Staci

coughingpuppy @ 2009-06-25T22:46:00

2009-06-26T02:47:36Z

Another piece for the RP character. I actually have a short vignettish-type thing that I'm working on too that will probably be put up soon.

The strawberry split into two neat halves. They tumbled onto the pile of slices in the blue ceramic bowl with a fleshy whisper just as the door whipped open so hard it slammed back into the wall. The man didn't matter; all Lisa saw was the gun.

Matt would have known what kind of gun it was.

Lisa swept the room. The window was too far away. There was a knife in her hand, short and sharp and glistening with juice. She didn't know how to throw a knife, though.

The man pointing the gun at her was a redhead, about her age, clothed in the charcoal gray suit and tie that had once been her daily form of dress. There was no humor in his baby round face as he pointed the gun at her head, his other arm dangling by his side.

“Operative McGowan.”

Lisa said nothing. Strangely, the only thing she could feel was regret that she was going to miss breakfast.

“I'm here to give you the Seventh Degree,” was all he said when she didn't answer. Plainly, simply, without judgment.

When Rufus came up behind her, as though he'd been there all along, as though she'd just been sitting down to eat with the old man, she knew there was no way out.

“Lisa,” Rufus said, and she could feel him leaning down, his breath against her ear, “you've only got a couple of seconds, kiddo. What are you going to do?”

She thought about how satisfying it would be to lunge at him and plunge the knife into him before she was peppered with bullets: there would be something gratifying about a last stand, about being infused with the strength of humanity before a futile attempt to strike him down. Even taking the high road, trying to talk him down and explain to him what she had done and seen since leaving them, that could be fitting. A last free act, a last battle cry for a just world.

The young man's eyes flicked to the knife, and then back up; cold, calculating gazes locked together with just the span of the room and the gun in between. His eyes were hazel.

“Losing time,” Rufus said.

“Killing him would be pointless, and he isn't going to listen to me,” she said to him quietly. Somehow the Technocrat did not seem to have heard; he stood there with the muzzle of the gun unwavering. A click when he cocked the hammer back. “I'm going to die.”

“Not everything's a fight, Lisa. You've got a couple seconds of living yet.” And then Rufus was irrelevant, a wisp of imagination powerless to defend her against what was coming.

Without thinking she reached into the bowl and brought two of the strawberry slices to her mouth. They lacked the slightly sour taste she expected; they were perfectly ripe, firm against her tongue as she chewed and swallowed, the taste as intense as it had been when she was a child.

The barrel of the gun wavered just a little as the Technocrat blinked at her, and then it steadied again. Lisa ate another slice and, after a second's thought, cupped the bowl in her palm and extended it toward him.

She expected the gun to roar like thunder, but there was only the hiss of a silencer, and then her left cheek was mist and her head was snapped backward into the wall and her knees buckled beneath her and it was as though she'd been hit by the grill of a semi and there was sticky warmth all over her nose.

It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt.

The last thing to fade from her senses was the taste of the strawberries, and she awoke tasting only blood.

Here's some writing

2009-05-10T23:32:05Z

Just a short piece about an RP character of mine that I really liked. I've been really busy working on longer and hopefully publishable projects, so it's nice to get a chance to write something not as serious once in a while. To be clear, it's told from the POV of the character's father, not the character herself.

Like most parents, Richard Carraway marked his daughter's growth by her birthdays.

The early ones had been odd. Richard had always imagined having a little girl who liked Disney and horses and kittens, or even a tomboy who went out looking for frogs and worms and refused to dress in anything but jeans her despairing mother would have to patch regularly. Lisa was neither. Lisa was a tiny, articulate adult from the moment she could walk. At four, she stated that she didn't want a cake, but would rather have ice cream, which he thought was an odd request in November but heeded. Presents were mostly books and a small telescope his relatives told him not to buy her because a four-year-old couldn't be responsible with it, but he knew better.

It made Richard smile to see them together when he came home early the day of her ninth birthday, Justin with the bus pass still crumpled awkwardly in his hand, Lisa nearly a full nine inches taller than she had been exactly a year before and veritably towering over the small boy.

“We had choir today,” she informed him when he asked her how her day was, and made a face.

“You like to sing,” he reminded her. Richard had been distracted that day, perhaps still lost in the meditation he'd had earlier that morning.

“Yeah, but everyone else is so loud. Nobody can hear me,” was the sulky response.

His daughter loved to show off. His daughter knew how talented she was. And that didn't change the next year, or the next one after that...or, really, ever. At nine there was a pair of binoculars and a camera because she wanted to be an FBI agent.

Richard imagined his daughter growing up into a Virtual Adept or maybe a Hermetic – he couldn't envision her not Awakening, and she'd shown little interest in his offerings of martial arts lessons or sitting quietly while he meditated in his office. Lisa was interested in sports and playing guitar and pretending to be spies with Justin. For the rest of November 5, 1991 both children tore through the house, stuffed full of vanilla cake, with ties around their necks in a Windsor knot he'd shown them how to do.

When she turned sixteen – ten years ago, now – he remembered that birthday as his favorite. Summer had been slow to die that year and he and his wife stood on the wooden slats of the walkway, the Atlantic Ocean rough with autumn waves, while Lisa and Justin, clothed in hooded sweatshirts, laughed and kicked sand at each other on the deserted beach. His daughter had other friends but Justin was the constant.

“Don't go too far!” Dianne called after them as they sped off down the boardwalk. She let out a sigh and pursed her lips when Justin lifted their daughter off the ground and dashed full tilt toward the restaurant at the end of the boardwalk with her partially tossed over his shoulder. “That kid is going to wind up in an emergency room on her birthday.”

“She's old enough to be driving,” Richard reminded his wife. “She's fine.”

Well, his favorite other than that it ended in an argument with Dianne, but those weren't infrequent.

He watched Lisa carefully, back then. Richard would have loved his child even had she not Awakened, but he could tell that she probably would, and he looked forward to finally teaching her all of the things he had learned, educating her, helping her pick her Tradition, in a way that he'd never looked forward to helping her with her algebra or teaching her to drive a car. He wanted to see her given the opportunity to do all of the things he gave up when he got married and moved to an American suburb, when his muscles went soft and he tucked away his Brotherhood name like a well-loved old blanket might be tucked into a box and forgotten.

He wanted the kind of close bond with Lisa that he couldn't have while she didn't understand the world around her, while she was still asleep to the energy around her. The kind of close bond he couldn't have with her mother, because Dianne never would have understood if he'd tried to explain. Richard perhaps should not have married a Sleeper, but Richard was a romantic, and Richard was a man full of regrets.

When she came home from college to celebrate her nineteenth, there was a palpable shift in the way she smelled, the way she moved, the way the air felt around her. Energy flowed around her as though she were a rock in a stream, and when he felt it, he knew.

And he longed for when his wife went to bed and he could take his daughter aside and ask her about her Awakening, how it had happened for her, what her Avatar had said. What her Avatar was, whether it would be like his.

Then, while he was slicing vegetables to cook dinner – cooking was one of his few talents – something Lisa said drew his attention from his thoughts. “So yeah, I'm going to be doing some specialized training with this new guy. He thinks I have a lot of insight into the psychological field, I'll have a job waiting for me when I get out of college and they're going to pay the rest of the way.” She looked at him and beamed, clearly waiting for praise.

And Richard just stared at his daughter and realized in that instant that it was too late for a conversation, that he'd waited too long, that maybe if he'd told her anything earlier she would have known enough not to go to the other side when it finally happened. The daydreams he'd had for years about how that talk would go suddenly evaporated in his mind. He couldn't find the praise she wanted.

When she brought Matthew Wong home for her twentieth, he forgave her a little for joining the enemy – even if she didn't realize that it was the enemy. Lisa towered over Matt, a trim Asian man, the way she towered over Justin many years before. Matt and Richard talked about whether Picard or Kirk had been the better captain, and Richard was left bewildered that his daughter and this man she clearly adored were really Technocrats. He could forgive Lisa because she seemed happy, because she still loved orange juice and playing guitar and she still humored him when he tickled her ribs, the same way she always had.

For her twenty-first he visited her at college and had a beer with her, four of her “work friends” and Matt, while Dianne frowned in disapproval. Richard was left slightly in awe of the fact that the smiling, laughing, tipsy twenty-somethings around him were supposed to be killers, rapists of the soul and mind, banes of imagination and free thought. Before that day it was all he'd known their kind to be.

And for her twenty-third she came home hollow-eyed, without Matt and without the engagement ring on her finger, and he put an arm around her shoulders while she sat out on the porch steps and a breeze with the cold metallic smell of autumn blew by.

“People break up,” he said, because he had no idea how he would otherwise console her. He had never been very good at it.

“It's not like that, Dad.”

“What happened, sweetheart?” Richard asked, as gently as he could. Technocrat or not, she was still his child. And maybe this would be his chance to finally have the conversation he'd wanted to have since she was born. Maybe, vulnerable as she was right now, she would listen to him.

For a long time he didn't think she would answer him, and he almost did not expect an answer. He'd longed for a close relationship with Lisa, one where she confided in him, but they had never had one. And then she did. “Matt was a criminal. He was doing illegal things and I didn't know. So I turned him in to the police.”

Richard felt a sinking, cold feeling as he looked at Lisa and began to read into her words, her posture, the joyless expression, and it was all he could do to keep himself from taking his arm away from her shoulders. “So the two of you broke up?” he managed to say, just to have said something.

“Something like that. It happened back in July,” she said, and Richard had to go inside, because he had never before expected to feel revulsion at his own child.

At twenty-five she told him she would be away for several months, that there was a business trip she had to go on and that she probably wouldn't be home for Christmas. They'd hardly spoken in the past two years, since she had told him. Richard wondered if he could be there for her, if he could help her, and he knew he probably couldn't, because what kind of monster had he raised?

One with cold eyes who hardly spoke, who, to his knowledge, no longer kept any friends, who no longer let him listen to music she had composed; one who had become everything he'd feared she would, when she told him seven years before about her new employers.

And on the fifth of November, 2008 she would have been twenty-six, but he hadn't heard from his daughter in over half a year. He wondered if she was dead – if someone he knew from his bygone glory days had killed her, if it had been a Traditionalist, or if the Technocracy had executed her. Richard wondered if maybe she would still be there if he'd tried harder to reach her, three years ago or in the years following.

But he didn't know, and Richard Carraway was a man full of regrets.

coughingpuppy @ 2008-02-10T05:45:00

2008-02-10T10:47:25Z

Wow. So, the lesson of the night is that Bacardi 151, in conjunction with cinnamon liquor, or the drink that Brad has colorfully termed "a rocket up the ass," -really- fucks you up fast.

coughingpuppy @ 2008-01-27T23:32:00

2008-01-28T04:59:55Z

Since people have asked, my back is fine and the incision is doing much better. I've gotten a good bit of feeling back, though we are nowhere near 100%. Also I have really sharp uncomfortable pins and needles on a fairly consistent basis, which tends to sometimes make me grumpy.

On a side note, I miss getting to hang around with friends and bullshit on a fairly consistent basis. Everybody's busy a whole lot, including me up until recently, and I haven't been here for the past month. Or maybe I just miss having somebody to really -talk- to every day. I get the lonely. It usually passes, though - it's worse when I'm not working and not busy.

Also I have a short thing to post. Just a quick blurb that I wrote at my writer's retreat that I liked. The prompt was to write exactly 100 words about a character that has everything - money, family, and friends - and loses it all to a mistake.

    Leah was her parents' good child. Robby, her brother, was in prison for burning down the African American cultural center while in college.
    When he went on parole Leah took him in. Robby ate chocolate powder and smoked marijuana. When Leah hosted the yearly office get-together at her house, she asked Robby to stay out of sight.
    So it was that when everyone was talking after dinner Robby wandered into the kitchen.
    Before she could react, Coke was dripping from her boss's face. "Stop fucking my sister," Robby said as he helped himself to the cold remains of dinner.

Also got some real, actual, definitive progress on the novel I've wanted to write for a while. Decided on a genre to help focus/detail the plot and mapped out the characters and the plot a bit. This is exciting since I've had things in the planning stage for the past three years or so.

Sadly I will have plenty of time to devote to this in the next few weeks because I was laid off due to the amount of time I had off after the surgery. If life were a D&D game I would be the character whose player constantly botches rolls - it seems like things that I have no control over usually turn out badly. But maybe I will find a new job that doesn't have the crazy hours or the long commute, and finding a job should be easier this time around because of the experience I accrued at the other one, so I'm fairly hopeful. I have a million things to do tomorrow, including applying for unemployment. Also maybe I will find a leprechaun and I can cut off his foot and carry it in a pocket. Or is that rabbits?

coughingpuppy @ 2008-01-02T15:22:00

2008-01-02T20:45:00Z

So, a quick update.

The good news: Work was very understanding and I will be allowed to come back to work once I have control of certain problematic bodily functions again. Hopefully this will be soon. My therapist also called and was very understanding and told me some ways to get in contact with therapists in the area while I'm healing. I was able to sit up and get out of bed today without pain and went shopping for a little bit with my mother. The stitches are coming out tomorrow, and I no longer have sciatica or back pain other than that caused by the incision, so once that recovers I can -do- things again. Also Amanda and probably Seth and Deb (!!!) are coming to visit shortly and I'm very excited to see them. I have several weeks to catch up with Kirk's character on WoW. It's a new year and hopefully it will be tons better than the last one. I am dealing with this and able to look at the positives much better than I would have three months ago, indicating that the therapy is helping tremendously and we are taking baby steps towards making me not-depressed. I told my insurance company to fuck themselves because they haven't covered a damn thing since I started paying for it and continually find loopholes to get out of covering my conditions. My parents and close friends have been very supportive. My parents got me a very nice wool coat for Christmas, and an expensive wine-colored dress shirt that looks very good (it's also a medium and I haven't worn one in God knows how long). I weighed myself at home and discovered that I have lost a total of 40-45 lbs as well as two and a half pants sizes since graduating from college. Go me.

The bad news: I am depressed and overwhelmed trying to deal with this. I am afraid of going out in public due to fear of having an accident. I never feel clean - a sorry state for someone very concerned about personal hygiene. I was getting to the point where I am ready to start dating again but now I have no idea how I will manage this in my current state, especially if it persists for months to a year to forever. I haven't noticed any changes in feeling/function so far and the neurosurgeon had hoped I would recover those things within a few weeks, if I recover them. It may be months yet. My insurance refused to cover any of the surgery because I had seen someone in the past and they qualified it as a pre-existing condition. Luckily the hospital has ways to cover people like me so I'll only be paying 20% of the cost of everything; however, due to the fact that everything will probably total around $50k when all is said and done, this is still exorbitant. My parents will help. My family eats much less healthily than I do at home and I am forced to be inactive due to a three-inch incision in my back, so I am worried about gaining some of my weight back.

It's going. Trying to get better at finding silver linings. I took pictures of my incision and I will probably put them on my Facebook to show everyone that I am a badass for dealing with this mostly with a smile and hopefully I will have an awesome scar.

For any friends who are as yet unaware.

2007-12-31T02:55:07Z

I will be away from home and slightly fragile the next couple of weeks!

I've been having back pain for a few years (we assumed it was a slipped disc) but over Christmas while I was at my parents', sections of my pelvis went numb and I lost control of several bodily functions (cough.) Upon being rushed to the hospital and given an MRI I was diagnosed with a very rare condition called cauda equina syndrome - a bulging disc was pressing into my spinal cord. They did some emergency surgery on my back to remove the disc and take pressure off my spine, and I've been in the hospital the past five or six days, I just got home a few hours ago.

Since some damage was done to the spinal cord (not quite as bad as it sounds, it's possible for those nerves to regenerate and bounce back) and we don't know if/to what extent I'm going to recover function and feeling, I'm gonna be at my parents' for a bit until I recover and until my back is completely healed up. The good news is that I can walk around just fine and should be able to live mostly normally even if I don't recover things; the nuerosurgeon said that things are working in my favor, though, so I have my fingers crossed.

I'll be playing things week by week depending on how things go, so I'm not sure exactly when I'll be back yet. This has been a very life-altering week for me in a lot of ways, so I'm intending to write something on it.

Here's to the new year.

Man, fuck NaNoWriMo.

2007-11-09T23:53:16Z

Dear Novel,

We've needed to have a talk for a long time now. I know I haven't been as attentive as I should have been in the past - as I have been in the past. I don't know what happened. In the beginning things were different and I was so passionate, but I guess the flames must have died down.

It's been a combination of a lot of things. This year has had a lot of major life changes for me and a lot of ups and downs. I'm not the person I was. Those times when I tried to devote my attention to you, I always felt pressured, and I frequently just couldn't come up with anything at all. I have a beginning but I don't have a middle or an end. I lack planning. Sometimes when I do get something written I get frustrated because it simply doesn't do you justice, and I throw it away. I know it's hard to be around a perfectionist, but in my mind I feel like I can't do anything that will be good enough for you.

I also have to confess that I've been unfaithful to you. I've had a few one-night stands with a few short stories. I just couldn't help myself - they were done so much more quickly, and they never required the same amounts of attention you did. I suppose I just have commitment issues. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

But I've felt really terrible about it lately. I know what we could have, and I've decided that I want to try to be a better writer to you. After another few short stories, that is.

Affectionately,

Staci

coughingpuppy @ 2007-09-10T21:37:00

2007-09-11T02:24:42Z

So, have my first counseling session tomorrow. Getting counseling/medication at all has been a headache - I talked to eight different people for two hours today trying to find a low-cost counseling service - but I'm hoping that this is finally the start, and the end of all the frustration, albeit not the end of worrying about -paying- for all of it. I've been on anti-depressants for about two weeks. Sometimes I think they're helping, sometimes it seems like they're not. For the most part it means that I no longer have the urge to burst into tears every five minutes, or even most of the time, but I'm still often very sad. The psychiatrist told me it would probably take a few weeks and that I might experience heightened depression briefly when I upped the dose. We'll see. I at least feel like I have more control.

Going is kind of scary, because I know this is likely going to be a long and painful process. It's hard to keep things sorted. If I'm angry, is it irrational? When is it irrational? How can I know? How can I fix it if it is? I know there is something very wrong with me, but figuring out exactly what that -is-, what parts need to be cut out of me and what I have the power to change, is something else again. Accepting some things will be hard. For some people, it's just a matter of accepting that things in life happen that they can't control, and that they don't have control over what -other- people do; for me that thought inspires terror and the fear that I'm going to lose everything no matter what I do. I don't know how to change that. I guess that's something I can hope to get out of the counseling.

Sometimes it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I've been diagnosed in and of itself. On one hand, I feel a lot of relief. There's something wrong. I always thought there might be something wrong, but now I -know- there is, and if it's wrong it's fixable and doesn't have to last forever. I don't have to feel anxious and hopeless and listless daily for the rest of my life. I don't have to feel like I'm constantly trying to control my emotions or my thoughts and turn them into something I want, and usually without success.

On the other hand I kind of feel like I've been branded. I don't know if it's something I'm going to have to struggle with for the rest of my life, or something that's going to keep coming up and influencing my friendships and relationships. I don't know anyone with major depression who has had much success with other people, and that's a really scary thought. On the other hand, if I honestly want to be better and I'm resolved to make it better no matter what it takes, maybe that's the difference.

I guess maybe it was something that needed to happen to me. Maybe I needed to learn that I can still pull through when everything imaginable has gone wrong and my worst fears have been realized, and maybe it will help me be less afraid in the future. Maybe someday I can look back on this and be grateful for it, because even if I am a weak person I can hopefully come out of it stronger. I don't know yet.

On the note of taking myself less seriously, soon there will be SHADOWRUN AND OHMIGOD I AM SO EXCITED BECAUSE I HEART IT. Also though I am mildly ashamed to admit it, it is the awesomest thing ever that my little sister got a Facebook because we have been using it to have fun together and stay in contact. I am mildly ashamed because I am mildly ashamed that I am actually using Facebook to keep in contact with someone instead of the phone or something, much less my sister. Still, she's a busy kid. It makes me sad that I haven't been around much since she hit her teens.

I turned in an app at Starbuck's in the hopes that they will hire me so I can bring in some money until I get hired at an office or firm, and it is looking good. I talked with the two baristas there for a bit to leave a good impression. I think I actually got hit on by one of them, but with other girls it's hard to tell whether they're just being friendly. I'm hoping I'll hear back from the firm that I was a pretty strong candidate for soon. They're offering a lot of money and it's pretty much exactly what I want to do (other than that they're an auditing firm so the writing material is kind of boring.) I'd rather be in entertainment or doing PR for a nonprofit, but that usually requires more experience than what I have. I'd be willing to take the probable pay cut to work with a nonprofit (as opposed to the business firms I'm looking at now). Perhaps someday!

We have been doing outside stuff a lot lately. This makes me very happy, I hope the trend continues. Hiking by myself is boring but I get the urges in the fall.

coughingpuppy @ 2007-08-27T21:53:00

2007-08-28T01:54:03Z

Lately my moods have been all around black. It's from a combination of things - the breakup being the biggest factor, but there's a lot of other stuff rolled into it too. I've felt depressed, futile, hopeless, horribly disillusioned, angry, conflicted about where to go with my life, and sometimes worse, bad enough that I've finally decided to seek help. Most of the time I can't shake it. I can cheer myself up for a bit but any reminder of anything is a slap in the face. Luckily everybody else has been pretty understanding and supportive, because I have a hard time shaking it even when I'm hanging out with people, which is (usually) not the case. It's hard to have fun when one of your friends is having a rough time; I know it from being on the other side of the fence.

Last night was pretty bad. I was hanging out at Amanda's with everyone sans Seth, who had gone out on a walk. We were sitting around talking. I was mostly there for the company and just to be with other people, and feeling for the most part too tired and too preoccupied to talk a lot myself.

Seth ran in the door about midnight, saying that he thought he'd seen a hurt dog on the side of the road while walking and he needed a flashlight. Blaine went with him to drive back to where he'd seen the critter. I'm feeling a touch upset at the mention of this; I love dogs, and a hurt dog on the side of the road is likely going to be beyond our help this late at night, especially if it's aggressive from its injuries. Amanda got a call from Blaine about twenty minutes later. He and Seth had found the dog and they wanted towels so we could bring it to the emergency animal clinic about ten minutes up the road. Amanda and I ran out the door, towels in hand.

It's in a part of town that's much darker and more wooded than where we live, though still close to our apartment complex. There are houses interspaced up the road, but there aren't too many street lights, and there's a tall fence running along the side of a wooded area just on the side of the road. Blaine met us on the side of the road, saying that the dog had run from Seth but that he'd managed to catch it in someone's backyard. We followed him back and found Seth sitting on the ground next to a garage behind the house with his hand on the dog.

The dog sitting next to him was small, about thirty pounds, probably some sort of terrier or sheltie mixed with yellow lab. She had a long, sweet face and floppy ears. But I could see even in the half-light that her back end was horribly mangled. I'd run out of the house so fast that my feet were bare, and I stepped on a warm wet spot on the ground that was probably her blood. I couldn't quite tell, but it looked as though her hind legs were both broken, but worse was that the flesh had literally been stripped away. For all that, she was silent and docile while Seth stroked her head and ears.

"We have towels and trash bags," Amanda told him. Seth wrapped the dog in a towel and picked her up. She didn't protest, but both of her legs were dangling uselessly, and it looked as though one of them was half-severed. She was limp and pretty obviously in shock. I spread a towel and a trash bag on the back seat of Seth's car. He put her on it and climbed in after her to sit with her while Blaine drove. She still didn't make a sound, and laid unmoving on the towel. My guts were starting to twist by then; in the light of the car, the legs looked even worse, and I was starting to wonder whether she'd even make it to the emergency clinic.

We hurried to the animal clinic. Ben and Kirk called ahead to let them know we were coming. Amanda and I ran in to ask the front desk to bring a gurney; she did, and Seth carried the dog in the door. I couldn't help but gape in horror once I finally saw the dog in full light. Her hind legs were nearly skinless around the joint, bright red, and by then it was pretty clear that she was a young dog, probably still a puppy. Her coat was in good condition, she seemed well-fed; it was likely someone's pet we'd found, but she didn't have a collar or identification. The girl at the front desk wheeled her into the back to be seen immediately by the vet, and she came back out to speak with us.

After talking with her a bit we came to the understanding that the emergency clinic doesn't do surgery for rescues – someone has to be financially responsible for the dog, and she said it was probably going to be somewhere between two hundred and four hundred dollars to even get the dog stabilized, but that they wouldn't know until the initial $88 exam. Amanda gave her information, and Seth and Blaine took off to try to find the dog's owner, leaving me and Amanda in the empty clinic to see what the verdict was.

We were upset and worried. Amanda couldn't afford to pay for someone else's dog, and none of the rest of us even have the money to consider it – though we offered to pitch in. We sat in the clinic, mostly silent, and hoped to hear a call from Seth and Blaine saying that they'd found a panicked owner. There were no calls. An older couple came in with a very sick golden retriever and sat across the room from us. Amanda went over to talk with them about their dog to relieve the tension. I hunched on the bench and hoped they wouldn't notice that my feet were bare.

It was nearly two in the morning when the vet came back out and took us into one of the patient rooms to talk with us. The cost to stabilize the dog (fluids, painkillers, bandages) was estimated between $350 and $450, and after the $88 exam the vet concluded that the dog had fractures, severe skin damage, and had lost a lot of blood. No shit. Amanda was fuming quietly but continued to be very polite to the vet, explaining that we were willing to do as much as we possibly could for the dog, but that the only thing we couldn't possibly do was pay – we just didn't have the $450 to throw around. The vet explained that his hands were tied and that the most he could possibly do for the dog was give her painkillers and hope that she lived through the night until an owner could be found the next morning to assume financial responsibility.

“Won't the Humane Society do something?” I asked the vet.

“They'd probably just have her put down,” he said. Besides, they weren't open until the following morning.

My heart was sinking and I could tell that Amanda's was too. Seth and Blaine arrived, ownerless, and explained that no one had answered their doors. We explained the situation. Amanda kept saying that there was no way she could pay for someone else's dog; I kept assuring her that she had nothing to feel guilty about. We'd done as much as we could for the dog just by bringing her in, and if she was put on painkillers at least she had a chance of living if we could find her owner by the next morning. It was a better chance than just having her euthanized, and none of us were comfortable making that call anyway. The vet, who was young and probably afraid of losing his job if he went against policy, was visibly upset; he let us leave without charging the $88 for the exam.

We left the clinic upset and grim. It seemed horribly unfair and pointless. Why did we find the dog and make the effort to save her if she was just going to die in the clinic for lack of funding? I felt even worse than I had earlier that evening. It felt like an additional Fuck You from the world.

When we got back home Seth and Blaine immediately went inside to go to bed. I went inside and promptly threw up. I didn't fall asleep until five in the morning and spent most of the time reading to try to calm down.

I woke up bleary-eyed at seven-thirty to the sound of my phone ringing. The screen said it was Amanda, and my stomach dropped again; I was pretty sure that she'd called to tell me that the dog had died overnight.

Amanda also sounded half-awake. “The clinic called,” she said. “A veterinarian came in this morning and said that she'd stabilized her and splinted her legs, and that if we call the Humane Society we can take her there to do everything else. They're open at eleven.” She asked if I could call because her phone was still broken.

I was mildly in shock. “Is she going to charge us for stabilizing the dog?”

“No,” Amanda said. “She sounded older – I guess she's probably been around long enough to know the most she can do from the most she can do.”

I told her I'd call her back once I'd gotten a hold of the Humane Society, flopped to the end of my bed and set my alarm for eleven, then tried to go back to sleep. Even though I'd only had about two and a half hours, my brain was running in circles. I felt relieved, and astonished that we'd managed to find a vet kind enough that she was willing to go against policy. The dog was probably going to lose a leg, but she'd live, and hopefully we could return her to a grateful owner, or she could be adopted to someone who wouldn't mind her handicap.

I watched the clock for a few hours and drifted in and out of sleep. At eleven my alarm buzzed and I dragged myself over to it. The Humane Society didn't pick up – for the next forty-five minutes, with me calling at five minute intervals. I kept getting a voice message that said they were closed and it listed their hours, though it made no mention of being closed on Sundays during the summer or anything of the like. Their website similarly lacked useful information. I called the vet, thanked her for what she'd done for the dog, and asked her what to do. The only thing she could suggest was that the Humane Society was often short-handed, and that it might just be best to go to talk to them in person.

Amanda went with me, with much grumbling on both our parts at the run-around. I was exhausted, and she wasn't much more awake – she'd woken up a bit after the phone call when Jonah had knocked a vase onto her head. I tried not to laugh at the bump. We went to get coffee (she was kind enough to pay for mine) and drove out to the Humane Society in Rochester.

We were met there by a few volunteers at the desk. They told us they'd be happy to take the dog, though the vetrinary clinic wasn't open until the next day and she would have to wait for surgery. They could make her comfortable, though, and give her painkillers if the vet provided them. Moreover, one of the volunteers knows a veterinarian who can do the dog's surgery for free and give her back to them to be placed up for adoption if we can't locate an owner.

Amanda and I were relieved and smiling, sure that the puppy would be all right now. We got back in the car to drive to the clinic to get the dog.

The veterinarian who treated her was indeed an older woman. She waved away our thanks. “I'm really more of a cat person,” she said, “but the puppy was so sweet, and she's young. It would have been such a shame to have her put down.” Then she thanked us for looking after the dog and for bringing her in when most people would have left her on the side of the road.

She told us that in all likelihood they could save both of her legs, that she had fractures and some bruising, but that if she'd had any internal damage she would have been dead by then. The dog had been given fluids overnight, so she wasn't dehydrating.

We gave her our numbers and asked for hers; she asked to be kept up-to-date on the status of the puppy. We promised to tell her how the dog's surgery went and let her know if we managed to find the dog's owner.

They brought the puppy out so that we could transport her back to the Humane Society. She looked immeasurably better; her legs were in the splints and the wounds were beneath bandages, and the segment of her tail that had been hanging by a nerve had been severed and the stump was bandaged. I sat in the back with her while Amanda drove. She laid her head in my lap and was soundless during the drive; I can attribute part of that to the painkillers, but for the most part she just seemed very friendly and trusting in spite of everything that had happened.

I stayed in the car with her while Amanda went in to talk to the Humane Society reps. She fell asleep while I was petting her and she licked my hand once; I kept talking to her and petting her while I waited for someone to come out.

They brought out a gurney after about twenty minutes. A family had come to the car with the volunteers to see the dog; Amanda said they'd heard the story inside. I helped them lift her onto the stretcher and they carried her in. People kept praising us – one volunteer told us we'd done our good deed for the year – but for my part I'm more astonished at how kind the vet was. It's hard to go against company policy for one animal, and I'm sure she wasn't paid for the service she rendered on the dog; she did everything for free, knowing that we might never find the owner.

The Humane Society is going to give us updates on how she's doing. Amanda said that she'd gotten them to guarantee that she won't be put to sleep under any circumstances; they'll give her back to us if they can't adopt her out, and that's highly unlikely. I told the whole story to Blaine and Seth, who were relieved; Seth called the vet last night to thank her for what she did. Yesterday we made fliers of the dog and posted them up around town, but we've yet to get a call.

This whole thing has really cheered me up. I feel like something finally went right for me, and the vet has put my faith in humanity up a slight notch. The dog's going to be okay, and with any luck will either be returned to her (hopefully loving) family soon, or adopted out to a new one if we can't manage to locate an owner.

Here are some pictures!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/selesa/Puppy1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/selesa/Puppy2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/selesa/Puppy3.jpg

coughingpuppy @ 2007-06-27T03:17:00

2007-06-27T07:18:03Z

Found this today. I wrote it a few years ago...at the end of my freshman year of college I think. Just a short little vignette.

When I was a kid I used to imagine a world in the clouds.

It was largely brought about by the cartoon images of heaven, with angels sitting atop a puffy cloud and playing harps. The images in my head were less of a cartoon but still a four-year-old’s fantasy. The clouds were a place people went after they died. When I got a little older, five or six, they were a place where Martin Luther King, Jr., and all sorts of other famous, good people went and mingled.

The place in the clouds was very plain – clouds that stretched for miles without end, white and fluffy, but the people there didn’t need anything more. God was there and he walked freely among everyone, less of a solid being than a spirit, something my four-year-old brain, still completely entrenched in the material, couldn’t fully comprehend.

When I was seven or eight I learned that those pretty puffy white clouds were, in fact, called cumulus clouds, and they were not puffy strands of heavenly matter but, in fact, were made up of tiny specs of water. Heaven evaporated. Like the north pole and the deepest parts of the ocean, though, the clouds still held their mystique.

When I was twelve I flew for the first time. We flew up, above the clouds, above heaven, in a matter of minutes. We broke through into the sunlight and looked down at the white, insubstantial mist far below.

There was no world beyond the clouds. It was only fog. Once we’d broken through and were back on the ground again, the wisps still clinging to the wings had melted away, as insubstantial as a dream.

coughingpuppy @ 2007-05-03T15:14:00

2007-05-03T19:15:58Z

The short story behind the cut is a short story for my creative writing class, partially inspired by American Gods. It's a little bizarre, I'm not sure it works.

Jake still didn't know why he'd thought that England would be any different. England had been enchanting and he didn't know anybody there. Anybody else would have said that Jake was at a crossroads, and that he'd gone out looking for himself, but Jake tried not to base his self-identity around cliches.

He'd left London that morning to take a bus to Norfolk, and from Norfolk he'd taken the rail out as far as he could to the suburbs, and then he'd walked and watched the houses fade to cottages which then faded to hills, then to moors that stretched like green dunes. There were roads here – except that they were old and cracked, quite unlike the meticulously maintained London streets.

Jake puffed along, sweat matting his Hi-lighter orange curly hair to his head. Some people might have called it copper colored, but no one used something as pretty as copper to describe the nest that sat upon a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound boy's head, especially not when his face was flushed a clashing florid red. Jake did not walk often.

This was Jake: a socially maladjusted boy, a recent college graduate who had majored in literary studies, who thought that no harm could come to him walking alone on an English moor, trying to forget the harsh realities of life that had brought him to the road in the first place. His hand was clutched tightly around a satchel that had four peanutbutter-and-marshmallow sandwiches, an apple, two Red Bulls, his wallet, a cell phone charger (he'd forgotten the phone on the kitchen counter of his London apartment) and the sort of disposable camera one bought at a cornerside convenience store. If he walked far enough, Jake assumed that eventually the broken pavement would turn to gravel, and that would turn to dust, and soon there would hardly be any farmhouses scattered along it.

“I think you might do better to stay in, have a drink, maybe ring another bitch and forget all about her,” Matt had said. Matt, who always referred to all women as “bitches” and liked to think of himself as a ladies' man, was the only friend Jake had made in London. “Hell, you don't even know whether she's cheating, do you, so think on it for a day and give her another ring tomorrow.” Jake, whom Matt had never encouraged to think about anything, had nodded, and Matt, who was preoccupied with his weekend plans, had given him a slap on the shoulder and they said no more on the subject. It stung, but Jake was afraid to tell him so.

A light drizzle had soaked through Jake's jacket and shirt and even through the tops of his shoes; his feet squelched inside them with every step he took, but he found that he didn't mind much. That morning still stuck in his mind like the peanutbutter-and-marshmallow sandwiches stuck to the roof of his mouth. He'd been gone for six months and a man had answered her phone at eight this morning, and she hadn't even cared enough to cover it up with some sort of pride-preserving lie, like “Oh, that was just my brother.” When Jake crossed the ocean she forgot about him. Jake had thought of several things to say, like I'll just hang up now, and Hi, this is Becky's boyfriend, maybe she's mentioned me, and even Who the hell is this? but in the end he'd hung up without a word.

Jake thought he might still be numb, but numb only meant that he was incapable of feeling anything in regard to it yet, and he wasn't sure that was the right word. His mind was an '80s supercomputer, struggling to keep up with the momentous task set before it.

So were his legs, come to think of it; Jake puffed and slowed.

With a start Jake realized that he had been walking for a few hours, that getting to Norfolk in and of itself had taken up most of the morning. He would probably have to turn around if he didn't want to be walking alone at night. There had been no cars.

It was only then, in the dimming light, that Jake saw the dog stumbling down the street, breathing heavily and dragging what looked like a heavy iron chain; it was coal black, with rough fur that curled around the edges of its shackles.

It would take him a moment to figure out why the creature shook him so, but Jake pivoted and ran in the opposite direction, ran like he hadn't since he was nine, ran like the creature was howling at his heels, ran like the Red Bulls had given him any energy whatsoever. You didn't question what you were doing when fear suddenly took you, and Jake didn't.

Jake largely blamed his fear of dogs on his grandmother's stories of the black shuck. “I knew a young lady who used to go for walks at night down in Suffolk,” Grandma would say in her English countryside lilt. “Most nights she'd go looking for young men in the city, but those nights when she'd go walking alone she always just said she wanted a breather.

“Well, one night this young lady saw a black dog – as big as a horse! - coming towards her on the road, with big red burning eyes and dragging a chain. The devil's own dog.” Here Grandma would purse her lips and nod her head. “She was so frightened she ran, but it was too late. That next night she woke up and found one of her young men taking all her things, and he stabbed her to death with her own nail file. She was one of the lucky ones. Sometimes the shuck just devours sinners when it finds them.” The ghost stories had been his grandmother's favorites as a child and so she loved to frighten him and then put him to bed with chocolate later, but Jake had always lain awake nights wondering whether a vengeful ghost would get him.

He stopped, feeling foolish and somewhat flustered; his grandmother had been dead since he was fifteen and he hadn't heard any such stories in years.

Jake looked down the 500 foot length he'd fled over, calm in spite of the fact that his heart was pounding. He took back the ugly thoughts he'd had that morning. He'd thought whether Becky would miss him if he were hit by a car, shipped back in a bag. He'd even once thought about how she'd feel if he swallowed a bottle of aspirin because of her. It was really only self pity, and he'd known that all morning; things couldn't really be so bad that he'd genuinely wish for any of that, and Becky was just a girl, even if he had been planning their future. They'd only been together for nine months, so he couldn't have realistically expected her to wait until he returned from England a wiser, more insightful, and hopefully employed man, who had experienced the world and learned to fend for himself in an unfamiliar country, a man who really took charge. He didn't want to die, that was just the darkness and the hills and England talking.

But really, who did Jake have now – other than a few friends, a year or two younger than himself, still in school – other than Becky, who was more than likely no longer interested in him?

Jake noticed how dark it had gotten, and how far away each lamp post was. The sandwiches, Redbulls, and fear had left a foul, sticky taste in his mouth. He could still hear the rattle of the dog's chain as it limped its way down the road toward him.

Jake swept his matted hair, damp and oily and slick between his fingers, back out of his face. The dog was only a few feet away now. He was hard pressed to make out even its silhouette in the dark, but he knew by the smell of its dirty fur and its huge, bellowing breaths.

Jake softened when he saw the eyes, which weren't a burning red but a silvery white color. It was only a dog, a sad, emaciated, blind wolfhound at the end of its hounding days, forced to drag around a chain half its own weight. He would have to try to get it off the road, maybe bring it to a shelter, and in the meantime maybe it would keep him safe while he walked at night. The dog had probably just escaped from one of the local farms.

Jake gathered some of the chain up and lifted it, carrying it in one arm while he let the animal walk beside him. He bit into his apple and contemplated his last sandwich. The animal's head swayed from side to side and it hardly seemed to realize that he was there, though its step was lighter now that he had lessened the burden of its chain. The thought that it could devour him was rediculous.

He'd wondered how much Becky had cared about him. Jake, who had been a virgin when they met, had confessed his love for her two weeks into the relationship. Becky had long brown hair and liked knitting and Wicca. Jake had spent those three months prior to leaving for England wondering how he'd managed to get a girlfriend at all, much less one like Becky, and then he had graduated. A girl like Becky wouldn't date a boy without a job, but he knew he had few prospects in the United States. For some reason coming to England, the country his grandma loved so much, seemed like the thing to do to help himself figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

He'd called her every weekend, and it only now occurred to him that maybe she'd forgotten about him a while ago, that maybe it wasn't just a moment of weakness that morning.

He talked with her online, and had sent her a recent picture of himself, a picture to show her that he'd lost nearly thirty pounds since his arrival in London.

“You look great, baby,” Becky had said. She'd said nothing else that whole night.

Even Matt had said more. “Lose a little more lard and you'll have to fend the bitches off with a stick.”

Jake had wanted to surprise her, and had simply assumed that his weight didn't matter that much to her when she didn't comment further.

Jake looked down at the dog, rattling beside him. Its ribs stood out clearly, furry hide stretched taut over them. Jake wondered how long he had been helping it carry that chain, and how long it had been dragging it. It looked up at him, dry tongue lolling from its mouth – a pink strip of leather.

“Come here, boy,” Jake said to the dog. He went to crouch in front of it and then wobbled on the balls of his feet for a moment, trying to gain his balance back.

The dog did not come.

Jake sighed and reached into his satchel. There was only one item left – one of the sandwiches, carefully wrapped in wax paper, each of the four folds perfect triangles that met in the center, where a strip of beige tape joined them. Jake had seen delis do that and had learned to wrap his sandwiches so that they looked nice in the paper. He ripped the wrapping off, balled the sticky paper up, dropped it into his satchel (Jake hated people who littered) and scooted his slightly squashed offering towards the dog.

The animal plucked it up with surprising gentleness, then ate the sandwich in two bites. Jake brushed the crumbs off his hand and rose to his feet.

There was a chill in the air, now. Jake rubbed his arms.

Ahead he thought he saw a motel on the outer reaches of the town he'd started from. Without warning, the cold feeling spread through his guts again, and he began to jog towards it. He heard the dog start after him with that same slow, deliberate rattle when he pulled on the chain.

It was sudden, and not what he expected. Not a car with an exhausted driver who didn't see a pedestrian, or a mugger who hit him a little too hard and crushed his skull. A pothole grabbed his foot, and Jake lurched, flung out a hand for balance, and his wrist gave with a snap. There was a sharp pain in his head and all Jake could do was fling the offending rock away in a rage and lie where he had fallen, clutching his forehead and trying to hold the split skin and bone together while blood seeped into his palm.

The light of the suburb was still surprisingly far – probably about half a mile, at his estimation, but it lit up like a beacon on the hills. The only warmth was streaming down his face, and his fingers and toes already felt like wood.

The dog settled against his chest, stretched its length out against his, and Jake knew it was only there to keep him warm. He rested a hand on the sleek fur of its skull and closed his eyes.

Writing.

2007-05-03T19:10:59Z

I have decided to begin posting my writing in this journal, as previously threatened, since I've just finished my creative writing class and have stuff to put in it.

Read if you like, please leave criticisms if you have them.

The first one is a poem. I normally don't write poetry, but I wrote this for my creative writing class, and I actually still like it.

Guilt

A baby bird still

Pink, featherless,

Lay chirping on my friend’s doorstep

He said it fell yesterday

And that the mother hadn’t come.

Another friend, grinning, arms stacked with books

Stepped in the doorway

The crunch of something through the screen

And horrified eyes dropped to

A flapping, squealing chick with the imprint of his shoe

Across its lower half.

I told him he should finish it

And he looked at me, aghast, and

Came in and sat down.

Frowns and little chatter while

Outside, it screamed. And screamed.

I got up and said

“Fine, you fucker,

I’ll do it.”

And stepped out

Grabbed a wooden plank against the wall

Beam held in two hands like

An executioner’s axe

A tiny pink lump

A twisted body

Eyes squeezed shut

Mouth open for food that would never come.

I raised the beam

And let it drop.

There's no resistance. Just hard concrete.

And then