WIP Excerpts

(I searched, so lock if appropriate.)

A place for posting short excerpts from writing you're currently working on, or WIPs (work in progress). I tend to post them to my Tumblr, but I think they're probably best here, right?

Emphasis on the "short", not mega huge paragraphs.

For writing you don't plan on using in a story, post in the Drafts thread.

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“So you think I’m “exotic”?” I raised an eyebrow, and secretly enjoyed watching him squirm.

“Well, I guess,” he said, but it sounded like a question.

“Jesus Christ,” I laughed, “I’m not a fucking bird of paradise. I’m half Korean.”

- from the second part of my three part short story, Into Sparks.

It rained the day I was drafted into the Imperial Army. A Monday, monsoon season had just begun, and the droplets were hitting the ground at a force that seemed almost unreal. I had entered my final month at Jikei University’s School of Medicine, and I was well on my way to achieving the job I had dreamed about from the tender age of seven. Becoming a doctor had been an unusual aspiration in my family, a family full of proud military history. My father had been a General in the Navy, my mother working in the factories when he was gone, just as her mother had done before her, and her mother’s mother before her. When I had elected to go to university and study, it had been a shock to my family, who had all expected me to proudly enlist on my seventeenth birthday and follow in the family tradition of bloodily killing hundreds in the attempt to create better lives for ourselves.

- An extract from the second chapter of Unit 731

This is a fab idea for a thread, by the way ^^

"Okay. Do you believe in God, Kurt?" Chase was not sure why he was suddenly so compelled to find this out. He supposed all of Kurt's talk of life's purpose had him wondering.
"No, I don't." Chase was not sure why Kurt's answer surprised him.
"Then, how do you know if there's a point to anything?"
"I guess I don't. Maybe we just have to settle for figuring out what the purpose in our own lives is for ourselves. Or just try to be happy and forget about it."
-an except from a new story I've started that I haven't got a title for yet.

I strained my eyes just slightly at his pocket, my years of training already coming into play. It was a small, squared box, possibly covered in velvet or some other soft material. An engagement ring. I sighed once more and took another sip of my coffee. To be honest, I wasn't even sure why I was drinking it in the first place. I hated coffee. It tasted sickly and never felt right going down my throat. But, oddly enough, I drink a cup of the damn stuff everytime I'm in a coffee shop or if I'm offered one. I liked to lie to myself and say that I didn't know the reason but I did. I knew all to well.

-excerpt from K-9

“Could you get me some more tobacco?” I smiled sweetly over my tea, “Please? I have the money upstairs.”

He held my stare for a few seconds. He didn’t really mind me smoking, but he didn’t really like to get involved with it at all. He cracked first, saying, “Fine, but only because you’re my favourite child.”

“I’m your only child.”

“Exactly,” he said.
-from what I've written of chapter six of I Wrote the Sky.

I was always the middle kid. Even before life became a twisting road of battle ground after battle ground, I was always treated like the responsible child who didn’t need any attention from his parents whatsoever. My younger brother was too young to look after himself, they said. And my older was too much of a loose cannon.

In my opinion, I simply wasn’t loved. That was obvious from my father, as he didn’t seem to feel the emotion of love at all, with any human being.

It was a different matter with my mother. Mum. Mummy. Mama. Every name I’d ever cried out to her when I was hurt or upset, and been rewarded with nothing but a fleeting glance that never quite seemed to focus on me properly.

-from the very beginning of my partly-written prequel to Men Don’t Cry

Noche otra vez y veo entre sombras la arrugada cara del tiempo. Una hora, dos, tres y sigo sin descansar, pues veo al muerto en todos lados.

La casa ruge, truena, relampaguea entre luces y oscuridad. Pasa un auto y su luz estruendosa alumbra mi cara. Mis ojos cerrados contemplan el blanco reflejado en mis parpados, luego llega el negro. La luz se ha ido.

Un crujido me levanta, me incorpora de la cama. Un armario ambriento esconde sombras y esqueletos.

Ha cambiado ya la casa, se convierte en un laberinto de paredes tapizadas con fotografias y rostros burlones, sonrientes. Me observan.

Un minotauro se esconde en la esquina de un corredor circular. Un hoyo de gusano comienza a engullir fragmentos de luz que intenta escaparse de las garras de la penumbra.

Son las 3:00. Madrugada. El muerto ya se asoma.

- Se Me ha Subido el Muerto

Taking deep, shuddering breaths, her heart fluttered like a moth, pounding against her ribs in an attempt to break through. She did not want to be late and didn’t want to know what would happen should she be late. All that mattered was getting there.

In a narrow street, a girl leaned against a cool metal wall, panting. People were everywhere, as they always were. They were those who had never been given the chance to go to a new world, where there was wilderness and land.

- Sky Castle

I ran out into the water, being pushed back by wave after wave. I kept at it. I kept walking against the masses of water crashing into me. They tried to take me in, to cave and stop swimming, but I couldn't. After all I'd been through the past few days, I'd grown stronger, and nothing could tear down what a built for myself.

- World of the Ancients

Anette sighed and got up from her bed to open the door. Her aunt’s voice was probably the noise that annoyed her the most. Just that accent was enough to make Anette have to take a deep breath so she didn’t say anything rude. The way she said “talk,” like there was a “w” in the middle of it… well, she was sure that she had an accent to them, but at least Anette didn’t pronounce anything funny.

She opened the door and let Aunt Carley in. She was that perfect Jersey woman, with the big hair, already naturally white blonde like Anette’s, manicured nails a bright turquoise, clunky jewelry, and though she still looked relatively young, her clothes still didn’t befit her age.

-from something I started that I don't know if I'll ever even publish xD

If this was a film I’d probably jump out the window silently and run back to my secret zombie-proof hideaway. But this wouldn’t be a film, I’m too fat to be in a movie, and I'm definitely too fat to fit through the window.

And no, I don’t mean to say I’m fat in the useless body-image way. I don’t have crippling self-esteem issues. I’m fat. I’m two-hundred odd pounds, whatever, I stopped counting. I’m fat, but I’m alive and all my Diet-Coke-instead-of-lunch friends aren’t.

- from my untitled zombie short story. Not posted.

It feels strange to him, holding another man’s hand like this. It’s something that he has never
experienced, and he doesn’t like how very much out of his element it makes him feel. But he lets
Akira take the lead anyway, and he realizes that the other man is very much comfortable with bringing
men home.

He is quiet while Akira unlocks the door, and he politely removes his shoes. And when he straightens,
there is uncertainty in his eyes, and yet he meets the gaze of a man who seems to know exactly what
he wants.

“So, what do you, um-“

“You seem a whole lot more sober now, you know that? Incredible what a good dose of nerves can do,
isn’t it?”

Kouyou nods, and he averts his gaze, discovering interest in his discarded shoes. “I shouldn’t have said
all of that. I’ve just, uh. I’ve never been with a man before. I-“ He sighs, and his voice drops to the
level of a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Akira sighs, and Kouyou looks up when he hears the rustling of a coat. He then feels hands on his
shoulders, and he lets the other man take his coat off for him, and he shivers slightly when he feels
how cold the house is. “Come on. It’s warmer in my room.” A hand folds into his, and he lets Akira lead
him through the house, pausing to open a door.

- untitled, unposted.

Her alluring green eyes seemed to pierce his soul, even from where she stood across the room. She smiled invitingly, and he found his legs bringing him closer. When they stood facing one another, she tossed her dark red hair over one shoulder and held out a pale hand in greeting.

He grasped her slender fingers as his mouth formed a question. "May I ask your name?"

Her smile turned into a playful smirk. "I'm the one they call Fox."

- from Down the Rabbit Hole, unposted.

One minute ago I was sipping orange juice from a plastic cup. One minute ago I took my sunglasses off. One minute ago Tommy smiled at me, and extended his arm like he wanted me to tell him how beautiful I thought he was.

-from an unposted drabbled inspired by the first stanza of A Primer for the Small Weird Loves - Richard Siken.

People think they know me because they've heard the gossip. Obviously, I'm a one sided human being. I'm not like them, complex and downtrodden.

- from my story, Newport Bitch.

Nothing’s really clean, not in our house anyway. There’s water, but there’s no gas so it’s all freezing cold, and no water pressure so it comes out like a slow dribble. Things seem to be slowly shutting down, as far as I can tell. There’s no electric either, so I can’t actually find out, but I’m not sure whether that’s because everything has been switched off, or because the bills haven’t been paid since my parents went A.W.O.L.

- Conversations With Dead People (unposted).

My grandmother, in her glory days, had been an avid collector of antique china dolls. Visiting her house was accompanied by the eerie feeling that you were being watched from every angle. Dressed in their fine little petticoats and shining black boots, they saw everything from their eagle perches around the house; in the living room, sitting on the kitchen countertops, staring at you in the bathroom. Some were even intertwined into the banister, their tiny delicate hands tied together with small pieces of rope that held them steady, dangling feet from the ground, the thin twine the only thing keeping them from plummeting to their death. But for all of the dolls in her house, this one was hidden from view, pushed into the back of the heavy wooden wardrobe, another antique attempt by my grandmother and her awful decorating skills.

- Ariella (unposted).

She's on your lawn again. Her roots have been addressed, but no other effort to improve her appearance has been made.

You ignore her. You walk straight past her, not pausing to count her freckles, or to disapprove of her flip-flopped feet and too low top, or to read the words the drooping neckline reveals.

Right not, you don't care. About Lucille, or Claudette, or Marilyn, or Evan or anyone. You are simply and suddenly tired of everything that is.

All you want (and really, it's not so much to ask) is to lie down.

So no, you do not see the words Claudette has inscribed on her chest, and even if you had seen, you would not have understood that there were a response to one - to all - of your questions.

She sat in her garden with a mirror and a barbecue skewer and wrote, in neat cursive: 'I can't stop'.

The apostrophe is still dripping, the cut was deep. Absently, she lifts a finger, wipes away the blood and licks it off, like a child.

If you had noticed, you would have wondered why. Maybe you would have dropped to your hands and knees and retched into the grass until you though you would choke.

But today, you are tired.

So no, you do not see.

“I only miss you when I’m breathing.”

The phone rang, the noise echoing through the flat and the lone occupant hearing the sound, but shrugging it off, he knew who it was. It was the third time today she had called and it was barely two in the afternoon. The phone rang again his suspicion being confirmed as the call display with the oh-so familiar number showed up on his telly

“His whole world is my world. We’re one in the same, Johnny and me. We’re a weird bunch, cartoonists. We wear our hearts on our sleeves when we draw and write. My characters come out of every inch of me, Johnny the most. We get attached to things that don’t even exist to other people. But then why do people get so caught up in music if it’s something they can’t see with their own eyes? Why do some folks love being in love? It’s ‘cause they feel it. They feel it with their own bones. It gets their guts. That’s why I devote my time to doodling a character who I love more than I love myself. ‘Cause he’s Johnny Cool, and he’s Anchor, and he’s Andy Allen – these people who don’t know the first thing about being anything.”

- Generation Why Bother (unposted)
(This dude has an entire freakin' monologue that I love to death even though I haven't written anything else for this story.)