Category: The Muse

Flash Fiction – Day Four & Final

Whoooo, yes! Fist pumps and happy jigs. I managed to pull off this massive stretch goal of writing a new Flash Fiction story four days in a row.

I’m not going to lie to ya, this has been challenging. Getting today’s story done was tough, and I think it reads like it. This challenge really took some work.

Today, the overworked Muse got a little silly. I hope you’re willing to come along for this final ride.

Tomorrow, as promised, I’ll be posting an oral reading of a New Mexico folktale as my wrap up of this crazy off beat week of Flash Fiction and Fables.

It’s a good one, I think you’re going to like it, especially the readers/listeners from my home state.

But for today, my randomly generated word is: portability

Without further ado:

The Device

by Karen Fayeth

Darryl and Sean worked quietly, side-by-side in the corrugated metal work shed they referred to as “The Lair.”

Work was wrapping up on their invention, a device without a name so far. If you asked them, it was totally a fusion reacting, power providing, super über top of the line invention.

The whole deal was this, it was a small reactor that creates enough power to run a small city. Clean burning, no electricity or fuel required, and it only fills up a small footprint.

The genesis of the invention came when Darryl had entered a project in his college science fair to show how he could make small fusion reactions.

Sean had also worked on an entry for the fair, but wasn’t able to complete it in time. His was a device for efficient distribution of power in a small space and without heat or exhaust.

The two ideas put together was an invention in which Pajaro Ventures had invested $3 million in R&D money. It would totally pay off, assuming they could get the device to be stable.

Initial trials were not as successful as they’d hoped.

The Lair had been replaced three times due to what the boys referred to as “misfires.”

But if they got it to work right, they could rule the world. Literally, they hoped, because that would be cool.

When they weren’t working on, or fighting over what to call the device, they were arguing over what to call themselves. Darryl favored Captain Hazard as his superhero slash evildoer name. His costume included a bright yellow vest, the kind road crews wear to be seen by passing cars.

Sean was leaning toward Dr. Reaction. His costume was a bit more ill defined, consisting mostly of a white lab coat with nuclear symbols attached to both shoulders like epaulettes.

The U.S. Army was interested in the unnamed device, as they needed strong, reliable power at many of their installations in the Middle East. A clean burning self-contained unit that kept them off either generators requiring gasoline or power lines requiring infrastructure was looking real enticing.

However, the U.S. Army was a bit skeptical that two recent college grads had the gonads to actually pull this thing off. No matter, the risk was on Pajaro Ventures. If it worked, Parajo got a huge contract. If it didn’t, Pajaro ate the R&D fees and the U.S. Army would keep on looking.

Early on, Darryl and Sean had flown out to Washington to meet with senior ranking officials, including one five star general. The field commanders gave the boys their list of must haves and nice to haves around this thing.

The team agreed on device specs. Darryl and Sean would come back in six months to demo their progress.

That demo was due to take place the next morning. After a good night’s sleep, the boys rose early and got ready. A black Suburban rolled up and men in dark sunglasses loaded up The Device and the boys and delivered them to the airport, where they boarded the Parjaro private plane headed for the Pentagon.

The flight went without a hitch and soon Darryl and Sean found themselves in a large auditorium surrounded by a lot of people, most wearing dark green uniforms.

“Yeah, so, ok, let’s get right into this,” Darryl said, doing the talking. He was the more eloquent of the two.

The Device sat on the floor in front. When signaled, Sean hit the go button.

Fans whirred, parts rumbled and the machine’s lights flashed.

“As you can see,” Darryl said, “It takes only a few moments to come online. Once you see an orange light here, at the side, it’s fully charged and ready to go.”

The light came on, and Darryl took the plugs from a refrigerator, a clothes dryer and a microwave and plugged them into the outlets built into The Device.

“These high power drawing items are but a fraction of what The Device can power. When up to full capacity, this device could power a small city, say the size of Austin.”

The assembled crowed murmured their approval.

It worked. The Device was generating smooth power. It shook a little, but no fires so far.

“Gentlemen, I believe this meets your requirements for high voltage yet safe and steady power. We have achieved your list of must haves. Oh, wait, there’s one more item we haven’t demoed,” Darryl said, flipping a red switch on the back panel.

Immediately a bright blue undulating hole, about a foot wide, ripped into the fabric of time and space above the machine.

“And there you have it, General, sir. Your requirement is complete.”

General Johanssen looked at the eerie opening in the air that was starting to exert a gravitational pull.

“What the sam hell have you boys done?” he shouted.

“You said that your key requirement was portal ability. We’ve succeeded. The Device not only facilitates powering your base camps, but also provides the beginning stages of time travel. This really is a cutting edge machine.”

General Johanssen’s face turned tomato red with anger. “I said it was mandatory that this device have PORTability, meaning moving the stupid thing as our troops relocate around the world. I did NOT ask for goddamn portal ability! What the hell is that, anyway?”

Darryl and Sean looked at each other, eyes wide. Darryl began frantically fiddling with the red switch.

“Boys, close that goddamn worm hole before someone gets hurt!” a major called out from their left side.

“Um, I’m trying, sir,” Darryl said, sounding panicked.

Suddenly, a nearby office chair was sucked into the depths of the wormhole and sent two thousand light years ahead into space. It landed with a “whump” on the fifth moon of the planet Kranon, killing the opposition leader of the attempted violent overthrow of the King of the Kranonians.

Two thousand light years back on Earth, Darryl could only reply, “Whoops.”

Creative Commons License
“The Device” by Karen Fayeth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

And now for something completely different…

So lately I’ve been impossibly busy with work, life and all the joy that long summer days bring to my easily distracted brain.

As such, I’ve had the attention span of a gnat and have been really running to catch up on my blog.

In reading over posts from the past couple weeks, I feel like I’m starting to be derivative of my self.

And, well, that’s ass.

I had a long talk with The Good Man about maybe taking a break from blogging, or quitting entirely.

In fact, I considered it seriously.

But then again…I’m up to 939 posts over three years, and there is a part inside of me that *really* wants to top 1,000 posts on this blog.

So I dug deep inside and asked myself if I wanted to stop blogging.

The answer was clear. No. I don’t want to stop.

I love blogging and it’s done amazing things for my writing and editing skills on the fly.

And so….

I’m going to keep on keeping on here on the blog. But to keep things interesting, I’m going to try something different this week.

I shall dub the week of June 21 through June 25 as Flash Fiction and Fables Week.

On Monday through Thursday, my blog posts will consist of a no more than 1,000 word fiction story or essay, thus the very definition of Flash Fiction.

As the impetus for each day’s story, I will visit a random word generator and use the first word that is presented as the foundation for the story.

I will have to keep an eye on myself for no cheating! No hitting refresh until I get a word I like.

I have no idea what the stories will be about as this is all a fluid process.

I hope you are willing to come along on this ride, as it will be harder than it looks, I can assure you. This is really a task in pushing The Muse to produce. And sometimes she doesn’t like that.

Here’s a representative sample of her cranky face.

Four days writing a totally new Flash Fiction story each day may be tough to accomplish. We’ll see.

And then Friday will be a special day. On Friday I’m going to present a “Fable Friday” selection. This is a story I’ve taken from one of a couple books I have of fables and folklore. I will read the story aloud complete with funny voices, if necessary, and will also post a link to a scan of the story if you’d rather read it yourself.

This was inspired by a great night at a friend’s house reading fables and folklore aloud. It was a fun and touching night and I’m experimenting with making this a regular item on the Oh Fair New Mexico blog.

After my week of Flash Fiction and Folklore ends, I will likely go back to my regularly scheduled stream-of-mind posts that I’ve done for the past three years, hopefully with a renewed sense of creativity and verve.

Verve…what a great word.

Anyhow, do join me and give feedback on the stories if the spirit moves you.

Personally I’m both excited and scared about the week, but I’m also raring to go!

Wheeeee!!

Show and Tell Time

Since yesterday was a whirlwind of deadlines and today is a whirlwind of meetings, I thought for the blog today I’d share a bit of what I was working on yesterday.

The deadline was for the Arthouse Co-Op, located in Brooklyn.

I participated in a project they have going called The Fiction Project.

They sent me an 80 page Molskine notebook and challenged me to fill up the pages with stories. My topic for the stories was, “And suddenly…”

Whoo. And I thought this was going to be *so* easy to do. I love to write short stories and flash fiction. What a snap!

Silly me.

It was a fun challenge. Writing the stories wasn’t even the hard part, though it was hard enough. The rough part was in actually putting all the stories into the book in some coherent form. It’s harder than you’d think.

I thought I was done and had a full book of stories, but when I glued it all into a first draft piece, I still had four pages left to fill.

I suppose I could have left those four pages blank, but that seemed like cheating.

So I sat down to dash off something quick.

Dash off something quick. Har, har. Of course, that’s when writer’s block set in.

Anyhow, it took a while, but when I did finally write, what is below what came through.

It’s in need of more editing, but as I ran out of time, I had to just run with it. This is what covered the last four pages of my Moleskine book. For your perusal.

It’s called “And Suddenly…It’s Over”

*****************************

I look at my oldest, most reliable friend and plead silently, “speak to me!”

The blinking eye of the cursor just beats a perfect metronome rhythm back at me, waiting. The whole empty white page, devoid of the text I yearn for so much, mocks me openly.

I love the words, the black squiggles and marks on the page. Words that express how I feel, how I want to feel, how I ought to feel. But the words don’t flow so easily from my veins.

I plead with the empty page to fill up quick, but it never helps. So I take another course and appeal directly to The Muse. She is recalcitrant and obstinate, but I goad her along.

She wakes from her satin sheets, stretches her pale, lovely long arms, and rises.

“Oh, all right,” she concedes after I’ve wooed her with mimosas and caviar.

And so we sit down to write.

I step back, ceding control of my body, my thoughts, and my mind to The Muse. I let her dance. I let her sing. I let her weep if that’s where she wants to go.

I am at her service, totally, completely.

We write tales of the life cycles of the human, of cranky old men with faithful dogs riding in rusted old pickup trucks. We write of lost girls with music in their head and small town girls finding their way in the big city. (editors note, these were the topics of the other stories that filled the book)

Sometimes we write of horses and cows, other times about diamonds and millionaires. We write of everything and nothing. All of it and more.

Today, however, this day when there is nothing I want to do more than write, I can’t manage to coax her to give more than a single paragraph.

This is the worst. We begin the takeoff sequence, the words start to form, but I can’t get wind under my wings. Soon we stutter and the engine fails. We write, but then we don’t get very far before we don’t write anymore.

The cursor blinks. Waiting.

I sit, begging, pleading with her. I try to do it on my own, force the words to come through, but each letter oozes painfully out of me like blood from a fresh, deep wound. It’s not natural like when she does it.

I used to think this was a terminal condition, this writer’s block, and would last forever. Over the years I’ve come to know that the diva inside of me, she of all the ideas and brilliant turns of phrase, will always come back. No matter how firmly she leaves or how far she goes, one day, I know she will return.

And she does.

She’ll always find a way to embody my fingers and my soul because she just can’t resist. The pull toward the joy we feel in those moments when the words flow free is too great. It’s like an addiction, stronger than any drug or drink.

We write because we must write.

And so today, I wait her out. The first paragraph is written and I wait, blinking in time with the cursor.

If I don’t squeeze too hard, if I don’t press her, it will happen.

Magically, it will happen.

So I avert my eyes and pretend it doesn’t matter. I fix a cup of coffee and I read the news and I say in a sighing way, “oh, I guess we’re not going to write today.”

And finally, when I’ve got her fully convinced that it just doesn’t matter, The Muse shows up with a “who me?” look on her face and suddenly has the will to write.

So we take another go at that runway. Faster this time, we let the words start to flow free. Soon, with enough speed and plenty of ideas to fuel our ascent, we break away from the land below and we begin to rise.

The adjectives and adverbs and participles flow smoothly over the wingtips and we soar, together, my fingers are her engine while The Muse is pulling all the levers.

It’s magnificent. Suddenly, we kill off the main character and bank hard to the left. Oh this is a great run. Then a plot twist, some suspense, upward we climb, faster, faster.

And finally, when it feels like my fingers might snap off from the speed and the altitude, the climax of the story arrives and we climb to impossible heights and finally crest that hill.

Once over the apex we begin coasting down the story arc of the glorious dénouement.

Then, the story draws to a close. The engines slow, the fingers wind down, and we touch gently back to down earth, weary but fulfilled.

Flaps come up, we coast to a stop and ease our rig back into the slip.

And suddenly…it’s over.

It is then, with much melancholy, together we type the words…

The End

Guilty Pleasures

Right now, as I write this, I am listening to the oldies country station out of Albuquerque (god bless the internets!) and right now they are playing Michael Martin Murphy’s “Wildfire.”

And I have the volume cranked.

Man, I love that song.

LOVE it.

I’m certain that my neighbors, however, don’t.

That song is *such* a guilty pleasure.

Yesterday in the Safeway, Huey Lewis’ “If This Is It” was playing and I sang along (much to The Good Man’s dismay) as I shopped. Yes, by god, I love me some Huey Lewis and the News.

Speaking of not being one ounce of cool and singing in the Safeway, do ya’ll ever just break out and dance in the frozen foods aisle when a good song comes on?

Because grocery shopping is SO freaking boring! And hey, there you are, bored out of your skull, fighting off old folks and screaming kids, trying to decide between Cheetos and Doritos, and a tune that you love comes on and you GOT to shake that thang! Got to!

I’m just saying.

By the by, this post isn’t going to be about anything. After a week where I’ve talked about such heavy items as my dad, myself, baseball and my infected toe, how do you wrap all that up in a nice, tight bow?

Hell, I don’t know, I’m asking.

I use this blog tracking service that helps measure, ping, and drive traffic. As part of that service, people can review your blog. I find the reviews pretty helpful, actually.

As a matter of fact, I’m currently looking for a new layout as I get terrible scores in that category.

One reviewer wrote that my blog is a “…somewhat random commentary on life…”

So at first I was sort of offended by being called random.

Then I had to realize, they are actually right. This blog is very random (reference: dad, me, baseball, infected toe).

So I decided to embrace it.

Especially on days (like, ahem, today) when I am at a total loss for a blog topic.

So instead of thoughtful, insightful, meaningful, you get random dancing in the supermarket aisle.

Did I mention I like pie?

Blame it on the rain…

So under deeply dark gray skies and a relentless rain, I drove this morning down highway 101.

I had on the local country station because that’s the kind of music I’m listening to these days.

That fairly dated song by Tim McGraw “Live Like You Were Dying” came on.

You know the one, goes something like this:

“I went sky diving/I went rocky mountain climbing/I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter/And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
Some day, I hope you get the chance/To live like you were dyin’.”

This song always did bug me. Dunno, I’m not the hugest Tim McGraw fan anyway.

But back in 2004, I really got a whole other view. I can’t hear the song without remembering.

I have this very dear friend, let’s call her Jane (it’s her Nom de Bebida).

Jane is about 90 pounds soaking wet and bouncy like a golden retriever. She is intensely athletic, too. I mean, despite being tiny, her body is finely hewn with long muscles and power. In other words, the exact opposite of my own rig. Which may be why we get along so well.

I once quipped that she has spin class for breakfast, power yoga for lunch and windsurfing for dinner.

And it’s true. That’s an actual day from her life.

Back in 2004 she went on a windsurfing trip to an island with a name I can’t recall. I believe it is part of the Canary Islands.

While there, she caught a particularly nasty parasite.

The side effects of this hitchhiker looked an awful lot like meningitis, meaning very painful headaches as the lining of the brain swells, utter fatigue, and more.

She went into the hospital and the doctors could not figure out what the heck was wrong with her.

For weeks she suffered. Huge doses of painkillers, doctors trying everything and still she didn’t improve.

At one point, they were unsure if they were going to be able to help her. Meaning…they weren’t sure if she would survive. They had a long talk with her boyfriend about options.

Finally after what must have felt like forever to our Janie girl, someone figured out the problem. With some meds and her own body’s immune system, everything kicked into gear and she started to improve, but recovery was very slow.

Once she came home from the hospital, she was told to rest. Rest, ha! You tell a golden retriever to rest? Are you kidding?

But she did rest as much as she could.

When she started to go a little stir crazy, I’d go get her and we’d go for short trips out to lunch or something. She’d fatigue so fast it was frightening to see.

Toward the end of summer of that year, Tim McGraw came to the Shoreline for a concert. Jane wanted to go, so I piled a lot of blankets and her tiny body into the Jeep and took her to the show. We sat on the lawn.

When the big finale came on and McGraw sang his top of the charts song, the crowd stood swaying and sang along. Janie and I sat on the ground and listened.

The first chorus rang out into the night air and my very down to earth, very blunt friend looked at me and said, “I don’t like that song.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it much either,” I replied. Then Jane startled me.

“I don’t want to live like I am dying. I want to live like I am living,” Jane said, pretty emphatically. “I’ve tried dying. I don’t like it.”

And I hugged her real tight that night, because she was right. I didn’t like her living so close to dying either.

So now whenever I hear that damn song, I remember my Janie girl demanding that she wanted to live like she was living!

By the way, just this year, at the age of 43, that girl got pregnant (naturally) with her first child and gave birth to the most delicate and beautiful baby girl.

Now if that ain’t livin’ like you wanna live, I don’t know what is.

And I smiled to remember my girl. She’s a ray of light on a rainy day.
_____

I believe this sudden serious turn on the blog is probably a surprise after the past several posts.

It came as sort of a surprise to me, too, when I wrote it in my head this morning.

Blame it on my melancholy mood and the relentless winter rain.

(iPhone photo taken moments ago)