The Ruins: A Dream

These ruins are old. Not even the natives know exactly how old they are, they tell me that they’ve just ‘always been there’.
The sun is setting casting everything in a shade of blue and purple and red.
Blood is everywhere. It lays in puddles and spills across the ancient stone where the hunters have gutted and flayed their prey. The skin of strange animals are stretched over racks to dry in the various states of tanning. In the distance I can hear the roar of the hunters ATV’s exploring the surrounding jungle, checking their traps for dinner. Rabbit hopefully, I don’t think I could eat another wild hog. At least not when the head is still attached; it’s eyes vacant in death, it’s mouth open in a final eternal scream.
I hope they trap a rabbit.
A river to the North of the ruins runs East to West and small children from the village south have invaded our camp. I welcome the distraction that the children bring with them. Anything to pull my attention away from the killing and the looming ruins.
We’ve been here for four days, exploring the jungle and camping. The men came for wild game, and I came for ruins, but I never thought I’d find something like this. Large and ominous, the pyramid shaped temple to the old gods, the forgotten gods, reach just above the canopy of the trees to stretch to the heaven it’s depths unexplored by men. I hadn’t gained the courage to shift rock and climb down alone.
The children jump from rock to rock, fling dirt into the fires and skitter away laughing. All of them start to talk almost simultaneously, and some point to the darkening sky and laugh. One of the older villagers looks up then down and shakes his head. ‘Big moon’, he tells me in broken English., ‘we go,’. The children scream and screech with laughter as they disappeared into the bush back to their mothers, back to their elders.
CRACK
The sound of a tree falling in the distance echos through the air. Birds fly up with screeches and caws.
Something is wrong.
The sounds of the ATV’s have stopped.
The few others in the camp have noticed as well.
And then the screams start. Blood curdling screams. The kind that make your hair stand on end and the skin across the back of your neck tighten. The kind of scream that you feel in the gut of your stomach that spreads through your veins like ice. The kind of scream that when it stops, you know all hell will break loose, so deep down, deep deep down in the very back of your thoughts you hope that the scream never stops. Because when it does you fear that you might be next.
And then it stops.
Silence fills the void and echos through my ears.
Three breaths.
Four.
Five.
We start running to the back of the ruins where the screams had come from. My feet slip on the stone still slick from blood and I fall. Tangled in a skin that hasn’t yet been washed or dried yet. Slick old blood coats my arms and legs.
Everyone is running in the opposite direction now. Their footsteps like thunder in the distance, their breath like the wind before a storm.
RUN
My boots slip in the blood.
RUN
My hands clench at the stones of the ruins, my fingernails scraping and bending back. I slip again and my head cracks against the ground. Stars explode in my head and my vision tunnels. The smell of blood is everywhere. And then the sounds of screams. The sounds of flesh being torn, and clothes ripped.
I hear it. It whispers against the back of my skull. Run.
On my feet again. You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get away.
The sounds of death quiet behind me.
RUN
It’s chasing me, I can hear it behind me. It growls like a big cat, it lets out a yip like the hyenas,  it grunts like the antelope, and squeals like the boars. It sounds like everything we’ve ever hunted. It sounds like all the death throes I’ve ever heard.
The ridge to the river canyon stretches before me. I trip but my feet keep moving.
Run.
Keep close to the ridge.
Dodge and climb the shining white rocks of the building.
See how they no longer have blood on them?
Run even if you trip.
Run with your hands if you have to.
Run.

–Dream circa 2008–

The Curse of Thoughts

“I’m up to my ears in unwritten thoughts…” – J.D. Salinger

In the midst of waiting for agent responses for ‘Satan & Shitty Situations: A Modern Girl’s Guide‘ I’ve started writing again. Which explains the lack of activity on this blog…sorry about that.

Everyone has different ways that inspiration comes to them. For some it’s a light-bulb moment that is accompanied by the words ‘EUR-FUCKING-EKA, for other’s it’s situational and depends on external environments, triggers…ect.. For others it’s work, true unadulterated work.

For me…well, I guess it’s all of the above. Writing is work, there is no doubt about that. But when I am inspired, truly fucking inspired by a thought or a story…well that’s different.  The idea starts to wreck havoc.

Sometimes the voices in my head are louder than the voices around me. The scenes, the dialogue, the inspiration… flicker through my head on loop. It’s there within reach, all I can hope to do is watch it enough, listen to it enough, feel it enough times so that when I sit down and put fingers to keys I can do it all justice.

This is the hardest part. Things are always lost in translation. The words get jumbled and the feelings are misunderstood.

So I sit and stare, listening to the conversations. I close my eyes to see them. I wake up in the middle of the night with my head filled with thoughts that I know will not be translated if it’s attempted right then, at two am. It’s like watching the same scene in a movie over and over again enough times that when you look away you can write it exactly.

It’s frustrating to say the least, because it’ll never be as good as it was in my head. Just like how movies are never as good as the book, eventually you just have to learn to lower your expectations.

Because once you do, you might surprise yourself.  Other things will come to light that you couldn’t previously see, or your characters might act a way in which it wasn’t originally planned and that’s the fun of it!

Although when your characters misbehave a *lot* I can feel like Mike Wazoski in Monsters Inc.

 

 

But a lot of times, it turns out pretty good in its own way and there are other things you can appreciate about the story that you hadn’t exactly planned. Like HP&The Prisoner of Azkaban’s filmography. Do yourself a favor and watch this Nerdwriter video on why that film adaptation is one of the best.

 

Happy writing!

The Girl With All The Gifts: A Movie Review!

It’s been a while!

So let’s dive into it shall we?

accurate representation of school for most kids

The Girl With All The Gifts, directed by Colm McCarthy, released in the UK 9/23/2016, Rotten Tomatoes score 84%, my score 5 outta 5 stars!

yea boooiiiii

**Spoilers Ahead** So if you are one of those people who have never seen a movie or read a book without peeking at the spoilers first, you’ve been warned..no major ones though.

This movie was down right creepy. Not a lot of horror…mind you…but a lot of thought provoking creepy.

It leaves you kinda feeling like this….

To start off you’ve got to have the right ingredients for this type of thoughtful creepy.

You’ve got to have the problem: in this case… zombies aka ‘Hungries’ yo.

same bro

You’ve got to have something potentially creepy: in this case…fucking children man.

no thank you sir! I’m good on cookies

You’ve got to have something to think about: In this movie it’s the questions of Schrodinger Cat.

The answer is, that is’t both alive and dead…

This move has all that, and more!

Instead of a virus creating zombie…or zombie creating virus…what ever…we’ve got FUNGUS! The FUNGUS among us! The FUN-GUY! The…well you get the point. It’s a fungus that works it’s way into the body and creates the ‘Hungries’.

I’m not creeped out…are you creeped out?

Funny enough..things like this actually fucking exist. Fungi are freaking creepy sometimes… check it out it has a wikipedia page and everything and it loves ants…thank god something does (sorry E.O. Wilson).

Anyways, there is more to this movie that.

There’s that god awful Schrodinger’s cat question.

Alive vs Dead…although this movie kind of misses the mark with the whole paradox of the question, but I’ll give it to them for trying. It does make you think though.

In the movie, the children were infected in utero (while in their mah’s bellies) and the fungus moved across the placenta to infect the fetuses. After which the fetuses matured and kind of ate their way out of their mothers.

that ain’t gas Karen…damn

These children were found to be relatively normal in appearance, they could be taught to talk and act normally, they could grow and develop, and for all instances they looked like normal children. Until they smell it.

we’re looking at you red shirt…

Until they smell humans of course. Apparently the smell of flesh tantalizes the children out of their relaxed human like hibernation like state. And that’s when they start snapping their jaws like they are fucking Xenomorphs…or that Cenobite from Hellraiser that clicks it’s teeth.

This one goes out to my loving husband…Erik! 

So, are the children alive or dead? Are they kids or Hungries? What ever they are… the definitely go cray-cray.

Granted not all of them do, and that’s what brings the whole movie into focus.

When the compound where the ‘Hungries Vaccine’ is being developed get’s over run by Hungries, it’s the struggle of a little girl to *not* be the mindless Hungry that everyone’s told her she is.

All she wants to do is protect her teacher. The only one who has ever been kind to her. She will pretty much do anything to protect her. Obviously, she get’s hungry along the way, but she resorts to eating animals instead (and then goes out like a light on some crazy tripped out psychedelic nap after eating).

There is so much more to this movie…little things…that make the movie what it is. Choices and desperation. Hope and devastation. I don’t want to give it away, because…I really want you to watch this movie.

So…Go watch it!

A Retrospective May

May…was not a good month. Don’t get me wrong, there were good points…but as a whole… not so much.

I know things are bad when I find myself reading Camus’ ‘The Stranger’ three times and binge watching ‘Rick & Morty’.

These might not see like bad things to the regular person…but for me…it’s kind of *the* red flag signalling an onset and battle against *dundundunnn* depression.

 

Fuck.

I hate it.

literally me when I think about everything

Growing up, I was always labeled the ’emotional’ one.  I cried easily. But I didn’t cry in the way that most kids cry…like because they hurt a themselves, or that they were picked on by a sibling, or they didn’t make the track team…or something.

No…I cried when I was *moved* by something. I cried listening to beautiful music, I cried when I saw the starving kids on television, or when there was a particularly moving sermon at church (because seriously…unconditional fucking love? holy hell to a ten year old that amazing).

I cried at these things, and I was teased for it (Fuck teasing!).

So me and my happy little preteen ass is like…’okay no more emotions for you’. And I took all of my emotions and I shoved them into some dark room in my mind and padlocked the fucking door.

me vs my emotions

I still am like this. I lock away everything so well that people who don’t *know* me think that I am pretty laid back and chill.

But inside, it’s pretty tumultuous.

Something happens, there is a trigger in my life that unlocks the padlock door that I’ve had locked up. Depression creeps out and the utter weight of all those repressed emotional responses sit’s it’s fat happy ass right on the ‘freak out about everything‘ button.

My brain: “you aren’t doing enough with your life! you have to much free fucking time! Where do you even belong in the world? WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE?!?!”

Me:    

To battle these self deprecating thoughts I watch a lot of cartoons (like Rick & Morty) and gravitate to those stories and philosophies (like ‘The Stranger’) that make me realize that it’s okay that I haven’t realized what the fuck I’m doing with my life yet. It’s okay that some of my dreams haven’t been met, it’s okay that I don’t have control of shit…and that it’s okay to be a little crazy…and that I am just an infinitesimally small dot on a very small speck of dust floating through the universe.

IT IS OKAY.

I will always miss the time I spent with my grandparents. I will always miss the time I spent with my dog. I will always miss the time I spent in my twenties. But that’s just it…it all revolves around time for me right now. And time (in a humans perspective) is limited and fixed and death and loss is inevitable.

So stop stressing about it. Because when you stress out you miss out. When you miss out, you stress out and so on and so forth.

It’s a cycle.

A rollercoaster.

I’ve hit my depression, and I’ve trudged up the tracks to self realization, and now I’m choosing to be okay.

 

Update! On Agent queries, requests, and rejections!

It’s exactly how I always imagined it’d be… *sigh*

Me vs most Lit agencies

So as I laid out in a previous post, I’ve started to query literary agents for my novel ‘Satan & Shitty Situations: A Modern Girl’s Guide’.

3 a week for the last three weeks! And SO MUCH MORE TO COME! So total…that’s nine. Nine agents queries. Only Four I’ve head back from.

Three no thank you’s!

All Feedback is good feedback….right?

 

And one maybe!

Words cannot describe how super stoked I got!

I know, I know…it’s just a manuscript request…not an actual acceptance, but it’s the little things! Okay? Let me have this!

Things I learned these past weeks.

1- It’s always going to be nerve wracking, just suck it up buttercup.

2- Impostor syndrome is real…you must FIGHT IT!

 

3- Just keep on doing what your doing…but don’t fuck with what you are submitting!

You might want to jump into the suggestions, or feel like it’s not good enough…I mean it’s being rejected, right?…who cares! Leave your baby alone until ALL the results are in. So until then, start working on something else. Cultivate that *other* project you are working on, *or* make notes of what you MIGHT change…but don’t do it..not yet. Not like this….not while filled with hopelessness.

4 – Remember no one hit’s the nail on the head the first time! And that is OKAY! I’m okay, you’re okay, it’s going to be OKAY.

Biiieeeeeee

A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Book Review

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…….

It was…okay…

This particular retelling of Beauty and the Beast was…interesting…and…while I appreciated Feyre’s (Fey-rah…fayreh… I know, I know the official pronunciation is fay-rah…but I can’t tell you how many times I had to look in the back of the book for it.) stubbornness?? resourcefulness?? I just….I don’t know…about it all. But it’s just the first book, I’m sure there is more to it…we just haven’t gotten to it yet.

I’m honestly more interested in Feyre’s sister, Nesta’s, story. Who the hell is so strong willed to not have glamour take a hold of you?! Even Feyre can’t claim that shit!

Every time I read Nesta…

And I don’t know about you…but it’s always hard for me to believe that someone who is hundreds of years older (aka Edward Cullen, Tamlin, Gavriel, and all those other male lust interests in these YA novels) fall in *love* with someone who is literally a child in comparison…is SO FUCKING HARD FOR ME TO BELIEVE!

YOU ARE CEDRIC DIGGORY!!!!

 

*Le Sigh* but I’ll read the next two books ’cause why the fuck not?

Three out of Five Stars. For not being a horrible read, for having an interesting villain, for Lucian’s sass.

 

Baby : The Freezer … Part IV

The woods are alive with the fire fight.
The maniacs from the mall are fighting against tall men with their faces painted. Red with streaks of blue across their eyes.
They fall, they rise, they fall again.
They will avenge their mother.
There is a gun in my face.
My body has gone numb a long time ago.
The woman called mama is crying. Her pink eyeshadow in rivers down her fat cheeks. She shoves the barrel of the gun into my mouth.
I shot my baby again…my baby….I shot her. She cries.
I didn’t think I could get any colder. I didn’t think I had anymore tears to cry.
No.
No.
My baby.
You shot my baby.
Loss rips through me as mama hits a button on the wall. I collapse to the ground and scream.
MY BABY.
She throws the gun on the floor.
I crawl to it.
I claw at it.
I aim it.
I pull the trigger, and cry. MY BABY.
There are no bullets in the gun.
She looks at me with nothing but emptiness.

She leaves.

–dream circa 2008

Baby : Part I

Baby : Part II

Baby : Part III

The unedited transcription of this dream…to come