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The Old Man
The world wraps its hands around those with kind hearts and generosity. When an old man takes advantage of Em's offer to find his cat, she ends up in the same world he was in. Take revenge or find the best outcome, the choice is up for Em to decide.
Length: 5399 words
~~~
All one could hear was the honking of car horns as they raced down the street, the caws from the birds that echoed between the tall buildings, the stomping of footsteps and distant chatter, and, of course, the screaming of the stray cats living in the alleyway.
This collection of noise was either a nightmare of overstimulation or it was the simple background noise to life to most people. To Em, the surrounding noise made her heart pound with life. She felt the most alive while feeling the electric energy of the air when the sun was high and the skies were clear. The boutique in which she worked to keep organized each and every day was a mile walk away from her apartment. In her city, it was faster to walk than to try the bus.
It didn’t matter how many times she made this trip per week, she never got tired of knowing that everyone around her each had their own stories and goals where they were heading to. She always stopped by to watch street performers and her bag always had cat food that she gave to the stray cats in the alley. Em never wanted one of the furry friends in her life to go hungry.
Friday was when Em would go to the market and pick up groceries for the week. Nothing fancy, she never had time to cook up something gourmet anyways. The bag she carried over her shoulder tugged down on her but she wasn’t one to let the small challenges get in her way.
As she continued down her normal path, she noticed someone who wasn’t rushing from one place to the next like most of the others in the city. It wasn’t a street performer and this person was wearing too nice of shoes to be homeless. Instead, it was an older man with hair white like cotton candy.
He was muttering something that sounded like “Here, Luna. Here, kitty. Where have you gone off to?” The old man had his back turned mostly towards her with only a sliver of his face visible. A black cardigan was draped over a light gray shirt that resembled a lost grandpa. His hair flowed wild and tall around his head as if static electricity ran through him.
“Hello, do you need help?” She approached him, noticing the look of distress on his face. He spun around to face her, making his previous distress turn into a look of relief. A small smile appeared on his face.
“Yes, actually. I am wondering if you saw this cat around nearby. I lost my dear Luna and I am running out of energy to keep looking. I’ve asked some others if they’ve seen my cat and if they could help me, but I’ve found no luck. Here,” he pulls out a crumpled-up photo from the pocket of his cardigan. “Have you seen this cat?
Em leaned in closer to the photo of a tiny gray and black cat. Its ears stood up almost as tall as its head and it was so skinny she wondered if it was getting enough food. Em glanced back up at the man who was still trying to feign a smile.
This cat was one of the strays she would feel in the ally. It had appeared relatively recently, within the last week or so. The cat had a patch of black fur on the tip of the cat’s right ear that always caught Em’s eye. When she would go into the alley, this cat would be the first to greet her, meowing loudly from behind one of the discarded and molded cardboard boxes.
She glanced between the photo and the man and had to suppress shaking her head in fondness. Pet owners always look like their pets.
Em glanced at the sky, noticing that she still had a fair amount of time to give him directions to the alley and get back to her apartment before the sunset. “I might have seen that cat this morning in the alley over there,” she pointed. “I’ll take you.”
She gives him directions to the alleyway and motions that’s the place she has seen the cat. As she does this, she reaches into her bag and grabs her phone. Going into the camera on her phone, she hits record. If anything were to happen to her, there would at least be proof of who did it.
In the alley, there was a pile of sleeping cats next to one of the discarded boxes in the alley. On the other side, a cat was roaming around and occasionally pawing at the bricks of the building. In the morning, the cats were rambunctious and excited about the food Em would bring. Now, however, the cats were cast in a sleepy spell as they tried to stretch out in the remaining light for the day.
The man enters the alley and looks around. He crouches near the other cats, one of them leaping up and moving out of the way. His head turns from side to side before he gets up and faces Em again. “She’s not here. Thank you for the advice, however.”
“She might come around in the morning. That’s when I usually see her.”
A ray of the low sun’s light caught Em in the eye, making the world light up in painful sparkles. Red flashed against the back of her eyelids. Her eyes fought to open against the light, looking at the old man that stood before her.
His face shone with youth in the blinding light. The wrinkles of his face smoothed and his skin snapped back with elasticity. His eyes brightened with a more vibrant color, the gray-blue turning bold. His pupils narrowed the slightest bit, making his stare piercing. The old man’s hair seemed to multiply on his head and the gray faded into black. The ends of his hair were the darkest and pieces of hair on the top of his head stood up in tufts. There was a smile on his face with sharp teeth that sparkled with the last of the day’s light. Yet, with his smile, there was a darker emotion behind his eyes. Panic, pain, Em couldn’t tell what it was.
Just as the light moved to shine down on both of them, the clouds moved and forced the light away. The illusion on the man fell away, him aging 40 years in the span of a second. His hair receded, the skin on his face sagged, and his teeth were no longer bright shining white and instead yellowed and decayed.
“Hmm. Alright. I’ll come around to look when I get the chance. Let me give you my number just in case you see her.” He grabbed out a pen and wrote on the back of the crumpled photo, then pushed it into her hands.
Em shook herself out of what she just saw, knowing that the light often played tricks on her eyes. “I don’t want to take your photo. What if someone else recognizes it?”
“I have plenty more back home. Have a good day, miss.” The man turned around and began to walk out of the alley.
She still felt immense guilt about taking the photo and rushed after him, tossing her phone back into her bag without a second thought. Em was surprised at how fast this old man could move. Once she was no longer concealed by the buildings of the alley, she looked over in the direction she saw the old man leave only to see that he was no longer in sight. He had disappeared in the few seconds it took Em to get out of the alley.
She was stuck with the photo with the number written on the back. Even though she wished the end of the conversation could have turned out differently, there wasn’t much she could do now. Just in case, she would keep the photo safe.
The emotional fatigue trudged on Em’s shoulders as she arrived home. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had perishables in her bag, she might’ve ignored her chores and gone right to bed. She fished around for the items that needed to be put right away, yet got distracted by her phone laying at the bottom of her bag with the screen still on. A video showed, ready to be played.
The recording must have stopped after the phone was jostled in her bag. However, as Em peered at the video thumbnail, she noticed that the video capture had issues. Pixels of bright colors dotted the screen like the file was corrupted. Em thought about just deleting the video, but something told her she should watch it back.
She sat down at her dining room table, the one covered with the few things she bought at the store. While leaning over the table and holding her phone, she pressed play.
Most of it was a recording of the ground and the sound of her and the man walking. It was full of the sound of cars and the conversations of the other people who had walked by. There was a flash of the ally as Em had turned and the sleeping cats were visible as a blur. Random colors popped up in random places, but it was nothing too distracting.
The whole video seemed normal until the shoes of the old man came into the frame. More colorful pixels popped up, starting at the corner and trickling closer to the center of the frame as more of the man came into view.
Now, here was what wasn’t mentioned earlier. When the bright ray of sunlight got into Em’s eyes, she brought the hand that was holding the phone up to shield her vision.
Em almost dropped her phone when the recording captured what she thought was an illusion of the light. Just like how it was in person, she saw how as the bright light shone down on the old man, the features of his face softened to make him look at least 30 years younger than he had before.
It was just a glimpse she was able to get before the screen was covered in bright colored pixels. A high pitched noise crackled out what audio had been there and rang in Em’s ears. When the camera caught the ground again, the corruption faded away until the inside of a grocery bag was seen, screen turned to black, and the recording stopped.
A meow called out from behind Em loud enough to be heard from a whole other room. She turned around and on her couch, a cat stretched out, its paws pushing deep into the cushion as its back arched into a deep downward dog.
It was gray with a patch of black fur on the tip of its ear. The cat from the alley! The one neither the man nor Em could find just an hour before.
Em rose from the chair, “What are you doing here?” She reached out to pet the cat and it nestled up against her hand. It was a good thing she was given the photo after all, she could message the man and let him know that she found the cat. After going back to grab the photo from the rest of her stuff, she typed out a quick text.
Hello, this is the girl from earlier today that you gave the photo of your cat to. Great news, I found Luna. She must have followed me home. I will bring her to the alley tomorrow afternoon. If that doesn’t work, let me know.
~~
The cat did not appreciate being carried around in a bag. Its meows echoed against the buildings and drew harsh looks from the other people walking on the street.
“You’re the one who ended up in my apartment instead of staying in the alley. I’m not going to adopt another person’s cat,” Em whispered to the cat under the revving engines that surrounded her.
As Em got to the alley, she glanced at her surroundings. The cats that were always active in the morning were hopping from one trash can to another. No other person was around.
The cat meowed loudly and began to fight its surroundings. Even with Em trying to soothe the cat and keep it from running off, the cat managed to claw at Em’s arms which caused her to retract her arm out of the cat’s way. It leaped out of the bag just as the bright morning sunlight shone into Em’s eyes.
The cat lit up in sparkles and its form began to stretch out. Its arms lengthened to human arms and the cat’s paws turned into shoe-covered feet. In a matter of seconds, what was once a tiny cat with an interesting pattern turned into an old man, the same old man looking for a cat.
Once the facts registered in Em’s head, she backed away with a shout. This was not something that was supposed to be possible. Cats don’t turn into humans. Humans don’t turn into cats. Her eyes went from the ground to the man and back again what would have seemed like 20 times.
“I see that you have found Luna, and kept my photo as well,” he came up to Em and grabbed the photo from her hand. She was in too much shock to fully react to how close he had gotten.
“You have been the first person to ever help me find my cat. I have been looking for her for such a long time.”
Em shook her head. “But you are the cat, I just saw you transform from the cat into you. How does that even happen? Who’s Luna?” She rambled on with a million more questions, each one making her question reality further.
The smile that was on the man’s face faltered and Em couldn’t stop seeing the resemblance between him and his cat, err, cat form.
“Luna was the fiance I lost a long time ago. She was a beautiful woman who I loved deeply. Luna couldn’t have understood what happened to me, I had to let her go.”
“This is unreal. Cats can’t turn into humans.” Em didn’t know whether she should feel scared or angry. Emotions flooded through her as her world spun in circles.
“Give me a moment to explain. 40 years ago,” the old man/cat started. “I was irresponsible and careless. It didn’t matter what happened to other people, as long as I got what I wanted. However, one of the men I manipulated was a lot smarter than me and had abilities I still don’t fully understand. He had placed a curse on me to randomly turn me from human to cat. The first few months were the worst. I wouldn’t allow myself around anyone else in fear that I would suddenly turn into a cat. So much of my time was spent in fear-filled isolation until I finally learned to control the curse, for the most part. I can decide when I turn, but I always must turn at least once per day otherwise I lose control again.”
“That’s… a lot,” Em said, trying to digest his words.
“It is, and it is a very challenging curse to live with. Ever since that day, I haven’t been able to live a completely normal life. The man I hurt told me that the only way to remove the curse was to have someone take it from me. I have been looking for someone to help me for so long. Will you take the curse from me? You’ve already shown me so much kindness and help.”
“I’ve just met you and I still can hardly believe that this is real. There’s no way that I can take on a curse. I still have my job, there are bills to be paid, I’m supposed to go see my family in a few weeks.”
“And you can still do all of those things. I want you to help me get rid of the curse for good. I’ve found information about the man who gave me the curse, we can go find him and make him remove it from you. I would do it myself, but I’ve gotten too old. The transformations have taken so much out of me. I need your help.”
The world continued to spin for Em. Everything felt so ridiculous and she couldn’t believe that he would want her to face the same struggles he had. He was the reason for his own curse, but as she looked at the man, she felt that he had changed over the years. Maybe being a cat for so long forced him to become a better person. Maybe it would be a good thing to remove the curse for good so no one would have to have the same fate.
“I still can’t give up my time.”
“Two weeks. That’s all we need. It will give you a few days to learn how to control your transformations. I can help you with that. Then, we go over to where he is. I figured out that he’s just a few towns over, the train can take us there. Take the time off of work. Say it’s a family emergency. I need you to help me. I need to remove this curse.”
She glanced at the world around her as if to remind her of where she was. As she did that, she spotted the cats still roaming around in the area. They almost seemed to be watching her. She had enough vacation time that she could take a two week vacation. She wouldn’t be able to take any more time off for the next few months though.
“Okay, I’ll do it. Two weeks, tops. Then I have to go back to my normal life.”
“Of course. Now, all you have to say is ‘I will take the curse from you.’”
As Em repeated his words, the sun’s light hit both of them, causing sparkles to fill the sky. Em’s world got so much bigger as she shrunk down into cat form. Her fur was a deep brown, the same color as her hair.
The old man looked about the same. He still had his wild hair and wrinkly face. However, he seemed a little more tired as if he just lost a few lives. He looked down at the now small Em, “Thank you.”
The old man seemed so tall now to Em. His height towered over her. She glanced up at the sky and saw a bird flying overhead. Her immediate urge was to hunt it. The claws hidden underneath the fur of her paws poked out. Her new ears twitched with each new sound, so much louder than it was before. She stretched just like how she saw the man the night before. The feeling of her much smaller body was so strange with the addition of fur and a tail. Everything felt weird and wrong, at least it was only for two weeks.
When Em looked back to the level of the old man, he started to walk away. This wasn’t what she expected him to do and was not what she agreed to. She dashed off towards him, trying to get him to stop. Her screams came out as screechy yowls that turned heads as she slipped between and around the legs of strangers, tumbling over her four feet instead of the two she was used to. She followed him as he left the alley and crossed the street. The car-filled street seemed so much more dangerous now that she was smaller.
Maybe he will be back. Maybe he is getting stuff for us to start traveling. He needs to come back, I don’t know how to turn back into a human. How long am I going to be stuck like this?
She lost sight of the man and seeing the huge world around her made her fur stand up, turning her into a puffball. With careful actions, she went back to the alley.
He’s not going to come back.
The voice startled her, her head whipped around to find the friendly orange cat that always tried to climb up her legs when she would give food to in the mornings.
As she tried to talk like how she would as a human, a loud meow came out instead. What do you mean, “he’s not going to come back?”
We noticed that when he appeared in the alley he acted weird. Right away, we knew that Luna was not his name and carefully observed him as he would disappear at random points of the day. The third night he was with us, we saw him transform back into a cat before coming to the sleeping pile. He threatened to take us all away the next time he transformed into a human if we tried to stop him from sharing our food or talking to you. We are sorry that this happened.
Another cat that was on one of the moldy boxes jumped down and made Em poof up again. This was the black and white cat that favored canned tuna over anything else.
We will help you learn how to survive in the city. It’s not easy being a stray. The food isn’t as good as the stuff you give us. But we have made things work.
Em spent the entirety of the first night trapped as a cat. It got cold and her stomach growled as she found a spot in the sleeping pile. She would always be grateful that the cats remembered who she was and welcomed her in. There was an advantage to feeding the cats every morning for so long.
You’re not going to turn into him, right? One of the cats asked her the following morning. Em had been sitting near the street, willing herself to turn into human form so she could hunt the man down. She wanted to warn her job about her future attendance. Her rent was going to be due in a week. Most of all, she didn’t want the man to win.
He manipulated her just like he did the others. She knew exactly what to have expected, but she still fell for it. Her ears twitched as she was pulled out of her thoughts. If you mean manipulate anyone else into getting this curse, then no. I won’t turn into him.
Her meows came out harshly, but she meant what she said. She was better than that, better than him.
Come then, let’s get some food.
This cycle repeated for the next few days. The cats of the alley showed Em where they got their limited food from and how to hunt the city mice. At first, Em was deeply disturbed by the idea of eating rodents and trash. However, her stomach growled louder with each day and she showed no signs of turning back into a human soon.
Did you know that the bakery down the street just tosses the rest of the sausage they made after two hours?
There’s a lady in the apartment a few stories up with a kid who loves to throw his vegetables over the balcony. The shop owner across the street never says a thing.
Come with me, I’ll show you how to leap across the roofs of buildings.
The other cats, each with their own given names which Em picked up quickly, told her information about the city. Even though Em had lived here for a very long time, she still learned new things from the perspective of a cat and from the other cats.
She even learned to stop meowing when talking to the other cats, instead communicating the soundless ways the others had been with her.
I don’t think I can do this. Em stood on the roof of the bakery. Tessa, the orange cat, circled around her with her tail flicking around.
You have to trust your new instincts. It’s no different than leaping from box to box. We can leap 6 feet. I’ve heard of cats jumping from floors to the top of the fridge. The other building is just a few feet away.
If Em was in her human form, she could leap across the gap with no problem. The distance would be nothing and she moved similarly when jumping across cracks in the sidewalk. Now, going from a little over 5 feet tall to a foot tall, every gap is a world away.
Her ears twitched once again and she sensed her surroundings. It has gotten a lot easier to tune into her cat senses, making it easier to sense sudden movements and catch birds from the air. She couldn’t deny that pouncing at prey was pretty fun.
Getting into a pouncing position, her front legs lowered and her eyes trained on the next building over. Em wasn’t going to psych herself out again, she was going to do it. She leaped into the air and across the gap that previously felt a mile long. Tessa shortly followed her, cheering as she went.
A few mornings later she woke up to an empty pile. Her cat form looked around to find the other alley cats surrounding some sort of object. She stretched a deep stretch before heading over to the other cats.
In the middle of the group sat a very shiny object. It was the fanciest pet collar she had ever seen. The collar itself was a deep blue velvet and was jewel encrusted. She recognized diamonds, tanzanite, and black opal placed into silver prongs.
Em got closer to the collar and placed a paw on it. With the touch, she felt herself expand and grow until she was fully human once again. Her first transformation stretched her muscles beyond their limits and Em was left in a lot of pain.
The collar moved with her transformation, staying in her hands with her fingers tightly curled around it. This action revealed a small note that was previously tucked underneath the collar.
A compensation for your troubles
She just knew that the old man had left this collar here. Of course, he couldn’t have helped her find the person who set the curse or given her a stash of food that wasn’t mice and other rodents. He gave her a random collar that taunted her as she looked at it.
Em no longer could hear what the cats were saying. They stared at her as she held the collar. Was this supposed to be an appreciation gift? Was this supposed to help her on her journey to supposedly stop the person who gave the old man the curse, which he never gave her any information to help? She wanted to throw the collar, to find the old man and make him wish he never stepped foot into the city.
Row, a white cat gone gray in the city debris, rubbed his head against her leg. She took a deep breath, knowing the cats could always sense how she was feeling. The collar was heavy and the jewels encrusted into it could make her rich, giving her enough money to search the world for those who wronged her. She could go state by state, country by country until she found out who these people really were and what she could do to them.
“I know, I won’t turn into the old man. I won’t do the same things he has done. He won’t turn me bitter and full of despair.”
Panic gripped her chest, her job. She surely wasn’t going to have a job when she got back to the boutique. Her phone was nowhere in sight. It fell out somewhere when she first turned into a cat, completely forgotten about as she no longer had thumbs.
But she could now see her family. She could sleep in her own bed at the apartment. There was so much she could do again now that she has started to figure out how to control her transitions.
Em returned to her apartment that night. A lot of the food in the fridge had to be thrown out and she was glad she had enough money to cover rent. The collar sat sitting on her table, glaring down at her. At least the nice lady next store allowed her to use the phone to call her work. Em explained that a family emergency came up and that she had to leave immediately. She never got a chance to use her vacation time after the sudden transition.
Em was fired that night for being a no-show so many times.
As Em sat on her couch eating dinner of salmon and fruit- the latter of which she missed dearly while as a cat, she was paranoid of the next time her human limbs would turn to those of a cat. How long would she be stuck as a cat again?
Transitioning between cat and human became easier over time. Em slowly learned how to control her transitions and how to keep them away from other people. She understood the struggles the old man talked about with how isolating it can be when she couldn’t control her transitions. At least she had a group of cat friends to keep her company when stuck in cat form.
Without a job, Em was close to losing her apartment. She was starting to pack things up and sell what she wouldn’t be able to quickly move in the few hours of human form she would sometimes have. Sure, she could have used the collar to keep her rent, but that felt selfish of her.
Use the collar for something good. Something that old man would never even think of. Tessa would often tell her as Em was trying to find her way back to her feet, sometimes literally.
The old man spent his years bitter and in isolation. His energy went to finding someone else to take the curse. Em never should have let the man use her, but now that it has happened, she vowed to be better.
She started up a cat shelter in one of the For Lease shops along her street. The money from the collar allowed her to pay for the lease, all the equipment, and to gain the knowledge needed of starting a shelter. She brought all the strays from the alley and gave them a nice cat room with lots of toys and delicious food.
I’ve never been in a place like this before. Row said after she turned into a cat for the night. How did you manage to do all this?
Em could only focus on the sweet smell of the cat treats she left open on the counter. She wanted to hop up and take one but told herself that it was for the others.
The collar gave me the money for everything. You all told me to not be like the man, and I took that to heart. I’m doing something better.
Em cried each night after she helped a family sign the paperwork to adopt a cat. It was good that the cats were going to someplace much better than the streets, but it hurt to see each of them go.
As more stray cats appeared in the city, Em would go and bring them to her shelter. Each cat loved the space and it always helped that Em was able to communicate with them.
For the nights that she got stuck in cat form, she had created a room of her own in the back of the shelter decked out with the things she couldn’t have had in her apartment. With both a bed fit for a human and one for a cat, it never mattered whether she was in human form or cat form.
Maybe the old man would come around again and she would force him to help her remove the curse. However, Em seemed to be making the cat life work much better than the old man ever could have. One thing was for certain, she was never lonely. In fact, the curse only expanded her friend circle, giving her more insight into the world around her.
Check the story out here https://hubpages.com/literature/the-old-man-a-short-story to help support my writing!
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if you ever doubt your writing, be it your themes, or the reason behind it, remember that h.g wells wrote war of the worlds both as a commentary on colonialism and the horrors it brings, and because he fucking hated his neighbours and his 13 hour job, and wanted to write about the town in which he lived getting blasted to the fucking ground by lasers into an irreparable heap and all of the townspeople dying painfully
you, too, can channel your hatred for that guy that lives down the hall and blasts music at 4am into the one of the most influential science fiction stories ever written! fuck it! i believe in you!!
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I’ve self-published on Amazon. Most of my books gave me royalties of less than a dollar no matter if I had listed my book at $1 or $10. Amazon EATS the earnings of authors and gives them scraps.
Yes, Amazon makes it easy for new authors to sell their books. However, Amazon makes formatting, listing, and selling books as an author HELL.
Amazon are upping their print costs for books, which means some (possibly many) self-pubbed authors may have to also up the cost of their book(s). I'd like to say now, to make it crystal clear for the record, this is not authors being greedy.
I think someone who looks up the royalty rate for KDP and sees "60% for exclusive publishing and 40% for non-exclusive" would think "Wow, these authors are getting paid good money!" but once you calculate the amount of the list price that Amazon eats after printing costs, that percentage can be literally pennies. The minimum, and I mean the absolute bare minimum that I could sell When Dealing with Wolves for after the changes is £12.48 – and if I did that, I would make £0.00. That's zero money. No royalties.
I repeat: 40% royalties on a book listed at £12.48 = nothing.
I currently have WDWW up at £14.00. My "40% cut" from that is £0.76. After the printing cost changes go into effect, I'll make £0.61 from each sale instead. I really don't want to up my prices, because frankly it enrages me that Amazon won't let me list my book for anything under £12, when the standard price of a fiction paperback in the UK is usually around £8.99 – but writing isn't my priority job, so I have that luxury. I'm not trying to make a living off my writing so much as using it to supplement what I make from the freelance career, which is a choice I made because I knew I could never cope with the workload required for a ""serious"" self-pubbed writing career without sabotaging myself. The £0.15 difference in royalties from one book sale isn't going to be the difference between me eating or not; it just really really annoys and disheartens me. (And, also, is further proof that I can't sustain a full-time writing career, because I'd run myself ragged for too little gain and then I wouldn't be able to eat).
But there are plenty of authors who are writing as their primary source of income, either because they can't do anything else or because they took the plunge they're building their career (and it shouldn't matter to you why someone is writing full-time, by the way. You want fiction media to interact with, then you need writers, and writers need to be paid in order to live in order to make more media). It's these authors who will have to up their book prices, and I feel in my bones that it's these authors who are going to face the backlash.
So, if you must be pissed off at someone, be pissed off at Amazon. The authors are probably pissed off, too (I certainly am!), so you'll be in good company.
(And if you can, buy the ebook version because we get better royalties, or see if the author has their own store where you can get the book, since they'll have more control over their own prices there).
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At this point I’ve now taken 5 classes for my writing major. I only wrote a substantial amount for one of the classes and that was my fiction workshop class. One of my writing classes wasn’t even a writing class, it was a document production class where I was mostly doing graphic design.
At this point I’m deciding to switch my focus away from creative writing and am doing more professional writing. This upcoming year I know I’ll be doing more writing (including some grant writing) but I got hardly anything out of the core classes I had to take. If I were to have just minored in writing (doing the 4 core classes and a couple of electives, I don’t think I would have learned much at all.
The Reality of Being A Writing Major
The reality of being a writing major is going to college and not actually doing any writing. It is taking several writing classes but learning nothing from them. It is your friends who are widely different majors writing several essays, stories (for whatever reason,) and discussions while you maybe have done a single essay all year.
Being a writing major is literally doing anything else but writing for your classes
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Flakey
I’m sorry, I can’t make it tonight. There’s an event that came up. We will have to reschedule.
No, no, nope, this can’t be happening. Mia stared at her phone screen, the light illuminating her face in the dark space of her room. After hours of waiting for a response, the sun had set and her bedroom was devoid of light. There was a single lamp lighting up a corner of the room, but it was small and didn’t do much.
Valentine’s day, the night she was supposed to be going out with her significant other in just a little over an hour. Her heart was constricted in her chest and she couldn’t tear her eyes away. She didn’t want to think about having to cancel the reservation she had set up or the movie tickets she had the email for on her phone. She didn’t want to think about any of it.
Mia flung her phone off her bed, hitting the ground with a heavy thud. Why would he do this? He knew what today was. He knew that we had made these plans weeks ago. Her fingers twitched as she grasped at the hem of her t-shirt while jumping out of her bed and pacing around the small space.
What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t bring herself to tell her friends what had happened and the idea of staying home alone while everyone else was going on dates made her want to scream.
As Mia paced around her room, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She had just gotten dressed up in a tight-fitting pink dress that sparkled with pale pink glitter as the light hit it. Her face was bare without the makeup she was planning on putting on, but her hair was curled and pulled back in a half-up half-down style. She wasn’t going to waste the work she spent putting her outfit together.
She picked up the phone laying on the floor now near her desk. After she quickly swiped away from her text messages, she checked to see if the nearby club was still open. Special hours on Valentine’s day, the club stayed open for 2 more hours than usual.
There was a makeup look that she had spent hours last night practicing. With the new skills she has learned, she decorated her face with pink and red eyes, heart freckles, and a shiny gloss lip. It was similar to the look she practiced, but this time, with more sparkle.
There wasn’t much that Mia wanted to bring with her. Small necessities got thrown into a small bag along with a granola bar and some perfume. Her legs rushed her around the apartment, moving as fast as possible so she could just get out of there.
In her and her roommate’s fridge were a few bottles of flavored vodka tucked away in the back. She took just enough shots for her mind to feel fuzzy and for the anger toward her significant other to fade away. She wasn't going to let her significant other hold the power over her valentines day. Instead, she was going to party until she dropped.
It wasn’t a long bus ride to the club. The air was chilly but the alcohol in her system kept the cold air from getting under her skin. She shoved the cover into the Security’s hand and adjusted her purse so that it would be secure to her side. A slip on the back of the bag tucked into a clip she secured to her dress, the best Amazon purchase she has ever made.
The crazy flashing lights made her pleasantly dizzy and the pounding of the music echoed in her chest. The music carried her feet to the dance floor where she went full out to mediocre music that her friends would have made fun of if they were with Mia.
She danced, drank, danced with groups of girls, drank with those girls, danced with a few guys, most of them were just creeps that she shoved aside as soon as she could, she drank until she couldn’t remember the text messages still on her phone, drank until she couldn’t register that her significant other was trying to call her. Mia kept going until all she knew was the feeling of the music and the laughter of the two girls that listened to her sob story for 45 minutes.
When Mia’s roommate asked her how her valentines day had gone the night before, Mia could barely give an answer over the pounding in her head and the scratchiness in her throat. She still had the girl’s numbers from last night on her phone, but to be honest, she couldn’t even remember what they looked like.
All Mia remembered was partying until she couldn’t feel anger for her significant other anymore. However, that significant other was coming ever so closer to being an EX.
~~~
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With All My Heart
“And the chicken penne for you.” The waiter set down a large plate of cheese-coated pasta with grilled chicken mixed in right in front of me. On the other side of the table was a plate of steak and looking up was my friend, Angel. She smiled at me before moving to cut up her food. I smiled back at her.
After thanking the waiter we ate in silence for a little while. Occasionally, Angel would glance up at me from her food. She would mention something about another table nearby or give an awkward, hand-covering-her-mouth smile when the waiter asks if everything is going well.
The latter moment stuck with me. The way she glanced at the waiter with a hint of panic in her eyes, her mouth full of steak that she had just taken a bite of. I found myself smiling at her.
After that, we began to talk. We gossiped about the people at our work, talked about our plans this weekend, and we smiled at a toddler who wandered up to our table and babbled about a toy she had.
Angel laughed at what I said, her head tilting back and her hair falling away from her face. Rose colored her cheeks and her shoulders shook with her laughter. For some reason, I can no longer breathe properly.
That’s been happening for a while now. Angel would do something so small and random but suddenly, my chest would constrict and breathing would become difficult. I’d find myself staring at her until the feeling would pass or when I’d remember about the other people that we were hanging out with.
Half of my chicken penne remained untouched. I’ve distracted myself to the point where I’ve forgotten to eat.
“Hey, don’t make it obvious but look at the guy sitting at the bar over there,” Angel nodded over in the direction of the bar with a guy working on his laptop. He sat alone with gaps on either side of him.
“Okay? He sure is working.”
“Isn’t he cute? Even just a little bit?”
Now I couldn’t breathe again. My chest constricted tighter this time and my stomach sank into the void. I couldn’t describe what I’m feeling now, but it wasn’t good. Glancing between Angel and the guy, I felt something burning in my soul.
No. I can’t. That can’t be the reason why. My gaze drifted back up to Angel again, who seemed to be gauging my reaction to what she said. There was a hammer in my chest and it won’t stop rattling my heart around.
A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes shone in the dim lighting of the restaurant and I don’t think that my food will be finished any time soon.
“I,” I start, trying to figure out how to control my expressions. “He looks okay.”
“Yeah, too bad you’re cuter.”
A blush spread across her face just as mine heated up to a burning red. I couldn’t help but laugh at how out-of-nowhere that statement was. Yet, as the laughter faded away, the panic was back in her eyes. My smile fell away.
“I like you, Lily.”
“And you’re telling me at an Applebee's?”
“Why do you think I asked you here?”
“Did you try to make me jealous with the guy over there,” I threw a thumb over my shoulder, gesturing to my location.
“Maybe.”
“Well,” my heart is still beating as fast as a plane flying overhead. I can’t stop thinking about all the things I’ve noticed tonight or the way this is the first time I’ve seen Angel this nervous in a very long time. “It worked.”
~~
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New Story Alert! “Lights Out”
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Check it out on letterpile at the link above to support me!
The lights beamed down, making the entire room boiling hot.
It is cool in this small and dark room. I stare through the window and can see hundreds of chairs below me.
There are 20 bobby pins in my hair. One of them is stabbing my scalp. My shoes are pinching my toes.
There is one girl on the stage. Her hair is done up into a high bun and she’s several inches taller than she normally is thanks to her pointe shoes. The music hasn’t started yet, I’m waiting for my cue.
The music should be starting any minute. I get into 5th position, my arms are raised above my head and I lift my chin. Once I do, the music begins.
The dancer moves across the stage with grace. It is my job to follow her with the light. A circle of light followers her as she dashes and pirouettes across the stage. Each movement reaches her fingertips and her head whips around each time she turns.
My feet are screaming but my face will never show it. As I go from a series of pique turns into another leap across the stage, I feel my heart race in my chest. I’m strong, I tell myself. This routine is hard, but it isn’t the hardest dance I’ve ever done. After a strong developpe, one that would even make my teacher proud, everything goes dark. Did I just die?
My hands scramble to find a source of light. Both in the tech booth and out in the audience the lights completely cut out. The spotlight I had control of no longer works, not that I could even see the buttons that operate it. I feel around for some sort of switch and shout into my earpiece that we need assistance. Hopefully, my earpiece is still working and I’ll get some assistance soon.
The music keeps playing and I keep dancing even though I can’t see the ground under my feet. The show must go on, as every cliché dance movie likes to say. I’m terrified of falling off the stage and into the pit. Murmurs from the front row make their way up to the stage and I still have another minute of my solo left.
“No, I have no idea what happened. My hands never left the spotlight. Look, if you want to blame me for all of this then you can check the cameras later. We need to get the lights back on now.”
Just keep dancing, just keep dancing. Voices from the side usher me to come backstage. But I must not leave the stage until the music is done. I will be there until the end.
Sweat drips from my forehead and the stage manager and I work by our phone flashlights to hook up a generator. Usually, it’s reserved for power outages, but neither of us can come up with a better idea. Everything gets hooked up and I hear whirring.
I’m going to end my solo in the dark, aren’t I?
Light comes back on in the tech booth. Everything outside is still completely dark and it feels like I’m in a vacuum of space. Now, where’s the spotlight?
With a solid 15 seconds left of my performance, the lights flash back on and I am blinded by light instead of darkness. Cheers scream out from the crowd and I finish strong. With a grand set of leaps and crescendoing music, I end in arabesque on pointe. A smile graces my face just before I exit the stage. What’s worse, being in the complete dark while dancing or the time when I danced to no music at all?
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if you see this random post appear on your dash and you’re feeling down or unsure of your writing, this is a sign to try and finish whatever it is you are working on, in whatever pace you find comfortable. one day this particular story you’re working so hard on, struggling with, loving and hating as you try to make the very best of this particular project, could one day be someone’s favourite story they return to, time and time again <3
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Check out my recent short story published onto Hubpages! Perfect for those who want to find a happy ending after miscommunication has happened in a relationship.
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when you give your iced coffee a little swirl and the ice cubes make the clink clonk clink clink clonk sound
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Times are troubling and hard right now-but never forget, your Beet loving Grandmother loves you very very much and wants you to be safe.
And for you to eat your vegetables.
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why is this written like it's trying to hypnotize me into making a batch of caramelized onions, and more importantly, why is it working
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gorgeous gorgeous writers don't worry when they haven't written in over half a year because sometimes life gets in the way, and that has no bearing on their talent or love for writing
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One reblog per day takes the writer and artist's pain away
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