There's a writing contest at school, if I win I get sent off to some camp somewhere to hang out with other writers. I have to submit three thousand words or less of my work, and that is what follows this paragraph. Everything except for "The Harbinger" is an exerpt from various stories that I've written, each story ends after the bold typeface. Some of them are really short and you don't have to read all of them, but reading at all would be appreciated. Just pick and choose, I guess.


The far off light in the sky forced Hunter Capule to blink. It was white as the stars and it glared at him through the protective film of flesh over his eyes. He screamed as his retinas writhed and burned and burst and as the ringing in his ears wailed. He covered his face with his arm, but the distant, far off light ate at his flesh, forced it to crinkle and dry like thin slices of paper set to flame. The air around him grew warmer, warmer, warmer, warmer, hotter, with the far off light, and he was in an oven. His feet sank into the melting, gummy pavement. He uncovered his eyes, looked to the growing far off light, and the wall of trees, bricks, girders, wind, to the wall of thrashing corpses rolling toward him. The wall lifted Capule like an ocean wave does to a piece of flotsam, and it carried him into the sky, into the heavens, to the parting clouds, the mangled armageddon burning in its wake, the untouched natural beauty of the world beckoning in its path. He thrashed with the corpses, bathed in the far off light, and when he blinked again he joined the ranks of the dead.

Nothing.

Nothing.

The harbinger of consciousness klaxoned in his ears, and his eyes opened to squint at the red digits of his alarm clock displaying four numbers: 06:20. It was time to leave the warmth of his blanket, the cozy gloom of his bedroom, to battle with the world, to stand on the cold street in the pale sunrise, his eyes watching the horizon for the far off light. Maybe watching. Maybe waiting.

--"Pinnacle"



And then it came, from some unforeseeable depth, from out of an orifice I had not originally seen. A cloud of dizzying black drained itself from the floor and shaped itself into a fiend I shall never forget, its deep, maniacal voice akin to the sound of raking claws and the guttural moaning of lions before the kill. I could hear it calling to me. The very sound penetrated my mind, tried to force me to remain in my current position, so it could catch me and drag me into whatever underworld collective it had detached itself from. I dizzily backed away, the unearthly fear so great in me that I would have fainted had not some degree of perseverance remained in my mind. I stumbled behind the doorway and slammed it shut, searching with my hands in the dark for a locking mechanism of any kind, but finding none. It shouted my name, as a mother would to a disobedient child. The door’s mouth widened, and I hurled myself against it, screaming such screams as men never scream. It heaved its hellish form against the door, knocking me into the hallway. I lay there, dazed and hopeless, and its pitch colored body, which had now manifested itself as a solid form, began to encroach upon my position, its many appendages opened wide, beckoning angrily for my body, for my soul, and for anything else that could ever remain.

Such fear throbbed through my body then, such a paralyzing feeling, enough to nearly detach me from consciousness, but I fought it. I fought the fear and I remained awake, the thing still approaching. I felt its touch, felt its sick, amphibious skin pressed against mine. I think it was then that I lost my mind, that whoever I once was drowned in a murky abyss of horror. I retreated spuriously, still on my back, my screams now coming in harsh rasps. A tentacle darted out and I kicked it away, the claw on the end of it slicing the skin of my leg. I stood, my blood draining away to the floor of the cave, and fled to the distant, almost otherworldly gurgling sound of the water. The thing roared behind me, and I smelt its breath, a vaporous aroma of decaying, rotting fish. I fell into the water, swam desperately, hoping to find some way to the surface. I saw the hole in the ceiling I created; saw the moon above, and then looked back to the cave. The thing was slithering into the water, and when its skin touched the surface an inky stain began to spread about and uncoil, swirling about like the storms of Jupiter.

--"Numina"

There are lights in my eyes again.

They said it would be hard, the first few times I was severed, but I never imagined it would be like this. So much was absent from my mind; I could no longer carry on the tens of thousands of trains of thought…could no longer feel the stationary molecules making up the hull. The minds of the troopers that were being ferried between stars, blank as they were before, were now completely gone. It was amputation, like my arms and legs had been cut and were lying on the nearby metal grate, bleeding warm blood into the dark, unexplored chasms of the Ozymandias. I could see them, but they were severed from my mind, beyond my control. I felt great pressure in my chest. Tears pressed their way to my eyes…my throat tightened, and the grunt-coughs spurred by feelings of suffering and weakness and uselessness sputtered from my widened mouth. Where are those goddamn drugs?

“Looks like he’s coming around. Why is he squinting?”

“Get the doctor, Saskia.”

A light patter of boots on metal, slowly fading away.

“He’s not taking it too well.”

“Well how the hell would you feel if you were given the power of a god, and then had that power taken away?”

A sigh. “I don’t know, I’d feel kind of like a loser.”

“How deep of you. Neither of us can even comprehend what this guy’s been through, what he’s seen, thought, felt. It’s like he isn’t really human anymore.”

“Then what is he?”

I sensed a shrug. “I think he’s a god…fallen from Mount Olympus.”

“Mount what?”

I groaned, rubbed the tears of my eyes and tried to focus them, but couldn’t see past the lamp they had swung over my face. I squinted. “Someone get that goddamn light out of my face,” I murmured, wildly groping for it.

There was a pause. “Light, sir?”

My hands went to my eyes, tried to cover them from the intensity of the light source, but they were unable to do so at all. It hurt quite a bit. Everything was painfully white, as if I was staring…staring into a thousand suns. Each star next to a neighbor, the sky filled with them. My eyes teared my body’s water away.

“Power’s down, captain. Except for Basic Subsystems—heat, life support, artgravs, everything is out. Even the computers are dead, sir.”

I kept rubbing my eyes, trying to ignore the light, but finding it very difficult. “What…what’s the status…the repair status…?”

“Ellis says he can have most of the ship back online in a few hours, sir.”

“How…how can he? Engine room…destroyed…”

“It was one of the earlier system failures of your interface, sir. The ship’s outer hull has sustained heavy damage, and there are several power fluctuation problems elsewhere, but other than that the mission is not yet in jeopardy.”

“My eyes…why…”

“Doctor’s on her way, sir. She was checking up on a
platoon near one of the damaged zones. She should be here any second.”

“Or I should be here now,” came the dried voice of the ship’s doctor…what was her name…Doctor Fabulous?…no…Doctor Romano…Eliza Romano. I never liked her that much. Too prissy, too old—

My eyes began to burn even further, noticeably so, and a groan that began in my stomach slowly progressed into a scream, I writhed on whatever I was lying on. It seemed that I could feel hands trying to hold me down. The pain was intense, thick, torturous blots bloomed like flowers over my eyes. I could hear their voices, distantly…as if they were miles away.

“Christ…christ his eyes are bleeding!”

“Shut up and hold him down. Come on, argghh, no, no Captain, calm down. Hold him still. I’m not sure what’s causing this but it must have to do with the interface—stay still sir!—I’m going to try to introduce some general repair nanos into his bloodstream. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix whatever the problem is.”

“God…the blood is everywhere! Get a rag or something to wipe off his face—”

“It can wait. Captain you need to stay still. Sir—”
“I need to get him in the heart…but he needs to be still. You don’t want to mess around with nanotechs. I lost the magnets we need to pull them out if I screw up.”
Distantly, now, I heard someone shout “what? If you screw up? Don’t screw up man, I don’t know how the hell to work this thing, no one on board does. Starships don’t come with goddamn manuals—”

“Just hold him still and there won’t be a problem!”

I felt something go through my chest, a chilled needle. It seemed like the tingling I had experienced when I had woken up increased ten, twenty fold. It spread like static through my body, crinkling and prickling every skin cell. I couldn’t scream. I felt like my lungs were constricting. When the tingling struck my head I thought that my skull was going to burst, that my hot blood, now black and oily with nanotechs, would spill all over the floor. I had long since gone numb to the pairs of hands holding me down. For a time I had ceased to be and was somewhere else…that dark chasm we all go to when our bodies tire of harboring our souls.

--"Look on My Works, ye Mighty, and Despair"


In class we’re talking about something, but I’m not sure exactly what it is we’re talking about. All I know is that it is exactly seven minutes before class is over. But the class has been a rough one, a grade I got back on a paper was so bad it’s going to have to be redone, and the teacher scolded me for my definition of happiness, which is as follows—

HAPPINESS IS A SHORT, CONCISE SENTENCE.

I regret saying that, she wasn’t amused. I said it partly to be humorous, but partly to be serious also. I didn’t want to get into all that crap about how happiness is warm sunshine on my pillow when I wake up in the morning, because that is essentially crap. The class did have an interesting discussion, which I was a part of, mostly to appease the angered teacher (who I actually like!) but to also pontificate to my classmates. Although I don’t like to admit it, for the most part I only listen so I can say something later on. In fact, I haven’t admitted it anywhere else before, not verbally, hardly mentally. But there it is.

I’m sitting at my desk, the fake wood warm from my tired face being pressed against it. My spine wishes to be straight, so I sit up, lean back into my chair and slide downward, then slide back up. Now I’m straight. That’s better. The spine is better, and all is right with the world, even though the lips of my classmates are still moving without much more than sound coming out of them. Then, through the door comes the distant monosyllable klaxon of the seven minute bell they use in the Art Wing, to tell students to clean up their messes so they can leave on time for the next class.

And like she always does, the harbinger of next period rolls down the school hallway.

She passes by the door, sitting happily in her black, mechanical wheelchair, the wheelchair that has a whining, almost opera-singer-like engine. Her face is pterodactyl-like, if pterodactyls could smile, of course. Because she is smiling, today, for some reason, her face is contorted into that of a happy grin. The harbinger is happy.

I call her the harbinger because she rolls down the hall a little earlier than everyone else. She has a terrible bone condition, something genetic that’s in Latin or Greek so I won’t even bother to try to remember, maybe it’s a muscle condition, anyway, if anyone touches her too hard, like a punch or a kick, the part of her skin that was touched will go through a painful metamorphosis and harden to bone. Yes, bone. I’m sure if an artist came in and hit her in the right ways they could turn her into one of those armor-plated dinosaurs with clubs for tails. God I’m such an asshole.

So she goes early to avoid the crowds in the hallways. And today, for the first time, she’s smiling, even though at the speed she’s going (somewhat excessive) she’s only visible to me for a second or so, so that the pterodactylness of her face, and her whitish blond, combed hair is hardly more than a blur. But it is more than a blur.

In spite of her handicap, of her almost total inability to walk, of her dinosaur ugliness, of her horrific disease, the harbinger was smiling. And while the lips of my classmates were still emitting only the squeaks and mumbles that come from the depths of the human throat—sounds—she was emitting something more in the instant that I saw her. I was listening to her, and I didn’t want to add anything else, didn’t feel that I had to. The thought she elicited from me by just being there, whatever it was, by just being the grinning, handicapped harbinger of next period was a complete one that I saw no need to add to.

--"The Harbinger"

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

George raised his forehead, his eyebrows flew up as he thought. “Well…”

“I do,” she interrupted, “I just don’t see how such a beautiful earth and how such a beautiful day could have come from nothing at all. It must have been created by someone, or something.” She sighed. “But then I think about all the violence of the world, all the hate, greed and mistrust. I guess it must be all part of His plan, right?”

George was going to agree, but the first nod of his nodding was interrupted by the painful screech of his cell phone. He fumbled for the device, and his sweaty fingers nearly dropped it onto the seemingly diseased public bus floor.

“George Hatfield. What? Honey, slow down, what—no, I can barely—honey, no I’ve never heard that name—no I don’t have a secretary—what?—Who told you? Cheryl? Cheryl told you that? Look, could we please talk about this—no, I swear, I don’t know anyone named Clarisse—”

Clarisse’s eyes widened. “My name’s Clarisse!”

There was a sudden silence on the other end of the line. George glared at Clarisse, the terror easily discerned from his dilating pupils. He mouthed the word “no” to her several times as the screaming from his wife resumed, although this time it was so loud as to force the occupants of the seat ahead of them to stand up and walk down the aisle to a different chair.

“No—no, yes…of course—no, I have no idea—I just met her, she was at the—no, like I said, I don’t—she was at the bus stop, she’s a new age hippy or something—please, honey you have to stop screaming, you’re going to wake the children—they’re already gone? Where are they? You what? Why did you—what are they doing there? Don’t they have school? No, it’s just that I don’t see why they have to go to your sister’s—okay, okay we’ll talk about this later, yes, I’m coming home at the usual time—earlier? Honey, I can’t leave earlier, my boss threatened me with my job—my priorities? I have to put food on the table, don’t I? Honey, I—yes, Honey I love, okay, okay, yes I’ll be there, six o’clock, Honey I love you, but I have to—yes, I have to go now. Okay, see you at six.”

As the phone beeped George’s tense body relaxed, and he sighed. The sweat was now drenching his hair, and beads of it were sliding down his cheeks like tears.

“You didn’t help me out very much there,” he murmured.

“You never asked me to help. Your wife just wanted to know if you knew anyone named Clarisse, that’s all. So I answered, like any happy person would.”

“She’s going to kill me.”

Clarisse sighed, but never lost the smile. “Is this all you live for?”

“Sorry?”

“Your wife. You sound like you argue with her a lot, that your life revolves around her.”

“I wouldn’t say that, I’m usually kept busy at work.”

“Well, don’t you ever,” she paused, her eyes became somewhat abstract, “don’t you ever…yearn?”

“For what?”

“For a greater life. For more freedom, to sail on the ocean, get away from technology and your wife and your boss and your job, just to…I don’t know, just to be.”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“You know, my uncle talks about it sometimes, how we humans had a lot more leisure time long ago, before technology, before skyscrapers, governments, gunpowder, that sort of thing. We were more animal than human, we were happier, you know?”

“I wouldn’t. I’m no animal.”

“How so? How aren’t you an animal?”

“I work in architecture. I build things, large things.”

“Beavers build dams. Ants build colonies.”

“I communicate with others.”

“So do most animals. They get more across, with less, though.”

“I have fingers.”

“So do monkeys.”

George sighed, stood up as the bus stopped at the skyscraper of his employment. He turned to her. “Screw you.”

He then strode with a calm exuberance off of the bus, his cell phone ringing as he reached the door.

Clarisse sighed. “God.”

--Fahrenheit 451 Dialogue