Monday, December 17, 2012

Fall 2012 Unworkshopped Draft: Ten Minutes in the Negev


Ten Minutes in the Negev

When I was in Israel this summer,
We stayed a night with the Bedouins.
When the sky was dark, our guide
Took us out into the Negev Desert.
We did not speak as we walked
Over the pale stones and dust.
Instead, we all hummed together
In a wordless song called a Nigun.

We stopped when the lights from the
Bedouin camp had disappeared behind a hill.
And our guide invited us to scatter,
Find a place where we could get comfortable,
And experience the Negev on our own.
I found a flat spot to lie down,
Took off my shoes to pad my head,
And stared up at the stars.

Alone in the desert, ten minutes
Felt like ten seconds or ten hours,
Or both, or neither, or in between.
There was the dusty ground beneath me,
Cool and dry, and somehow soft to the touch.
Little shrubs crouched near my head
And my right foot, their rigid forms silent
In a breeze so light it could be
Mistaken for the hills breathing.

And those stars.
So many that they seemed
to swirl like a Van Gogh
When I tried to focus enough to
Pick out the Dippers and Orion.
Each time I blinked, the sky stilled,
But within seconds, my eyes would
Give up on taking them all in and
I would get the illusion that the stars
Were wandering amongst themselves.

Our guide called us back together
With another Nigun. As he counted us,
I looked back towards the Bedouin camp
Just in time to see a shooting star.
Everyone else had missed it. It was all mine.

Fall 2012 Unedited Draft: "How To" 2nd Person Story Assignment

How to be one of the Cool Guys in a Social Dance Scene

Don’t be gross. Brush your teeth ‘cause nobody wants to smell what you’ve had to eat this week. Wear deodorant, but not the kind you spray on ‘cause that’s for high school kids who don’t know their armpit from their backside, and don’t realize the stuff smells like an over-chlorinated indoor pool. A dab of cologne can be nice if you’re still concerned, but don’t bathe in it. You want them to either smell nothing or detect something subtle enough to want to smell more. It’s a bad sign if they’re coughing until their eyes tear up.
Know yourself. Do you sweat a lot when you exercise? If you do, bring lots of shirts and change when you start to feel damp. Nobody will think you’re a fashion-obsessed attention whore for wearing 6 shirts in a night. All of the girls have a story about that time when they were dancing with someone who seemed like he’d climbed out of a bog clothed from head to toe; such stories usually include a badly executed move that pulls the girl’s head right through his armpit and then gets it stuck there when the poor sucker lowers his arm early, leaving the girl’s hair wet against the back of her neck. She will never forget it, and neither will all of the other girls she tells about the experience.
Don’t be a creeper. Don’t come up from behind girls to ask them to dance. Make eye contact first. If she maintains it, she probably wants to dance. If she breaks it, back off but don’t be insulted. She may have promised this song to someone else or want some water or hate this song. If she turns her back completely, don’t follow her. She might be looking for someone and it’s harder to do that while also choosing her path in a way that leaves the most obstacles for you.
Even if you do make eye contact with someone, ask her to dance before you touch her. It is a lot easier for a girl to decline gracefully if she doesn’t have to take her hand out of yours when there might be people watching. She might be sore and want someone to talk to for a song or two. If she starts a conversation, join it. You want friends, right?
Don’t interrupt people’s conversations. That girl standing by the DJ might be the prettiest, best dance partner in the room; she might be a good friend or someone you just really want to meet. It doesn’t matter which. She’s enjoying the conversation she’s having- if she isn’t, she’ll excuse herself from it. Lots of girls also strike up conversations with people to avoid being asked to dance when they’re tired or your people skills aren’t completely perfect and she doesn’t like you. It’s a great method of subtle conflict avoidance if you can take a hint. And don’t worry. There’s plenty of other girls to dance with.
Don’t ask the same girl to dance more than twice in a night unless you know you’re one of her favorite partners. She wants to meet other people and might think you’re coming onto her. If the latter is true, then by all means, ask away, but make sure she’s smiling honestly and slow it down if the words she uses to accept a dance start moving towards neutrality. “Absolutely” is a great word, but few girls ever use it, and many of the ones who bother tend to say it to everyone to encourage them to keep coming back to dance. “Yeah” is pretty good, but watch for how she says it. Be careful with “sure.” Lot’s of girls use it as a default, and it can be hard to tell whether she is accepting with pleasure or reluctance.
Don’t worry about how much you talk during a dance. Lots of girls like to have a conversation, but sometimes even the talkative ones get really quiet. Don’t panic. Sometimes she just wants to get into the groove. Let her. Join her. The more you focus on the song, the more she’ll enjoy adding her own styling to the moves you lead.
Socialize with the guys too. Learn their names. They’re here to dance just like you, and they’re probably pretty cool. You don’t have to dance with them, but learning to follow will make you a better lead and girls will like dancing with you better. It’s also fun to watch.
Dance with people who are better than you. Dance with people who are worse than you. Dance with everyone. The better dancers will help you improve just by dancing with them, and the best way to make new girls feel welcome is to ask them onto the floor. They don’t tend to forget the people who initially make them feel comfortable. Just make sure you don’t overuse that joke about needing chips to go with that dip.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Final Draft Fall 2012: Confinement Dialogue Assignment


Assignment: Two characters confined together having an uninterrupted dialogue. No descriptions outside of the dialogue. Given context must contain only names, ages, and genders of the two characters, the location of confinement, and a maximum of one sentence about how they got there.

Toby: (M) Age 24

Canton: (M) Age 50

Location: The men’s restroom; each in his own stall.

Situation: Toby has the runs and Canton is stopped up.

 
Canton: Someone’s in a hurry.
Toby: I suppose you could say that.
Canton: Are you taking your pants off?
Toby: Uhhh, I have to change my boxers. Haven’t had the runs in years.
Canton: I see. Not your night, huh?
Toby: Understatement of the year.
Canton: You dropped something.
Toby: What?
Canton: Your Trojans fell out of your pocket. Should I kick them back over?
Toby: Shit. No thanks. Keep them if you like.
Canton: Naw. These wouldn’t fit and I’m way past having to worry about kids.
Toby: Uuugh. Shit. I know she means well, but Jessica shouldn’t be allowed to cook fish.
Canton: I can tell. That reeks.
Toby: Been having to pull over at every rest stop big enough to have a toilet for the last three hours. Gonna be a long night.
Canton: Count your blessings, kid. I’ve been taking softeners for days, but I don’t think I’ll be able to go until next month.
Toby: Why bother trying? It’s not that I don’t enjoy shitting my pants and dropping rubbers in the company of strangers- It just seems to me that I’d rather be on the road so I get where I’m going faster rather than wasting my time.
Canton: My gut feels awful. And there isn’t another rest stop for something like twenty miles.
Toby: Oooooh. Note to self: never let Jessica cook again.
Canton: I’ll keep that in mind. Do you cook, yourself?
Toby: A bit. My parents taught me a few recipes that I can do rather well.
Canton: Yeah?
Toby: I can make good pasta sauce. And I’m good with steak too. Basically anything that isn’t more involved than stirring and flipping or using a microwave. I’m an expert at mac’n’cheese.
Canton: Well that’s good. Can’t get enough steak and macaroni.
Toby: Awww shit.
Canton: What?
Toby: Uh… I’m… out of toilet paper.
Canton: Oh.
Toby: Well that’s just great.
Canton: I’ve got plenty. I can give it to you- it’s not like I’ll be needing it anytime soon.
Toby: Sure…
Canton: Here.
Toby: Thanks. What I wouldn’t give for this to stop…
Canton: I’d trade in a heartbeat.
Toby: You haven’t had Jessica’s cooking.
Canton: I’ve got a daughter by that name. She learned to cook from her mother, and I don’t know whose is worse.
Toby: Yeah- I used to tip it to the dog, but it died.
Canton: Uhh…
Toby: Not ‘cause of the food; it got hit by a car. Which I suppose is nice ‘cause we’d just gotten back from the vet after finding out it had cancer.
Canton: What kind of dog was it?
Toby: Rat terrier. Ugly little fucker.
Canton: I see.
Toby: Woke us up at 6:00 in the morning every single day. I kept telling Jessica that if we fed it later in the evening, it would let us sleep in more, but she just couldn’t stand to let it wait for us to finish our own dinner first.
Canton: It sounds like a dog door would have been a sound investment.
Toby: It’s an apartment, so we couldn’t modify the door.
Canton: Right. That makes sense.
Toby: I don’t suppose you can get a whole roll out, can you? I’m probably gonna need it rather often.
Canton: They’ve got a lock on the dispenser.
Toby: That’s just fantastic. I’d change stalls, but the moment I do, I just know I’m gonna have another wave and wreck my pants.
Canton: Again.
Toby: Uh, yeah.
Canton: Well here’s a bunch more paper. Should last you a few minutes.
Toby: Thanks.
Canton: So where’d you meet this Jessica?
Toby: We were on the same train from Denver to San Francisco last summer. Good thing too- I don’t know how else I could have survived the monotony of northern Nevada.
Canton: Don’t like flying?
Toby: I’m not the biggest fan of airports. And I usually like seeing the countryside go past. Just not the Nevada desert. There really is nothing there.
Canton: I suppose it would lose its charm after the first hour or so.
Toby: Yeah. I was really glad for the company, and by the time we got to San Francisco, I decided that I’d be an idiot not to ask for her number. Rest is history I suppose.
Canton: I suppose so.
Toby: So where are you headed so late anyway?
Canton: I’m on my way home to Seattle from a business trip. Yourself?
Toby: Gonna meet my fiancĂ©’s parents tomorrow evening, but we decided to head up to Seattle a day early and spend the night in the oldest hotel we can find. We like to do that in every city we visit together.
Canton: Is that so?
Toby: Even back in San Francisco it’s fun to have a change of scene every once in a while. Ya know what I mean?
Canton: I think so.
Toby: There’s something really cool about new things in old buildings.
Canton: Like what?
Toby: It makes them feel timeless. Like we could be anywhere, you know?
Canton: Do you usually have the urge to be anywhere but where you are?
Toby: It’s not that at all. I dunno. Jessica puts it really well, but it might come out kind of garbled when I say it. It’s sorta like the old buildings with various decades or centuries of retrofitting are some kind of reminder that things can always be made fresh. She really enjoys it, and that’s enough for me.
Canton: Sharp kid.
Toby: Umm thanks?
Canton: Just don’t forget that last bit ten years from now.
Toby: I won’t. She might be an awful cook, but we’re all bad at something. I’m horrible at remembering to separate my laundry loads, so I’ve got a bunch of pink shirts. Figure as long as the color is even throughout, who cares?
Canton: Yeah, well my wife loves watching Tom Hanks, and I can never keep straight which one is Tom Hanks and which one is Tom Cruise. So my wife gets disappointed whenever I take her to a movie with the wrong one by mistake. She jokes that if I try to take her to one more Mission Impossible movie, she’ll divorce me.
Toby: She sounds like fun.
Canton: Huh. So when’s the wedding?
Toby: Not sure yet. It’s been a whirlwind; we haven’t even told her parents yet. Figured we’d do it in person.
Canton: Good luck with that. When I met wife’s parents, her father asked me to toss him a roll from across the table, so I did. Bounced it right off his forehead and onto his plate.
Toby: Jessica told me her father did that too. Small world.
Canton: You won’t let her do something as absurd as naming a rat terrier Kitty again, will you?
Toby: I’ll try not to. Wait. I never said the dog’s name was… Oh shit. I didn’t mean what I said about your daughter’s cooking.
Canton: What do you do for a living, Toby? Jessica told me, but I don’t remember.
Toby: Uh, I do the financials for a startup.
Canton: Oh yeah? How’s that going?
Toby: Pretty well actually. I just resigned from my other job so I could do it full time.
Canton: Congratulations.
Toby: Got a fifth share in the company too.
Canton: Oh, so in a few years, you might be able to afford to just do delivery. For now, I’d just put cooking lessons on the gift registry.
Toby: Well… This isn’t the first impression I imagined making.
Canton: It rather smells. Need more paper, son?
Toby: Not yet.
Canton: Well that’s good. ‘Cause I’m giving up on needing mine. I’ll see ya tomorrow night.
Toby: Um… Drive safe.

Final Draft Fall 2012: Tell Tail


  Tell Tail

They’d already gone through all of the boring questions you’d expect to hear on a first date over dinner. Where are you from? What do you do? Oh? What’s that like? What do you like to do on weekends? Where did you graduate? What’re your favorite movies? What are your favorite books? What music do you listen to? And the other tedious questions that tempt a person to eat the garlic bread that is calling so tantalizingly to be paired with that plate full of spaghetti, but could tarnish a goodnight kiss.
But now, as they lay on the hood of Tim’s dark green car gazing up at the stars in one of those little dirt service roads that run through the middle of cornfields, he propped his head with an elbow to face her and said, “So tell me about your first kiss.”
“Well,” Anna smiled and did that thing girls do where they stroke their hair behind an ear and make guys want to feel it for themselves. “It’s not that exciting a story. I didn’t have one of those horribly awkward near misses or anything.”
“Uh huh?”
“When I was fourteen, I went to summer camp. A bunch of us went by the fire pit after dinner one night to play truth or dare in the dark. This guy I liked picked dare. So they said he had to carry me into the woods and couldn’t come back for five minutes. Ended up being more like fifteen.”
“Ooooh,” Tim teased.
“And you?”
“Oh, mine was awful. Sophomore in high school. I had a crush on this girl who always ate lunch in a tree. One day she fell out, broke her leg and I kissed her in front of everybody after helping her up. She started crying and one of the football players carried her to the nurse’s office.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yep.” He paused long enough for her to raise her eyebrows before starting over. “I really was a sophomore in high school and I really did have a crush on a girl who ate lunch in a tree. But it was me who fell while trying to join her. She jumped down and held her ice pack to the back of my head for a bit, so I just sorta leaned in.”
Anna laughed. “And what broke you two up?”
“She got cast as Juliet in the school play and dumped me for the guy playing Mercutio.”
“Ouch.”
“High school,” Tim shrugged. “He was Mercutio and I was the guy with fifty toy alligators.”
“Fifty?” She raised an eyebrow, incredulous.
“More now.” Tim tapped the decrepit car’s hood with an almost childlike smile, “This is Propagator.”
Anna blinked.
“Hold on a sec…” He dusted the flakes of old paint off his hands, jumped off the hood and scampered to the rear door of the car. After a moment of rummaging through binders and spare backpacks, he emerged with a plastic alligator with wide-open jaws and the letters I-N-S-T-I written on its stomach in black Sharpie. “And this is Instigator.”
“What does he instigate?”
Tim made Instigator face her and let his voice go flat as he said, “So this is that date you met online?” Instigator turned from Anna, back to Tim, and back again before settling on Tim. “She doesn’t like you. She thinks you’re an overgrown toddler.”
Tim squeezed Instigator’s jaws shut between a thumb and a forefinger. “Shuddup.”
“Huh… So you just keep plastic alligators in your car?” she thought for a moment before deciding with an internal shrug that it was more cute than weird. If she were the type to regularly use wordplay, she’d categorize it as adorkable.
“Not always. Sometimes I have a hand puppet or a stuffed animal.” He put Instigator on the hood.
The stars were bright without any clouds to obstruct them, and the moon was in that crescent shape that looks like the outline of a closed eyelid. A light breeze whispered through the corn stalks and crickets passed rumors around in a constant buzz.
After a few minutes of silence, Tim said, “So you mentioned earlier that you have a brother. Are you close?”
“He’s a real piece of work,” she said. “You know, when he was around six, he managed to stick a live cockroach as long as your thumb to the kitchen floor with plastic packing tape, and then sat back to watch and see who would round the corner first and step on it. I suppose it’s not a surprise that his idea of pest control a decade later was to pour half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on a fire ant mound and set it alight.”
“He sounds like a charmer.” Tim smoothed his short, light hair back from a prominent widow’s peak- a motion that suggested that he’d worn it longer in the past.
“Haven’t seen him in like two years. By now, that pet scorpion of his will be gone I suppose. What’s your brother like?”
“My older brother had me completely convinced that our house was built over the grave of a murderer and that he was going to beat his way through the floor of my bedroom.”
“Aren’t brothers the best?”
“Well, the younger one gave me an alligator soap dispenser when I graduated from college.” Tim watched the blinking lights of an airplane cross the sky and released one of those sighs that Anna could feel hum through the hood of the car. She shifted a bit and tilted her head slightly towards him to avoid resting it on the little jet that shoots cleaner at the windshield.
“Let me guess,” Anna joked, “Exfoligator?”
“Nope. That’s the loofah.”
“Right. Of course,” she smirked.
“Obviously.”
“Clearly.”
“Naturally.”
“How could I have thought otherwise?” Anna swept the back of her hand to her forehead like an actress fainting in a silent movie.
“Not a clue.”
“Ever try to get a pet gator?”
Tim shook his head. “My yard’s too small and I don’t think Murphy would have liked the arrangement.”
“And Murphy is…?”
“She was my big-assed bunny,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“You had a bunny?” Anna sat up and gave him a disbelieving stare.
“Uh huh.”
“You?”
“Yep.”
“Not a bearded dragon? Or an iguana? Of all the things to keep as a pet, you chose a salad-eating alligator snack?”
Tim grinned boyishly. “She had goofy ears.”
Anna let out one of those laughs that some guys think is annoying, but the good ones find adorable.
“What?”
“You’re such a child.”
“I’m older than you,” he said a bit more defensively than he intended.
“I know,” her giggles subsided. “It’s cute.”
“You say that now…” he joked-or he hoped he did. He’d gone out with a freshman while he was in grad school; she’d dumped him with those words.
Tim picked up Instigator again and made the toy gator whisper loudly, “That’s why he keeps asking about you when you were younger. He’s still such a child himself, he’s only trying to relate.”
Tim flicked Instigator on the nose and said with a mock glare, “I told you to shut up.”
Anna studied his face for a moment, waiting for him to say something more, but his gray-green eyes stared so fixedly at the sky that the moon’s reflection was clearly defined on the irises. After several seconds, she shrugged and lay back on the hood. The silence stretched on. Anna twirled a lock of hair around a finger until it stayed in a tightly wound curl. She glanced at Tim again, but he seemed entranced by the night sky, so Anna scanned the stars for the few constellations she knew.
She’d found the Big and Little Dippers and was picking out the last few stars of Orion when Tim continued as if their conversation hadn’t come to an awkward halt. “What were you most scared of as a kid?”
Anna thought for a moment. “Ummm… I don’t know.”
“Yeah you do.”
“Well I don’t know about ‘most,’” Anna frowned. “But growing up, we had a cottage on a lake in the woods. All of the running water came from this pump anchored to the bottom by this white plastic lawn chair.” She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise at the memory of treading water over that stupid chair. “It always looked like a skeleton tied down there by giant leeches and I was always afraid to swim over it. Still gave me the shivers when I was there 3 years ago.” Anna had told herself she would swim down and touch it that summer. She never did.
Anna found herself faced again by Instigator, who seemed to stare at her for a moment before saying in his flat monotone, “That’s stupid.” The plastic gator turned to Tim and continued. “She’s scared of a chair. She’s stupid.”
Tim glared at the toy, but there was a joking glint in his eye. “Shut up, Instigator, or you’re going back in the car.”
“Why gators?” Anna asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s the appeal?”
“I like gators.”
“What about crocodiles?” she prodded.
“No! No crocodiles. Just gators.”
“You’d like Texas then. About an hour from where I grew up, there’s a state park where the main attraction is a walking path around a swamp that’s crawling with alligators. There’s no fence, so sometimes the gators sun themselves by lying right across the path so nobody can get by.”
“That’s cool.”
“And there’s a nature center there where you can pet baby alligators too. It’s a fun spot.”
“Florida’s even better,” Tim said. “There’s a guy there who will bring five-foot-long alligators to your pool party for less than two hundred bucks.”
“That sounds fantastic actually,” Anna mused.
“What was your favorite birthday party growing up?”
“My favorite birthday party…” She thought for a moment and absently scratched at the peeling paint on the hood. “Favorite… birthday party…” The slightly sharp edges of the paint flecks and the roughness of the rust underneath reminded her of the old bike that had always leaned against the back of her grandparents’ garage. The one that nobody had ridden for decades. “Probably when I turned eleven. We had games set up in front of our house and a stray puppy wandered into our yard. I didn’t see him until my dad had picked him up, and my parents didn’t have the heart to tell me in front of everyone that he wasn’t a present. So we got to keep him. Mom and Dad told me years later that they tried to find out if he belonged to anyone behind my back, but nothing turned up.”
“What did you name him?”
“Kelev. It’s the Hebrew word for ‘dog.’”
“Cute.”
“Well what about you?” Anna asked, “Any special birthday memories?”
“Not really. Mine’s so close to Christmas that it kinda gets overshadowed. Plus it’s always been in finals week or during winter break when everyone goes home.”
“Mine gets pretty much forgotten when it happens to coincide with Election Day.”
“That sounds pretty awful. At least mine is blotted out by candy and fat men in costumes.”
“What makes you so sure mine isn’t? It’s right after Halloween, you know.”
Tim laughed. “TouchĂ©.”
“What was the best Halloween costume you’ve done?” Anna asked.
“I was Calvin and Hobbes once. I turned my hair yellow, wore a red and black striped t-shirt, and had a giant stuffed tiger.”
“Sweet.” Anna smiled, remembering the stuffed animal collection she’d had when she was little. There were so many of them that the miniature hammock on the wall struggled to contain them. She sometimes regretted only having two left.
“What was your best one?”
“I was the headless horseman for three years in a row. I made a fake set of shoulders out of a baseball cap and two coat hangers, and put a shirt and a cape on top. Nobody could even tell it was a girl under there.”
“How long did it take to put that together?”
“From idea to a finished costume? Fifteen minutes? Probably less. As long as you’ve got enough black clothes in your wardrobe, it’s the easiest costume out there.”
“Doing it again this year?” Tim asked.
“No. It’s time for something new. And maybe a bit less manly.” Three years was more than enough of a lesson in how it smells to keep breathing the same air with a shirt over her face for hours.
“You’re not gonna go from badass to one of those Playboy bunny things that stampede Greek Row every year are you?”
“No…”
“Okay, good. That would be a shame.”
A shame? Anna frowned and resisted the urge to look over her reflection in the windshield. She covered her pause by grabbing Instigator off the hood and deepening her voice to say, “Why’s that? You think she’s not pretty enough to pull it off?” It felt oddly natural to voice a toy animal again after ten years or however long it had been. She turned Instigator to face herself and continued. “He doesn’t think you’d make a good slutty bunny. He thinks you should stick with the costume that covers your face.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Tim said. “Halloween’s supposed to be scary.”
“What’s scary about Calvin and Hobbes?” Anna asked.
“What’s not scary about a smartass little kid with a pet tiger?”
“Fair point.”
“Also, it’s one of the only recognizable costumes that I can pull off without wanting to jump off a building. You know,” Tim said with the amount of disgust that is usually attributed to food poisoning or flesh eating bacteria, “I once had a high school girl tell me I looked like Edward Cullen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was awful.”
“To be fair,” Anna teased, “you’re closer to thirty than twenty, and could still pass for a college freshman.”
“Oh, shuddup.”
“You have some special laser that zaps the age off your face?”
“No. I’m a geek. We spend all of our time indoors where the sun can’t find us to send updates.”
“I see,” Anna said. “I guess that explains why you never grew out of your toy animal collection.”
Tim feigned indignation. “Are you this mean on all of your first dates?”
“Yep,” Anna tapped him on the nose with a finger.
“Shame. I was wondering why you’re single…”
“Ooh, burn.” She grinned.
“Is there anything else I should know on the subject?”
“Of why I’m single?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Anna started twirling her hair again in a slow, consistent motion that seemed more like an old habit than a conscious decision. “I was with this guy who came to study here for a year, but he’s gone back to Sweden. We’re still friends, but neither of us wanted to do the long distance thing.”
“Yeah. Long distance sucks.”
“So whatever could cause a gator-obsessed electrical engineer to be single?”
“We’re an acquired taste,” Tim shrugged. “And my ex’s mother was constantly introducing her to Jewish bachelors when we weren’t together.”
Anna winced. “Subtle.”
“Yeah. It did strain things a bit.”
“I bet.”
“So what about you? Have any crazy old boyfriends?”
“No. Not like that,” Anna mused. “But I did have this crush once who I knew was a complete loser and was fed up with myself for liking him. I’d known him for a year, so to snap myself out of it, I pushed all of his buttons at once. Nothing mean- just little things like correcting his grammar, making references to shows he doesn’t watch, putting my hat on his head, and sticking my tongue out. Yeah. I think that was all of it. Anyway, he dropped off the surface of the earth and I didn’t see him again for more than two years.”
“And?”
“He got fat.”
Tim snorted. “Ouch.”
“It was weird- I was so used to him being a skinny guy, and now he has an extra chin.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Same issues, same buttons, same sense of style; just a couple sizes larger.”
“And what’s your sense of style?” Tim asked. “Not now,” he added, taking in her fringed black skirt and bright red tank that was embossed with the pattern of a lacey bra underneath. He hoped Propagator’s ‘skin condition’ wasn’t going to wreck her clothes. Maybe he should have brought something to spread out on the hood. “I mean as a little kid.”
“Oh, I was bona fide fashionista,” Anna said. “When I was two or three, I would dump my brother’s Tinker Toys on the floor and put my feet in the empty cans. They were the hottest boots around. There’s actually a picture of me that has them in an ensemble including a Simba nightgown and a plastic hard hat.” She sat up so she could stare down at him. “Top that.”
“I can’t. But I still carry a Ninja Turtles backpack. It actually looks like a turtle shell.”
“That’s still pretty cool. Can’t outgrow it. I still remember curling my toes under when my feet got bigger than the Tinker Toy cans. I was so disappointed when I couldn’t wear them anymore.”
“I would be too.”
“Yeah…” Anna sighed forlornly and sank back down. After a few beats of silence, she turned to face him. She mentally traced the outline of his profile; the slight cleft in his chin; the defined jaw line that was sharp enough to be called square, but still had enough of a curve to it to lend him a boyish charm; the sharp cheekbones running under gray-green eyes set deep enough to be surrounded by raccoon-like shadows in the wrong lighting; the thick, light brown brows that narrowed suddenly into a dainty curve; the straightedge of a nose with its own hint of a cleft; the dimples that made an almost imperceptible twitch at whatever he was thinking about. “Tell me a secret.”
“A secret?” Tim turned and suddenly his eyes were very close.
“A really embarrassing secret.”
“Umm…”
“Yep. The one that’s making you blush right now.” Her brown eyes glittered in the dark and her red lips slowly spread into a smile.
“Well…” He could feel his ears starting to match her lipstick.
“Come on. I won’t laugh.”
“I… uh…” Tim tried to avert his gaze without moving, but she was too close, and everywhere he looked, from where her curls rested against her slender neck, to the glinting opal studs that were just visible between the strands, to her forehead which was slightly wrinkled by a single raised brow, brought him back to her eyes that teased from between mascara coated lashes that flared outward like an open zipper. “A few years ago… I named my penis Invagigator.”
There was a silent stillness Tim could have sworn lasted at least ten minutes before Anna’s left eyebrow joined the right one near her hairline and she bit her lower lip, restraining herself to only a few giggles.
“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”
“Trying my best,” she visibly forced her face to something like straight.
“Alright. Your turn.”
“Okay,” Anna said, and paused to keep from cracking up before continuing. “When I was little, my parents told me that the cream inside of Oreos make your eyes feel better if an eyelash gets stuck there. It happened a lot and they were tired of me screaming when there wasn’t actually anything there. So when I was in first grade, this boy found me lying on the floor with Oreos on my face and called me stupid in front of everyone, so I snuck back into the classroom during recess and peed on what I thought was his backpack, but it was actually his friend’s.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The teacher spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out who did it and made us all sit silently and wait for someone to fess up.”
“Did they ever find out?” Tim asked.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
“In fifteen years?”
“Yup. I got so used to having to hide a dirty little secret that I didn’t say anything even after I wouldn’t have gotten punished.”
“That’s awesome.” He smiled, a naturally carnivorous smile with incisors that extended a little past their neighbors and prominent canines rooted a little out of line with the rest and ending in surprisingly sharp points. He must not have chewed on ice as a child.
“I’ve got another question,” Anna said.
Tim’s face was still only inches away. The gray-green eyes blinked. “Do I want to know?”
“I’m just wondering…” There was a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Your OkCupid account’s personality rating made me laugh.”
“What about it?” Tim asked as the blood rushed back to his face.
“Are you really about fifty percent less sex-driven and spontaneous than the average twenty-six year old?”
“Uh, I dunno.” He felt long, slender fingers that belonged on piano keys, run through his hair, and the distance between them suddenly closed.
Anna felt his startled hesitation before returning the kiss. She couldn’t help thinking, “Engineers. They think they’re so clever, but put a girl in their arms at any age and they don’t know where to start.” She let the thought drift away as a big hand slid down her back and pulled her close.
They were interrupted when Tim’s phone vibrated in his pocket and then started playing a horrible electronic rendition of Maynard Ferguson’s “It’s the Gospel Truth.” He took the phone out and read the caller ID. Gary.
“You gonna get that?” Anna ran her finger along his jaw line, and his dimples deepened in a smile.
“It’s my PhD adviser.”
“Past midnight?”
“He never does that.” Tim answered the phone. “Yeah? …No. Why?” The smile vanished and he sat up with a jolt. “What!” The color drained from his face. “Okay. I guess I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He hung up.
A strong breeze gasped through the cornstalks as Tim put the phone back in his pocket.
“Is something wrong?” Anna asked.
“Yeah…” Tim said, dazed. “Um, this is gonna be really weird. I, uh, can’t go home tonight. The whole neighborhood’s blocked off.”
“What’s going on?”
“I live too close to the lab.”
Anna frowned, confused. “So?”
He blinked a few times. “It’s on fire.”

Final Draft Fall 2012: Deathsatwist

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Deathsatwist


He’d been dreaming of the man who had swerved into his lane last month. How killing Susie wasn’t enough for the bastard. How leaving Steve and everyone he loved alive kept some sort of pattern incomplete. Steve couldn’t do anything to help his girlfriend- it had taken less than a week for the doctors to determine that she would never wake from her coma, and Steve was still in bandages at her funeral. But now the face behind those weaving headlights had returned for his little brother. Steve had gone to Jamie’s room with the gun his parents didn’t know he kept under his pillow. A figure had been walking from the bathroom towards the bed. It turned at the sound of the door opening, and some of the water sloshed out of the glass in its hand. A fearful voice had said, “Steve?”
Steve woke to the sound of gunfire and a jolt running down his arm.
Steve’s eyes snapped into focus to see the glass shatter and Jamie tumble back against his Batman-decorated dresser and slump to the floor with a dark stain forming on his chest and a face full of surprise and pain. He was ten.
Steve dropped the gun. He heard the sounds of other people awake in the apartment. His parents. How could he face them? What would happen to him? He couldn’t look at what was left of his brother. He couldn’t do anything but run.
Jamie’s window opened out onto a fire escape. It felt shaky under Steve’s feet, or perhaps it was just tears making his world spin. He managed his way down four flights before the fire escape ended in a fifteen-foot drop. Steve couldn’t get the last section of ladder to lower, so he took a deep breath and jumped. The ground approached like a speeding car and Steve landed with a graceless jolt. Numbness in his left ankle gave way to a sharp, bone-deep ache, and Steve bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming as he hobbled away. There was the sound of his parents wailing from Jamie’s room five floors up, and the taste of blood in his mouth. His blood; Jamie’s blood.
Steve managed his way to a stoplight near the freeway a block from his building, and climbed into one of the huge concrete pipe sections on a semi’s flatbed trailer while the driver stared ahead. After tying the loose end of a cargo strap around his boyishly skinny waist, Steve sat with his head in his hands.
He’d failed. He’d lost. The man in the car had gotten Jamie after all, and he’d used Steve to do it. That had to be it. Were his parents safe? Steve snapped out of his stupor when the semi started moving; he’d pulled two clumps of brown hair clean from his scalp. He shook the strands away and looked at the hand that had fired the gun. It seemed to be heavier than the other as if he were still holding it. Steve wanted it gone. He wanted to cut it off and throw it into a ditch from the highway. But there wasn’t a knife to be found. There was only Steve with a pair of green plaid pajama pants and a stray end of cargo strap around his waist. He didn’t even have shoes. Or his wallet. Or a shirt. The wind picked up as the semi gathered speed and Steve began to shiver.

He slept fitfully, waking often to the cold wind and the throbbing in his ankle, which had swollen to more than twice its usual size. His home on the edge of the Twin Cities faded into the distance, and the tree-studded hills quickly gave way to the rolling, grassy sea that is the Great Plains. It was only an hour or so before the first windmills loomed in the dark on either side of the road. Steve had always thought their silently spinning blades looked like the makings of a guillotine assembly line, and now he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be next in line after hearing hundreds of other guilty souls’ last exclamations of fear and pain.
The sky turned to a deep, predawn glow, and a sign informed Steve that he had crossed from his home state of Minnesota to Iowa. He was on the run; a month ago, he never would have believed it possible. He was on the run, and he had nothing. Steve was still trying to piece his situation together when he fell into the first sleep that was deep enough to go undisturbed by bumps in the road.

“Oi!”
Steve opened his eyes to see the truck driver towering over him. He was over 200 pounds with the hair he had left shaven to dark stubble. Hard gray eyes looked out from a pockmarked face. His nose looked like it had met a few fists over the years, and he had a scar running from one corner of his mouth to his jaw line. He was wearing faded jeans, a thin sleeveless shirt, and brown utility boots that looked like they were a decade old. The man’s bare arms and the visible parts of his chest and shoulders sported a number of tattoos.
“U-um…” Steve stammered. He was not cut out for being on the run. But was anyone really?
“I said out. I drive cargo for pay. I don’t drive the homeless for nothin’.”
“Homeless?”
“What’re you one of them special folks that’s parents don’t love you? I’m not yo momma either, so get off ‘a my truck.”
Steve said nothing as he scrambled to undo the cargo strap around his waist and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. The driver watched Steve’s limping gait with narrowed eyes for several seconds. “Awwww… The look on your face!” The tattooed truck driver was suddenly laughing hysterically.
Steve tried to hobble a little faster.
“I was just kiddin’ with ya. Get in the cab, kid.”
Steve turned. Was this guy crazy?
The truck’s passenger side door opened and a boy around Jamie’s age started to climb out. He pointed at Steve and said, “Daddy, why isn’t he wearing a shirt?”
“Is that how we introduce ourselves to people, Connor?” the huge truck driver scolded.
“No. Why do I need to say ‘how are you’ if he can’t walk? I already know he’s hurt!”
“’Cause it’s proper, boy.”
“You’re never proper.” Connor crossed his bony arms.
“Oi! Now what do we say when we meet strangers?”
The boy turned to Steve and said, “I’m Connor. What’s your name?”
“Steve,” he blinked. What on earth was going on here?
The truck driver stepped forward and held out a massive hand. “Nice to meet you, Steve. The name’s Zane, and that bathroom there’s not so bad for Iowa. Go use it so we can hit the road.”

The semi’s cabin was a bit cramped with three people, but it beat riding in the back. Steve quickly got used to the smell of old cigarette butts and did his best to ignore the old soda stickiness of the gray carpet floor. The old shirt Zane gave him fit like a dress, but it wasn’t as bad as not having one at all. Steve couldn’t help but wonder whether he deserved the kindness at all. His head seemed to be spinning around the same questions on a loop. What about his parents? Would they still be in danger with him gone? Were they worried about him or just crushed to lose Jamie? Should he call? What would he say if he did? What about Zane and Connor? Were they safe with him?
“Where ya headed, Steve?” Zane asked.
He jumped a little at the suddenness of the question. Where was he going anyway? Steve had studied maps with Susie, fantasizing about the trips they’d take together in the summer between high school and college. Next summer. Remembering where he’d end up if he continued on this route, Steve found himself replying, “Texas.” Even if he hadn’t really considered where he was going before, and decided that he might as well pick something specific so he didn’t travel in circles.
“Texas, huh? Ya got a long way to go. We’re headed to Albuquerque, so I can get ya as far as Oklahoma City unless you’re wantin’ the panhandle. Ya need that foot of yours looked at, Steve?”
“It’ll be fine,” he lied. “Oklahoma City would be great, thanks. So why do you take your son on the road if you don’t mind my asking?”
“His momma’s locked up for dealin’ crack and the road pays better than what I’d get in the city. Got him some books to learn up though. He’ll do better than me in the end.”
 “Oh.” Steve talked as little as he could for the rest of the drive south. Memories flooded back to him. Susie’s smile. Jamie’s laugh. The first time he kissed Susie while they were studying together for a chemistry test. The time when he and Jamie had laughed the whole way home after getting both of their kites stuck in the same tree. A car crash and a gunshot.
He distracted himself by watching the country change around him. Iowa was a monotonous set of vegetable fields and wind farms. Sometimes, there were even wind turbines in the same fields as the corn and wheat. The corner of Missouri that the highway passed through was largely the same. Steve was fascinated to see the state border in the middle of Kansas City, and readied himself for the pancake-flat sea of green that he’d heard the main feature of the state. But he learned that he and Susie hadn’t studied the map as well as he thought; I35 goes straight through the Flint Hills, which was the prettiest part of the whole drive. The road wound between, and occasionally had been blasted straight through, green hills that ranged from the subtle bulges of ocean swells to tall, irregular monstrosities that suddenly end with sheer cliffs. There were views down the lengths of small valleys that disappeared as soon as they showed themselves at highway speed. Ponds flicked in and out of view and there seemed to be cattle milling about everywhere. Steve was sorry when they passed the sign that heralded a change of scenery from that beauty to what would soon be the flattish, shrub-studded wasteland of rusty red dirt that is Oklahoma.
Zane’s voice woke Steve from a troubled doze. “I think I’m gonna be a little behind schedule, Mr. Reynolds. Been makin’ great time but there’s a tornado warning and I gotta hunker down.” There was a pause. “Did you hear what I’m sayin’? I can’t drive this truck in a tornado.” Another pause. “Yes.” Another. “No.” And another. “A’ight, Mr. Reynolds.” And he hung up.
Connor yawned. “Mr. Reynolds wants us to drive, doesn’t he?”
Zane frowned. “Yep. He’ll be sorry one day.”
Steve looked out the window. The sun had vanished while he slept and rain was fighting a losing battle with the truck’s windshield wipers. The sky was an eerie shade of green and wind made the scrawny shrubs outside look like starved old men clinging to a horizontal cliff face.
Steve started to feel nauseous. “He’s still following me. Oh god, he’s still following me…”
“What’s that?” Zane said.
Steve hugged his knees to his chest, ignoring the jolt of agony in his ankle. “He got Susie and Jamie. Probably my parents too, and now he’s coming for me.”
Zane looked in the side mirror. “There’s nobody else on this highway. We’re the only ones crazy enough to be drivin’ in this weather. Who’s after you, kid?”
“I don’t… I can’t…”
Connor interrupted. “Daddy, why’s the sky green?”
“I don’t know. It does that when it’s gettin’ ready to make a tornado.”
“Oh. Were Susie and Jamie killed by a tornado?”
“Don’t ask like that, Connor,” Zane said. “It’s too personal. Now Steve, you said someone’s followin’ you. Who is it? Now I’m fine givin’ ya a lift, kid, but I can’t have trouble trailin’ me.”
Steve’s eyes filled with tears and a roar filled his ears.
Zane checked the side mirror again. “Aww shit. Well boys, buckle up and hold on tight. We got a twister behind us.” He pushed the accelerator pedal all the way down. The engine roared as it gathered speed.
The speedometer passed 75.
Then 80.
Then 85.
Then 90.
The needle held at 97 miles per hour, and the roaring wind still got louder. Steve closed his eyes to block out the unnaturally green sky. He missed his parents. He missed his brother. He missed his girlfriend. All alone with strangers running from a tornado, he couldn’t help but wonder why he’d bothered to run at all.