The Green-Walled Tower

March 22, 2015

Death Don’t Us Part

Death Don’t Us Part

Life and death never end up like you think. I went to sleep one night, dreamed about being back at college with a lobster for a roommate, then woke up in a coffin. It was comfortable, at least.

I lay there for a bit, wondering why I had had a lobster for a roommate when I heard a tap, tap, tap.

“Who’s there?” I said. What else do you say?

“Is that you, Jamal?” It was my wife Olivia.

“Yeah, I’m in a coffin. Where are you?”

“In one too. I’m next to you.”

“Huh. Do you suppose we’re dead?”

“I suppose.”

There was a pause that could have been a few seconds or a few years.

“Do you think this is because we omitted ‘Til death do us part’ from our vows?” I asked.

“Could be. I never thought of this happening. So, you want to get out of here?”

“Can we?”

“After you, monsieur.”

I tried and a moment later, I found myself in a cemetery at night. A translucent version of Olivia appeared a moment later.

“Have you lost weight?” I asked. She rolled spectral eyes at me.

“You don’t have to be so grave about everything,” I said. That made her laugh.

“You kill me, you know?” she said.

“Not anymore. So, what now?”

She took my hand. “I don’t know, go visit our old haunts?”

“Now look who’s starting.”

We floated off. Together.

26 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, death, fiction, flash fiction, funny, ghosts, marriage | posted in Light

March 21, 2015

In An Alcoholic Home

By David Stewart

I found this a very powerful and honest piece. I’d encourage you to read it, especially if you’ve lived near alcoholism.

athingirldotcom

Both my parents were drinkers, and not of the modest variety.

My father died of cirrhosis of the liver at forty, while my mother, with ice tinkling in her glass, terrorized everyone and everything in her path. Even the goldfish were afraid of her.

As a kid growing up with serious drinkers, you never knew what to expect leaving its mark on you as an adult.

Why are you so edgy Susannah….always waiting for the other shoe to drop? A question I’ve been asked my whole life.

Well I’ll tell you, and it took 10 years in a 12 Step program to educate me on why I’m the way I am.

Imagine being raised by wolves, but just not as well.

I’d come home from school every day not sure what I’d find.

Would my mother be blissfully in the kitchen baking, or in my room breaking my 45s over…

View original post 531 more words

3 Comments | posted in Uncategorized

March 18, 2015

The Id of Life – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

The Id of Life

52 Comments | tags: couple, eco-tourism, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, jungle, life, word art | posted in Friday Fictioneers

March 17, 2015

5 Ways to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day like a Hipster

By David Stewart

Because of the huge number of people who are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day today, if you are among them, then statistically you are probably not Irish. There is even a big celebration in Tokyo, which is not normally known for its brogue.

Source

There are several reasons you might celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. In descending order of likelihood:

You like to hang out and have fun
It’s a socially-accepted excuse to get drunk on a Tuesday
You really like green beer
You’re an Irish Catholic

But come on. St. Patrick’s Day is so mainstream. If you want to be really cool, I have a better celebration for you: the feast of St. Gertrude of Nivelles, which is also on March 17. Here are five ways to celebrate March 17 that no one else is doing.

Source

5. Open Your House to Couch Surfers

Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of travelers, so it’s a good idea to take in some travelers today. However, make sure you mention to people that you’re only doing it because of the holiday. If they ask if you’re having a party for St. Patrick’s Day, look rather shocked and say you’re celebrating St. Gertrude of Nivelles Day. Then expound about how Gertrude of Nivelles welcomed people of all types, especially Irish monks. Make sure you mention this too when you invite green-clad drunken revelers into your house late at night and explain why you have no beer for them.

4. Plant Something

Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of gardeners, so carry around a house plant all day, the more obscure the better. Remember, if anyone asks about it, that’s your perfect time to explain you’re not doing it because it’s green, but because of Gertrude of Nivelles.

3. Dress up Like a Cat

This is bound to confuse people, especially if it’s not a green cat. They will probably think you started drinking early and mixed up Halloween with St. Patrick’s Day. You can then explain that, in fact, Gertrude of Nivelles loved her some cats and is often portrayed with them. If this doesn’t impress anyone, put up random cat memes based on her. Make reddit fall in love with this 1400-year-old nun.

2. Stand on a Chair and Start Screaming

Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of “Those with a Morbid Fear of Mice and Rats” so doing this will definitely give you a chance to explain to people how you are celebrating the holiday in your own way and explain why this is way better than pinning a shamrock to your coat.

1. Get a Tonsure

This is the best and most hipster way to show you are a celebrating an obscure holiday that other people just don’t get. A tonsure, by the way, is when you shave all the hair on top of your head but leave a crown of hair around the edges, like this:

Source

This is especially effective if you are a girl, because when people inevitably wonder if you have gone crazy, you can explain that Gertrude of Nivelle’s mother gave her a tonsure cut in order to keep “violent abductors from tearing her daughter away by force,” i.e. marry her.

So, the choice is clear, either go out to a party, wear green, drink beer, and do that horrible attempt at an Irish accent that you do and be one of the crowd, or stay at home, welcoming in traveling, loving cats and plants, hating mice, and knowing smugly that you are celebrating the festival that just isn’t “cool.”

Go Gerty!

Note: All information is this post is totally true and accurate.

13 Comments | tags: beer, cats, gardening, Gertrude of Nivelles, hipster, party, patron, rats, religion, saint, St. Patrick's Day, travelers | posted in Uncategorized

March 16, 2015

Coffee and Writing and Muggings

By David Stewart

Last Monday, I wrote a story that only had verbs and adjectives, called Read Run Inspired. People speculated what was happening in the comments and some got pretty close to what I had intended. Here is the full story, with nouns and prepositions and everything.

Sources 1 2 3

It was my New Year’s resolution this year to never have a full-time job again. That might seem risky but it wasn’t total suicide. The November before, an agent had gotten back to me about a novella I’d written. “Great,” he’d said. “Make it into a full-length novel and I think we’ll be in business.”

So I quit my job. I sold most of my furniture and moved into the back room of my friend Crazy Bob’s coffee shop, eating the bagels and baked good he couldn’t sell during the day. And I sat and drank free coffee and typed as fast as my jittery fingers could.

At least that was the plan. Maybe it was malnutrition or the pressure of having to produce a masterpiece, but everything I wrote sounded stupid. Crazy Bob was sympathetic but I could tell he thought I was stupid, and that’s something, coming from Crazy Bob. I wasn’t stupid, although I was afraid I might get scurvy by the end of the year if people didn’t stop buying all the lemon muffins.

I usually worked in the back where I wouldn’t take up table space, but one day I just kept writing and rewriting the same paragraph and went out front to get some sunlight and coffee. I sat there in an overstuffed chair and sipped my coffee, feeling my brain activity spark back into life.

I was feeling very cozy when a woman came in and walked straight at me. She was dressed like a mugger, or at least what one might be dressed like in a movie. She had a hand stuck in her pocket and it looked like she had a gun.

“Can I help you?” I asked, desperately hoping that I couldn’t.

“Give me all your gold dust,” she said. I didn’t know if this was a euphemism for money or a new kind of drug, but I just froze. She repeated it and moved a step closer.

I’m not a good one for crises. My body flips a fight-or-flight coin and I have no say in the matter. I yelled and threw my cup of coffee in her face. She screamed and fell down and I ran towards the door, leaving my laptop on the table.

“Wait, come back!” she shouted after me. I wasn’t going to fall for that trick. I kept sprinting. She stumbled out of the shop, still wiping coffee off her face, and promptly ran into a light pole. I heard the scream and looked back, still running. It was so comical that I laughed. I turned back around just in time for my nose to collide with the “S” on a stop sign. I shouted something that started with “S” but it wasn’t stop.

I kept running, limping even though it was my nose that was bleeding and apparently broken. The woman kept coming, cursing and shouting for me to stop. I was considering slowing down when I heard a gunshot, which convinced me not to. I was getting tired when I turned down an alley that was blocked by a truck at the far end. I stopped, trapped.

She came into view, scalded, bleeding, and holding a gun. I screamed like a little girl because no one gives out medals to the corpses that died with dignity. She stopped, caught her breath, then gave a little laugh.

“Are you done yet?” she asked.

“Uh, I guess.”

“You run really fast for an unemployed writer,” she said. I waited, not sure how to take that. “I’m Crazy Bob’s cousin,” she said.

I was confused so I just nodded. “He was worried about you,” she continued, “so he asked me to pretend to stick you up and ask for something bizarre, then just leave. He thought it would inspire you in your writing to have a real experience to write about. The gun’s not even real.” She put her hand over the muzzle and pulled the trigger. Sure enough, there was no hole in her hand.

“Are you crazy?” I was just about to begin an epic rant when I remembered whose cousin she was and thought it might not be a rhetorical question after all. I stood for a moment, trying to adjust my mind to not being mugged and murdered and then I started to laugh.

“Sorry about throwing coffee at you,” I said.

“Sorry about your nose.” We both laughed, then waved and limped our separate ways.

I went back and bandaged up my nose. It didn’t seem to be broken, just very sore. I got another cup of coffee and sat down again. The caffeine flowed through my brain and suddenly I started to write.

Thank you, Crazy Bob.

6 Comments | tags: chase, coffee, coffee shop, experimental, fiction, gun, mugging, quirky, reading, story, woman, writing | posted in Light

March 14, 2015

Acid Rain! Now in Different Colors!

By David Stewart

I pulled back the shower curtain after my shower and saw a group of people in blue raincoats crowded in front of me, holding up cell phones and cameras. I was shocked for a moment, then nodded smugly, remembering my new LSD-laced shampoo: Acid Rain! I didn’t think the hallucinations would be so specific though. The ceiling wasn’t melting or anything.

“Can we ask you a few questions?” one of them asked.

“I can’t hear you,” I said, combing my hair. “You’re just a product of double lathering.”

“Actually,” one said, “we’re part of a focus group on the drug-related merchandise you’ve recently bought.”

“You’re not hallucinations?” I asked.

“No.”

“You’re real people?”

“Yes.”

“So, I should put a towel on?”

“Please!” they all said, in unison, like they’d been practicing.

“Now, you have questions?”

They all pulled out clipboards. “How’s the shampoo?”

I shrugged. “No dandruff. Pleasing smell. The morning is a magical time.”

“Have you been eating your Weedies?”

“Every morning!” I said brightly.

“And how is your new Honda Ecstasy?”

“Great gas mileage!” I said, “and I always get to work happy.”

“Excellent.” They all scribbled notes assiduously. “Now, we’d like your ideas for other things.”

“Well, maybe some sort of heroin bicycle?”

There was a shocked silence. “Heroin?” one said. “At OmniDrugCo, we’re trying to make the world a better place. We’re not monsters. Now take your free sample of meth and have a nice day!”

12 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, fiction, flash fiction, funny, heroin, LSD, marijuana, market research, meth, quirky, shampoo, shower | posted in Light

March 14, 2015

Ask Alex a Relationship Question

By David Stewart

Meet Alex.

He likes music, Beethoven, to be particularly; milk plus; and a little of the old ultra-violence every now and then. He’s the main character of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. I got him to answer some questions on relationships in my ongoing series, “Ask Fictional Characters.” Leave a question in the comments and I’ll post his answers this coming Tuesday (translations from Nadsat will be provided).

4 Comments | tags: A Clockwork Orange, Alex, Nadsat, questions, relationships, writing | posted in Ask a Fictional Character

March 11, 2015

Frostymandias – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

Hi everyone,

the story is below the photo but to those who write Friday Fictioneers stories, do you hate having to log into the Inlinkz site every week to get the code for the “blue frog” button? There is an easier way.

The code is always the same. The only difference is the six-digit number in it. If you save the code in a word document, you can reuse it every week, only changing those six digits. You find them by clicking on the blue frog on Rochelle’s post. The Inlinkz URL looks this:

http://new.inlinkz.com/luwpview.php?id=497352

Those last six digits are the unique numbers for this week’s group.

Here is the code (at least if you have blog through WordPress; the others are slightly different). Replace those six digits with the new ones and it’s good for the new week.

<!– start InLinkz script –>

Maybe you already do that, but it’s just a quick way to save a step when you’re trying to get your story up and start being read.

Frostymandias

I cut through Pine Park and came across a slushy stump, the remnant of our winter tyrant, Frostymandias.

After months of winter, people cried out for relief and with the perversity of frost-bitten minds, we made the thing we loathed: a god of ice so that we could beg him in person to leave.

Offerings of icicles were stuck anonymously in the snow, but Frostymandias only glared down, laughing at our puny supplication. He was cold, biting, eternal.

But then spring came.

* * *

A bird landed on the stump and dropped some grass: a toupee for a bald and melting god.

The inspiration for this story.

53 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Frosty, God, idol, Ozymandias, quirky, spring, winter | posted in Friday Fictioneers

March 10, 2015

Gandalf Answers Your Questions

By David Stewart

Last Tuesday, I started the series Ask a Fictional Character, starting with Gandalf. I got three questions for him, so here they are, with his answers. Read to the bottom for next week’s fictional character.

Question 1:

Gandalf, what did it feel like to go from being Grey to being White? (submitted by Miles Rost at Music and Fiction)

Source

Good question, Miles. If you have never died and been resurrected, it will be hard to explain, but let me try. Imagine you are standing on a tall mountain, looking out over an overcast landscape. It is before dawn, in that grey time before the sky in the east turns colors. Everything is clear and visible and there is a distinctness to everything, even though the colors are muted and dull.

It stays like this for some time, a middle land between the day and night with the visibility of the day but the colors of night. Then, suddenly, the lights begins to increase. Colors leak into the east and the whole world seems to hold its breath, waiting for that moment of transformation. Then the sun breaks over the hills and the grey sky above glows and turns into the white clouds of day, getting stronger and whiter with every passing moment.

That is how it seemed in retrospect, at least. At the time, I had just finished fighting a balrog for a week, so I was rather overwrought physically. I was also very, very cold (being naked on top of a snowy mountain) so some of the wonder may have been lost on me.

Question 2:

Gandalf, have you ever read “Catcher in the Rye?” Holden Caulfield doesn’t like phonies either? Kidding…real question. What kind of shoes do you wear to do all that walking?
(submitted by Amy Reese at The Bumble Files)

Source

Amy, if you ever make it to the Grey Havens, ask for Galdor the Leathersmith (not Galdor the messenger of Cirdan). He used to make me boots made from the leather of cattle descended from the Kine of Araw. I do not if it was by magic or superior craft but those boots would last me almost a century. My cousin Radagast would save an extra pair for me at Rhosgobel, since I always needed them more than he and he was more for moccasins anyway.

Bosco Proudfoot once made me a pair of boots as a present but they always pinched after a few miles and I gave them to the great-great-grandfather of Barliman Butterbur, who took quite a liking to them, I hear.

In response to your first question, I have never read the book you mentioned but now that my labors are done, I have more time for leisurely reading. I did know a small hamlet called Caulfield where Wood End is now. I once saw a group of Took maidens dancing with a group of elves in a turnip patch one moonlit night. I have never seen such a thing since.

Question 3:

Gandalf, of all the other races you have encountered dwarves, hobbits, elves etc if you had to choose to be one which would you choose to be? (submitted by Paula Acton at paulaacton.com)

Source

I would have to say, Paula, that of all the races I have met and all the peoples I have dealt with, I prefer myself most of all. Not as a wizard as such, since I do not always get along with my own kind. We are a lonely and crafty bunch at times. However, that was not your question.

I would have to choose a hobbit, I think. That is not surprising, perhaps, to those who know me but I like their carefree ways and as someone who has borne a great number of burdens over the years for a great number of different people, the idea of a big problem being getting the harvest in on time seems very relaxing.

It would be a change, especially, to give up my stature, both physically and as a (sometimes) respected personage. I am sure that if I ever were a hobbit, I would keep up my meddling ways and become one of the biggest busybodies in all four farthings! So perhaps it is best that I am just me, comfortable in my own skin. And so it should be.

Great questions guys and a big thank you to Gandalf for taking time to answer them.

For next week, I will be taking relationship questions, whether romantic, platonic or anything else. Our guest fictional character will be Alex, from A Clockwork Orange. Bring on those questions, folks, and let Alex solve all your relationship difficulties!