Sunday, 30 December 2007

Back to the freewrite tavern. (fiction)

I wrote a short two-page fiction piece in my journal somewhat recently, so I felt like trying fiction again, especially when I recently came up with the idea, while I was shopping, of a freewrite Tavern. (the "f" shall not be capitalized in this name)

by the way this is only the first part not the whole story. that would be bad
I reserve the right to write the story in free-order fashion, though.

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I tapped in at around 7 PM, taking the shorter route from the department store to the Tavern. The night was illuminated so much by the moon that I could only stare upwards. So I bumped into a few people along the way. The girl who fell into the mud will probably never forgive me.

If you want to get drunk at the freewrite Tavern, you have to pregame. I pregamed at some other hour. They only sell one beer per night per customer (or per customer per night?) if they remember you've already had the first. I don't understand the policy. I don't understand the other policies either. If you're rowdy, they kick you out for two days. Who runs this place?

But I'll admit--I think it's the quirkiness that keeps me coming. You think the idea would get old after awhile, but it doesn't. You'd think that there's something in the air, but there isn't. Love hasn't come up, and perhaps that's because I've been burying it in unread freewrites, like the one I began to write after I came in.

"My wrist extending along this paper has been worn out lately. I am not reading this out loud. Extending along this paper? That doesn't even make sense. Who am" --

People read their freewrites out loud one at a time, and you can listen if you want to, settle in, write if you don't want to listen. Someone blurted out "And the filibuster is wrong," which caught my attention, and I stopped moving my pen. From the phrase I heard, you couldn't tell what his position was, and feeling that my own freewrite was more important than potentially being offended if I kept listening, I put my pen back on the paper again.

-- "Who am I to say that this doesn't make sense though if I don't even know what I'm talking about? New paragraph. Not. Has anyone noticed how often baseball shows are cancelled lately? Even the games' TV broadcasts themselves. I remember when that only happened to the Expos. But now...
I might as well stop here, since with my slow hand tonight this has been four minutes, and I like the four-minutes thing." I stopped.

I stopped but I wasn't listening, either. I was thinking, if you could call it that, but I couldn't seem to remember the last thought I'd have. The surrealists would probably hire me now, I thought, in my mild state of mindlessness. What was I doing here? What wasn't I doing here? Was there anything that I actually could've been doing that was better? At the moment, I couldn't think of anything, and I let it go as I was letting everything else go. Wait, did I pregame? Maybe it was inadequate.

Raising my head to the ceiling, I felt around the floor to test for smoothness. I'm never afraid of splinters. I'm irrational. I finished the test. No splinters, but no smoothness either. Check.

Then they stepped into the building.
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