izzy
For many months during this project, I kept thinking that I was going to fail and if I had failed, I would have been sorely disappointed in myself. It wasn't a Herculean task like so many other people might face, but it was a goal I set for myself, to write one of these suckers a day for a year. As it is, for the last month, there have been times when I just didn't want to keep writing. So, I came up with a way of counting things down. I counted backwards until tonight when I reached the number one. Interestingly enough, the number one also brings me to the last part of this project. There is some philosophical discussion to be had about the juxtaposition of something being both first and last but that's for another night when I've had at least one glass of Amarula. It's been a pleasure to write these stories, and an honor to see that so many of you have read them. I can't wait to share the next phase with you and that's all coming soon....
"Father, son, and the holy ghost. Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Earth, sky, and sea. See? They all come in threes." Jackson careened around the room and yanked on his hair as he named all the triads he could think of. "Life, death, rebirth. Solid, liquid, gas. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Oh man, it's all so intense!" Now he stared up at the ceiling as if it would yield the secrets of the universe as murmured more triads. "Um, dude," Toker raised his head off the floor blearily. "Speaking of breakfast, lunch and dinner, did you eat any of the brownies I had in the fridge?"
"One cell, two cells, four cells - they all divide, and then after nine months, you get a baby." Marcia desperately reached for the best explanation she could come up with under the circumstances. It wasn't every day your eleven-year-old asked you about the birds and the bees and Taylor had taken her by surprise. Marcia sighed inwardly as she thought she'd acquitted herself quite well. And then she made a crucial mistake and said, "Does that answer your question? "Actually, no, Mom," Taylor replied. "'Cause what I'd asked wasn't where do babies come from. What I'd asked was how do people have sex?"
The class stood in hushed anxiety while they eyed their instructor. He had a reputation and not all of it good. But still, his classes tended to fill up quickly even if there was almost a five percent daily attrition rate, once the class got going. "And now," Professor Sommers snaked around the room and poured the clearly-labeled bleach into the beakers set on every lab table. "Now, we will predict which will cause the biggest reaction." Without missing a beat, he reached for the well-marked Hydrochloric Acid. He made the barest of pauses and turned in a full circle to make sure the students saw what he held. No one stopped him. Almost sadly, he moved to the first beaker to pour. "My poor eyebrows," he lamented quietly. "Professor wait!" Sheldon Bowerman yelled right before the first drop left the bottle of acid. "Yes?" The professor froze. "That's - that's acid." "And?" the Professor continued. "It will explode!" Sheldon cried. The Professor grinned widely. "Well," he said as he capped the bottle and quickly moved it away from the beaker of bleach. "I'm glad someone was paying attention."
"Do you share the common belief that nine is a magic number?" Reginald asked as he approached Darlene. "What?" she turned her cornflower blues on him and his well-rehearsed come-on disintegrated. Uh," he stuttered. "You know. The number nine. Three times three and it makes nine." "I know my multiplication tables," she continued scanning the books on the shelf. "Well," he tried one last, desperate gambit. "Did you know that if you add the two digits of any two-digit multiple of nine, they all add up to nine? Like 27. 2+7 equals 9." "Yes," she replied and tugged a stray bit of honey-gold hair behind an ear. "I also know that Pi is infinite, that density equals mass over volume, and that the limit of sin X over X as X approaches 0 is one." And then Reginald noticed Darlene was searching for a book in the Higher Mathematics and Statistic section.
"Take me to the station for Channel 12," Madeline commanded as she got in the cab and slammed the door smartly. "I'm going to give them a piece of my mind." She settled into the seat in a huff and reached into her large, pink bag. She brought out her knitting. For a moment, the click clack of her needles made the only sound in the cab. "Um, Ma'am?" The cabbie twisted in his seat to look back at her. "We don't have a Channel 12 in this city." "Well of course you do," Madeline lay aside her knitting, reached back in her bag and withdrew what looked like a cross between an XM radio receiver, a satellite dish, and a spaceship. She flipped it on and a hissing zapping sound filled the space. "Do you hear that?" she cried. "How can they use that kind of language in public?" "Ma'am, I don't hear anything but static," he replied and then he noticed the sweater she was knitting. It had room for four sleeves, and two heads. Quickly, he glanced back at her and saw the slit eyes behind her horn-rimmed glasses. "But," he amended. "I'll definitely take your word for it."
Many people say 13 is an unlucky number. Me? I've embraced it. I mean, look. There are 13 full moons in a year, which is cool because that means that sometimes we get Blue Moons, and while they're not blue or anything, they're still pretty cool. There were 13 people at the last supper, and while some people might think it's a bad thing, I say, no because Jesus had company, you know? There are 13 players on a rugby team and I think rugby rocks! But mostly, I love the number 13 because last Friday the 13th, I bought a lottery ticket, picked the numbers 1, 3, 13, 26, and 39, and won 13 million dollars.
"My beloved," Franz spoke softly and still his breath hissed through his fangs like a thousand whispers under a midnight sky. "Please, allow me to make you immortal. Then, we shall be together, as one, in eternity." Myra languidly opened her sapphire eyes and gazed deeply into his. Tantalizingly, she moved her soft, perfectly-formed hand to his face. Just before she reached his cold, sallow skin, she balled her fingers into a fist and punched him on the nose. "Dude," she said, "I'm only fifteen. There is totally no way I'm going to be stuck at this age forever. If I am, I'll never be able to get my driver's license."
"Grandma," Sarah called patiently as she pulled up at Taggart's Final Rest Mortuarium and opened her car door. "This is the 15th funeral you've been to in the last week." Yep," Grandma Turnbull replied as she swung her cane, legs, and tiny frame into the car. "Sometimes, you just need to double up and do two a day. Besides, funerals are the only places that serve Pigs in a Yellow Blanket anymore." "Wait," Sarah said. "You go to these funerals because they serve hot dogs wrapped in bacon all surrounded by American cheese?" "Yes," Grandma Turnbull pulled open her bag, drew out a specimen and popped into her mouth. "They serve them at every single one nowadays. I guess they figure if the grease kills you right there, they have more of a chance of getting your business."
"You have one hour to complete the test," the proctor announced as it picked up its computer. "After that, you will be summarily thrown out." "Now that's a way to inspire confidence," Marika whispered to her classmates as they all looked uneasily at the clouds of whirling space dust just outside the three-inch think porthole. "I mean, after all, 'thrown out' doesn't exactly mean just out of the class."
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writing since 2010 · 211 entries · 210 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means Izolda showed up.
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