Description Exercise: Character; A Close Look at Alfred

He capered in his wire cage, rather like a jester with a bad case of consssstipation.

Even though Alfred alwaysss quivers and shiversss like a plate of tomato aspic in an earthquake, he'sss actually quite...pretty. For a pigeon, that isss. His thick, white featherss poof around his fat, well-fed, entirely edible body. He looksss cuddly--fluffy and cuddly, like a fat little bread roll with butter stuffed inside.

Black and gold spotsss decorate his wingsss; he's so lovely, you could almost believe he wasssn't a pigeon. It all comesss down to breading. Alfred is so well bred that you'd expect to find him in a hilltop bakery, far above the drab city pigeonsss you see in public parks. At least Alfred is clean with normal feet; park pigeons all have grime ground into their feathers, and deformed, clubbed feet.

His good looksss are a bit ruined by hiss eyeballsss, though. His feathers look softer than whipped mashed potatoes, but his eyeballs are like cold little pepper kernelssss. And he hassss pink skin around those mad little eyes, too, as though he has some sort of inflamed skin disease in his eyelidsss.

Description Exercise: Setting

So, here I am in my little glass box, with no one to talk to but Alfred. Daphne the hamster is kept well away from me. As if I'd eat that mangy little rat thing.

As if I could even get to that mangy little rat thing. Like I said, I live in a small glass aquarium, and the funny thing about aquariums is that they're built for FISH. I am not a fish. Bubbles are not a part of my life. This is no place for me.

The light reflects off of the well-polished glass walls, glinting harshly at me. It's cold light, too--the kind of light you'd find in a doctor's examination room, or a school. Definitely not the kind of light you'd want to see at the end of the tunnel.

My owners lined the aquarium with sawdust, too. I expect they felt like they were being charitable by giving me a nice, soft, airy floor. Oh yes. Nothing homier than a bed made of woodchips. The little particles of wood get stuck all over my tongue, coating my mouth with the manky taste of wood that has, over time, soaked in the essence of a snake's bodily functions. Even my water bowl has little floaty gritty bits, like badly brewed coffee.

I have a little igloo, too. A plastic igloo that sits in the corner, looking cheap, dinky, and stupid. I don't fit inside of it, even when I curl up as tight as I can. And it's an igloo. I'm a snake. Igloos and snakes don't even belong in the same sentence, let alone in the same aquarium.

Monologue: Wilberforce Speaks

My aquarium tumbled to the ground. It wasss not, as moviesss and popular fiction would have you believe, in sslow motion. I did not float to the ground. In fact, the word 'float' dessscribess my fall about as well as rockss sssstick to the ssceiling.
My cage shattered onto the tile floor, shoving glassss sslivers through my sscales and exploding outwardss in a ssparkly dissplay, made all the more noticable by the fact that the glitter came from light reflecting off the decidedly sharp edgesss.
I felt like I had been ssstabbed—which I had, sso let'sss talk no more about that. Jussst know that it wasss a mossst unpleassant experience.
And then the idiot human ssstarted sstamping around in panic, trying to crush me with hisss Nike tennissss shoesss. I wriggled away as I had never wriggled before—the threat of imminent death can do that to a person—or sssssnake—no matter how many sharp pointy objects you have sssstuck in your body.
I dragged my bleeding carcasss under the conveniently placssed piles of clean, unfolded clothess—a sstroke of luck in my usssually luckless world. I wish I could sssay I was dead weight—that would imply sssomeone elsssse would be doing the dragging. As it wasss, I wass dragging my sssory sself.

Character Creation (First Fabulous Friday)

It was just out of my reach.
I couldn't reach it; it was so close, though, I could almost taste success in my mouth!
I couldn't do it. I was a failure, a loser, a pathetic excuse for a human. I had been sent on a mission, and I had failed. Someone else would be sent after me--they would prevail, and I would be lost from history, not even worth a sentence of remembrance.
How had it come to this?
Life had started out so... good. Success at every turn, working my way up in the world--I'm smart, I have common sense. I never fail.
An emptiness filled my gut more effectively than concrete mix. I would return empty-handed. I gazed longingly at my goal.
"Excuse me miss... Do you want me to get that for you?" He stood there innocently, in all his over-six-feet-tall glory. Tall, good-looking, and with god-like proportions.
I decided I hated him.
I narrowed my eyes and coldly muttered, "No, thank-you." I gave him a look that would toast paint off the wall. He edged by, realizing he had narrowly escaped death. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him skirt around the corner and out of sight.
No. I didn't need help.
I returned my attention to the goal--keep the eye on the goal. This was it. My famous last stand. Do or die.
My muscles strained and cramped as I tip-toed my fingers up the wall, inch by inch... Just a little more...
To hell with this.
I gave a little hop, my arm stretched all the way up--and I snagged it, yanking the long-sought prize from the top shelf. Victory!
Mom would be so pleased that I'd been able to find the multi-grain cereal she likes the best.

Shaggy Dog Stories; Untitled; do not read these if you loathe horrible puns

1.) (Please read the following passage bearing in mind that the character has a British Accent)

This, here, is my lily pad. I live a high-wired life, flicking out my lightening tongue to catch flies. I creep up on them; it’s a talent of mine. One second they’re flying around carefree, committing their crimes—i.e., the crime of being alive—and the next second BAM. No more flies, no more crimes. My lifestyle really pulls in the ladies, too—they can’t resist me when I ribbit and puff out my throat.
I don’t know if I’ve introduced myself… The name’s Pond.
James Pond.


2.) (Takes place on a big boat)

The Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water, lowered his telescope and said, “Arrr!” in the tones of one who has wearily followed tradition for a lifetime. His skipper looked up.
“Arr, Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water?” the skipper asked.
“Yes, arrr, skipper. It be the time to say ‘arrr.’”
“Why’s that, Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water?"
“We must find the treasure, skipper!” Cried Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water, rather exasperatedly. Then, for good measure, he growled, “Arrr!”
“Right, sir. Arr.” The skipper had never really gotten into the spirit of things. “What sort of treasure are we looking for, Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water?”
“Treasure! Loot! One, two, three, four, What are we pirates for?” replied the now terribly annoyed Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water. The skipper thought about this, then took off one of his boots and handed it to the Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water.
“What’s this,” snapped the now-furious Dread Pirate Captain, Sea Devil, Man on Water.
“It’s our booty.”

Clarence the 4,000,000th, Founder of Civilization: The Beginning of the Kingdom (Writing Prompt 9-14-09)

Chapter 4

It was almost 7 AM on the east coast; the sun was not so much as kissing the sea as it was slobbering all over it, and the light lit upon die-hard joggers trotting along the shoreline as they kicked up dust clouds and dripped perspiration off their noses; it would have been a peaceful scene, with its gleaming seashells and seagulls (who would have been pretty if only they weren’t seagulls0, but for the atomic bomb that went off at 7:01 AM.
The mushroom cloud was quite a sight. The black dust and smoke at its feet chocked the air, and the glowing top of the mushroom outshone the sun with its evil red glare. Millions were incinerated, but a few survived…
And two days later, Clarence the 4,000,000th was born.
He was small for a newborn, and he certainly had a few odd traits that most babies definitely did not have. His mother put it down as an effect of The Bomb, though she didn’t really understand how radiation and that sort of thing worked. The fact of the matter was that Clarence was weird, and he was probably weird because of whatever effect the bomb had on him before he was born, so Clarence’s mother left it at that.
The family, led by Clarence the 399,999,999th, Clarence’s father, foraged for food in those days after the bomb. Of course, they had always been self-professed dumpster-divers, but now even finding a dumpster was a struggle, what with all the radioactive ash and debris strewn about the place.
It was in this kind of atmosphere and danger that Clarence was forced to grow up in.
Early on, Clarence knew he wasn’t like his brothers and sisters. First of all, one of his legs was small and under-grown—it couldn’t support his weight, so it simply dragged along uselessly. Second of all, he asked questions—questions like, “Why am I Clarence the 4,000,000th?”
And third of all, though perhaps the most important, was that he was…well, smart. By the age of four days, he could read simple sentences. After two weeks, he could read Paradise Lost and give a verbal dissertation. He couldn’t write, but that was more of a physical problem than a mental one—had he been gifted with the body parts necessary for writing (i.e., hands and fingers), he would have excelled at it.
As it was, he had six legs, and one of those didn’t even work, so he often didn’t count it and thought of himself as Clarence of the Five Legs.
Clarence’s mother had no idea what to do with her son. He…well, he kept thinking about things. And he’d solve problems that the family had dealt with for years in their roundabout but traditional ways. And he would read random pieces of paper left over from the bomb and soak it all in and think some more. So she did her best and tried not to worry about him, which was actually quite a simple task, since she had 7 million other children to mind and couldn’t spare her thoughts on one oddball of a child.
Clarence didn’t mind, really—he just wanted to be left alone to mull things over. He had found a half-burnt encyclopedia in the rubble, and while he had flipped aimlessly through the pages (a difficult task for one so small and hand-less, but he managed by thrusting his thin limbs between the pages and wriggling them over until they turned), he had discovered a picture.
It was a great discovery. He stared at it, and then read the entry that went with the picture. Then he went to go find his mother.
“Mother, we are cockroaches, according to that book over there. A type of insect. And apparently we—”
But his mother cut him off with a stern wave of her antennas. Then she scuttled away to do whatever it was she felt she had to do.
Clarence stood for a moment, staring after her. He made a sudden decision.
It was time to leave home.
He wasn’t terribly sad—after all, he had only known his family for three weeks, and it wasn’t as though they made it easy to get attached to them—but he felt a twinge of a regret as he skittered away from the only home he had ever known.
After he left home, details of Clarence the 4,000,000th’s life are largely cloaked in mystery. His travels around the world and as the first cockroach to circumnavigate the Earth are, of course, legend, and the particulars of those travels are covered in the next chapter.
Before he left on those travels, however, he met the love of his life, Conchita the 339,221,451st. Together, they had over 900,000,000 children, and they and their children began the Period of Enlightenment.
So, two hundred years later, we pay tribute to Clarence the 4,000,000th with the Founder’s Day celebration. Without him, the Cockroach Kingdom we live in today would never have begun.

Please turn to the next page for Review Questions.

55 Word Fiction

Free At Last

He was free. Free to scamper, free to run around in deranged circles. He scurried around, mouse-like. After being trapped in the house for so long, this was heaven. Just for fun, he leaped into the air--
SNAP CRACKLE POP.
Breakfast.
The cat crouched back down, waiting for the next rat.

Skeleton Story-- The Escape

I am barely one inch wide and eighteen inches long, which is a frustrating form of existence, let me tell you. This world is made for tall people with opposable thumbs, and I'm neither tall nor do I have opposable thumbs. Or hands, for that matter. In fact, this world is made for humans, who ought to try living at the bottom of the food chain and see how they like it.
What's their problem, anyways? For instance, which one of them had the bright idea of breeding pigeons and keeping them as pets? “Whoopee, we have conquered a species of deranged birds that warbles and has a neurotic, eye-balling stare.” That must have been a greeeaaat success.
I'm not a pigeon, by the way—thank god. My neighbor is, though, and oh joy, he's a great conversationalist. He's a twitchy little freak. He makes that stupid cooing noise incessantly, which makes him sound like he's drowning in his own spittle or something, and it's just my poor luck that he isn't.
Did I mention that I'm unlucky? Well, I am. I live in a glass box that isn't big enough for me to lie out in a straight line and the oh-so-intelligent humans keep dropping dead mice on me and expecting me to yum them up like candy. I'd rather eat the damn pigeon. His name's Alfred, by the way—not that that means anything. Oh, and that's something else—on top of everything else that sucks in my life, the humans named me Wilberforce.
It takes a special kind of person to name their pet milk snake Wilberforce—special as in the kind of person who names their child Winnifred and wonders why the poor kid gets picked on at school so much.
And to put the cherry on my Misery Ice-Cream, god hates me. Why else would he make me a milk snake? I was just this close to being a coral snake and having deadly poison and a death clutch to be feared. Red on yellow, kill a fellow—but here I am, red on black, friend of Jack. I've made it my lifelong goal to loathe this Jack person.
Of course, hating him is difficult, since I don't know a single person named Jack. You'd think it would be easy—Jack's a pretty common name, isn't it? But no—my human slavers-slash-jailers are named Chuff, Edna, Dwain, and, you guessed it, Winnifred. Stupid names, it's true—that's why they feel the need to name their pets Wilberforce, Alfred, and Daphne. They get some kind of vindictive pleasure out of it, no doubt.
So, here I am in my little glass box, with no one to talk to but Alfred. Daphne the hamster is kept well away from me. As if I'd eat that mangy little rat thing.
“Hey, Alfred,” I hissed, my tongue flicking towards him. He hates it when I do that. He shuffled on his perch, eying me with his mad bird eyes. Twitch, twitch. God, he's a little creeper.
“Don't you look at me like that, like that, like like likelike that.” He sounds like a broken record that occasionally gets stuck on a word and it replays ten times before getting a move on.
“Sssssorry.” Not that I'm actually sorry, of course, but there is a shred of pity in my cold reptilian heart for that dumb bird.
“Good, you should should you should be.” He capered in his wire cage, rather like a jester with a bad case of constipation. He twisted his head around until he was peering at me almost from an up-side-down angle, his insane, beady little eyes fixing on me. For a couple minutes we sat like this, staring at each other. I didn't move a muscle, but Alfred tried out new and exciting ways of peering at me. Finally he hopped around and stood facing the window, his feathery back towards me. That didn't last long—after about half a minute with his back facing me, he fluttered back around to glare at me.
“Stop it, stop stop stop staring at stop at staring at me!!”
I let my tongue flicker again, and I pulled back my second eyelids. “What'ssssssss the matter, Alfy? Do I make you... nervoussss?”
I spent another ten minutes toying with him, and then I got bored. It always ends like that. Whatever entertainment I manage to squeeze out of my pointless existence generally gives way to boredom. I coiled up and pretended to go to sleep.
I daydreamed. I can see out the window into the yard behind the house, you see, but I've never actually been out of my glass box, not counting when they take me out to squeeze me in their hot little hands and to take me to the vet.
The window is... well, it's nice. I can see grass out there, and the sky. At the moment, it wasn't very blue—more like a heavy cloudy gloom, but it was a better sky than a plaster ceiling. And there have to be live mice out there, or live rodents, or live insects, or any living food. Do you know what it's like to eat pre-dead mice that Dwain buys from the pet store? It's awful. He buys them in bulk and freezes them until he feeds them to me. Frozen and thawed-by-microwave mice taste like...well, I'm assuming the only people that will read this will be humans, so describing the taste of mice would be rather pointless, since you have nothing to compare to it. Humans don't eat raw mice, and usually not cooked mice, though that depends on how desperate they are. Ever wonder why you humans don't eat mice?
Don't get me wrong, I love mice—proper mice, though, not scarily inbred rodents that have been frozen for months before I get to eat them. Fresh meat, that's the thing. Squirming, living flesh, where I get to make the heartbeat stop... I'm a snake. It's what I do. Or what I would do.
I stared out the window some more. Slithering through grass would be pretty cool, I think. Better than crawling around on dry sawdust, at least.
I was hatched from the egg in this glass cage. All I've got is the window. Bit depressing, really. But they don't have anti-depressants for snakes. The vet thinks I have a 'mellow nature, har har'. He's a scary man in a white coat with pointy objects he likes to prod into animals.
And then my window smashed into a thousand pieces. A heavy-set human hauled himself into the room—and he definitely wasn't Dwain, Edna, Dana, or Chuff. They'd left some hours before to go do whatever it is humans do during the day.
I lifted my head, watching him. He stumbled into the house and—
It's very disconcerting to have what's basically your house with you in it shoved onto the floor. My aquarium-cage smashed onto the wooden floor, adding its broken glass to the shards of glass from the window. Sawdust poofed around me as I flopped onto the ground, and a few slivers of glass thrust themselves through my scales and into my flesh.
Snakes can't scream, something that I've often lamented about—but we can hiss in a most distressing way, and as those splinters of glass stabbed me, I was quite distressed. The closest I can get to the sound with the mere written language is something like this: HSHRGHGSSHSHSHSSSSSSSSSsssssSSSSSSghhshhhshsssss!” Maybe a few more exclamation marks, too.
And then the idiot human started stamping around in panic, trying to crush me with his Nike tennis shoes. I wriggled away as I had never wriggled before—the threat of imminent death can do that to a person—or snake—no matter how many sharp pointy objects you have stuck in your body.
I swiftly hid myself among the piles of clean, unfolded clothes that were piled on the floor—a stroke of luck in my usually luckless world. I peered at the human invader through a gap in the clothes. He was breathing hard as he looked at the clothes.
He knew I was here. I knew that he knew that I was here. He knew that I knew that he knew that I was here. I knew that he knew that I knew that he knew that I was here. He backed away from the clothes pile. Maybe he thought I was a coral snake—who knows. He disappeared into the rest of the house. I heard rummaging noises and made an educated guess—burglary. Which wasn't really my issue at the moment, since I was bleeding from about five stab wounds in my sides. In a couple of the wounds, the glass was still stuck fast in my flesh.
And then I saw the window.
Fact number one: The window was devoid of glass, courtesy of the crude entrance of our friend the burglar.
Fact number two: I was out of my cage, also thanks to Mr. Graceful.
Fact number three: Snakes can slither up walls.
Put them together and what do you get?
A free snake, that's what you get.
I listened for the burglar, but by the sound of it he was shifting heavy objects. I wished him a merry looting and squirmed out from underneath the clothes pile. I wormed my way to the wall, managing to knock one shard of glass from my flesh. I peered up at the gateway to freedom and wished it wasn't quite so steeply positioned, but then, life's a—well, life can be a bit trying sometimes.
“What are you you what are are what doing?” Alfred gurgled, prancing on his perch like a bird with a serious case of palsy.
“Essssssssscaping,” I said. Even Alfred couldn't dampen my new-found determination to get out that window. I began to pain-staking-ly crawl up the wall towards the window.
I said snakes can slither up walls, but trust me, it ain't easy to defy gravity like that. For a human, I expect it's akin to clinging to the side of a cliff with nothing more than the stickiness of your sweat gluing you to the rock.
And then I was there, slumped over the window sill, my muscles going loose.
You know, the weird thing about the prospect of freedom is that it looks a lot better from inside a cage.
Could I even catch live mice? I'd never actually had to before—the concept was simple, of course, but... there's a difference between snapping up dead mice and snapping up a scampering, panicked dinner. And weirdly enough, Alfred was a fun companion...in that he was fun to torture, I mean.
I know I didn't sit on that windowsill for long, but it seemed to last forever in my tiny snake-head. It was Alfred who made up my mind.
“Well fly fly fly away, you moron moron you you moron!” He said in his incredibly annoying voice. He shoved his head between the bars of his bird cage and grabbed the last shard of glass and yanked it out of my side.
“Thankssssss, Alfred...” I slipped out of the open window, leaving Alfred and the smell of his moldy bird food.
The dreary sky never seemed so beautiful. Fat raindrops began to plop down around me in the tall grass. Behind me, I heard Alfred give a last warble before I slithered off in search of a mouse to make a brief friendship with.

First Short Story, Drawing-Inspired

Rain trickled down from the sky, as though all of the angels in heaven were feeling rather depressed and in need of some chocolate cake and a hug.
Grass perked up as water seeped into its roots. It makes mowing the lawn seem so pointless. The earthworms don’t mind, though—they writhe to the surface of the ground, their slender, slimy bodies soaking in the delicious moisture. Some of them squirm their way onto the sidewalk or onto the asphalt of the street; those are the ones who will get fried to death when the sun comes out again.
And the sun will come out, of course. This damp bliss never lasts for long. Rain lilies will wither, puddles will dry—and I…Well, I’ll die, of course. My soft white skin will burn in the sun’s heat, my fleshy body will quickly shrivel, and I will be no more.
I suppose this is sad. I don’t really know. In fact, I’m not that great of a thinker. I only live for a couple days, so my main concern is certainly not with philosophical questions of existence. Actually, I have no idea what philosophical questions of existence are. Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I covered in polka dots?
These things do not occur to me.
Why should they? For I am nothing more than a… toadstool.

The Moment (villanelle)

A moment, so brief so small, just before sleep
The velvet blanket of night slides over my eyes
And into my mind, vague dreams begin to creep.

I lie so still, beyond the time of counting sheep
The last few breaths before my conscious dies—
A moment, so brief so small, just before sleep.

Awake, no, nor am I in a slumber deep
Cocooned in blankets my body lies
And into my mind, vague dreams begin to creep.

A whoosh, a whisper, in my mind such sounds seep
A half-forgotten memory softly cries
Just a moment, so brief and small, just before I sleep.

Susurrations mutter, flutter, and darkly weep
Trapped inside this space of time, ever nigh
And into my mind, these vague dreams still do creep.

Oh, ephemeral moment, drag me down this slope so steep
Take me down to where my subconscious flies
A moment, so brief so small, just before I sleep
Into my mind, these vague dreams begin to creep.

In the Early Morning Hours (sestina)

Black velvet pressed against my windows
White porcelain, cupped in my hands
Wood floors, creaking under my stocking feet
And all around me the world still sleeps
In those sparse hours just before
The waking of the dawn.

Silent, silky, inky night still hovers over dawn
Midnight creatures stalking past the ill-lit windows
And I, I stand still in jim-jams, for moments just before
I have only just risen, drowsiness still slows my hands
My cat rumbles a purr, and curls to carry on sleep
I shuffle out of the silent house, still no shoes on my feet

Stagnant, chill air swallows sound whole and freezes my feet
I shiver, awaiting only that epiphany of dawn
I could’ve stayed in bed a little longer, another hour of sleep
No one need rise so early, to only light a few meager windows
But such thoughts are brief and passing, sliding past my hands
I’ve gone through this ritual before.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this sight before
Walked out to see seeping cold air curl over my feet
Carried a steaming mug of tea in reddened hands
Watched a sun struggle upwards, claiming dawn
Slicing sharp grey light across glass panes of windows
When I could have—if I chose—stayed in to sleep.

Today, I know there are better things than sleep
As clear, crisp light spills across what had been pitch black before
The light is climbing—uninvited—through windows
Telling the rest of the world it’s time to get on its feet
The night is gone, and in its place is the dawn
Get up, move, arise, leap, spring—lift your hands!

Groaning, it’s pushing itself up with its hands
It gives a half-hearted plea—“Let me sleep?
“It’s too early,” it says, “only just the crack of dawn,
“Why does the sun come so early, must it rise before
I’ve had the chance to rest my weary feet?”
I do not answer, watching sunlight sluggishly slither in windows.

I’m glad the dawn has come now, not after or before
My hands are now free from their dulled sleep
I’m on my feet and staring out a glowing window.

Free Verse Poem-- Gimme My Backpack

So listen.
I hate it when like people take what’s mine
And like hold it out of reach
Oh my god it makes me so mad.
Grr.
Like this morning
He took my backpack and held it away from me.
So then I was like, oh my god give it back
But he wouldn’t give it back
And I was like, “I wish Godzilla would crush you”
And oh my god he laughed at me.