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 Hyper_Panda_GO
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Registered: 05/28/06
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 Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#8889223 - 09/07/08 12:36 AM (2 months, 27 days ago) |
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There's a humming in the air as I'm standing at the beach in the blue of morning
And I don't care
A dark fog rolls in from the distance like a mass of despair
And I don't care
You will call to me with a voice of lightning
You will watch me with eyes of storm clouds
You will touch me with brutal cold winds
You will taste me with sorrowful rain
You will feel me in your heavy embrace
You will take me away from everything I love
You damn demon you
You will take me with you to up above
You will show me a wondrous land of nightmare
I will scream to Earth and pray it hears my call
I will cry and tear out my own hair
You will laugh as I begin my great call
Vision melts into the sea
The ocean depth for you and me
Grieving for my future loss I clap my hands
Clapping hands, smack the flesh that will welcome you
Lovely were the rays of sun yesterday
And the smiles of the people as they ran everyway
And last night when I thought the moon kissed me goodnight
I went to bed without a fright
Now today I will empty my soul on your formless chest
And lay on a bed covered in death
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#8889642 - 09/07/08 03:14 AM (2 months, 27 days ago) |
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(sometimes replies are better left unsaid)
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
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"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
Posts: 9,660
Last seen: 5 hours, 14 minutes
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#8968906 - 09/22/08 04:29 PM (2 months, 11 days ago) |
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Hehm I giggled
Clouds crawled across the sky and Sheila and I lugged a whole bunch of crap to the family reunion. Soda, celery, fried chicken, cake, cookies, buns, bread, blue paper napkins, plastic utensils, red paper cups. The gathering was meant to commemorate the death of my Uncle John, the meanest, most foul-mouthed survivor of the Vietnam War. I don't why my mother wanted us to go. I guess it's a bit weird I refer to my mother mother, even when I'm alone with my thoughts even when my friends call theirs mom. Not as weird as calling my dad pops, I guess. According to my parents that was the first word I spoke and I guess it just got reinforced.
We finally got to the picnic site and dropped out load. We were the first of the very late guests to arrive. Two more families, both friends of Uncle John, arrived and then everyone was accounted for.
"Where's Theodore?" I asked my sister.
"Working? He's got an excuse."
"Man I wish his parents didn't put so much stock in him working at Grease Wings. That's always the lame reason he gets out of these functions."
"The dude was a coke addict for a solid year. A job at Grease Wings is a step up."
"Your just mad because screwing your boyfriend wasn't a viable excuse for missing this."
"And I'm sure eating mushrooms with your neo-hippie friends would've flown with mom."
"Beats hanging out with this weird family."
"We're not weird. You just exploit our shortcomings to look cool in front of your group."
I flipped her off. I hated it when she was right.
After wandering around catching up with cousins whose names I couldn't remember, I floated toward the dessert table. Chocolate covered marshmallows with cookies heavy with frosting. What else can I say but Uncle John had a taste to match his temper. A weird relationship he had with Aunt Dorothy is that every time he'd go on a physical rampage about town she'd whip up a sugary confection, baked with love and the futile hope he'd get on top of his stuff. Once, at a Christmas dinner, we were opening gifts just as she took out a freshly baked cake from the oven, chocolate with a peach center, white chocolate chips melted into the surface of the cake. We had found out later Uncle John had obliterated the jaws of two passing frat boys headed to some sorority shindig that were fool enough to assume he was a staggering drunk and not the swinging king.
“Bored,” I said through a mouthful of cookies. I made a face at a little girl I didn’t recognize as part of our family. She giggled.
“Want to get high?” Sheila asked me.
“Jeez Sheila, if that were dialogue one might think it was written by a bored college student with nothing to do.”
“Hey, Pynchon wrote whole chapters detailing the rising inebriation of people.”
“You and your Pynchon. Hey, little girl, scram.”
I gave her the rest of my cookie and she skipped off. Her purple skirt bounced along with the breeze while her brown ponytails bobbed against an Easter yellow tank top. I’d have a sinking feeling she’d be a whore one day or that I was a blossoming pedophile
“Arturo does. I said I’d come ask you before I tried it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about Arturo.”
“Come on, it’s your cousin and it’s free.”
“I think he laced that one kid’s, you know, at Jenene’s seventeenth.”
“Well, you’re call, I’m only extending an invitation.”
I looked around. The majority of adults were stumbling around and giggling and talking in secretive tones about stuff I probably wouldn’t find interesting and the kids were lazing in the shade of trees.
“Hmm, fine take me to it.”
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#8970226 - 09/22/08 09:24 PM (2 months, 11 days ago) |
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that one was the shizzle doggy
Quote:
“Jeez Sheila, if that were dialogue one might think it was written by a bored college student with nothing to do.”
Quote:
a sinking feeling she’d be a whore one day or that I was a blossoming pedophile
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
--------------------------------------------------
-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
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Posts: 9,660
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#8982236 - 09/25/08 12:41 AM (2 months, 9 days ago) |
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It;s pretty awesome you've been my only audience since like..I started this
After submitting to dreams full of dark clouds and large, fearsome birds that didn't look like they belonged to any corner of the Earthen animal kingdom, Kyle woke up and decided he needed to stop reading Thomas Pynchon.
"So he stops reading Pynchon, right, and switches to something really opposite like, I dunno, Margery Kemp? Anyway, he starts getting these odd withdrawal symptoms, like he's no longer able to love and every time he wanks one, he gets jolted from his seat, or...wherever he is."
Flies had started gathering around the faces of the bored. They sat around in a messy looking semi-circle, four women and three men. Peter was the speaker, the resident Pynchon enthusiast, and thus the most disliked. Everything he wrote and spoke about had some Pynchonian anecdote fixed into it. Pynchon Pynchon Pynchon!
It was unreasonable.
"And he meets this librarian with an out-there name, Whitney-Ann Madnut, and a slight inclination toward the psychic realm, and half is about him going about his day with the addition of the symptoms and the half focuses on the librarian wandering around his mind and meeting all these symptoms in the form of mutated visions of the Hermetic P. himself!"
"Cigarette or snack break!" Roxy said, clapping her hands. Everyone got up and filed into the kitchen or the porch in a hurry. Peter was left standing alone, a large, dumb smile on his face, well aware of the animosity possessed by all toward him but determined to put on a cheerful show, if only to spite him."
"He's obsessed!" Mrs. Shelby said, lighting a cigarette for both her and Mr. Raddum. "I mean," she continued, "it's one to emulate an author but he's just recycling plots and characters and using them himself! He even gets the deformities in somehow!" She exhaled loudly. She had a messy mound of greying blond hair that fell attractively around her temples. Misty green eyes caught all the sidelong glances men turned in her direction. A "MILF" she had heard her students whispered, and smiled each time she thought of this, gambling on which one would be ballsy enough to make a move.
Mr. Raddum nodded eagerly. He was a short red-headed man with poor eyesight and a rebellious streak that refused to wear glasses. He always peered at people closer than one should have, giving the impression of curious intent even if he was bored of the conversation.
"I don't get what it's all about, anyway," he said. He took a drag. "He has a stale writing style, really. Arbitrary absurdism has been done by many before him, and in better ways."
Mrs. Shelby let the man's use of absurdism slide. Any student who had written that in an essay would've been penalized two points for such flat creativity.
"He's all right, for a spell, if you're into submitting yourself completely to an author's work, because that's the way to read Pynchon."
"Hmm."
"Authors shouldn't wield their gift like that," she said huskily. She loved it when she sounded intelligent. "They should be soft, inviting. Reading shouldn't be a hierarchal challenge, not everyone will be able to read Pynchon and take away the same thing as intellectuals do."
"Yes, yes," Mr. Raddum said, eager for more.
"It's confining is what it is!" Mrs. Shelby said. He strained ever forward to gaze upon Mrs. Shelby's face.
"Absolutely unforgiveable!" he said.
"Yes!" Mrs. Shelby's eyes flashed. "The man's writing is as dense as an evil fog and just as brutal. Those poor bastards at the coffee shops thumbing through it casually, when you can almost feel the heat of anxiety emitting from them."
She took a last puff of her cigarette and jammed it in the ashtray.
"No, that just won't do," she said smugly. Without a word to Mr. Raddum, whose neck was starting to hurt, she hurried back inside.
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just me
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#8982303 - 09/25/08 01:03 AM (2 months, 9 days ago) |
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i know im not hte only one looking, but has anyone else responded?
the last one was out there
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
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-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
Posts: 9,660
Last seen: 5 hours, 14 minutes
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#8993337 - 09/27/08 11:52 AM (2 months, 6 days ago) |
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The routine is familiar, frightening, and fun all at the same time. Pick a man, any man will do, though the desperate looking ones yield the most effective results. Side up to him, stalk him, seduce him, all easier said than done. No one save for the most disrespectful can fathom the strange thoughts of titillating evil that run through the mind of people like me. It's an almost shameful power you have over these men, and in odder cases women. I always wonder what goes through their heads if they accept my invitation, and especially if they don't. Do they tell their friends the next day? Complain to it to their better halves?
"Ugh, Mary, you won't BELEIVE what happened today!"
"Oh George! What happened?"
"Some, some homosexual protistitute, and a minor and that, came up to me and sultry and prostitutey and accosted me!"
"George, heavens no!"
"Hell yes! I think he was waiting for me. The carnal look in his eyes...so hungry. Speaking of which is it steak night?"
"I've just prepared the sauce."
Probably not. It's not an anecdote one would really disclose to anyone. I'm sure some have but I know if some little bastard like myself came up to someone and that someone was me I certainly wouldn't tell anyone. I try to work under the assumption the people I select won't have anyone to tell. It's the ones I find attractive, oddly, I guess, that I never attempt to approach, a work ethic my friend Peter calls 'dangerously ass-backwards'.
Today's victim is some balding fellow with one of those woolly brown jackets history professors always wear. He's chosen the most unflattering shorts I've ever seen on a man, drab green things with shameless frays that fall over his knobby legs. I am of course exaggerating but nothing in recent memory has inspired me to reconsider my target on clothing selection alone.
I approach him with feigned confidence and allow my eyes to droop so I may go for the mysterious stranger approach. I'm suitably high to dissipate some of the guilty.
I will find out later tonight he is a deranged psychopath and by then my life will have changed.
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just me
Friend
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#8996181 - 09/27/08 10:36 PM (2 months, 6 days ago) |
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DAMNIT, i want more of this one too.
u never continue 
do u continue them on paper somewhere?
you know, i think that writers give a little piece of themselves in every character...
this one makes me wonder
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
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-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
Posts: 9,660
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#9005987 - 09/29/08 11:38 PM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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Sometimes, but usually not
Everyone screamed at him from the bleachers, but the hell with them, what did they know about his body? His knees felt like they could give away at any second, his calves throbbed and with each tremor he imagined fantastic, horrible thoughts that involved the muscles exploding and streaking the tan track with runner's blood.
Last lap he thought frantically. Last lap
He always thought it funny how certain music would play over and over again in his head as he was pushing his body to its limit. This time it was The Doors' Not To Touch The Earth, the final part of it, when the instruments cannot seem to be played normally and collapse under the wild genius of the song.
Oh my God I have to pee he thought. He was nearing the first curve and if he craned his head just so he could see the glorious finish line. Some ass with little else to do with his life besides run had just sprinted past it and collapsed into the grateful hands of his teammates.
And I'm dead last he thought with some strange satisfaction. He could overtake the runner in front of him easily, just a small push, his body could take a bit more punishment if he really felt like going all out. He could reasonably pass up the next two runners and possibly the third if he started kicking right now.
Nah he thought. He maintained his speed, and the runner in front of him was falling behind, a somewhat chubby fellah, trussed horribly in his school's colors of pine green and yellow.
Oh man I'll cut him without meaning to he thought. Cool
It happened within seconds. He was no longer last, the poor kid dressed in questionable colors was. He wouldn't be the bane of the track team as usual tonight. He would earn his school no points, but he would not disgrace them like he usually saw fit to.
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9006119 - 09/30/08 12:12 AM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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strange one
did you run?
whats this:
Quote:
Some ass with little else to do with his life besides run had just sprinted past it and collapsed into the grateful hands of his teammates.
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
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-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
Posts: 9,660
Last seen: 5 hours, 14 minutes
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#9006168 - 09/30/08 12:24 AM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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In track and XC it was generally assumed whoever got first had little other life outside the track, like all they DID was run
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9006221 - 09/30/08 12:35 AM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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gotcha!
so did you run?
were you ^that^ guy
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
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-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
Posts: 9,660
Last seen: 5 hours, 14 minutes
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#9006276 - 09/30/08 12:50 AM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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Nah, I was usually in the 20's or 30's, and usually out of 80+ people
Not to say i was fast, the discrepancy between runners is huge
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just me
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Posts: 4,863
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9006284 - 09/30/08 12:53 AM (2 months, 4 days ago) |
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like the fatty in pine and yellow
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
--------------------------------------------------
-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
Registered: 05/28/06
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#9013909 - 10/01/08 03:19 PM (2 months, 2 days ago) |
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Whenever I get lazy, I just end crap with a heroin binge
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just me
Friend
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9016936 - 10/02/08 03:03 AM (2 months, 2 days ago) |
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easy way out 
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For All Your ETHNO SEEDS Needs, Come See Me @ www.FreeSeedsRing.org
--------------------------------------------------
-pEaCeLoVeGoDbLeSs-
"The Downfall of Mankind; is Believing He Has Limitations."
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Hyper_Panda_GO
Team Action!
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: just me]
#9017508 - 10/02/08 09:22 AM (2 months, 2 days ago) |
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Oh what the fuck I didn't even post the story to go along with the post
She surveyed her room, the ground covered in coins and forgotten assignments and her the order of her shelves disheveled with the misplacement of book and CD's, and smiled to herself. Her perfect chaos was nearly complete. A few random strains of brownie mix on the curtains and Diana would have her sanctuary.
"You know, Diana," said her friend Emil, pronouncing the na at the end like nah, "if I ever want to feel like I'm amid destruction I just go to one of Jodie's weekend bashes."
"Too limiting. Besides, she always has themes. What sort of conceited person has themes for their parties?"
"The ecstasy party was...weird, but the the mushroom one was pretty fun. You really should go, she thinks you hate her."
"I don't hate her but I don't like her enough to go."
"I think she wants to change that."
"Phooey, this chocolate isn't working out the way I envisioned it. Should I switch to the rainbow chip swirl?"
Emil tossed her a thing of frosting. Diana caught it in one hand and threw the chocolate one back at him. Instinctively they both started tossing the cartons at one another.
"I don't know," Diana said. "This self-destructive space thing doesn't seem to be empowering me."
"Not messed up enough?"
"It just seems to perfect, like would the casual observer, though I really hope no one casually walks past the doorway because that would be creepy seeing as how we're the only two in the house, think that there's an order to my disorder."
Emil peered around. The rainbow chip landed on the side of his face.
"This feels typical," Diana said after letting out a guilty sounding giggle.
"How so?" Emil asked, rubbing his head. At least the frosting didn't pop open.
"Almost like we've done this before, more than once, every weekend, we try to figure out ways to enable ourselves to be more creative, or take life headlong with more zest, but it never gets us anywhere, we always end up at square one, plotting and plodding."
"Diana, you need to get high."
With that he pulled out two syringes full of potent heroin and the the two shot up for the rest of the day.
"Oh yah," Diana said.
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Hyper_Panda_GO
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9036207 - 10/06/08 08:46 AM (1 month, 29 days ago) |
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The cry of a raccoon is the most frightening sound one can hear while stoned and smoking a stog on a night so quiet you can hear the paper burn off as you take a drag. I had just gotten home from a wild party, the sort that starts from nothing and explodes into a period of much debauchery and swearing. I stumbled out of the driver's seat and fumbled for my house keys, enjoying the warm breeze of the night surrounding me, pushing them into the lock and turning and pushing open my door and nearly collapsing on the mat I willfully called a bed. The touch of the late summer caress was still with me. Why not go outside for a smoke? A good idea, a peaceful idea. I pulled one out of my breast pocket, bent to the point the next level would've been tobacco decapitation, grabbed a lighter, and stepped out to my porch.
The lighting of a cigarette is almost as gratifying as actually smoking it. I love the small woosh of the flame and the sinister orange glow of the lit end. I took a long, contemplative drag and stared at the neighborhood around me. Middle class, lame paint jobs, a good deal of grey Volvos and rust-red Toyotas. I wouldn't have it any other way. I felt like this was my kingdom. Every breath breathed out released a protective smoke that spread out around the houses. I wondered what I did at the party.
The scene was satisfying for a bit. About halfway through, lightheaded and scratchy throated, I heard it. A brutal wildlife cry that insulted the ears in its natural bitterness. Or perhaps not that verbose, but it was a pain hearing, and it was sudden enough to give me a start and nearly drop my cigarette. I looked around quickly. Images of nasty critters with sharp teeth and long nails and movie-magic red eyes were the result of me not being in a sober state of mind. A rustle. A sharp hiss. And then that damnable cry again. It wasn't human. I listened more closely in spite of my shock, not wanting to see the cause and leaning forward to better inspect the area.
They came out a second later, behind Mr. Sethen's car, a group of three, two fat ones and a scrawnier one that acted like the leader, darting ahead in restless directions while the two slaggered behind. The turned to look at me, still moving toward the sewer drain. They disappeared one by one, the big ones first and the small one last, each one pausing to scrutinize me closer, and the situation was just that I felt like I was Mother Nature's misbehaving child and her friends had been called to judge me. When they were gone I slowly finished my cigarette, thinking up silly lyrics I could play on the hard I had inherited from my friend Allison before she offed herself in a mess of pills and alcohol.
I tossed the still lit thing out on the curb and went back in. It was a good idea. I tried ending the night playing the harp, but my hands trembled at every sound my fingers created, as if the music I was producing was too beautiful to hear, though I was sure I was just producing a lot of immature noise. Ending failed, I siddled onto my mat and passed out.
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Hyper_Panda_GO
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9058183 - 10/10/08 10:59 AM (1 month, 24 days ago) |
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I was gonna say it was getting grey
But I awoke today greeted by too-bright sunlight
"This is getting pretty gay," Tony whispered to me. I nodded my head. Ashley's party had turned into a sausage fest. Her parents were fervent supporters of the Fairgrounds Meat Day Festival and had used their daughter's birthday party as a guise to nab us all into mincing and shaping sausage.
"It's diabolical," I said, pushing my hands into the soft meat. A ton of sexual jokes ran through my mind but none of them seemed appropriate, and Ashley's mom was walking around the kitchen slowly, her head turning side to side and gazing upon the proceedings with cool green eyes. Anytime she met someone knew she made sure to introduce herself as an ex-Marine. This fact more than anything, even the loose cutlery lying around the kitchen and Ashley's dad skinning an apple near the front door, hindered anyone from leaving.
So we were there for most of the day, meandering in the meat, most of us snapping quick glances mixed with blame and sympathy at the birthday girl who chose to keep her head down. It was sunny for most of the day and for a while the room was too hot. Then at around two rain come down from nowhere and then it became too cold. Mitzy was the first to snap.
"NO!" she screamed, punching her fist into the bowl of meat so hard we heard the flesh connect with the metal. "I can't do it anymore!"
“Mitzy, dear,” Ashley’s mom said, “what’s wrong?”
“What do you mean what’s wrong?! It’s your daughter’s birthday! And we’re surrounded by meat! Where’s the cake? Where’s the soda? The presents?” She looked around wildly. “OH MY GOD!” she screamed. “THERE AREN’T ANY PRESENTS!”
It was true, though all of us until now had chosen not to acknowledge this fact.
“Oh, Mitzy, there’s be all of those things as soon as this little meat process is done, and-“
“Bone the meat process!”
“Bone?” Ashley’s mom asked. Her eyes flashed dangerously and suddenly a terrible warmth filled the room. I glanced at Ashley. She didn’t move, didn’t talk, still kept her head down and I supposed she was used to this sort of thing.
“Oh, Mitzy, you shouldn’t leave any bones in the meat. What if the children choke?”
“Cake,” Mitzy whimpered, tears forming in her eyes. She smelled terribly of meat and fatigue. Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat. The word bounced around in my head. I began thinking of all the delicious greens and sweets I’d eat when I got home.
“The Fairgrounds Meat Day Festival is among the most important tradition this town has to offer,” Ashley’s mom said quietly. In between breaths we could hear the eternal skinning of the apple. “And you would dare hinder it?”
Mitzy didn’t say anything. She cried a bit more and then went back to work.
“God if my twenty-first birthday is anything like this I am going to off myself via an oncoming bus,” Tony whispered. I nodded in agreement.
The next day we found out Ashley died by running into an oncoming bus.
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Hyper_Panda_GO
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Re: Various snippets I'd like critiqued [Re: Hyper_Panda_GO]
#9066492 - 10/12/08 12:19 PM (1 month, 22 days ago) |
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He walked speedily on the sidewalk taking in the cold nativity of the night. There were few actions as desperate as walking alone in the early black AM in a bad neighborhood on a dry, windy night, but boredom scares him. He is scared by what he is capable of when he is bored, violent actions that would produce needlessly intense disputes that could possibly end in a passionate murder. So he walked speedily on the sidewalk, stoned and making himself scared. It was obvious what he was in the neighborhood, a local tourist, the sort who was supposed to stay on the golden side of town. They got a few of those each month, craving a sobering scare of reality and all the while not knowing how deep they were getting themselves into. Oftentimes they came back with scars or torn clothing of fat lips or black eyes or a mix of injuries and on the rare occasion they didn't come back at all the police would post around the corners, tackling characters who had even slight traits of mistrustworthiness.
Dark whores watched him from the shadows with hungry eyes while motley pigeons hopped around abandoned lots. Who'd want to willingly be in an area like this. The Dregs were the only ones who showed any sign of affection for the cold cement, patting it like they would a little sibling as they scrambled on the ground for stray bits of the Stuff. All Stuff was good. Stuff allowed them ownership and if they couldn't own themselves they could at least own some Stuff. They watched him with hollow interest then went back to their work. Everyone now and then one of them would wander into Charlie's All Damn Day Cafe, plop on the floor, and collect empty ketchup packets, crumbs, forks, gum, pennies, rat feces, whatever was pocketable, no standards of scavenging needed.
"Damn folk, dirty folk," Charliw would curse under his breath. "No cleanliness or nothing, just rugged outsiders taken over by a synthetic."
"Charlie, calm down," a lighthearted patron would say, sensing the rising of a rant. Charlie could go on and on about nothing, all the while brewing the best coffee in town.
The boy took a look in through the window. No one there tonight, just bored Charlie and a bottle of pills from which the source was anyone's guess as were the effects. The boy had a feeling if he asked for drugs he would get it if he asked Charlie but he didn't want to test that and continued walking. Every now and then a car would slow down like a criminal on wheels and he'd get this awful start in his heart that felt just wonderful. He wanted to be beaten and have a story to tell when he got back home, if he got back home, and this if instilled in his character a wild sense of rebellion and suicidal thrill.
He wanted to stay out much later, when the Beetle People came out. Everyone knew about the Beetle People, most of them through stories from the unlucky few that had a run-in with one. The Beetle People were the worst type of Dregs. They could shell up anywhere, in tires, trash cans, trees and the most evil sort, the ones who still had a shred of mind not yet consumed by the bad stuff but tainted to the point of evility, in the paranoid dreams of a narcotics officer, asleep with his family and dead confident they would never use and abuse, though his thirteen year old daughter has every intention of getting high with her fifteen year old boyfriend the next day and his little namesake will stupidly get into huffing glue and using whippets when he runs with the wrong crowd in the local soccer team. A conniving goalie named Lester has his sights set upon him and will invite him to relax with his friends, all of whose parents are blossoming Dregs and the mostly skin who walk in the night.
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There is no valid reason you should be reading this
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