More dreams and stuff

So I woke up at 4am after having a very odd nightmare. I was on a train with my mom, and on this train was a band of thugs, each carrying an implement of bludgeoning – large wrenches, lead pipes, etc. The thugs went around the train and demanded all the cash every passenger had. I somehow wound up sitting next to the ringleader, who was very scary and mean and was yelling at all of his thug pals. I had several hundred dollars in cash (oddly enough that I’d gotten from President Obama for promoting a children’s book he’s written) that I was supposed to hand over to the king thug, but I only pulled out a few bills from my purse, trying to pull one over on him.

This scared the bejeesus out of me, I woke up trembling and had to go have a cigarette to calm down enough to go back to sleep. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a dream that woke me up like this. I’m finding it interesting that I’m now remembering many more of my dreams since I started writing again. Even though I’m not really writing a lot of fiction yet, my brain is in that mode, constantly looking for story ideas, and I think they’re starting to come out in my dreams. Because they’re certainly not coming out in my waking hours – I’m struggling to formulate even one reasonably good idea worthy of putting down on paper.

I had actually considered joining NaNoWriMo a touch late and just jumping in to see how far I could go with it, and what stopped me was the fact that I had no clear-cut idea for any story. I’m trying to remember how I gathered ideas for stories in the past, and it’s eluding me. I guess this is something I’ll have to work through in this literary journey I’m taking!

Different (Fiction Friday)

As I lay down to try for sleep my mind immediately began racing. Not very conducive to sleep, I know. But how could I not think about the last time I’d fallen asleep?

It had been two days ago that I went to bed as usual, after having a perfectly normal day. But for some reason, when I drifted off to sleep, something odd happened to my brain.

It traveled. My brain, or my soul, or whatever you want to call it, traveled. And not just to the convenience store down the street. It traveled to, as near as I can tell, an entirely different world. A different dimension, perhaps, but different is the key word here.

As I fell asleep, I felt the spinning and thrust of rapid movement, then several moments later, it stopped. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the familiar shadow on the wall that the streetlights outside my apartment make. Instead I found myself…somewhere else.

It was a bustling street with loud music coming from several establishments. It was closed off to vehicles, or…maybe there just weren’t any. People freely walked in the street between the two columns of shops and restaurants.

I stood up from the bench where I was sitting, and took a few steps toward the middle of the street to look around and take in my surroundings. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a typical business district in a quaint, New England town. I’d seen dozens of streets just like this. But the people….

The people were…I guess there’s no other way to put it but bluntly, they were all blue. Not fake Halloween face paint blue, but tinged with blue, just like the blue of your own veins that you see under your skin. And everything else was blue, too. The bricks that made the buildings, the pavement of the street, the bench I had just gotten up from. It was all blue.

I looked down at myself, lifted my right hand up and into my field of vision. I was still myself, still pinkish colored, my sweatshirt still green. I looked down at my shoes and pants, still brown and tan.

A wave of fear flowed through me as I looked up, returned my gaze to the other people in my surroundings. They’d noticed me, and how different I was, and several were coming toward me….

Untitled (Fiction Friday)

It was that quiet time of the morning where nothing much is stirring, save for a couple birds just waking up. I stood on the back porch, leaning against the railing. The autumn leaves filled the yard and forest with vivid bursts of colors, and a thick fog seemed to wrap everything in a crisp, damp embrace. I gazed across the lawn into the forest beyond, the smoke from my cigarette wafting up into my vision.

A subtle movement caught my eye. It was at the edge of the forest, just behind one of the first trees, half hidden, but defined against the darkness of the trees. A figure stood there, leaning against a tree, the fog swirling slightly as it settled around her. Dressed in white flowing fabric, she appeared to be looking directly at me.

The shock of seeing someone where there wasn’t supposed to be anyone sent electric waves through my body, and I began trembling. My feet felt rooted to the floorboards of the porch. I could neither flee back in the house nor move closer to confirm that what I was seeing was real.

She took a step forward away from the tree then, stirring the fog around her again. Her right arm lifted from her side, her hand, palm-side up, moved through the fog toward her face and then in a repeated beckoning motion. I could just make out a soft smile on her lips, the whole of her face taking on a soft, warm expression.

My jaw dropped as if to speak, though nothing came out. My feet uprooted themselves from the porch floor. I felt a strong urge to go to her, and at the same time, to flee. As I watched her waving me to her, pulling myself in two directions, the fog seemed to thicken in the woods, enveloping her entirely. A new wave of shock flowed through me as I noticed her fading into the fog, fading away until she herself became the fog.

Senseless (Fiction Friday)

Great. Just great. How am I supposed to make this decision? How do I choose which of my senses I’m going to give up? Stupid new age medicine. They can keep me alive, but I have to give up one of my senses for them to be able to do it. Dammit.

I sat in the chair next to the window in the hospital room  grumbling to myself about the decision. My mind raced. I felt dizzy. Sight. Hearing. Taste. Touch. Smell. I sank deeper into the padded chair and stared out the window at the brightly colored leaves that fell from the maple trees at random intervals. As always, I shut down when overwhelmed.

The doctor came in just as I had drifted off to sleep, shocking me out of my stupor. I shuddered slightly, waking myself further. He wanted my decision. I didn’t have one for him.

“Have you made a decision? We don’t have much time left, I’m afraid,” he said in that hushed tone that tried not to be condescending but always was. I looked up at him through the frustrated tears that had welled up in my eyes.

“Taste.” I sighed deeply after the word left my lips. It was the most bitter word I’d ever uttered. But it was the only choice. I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t be blind or deaf – to never read or hear music, look at art or listen to someone’s laughter would be as bad as death. It couldn’t be touch, I would starve for want of a hug or the feel of a cat’s fur under my hand. That left taste and smell. If I chose smell, I would lose most of my sense of taste anyway, so I chose to lose my sense of taste. To save my own life, I would never again taste the sweetness of an apple or the saltiness of a ham. No savory cheddar cheese. No bitter coffee. No sour grapes. No more taste.

A stroke of genius…

While enjoying my first cigarette of the morning today, looking out on my back yard with its frost-covered multi-colored ground cover of leaves, I had an idea. Fiction Fridays. I’ve always enjoyed flash fiction, both writing and reading it, and not only is it a great format to stir up the creative juices, it is also a perfect format for a blog!

Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction.

So, as a way to force myself back into the world of fiction, every Friday I will post a short (or not-so-short, if I so choose) piece of fiction. This may be in addition to my normal journaling philosophical blathering, or it may stand alone. I will probably use writing prompts at least to start out, and many of my beginning efforts will probably suck. But, as my favorite inspiring writer (Mur Lafferty) says, “It’s okay to suck.” As I continue this journey, I will suck less and less, and more importantly I’ll be writing more and more.

Now that I’ve figured out the link feature (not that it’s that difficult, but yay! I have links in my posts now!) I’m going to work on figuring out categories and tags. Categories won’t be difficult – but tags…holy crap I really don’t know how to tag my posts! How do you choose what words to tag with? How do you know when to stop? Why do *I* have to do the work to tag my posts???