Just saying...

I HAVE been writing... tomorrow I do not work so I might have time to transfer writing from paper to blog.

Consider it a date!

Day Four

Day Four was a gaming day, so you get a gaming backstory and a day late posting. I am running a StuperPowers game, silly and light but fun. The group has 11 players (!) and this was a first day for the two in the story. This backstory is how they met up with the rest of the party.

On Friday evening, Jon and Laura returned from their holiday in Germany early. Noone was in the house when they arrived, and there was not much in the way of food, so they headed into town to have dinner. On their way to the restaurant, they were surrounded by a large group huge rodent looking things.

Some of the rodents were white, and some were brown, but they were all about the size of a small dog and they were extremely aggressive. Jon and Laura thought that the rodents were going to attack, as they kept nipping at their heels and making angry sounding chitters at them. Jon and Laura moved away from the rodents, but they only circled behind and nipped at their heels again. It was soon obvious that Jon and Laura were being herded by these angry, giant-teethed creatures.

They forced the young couple to the Cathedral, and to a hole in the ground at its foundation, which led to a tunnel. The walk down the gently sloping tunnel was extremely long (about a 45 minute walk) and led to a series of underground rooms that had been dug and well packed. The floors of the tunnels were layered with grasses and leaves, and the smell was earthy and pleasant. Jon and Laura walked through many rough-hewn rooms and down a flight of dirt steps before Laura was separated from Jon and herded into a sterile looking metal room. Jon was herded into a different direction and placed into a different room. Hours later, Jon was taken out of the holding cell and herded by the rodents into a different room where a short young man with crazy white hair (looking decidedly like Albert Einstein’s) strapped him into a chair. The man wore a white lab coat, thick yellow plastic gloves (like cleaning gloves, but much thicker,) and a pair of goggles that made his eyes huge.

He was doused with pink powder, which made his head feel funny and swimmy, and the man talked at him for a long time. Jon didn’t really understand what was being said, but it felt like he knew what he was supposed to do when the man was done. The man then stuck Jon's face into a bag of green powder and poked at him until he screamed, which gave Jon a big lungful of the stuff. After about a minute, Jon began shrinking and felt very strange. He was slowly turned into one of the same rodent things that attacked him!

There was a huge commotion outside, great chitterings and stampeding noises, and the man ran off, leaving Jon alone in the room. He went exploring in his little rodent body, having forgotten that he was anything except a rodent. As he nosed, he found a jug filled with brown liquid on the counter, which he knocked over. It's thick brown viscosity oozed across the counter top and down the side of the counter door. It smelled interesting, and Jon could not help but have a good taste of it. It counteracted the work of the pink powder and Jon realised that he was actually a human named Jon who had been turned into a redent. He remembered Laura, and realised that he hadn't seen her since.

In great haste, Jon scampered around the room looking for a way to escape. Luckily for him, the man had left in such a rush that he left the door open a crack, and Jon took off down the corridor, looking for Laura, or anyone else that could help him find her.

Day Three

Day Three was my birthday, and while I did write, I didn't take the time to post it. So here it is.


Birthday dinner: Mexican food, which is always disappointing. But this place was new, and seemed to know how to make margaritas. They had poppers!!!!! And they were good poppers. The chili con carne was spicy, but they used it as a staple. I had a beef burrito. Inside was the chili con carne. Stephen had chicken tacos. The sauce on the chicken was the sauce from the chili con carne. The margarita... well, it didn't suck, but it also wasn't wonderful. I spoke to the barman afterwards who said it was made with some random silver tequila. Tell me I have champagne tastes, but I like my margaritas with Jose Curevo - gold. Silver has such a delicate flavour that it is lost in the frozen margarita. The barman said that he makes margaritas on the rocks with Cuervo gold - so I might have to try that another day. So all in all - birthday dinner: didn't suck. I guess that it pretty good for Mexican food in England.

Day Two

Sweat
once as familiar as breath
trickles down my back in a slow crawl.
It is not a friend, this new sweat.
It sticks and clings.
It mucks and binds my clothes to my skin
and slides stinging into my eyes.

What is this creature
that burns my thighs
and hangs under the swell of my breasts?
Sweat drips and cools.
I know because sweat was once my friend.

This is not my friend. This is not that sweat.

This must be a relative come to visit that just won't leave - like dead fish, smell after seven hours (as I smell - though I never actually dried from the cold shower and my hair is still damp twisted into my bun.)

The air hangs ponderously in
obeisance to this sweat,
worshipping at the alter
of the damp that covers the world.

Finally,
       I collapse into a chair
              AIRCONDITIONING........
                     AHHHHHHHHHHHH........
                            and the sweat dies on my skin -
                                          only to rise again as I step into the street.

Day One

The day is just warm enough in the sunshine to make me drowsy and careless. The steps I take, loud in my own head, are drowned out by the heartbeat of the crowd. Men in suits and ties, teens in dark clothes and spiked hair, and ladies dressed in the long robes and head coverings of their faith pass me. Suddenly I am trapped between the tall buildings whose centuries-old façades block out the sun and the green and white medieval tents that fill the center of the High Street. I am crammed in between strollers and tendrils of cigarette smoke, between girls in short skirts and old men in top hats and canes. Languages swirl around me like eddies in the waters of the river over which I pass. Even if I choose otherwise, the crowd carries me forward. Groups of foreigners gather in excitement; dogs and men covered in tattoos drink lager under the shade of the pub umbrellas, but eagerly crane their necks to watch. It is Market Day.

I look for a place to sit and listen, a place to escape the crowd and seek to understand the sights and sounds of a busy English High Street on Market Day - but there are people everywhere I look. Every spot of shade is filled with bodies stacked upright. Vendors hawk their wares to the vertical dead. "Flowers! 2 bunches a pound!" "Cigarettes - Get your fags and cigars here!" Stalls, rainbow fields of colour, act as the market's own façade: hiding the stacked boxes filled with emptiness behind them. A tub of watery marbles entices passers-by with a sign that says, "Touch me - but do not squeeze." As I pass, a small girl sticks her hand in the tub and shrieks shrilly. She tugs at her mum's ample skirts, but they are swept away in the crowd, her hand caught in the folds, her voice fading to a whisper on the wind. The vendor calls to me, "A bag is only a pound, why don't you take some home?" I back away, shaking my head.

Bees drone complacently at the baker's tent - pastries tempting them with bright colours and sweet icings. These lures work on other creatures too, for there is a line forming and dumpy pigeons peck at the crumbs dropped by those who have gone before. Enough have plunged their coins into a cup for their desire to stuff themselves, without a thought for what might come afterwards, that the cup splits, spilling coin. While young apprentices scurry to gather the fallen coins, the people only shuffle in the line towards their reward. Nearby, a small table holds a sign on which is written "Children's DVDs" and houses Ghostbusters, The Darkness Within, and Home Alone side by side in a silent, emphatic statement. People pass, oblivious to the warning.

As I walk, I am tempted by the old, familiar smell of blue coconut. Visions of sno-cones and blue lips fill my eyes - marks of innocence and childhood that are buried in my olfactory sense. I thought this was something I'd left behind - but as I turn and walk past again, the smell reveals a sour undertone and my stomach rolls. Eventually, I end up in the small bit of America in the midst of Market Day: Starbucks. There are tables at which to sit and absorb, though I am no more safe from Market Day than I was before. The words I write, punctuated by the screams of a newborn desperate for suck and darker than I thought, make me wonder if there is more to Market Day than meets my conscious brain. But the people who walk past my watchful eyes don't even seem to notice. After all, it's Market Day.