ICW:Allegory for Sex

 

You really wish you had read the manual. But no, that would have meant wasting needless time right? And damn it, you already waited enough.

    I bet your glad you'd forgot to cut your nails. Makes tearing into the shrink wrap ever so much easier. Scratch the hell of the cover, but who cares, that ain't the important part. The best part. That's yet to come. Shrink wrap ends up on the floor, soon joined by the manual. Unimportant things. Window dressings really.

    Heh. Donuts to dollars that your hands shake as you cram the cartridge into your Nintendo. But what's this? It won't start! Shit. Fuck. Son of a bitch. That's what happens when you go too fast. When you forget to give the system a little bit of well…attention.

So you pop the cartridge right out and do what you done hundreds of times before. You blow on it. Run your finger across the insides of it and make sure there's no dust. Familiarity bred out of repetition. But today it seems more important than ever. And then you turn to the old NES and do the same. And you wait. Cross your fingers maybe?

Aha! Success! Sweet, sweet success. You get the start up screen. Might be a new game, but you're somewhat familiar with the procedure. After all, you heard all your friends recommend it enough. Talk about it enough. Even draw pictures. All as if to taunt you. So you press start, watch some words scroll to the screen, and finally, finally there you are. World 1. Level 1. Section 1.

Every once in a while(probably on Fridays) I'll post something with ICW in the title. It stands for In Class Writing. I'm taking a creative writing class, and we usually have an assignment at the last half of the class where the professor gives us a prompt or directions and we have about ten or so minutes to write something. Today our assignment was to write a scene where the entire thing revolved around sex, but we never went into specifics.

 

Work Shift ver. 2

It's a fucking shame man, that's what it is. All that good alcohol ending up on the streets. But that's two drinks Tommy for you. A fucking shame.

"Jim, I'm sorry Jim. Shouldn't have had that last tequila. That's what messed me up. Bad tequila." I'm surprised he manages to get all the words out before the tequila starts kicking his pudgy little ass again.

I take a step back to avoid the splatter. "No worries Tommy." It's my usual line when it comes to him.

"Tom," he slurs, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. All that does is plaster specks of brown chunks all over his ballooned up cheeks. "The name's Tom."

"Yea, yea. Tom." I'm barely paying attention to the guy, my eyes stuck on a duo exiting the bar. A redhead and a blond, short skirts and bare midriffs. Young. "I don't wanna go home! It's not even late!" Blond had too much of a good time it seems. Red tries to get her to be quiet as she leads her to their car, but blondie ain't having none of it. "Don't hush me, I'm the one that brought you here. And now you want me to leave?" She suddenly caught sight of me and waved. Bracelets crash against each other and almost drown out her voice. "Hey! You're cute, doing anything?" Red gets her into the car before I have a chance to answer. I think about making my way to the two and having a chat. Just a chat, nothing more. Honest. But just as I'm contemplating a good line to come through Tommy throws up on me.

"The fuck!" I shove him to the ground and he goes down with a sob. I can hear Blondie laughing from inside her car and suddenly I want to make it explode. Betcha I could too. But Red's look softens me up. Kindred spirits her and I, both having to babysit drunks. 'cept hers aint gone soft in the head like mine has.

"Didn't mean to Jimbo. Honest." The sad sack is actually crying. Damn it all to hell.

"Here, get up now. Didn't like this pants nohow." He takes my hand, and I'm surprised by how strong his grip is. Dunno why, surprised that is. Guess it's just easy to forget sometimes. I'm reminded now as I look at his hands. Large and ape like, his hand is almost the size of a small child's head with calluses running all across his knuckles. I think I spot a dab of dried up blood. No surprise there, his shift ended just a bit a go.

"I think I should go away."

Now, what the hell am I suppose to say here? Damn right Tommy should go away. Would do him a world of good. Every day it becomes harder and harder for me to remember the man I met so many years ago. In his prime, Tommy was…fuck, Tommy was motherfuckin' Tom. Best and brightest of us all, able to put in twice the amount of hours than anyone else and still have that aww-shucks-I'm-just-from-the-country smile when he walked into the bar at the end of his shift. That smile was a legend, nabbing him chick a dils from all corners. Grateful civilians, women from our side, and even some from theirs.

Sometimes he still tried that smile. It's then when it's the hardest to be his friend. Mainly cause I want to burn his face off.

Might be thinking I'm not much of a friend with that sort of admission. Thing is, I'm probably the last friend he got. Most of the others won't look at him anymore. They would be too chicken shit to admit it, but they stay away because Tommy's a reminder of what happens if we stay too long in the game. Too many punches and you might end up like old Tommy I heard them say.

"Here we go." Propping him up against the wall, I loosen his tie and clean him up best as I can. His head rolls side as I do so, reminding him of a doll with all its joints loose. "Stay still you hear? Pants I might not have cared about, but I do fancy this shirt." He nods.

"Think I should go away?"

I look at him. Really look at him. How old must he be? His hair is thinning more so every day, and as if in direct relations, his second chin grows bigger. His eyes are glazed over, and I wish I could say its all due to the drinking.

"Nah Tommy, you still got a few good years left."

"Thanks Jimmy, really. You always tell it straight don't you?"

"That I do, that I do." I lean against the wall and search for a cig. I can make out some of the sounds from the inside of the bar and I wish I was there. I don't know what I want more right now a drink or a fuck. No wait, scratch that. I want a damn cigarette. Can't believe I got none.

We both freeze when we hear the sirens. They cry out to the streets, like a mother crying out for her child. More sirens, all heading to the same direction. Means something big is up.

"I should go."

I could stop him. Could tell him he already put in his hours, let someone else worry about this. But I don't, cause Tommy needs this. Needs to feel like he's still able to do something.

He's still fast. Not as fast as a speeding..well, you know the rest of that phrase, but still fast. I watch him rise to the clouds and fly towards the sirens, their screams calling out to him.

"Luck Tom," I finally find a cig in my back pocket. I let a flame dance on the tips of two of my fingers and take a long drag. Best enjoy this, my shift will start soon.

Then it's off to save the world.

Been a productive few days. I actually have been working on my normal novel and so far I like what I have. I ended up posting the story that grew out of the prompt on a forum and didn't get much critiques, but the ones I did get were along the line of what I was thinking. I really liked the idea I came up with, even though to be fair it's not THAT original, so I figured I would try to rewrite it, this time without the shackles of a prompt. I actually really like what I came up with, and I think Tom and the James are more fleshed out. In my head, James is British, pretty clear the inspiration for that was Spike from Buffy, while Tom is a Superman analogue, except his obviously a much sadder version. I originally wanted to make him almost mentally challenge, like Lenny from Of Mice and Men(which by the way is a great story I should reread sometime soon) I don't know if I went far enough with it, or if I should.

I also wanted to try something new. Both in the forum that I posted the original story, along with my creative writing teacher mentioned how a lot of writers are moving away from the whole "she said/said/exclaimed" kinda thing, so I wanted to try writing something that did away with that. Along with that, I wanted to try to write something in present tense, as it's the tense I least work with. Woo, who knows, maybe sometime soon I'm try writing something not in the comic/fantasy/horror/noir theme. Or even gasp something that isn't in first person.

“PROMPT-Helpful Hint: Wait until you’re sober before trying that again”

It didn't take Tom falling of the stool for me to realize that he had more than enough to drink for the night. I known ever since he went off to talk to the cute blonde girl at the other side of the bar. Sober Tom would never have had the balls to do that. Drunk Tom, or Tommy as he liked to be called swaggered over to the girl with a half empty bottle of Shiner and what one can assumed passed for a cocky smile. That smile didn't even budge a millimeter when the girl laughed in his face and shoved him away.

That stupid smile was still there as I helped him back up to his feet. "Here's a helpful hint," I said, "wait until you're sober before trying that again."

"She was too pretty to wait for" he muttered, glancing at the stool as if trying to figure out the best approach for attempting a remount.

"I was talking about sitting" I said, taking him by the cuff of his shirt and leading him away from the bar. Nice thing about going to a bar on a Tuesday- no crowd to try to fight our way through.

I remember a time when it felt strange to be taking care of Tom this way. He was at least twenty years older than me and was always careful to exude an image of self control at work that had served him well. Work wise, Tom was a machine, racking up twice as many numbers as the next best guy. Which would be me. Funny though, I never begrudged him for being better than me, maybe because I saw what such determination did to him.

"Hey Jimmy?"

"Yeah Tom?"

"Tommy, man, Tommy" He leaned dangerously to the left, almost bumping into a couple who were severely overdressed for the type of night and place this was.

Pulling him to the right I offered an apologetic smile to the couple. "What's up Tommy?"

"I want to quit."

No need to ask what he wanted to quit, this wasn't Tom and I's first Tuesday out. "No you don't." My answer wasn't always the same. Sometimes I encouraged him to quit, sometimes I would argue for him not to. Okay, so 'argue' was to strong of a word to use for what I did..I would just tell him not to. See, I long ago discovered that whatever I said wasn't really important. Tom wanted to just be heard, not have an actual discussion about it.

"I do! I'm sick of the workload and the hours. Look at me Jimbo, I'm not a young man anymore."

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. The man I that leaned on me as we walked looked very little like the one I met all those years ago. At that point he'd had hair and good eyesight. He still had those things, but it was all fake. Expensive toupees and top of the line contacts. All in an attempt to keep pace with the younger and younger men and women getting into the business. What he couldn't fake was what the job had done to his body. I helped him walk not only because he was drunk and liable to tip over, but because I knew of the joint pains he tried to hide. For the briefest of instants I was disgusted with him, disgusted with what he let himself become. That disgust quickly went away, replaced with guilt, and..fear. Guilt that I had felt the way I had, and fear that well, that I was looking at my future.

The cold air as we stepped outside of the bar seemed to snap Tom back into the land of sobriety. For my part I wished I worn a coat. We heard police sirens wail away out in the distance, and I could feel both us become tense. Neither of us said a word until the sirens faded. Sticking my hands into my pockets I paced back and forth on the sidewalk for warmth. Wished I had a cigarette too.

"Everything changes James, everything," Tom whispered, extending an open pack of cigarettes. I took one and left the remaining one for him. "Back when I started out, the whole job was new and exciting. Heh, same could be same for the city." Lighting the cig, he brought it to his lips and took a deep puff before beginning to cough. "Damn, don't know why I smoke this things."

Probably same reason he drank and chased girls half his age. Same reason he'd been in the this profession for so long. Looking down to the cigarette I held, I suddenly no longer wanted a smoke.

"The city, God I loved it back, then," he continued, looking around the block. "There were more brownstones you know. And alleys for crooks to dart in and out off."

I glanced around the neighborhood, trying to imagine what he was seeing and failing. To me the City would always be this neon bright thing. Type of place where you could feel totally crowded and alone at the same time. And crooks didn't have to dart in and out of nowhere this days, no, nowadays they just strolled casually on the sidewalk and did their thing.

We heard the sirens again, angry wails that pushed through the street and cared not for who they stirred.

"I should go," Tom said, undoing the first button of his shirt.

I could have told him that I could handle it. That he already put in almost ten hours. But I didn't. Because he wouldn't listen. And because he needed this. So I just nodded and wished him luck.

He was still fast. Not faster than a speeding..well, you know the phrase, but still fast. I watched him rise to the sky and head towards the sirens until he became a speck in the clouds. Then I went back inside the bar. My own shift would start soon.

This is an experiment. I'm hoping that every day I can come in and write something. Somedays, like today I'll take inspiration from a book I have, The Writer's Book of Matches, which is a book of prompts. For the most part I'll probably use prompts, but there might be times when I'm actually inspired and go without them, we'll see on that.

As for this particular work, I started off knowing I wanted to keep it to one thousand words or less. I'm starting a creative writing class, and our first work that is due is a piece of flash fiction that is 1k or less. I'm hoping that the story makes sense, but I have a feeling I rushed through it. I really didn't want to use the "faster than a speeding.." line, nor have Tom fly away, as it brings up the image of Supes, but I couldn't figure out how to end the story in a strong enough image that tells the reader what is going on with the limited amount of space I had left.