Key South

I got a letter in the mail. That didn’t surprise me, because all my correspondence comes in the post mail for me, but what surprised me was who it was from. Rory Abbott, with his name on the envelope. I used to let myself secretly think, in unspoken thoughts I was too ashamed to acknowledge, that I wanted him to reach out. I wanted him to work to find me, to tell me that he missed me and wanted me to come back and start our life together.

I stood at the mailbox in the humid morning air, the sea breeze blowing my lazy fallen strands of hair back around my neck. It was a lush morning, and quiet. The heavy tropical plants seemed to be collecting sweat already, the bright houses were glowing in the morning rise, and chairs rocking breezily on their thick wooden-plank porches.

I looked back down at the browned envelope in my hand, already damp, having spent a few days traveling through the Keys, no doubt. Now that this letter was here, I didn’t know what I thought. I didn’t feel the sense of relief and romance that I thought I would. No, there was nothing but a wave of self-loathing that I had worked so hard to give up.

I walked back up to my porch, barefoot over the uneven cement where thick crabgrass grew in the cracks, slowly, slowly up the steps, and sitting at small table in the small wicker chair on the porch in a daze. I tossed the mail on the tabletop in front of me, Rory’s letter face-up. I sipped iced coffee. I thought about Rory. I thought about me. I thought about the plane that brought me here, and the disaster that kept me here.

It’s been four years now. Back then, I was living in Boston. I was married. I would have said that I was happily married, because I truly felt that I was happily married, but happily married people don’t have affairs. So why did I do it? I’m asked that by everyone, but I asked it of myself more. I had just moved to Boston with him. We had been married a few years, I loved him. Then I met Rory, by chance, on the small walk of West Street off the Commons. I felt nothing more than some sort of Hunt; it raised my blood pressure, awoke my Fight or Flight, brought tension and adventure to my life. And the moral world, the world on paper, can’t seem to believe in relationship indulgence out of marriage. I didn’t believe in it either, until it happened. Isn’t that the way it always goes? And now? Am I criminal for being human?

When everyone found out, I broke. Why was I surprised? Energy in, energy out. Tension build, and tension break. My husband left for a week, to stay with his brother in Milwaukee. I didn’t blame him, but I cried on the floor while he packed his things. Who had I become? I thought I had integrity. I still felt like I had integrity. Did this slip invalidate my entire life? I couldn’t stay there in that emptiness. A friend had once told me about a beach in Belize. I had never seen the beach in Belize.

I loved that beach. It was lush. I felt loved, at a time when I wasn’t loved, not even by myself. It was weird though, the way I couldn’t push the dark thoughts out, couldn’t stop internally berating myself, couldn’t stop thinking about my husband, about Rory, about the way I ruined my life at 24, and the stain I was going to carry on now forever… but when the afternoon thunderstorms came, my mind was clear, I could think of anything.

It was gone when I got on the plane. I was back to my place of suffering, the room I knew would always exist in my brain, always there in my mind for me to revisit, no matter how many locks I put on it. We had a layover in Miami, but we didn’t get that far. The plane required an emergency refuel and the closest airport we could get to was Key West, and we barely made it there. As the plane descended in a rocky, turbulent landing, I knew my impending death would be everything I deserved. I cried against the window while they refueled, until they told us we all needed to disembark. I wrestled my carry-on out of the overhead compartment, and sulked into the airport to wait, but as I exited the plane into the Florida air, something changed. Something smelt of hope, the wind brought a sense of rebirth with it, that heated island air. I was barely in the lounge when they announced our plane was discovered to have a mechanical error, and to see customer service to book new flights. I saw the signs for customer service. I walked towards it. Got to the desk. And then I kept on walking. I walked right out of airport. There was nothing to go home for. I had ruined lives. Me, I was the cause. I didn’t deserve to feel better, and they didn’t deserve me around for the hurt, and they didn't deserve me around to use me. I would be home now, on Key West.

I took a cab to the downtown. I found a room not far from Ernest Hemingway’s house. I saw the neighbors waving to one another. I saw the old man smoking at the outdoor café. I saw the roosters roaming the streets. And I saw myself here, for a long time.

I had a fine job in Boston, but the job market in the isolated Key was limited. I approached the landlady of my small inn and offered to work for her for room and board. She agreed. I worked for some of the sunset cruise companies in the evening for money. I made friends with tourists, I made friends with the locals. I didn’t tell anyone but my parents where I was, and told them not to tell anyone else. The humid climate suited me well after those cold Boston winters. The small, intimate community was good for me after the sprawling anonymity of the larger city. I found myself happier here, alone, than I had ever been with someone, up north. I found friends in other local business owners. It was enough to satisfy my lonely times, but not enough to ever make me godmother, and that was how I liked in. I began painting the lighthouse in different painting styles. I braided my hair, I bought flowing island dresses, I let go of my self-degradation. I bought a bike. I fed the roosters, the roosters who wake us for morning, for light. And only sometimes would I wish that I would Rory would work to find me, to prove to me that maybe it had been real, that maybe it was worth ruining my life over. But he never did. And each year I forgot about it a little more, and my wedding ring tan faded into oblivion, as though it had never been there.

And four years later, here it was. I had disconnected myself in every way possible, and his sealed, stamped letter had found it’s way here to my life on Key West that had been so devoid of everything before, that at times I really was able to convince myself that it had never happened. I looked at the letter, and reached for it, and my fingers were trembling.

I looked at it, and took a breath, and then tore it open, pulling the letter from it and almost ripping it, and was disappointed at the brevity of it, even though I hadn’t read it yet. What would it say? Would he reappear? Would this all be worth it? Would he come? Would I go? Would it be an ending?

 
You’re hard to find, you know that? Let me know when you’re in town again, I still have that spare room

Rory

I felt sick. I had wanted to hear from him I realized, but I wanted it to be something other than it was. But it’s what it had always been. Why did I still want him more than the man that had been my husband? I see now that he was the better man, better for never reaching out, better for never tormenting me, for delineating me. And he was the one I knew I’d never find again. Who comes up with these endings? We all have so many acceptable endings for our lives, so many permutations and ideas, and none of them ever what we are actually delivered.

I heard a rooster crow. I took my iced coffee in my hand and walked back down the porch, down the crooked walkway, into the street. Did Hemingway ever feel this validated? He had to have walked this street at some point during his tenure here. I smiled because for the first time, I knew with certainty, I knew that here was where I’d stay forever.

Fail Forward

"Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction,” storyteller John Cheever once stated in an interview. Unforeseen conflict reveals hidden character flaws and virtues. Don’t self-edit. Though it may not make the final draft, experimental writing deeply informs both style and character. Writing is the act of failing forward every time you sit down.

Prompt #4

Your character is traveling across the country and your plane needs to stop for an emergency refuel. You find out something more serious is wrong with the plane and you have to stay overnight. You decide to just stay perpetually in the town you land. What happens?

Due: March 31, 2014

Tension in Fiction

Tension is critical in fiction. Tension is the difference between a story about a boy flying a kite and a story about a boy flying a kite in an electrical storm. Tension often is created through conflict—which means your character must want something desperately: an apology from a lover, respect from a father, a cup of water on a crowded lifeboat.

The Future Adventures of Penny Coppercoin

Penny Coppercoin was walking along her favorite avenue with the deserted old buildings, imagining what life must have been like when the cities were still populated. She heard stories from her grandmother and saw holograms of it in her classes at school: people covered the sidewalks going every which way, in and out of buildings. She wondered how people found their way or remembered which corner was which, or how they lived in all the cement and brick buildings. She like the ancient, old, bent-metal sign on the road in that said "Nashville" from over a hundred years ago. Her grandmother told her that's what the city used to be called. Cities used to have names that they made up, usually named after the first people and what they called themselves or places. Of course around 2050 they realized how politically incorrect this was, and that's when they renamed all the areas to represent the House of the United States. The northeast where the capital still was, was the Bedroom, where everything happened behind closed doors, and the middle was the Living Room, because that's where most of the low-key suburban living happened, and the southeast corner where Penny Coppercoin lived in was the Garden.

Penny often snuck out during the day, when the rest of the world was sleeping. After the Great Skin Diseases of the 2070s happened, the United States transitioned to the Nocturnal Clock, and the rest of the world quickly followed suit. Because of this, everyone deserted the hot cement cities in search of the countryside and forests, and built their houses below the earth, to stay cool while sleeping. Penny Coppercoin would go out with her best friend and sidekick, Lincoln the Lightning Bug, and it was much easier for them to go unnoticed during the day, when his flickering flame wouldn't be seen as well.

Penny and Lincoln were playing around a huge old electric guitar when Lincoln started glowing off and on faster and faster.

"Oh no, Lincoln! You're right, it is getting dark, everyone is going to be waking up soon! We need to get home and get in bed before Mom finds out!" Penny cried. She strapped on her backpack and went running down the pavement. It always hurt her feet, but she liked the feeling of resistance. Lincoln zoomed ahead, glowing on and off and lighting the way back into the forest.

They ran fast out of the town and into the lush forest as the afternoon was ending and the humid heat was just starting to cool with a river breeze. Penny was running full force, jumping over small hills and tree roots, dodging branches and brambles, and she recognized their civilization coming in with the flags propped up on poles in the earth, signaling the rooftops of homes and nearby stairwells leading down into them. As she was rushing past one, though, she past by the warm smell of hot, fresh bread, and stopped in her tracks.

"Wait Lincoln!" she shouted ahead to the fluttering insect. "Do you smell that?"

Lincoln came rushing back and blinked in her face.

"We should visit the baker first. We can bring home some bread for Mom," she suggested. Lincoln switched on and off, buzzing loudly his disapproval, knowing it would make them late.

"Well, we'll probably be late anyway, and this way Mom will think we just left to pick up breakfast. Come on!"

With that, Penny turned right and led the way to the riverside, going down the stone steps into the cavernous muddy walls of the bakery until there was almost no light left, and candles lit the way.

Penny and Lincoln found the baker wiping his brow with a flour-covered hand and yawning awake.

"Nickel! Fancy seeing you here so early. What can I get for you?"

Penny was confused. The baker looked a little delirious, and he had called her a weird name, even though he had known her since she was born.

"I'd love two fresh loaves of bread, sir," she said politely, unsure if she should correct him or not.

"You got it, and I'll even throw in a fresh fish or two for being my first customer," he smiled and winked at her. "It'll be just a minute, the loaves were just put in the oven. Hang out with the president," he suggested, waving his hand to the corner of the room. Penny knew something was up with the baker, he didn't sell fish, and it wasn't the president in the corner of the room, it was the mayor, sitting and reading the newspaper.

"Miss Penny Coppercoin!" he declared, lowering the newspaper. "What are you doing up so early?" he asked.

"Oh you know, just getting breakfast sir. How are you?" she asked politely.

"Well I was doing fine, but suddenly my own breakfast is not sitting well with me. I had one of them French pies, you know that quiche or whatever it's called, but I'm thinking I'm going to have to stick to 'Murican food, I do feel a little queasy..." the mayor went a little pale as he talked, and Lincoln flitted in and blinked in front of him.

"Mr. Mayor you don't look very well, should we go up to the riverbank?"

"As a matter of fact, Penny, that's exactly what I'd like to do! You have to see the new house I bought, I've been dying to show someone and I haven't shown anyone yet and I've been thinking that I might die if I don't show someone soon!!" he exclaimed, throwing down the newspaper and bounding down the hall and up the stairs, following by Lincoln, lighting up and down, who seemed to be just as excited as the mayor.

Penny was the last one out, and could just make out the mayor running upriver, shouting over his shoulder "this way! this way!" she sighed and then went running after them full force, following Lincoln's blinking and coming up on a small lopsided wooden shack, with a creaky, uneven swining door that had the cutout of a crescent moon on it.

"This is the new place I just bought!" the mayor declared with pride. "Do you know how hard it is to find old real estate from the Above Ground Era in the forest? I can't go too far or no one would vote for me again ha ha!" he laughed at himself, before putting his hand over his mouth in a wave of nausea that turned his face green.

"Sir? Are you okay?" Penny asked. Lincoln fluttered his concerned.

"Oh yes, yes. Just that quiche that isn't going down. Isn't this great?" he kicked the door to show a tiny, inside with a square floor and a hole dug into the ground, and a putrid smell coming out of it. Penny put her hand over her nose and Lincoln went dark with polite disgust.

"They were called 'outhouses' in their day, they were like a home away from home, and you don't even need to leave to go to the bathroom! You just go over the hole," the mayor beamed with his nauseous green face.

Suddenly Penny remembered a lot of what she had learned in school about the Above Ground Era and old houses.

"Mr. Mayor!" Penny cried. "You can't! This is what is making everyone sick! Your outhouse is going downriver toward the baker's and that's what's poisoning his bread and quiches and making him delirious and you sick!"

The mayor reflected a moment, then turned around and retched into the hole dug in the outhouse.

"My, my, Penny Coppercoin, you are a true detective, a real go-getter, just as bright as your name and you just saved my life and many others' lives. I think you deserve to be Mayor for a Day, what do you say?"

The mayor unpinned his Mayor Medallion from his suit and put it proudly on Penny, and Lincoln the Lightning Bug flickered his approval bright.

"Now, what do you say we go back to the bakery and order up some new bread after this is all sorted out? I'll take you home personally and explain the whole ordeal to your mother, and you'll serve in my spot for the day, and you can even bring that flickering light with you."

Penny Coppercoin didn't have to think twice.

"Race you to the baker's!" she cried, and took off running before the baker or Lincoln knew what had happened.

Ibraham Bean of the future

Ibraham Bean loved turning back the clock. Not for the extra hour of sleep, but because with his prized collection of super antique wind up clocks he would have hours of work ahead of him setting back time. The one thing he still got to do by hand and without the help of a bot.

His collection of clocks went all the way back to his childhood in 2086 when his great grandfather nicknamed “Beta” Bean handed down his most cherished Austrian kuku clock. This was back when “countries” like Austria still existed, very unlike today when countries had turned into even smaller metropolises in the new era of every major city amputating into its own territory.

A throw back if you will to the olden times when Texas thought it should bud away from the United States into its own country. Well look what you started Texas. Now just about anyone could bud off their city into its own country. The country once known as New York City and now only referred to as Manhattan the country lead the way.

Ibraham Bean was a historian. He didn’t like how history hadn’t repeated itself this time. This new era of forming pacts and alliances with thousands upon thousands of individual mini countries really made it hard out there for the working man and woman. The world taking the old television shows of survivor a little too seriously.

In order to just commute to work via his speedster flying Vespa he has to pay a toll including a visa fee to go less than fifty miles from his pod, or for you old ninnies what would be considered a house, if it wasn’t so spherical and buoyant. Ibraham’s easy pass which somehow made its way through the years as the one and only easy access toll paying device company, showed a tally per day of over $450.00. As an accountant, reporting to computer based number crunching rude robots, Ibraham came to the realization that his commute cost more than his pod and taxes. He was already being taxed out the bot for living and breathing taxes.

As he made his way around his house turning back all 150 historic clocks it was time for him to get ready for work, which thank goodness the alert-bot reminded him of, he was so confused by the time he had wound all those clocks as to what time it really was. The clean bot found him and started preparing him for his morning routine without even finding out if he was indeed ready. No this clean bot meant business, and showed no mercy.

First it sucked away Ibraham’s pajamas which as you know in this age were tear-aways like all clothing, making it easier for the bots to do their thing, and for you the human to save precious time.  Ibraham was a bit chilled this morning on this fine July day with his pod knowing he preferred it this way. The bot read his body temperature and goose bumps and shot hot air at him in spurts to help him get over it momentarily until the uni-shower began. What is a uni-shower you ask? How are you reading this without knowing what a uni-shower is!?

The clean bot’s top selling gimmick is that it creates a cleaning mist that can happen literally anywhere, it blocks all private bits, and really cleans well using new technology cleaning mist agents, soaps and shampoos were so yester year. It’s all about the mist clean guarantee! It works for up to an hour even after it has ended. Check with your doctor bot before testing this product.

Now that Ibraham was nice and misty and wrapped in a Velcro-on towel his dress-me-bot appeared. It was the be-all end-all of ending your struggle with deciding what to wear. It did all of the thinking for you! And with just a small pinch here or there and the familiar sound of the Velcro coming apart and then being replaced by more Velcro Ibraham was dressed in the suit of the future! Which looked pretty similar to that of years ago for a middle manager position only, you may have guessed it, it used Velcro to fasten on.  Ibraham didn’t like the feeling of Velcro or of bots cleaning and dressing him. It made him feel strange and not in a good way. It had always been like this since his birth but it never sat well and constantly weighed on his mind. What is the point of saving a few minutes if I can feel less strange, he always thought.

It was time for Ibraham to throw on his oxygen helmet, required by law when outside of your pod, and hopped on his Vespa. He turned on last night’s season ending shocker of Dallas 2.0 where there is rumor that Bobby Ewing may actually succeed against the bad guy and let the vespa drive for him. Yet another perk of the future. As he was really getting into this episode a flash commercial popped into his helmet.

“Ever wonder what it would be like to live past? Well now you can! We at Virgin Atlantic have perfected time travel to go back. If you, or a loved one, are just not having a good time with all of these robots, this is the answer for you. If you want to go to our web simulation click here with your mind.” And sure enough Ibraham did.

By the time he arrived at work, Ibraham had purchased his ticket, and rented out his pod. His stuff was being packed by the moving-bots already. He would be getting on a transporter this very evening. He had been waiting for this his whole life.

At work it was business as usual, as Ibraham is the only human in the company other than the CEO and VPs who never had to go to work, and collected the big money all the same. This didn’t stop Ibraham from telling every single bot that he went past all about what he had just signed up for. Does not compute was the only response he got. He was used to this. It happened every time he tried to have a conversation with these tin walls of silence.

He ate his lunch by himself for the last time, watching the bots shut down and plugged in for their lunch time reboot. His lunch pills seemed even sadder than usual. He fondly recalled his great grandfather’s stories of lunch meat and sliced cheese. Cheese, a constant favorite for Ibraham to hear about. He could not wait to go back in time to when all of these things existed. A time where people spoke directly to each other in person and didn’t use technology so much. He had signed up to go back to the early 1900’s, which is okay because he had had his millennia shots.

Ugh, his stomach was going crazy. He shouldn’t have had that extra pill helping of cheesecake. What was he thinking, the pill seemed so small, but expanded thusly in his stomach. Every time, Ibraham thought.

After collecting his money via his iphone500 for the rent upfront for the year from his pod, and vespa sale, he said farewell to his vespa, and hopped onto the transporter. Oddly enough he noticed a lot of recycling and garbage being loaded on underneath the transporter. I wonder why the past needs this garbage and recycling that we have been promised is always reused unlike ever before. Hmm. Maybe they will share this technology with the past so that we can maybe save the planet in a way that would let people breath air outside of their pods…

He thought a fond fair well to this horrible place he had called home all his life. The sting of the air had made his hands bright red, he had forgotten to put on his safety gloves before leaving work today, in all of his excitement.

The countdown began. He was happy to see that other human beings were also on this transporter. Mostly really old people, but a really sweet looking woman who may be just a tad younger than him was also settling into her seat. Around her neck she wore a necklace with a small sprocket on it. As he gained enough courage to try to speak to her, he hadn’t spoken directly to another human since his father passed away two decades earlier, the safety hoods came down and blocked him in a big way. The countdown ended and they were shot into the past faster than the speed of light!

Awoken hours later, Ibraham did not like the shaking feeling the transporter was causing him. Something must be wrong he thought. Maybe it is turbulence like he had watched about in the safety manual video the hood displayed early. Turbulence only happens in the past!

Crash landing later, the transporter in tatters, Ibraham crawled out of the wreckage afraid for his life, afraid that the air would burn off his skin. The air, although a bit cloudy, did not sting his face. He coughed because of smoke from the crash. But this air was clean! He must have made it. He was alive. He was back in the 1900- what is that sound? A weird loud noise was approaching him. Flashing lights were getting closer. Oh no, he feared!

Sir are you okay, a human wearing weird clothing asked, not wearing a helmet like was custom.

What year is this, Ibraham asked.

This is 1984 sir. Replied the strange human being. He hadn’t made it. He was stuck in 1984. Luckily he had heard all good things about it while watching historical video documentaries about this decade. He was disappointed, but happy to be alive. He wasn’t sure he could really get into the flock of seagulls or pull off their hair. But hey he would make the most of it. And stay away from the white powder which ruined so many careers. Most of the passengers under the age of 90 had made it also . Some had passed away on the flight even before the crash. And all of the garbage and recycling was spread all over the place.

Don’t worry about the mess sir, we have this awesome landfill we use, said a different strange human.

The woman with the sprocket was being transported out by humans. It was a sight to be seen. She was knocked out but looked alright. There were no bots of any size. There were bright colors, radical hair styles, and unnecessary sunglasses, but absolutely no bots! His broken clocks were strewn all around him, frozen in time. Part of his package included free lodging, his very own house. He wondered how his contract would work out in 1984 and what house he would be able to rebuild all of his clocks in. The woman was being put into a, no it cannot be, an actual non flying automobile!

“I’m with her,” Ibraham lied, for the first time in his life. He didn’t know anyone here, and likely neither did she, so why not do the old fashioned buddy system until they figured things out.

Prompt 3

The story takes place a century into the future. During the story, an important item or piece of equipment fails. A character buys a house, and they are surprisingly over-enthused about it. A character is disoriented throughout most of the story. During the story, a character eats something that disagrees with them.

Good luck! And this should be done... by Monday March 24th ish.