Super-Automatic ("A Day In The Life", from Making Shapely Fiction)

On Saturdays, Caribou was always the busiest store in Southdale. Every truly sophisticated Edina shopper needed a designer latte to sip whilst perusing through their beloved department stores. Naturally, the place was abuzz behind the counter. Steel on steel chimed and clanked as milk steamed and coffee brewed into huge metal carafes. Laughs sounded through the open kiosk and into the mall as eccentric Baristas attempted to create a lively workplace.
Then, suddenly and as if by instinct, every twenty-something worker-bee grew silent and looked to the floor. Patrick had arrived.

"Two large double-moosed iced lattes, no ice in the drink, ice to the side." And the order was up. He didn't need to say it; didn't need to add his pretentious stress on the second syllable of latte. They knew.

In her corporate-standardized polo shirt and ponytail, Sarah watched nervously as rich brown espresso poured down into little steel pitchers. They always seemed to take ages longer than necessary. Often, the shots were what slowed her down; what kept the suburbanite customers anxious to get back to their endless shopping; what made them judgemental of her character. Fuck! They don't get it. I can't make this many drinks with two machines, she often thought to herself, wondering how it could be that one of their three glorious machines was perpetually broken. The order screen flashed bright green as Sarah attempted to speed up Caribou's sub-par, barely-functioning "super-automatic!" espresso-creators through telekinesis. This was not an artful career. To give this job the title of "Barista", Sarah thought to herself as she grew more and more impatient with each of the machines, was, by far, an unjustifiable glorification. Twelve shots - push the button six times. Pour milk. Espresso. Cap drink. This was a wage-slave's life.

"Make sure to add the milk first. I don't want a melted cup." Patrick snapped with a tone of authority.

"Mhm!" Sarah replied, forcing a smile as she turned to stare at the middle-aged regular. Even with all the required smiles, she knew he would never forgive her for her first shot at those damned lattes over a year ago.

Long ago, Sarah dreamed of a life far more successful than this. Scholar. Artist. English major. Ivy Leagues. Now, at 22, she was struggling to finish her generals in community college without help or sympathy from loved ones.

Most days, she made her job mindless and shut herself off from the terrible corporate-ness of the job. She arrived, tied on her apron, punched in and started timing the shots. She had become super-automatic herself. She did what she was programmed to do, went home, abandoned study, drank herself to sleep and started the cycle over once more in the morning. At this point, Sarah no longer cared about the pursuit of happiness. Now, those sluggish espresso shots seemed to stand in her way more than anything else.

The Menu

What makes you angry?

Careless grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes.

Nagging.

Misunderstanding.

Inability to explain on my part.

Inability to articulate.

Malevolence.

Irrational behavior.

Incompetence.

My mom.

What are you afraid of?

The future. My future.

A life in poverty.

Pain.

Stress.

Romantic relationships.

My dad.

My brother, for becoming my dad.

What hurts?

Memories of living with my dad.

Memories involving my family.

Memories of past relationships.

The past in general.

Careless mistakes.

A loss of hope.

What really changed you?

First, working 30 hours a week during last year, my Junior year (of high school), while living with my father - a careless, detached, malevolent, abusive, newly-unemployed, newly-un-medicated bipolar fiend. Coming home at 11pm most weeknights to desolation and recklessness. Being terrified of him - being terrified of the future - for not having a job. Becoming completely financially independent against my will. Hating every piece of my life more and more as the days dragged on. Having less and less power over my situation. Falling farther and farther behind in school. Slowly losing all hope for the distant future. Losing hope for getting into a good school. Losing hope for a decent career. Losing hope for happiness. Once a straight-A student with high hopes for Berkeley, Carleton, Boston University, I became a hopeless, sorry, self-pitying wage slave at the age of sixteen.

On top of that, being arrested the spring of that year (that is, spring 2009) after assault on my father's part and his consequent delirious lies. Spending five hours in an detached iron-walled cell in a Juvenile Intake Center in downtown Minneapolis. Not knowing where I was going next. Not knowing how long I had been there. Crying, bawling for hours and hours with no answers, no compassion. There was dried, caked blood smeared on the walls. I became temporarily insane. I reasoned for a long time and came to the conclusion that suicide would soon be my only reasonable option for an end to the madness. I forced myself to envision my best friend, Ben, as vividly as possible, with his rough, black beard and bright pink mohawk, hugging me tightly and telling me it was going to be okay, that I was loved. I cried. I cried. I cried.

Later, I was handcuffed again and taken to a Juvenile Detention Center. I spent a tearful, sleepless, shameful night there, hating myself between the tears and beginning to believe my dad's horrible, horrible lies. I thought I was a monster. The entire time I was there, I forgot I was the victim. My entire life changed very quickly after this.

(Yuck. I'm sorry. Dramatic stuff.)

The Art of Oblivion ("Iceberg" from Making Shapely Fiction)

So, I realize that both characters are probably supposed to be argumentative/angry, but I enjoyed how this strategy panned out, so I'm keeping it this way.

"You know, I think it's impeccable. Her eyes never move, yet she's always watching you." Hubert commented slyly as he strolled through The Musée du Louvre, Anne-Marie dutifully following at his side. "Back when I was in Harvard, my art history teacher used to tell us how..."

Anne-Marie anxiously fiddled with her necklace, trying to decipher his words as they floated through space and made attempts to register in her consciousness. Her icy blue eyes filled with white hot tears. He's a fool. A damn fool. "Yes, she's beautiful... Mhm, you're right... Oh, I didn't notice that before..." Somehow she managed not to scream these words in his face. I don't want to be here with him. I don't ever want to be anywhere with him.

After the fifth lackluster night in Paris with Hubert, Anne-Marie had decided that she'd had enough. She was beginning to realize that her simple adolescent fantasy had suddenly revealed itself as a sham right before her eyes, and all five years too late. Hubert was one of those "culturally-enriched" intellectuals who always had something more intriguing to talk about than your topic of conversation. Long ago, this was charming. Many years previous to that night, Anne-Marie visualized running away with Hubert and spending their life together in a little dwelling in the south of France. Now, he was hideous. Everything about his personality wreaked of pretension and baselessness. As the days progressed, he became more and more visually disgusting to her, and it was a constant struggle for Anne-Marie to stay passive and submissive.

Oh, she's intrigued. She loves me, I know she does. And she's so lucky to have met me. Such a simple girl. We'll make a beautifully contrasting couple. Hubert mused as he fingered the massive diamond fastened to the ring he kept in his pocket that night. And what of her parents? They'll be so proud. Their son-in-law. A Harvard Law graduate. "Oh and oh my! The Death of Sardanapalus! Such an interesting historical value to this, don't you think, dear? And look at the detail!"

Hubert's words sounded like lines from a terrible, cheesy movie. Anne-Marie's stomach began to churn. How does he not see how livid I am with him right now? I must be completely flushed. Has he even so much as glanced at me all night? Her face was flushed, as a matter of fact. So flushed, in fact, that other tourists began to eye Anne-Marie in what appeared to be fear. Still, Hubert didn't notice. "Hubert, I don't feel well." She managed to produce as she began to perspire with rage. There must be a way out of here. I can't take another second of this.

Well, she'd better get better. Hubert thought selfishly as he gazed at the intricacies of the frame to a piece of history. He anxiously tapped the marble floors with his freshly-polished wing-tips and began to resent Anne-Marie for jeopardizing the plans. "Hm? Oh, you'll get better, darling. Maybe it's jet-lag. Or maybe you're just swooning over me," he added with genuine satisfaction. Charming and funny. How could she say no?

Anne-Marie was now entirely certain that she was finally through with Hubert. "I think you should feel my forehead. Do I have a temperature?" Turn around and look at me, you egotistical pig! Her eyes burned with fury as she stared fervently at the back of Hubert's hideous olive-tinted suit.

Oh, God. Can't you handle just five more minutes? Are you really that uncultured? "You know, we're almost all the way through. We came a long way for this." Hubert smiled as he turned to meet Anne-Marie's gaze. He looked her in the eyes a moment and turned around once more without noticing a thing. What a child! She thinks she can just ruin our night at The Louvre because she's feeling under the weather? Hah! Oh, if Jemaine was here to see this! Such a beautiful sight. Yet such a pity to be wasting the night with a child. That's just how women are, I suppose. Always wanting attention and power and little presents...


Completely absorbed in his own thoughts, Hubert had failed to recognize the swift slither of Anne-Marie's silk dress and the serious tap-tap-tap of her Italian designer pumps as she briskly and pointedly walked away from him. I'll go back to the hotel and I'll get all of my belongings. He probably won't even bother to catch up to me. I'll find another place to stay and I'll trade in my plane ticket. He'll never look for me again. He doesn't have to.


A few minutes later, once Hubert distracted himself from his thoughts and resumed commenting on all his favorite paintings, he realized that there were no reassuring remarks or little praises coming from behind him. He turned, horrified and shocked, to find a cluster of tourists staring back at him with confusion. He dug his hands into his pockets and turned around, unable to think. He pushed past the crowd and felt for the ring in his pocket. His pride and joy. It's here. They're just deep pockets. ...Well, I can't lose both in one night. But he had lost his girl and his glory that night. They were gone.

Hostility (A Story in Under An Hour)

"Fuck."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know if I can keep doing this. It's killing me."

"You can get over it."

"It's broken. All of it."

"What is?"

"My life. I can't fix this. Everywhere I go, this will follow me... It's God damn freezing in this place."

"Don't say that. Please don't say that. You can get through this. I can help you as soon as you get back on your feet. You'll never be without-"

"No, don't fucking say that, Anna. You don't know what the future will hold. People don't like drug addicts, even if they've gone through "recovery". I won't have a job, I won't have a house, my family won't fucking talk to me. I swear to God, there's just no way out. I'm going to start using as soon as I get out. I know it, because that's how I got into all of this. I don't have anything else to enjoy."

"You can stay with me and Thom. You still have friends. We love you and we're just waiting for a chance to help you."

"No, that's not how it is. You know it isn't. The friends I had when I checked in here just talked to me because they wanted crystal meth. The friends I had before that stopped hanging out with me the minute I started doing all this bullshit, and I'm not-"

"Well God damn it, you have me. Why would I be sitting here right now if I didn't care deeply about you? You have Thom. You have your sister. Don't be difficult. Just get through this. You know you're stronger than this. Stop being such an ass."

"You don't understand. You don't understand how much it hurts. Physically. How much it aches and burns. You don't understand what its like to be taking all of those pills. All I see here is white. Everywhere. When I wake up. Everywhere I go. Nothing has meaning or depth or light. Everything is empty. Even the faces here are blank. You don't know how hard it is to push myself to stay in reality."

"You haven't been living in reality for the past five years of your life, Jack! If you could somehow push yourself through that, you can get through rehab. Your problem is that you want to act tough, but you're just making yourself out to be a stubborn sunofabitch."

"Yeah, that's me. Why are you here? What is this going to do? Give me hope that I'll push through all of this? I don't want to fucking be here."

"You have no other options. If you use any drugs one more time, you'll likely die. Is that what you want?"

"Why should I push through this if there's nothing on the other side?! What good am I, dead or alive?"

"You matter to me. That's what I'm telling you. Arguments or no, I've fucking been here for you. For as long as I've known you, I've been there. And up until five years ago, you've been there for me. I intend to keep doing this until the end. There's just about nothing you can do to stop me. I care about you more than most people I know."

"Mm. Yeah, that's nice. Guilt won't see me through this though. Sorry."

"You're going to get through this."

"Bullshit."

"You're going to do it, and you're going to do it for me."

"I'd rather die."

"You don't mean that."

"I do. You can cry if you want, but death is better than this. I'd rather have sheer darkness than blank white walls everywhere."

"Fuck you."

Two minutes, guys. Let's wrap it up.

"I'm going to call you every day, and you're going to tell me how much it fucking hurts. How cold it is. How alone you are. If you don't pick up, I'm going to come here myself. If you refuse to see me, I'll wait here until you get your shit together."

"Jesus. Good luck."

"Same to you. Get some sleep tonight, you need it."

"You do the same. Don't stay up all night underneath Tommy, like I know you kids do."

"This is why you're going to get through this. My best friend shouldn't be this much of an asshole."

Anna turned and left in an instant, Jack's metal door slamming behind her. She walked briskly all the way down the hall without wincing once. She'd be in tears before she started the car. He knew it.

It was cold in that place. Most of the time, Jack curled up in bed and shivered, closing his eyes to block out all of the white. White sheets, white walls, white floors, white lights. No windows. Here, everything was neutral. Everyone was in limbo. This was intentional. It was like they wanted all of their patients to experience birth once more. They wanted nothing to influence their state of being until somehow, miraculously, they came through. Or otherwise walked away to pick up where they left off. The latter was more likely the case.

Nothing had a taste or a smell. The doctors told Jack that he ruined a large portion of his sensory capabilities. He thought they were full of shit. They wanted everything to be fucking neutral, no tastes or sounds or enjoyment or pleasure. Not here. Here, you waited. You waited for comfort and love and light. And sometimes, you waited for darkness.

When Anna left, Jack dragged his pale, meek body into the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. Open wounds and bruises engulfed his flesh. His skin yellowed and fell from his bones. His eyes were dark and sunken in. His perception of this was, like so many other things in his life at the moment, indecipherable. Some days, he was proud of this. Some days, he looked into that mirror and smiled, laughed with his reflection. These were battle scars. He had fought and had won. Against what, he really didn't know. Other days, which occurred more frequently, this was simply what he had become. This was who he was, and none of it made any difference. No one who he cared to justify would be scrutinizing his behavior in the future.

On those days, he forgot about Anna. He forgot about how he had loved her madly so many years ago. How she had completely overlooked that fact. To this day, he was convinced that she had no idea. But he made compromises. For years, they were best friends. She was under the impression that this was still the case. Jack didn't admit it to himself, but Anna was the most important person in his life.

It was just so hard to think about Anna. So many memories of who he used to be appeared when he remembered Anna. All of his friends. All of the times they laughed together. When he spoke to her, he was never really there. He couldn't be. It hurt so badly.

That day, he was forced to be there when they spoke. The minute he looked into her eyes and saw compassion, he lost all ability to keep his guard up. It was a miracle that he didn't break down and cry in front of her. Everything in that room was stiff and unforgiving. There was no room for him to truly feel as he had expressed, and she knew it. Everything else was blank and lifeless, and his passions were thus magnified against the bleakness of their situation. Before she stormed out in her business suit and Prada shoes, he remembered the day that he and Anna skipped school together and spent the afternoon in the empty wilderness of Pennsylvania. That was all the way back in the fall of their Sophomore year of high school. They found a valley in the middle a dense forest and laid there for hours, lazily staring up at the sky and laughing with each other, chasing each other through the poplar trees, singing horribly out-of-tune melodies. It was hard to leave when the sun began to set.

He hated the monitors. He hated the time constraints. He wanted the time to stay with Anna for hours and tell her everything. He wanted to share his memories and his feelings at a time when it was hard to feel. He wanted her to hold him and tell him he would be okay as he wept on her shoulders. But he was pulled away from this by the fucking rehab guards. Another reminder of what a horrible person he was.

Every day of his life, he blamed his parents for his failures. He accepted his shortcomings as such, but they were never his burden. For this, his family resented him. They weren't loving or supportive parents. This was true. His mother was Schizophrenic. All of his early memories of home involved his mother and screaming. Sometimes knives were involved. Other times, demons were imagined. Nothing helped. Nothing made it better. His father didn't care. Jack thought he didn't care, because he was always gone. Jack would be left with his mother, scared and sad. When his father came home, Jack would shut himself off in his room and refuse to speak to Ralph. He never really spoke to his mother. Without siblings, troubled little Jack learned to make friends quickly. As soon as age allowed, he'd spend most of his nights away at friends' houses. When Jack was nine, his mother gave birth to another child. Somehow, this child survived. Somehow, she led a normal life. But this and an age gap kept Jack and his sister Mary in a perpetual state of fear of one another. Jack couldn't comprehend how she lived through his mother's insanity, how she still loved her. He sensed there was something horrible brewing deep inside Mary, but he kept it to himself.

Juggling Tears ("Juggling", from Making Shapely Fiction)

A single, icy tear began to fall from her warm brown eyes. She kept her gaze focused on the glistening December snow clinging to the road and becoming liquid beneath the tires while she tried to find a way out. I can't do this anymore. Her lips froze shut from the cold and out of faked stability, her unsmoked cigarette leaving a trail of sad, blue smoke through the window and into the freezing winter air. It hurts. Suddenly, everything leading up to this moment became incomprehensible. Why didn't I run? She tried not to think about all the times he backed her into corners, breathing down her neck madly as he screamed incoherently into her face. A chill that ran deeper than December's cold crept up her spine. Being home for Christmas always did this to her. Still, she failed to turn on the heating. She tried to think of far more beautiful things. Tried to keep herself from allowing tragedy to become her own personal failure. Her fingers began to turn blue. She stared coldly through the frozen windshield.

I shouldn't feel this way. Pain meant that she wasn't strong enough. She should have been able to tolerate more, should have been more considerate. Her heart rate increased and blood rushed through her body. Her single, stubborn tear crept down her pale cheeks. Her eyes glazed over.

When she was little, he carried her through the snow when she was too cold. Once, when she forgot her boots at home, he carried her all the way home from school through a snowfall.Things were different now. There was only screaming and disconcert. He wouldn't listen when she asked for him for help. He became irritated when she begged for it. Somehow, when she was little and he cared for her, it was less noticeable when he yelled and pounded his fists and hurt people.

There was no whimpering. No heavy breathing. She at least could appear stronger. Her head pulsed and the skin on her knuckles cracked as she clutched the steering wheel, never turning or swerving. Every time things went wrong, she remained stoic. She faked strong.

Today, she fought back. He's right, I'm fucking stupid. At that moment, she had doomed herself. There was no reason to turn back.

Red and blue lights flashed brilliantly. A sound more beautiful than she could comprehend broke, and suddenly there was stillness. Peace. Blackness.

With her eyes closed and desolation surrounding her, that single, glorious teardrop fell from her face and landed on the ground beneath her.

Hoax Photos

The most convincing photos were those that were not too out-of-the-ordinary, but had subtle yet dramatic differences from the pictures that were real. The reason that photos like these exist is that photographers are required to have powerful images in order for their photographs to be published. Often times, reality does not provide enough intrigue on its own, and the photographers are obligated to shift things to make their pictures more eye-catching.

Writers are obliged to embellish their stories in very much the same way. Because reading is a considerably more involved practice, the most successful authors will attempt to create the same eccentricities in their stories at every chance they get in order to keep the reader interested. It's also important to stay within the realm of the reality. For example, the photographs where things were blown way out of proportion were not very believable to me, and a story with a ridiculous setting might have the same effect. The writer has to play with what he knows to be true and turn reality into something more extravagant, rather than just going off in wild tangents and describing impossible events.