|
So, reading my own post history reminded me that I don't really embarrass easily. I figured I'd just drop whatever words I write in the NaNoWirMo here to save them. Comment or don't I honestly have no idea if it would help. I'm just writing so I figure it cant be that bad, or good for that matter. I just sat down and vomited almost 500 words into a different random textbox, so I might as well put those here. ---------- Gabriel sat atop the mausoleum. It wasn't the first time he'd been up here, in fact he was sitting next to a statue of the same name. A marble cherub tooting on a recorder, not really Gabe was greying around the cheeks and shoulders, the hairline. Smog from the nearby freeway hadn't done the statue any favors over more years than Gabe could remember back into his past. It was newer when he had first climbed up the decorative carving along one corner onto the roof looking for a place to be alone. There was a lip along the outside of the tomb, rising three or so feet up from the flat roof itself. He used to sit down there and look up at the sky, listening to people talk as they walked through the garden of stones around him. No other building nearby was as tall as this, and this place was surprisingly neglected. Originally, the roof was sloped with a gutter and drain built into the side that had clogged sometime more than a year ago, now it was invisible under the pool that had formed in Gabe's little spot, a misplaced design. Small fish disturbed the surface of the water. Gabe had put them in a month and a half ago, and the water level hadn't sank to a point where they became uncomfortable. Just little guppies, given away at pet shops to help control airborne parasites, they were doing quite well. There was an actual large pond maintained and covered with waterlilies, filled with abandoned turtles at the other end of the cemetery. Gabe had liberated some small freshwater plants from the corner of that pond, and with a literal pocket full of soil placed over the single drain, the water had cleared up within a week. The drain itself having been filled with leaves and twigs from nearby eucalyptus, seemed to hold the soil with the kind of caring embrace that only the hold of nature could provide. Lately the rain had been steady but light, filling the roof up with a foot and a half of water on one end, with the other end of the sloped rectangle thirty or so feet away still uncovered enough to create a concrete shore. When Gabe had first found this place, he would sit inside the lip where he was completely unseen, but now, there were seldom people in this part of the graveyard. Apparently the plots here had all been filled recently, and a newer area had opened up, leaving the less recent dead to their rest, alone. Now, with comfort, he sat on the edge of this lip looking down into his pond, in his place, watching his fish swim around eating mosquito larva where it wiggled. The larva weren't his he thought, his better than average eyesight could pick them out often enough to see them before a guppy darted over to swallow one whole. A handful of dirt, a couple plants, some old waterlogged twigs, a fresh supply of water, a very slow drain and little fish, that's all it took to make a tiny world come to life. Life while it lasted he thought, in a fishbowl. "They belong to the fish." He mumbled absentmindedly, his feet dangling, his toes scraping lightly on the roof. The wind shifted and he could smell tobacco. "HEY GABE" The familiar voice spoke with the slightly annoyed tone it always seemed to have when it was put to use. The sound of Mike's feet came, scraping on the side of the mausoleum as he climbed up, the wrong side, his light brown hair appearing, followed by the expressive eyes locking with Gabe's own as they rose above the edge of the lip. Eyes that went from strained to smiling when they met those of their friend. He pulled his body up and swung his legs over in one smooth motion, nimbly for such a large man, propelling himself into the deepest part of the water. A smile broke out on Gabe's face as he hopped down, sloshing into the pond no deeper than his waterproof boots would cover. The cigarette had flown out of Mike's mouth when he dropped into the deepest end of the puddle, propelled by the tiny cough of a person who had almost swallowed that cigarette in response to his boots filling with cold water. Gabe picked it out of the water before it could float back into the deeper end, where he wouldn't have put the effort in to fish it out, probably, flicking it over off the edge onto the rolling lawn that surrounded the macadam pathway that led up to the structure's door. He chuckled as he moved back to his spot, dried off before he had sat in it the first time. Mike, as per usual with a wordless grumble impulsively sat down nearby, wetting the remaining dry parts of his pants. "It was just raining you know." Gabe said as if it wasn't obvious that everything around him was soaked. Mike looked at him briefly with the impatience of a person who had all the time in the world, and something important to do with every bit of it. He took his boots off slowly, shook them out and left them to drain, next peeling the socks off of his feet, glowering at the misfortune that always seemed to follow him. "It's going to be dark soon, I don't think you're going to get a chance to put them back on if you expect to let those dry." Mike's mouth lengthened at the corner and his eyes narrowed, his brow crinkling in disapproval as a response. He twisted his socks and managed to drain a lot more water than either of the men had expected, leaving them stretched out on a somewhat dryer part of the mausoleum's rim. Mike took his pants off next, wringing out legs that also had a soup bowl's worth of liquid stored in them before putting them back on. The two men sat quietly for a moment as the wind rustled the high branches of surrounding trees. Tall trees that had been there longer than the cemetery. What a piss poor design Gabe thought again as they sat in silence, staring out over the graves, the distant sound of traffic occasionally louder than the wind in the trees. The air tasted fresh in the way a rain will always leave trees and grass smelling. The nearby streets would smell of rehydrated urine, and almost every park in this city had more human poo poo than dog to lend a miasma to the air in places where the living were allowed to go about that life. There was also a municipal golf course nearby, far enough in the distance to see carts carrying dots about, but close enough to create the illusion of rolling hills as far as one could see from this angle, that freeway laying at the bottom of a valley in-between. More land unsuitable for development, this land however was a park that excluded people of the city unwilling or unable to pay a green fee, a fee to participate in a game that required the layout of a week's worth of groceries for a family of five. Mike was informed not long ago, that people who simply wanted to stroll the golf course would have to pay. No more walking past the pro shop at the one entrance that had a path to it and exploring. According to the teenage caddy who had informed him, there were actual police walking around ticketing people who were out for a walk. Something about too many people taking their dogs and not cleaning up after them. "A park for the wealthy, a park for the wealthy dead, and not even a bathroom for the rest." Mike broke his stare off of the distant golf course to look over at Gabe momentarily. "You weren't the one who stumbled into that squat. Man, you'd think people who have to live on the street would have heard the old saying 'don't poo poo where you live' wouldn't you?" He looked back down and pulled his pack of cigarettes' out from the inner pocket of his thin jacket, fishing one out with his lips and lighting it with a lighter Gabe hadn't seen him produce. Mike stretched his longer legs out and rested his heels on the mausoleum's roof, wriggling his splayed toes as he took a slow drag. Recently when exploring the town, Gabe had insisted they leave a path through the park to see more of the canyons surrounding it, there were trails there he pointed out. Dirt trails, but it wasn't like they weren't meant to walk on them, they snaked off though bushes, low trees and tall grass, winding along hillsides in ways that weren't readily apparent until you were faced with them. One of these twists walked Mike right into a place where someone, some people more likely, had been dumping buckets of slop too foul to just sink into the dirt with the recent rains. There was nobody home when they walked a little further, Mike grumbling and dragging his boots, caked with the worst kind of mud imaginable. Just a thin dollar store tarp stretched in a lean to over dry stack of cardboard and older tattered tarps, folded neatly and placed on the stack with a rock on top. There was an orange bucket covered with a lid nearby, a toilet seat leaning up against it. Mike had kicked that bucket so hard that it would have exploded where it was, had he no technique. Instead, it had rolled end over end under the lean to, where its side split and the lid fell off, spreading its contents everywhere across the shelter. Gabe continued to look off at the golf course, ignoring his friend and leaving the foul memory behind in favor of his rumination about the nature of life. People didn't seem inherently better than one another, not even Mike who would stride though the worst circumstance as if it was expected, not earned. Besides, that's not him anyway, its just what he does, you must be more than just what you do Gabe thought. Gabe thought... Nothing that could justify this kind of existence would come to his mind. Decedent fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Nov 1, 2023 |
#
?
Nov 1, 2023 01:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 15:46 |
|
|
The air had started to chill and dry, the clouds had broken and begun to part ways when Mike put his socks back on feet that had the rosy color of being warmed by a fire. Gabe had sat there still and silent for almost an hour as Mike wiggled his toes and smoked cigarettes' till they were all gone, even the crumpled red pack sitting conspicuously in the grass. Having the right people around makes life easier you would think, but how much choice does anyone really have about who that is? Gabe stood up and stretched, took a step along the waterline and squatted for a last look at his fish. The light having recently dimmed significantly, he was only able to see the movement rippling across the surface, and that was enough. He walked over to the edge, sat down on the lip, reaching up over the edge as he let his body slide off, he planted a foot and bounced it off the side of the wall before landing comfortably on both feet in the grass. Of course Mike was already there, his eyebrows raised in question with his back to a lamp post that lit up almost on que. "Did you just loving jump? Mike stood there, his eyes open wide with his lips tightly pressed against each other in a line and his chin winkled. There was mud on his knees and deep marks in the grass where he had landed. "Why do you do things like that?" Gabe continued as he walked past a flickering yellow lamp towards the impish Mike who was looking down, his eyebrows raised and now smiling openly with a slight chuckle. "So was there something you wanted, some reason you came here again?" "It's almost time!" Mike said with quiet but obvious excitement straining his voice. "I know that! I can feel it too and your knees don't look like they're bothering you at all." Gabe said, noticeably louder than he would usually address people. Mike continued to smile. Gabe had taken so much time to get here, given so much thought and put in enough effort to recreate any other endeavor he'd ever undertaken at least twice over. There was literal blood and sweat devoted to everything going just the way it was supposed to. With a contempt for Mike that was usually absent entirely, he thought "Do I even need him around?" Mike stopped walking to stare at Gabe. "What? You know the answer to that." The familiar annoyance was back. Gabe hadn't realized he'd said that out loud. His hands in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, warming them against the increasing chill of the evening, he stumbled and lost a step before stopping and turning around grateful to not be facedown on the now concrete pathway, back towards the main section of the graveyard. "You know you're a colossal rear end in a top hat dude? Hurry up I don't want to jump that fence if I don't have to. They're going to close the gate soon as the guard finishes his loop." The one security guard on duty in the evening was as regular as clockwork, and as long as he'd been coming here, Gabe had only seen him deviate from his routine once, and that was when he was surrounded by police trying to break up a party that tried to form from a group of kids that used haunt this place at night. Since then, it had been dead as one would expect in the evenings. "It's almost time." Decedent fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Nov 1, 2023 |
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2023 16:59
|
|