he didn’t take it, that’s what I said, he didn’t take my hand so I was free to wash mine of any guilt, that’s the lie I settled for.

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6:16pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xMFwhk3
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: creative writing nonfiction 
May 22, 2012
For Whom The Bell Tolls

“I shit in your milk!” - Every character in the book

11:57pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xL_BXYb
Filed under: Ernest Hemingway For Whom the bell tolls Lit 
May 18, 2012
What I once heard

There was filth all over the carpet, and this was only the waiting area. The kids room was worse, a crayon covered mess. Jake pictured their little hands rubbing and twisting the crayons. He saw the streaks of orange and yellow and red and he wondered if those tiny fuckers thought those stains just disappeared at the end of the day, as if there was some kind of carpet fairy and not just some guy who had an aching back and a bold spot that got bigger every time he checked. Well whatever the kids thought, Jake was there, on his knees, scrubbing the crayons out, cause the machine that normally did it was broken and because the doctor who owned the place wouldn’t take that as an excuse.

                “I’m paying you to clean this place, am I not?” he would say to Jake, or “I know of a guy that would do what you do for half the price, and I know for a fact that they would clean the crayons!” Dr. Schwartz, that was his name, a real fucking Jew if Jake ever met one

               

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7:59pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xLjrN5k
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: prose creative writing fiction 
April 23, 2012
tim-obrien: A young Tim O’Brien

tim-obrien:

A young Tim O’Brien

1:41pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xKAjWLf
(Notes: 1)
  
April 16, 2012

Andrew told me of a dream he once had. He was sitting next to a man on the subway when things turned lucid, only not in a way that gave him control. He described how he was thrown from his body and forced to watch as something else began to control him. He watched as he turned to the man next to him and gouged his eyes out, forcing his thumbs through with agony. Andrew realized it was a dream, and that he should have had control, but he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. His body turned and smiled in this knowing way and Andrew said only then did he wake up.

It was a lucid dream, he knows that, but he doesn’t know what took over. He’s afraid of something, that what took control really was him, or at least a part of him, a part that lurks within his soul, beneath his conscious, a part which still yet plans its escape.

11:30pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xJojZbE
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: prose creative writing horror 
April 14, 2012
Closing Shift At Your Local Checkers

The sound of Joe turning the key and finally locking the place up was so welcomed. Inside the restaurant there was a single light still on, the light in the back that they never turned off. It glowed behind the fryer and the sinks. The music was still playing too. It was that poppy 50’s music they always played; the kind got stuck in your head in such a terrible way that you found yourself looking it up in your spare time. There was Elvis, that short shorts song, and Johnny Cash, the only one I actually liked of the bunch, but then again you can listen to “Ring of Fire” only so many times before you hate that too. We were all pretty sure Joe had forgotten to turn the radio off, he was tired, and were we too, and we weren’t about to wait while he went back in to turn it off, so we just let it keep playing. I checked my phone and I made out “4:02 AM” in the dark. My eyes burned a little in the back.

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11:03pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xJh5sze
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Checkers prose creative writing 
April 11, 2012
Cupid Wears a Red Hat on the Downtown A Train

They sit together on the car as close as possible without actually touching. Every now and then he puts his hand out and tries to grab her hand but she slaps it away each time until he rests it on her leg, and even then you can tell she’s not happy bout it. They get to the point where they’re sitting there, eyes straightforward or to the opposite side or up or down, just not at each other.

She takes out this one stick of gum from her purse and he asks her for some. She gives him the stick and doesn’t grab another for herself. Man, whatever this guy did must have been pretty terrible. He unwraps it and puts it in his mouth, halfway sticking out, like a pathetic Lady-and-the-Tramp. She just gives him this look that is half disgust and half pathetic and he takes that stick out as quick as he could. He tries splitting it in half and giving her a piece but at this point she’s all stone and not budging. He chews on the gum for a little, then just swallows.

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12:32am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xJT5fsl
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: prose creative writing writing 
April 10, 2012
gogogogol: “‘There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself.  But now I hate her guts.  I do.  How do you explain that?  What happened to that love?  What happened to it, is what I’d like to know.  I wish someone could tell me.’” -Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”

gogogogol:

“‘There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself.  But now I hate her guts.  I do.  How do you explain that?  What happened to that love?  What happened to it, is what I’d like to know.  I wish someone could tell me.’”

-Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”

10:55pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xJSnc-u
(Notes: 9)
  
March 31, 2012

It’s funny when they ask me what classes I’m taking next semester. I get to break eye contact and just fumble around there for a second till I look up and give this sad smile and tell em I’m not.

8:09pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xItJWeB
(Notes: 1)
  
March 16, 2012
A monster truck driver leads two lives: one inside the monster and one outside. They are two very separate lives, but the driver will always seek to bring the two together, or rather, they will always seek to turn the outside life to match the inside life. As a driver soars and rips through metal, they do not once think of their other life, the one stuck in traffic, the one at the office with the shitty manager, the one with the cheating wife and snot-nosed kids. It is only in those lives does the driver dream of their other life, the life of arenas and wheels bigger than their double-mortgaged house. There is only a matter of time until each driver snaps and forces the “normal” life to match the monster life. They strap their giant wheels to their tiny cars and put on their best racing suits and start their engines, and drive off for their daily commute.

A monster truck driver leads two lives: one inside the monster and one outside. They are two very separate lives, but the driver will always seek to bring the two together, or rather, they will always seek to turn the outside life to match the inside life. As a driver soars and rips through metal, they do not once think of their other life, the one stuck in traffic, the one at the office with the shitty manager, the one with the cheating wife and snot-nosed kids. It is only in those lives does the driver dream of their other life, the life of arenas and wheels bigger than their double-mortgaged house.

There is only a matter of time until each driver snaps and forces the “normal” life to match the monster life. They strap their giant wheels to their tiny cars and put on their best racing suits and start their engines, and drive off for their daily commute.

2:48am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXJ9_xI3gq4s
Filed under: prose monster trucks monster truck fiction 
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