i cracked a crown on one of my back teeth the other day and today i had to literally pull over while driving because it hurt so bad. like it felt like it was glowing with pain that stabbed up into my head and made me have to start moving my feet around like some kind of weird masochistic dancer.
I honestly don't think I've ever felt pain *that* bad before. I was genuinely considering pulling a Tom Hanks in Castaway and knocking the tooth out myself, then after like an hour it kind of stopped hurting?
I know I haven't posted any updates here in a while (life/laziness got in the way of me posting the last ten chapters on here), but The Blink is currently up to Chapter 14 and I'm now working on the last three chapters of Part One. I suck at outlining so I'm going to finish these chapters all at the same time so I can make sure nothing happens in 17 that requires plot tweaks in 15/16.
So if you're behind on reading (or if you're seeing this link for the first time), you can catch up in time for the Part One finale to drop.
Less-than-brief synopsis of The Blink:
After countless entry level jobs and aimless drifting through life, Ryan Anders abruptly leaves behind his apartment in Florida and accepts a position as a staff writer for the Honey Grove Herald in north Texas. For the first time in years, his life is moving toward something he wants. He is out of the rut. He is happy.
Then The Blink happens.
In less than two minutes the Sun goes dark, plunging the world into eternal night. Nations fall to panic and chaos, fear and conspiracy theories become a new kind of gospel, and the cold winds of a permanent winter begin blowing. The world that once was exists no longer.
With the help of a group of people in town, Ryan starts to think staying alive might be nothing more than a matter of working together. But as the dropping temperatures show no sign of stopping, it becomes clear that a better plan will be needed if he wants to survive the coming winter and get to the bottom of the biggest story in human history.
Check it out and let me know how you think it's going so far, tell me what you like about it, what you hate, anything that crosses your mind!
And give this a heart/reblog/share if you do like it! My fanbase is currently a handful of Facebook friends and family, so I'd love to get some more eyes on it! <3
so one of my friends who teaches a high school creative writing class asked for some writing tips and mentioned that she was getting local writers to come in and talk to her class throughout the semester. I was all "That's a great idea!" and offered some advice I've learned from taking a bunch of writing classes, all the basics I see shared on here by you fine people.
Eventually the conversation came to an end she thanked me for the info and said she'd get back to me on a date/time for me to talk to her class.
*record scratch*
oh. OH.
So it turns out I'm a "local writer" and I'm now giving a creative writing talk next week to a group of high school students. I'm only slightly terrified.
Truly the all time funniest writer thing is when you're doing edits and you think to yourself "omg I've got the PERFeCT sentence to add right here!" and then you stick it in all excited, only to find that literally three lines down you have virtually that exact same sentence in the draft already.
So a friend of mine is a high school English teacher and she just messaged me and said she was planning a creative writing class this coming semester. She asked for some tips, I gave her a few of the popular ones I knew.
Then she asked me if I could come by one day and talk to the class.
AND I SAID YES??? WHY DID I DO THAT THE ONLY THING THAT TERRIFIES ME MORE THAN PUBLIC SPEAKING IS TEENAGERS I AM GOING TO DIE
Andy Waller is not a world-famous newscaster, not by a long shot. If you asked someone in New York or California who he was, they wouldn’t have a clue. But ask that same question in one specific corner of northeast Texas, you’ll find that everyone knows Andy Waller’s name.
And if they don’t, they certainly know his face. Perfectly symmetrical, clean-shaven, distinctly charming, Andy’s youthful face appeared every night on TV screens throughout the local area just before Wheel of Fortune, where, for the last five years, it had stolen the breath from middle-aged women sitting beside their snoring husbands on the living room couch. Andy Waller had become a household name for countless families throughout the state, a man who sat right across from the couch and read the events of the day out loud with that devilish grin flashing out at his audience.
Today, however, Andy is not smiling.
“We—We’ve just got another video,” he stammers from behind a BREAKING NEWS banner along the bottom of the screen. His voice no longer has that over-enunciated confidence inherent of newscasters. Instead, he has reverted back to his native Texan drawl. “This one was sent in by a viewer from Mount Vernon a few minutes ago. Can we switch over to that one?”
A moment passes, Andy’s face awkwardly motionless in the center of the shot as the news crew works to pull up the video, then the screen cuts to black.
It starts with a view of a Little League game filmed from the bleachers. The field is old, the borderlines between sand and grass blurred in several places from wind and time. A chainlink fence surrounds the field’s perimeter, and beyond it grassy Texas fields extend to a wall of forest far in the distance. Small shadows of cottonball clouds drift effortlessly across the world. It is a perfect summer day.
The metallic ting of a bat striking a ball, then the sound of parents cheering and clapping as a young boy runs tottering toward first with everything he’s got. Just before he reaches the base, the camera drops and gasps fill the stands, the same sound you expect to hear when one of those Little Leaguers gets hit by a foul ball, but when the camera pans back up it is like four hours have passed in the span of a few seconds. Twilight now blankets the scene in a hazy dimness that causes the camera to auto-adjust its focus. A blurry flock of small birds takes flight over the field, followed by a handful of bats zigzagging through the air at the mistaken belief they overslept their circadian alarm clocks. The cameraperson aims upward and zooms in on the Sun, and it is immediately clear that something is wrong.
Though at first washed out from the brightness, the camera shortly begins absorbing more and more detail as the Sun’s glare diminishes. What started as a perfect circle has morphed into a gibbous shape, like the moon a few days after it is at its fullest. As the shape continues to deform, the sky begins to darken, the clouds changing from white to gray and then to almost black. In less than half a minute, the Sun has become only a fraction of its former brilliance, the progression resembling a sped-up video of the moon’s phases. From full to gibbous to quarter in the span of a few seconds.
The crescent Sun wanes further, its last sliver glinting like firelight along the blade of a new scythe. Beads of light flash and pop along this strange hairline curve in the sky, sparking briefly against the ever-darkening backdrop, and then it is gone.
The video goes black, but concerned voices can be heard from the parents in the stands. Were it not for these whispers, people watching from home might think the video has ended, but it hasn’t. The camera zooms out to show the field now bathed in the harsh glow of tall stadium lights. On the field, the Little Leaguers stand with gloves hanging limply by their sides, all of them staring straight up at the stars.
All but one.
The kid who’d been headed for first moments earlier is now rounding third, too focused on scoring a home run to realize the world just ended. He slides across home plate and jumps to his feet, fists raised and a triumphant grin on his face as he looks to the stands, then his gaze shifts upward and he begins to cry.
This is where the video ends and Andy Waller’s perfect face returns to the living rooms of Texas. Rather than charming, though, his face is haggard and haunted. Shocked. Afraid.
“Uh,” is all he manages to say before glancing slightly up above the camera. He stands up and walks out of frame, leaving an empty desk in the shot. A minute passes like this. Indistinct voices mumble in the background, doors creak open and clang shut, footsteps shuffle around just out of view.
When Andy returns, his eyes are somehow even more haunted than they were, like he hadn’t believed the videos and reports coming in until he looked outside for himself.
“Uh,” he repeats, then clears his throat, remembering the hundreds, maybe even thousands, of unseen eyes currently fixed on him. “I just looked out the window and, uh, the sky is dark. This is real. The—The Sun seems to have . . .” Andy trails off, eyes again drifting back behind the camera as all thoughts of TV broadcast etiquette leave him.
He doesn’t know that his segment is already in the process of going viral, that, because it is one of the earliest and clearest videos shared of the Sun’s death, it is already being posted to Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and being sent to other news stations around the world, where it is shared again and again. He doesn’t know that his face will shortly be one of the most famous faces not just in Texas, not even in the United States, but in the entireworld. He has always wanted this kind of fame, has always secretly prayed for the day his face would be beside the likes of Anderson Cooper and Lester Holt, and his prayer to be a celebrity television star will be answered a dozen times over before the week is out.
Andy has no idea that in the next few days, his brief segment will become the most watched video on the Internet, breaking records as the fastest growing viral video in the history of the world.
He also has no idea that it will be one of the last viral videos mankind will ever produce.
@squarebracket-trick tasked me to find slip, trap, great, and maybe, so we're scouring my documents today!
---
Moi wanted to laugh because it’s so dumb, instead she just wore a poker face and told her “You should be a comedian, not a witch.” She sighed again and beckoned her to follow her from the shore and the rocky footsteps. Both were concentrated on their steps so as not to accidentally slip on the moss in the rocks from the steep stairs. The rocks have weathered, revealing pointed edges that could impale someone should they slip. Fortunately, Moi was used in this terrain, but Luna wasn't, which is why she also needed to be careful and watch her. Their entire walk was quiet because of this.
(Wow, I didn't expect it would appear here twice lol)
---
Mary didn’t talk to anyone about her dreams. The surreal rooms and the challenge of getting out was something she wanted to keep exclusive for herself. It was the very thing she wanted in life, an escape. A way of getting out, because the world she lives in might as well just be one of the many rooms in her dreams. If only one of the doors she’d open would lead to another room, a better reality. It is both comforting and scary, for that would mean that she’s trapped in a dream and uncertain about her reality, yet she would be happy.
---
“I said, ‘Don’t they all? Children and everyone.’ But, this lady, she was serious. She said ‘More than a headache. He will cause you great misfortune in life. Everything you’ve worked hard for will be gone-;”
---
“Things are going well for us Ajaye, maybe even a little too well?”
---
Tagging (no pressure): @authorofstories5 @dyrewrites @moariin @reamous23
Hella late to the party, but thanks for the tag @phynewrites!
I'm supposed to look through my WIP for the words home, quiet, sun, and breeze and post a line that contains each.
(Sorry if you aren't down for tag games) I'm tagging @wmlittlemoreauthor, @ryns-ramblings, and @words-after-midnight. Your words are COVER, FLIES, FIRE, and GREEN
HOME
The power outage was limited to his house alone, it seemed, as every other window along his street glowed with light from inside. He noted with a bit of inward humor that the zombie movies had gotten it right after all; all down the street people stood silhouetted in the door frames of every single home. If it had been zombies, well, there was no doubt about it. They’d all be dead.
QUIET
For several moments Carlos and Ryan were quiet, both looking up at the constellations as if expecting to see some words of guidance written in them.
"It's weird," Ryan said after a minute. "I've never seen the night sky look darker than it is right now, but I don't think it's ever looked brighter, either."
SUN (This one's fun bc my WIP is literally about the Sun going out)
[...] The same sound he also heard every afternoon right after his 4:30 nap.
It was his alarm.
Ryan picked up the phone and tapped STOP beneath a box informing him that it was in fact only 5PM, that his thirty minute nap was over now and he could start working on his article. Dazed, he drifted back to the doorway and joined the rest of the street—the rest of the entire Western Hemisphere—in staring up at the place the sun should have been but wasn’t.
BREEZE
"In less than a week the entire planet is going to have an average surface temperature of just below freezing. Everywhere. And it won't stop there. It'll keep dropping until the last degree of heat radiates out and the planet reaches thermal equilibrium with space. That's negative 450 degrees, in case you weren't aware. So that nice warm breeze you're feeling right now? That's the warmest air you will ever feel again outside for the rest of your life."
Ryan tapped his pen against the empty lines of his notebook while the people of Honey Grove argued over whether or not the world had ended.
Town hall’s main meeting room was spacious and open, filled with the works of local artists hanging on the walls and on displays that made it look more like an art gallery than a government building. A raised platform against the back wall supported a simple wooden podium in front of a Texas state flag and various Fourth of July decorations that would most likely stay up until late August. In front of the platform, rows of metal chairs reached all the way back to the front doors of the building.
Or they had when the meeting started. Once the room began filling up, the chairs were pushed to the far sides of the room to provide more space for people. Now there were close to three hundred people crammed inside, with more lined up on the sidewalk hoping to see what was being said through the windows.
They were the lucky ones, in Ryan’s opinion. They at least had fresh air and space to breathe out there. Inside, standing fans did nothing but move the sour smell of sweat and fear around the room; the smell was almost more oppressive than the collective body heat radiating off of so many people in one enclosed area. And to top it all off was a droning roar that rivaled that of college football stadiums, a blended shouting match of voices all trying to argue louder than their neighbors, as if their point’s validity was based solely on volume.
So far, the gathered crowd had only been able to agree on one thing: the Sun was no longer shining over Texas.
“Folks, please,” Mayor Glenn Howell said yet again into his microphone. Standing behind the podium, the mayor had already tried several times to regain control of this renewed wave of shouting but was so far unsuccessful. Sweat ran down his face and stained the collar of his dress shirt, either from the faltering A/C units or the stress of being in charge of a situation for which there was no protocol. He stared out at the crowd with a distant, haunted expression on his face, like he expected to wake up from this nightmare any minute and find a sunbeam resting against his cheek. Ryan figured his own face had that same detached look of fear and denial, the same desperation that it would all go back to normal if he could just open his eyes. Everyone’s faces did.
The problem was one of information. People were afraid, understandably, but nobody up top had told them they didn’t need to be. Outside of the Emergency Alert Broadcasts that infiltrated TVs around the nation, no facts had been provided by a single government agency. Those broadcasts, with their screeching siren and robotic voice emotionlessly informing citizens to shelter in place until further notice, had done more to terrify the people of Honey Grove than reassure them. As if this were no different than a wind advisory, the broadcast stated that an “Extreme Solar Event” had taken place (whatever that meant) and that more information would follow shortly, but in the four hours since the broadcasts started there hadn’t been any information added, no press briefings from the President or NASA, just total radio silence.
Ryan thought the silence was the scariest part of all of it. The government wasn’t even lying about what had happened. No swamp gas or weather balloon excuses, nobody trying to explain away what had happened to the Sun, nothing. If some well-dressed man in a suit had stood before a hundred cameras and lied through his teeth to everyone in the world, Ryan would have felt better. That would have at least felt normal. Silence meant the people up top were just as shocked and confused as everyone else, which meant they really had no idea what was going on, and that was almost more terrifying than a sky without a Sun.
With no official updates, people were beginning to invent their own narratives to explain the unexplainable, latching onto the first social media post or blog article that offered to make the dark not seem so scary. Which was to be expected, Ryan knew that much from living through the last decade. But it was nothing new, not really. Humans had been doing it since the very beginning, inventing lightning bolt-wielding gods to offer an explanation for the sudden explosions in rainstorms or legends of giant beasts swallowing the Sun to explain solar eclipses. The unknown has always been humanity’s greatest fear, but it’s not all that different today than it was five thousand years ago. Just easier to spread the comforting falsehoods around the world. That was why journalism—good journalism—was so important to have in a healthy society. Being able to separate fact from fiction allowed people to move beyond their fear and focus on the truth, on their lives, and this was only possible if someone was willing to question what they had heard and start looking for answers.
Although he had only been working as a reporter for a few weeks, Ryan hoped he could one day say that his words had had this effect on someone, that one of his articles had banished fear and inspired hope in the mind of at least one other person. It was the reason he had wanted to become a journalist in the first place, why he had moved halfway across the country to accept the first position that accepted his application. And it was why he had answered the phone when the Herald‘s editor asked him to cover Howell’s emergency meeting.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Cheri had called Ryan, but she hadn’t assigned him to the meeting. In fact, she hadn’t assigned anyone to it.
“The Herald is canceled,” she had told him before he had finished saying hello. “Javi and Veronica won’t return my calls and Joanne texted that her family is heading up to their cabin until this blows over. In other words, we don’t have enough writers to keep the paper going. If I were you, I’d head back to Florida before the interstates get too bad.”
Ryan was stunned. Was she serious? At that point it had only been about an hour since the Sun went dark, far too early for people to declare that the apocalypse had arrived. “It’s not the end of the world,” he’d said, the anger in his tone surprising himself more than it did Cheri. He took a breath and tried again. “Whatever this is won’t last forever, it can’t, and in the meantime people need to know what’s going on locally.”
“I agree, but we don’t have the resources to give it to them right now.” Sherry sighed. “Look, I know you’re excited to get your literary feet wet, but now isn’t the time for it. You can have the front-page story on all this when we reopen, I promise. You may be new, but I really do think you have potential. Plus you’re the only one who actually answered the phone. That’s worth something in my book.”
“Then let me cover the meeting,” he begged. “I’ll have a full article ready for print before noon tomorrow. Or we could run an online article—”
“Ryan, no. Go to the meeting and take notes if you want, but the Herald‘s doors will be locked until further notice. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Ryan had tried arguing with her but realized after a few words that she had ended the call. He had almost lost it then, standing there in the dark of his living room surrounded by some half-burned Christmas candles he’d found in a kitchen cabinet, no lights, no power, probably no job now that he’d picked a fight with his boss. His bedroom was destroyed—desktop computer now a scrap heap, bookshelf splintered and surrounded by the corpses of his favorite books, and in his crushed bed slept the front half of a two-ton Toyota. Through his windows he could hear the sounds of car doors slamming as neighbors loaded everything they could into the backseats, as if they could catch up to the Sun if they could just drive long enough.
But this wasn’t something you could run away from, Ryan thought. It was global. As much as he believed it would come back, right now the Sun was gone. He and everyone else on the planet had watched coverage of the event newscasters were referring to as “The Blink.” Without a working TV, Ryan had sat in the dark on his couch and watched videos on his phone of people who had filmed the Sun’s final moments. Each one was the same as the last, the only difference the backdrop. They started with the round disc of the Sun deforming from the top down, morphing from a perfect circle to a semi circle, then to a shrinking crescent that reminded Ryan of the Cheshire Cat’s toothy grin hanging there in the sky, then to a sliver no thicker than a clipped fingernail, and then to nothing at all.
Like an eyelid slowly blinking shut.
Ryan had gone down the various rabbit holes of the Internet in search of more news, but he had found only wild conspiracies and doomsday comment threads that made his heart pound in his throat. Thousands of videos of The Blink circled the globe within minutes as people shared what they’d seen to social media, but the wildest thing was the faked videos that began spreading. Clearly edited clips showing a man in white robes stepping out of the Sun before it vanished, CGI’d alien ships descending on the world and destroying cities, ghostly voices chanting in Arabic from the sky, the list went on. Ryan didn’t get it. There were real, actual videos of the Sun disappearing out of the sky and people were rejecting them in favor of obvious fakes. It was crazy.
And from the way Howell’s emergency meeting had gone so far, crazy was very quickly rising to the forefront of peoples’ minds.
Ryan clicked his pen let its tip hover over the blankness. The pages, thick and smudge-proof, were lined with dots rather than solid lines, but most useful was that additional pages could be “loaded” into the leather cover as needed. He’d gotten the journal as well as four notebooks worth of replacement pages from his grandparents as a going away gift last month, and he loved everything about it. It was the kind of book you felt nervous about writing in, the kind you leave in a drawer and plan to use but never do for fear of ruining its beauty.
Ryan’s pen began scratching across the page.
Town hall was filled to beyond capacity Friday night evening (?) as the people of Honey Grove looked to Mayor Howell for leadership following the mysterious bizarre disappearance of the Sun.
It was a decent opening, he thought, despite the crossed out words. Obviously still needed some fine-tuning, but it was a good enough place to start. Writing the words “disappearance of the Sun” had almost felt too ridiculous to put to paper, but what else could he call what happened?That was about as truthful as he could get on the matter. And Ryan wanted this article to be the clearest representation of the truth, because right now that was what the people of Honey Grove needed most. The pressure to write a story that people would not only read but also learn from had been steadily building over the last two hours, ever since he had grabbed his notebook and pen and headed out the door for the meeting.
What started like any other meeting quickly turned devolved into chaos as questions unanswered by top minds leading scientists remain unsolved, leaving the people of Honey Grove Texas, and the world at large, truly in the dark.
Ryan chewed at the end of his pen. Every article needed a bit of wordplay, right?
Mayor Howell slammed his hands down on the podium hard enough to crack its wooden surface, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the room. “That’s enough!” The crowd fell silent, every face turning toward their otherwise mild-mannered mayor. “Now, if we can’t do this like civilized people, we’re not gonna do it at all. I’ll end the meeting right now and you can all go home and figure it out on your own.” He waited, eyes moving across the people before him as if begging someone to say something. No one did. “Alright. Let’s get this thing back on track. Who has the mic?”
The microphone, found on the floor where it had been forgotten once people had realized shouting was a much quicker way to be heard, passed from hand to hand until it came to a man standing at the front of a group in the middle of the room. Several groups had broken away from the once unified crowd, but the man with the mic belonged to the largest of these by far. He looked to be in his forties, a short, stocky man dressed in camo pants and an olive green shirt that looked about two sizes too small. Despite not having a need for them, a pair of sunglasses dangled from a cord around the man’s neck.
“Darren,” Howell said, gesturing to him, “you have the floor. What’s your question?”
Darren took the mic and switched it on. “My question is what you’re planning on doing to keep the town safe while all this is going on.”
Howell nodded, slipping back into the role of politician without hesitation. “I can assure you, Honey Grove is in absolutely no danger at this moment. Our grocery stores are fully stocked and between the two gas stations in town, fuel will not be—”
“I’m not talking about supplies,” Darren cut in. “I’m talking about safe. Secure. From enemies foreign and domestic.”
The mayor glanced around the room, waiting for some indication that this was a joke, but nobody laughed. The people surrounding Darren only nodded in agreement with him. “Sorry, Mr. Turner, but I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean Russia. Or China. Korea.” Darren said. “People are saying this is the first step in an attack on U.S. soil. A distraction to keep us all looking up at the sky while they send in troops.”
“Well,” Howell said carefully, “I haven’t heard any official reports about that, but I can assure—”
“Well you won’t,” Darren said. “The media’s keeping it all quiet so we won’t have the chance to prepare. That’s why the news isn’t covering it. We need to be ready.”
Ryan frowned and stopped writing. He knew he had a duty to be an unbiased and professional journalist, especially at a time like this, but he also wanted nothing more than to ask Darren—
“How the hell did you hear about it, then?” The voice belonged to a woman toward the back of the room. Ryan bit back his smile and looked for her, but there were too many people in his way.
Darren’s jaw muscles tightened but he ignored her question. “We need a plan in place in case someone starts parachuting in soldiers or dropping bombs.”
The woman fired back at him, her voice audible even without a microphone. “This isn’t Red Dawn. We need to worry about what’s actually happening, not YouTube conspiracy theories.”
“One at a time, Miss Rivera,” Howell warned. He turned his attention back to Darren. “I have every confidence that our military can defend us against any threat that might come our way. Besides,” he gave a rehearsed little laugh and flashed a too-white smile, “I’m willing to bet we have more guns in this room than all the military bases outside Texas. I think we’ll be just fine, Darren. Next question?”
The microphone reluctantly made its way out of Darren’s group and to a more scattered one to the side of the room, where it ended in the hands of a younger man no older than twenty. The rising chatter of the room died down as he cleared his throat. “I don’t think we need to get ready for war,” he said nervously, gaining a few nods from around the room that seemed to raise his confidence. “We need to attempt to respond.”
Ryan again stopped writing, knowing exactly where the kid was going with his thought.
Howell, clearly unfamiliar with the Internet theories Ryan had read through a few hours earlier, shook his head in confusion. “Respond?”
“It wasn’t natural,” the kid said, voice low. “I saw it. Didn’t you? The Sun didn’t just go out, something moved in front ofit, some kind of giant round thing. What if it was a ship? No, wait, just hear me out. Shouldn’t we try to say something to them so they know we see them?”
The people who had been nodding with the kid seconds earlier immediately stopped. Howell didn’t attempt to hide his laugh, but motioned for him to pass the microphone on. “I don’t think aliens did this, son, but if they did, I’m sure NASA has already sent them a greeting card.”
The microphone embarked on another journey around the room, stopping briefly at more islands of insanity before sailing off to the next in line. People discussed setting up an armed guard to patrol Honey Grove, contacting the National Guard to request soldiers, even blocking the highways leading into town just in case, and Mayor Howell shot down each of these ideas with a surprising amount of patience.
Ryan held his hand up several times as the microphone traveled, but it never came his way. Howell saw him, he had to have, but not once did the mayor make eye contact or tell the people to pass it to him. This would have bothered Ryan if he’d had any questions worth asking, but truth be told he didn’t. Howell had already “answered” some similar ones asked by other people in the room, though his response always came in the form of considering the question for a moment and then simply saying, “We’ll just have to wait on an official update to really know. Next?”
Near the end of the meeting, the microphone came to an older lady with thick glasses and a puff of white hair. She stood in another group of people, not quite as large as Darren’s but probably a close runner up. “Yes, I only wanted to take the time to invite everyone to come down to the church for our potluck dinner when this meeting ends.” She smiled. “We will be keeping our doors open and lights shining bright for as long as we can, all the way up until the Sun’s return.”
Ryan thought this was a very nice and optimistic outlook on the day until the people of her group let loose a chorus of enthusiastic amens, and then he realized she had said “Son’s return,” not “Sun’s.”
Surely there was at least one other person in Honey Grove who expected daylight to return without an apocalypse. Out of everyone who had a turn at the microphone, the sanest person in the room so far seemed to be the kid who wanted to send smoke signals to the alien ship blocking the Sun. At least he had formed a theory from what he had witnessed with his own eyes, crazy as that theory was.
The microphone bounced around the room for another half hour, landing at people with various concerns and ideas for what the town should do. Some were rational, such as questions about if martial law would be imposed (“Not in Honey Grove, but let’s be smart about things. Next question.”) and operating hours for the town’s grocery store (“Up to the store owner. Next.”). There were a few more irrational concerns as well, such as one older man who used his time to state that the President, who he knew without a doubt to be behind the Sun’s disappearance, should be hanged as soon as possible for his crime. Another began rapidly reciting verses from Revelation until the microphone was taken from him by a town hall security guard. One woman asked if laws still applied in the state of Texas, which roused a good bit of suspicion toward her from the others in the room. But overall, the meeting came to a close peacefully but, in Ryan’s view, unsatisfactorily. Not much had actually been answered, and Howell had spent half the time glancing down at his phone, patience clearly running thin.
“Alright,” he eventually said, clapping his hands together. “How about we wrap this up for the night? If it’s still dark by sunrise tomorrow morning, we’ll hold another meeting to start thinking about—”
“Excuse me?” The same woman who had confronted Darren was now waving her arm in the air. Ryan could see her now and he was shocked to find she was in her mid-forties, streaks of white in her black hair, far from the beret-wearing, fist raised in the air college student he had pictured when she first spoke out.
Howell sighed. “Yes, Miss Rivera?”
“Oh, good, you can see me.”
In the crowd, Darren snorted. “Can hear you, too, unfortunately.” Several people laughed.
“Do you have a question?” Howell asked.
“Yeah,” Rivera said. She still didn’t have a microphone but that didn’t stop her voice from carrying throughout the large room. “What are you planning to do about the cold?”
Howell smiled and looked around. “Miss Rivera, it is currently in the high 90s.”
“Currently,” she emphasized. “But if the Sun really is gone, it’s not going to stay that way for long.”
“As I’ve said before, we don’t know that the Sun is gone. This might just be another eclipse like the one we had a few months ago. You remember that, I’m sure. It got dark over the whole town, just like this, but the Sun came right back after a while.”
“Less than a minute later,” Rivera said, then shook her head. “This isn’t an eclipse. Those aren’t this dark and they don’t last for four hours. If the Sun’s really gone, we have a very small window of time to prepare before the world starts getting cold. And I mean very—”
“Hold on a minute,” Darren turned to face her. “If memory serves, last time you came to a meeting all you did was bitch and moan about the world being too hot.” He looked around and grinned. “Sounds like your problem’s solved, Doc.”
More people laughed, but Rivera’s eyes glowed with a heat that could have melted steel. When she spoke, her voice was calm and steady. “The last time I came to a meeting, the Sun was still in the sky. I’m sure even you can understand that the Sun warms the Earth.”
Darren only smiled back at her. “I can understand how those solar panels on your roof work, and I can understand what it means for your batteries when the Sun don’t shine. Bet you regret going green, now, huh?” The people in his group erupted in laughter.
“Okay, Darren, that’s enough,” Howell called out over the returning chaos of the room. He looked up from his phone. “This meeting is over. We’ll meet again tomorrow at two.”
People began wandering toward the doors at the back of the room, their voices rising again in volume, though not in anger. Ryan glanced down at his notebook, at the mostly useless lines of text that covered the page. He’d written down most of what people had said, but even so there wasn’t much to make an article out of. At least not anything substantial.
Howell gathered his things from the podium and started toward a hallway at the side of the room. Heart pounding, Ryan saw his final opportunity to get a few noteworthy quotes before the day was done. “Excuse me,” he called, following after him.
The mayor didn’t stop walking. “Yes?”
“Care if I ask you some questions for the paper?”
Howell frowned at him. “What paper?”
“The Herald. Here in town.”
“Cheri told me she was temporarily shutting down.”
“She is, but she said I could write a story on what’s happening,” Ryan said, which wasn’t really a lie.
“Good for you,” Howell said, “but I really don’t have time for . . .” His gaze shifted behind Ryan and he groaned. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Rivera walked past Ryan like he wasn’t even there and jabbed a finger at Howell. “People are going to die if you don’t get your shit together.”
“Language. And how many times do we have to go through this same conversation after a meeting?”
“As many as it takes for you to start listening.”
Howell glanced down at his phone, sighed, and began typing something. He spoke as his thumbs moved, voice distracted and uneven. “I will hear . . . whatever concerns you have . . . at tomorrow’s meeting, but right now I’m . . . very busy.”
“With what?” Rivera demanded.
Howell’s thumbs paused and his head snapped up, lip twitching. “Look around you! The whole town is coming apart at the seams! People are packing up and leaving, I’ve got over a dozen car accidents all over town, and half the rescue squad won’t even answer their phones.” He held his own phone up for her to see and Ryan caught a glimpse of what looked like an electronics store, its windows shattered and displays empty. “That’s Al’s Computer Corner,” Howell said. “Apparently someone broke in half an hour ago and robbed him blind. I can’t get in touch with any of our police officers to investigate it so I’m instead sending two of town hall’s security guards.” He lowered his voice and shook his head. “They’re glorified mall cops, for Christ’s sake, not detectives. I know you and Darren don’t see eye to eye on most things, but he may have been on to something about calling in the Guard. We don’t have the manpower to deal with what’s happening, and I fear it’s only going to get worse. If people start looting the necessities . . .”
Rivera’s shoulders dropped. “That was fast.”
“Yeah,” Howell agreed. “People are starting to panic, and panic leads to irrational behavior. So you telling the whole town that we’re all going to freeze to death isn’t exactly helping.”
“Even if it’s the truth?”
“Especially if it’s the truth,” he hissed. “The town needs to feel safe right now. Not terrified.” He shook his head, eyes drifting back toward the now empty town hall room. “It felt like we were preparing for war during that meeting, not nightfall. Now please, I’m wearing about ten different hats as it is and I don’t have time to play Q&A with the two of you. Go home.” Howell turned and disappeared down the hallway, ignoring Rivera as she called after him.
She sighed and crossed her arms after he was gone, then glanced back at Ryan as if noticing him for the first time. “Sorry, who are you?”
Ryan closed his notebook. “I’m a reporter. Or I was when I woke up this morning.” He pocketed his pen and rubbed his face. How was it only 9PM? It felt like it was going on two in the morning.
“You write for the Honey Grove Herald?” Rivera asked.
“Technically no,” he said, “at least not yet. I’ve only been in town a few weeks, and I spent most of that time being a glorified errand boy for the actual writers. Now they all think the world’s ending and ran for the hills, so lucky for me I’m the only one left at the Herald who can write anything. Unlucky for me, though, I have no idea how to even start writing about this.”
“Have you written any articles before?”
He nodded. “A few for my grad school newspaper. Mostly about whatever flashy event was going down on campus. Easy stuff. Not–” he glanced toward the doors “–this.”
She studied his face for a few seconds, gears turning behind her dark brown eyes. “What would you need to write the story?”
Ryan shrugged. “Half an hour with Howell? Just enough time to ask a few questions and get some straightforward answers, anything to give this town at least some idea of what’s going on so they’re not so afraid. But I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.”
“It’s not.” Rivera said, like she knew firsthand that the mayor wasn’t the type to waste time with news interviews. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “But what if you interviewed me?”
“I appreciate the offer,” Ryan said, genuinely touched by her willingness to help him, “but I can’t just interview random people off the street. I have to use people with relevant credentials, government officials, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing personal,” Ryan quickly added. “I just don’t think my editor would be too happy if I brought her a story that didn’t come from a quote unquote reputable source.”
“Right, of course,” Rivera said, but there was something in the way she said it, like someone waiting for the punchline to sink in after telling a joke. And she was looking at Ryan like he was the one who still didn’t get it.
He smiled uncomfortably and tilted his head. “What am I missing?”
She reached for the small backpack around her shoulders and shrugged. “A more feminist upbringing, maybe?” A few seconds passed while she dug around for something, then pulled out a laminated card on a lanyard and held it up for Ryan to read.
Oh. Oh. He had never felt more stupid in his life.
Dr. Katherine Rivera, professor of astrophysics and climate science at the University of North Texas, returned the ID badge to her bag and smiled at Ryan’s dumbstruck expression. “So how about that interview?”
Sorry it took so long to post. Been in a bit of a writing rut over the last few weeks and making words (or even copying them over from my main site) was simply not happening
share a little about your favourite novel of all time! give us some reasons why you love it, ramble on for a bit. i am going to ramble, so go absolutely feral about it. i don't mind. i don't think anyone else does either.
also tag some others who you think would love to participate!
tagging: @stesierra, @anonymousfoz, @olivescales3, @hallwriteblr, @asher-orion-writes, @wrenibimben, & @reamous23 - no pressure to participate of course!! anyone else feel free to join in too!
it's probably not surprising to hear my favourite novel of all time is house of leaves by mark z. danielewski!!
okay. so for real i would not have written the art of betrayal, my own published novel, without house of leaves. i got my copy for my 15th birthday, and a day later, i started writing taob!
sure, it's not a book for everyone, but it was certainly a book for me. sure, there are skippable parts (ie. johnny every time he has a one-night-stand because im ace and can't stand it). and sure it's confusing but OUGHHH THIS BOOK
hi yes i am planning to get at least five (5) passages of this novel tattooed on me at some point in my life. its construction as a visual storyteller is unmatched, and the dark recesses that this narrative reaches is pretty unparalleled.
my absolute favourite thing about it is that the novel is written almost as if it's examining itself. which is so bizarre. especially when you are reminded that this was danielewski's debut novel and he would have had no idea the cultural impact it would have, and yet here the novel is talking about becoming ingrained into the country's cultural experience.
okay ramble over
tldr: i love house of leaves nearly all of the time but not so much when johnny truant (the protag) is horny
Hmm. I honestly don't know what my favorite novel is, but there are a few I've intentionally re-read so those are definitely up there on the list. My most recent re-read is Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
This book is rough. It's hopeless. Dark. Dreary. A borderline instant dose of depression each time you turn the page.
He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then the distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.
One of my favorite things about this book has less to do with the story and more to do with McCarthy's writing style. He uses short sentences and fragments that make you pause while reading, kind of like you're in the headspace of the Man observing the ruined world. Then there's the vocabulary. Archaic words like "salitter," which I had to do quite a bit of googling to find the meaning of (it's from a 17th century German mystic and used to mean essentially the "essence of God"). I just love McCarthy's writing voice. It's so distinct and ancient and unusual.
Another thing I like has to do with the story itself. Because the writing tone can be very dark and hopeless, it can be dangerous to read if you're feeling low or depressed already. But if you know how to read it and what to look for, it can be the exact opposite.
The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.
Pretty dark, right? But think of it with reference to now. All those things the Man and Boy have lost are here with us in our world. That fragile world exists all around us and we can see the birds and feel the warmth of the Sun and observe life every time we step outside. It's said that you don't realize the value of something until it's gone, and by reading The Road we have the chance to experience that loss without actually losing it, which (for me, anyway) highlights the value I might not otherwise notice.
Our world is beautiful and colorful and so fragile. Every time I read this book I think about that.
Then there's the more obvious hope McCarthy offers. It isn't much and it isn't common, but it is there. Just like real hope.
[the Man:] You have to carry the fire.
[the Boy:] I don't know how to.
Yes, you do.
Is the fire real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I don't know where it is.
Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.
It might not seem like it, but hope is always there. We just have to be able to see it and recognize it for what it is. Especially in our current time, a time when wildfires rage and temperature records are broken every other day. We're living in a world so close to seeing that salitter dry up and vanish. A world where colors are fading and beauty is going extinct all around us, but even so we have the chance to make sure it doesn't happen. We can make sure our world doesn't become the world of The Road if we decide to do something about it. In that way, McCarthy's book provides hope by indirectly pointing this out. Here's what you could lose and what the world could look like one day. Don't let it happen.
Yeah, so I didn't mean to rant this long but once I got going my useless English degrees took hold and I entered "final paper mode." Check out this book if you get the chance to. It's dark and I cry basically every time I read it, but it makes me better appreciate the world we live in. And that's what good literature should always strive to do.
Tagging a few people to continue the game and carry the fire: @wmlittlemoreauthor @stesierra @winterandwords
How would you like to see the book I can't publish? It's a book about disability and societal injustice and gay teenagers and terrible diseases. I'm proud of it but I wrote it in a time before OwnVoices and I don't want to take money away from writers who actually are physically disabled. But maybe it's okay to share it for free. YA fantasy that would definitely be banned in Florida.
CAST OUT
CHAPTER ONE
The smell was like nothing I'd ever encountered. It filtered through the hood of my cloak and the silk mask over my nose and mouth, and it filled my lungs the way the sun fills your eyes when you stare at it.
On my shoulders, my parents' hands weighed heavy and warm. My father's trembled.
I was not trembling. I was sixteen today. Full-aged. Full-aged women walked with their heads held high and uncovered. They looked at the world around them, at anything they liked, without worrying they'd see something that would blight a growing mind.
It wasn't gawking to stare around at the gold-plated columns, the silk-draped ceiling, and the obsidian stairs. It was being adult.
We mounted the stairs, my parents a step ahead of me.
At the top, sentinels framed the ivory entrance. Straight whole tusks made up the door, each twice my height and lashed together with silver wire. As we reached the top landing, the sentinels seized silver handles and pulled. They moved like mirrors.
The doors swung wide. A fire smoldered in the entryway, set in a grate lined with silver fish. We walked around it, onto a tiled platform that stretched into the heart of a triangular chamber. Down below, twelve robed men and women sat cross-legged on the floor. White triangles of linen capped their heads.
The Justry.
I took a deep breath. The smell was stronger here. It was a mineral scent, but sweet, almost cloying. I felt a little dizzy.
My parents' hands squeezed my shoulders. Then Father pulled my cloak away. Mother stripped off my mask. For the first time outside of my home, I stood exposed in nothing but my linen camise and baggy calsounds, which belled out all the way down to my slippers. My scalp felt the kiss of fresh air, even with my black hair braided and bound tight to my head. I stood proudly. I wore my best clothes, dyed red with madder and embroidered by Father's hand. I'd even scraped the paint from under my nails.
When my parents returned to my side, smoke choked the air, and the cloak and mask were gone. I would never wear them again. I wanted to skip and jump, but the eyes of the Justry were on me.
The youngest of the Justry rose, a woman no more than seventeen. The justa's skin was the same brown as the powdered cuttlefish ink Mother bought me. A touch lighter than my own.
The woman spoke, but I fixed my eyes on the crimson pillow she held. On the pillow sat a little golden jar.
Mother nudged me. I looked up.
The justa's mouth moved with ritual words Mother had already taught me. "As I have seen revelations, dear one, and been made pure, so will you. The first revelations are always the strongest." She smiled, revealing teeth a shade brighter than her white lip salve. "Are you ready?"
I nodded.
The justa reached down with white-nailed hands and lifted the golden lid. I caught a glimpse of a little cone, which sent up tendrils of glowing green like the essence of life itself. Oracle ore.
Then the smell caught me.
It swept me out of my body and up to the ceiling and through it, like I was no more substantial than a soul. It sparkled and churned and danced in my lungs, and I danced and churned and sparkled in the air above the city, a leaf on the wind. A grain of sand being melted to glass.
I felt as though I could shatter.
Lights burst behind my eyes like lost stars, and they showed me wonders that flashed by so fast I missed half of them. Underground caverns and winding tunnels that burned with their own greenish light. Gold-fronted mansions that lined the curve of a manicured hill. Huge automas, in shapes of animal and human and nothing living, with joints that moved smooth as oil. Their intricate, glowing guts.
A pale-faced woman with a jutting chin and stub nose, her low cheeks framed by mousy brown hair. Her eyes were the green of malachite pigment and old copper and the little cone evanescing on the pillow in front of me.
I fell into them.
I fell into myself.
I knelt between my parents on the platform. I had not moved except to fall. The justas still surrounded us, and the woman with white lip salve had replaced the lid on the golden jar.
Her smile at me was tender. I was too dazed to read her lips, but I could envision in signs what she said; Mother had drilled it into me. "Well? Child, tell us of what you have seen, and be welcome to adulthood."
I let my parents haul me to my feet. My knees felt like pudding. I closed my eyes, and Mother and Father steadied me with their hands.
"It was amazing," I said to the justa. And I laughed. "It was beautiful. More beautiful than anything I've ever seen. And the taste– it was like waterfalls in the mountains, or the way a diamond must taste. I've never seen either, but I've read–"
Mother's hand clamped down on my shoulder. Father's had fallen away. Something was happening. Something was wrong. I opened my eyes.
The justa's mouth was moving. I'd missed the first part of the sentence. But I read the last of it on her lips and guessed the rest. "–She will be cast out."
My hands clenched in dismay. "What? No, you can't! I saw the revelations! I saw!" I needed to taste it again. I needed the justa to lift the cover over that little glowing cone and let me suck its magic into my lungs.
The justa shrouded the golden case with a sleeve and stared at me with narrowed eyes. "Silence your child, perfectas. Her voice saddens this body."
Mother pulled me close. She spoke – her chest reverberated against my back – but I couldn't see, even without my hood. My eyes had frozen on the justa's mouth. I caught every twitch of her lips, as though I had known and read her face for years.
The justa replied, "She is an imperfecta. The law has no leeway." Her eyes turned towards Father. He must have said something. "Take comfort. There are always miracles. Perhaps the Great Unknowns will hear your prayers and cure her."
I set my jaw. "I don't need to be cured. There's nothing wrong with me."
The justa ignored me. "You may have one night with her before she is escorted from the city. With our blessings."
A drop splashed the back of my neck. Mother was crying.
The justa lifted a hand. "Walk in perfection."
My parents led me away.
#
They didn't speak to me until we were home, inside our own entry chamber, which I'd painted myself a year ago. I stopped just over the threshold, brushed by the draft of the door swinging shut behind me. My hands swept the air, agitated, too fast. "They aren't really going to make me leave, are they?"
My parents turned towards me. Tears glistened in the cracks of wrinkles that hadn't been there that morning. "Zisha," Mother said, her hands cupping my face. Was this the last time I'd see my name on her lips?
"They can't throw me out," I signed. "Not just because I talk strangely."
Father and Mother exchanged mournful glances. Father signed, "Little bird, they knew it wasn't only your voice."
"Just because I'm deaf? Because I can't hear?"
Mother stepped back, freeing her hands. Her fingers twitched a subdued answer. "Yes, dear one."
My face felt hot and sticky. Tears ran down my cheeks. "All those years you spent coaching me on how to talk properly, how to read lips. They were for nothing?"
Father signed, "We hoped your training would fool them. But–"
"It didn't."
"You have a beautiful voice, dear one," Mother signed.
"The Justry didn't think so."
Mother bit her lip. "They are all fools."
I signed, "Tell them I'll stay inside. I won't take revelations again. No one needs to see me–"
"They know you are here now," Father signed. "They won't let you hide."
I swallowed. Sniffed. "It isn't fair."
Father shook his head. "I will pack a bag for you, little bird. Go pick your favorite books from the library." He strode away, his back as stiff as the benches lining the entry hall.
I sank into one and signed weakly, "He's thinking of books? Now?"
"You will want them," Mother signed. "You will not find any outside the Plenary Cities. They cannot read, out there."
"Can they even paint?"
"Not like you, love."
I hugged my knees to my chest, pressed my face against them. Tried my voice. "I don't want to go there."
Her hand brushed my back, but I did not look to see her reply. I didn't want to see it.
Illuminated only by the ruby red glow of astronomy lamps, a group of twenty-one tourists wandered between the observatory’s public telescopes with their eyes fixed on the stars above them. For those who came from the surrounding cities, this was their first time seeing more than a handful of stars in the night sky. One family had even made the trip from London for their chance to see the stars up close and personal, and simply being able to see the Milky Way spanning the sky had been a source of complete astonishment for them. As the student host of the night’s public astronomy event, Becca Simmons loved nothing more than to show people just how beautiful the firmament really was.
Most of this beauty was due to the Observatory Science Centre’s remote location all the way out in Herstmonceux, which meant light pollution from cities didn’t have the chance to wash out the night’s darkness. Phones also were forbidden on the grounds, which forced people to focus on what was in front of them. But more than that, Becca thought the sky had particularly lived up to its designation of “heaven” tonight, not just the result of the observatory’s remoteness, but of perfectly cloudless weather, a waxing half-moon still far beneath the horizon, and stable, non-turbulent atmospheric temperatures. Getting all three of these conditions at the same time was like hitting all 7s in an astronomical slot machine—in the year or so Becca had worked as an assistant for the observatory, she had only seen such conditions one other time. The fact she was able to host such a perfect viewing night for her final astronomy event before the semester started made her feel like she really had hit the jackpot.
Then again, just being able to work for an observatory was a jackpot all on its own. With a year left in her undergraduate, Becca was beyond fortunate to have landed the position at such an esteemed astronomical institution. It had started as a simple job shadowing opportunity but, thanks to a good word from her mentor at the university, the staff at the Science Centre had been open to accepting her as a member of the team. An assistant paid only in work experience, of course, but it meant she was part of the Centre’s family and could therefore use the facility whenever she wanted, free of charge. She’d spent countless nights beneath the stars in this very viewing area, her only company the telescope her parents had bought her and a playlist of classical music streaming through her earbuds. Nights like those made her feel like she stood in a cathedral the size of the universe, completely alone but somehow not lonely, as if God himself had silently wandered onto the yard just behind her to take a good look at his creation.
snowghoul
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
