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You’re Not Your

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Maykirk’s attention drifts past the tattoos unraveling from Your gently curled fingers and palm to Your neck and breasts. He looks into Your eyes, but doesn’t see his death—not certain anyway. He knows Your unseen hand carries a bolter.

The synthetic bedsheets actually smell like cotton; the pillows fluff like down. Maykirk hadn’t expected such niceties on this floater, but guesses any city this large must have an array of services. He’s glad he spring for the room.

“How much time do you need?” Maykirk asks.

“Mmmm?”

Maykirk laughs. “How much time do you need me to wait before I report my cred stolen so that I can get out of this alive? Or are You still pretending this isn’t a Romp and Rob?”

“I am,” You say. “Or I haven’t decided. Last night was pretty good.”

“I guess I should thank you for that?” Maykirk pulls himself up in the bed. You slides the bolter under the sheets and cranes her neck.

Ok. That’s taking too long to get off the ground this morning, and I’ve discovered something about writing You that I hadn’t realized before: you can’t do it in second person unless you’re in that person’s POV. That seems obvious now, but until I tried it—for wahtever reason I tried it—it hadn’t occured to me. It looks like I’ll need to get a name for my You character if I’m ever going to write outside her POV. Or not write outside her POV.

247 words on day 771

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Mark Them Both, Please

“I am my height. You should not be.” The short man bent down to the floor and jerked the stool out from under Cyril Rockandhammer.

At first the brawl was fueled with Cyril’s surprise and anger, but as the short man absorbed a few punches he hadn’t needed to take and passed over some great openings in Cyril’s defense the two turned to a measured fight between brothers. And just as the crowd grew bored of the unescalated action the short man stood. He offered his hand to Cyril.

“My name is Bogdan Grigoriu. Stand tall, friend.”

Cyril shook Bogdan’s hand from the floor then stood and straightened to his full seven feet on his own. He crashed into a sign which read, “Caution: Low Ceiling.” [lame gag I know]. “Dude, Cyril Rockandhammer. Can I get that beer now?

###

In the back of the beer-door an older priest turned to a younger one. The younger priest shrugged opened his hands.

“I think so too,” said the older one. “Mark them both, please.”

The younger priest manuevered to have a direct line of sight on Bogdan then pinched the air in front of him like he was grasping a thread. He drew back that imaginary thread and a wrinkle of vision—like catching a mote in your eye—drifted out of Bogdan’s back and across the room to the younger priest. Some might have said the effect was like reversing the throw of a dart and slowing it down and with a wrinkle of reality instead of the dart, but still. He manuevered again and did the same for Cyril.

xxx words on day 768

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Very Very Tall

A thing I haven’t thought. This is what I’ve been itching for in my writing in the past month or more. Not having it is likely the reason I’ve recycled my meta on Charming and Partly. But I’m thinking this thing I haven’t thought is a red herring. I think it’s a brought flower off the main trail of my half-promise to plot several things this year. I think it’s an excuse to shield me from digging in to anything. I need to find a way to tell it to go fuck itself. What better way to do that then to write the things I promised to write?

Sigh.

I just re-read the plotting I did for Partly to remind myself. Overall I like it better than I thought I would—possibly because I didn’t recognize some of it. I need to make Bogdan an enforcer for the Priests.

Is hard to know the end of your stories. Real stories have no cataclysm, no satisfying denouement. Just…just more life. But usually beginning easy enough to find.

###

Hulked on a barstool in one of the more backwater of backwater beer-doors in Terminus sits a man who named himself Cyril Rockandhammer. He wears a gray canvas jacket because this beer-door—like all beer-doors on Acetylene Avenue is unheated. And it’s cold tonight. He’s about to be on his ass.

“Would like to buy to beer as apology, friend,” said a short man who had forced himself and his belly into the narrow gap between Cyril’s stool and a third man’s.

“Dude, what?” Cyril thought he’d heard the man offer to buy him a beer, but something about the invitation unsettled him.

“I am sensitive about my height, and you are very, very tall,” said the short man.

This was true. Cyril was tall maybe even very, very tall by some standards, but that didn’t seem like something he had much control over. The promise of free beer seemed to be fading. He said, “OK.”

“Is not OK. You slouch at bar trying to be small.”

This was also true. Cyril did have some control over his height after all. He usually exercised it in the form of shrinking himself to fit in with others. At a diner he might slump in a booth. At a bar he might—was—slouching on the stool. Standing around talking in a group he often leaned on something or outright squatted.

“I am my height. You should not be.” The short man bent down to the floor and jerked the stool out from under Cyril Rockandhammer.

427 words on day 767