Bad and pointless short story written to entertain a sick friend and using prompts.

( Easy Money )

I’m watching baseball highlights with the sound off. This is how much I hate myself.

Over the cacophony of the barely legal crowd devouring $2.50 appetizers and warm beer, I can hear the sappy, lovesick, off key recording of the latest one-hit-wonder. You know, that one that makes everyone who listens to it feel deeper than a puddle for 2.5 minutes and is destined to be burned onto every pathetic ‘Summer XX’ mixtape and find its way on the soundtrack of every romantic teen movie from now until the end of time. It will inspire nostalgia, later reminding the 9-5 drones of ‘that one time’ whenever it makes its way onto the all-request lunch hours of pre-middle-age radio stations. I’m listening to the sickeningly earnest singer’s pathetic, nasal drone, drinking a Long Island iced tea and watching baseball highlights on the TV above the bar.

This is how much I hate myself.

Youth is crowding me at every side. An army with blonde highlights and professionally distressed ballcaps, dressed head to toe in the uniform sponsored by American Eagle. A zombie army infected through the bite of pop culture media, oozing store bought cool, store bought integrity, store bought personality.

These people love this fucking song and every saccharine, contrived top 40 hit that follows. And they love it because its about them.

That one song is their Indie Badge, proof they are worth more than face value. Every single one of them unique in exactly the same way, and equally content with it. This is what life is supposed to be at this point in their lives, completely picture perfect right down to the product placements. I am lapping it up. I am drowning in this normality.

This is how much I hate myself.

I am out of place, disconnected from this heard of peers. I don’t understand them, or how this next song that makes light of suicide can make them laugh and dance. Actually, dancing is a bit of a stretch. Its more flailing and a cheap imitation of a sexy hip shimmy. A carbon copy of a photocopy of a carbon copy of a photocopy of a music video that was made mostly by a computer.

So, this is the first draft and I wrote it in the way you'll read it so there are some inconcistencies. But I'm done with it tonight and I think it turned out on the interesting side so I'll share.

( Echoes )

I'm not sure what to call this. I suppose its character headspace, but I'm not sure who the character is. I suppose we'll see if it goes anywhere someday.

( Headspace )

It billowed, curled up so gracefully, so beautifully. She’d never seen anything like it. It rose steadily, heavily into the air, engulfing the sun. She stared in from its shadow.

Black, so dark, so deep, so impenetrable, the light didn’t stand a chance. But she knew it shone from the other side, she could tell from the halo it had created around the darkness.

Illuminated, it was so bright but so different from its source down here on the ground.

Looking down she was blinded, she was seared. So warm, so hot, so intense, the flames licked at the wood. She could feel it on her skin, that heat that screamed at her to leave. She was already safe, but still too close. So close.

She was enraptured, trapped by the beauty. Dancing, the yellow, the orange the red, the white, the blue, the green, the black, all flashed in turn. Feeding off each other, feeding off of her, feeding itself so greedily, so gluttonously.

A child at a bonfire in the backyard. An adult at a house fire downtown. Both were the same.

Possible intro to a short story that would be something of a prelude to a series I've been working on for about five years now called Relic Warriors.

Constructive Crit welcome.

( The Mountain )