A Spark

My senior year of high school our English teacher asked our class to write a story based on three pictures he gave us. I cannot now remember what was depicted in these pictures, but those six years ago, this was the short story I came up with. Nagging and unpolished, it's not much to bark at, but I could cultivate it...

     “Susan Baker” appears on the screen one letter at a time. The well manicured hands continue to clack away at the keyboard as the editorial on Cher’s wardrobe unfolds. She has always been responsible for the one or two actual articles in her brother’s magazine. She had formerly referred to fashion as the envy based, long-legged tramp displaying, money mongering industry, but her grandparents had founded the magazine and created it from the dust of the Depression for their future generations to inherit and run. So she had hopped on the family band wagon, and the job now consumed her life. It paid well, and she was part of the elite in Manhattan. One of the best apartments money could buy was hers, the most eligible bachelors craved to make her acquaintance, and if she could not purchase the most contemporary designer outfits and jewelry, they were hers to borrow from the company’s stocks. Yes, the world was at her fingertips, she thought, and with a little maneuvering it would be eating out of the palm of her hand.



       She awoke to the buzzing of a black fly against the canvas of her hastily pitched tent. The night air had crept in while she slept, and a fine layer of dew now coated her sleeping bag. Rorek still slept soundlessly beside her, his ginger beard shining with little rainbows as the rising sun slipped between the flaps of the tent onto the beads of dew. A feeling of utter contentedness and ease washed over Susan, and she lay back down and watched the sun slowly dry the contents of their humble shelter. The black fly came to land upon her arm, and she looked on quietly as it took its breakfast. She felt the pinch of the bite, then the throbbing, itching sensation, but still she did not move. As a breeze blew in and opened the front of the tent, Susan peered out lazily at the breathtaking landscape, full of the dips of valleys and peaks of mountains. She and her husband had settled not far from the sheer face of a cliff that shadowed miles of the valley below at both sunset and sunrise. Husband. Husband? She blinked rapidly.

Corns on a Cob

Corns on a Cob

An original play by A.L.Martin

4/13

CHARACTERS

DORA: a sixteen year old vegetarian, teenage girl. First child of Serra. 

SERRA: a late thirties, early forties year old woman married to her second husband, Seth. A people pleaser.

SETH: a man in his early forties. A prestigious car salesman/advertiser. Overweight, abusive. Has type two diabetes. Married to Serra.

SELMA: a woman in her late seventies to eighties. Seemingly senile, playful, taking advantage of the privileges of old age. Likely to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

CHILD: (alive) a seven to ten year old child. Speech impediment, poorly educated, lacking in emotional expression or depth (autistic?). Correct spelling of his mispronounced words placed in brackets   [ ] (dead) a Ghost, no longer linguistically challenged, would go so far to say he’s even intellectual.

CHICKEN: a Ghost played by a man in a chicken suit, preferably one with a full chicken head, however the face of the man should be visible, but only the face. He is sarcastic, arrogant, casual, and flaky. Like a lucky, charming, handsome gambler. Like the other Ghosts, he is “invisible.”

PIG: a Ghost played by a man in a pig suit, again fully depicting the exterior appearance of a pig but allowing the face of the actor to be visible in its entirety. He is skittish and self conscious. He is by all means a “stereotypical gay pig”, whatever that may mean to the actor in the role.

PEANUT: a Ghost played by a woman in a cow suit, similarly crafted so the whole of the cows physical appearance is intact, but the face of the actor is visible. Udders should be plain for any to see. She is a sassy, proud female, a feminist and PETA advocate combined. But intelligent.

Janitors: a collection of men or women, no less than five, no more than ten, who perform a wide variety of tasks. They are stagehands, they play the Janitors, they play the Hobos, they play all the various characters seen in T.V. show reenactments onstage. If there is a minor role to be filled, they will be substituted freely.

Gran, Lunch Lady, Game Host, Unknown Man, Young Dora, Young Serra, Infant Dora, Elderly Minister &etc.: this vast collection of brief or one time roles can either be given to those casted as “janitors” or can be individually casted. The infant must be of infantile size, a doll maybe, but no larger.

*Note, when a forward slash / is placed within dialogue, an interruption by the following / ensues.

Ch. 2

Chapter 2.

            Books spill out from the trunk of my car onto the pavement as if jumping to their deaths after the torment of being locked up in ninety degree weather. Covers flipped open, pages press into the depressions of dried up mud puddles, failing to find a drop of cool respite in the heat wave. I groan and stoop over the curb to pack them back into crumbling cardboard boxes.
Louann comes jogging out of the dusty, vintage general store we had invested in mere months ago, “Jesus christ, Lea, no one is going to want to purchase books in this condition.”

I examine a dog eared calculus textbook, glance at her, and throw it haphazardly into the pile. “No one was about to purchase underlined, creased college texts anyway. Used bookstore or no, we’ll need a lot more variety than this before we’re even able to draw in a single customer.”

Louann’s face was creased with years of judgment. At thirty years of age, no woman should look as worry worn as she did. It’s true that joy crimped her face with lines in all the areas unmarred by anxiety, but the wrinkles revealed the vast contrast in her day to day emotions, an observation that always affected me. Was it more of a hindrance or an advantage to experience such a wide range of intense emotions?

Note to Self

Don't stop writing. Never stop writing. Write write write. Writey writey write.
He may not want the weight of your words, but you need not give them to anyone - just get them out. Lessen the burden.

Ch. 1

Chapter 1.

            That night I had a dream. I was standing in line at a bureau much like the DMV with an application in hand. When it came my turn to speak to the clerk I passed the sheet beneath a barred window and said as nonchalantly as I was registering a car, “Hi I’m submitting a death request.”

“Application for death. The last name of the applicant?”

“Grangely.”

“First name?”

“Leandra.”

“One moment, please.”

            I never saw the face of my teller, nor his hands, and to be quite honest I could not tell you what his voice sounded like. It was now that I realized the earth seemed to be moving. I was quite certain there was an earthquake occurring, and as strange as it sounds considering the aforementioned information, I feared for my life and tried to call out to the teller. I felt a tug at my pants and turned, expecting to see a lost child. However the hand came right out from the floor beneath my feet, and I discovered the floor was not linoleum, tile, wood, or the like. There was no earthquake, there was no lost child. The floor was a moving mass of bodies, crawling upon hands and knees, packed tight together.

Prologue.

prologue

They are given many names. The undead. Zombies. But the most accurate term to befitting of their behavior, would be the old Norse word “haugbui”, used to define “mound dwelling” undead. They are tied to their tombs and therefore do not roam.