Graduation!

Thanks to my super awesome PhD advisor, I am on the road to graduatin' and will be a Dr. starting June 1. Excited yet? Well I sure am.

Here comes more...

I have decided to write a murder-mystery novella that takes place at my work. The originally plan was to write something goofy and fairly unrealistic, quickly introducing all my co-workers as characters, killing them off in ways that makes sense in an inside-joke sort of way, then having some other co-workers solve the mystery by matter of deduction. However i've been reading lots of murder mysteries lately, a totally new theme for me, and went a little overboard with the first part, making it altogether a different kind of story than what I intended. I'm still trying to decide whether to rewrite it or whether to keep going. What's the purpose of this, I have to wonder? I guess I'm still deciding.

Anyway read the next post for the story...

A Murder Mystery at Work

Here's Part I:

On a whim on the way home from work one day the wife of a police officer bought a bright yellow Humvee. She laughed maniacally as she drove it 27 miles home, a drive she had never enjoyed before this one. Her daughters were excited, her husband confused, but she had returned all of her Christmas presents every year since her marriage, shopped only at thrift stores and always clipped coupons, and they felt she deserved this one indulgence.

The next morning she arrived at work to find her co-worker dead, in the center of exploded chaos.

She was the first one in that morning, as usual she got there early to avoid morning traffic (although this morning’s drive had taken half an hour longer due to a detour past her high school nemesis’ neighborhood in her flashy Humvee). Just seconds after she arrived, another earlybird co-worker, Kent, showed up and was still reacting to the scene as she picked up the phone to dial 911.

But she couldn’t decide whether to dial 8 first, which would direct the call to the external emergency number, or to dial 911 without the 8 so the call was directed to the internal emergency number that was for the kinds of things that weren’t supposed to leak out to the media.

As she paused, Kent found his voice. “What the hell happened here, Deena?” He asked her.

“I don’t know!” She said, phone still off the hook, finger suspended just above the keypad. “I think John’s dead!”

John was clearly dead. He lay crumpled beneath a broken window. Everything that had been on the windowsill was broken all around him, including a dead plant they had been watering for the last two months and hoping to revive. John looked like he had been subjected to a very hot, shortly lived fire, as his clothes were all black, his hair was gone and his glasses covered in soot. His mouth hung open. No breath came from it.

Kent walked over to John’s body and inspected it briefly, then turned towards Deena, his eyes closed, gagging.

The room was rather cold. It smelled pretty badly too. It was easy to leave.

They left, and went into the darkened lab across the hall. Nobody was in yet on the floor. The sun wasn’t yet up, and this side of the building revealed a stunning view of the city’s downtown.

“Did you call the police yet?” Kent asked.

“No, do we dial out?”

They decided together to dial internally. The dispatcher sounded slightly concerned, and connected them with the University Security, who said they would send someone over.

Ten long minutes later two young overweight security officers ambled down the hallway. They thought it was a joke. They were laughing about it the whole way over. The floor was dark, clearly nobody was in, but they walked almost to the end of the hallway and peered through the windowed door anyway.

One of them threw up.

The other one called back to University Security, and when Deena and Kent came out into the hallway they were escorted outside. The rest of the building was evacuated.

By the time a third co-worker, Katrina, came in at her usual eight o’clock hour, the building was blocked off by police cars, and yellow tape, and signs saying “This building closed by University Order.” The adjoining hospital remained open, but security guards stood ominously at each of the two nearby entrances. Katrina looked around for someone she knew who could explain what was going on, and when she saw nobody familiar, she checked her cell phone for messages. There were fifteen of them.

The first three were from the City Police, explaining the situation and requesting she call them. The next 12 were from her other co-workers and a classmate of hers that worked in the building.

She called her parents.

I've Been Found!

Well, you guys finally found me. I was afraid of that. Ever since I took creative writing in college through the Iowa Writers Workshop I have been wanting to keep up my writing, and this blogging thing was supposed to be my practice. Unfortunately, my first attempt in five years (the one you read) proved my creative side is a little rusty. I think it atrophied from lack of use. I was however motivated by being found and decided to post a few other things that had previously only been half-finished drafts. My goal is to write one thing every few weeks or months, just to keep my creative shop from closing down altogether. I am still finding it very challenging to dive straight into fiction, so I may take it slow and have a few warm-up attempts before I really get going (if I ever do really get going). We'll see how it turns out.

Bailing Hay

When it’s time to bail hay in Iowa, it’s always so hot out that your sweat drips down your stomach like a spider and all the airborne hay particles stick to every exposed part of your skin. Eventually it isn’t even worth scratching at all the itches because everything itches, even your attempts to itch yourself. I was a scrawny girl with pretty weak arms but it really made me feel tough working beside all the men that actually appreciated whatever I could do. We had a small piece of land that was bailed and we share cropped it – so somebody else came with all their big equipment and hired help and did most of the work for half the final loot, but we always had to help with the last part because there could never be enough people. And we always recruited whoever we could to help for that last part - my loyal (or tricked) college friends who weren’t really sure what a bail of hay even was, or my ex-football playing co-worker who could throw two bails overhand (wow, my mom said, don’t you have strong arms!), and eventually my boyfriend, who toughed through the main and married me anyway, but made me promise not to ever make him go through that again. The share croppers always brought their hired help as well, and although we only had to speak about three words to each other to get the job done I soaked up as much of their very different life as I could.

The Sunburned Guy. This was the guy who had bailed so much hay it was the same to him as sitting in front of a computer is to me. He was probably the oldest guy I ever saw out there, and had a potbelly and a life’s-been-too-hard kind of swaggering walk, which made me wonder how long it would take an ambulance to get out there. The only day I ever knew him he was lobster red from head to foot and didn’t have a bead of sweat on him. The lack of sweat shocked me, but his attire was even more absurd. He was wearing a floppy straw hat, cutoff jean shorts, flip-flops, and no shirt. Generally, when you bail hay, you want to protect as much as your skin as possible to protect yourself from each scratchy 50 lb bail that you have to hoist up with your body, rest on your leg, or push off your forearms. This guy had not a drop of sweat on him, nor a scratch or even slight rash. His lobster red and wrinkly skin showed no sign of distress other than being a deep shade of red that could only mean all-body skin cancer. Can sunburn and irritation be so permanent that your skin stops responding like normal skin and takes on an alternate and infinite sweatless, rashless, surreal state? The Sunburned Guy defied the laws of skin. To me, he represented victory.

Oblivious Man. He gently hopped a fence, and I was expected to follow with no exchange of dialogue. He slid through the ditch on the other side and headed into the hay field. Meanwhile, an invisible strand of barbwire that he had gracefully plucked aside and released whipped back and scraped across the softest part of my arm. Trying to keep my composure and remain strong, I choked back the sharp pain, grabbed the wire and began my maneuver over the fence. The barbs caught my shirt and the deep ditch threw my balance and I got sort of hung up on my way through. I looked up at the guy for a hand, but he was already gone. This man brought out the man in me.

MacGuyver Farmer. The bed of his wagon was missing floorboards and rails, but he had nailed down chicken wire to prevent one of us from sticking a rogue leg through or sliding off. Instead of stacking the wagon with bails that had been previously deposited on the ground by the bailer, he stood on the wagon, which was attached to the bailer, and hooked the bails coming out of the bailer with a crowbar. The wagon hitch was too long for the bailer so he had to haul each bail over the three foot gap with the crowbar, relying on the momentum of each bail as it was shot out of the bailer. He then threw the bail back to the rest of us as we slipped and slid across the moving wagon bed on the chicken wire trying to get them stacked. When something broke out in the field, he would fix it with bolts and boards that he pulled off another part (were these essential?). This farmer had learned immortality, and he taught me fear.

The Hot Farm Boy. He never spoke or looked at me, but I couldn’t imagine not looking at him. He was classic: tall, tan, strong, beautiful face, elegant moves, no previous connection, very close association. I never knew skill at bailing hay could be such an attractive quality. He could have gone to my high school, but if he had we wouldn’t have known each other. Hot Farm Boy caught my attention that day because he was a guy my age that could do exactly what I was doing with grace and skill that I knew I could never have. I recognized that day how attractive it can be to be good at your own thing.

Creative Hemmorhaging

I started this blog to post short stories that I could link to from my main blog, however I have only so far posted one story and it wasn't very good. I am having a very hard time coming up with story ideas. I am also having a very hard time convincing myself that cultivating my writing is worth my time. I have thus decide to hemmorhage story ideas to try to come up with something that might motivate me in the future. Here goes:

1. My first run in Minneapolis when I moved up here (finding yourself and finding confidence when you're truly by yourself for the first time)

2. Going to the bar with an old friend that you once knew so well but barely know now - and then she tells you some funny story about why she has to keep buying new bottles of KY jelly and you remember why you always loved her so much

3. My experience with a crazy psychotic roommate (it happened to ME)

4. My first date with the hubby

5. Baling hay in Iowa - mix with a story about something else? Maybe meeting someone interesting? or just describe some of the characters I've met - andrew, the super-tan guy in shorts and flip-flops, the guy that didn't talk, the guy that lied about the number of bales...

6. write about a girl that is reading in bed about some interesting article, it reminds her of something crazy, like ...?

7. the camper truck my dad lived in for a summer

Story 1: of Villains and Politics

Selina had to go to the grocery store. She hated going, but couldn’t exactly hire someone to do it for her with imaginary money (although she imagined it would be nice), so she planned some time for it on Saturday morning in between studying for her chemistry class and homework for her math class. She made a grocery list, like any good college student would, then made herself go to the grocery store. The last time she went grocery shopping, which was a good three weeks before, she had forgotten her wallet and had to drive back home, leaving her cart full of groceries at the check-out. She barely had time to go grocery shopping itself, much less make an extra trip home to get her wallet, and the whole experience had been even more hateful than usual. She hated everything about it, the lights, the piped in music, the people racing around all panicked to get there food and get wherever they were going. This Saturday was no exception. It was beautiful outside, and she hated spending her only hour of spare time in an artificially-lit warehouse fighting her way down the aisles. She bought extra everything, hoping it would last longer than usual. Afterwards, she lingered by her car and enjoying an extra moment of the sun before putting the last bag in. She saw some kids playing in a park across the street, and envy rose up inside her. She shook her head and looked away, back towards the grocery store. Something strange was going on at the grocery store, however. The roof looked like it was being lifted up in the front, right off the building. She moved her gaze up to the sky for an answer, and saw only clear blue. There wasn’t even much of a breeze. Well, this is interesting, she thought. She looked back at her car, which was the same color as usual, and then over at the kids in the park. They were looking at the grocery store now too, one of them was shading his eyes with one had and pointing with the other. She heard someone else in the parking lot scream, and now she could hear the sound of metal crunching as the roof began curling back like the top of a can of sardines. Screams and shouts from inside the grocery store could now be heard, and a few people in the parking lot were shouting as well. A car crashed into the front of the grocery store, the distracted driver most likely not noticing where he was going. The front end hit a sturdy part of the front side and the damage looked minimal, but the panicked driver jumped out of his car and began running backwards, trying to get a better look or trying to get away.

Selina hadn’t seen anything that strange in quite a while, and the sight glued her to the ground as she tried to take it all in. It still wasn’t clear what was causing the roof of this grocery store to peel back. It didn’t look like the store was built to do something like that, since pieces of it were breaking off and falling into the building. The break looked smooth, like it was cut with a saw or something. Selina shaded her eyes and squinted up at the freshly cut line, and noticed that the front center of the roof seemed to be leading the rest of the roof, and the corners were lagging behind or breaking off. From the center of the roof she thought she could see a string, no it must be a wire, and attached to a string was what looked like a man dressed in blue, almost the same color as the sky. He looked like he was standing in the middle of the sky, hauling back on the wire, which was attached to some larger object that he was holding with both hands. In concurrence with Selina’s revelation, she could hear a few words from the people around her that they had seen the man too. A woman at a car across the aisle demanded that Selina explain it to her.

“Is there a man up there? What’s he doing? How can he do that?” the woman said. She was very large and had short hair, and was wearing what looked like a mumu. Why do you only ever see women like this at the grocery store? “How can he do that?” She repeated. Her two kids were standing near her asking their mamma the same thing. “What’s that guy doing momma?” One asked. “Do you see him up there? Is he flying?”

The roof seemed to be done peeling back, and started falling apart. People were now running out of the grocery store, screaming and shouting, and a few ran past Selina. The woman in the mumu collected her kids and tried to make them get in the car. They resisted, mostly because she didn’t explain to them what she was trying to do, and she had to physically pick one up and fold it into the car. The kid started screaming, which started the other kid screaming, and a few people running past were screaming, and Selina wished she could join the guy in the sky where it was probably peaceful and quiet.

Something near Selina made a loud popping noise, and then glass shattered. She quickly squatted down beside the wheel of her car and momentarily covered her head, then looked over. A windshield of a car near her had shattered. Was debrit falling from the demolished grocery store roof? She looked up, then realized looking up was a dumb thing to do when checking for falling debrit, and quickly looked back down. She had to take a second look up, because the man in blue was on his way out to the parking lot, standing still, looking like he was floating. He was pointing something and waving it around, and clearly yelling something that was completely incomprehensible.

Selina was pretty sure the man in blue was shooting some sort of gun, but by now the yelling and running and screaming around her was so distracting she couldn’t be sure. She was somewhat protected by her car, but still wanted to watch all the action, so she opened up her car door and got behind it.. All the while, she was watching the man in blue. He was floating across the parking lot now, shooting the gun off, about 12 feet in the air. He appeared to be floating on a blue plastic disk that strongly reminded Selina of a disk sled she loved as a kid. The man in blue was clearly not trying to shoot anybody, since he appeared to be aiming for empty cars or remote areas of the parking lot. He hadn’t noticed Selina, and was following the mass of people as they charged across the parking lot. He was in fact coming directly in line with Selina as she squatted behind her car door thinking of what she should do. She could finally decipher a few words of his yelling, but “Bush” was all she could make out.

As the man in blue approached, Selina decided what to do. She was going to attack him. She was sure he hadn’t noticed her, and clearly wasn’t expecting an assault since his suit was made of nylon or cotton or something and he wasn’t shooting at anybody. Right when he was directly overhead, Selina jumped up in the air so that she was right behind him, and kicked the disk sled with everything she had. Unfortunately, her jump was a little rusty so she only got up about 11 feet, and the sled tottered underneath the guy instead of flying out from under him like she was hoping.

He looked around at her with his mouth open in surprise as she landed back on the ground beneath him. She saw now that his hair was died blue, and he had a long face and an angry bushy monobrow. As he swung his gun downward, bending his knees and moving the sled aside to get better aim, she jumped again and this time was able to knock the sled out from underneath him like she originally planned.

Selina was an out-of-shape college student whose diet consisted mainly of tunafish, and she fought to get her breath back as the man in blue teetered off his disk slide and grabbed it on his way down. The slide tipped up as he hung on to one edge, then lost its anti-gravity power and he and the slide fell the rest of the way to the ground. He looked even angrier now, but fortunately he had dropped his gun and needed to find it.

Selina decided to attack while the attacking was good. She could now hear sirens approaching, and figured she would have some police backup soon anyway. Selina knew she had the advantage that she was clearly not the villain this time, since she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of the old familiar black lycra outfit.

She got herself pumped up. Clearly, this guy was a raving lunatic, and anybody who liked blue that much had to be stopped. Now that he was on the ground at her level, he looked like he could be easily taken down. She deeply inhaled, and let her breath out in a hiss as she accelerated towards him in a ball of spit and nails.

He buckled quickly at the onslaught. He didn’t have his gun, had been thrown off his flying snow disk, and once his blue suit got ripped his fight lost its fury. Selina felt sorry for him, and after she had him in a painful hold on his back on the ground, she eased off and softened her expression, although that could have been because she was so out of breath.

“I only wanted people to finally hear me,” he whimpered. “They need to hear my message…”

The police had circled them, and had their guns drawn. One of them was yelling at her to back off because they had it under control, but she knew she had it under control already.

“What was your message?” She asked him.

“Bush is corrupt! He’s crazy…”

Selina was mortified. She tightened her hold on him and he squealed in pain. “You’re in the wrong city,” she told him. “This is already a blue state, hadn’t you realized? We already know!”

He recoiled, and she wasn’t sure whether it was in pain or surprise.

The police had circled in close by now, and one of them pulled her off while another quickly handcuffed the man in blue. Selina reached out her hand to a nearby car to steady herself, then wiped off her face with her arm. She was still breathing heavily, and turned away from the police so they wouldn’t see. She had lost the effortlessness she had previously developed so well, and was embarrassed. The police didn’t know her from the next guy and were already gushing.

“That was great, lady! We can take him in now, but we’d like to ask you a few questions first… man, where’d you learn how to attack like that? Your nails were like knives…”

Selina smiled weakly at them, and glanced back over at the man in blue, whose blue outfit was hanging in shreds around him. He was being held by two police officers while his remaining clothing was searched by a third. His eyes, beneath the wild but defeated monobrow, locked with hers and he mouthed, “Remember…”

“It’s a good message, but you’ve got to change your delivery!” she yelled at him.

He lowered his eyebrows and started to fight the policemen, who tightened their grip until he gave up.

Selina turned her back on him and sighed, noticing her racing heart had finally slowed. She wanted nothing more than to get back home to her homework, and perhaps next time she’d don the old black lycra outfit when she went to the grocery store, just in case.