Writing again

I just started a creative writing class, and it's fueling me like nobody's business.  Just 4-weeks long, 2-hours every Monday night.  It. Is. So. Fun.

Tonight's earlier post, a hastily written short story, came from that.  A writing partner gave us a character - their character - and we had to write  a quick short story about that character.  We had just 25 minutes.

My writing group partner, Richard, described his character: a man in his 20's having experienced his first failure.  Broke, down and out on his luck, surrounded by take-out containers.  Now, that he had failed, he was open to possibilities. Open and ready to pick himself up, and start making money by any means.  

Steve was born.  I don't know if it's any good or not.  Not horrible for a quickie exercise, I suppose.

But there are some things I like about it or at least had great fun with. I like his apartment full of desperation and depression.  I love that the "world wide web" is accessed from his isolated and depressed apartment, and ultimately, the "world wide web" will isolate and depress him more.  I like that his entrepreneurial risk that he took with his start-up, is now playing out with online poker.  He likes quick wins; making quick money drives him.  He is impatient.  He loves the addiction and the adrenaline of it all - for better for worse.  I like how The Golden Ticket somewhat evokes Willy Wonka.  I love the line about $$ and the XX's on porn sites.

Thank you.

The Golden Ticket (a hastily written short story)

Steve slumped on his couch, a crumpled mess.  He hadn’t showered in days, and even he could smell his own stink. The TV blared in the background, some cable host blabbing.  Steve didn’t know or care what or who anymore, it had all blurred together over the last few days. “Meaningless.  All fucking meaningless,” he muttered.

His stomach rumbled, and he farted simultaneously. “Hungry,” he thought.  But he was uninspired by the pile of take-out menus stacked on the table beside him.  They matched the collection of containers scattered around him on the table, floor, and couch, which in turn matched the collection of condiments: soy, ketchup, hot sauce.

“Damn bastards got there first!” he said to the empty room. “It was my idea! My concept! Mine!” He was nearly shouting now, but it took too much energy.  He slumped again. 

Coulda, woulda, shoulda been a millionaire.  Steve’s app, LumberJack, had been on the verge of acquisition.  A brilliant social network with an actual revenue component, Lumberjack was hot in the coveted 18 to 24 year old space,  and growing in members and clicks by the hour.

But the two guys over at the Firefly app had been steadily creeping up on him over the last two months.  Steve felt the heat, and was dying to close his damn deal.  He also noted the longer pauses between negotiating calls.  

And then last week, the dreaded call came.  He had let it go to voicemail, he knew what it was.  “Steve, I’m sorry.  It’s just not gonna work out.  Stay in touch, you’ve got great potential,” said the tech firm’s dispassionate counsel.  Steve had listened to those words over and over again since.

Now he was broke, his money had all gone into business development.  He had pre-spent some of his deal money.  He had tasted it.

Steve turned on his laptop, balanced it across his knees, and ate a chip.  Clicking, browsing, surfing the world wide web.  He started playing a game of Solitaire, but was instantly numb.  He craved the excitement he’d been feeling before the call, back when he held the Golden Ticket.  

An ad blinked in the right hand corner of his screen.  “Online Poker. Win. Win. Win.” The dollar signs were as plentiful and tantalizing as the X’s on the door to a porn site.  He clicked, and played a quick winning hand.  He reached for his credit card, not quite maxed out, he realized, the light returning to his listless eyes.  

“Small money. Just a little fun,"  he thought.  He won again, and stated chatting with the online lurkers on the bottom of his screen.  His energy was building with another win.

Steve got up, cleared off the table, plugged in, and sat down.  Another win, his total had crept up to over $1,000 in just a few minutes.  

Steve entered the high roller room.  “Just looking,” he said to himself, picked up the phone and dialed the Thai place down the street.  He watched the high roller action for a few minutes.  The $10,000 bet button winked at him, he ignored it, but it winked at him again.  He clicked.  “My Golden Ticket,” he said with a small smile creeping across his face.  He was back in the game.

What's left unsaid.

Louise filled the coffee pot with water, and measured out the coffee. One...two...three...she wasn't really counting; she stopped when it looked like enough. The empty wine bottle was on the counter from the night before. Recycle. There, the testament to the night was gone from their vision. "It's going to be a hot one. Ninety-five degrees." She turned toward the fridge, opened it up, and stared inside. "Do you want jam on your toast? I have blackberry." She closed the fridge again. Louise turned back toward the sink. She busied herself washing out the pan - running the water, watching the suds bubble over the rim, scrubbing the tiny black fleck of cooked-on dirt barely the size of her pinky nail with a green scouring pad. He looked on. "He must think I'm really diligent about pot-washing," she thought. She looked up at him, smiled, and looked away. "Do you know this song?  My sister loves it."  \She tried looking up again, and this time held his gaze for a moment longer. "I might go get a new filter for my a/c today.  \I don't know when the last time I replaced it was," she said, as if this were actually an interesting prospect for the day. "Coffee's ready. Do you take milk?," she said busying herself once again with two mugs, and two spoons, and the re-arranging of the fridge shelf to reach the milk. Her fingers touched his when she handed him the warm mug. They both lingered for a second, and then moved on.

The music on the stereo turned to something uptempo, a little too much for a lazy, unscripted morning.   She winced to herself.   She hadn't liked the silence either; she felt like she had to fill it.  But the music felt off, too - the wrong mood.  She wondered what the right mood music would be for the morning after.   Louise's thoughts resounded through her head like in a vast echo chamber. They were small, random, and probably inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they took up a lot of space, and they were hard to dodge.  Like a hundred superballs in a racquetball court.  They were loud and active - searching for an escape route.  But she had sealed off all openings, and held them in check.  Her thoughts clashed anyway, each one in direct conflict to the other.  They ricocheted off the walls in her head - and collided with each other with bounces and rebounds.  What was the point of letting any one of them out if the next one would contradict it anyway?