| Chap 1.1 - Page 3 | frangles: Skip book 1: Writer's Bricks |
"Do you ever get the feeling that it just never begins?" "What? "You know, it." "I don't understand."
"Neither do I. I just thought it sounded like a dandelion opening
line for a short frwoa. Or even a long one. You seem to
have lost your mind and memory right at the one of the most important
moments in your expected life-long writing career, and I figured what a
great story that would make!"
"But why here in the cafe? Isn't it a bit late to be starting up
a frwoa now? The time to do so would have been when I
arrived on the train station, or perhaps when you woke up this morning
or something."
"Quite right. Perhaps that's why I'm not in charge of friting the
catylist frwoa of all of Okuaka. Why don't we pretend the past
few lines of dialogue never happened, and I'll let you narrate our
introductory scene. Go ahead, give it a shot. You seem to
have retained your skills if not your memory why you should have any
reason to bother using them, so give it a shot.
" 'The short dwarf-esque worflii whom Skip had just met from one point
of view, stirred his vague idea for some sort of mixed drink involving
alcohol and Pepsi and a solid form of water. Skip seemed to have
hit a brain fart with his initial description, because the bright
polka-dotted dress he thought the Worflii was wearing was now full
steel-plated battle armour. The two sat in a vifa cafe, which
consisted of a few cafe tables, a bar, a couple sipping milkshakes at a
diner booth, and a confused owner who wasn't quite sure if he owned a
cafe, bar, restauraunt, or cafarestraunt. The worflii frowned,
yet seemed hopeful; perhaps one might even say fropeful,
and the confusing mixed thoughts stirring in his head wobbled and
bobbled up and down with the invisible buoy he imagined he was poking
with his stirring straw. His mind was not a mixed drink, but
rather a... a mixed think
about whether his current dilemma was a good or a bad thing. He
opened his mouth as if about to speak, then seemed to fruse awkwardly
about something, and then--' "
"Alright, alright, that's good. You seem to have lost only your
memory and not your gift with irritatingly overdescriptive
narration. We're going to need that kind of intuition from you if
we're both going to survive being bricked to death for not getting this
current draft finished of whatever the hell it is we're eventually
going to have been writing. 'Going to have been writing...'
Is that right? I'm a tad drunk and I'm afraid my grammar's a
little off beat."
"Bricked to death? I'm afraid that doesn't sound very good at
all. What does it--"
"Bricks! Writer's bricks! They're going to throw writer's
bricks at us until our friters eventually lose their minds themselves
and completely forget they ever brainstormed us. We'll be
dead. Gone. Nothing. Not a remembered death with a
lack of a note on a blank tombstone, but simply never to have existed
at all. I feel some metaphor coming on about a hole in a lake but
the bartender's giving me that warning look he gives when he's
forgotten to pay his quotation licensing fees, and I'm not quite sober
enough to figure out the precise probability of the allusion falling
under Fair Use rights."
"Could you be thinking of the Rock Biter's dried up lake in the 1984
Warner Brothers--" The couple in the bar went rigid as the
bartender chopped the wine bottle he was holding downward and smashed
it on the edge of the bar. The surprise on his face said he'd
never attempted such a thing and the outcome had entirely surprised
him. He'd clearly meant to do something that would demonstrate
his irritability in fusion with his low anger management skills in a
threatening manner, but not cause a mess. Instead, the bottle of
what everyone decided was now chicken broth smashed into a plethora of
uncountable fragments of glass and liquid. The faces in the room
further tightened as they saw that he looked like he was about to break
into tears at the catastrophe, which would certainly further damage his
brawny reputation beyond belief. No one wanted to face the wrath
of a doubly disgruntled bartender furious at his own lack of
testosterone, but no one could think of anything to say. When
awkwardness grew near it's limit and his eyes were starting to
gather moisture, Skip felt a kick from the worflii who seemed to have
completely forgotten that Skip had completely forgotten what he could
possibly do to remedy the situation. "Intuition," he whispered.
"Ah, yes! That reminds me of that old classic riddle, why did the
cross pessimist cry over a half-empty glass of spilt chicken broth
before it got to the other side of the end of the road of life!
To spill, to weep! Perchance to seep! For in those fears
for tears what seers may steer us wrong must give us ponds! What
light through Yanni's window drapes; we reel kool, we left stool; a
hundred bottles of beer in a pool! Broth--and--beer! We're
not gonna pay; we're not gonna pay last year's frwoa fees! Don't
worry, be happy now! Yah! Yah! Come on, everybody!"
As Skip wasn't quite sure what he'd done to begin with, he had less of
an idea what it had accomplished, and certainly had no idea how to turn
his rant into a five-person sing-along, since he wasn't singing at all,
and nobody else could possibly know what came next if he did.
Either way, Skip seemed determined to keep going, so he put a cheery
jingle to his poem-riddle and began the entire thing again. The four
others in the bar had already forgotten the broken bottle incident and
were now just plain staring blankly at him.
"Ohhh... why did the pessimist cry... about a half emp-ty glass of spilt broth. Before it crossed the tot it thought to strife the tot of life! To-spill-to-weep-perchance to seep, what seers may steer us wrong? What light that night through, uh--"
"That's quite enough." The worflii rushed to toss a twenty on the
counter for his drink and Skip's idiocty, and hurried Skip out of the
bar. "Let's get out of here before the bartender recovers his
wits and calls the police for noise disturbance or bad poetry drafting." ||< (last) (next) ||> |