Pallet Cleanser Pieces

Written Doodles

Today, I share a "word doodle."  Before I do, however, I would like to define this genre as "works written without the intention to become either complete OR to be magnificent, instead taking as their reason for existence a chance to relax the author's mind before more serious works are visited."

In word doodles, Standard American English is not kept as any sort of ideal, nor is content particularly important.  There might be elements of plot and there might be an ending or a beginning, but these are not required of the genre. Nor are these braindumps in the form of a story that is yet to be written.  Instead, these are free-form, quasi-stories that are meant to be enjoyed for their moments and not for their net sum total.  Often, they end abruptly, having served their purpose and allowed me to focus on more pressing, important, carefully crafted pieces.  

Sharing Sub-Par Work

As with any venture, sharing a piece that is not complete and not up to the professional standard is a risk.  However, with storycraft, I have found that too many people consider the actual making of stories to be "magic" in the form of some sort of "divine inspiration" or some "gift" that they do not and cannot have.  This myth serves to alienate the author and the community that would purchase the result of their craft.  Just as anyone can learn to garden, can learn to knit, to fix cars, to program computers, to do any of a number of things that, until learned, feel like magic, anyone can write.  But this skill, while at its roots a basic one, requires constant practice, training, and improvement.  Showing a few pallet cleaning doodles, one at the onset and perhaps a few more in the coming future, is intended to show the practice, the "how to" aspect of the craft.  As with "slow TV" set on mute, no explanation beyond this is given.  

Inspiration and Idea Theft

Many of my doodles are pale, empty things with a few phrases that are good and a few scenes that are gut-wrenching.  If, after reading a segment, an idea pops into mind that forms the seed of a story, please act on that idea, but please either alter the used words nearly entirely OR give some measure of artistic credit.  "Inspired by" or "influenced by" followed by Kendra Namednil is a tried and true formula.  In terms of themes or general content, my view is that many of the core aspects of storycraft are universal.  Reading a scene wherein a "bad guy" (sprite, witch, cutpurse, ghost) has a penchant for targetting individuals with a "hobby" (water skiing, stalking other innocents, writing, dancing) and deciding that you would like to write a similar type of scene wherein a different kind of bad guy has a penchant for targetting individuals with a different hobby is not so much theft as picking wild blackberries.

For private, non-public use, put a reminder-note of the source material and use whatever inspiration works.  Follow the same rules as watercolor, oil, and ink artists.  For practice, read a scene that resonates, close the window, and, after writing the original source, try to rewrite the scene from memory, embellishing as needed to enhance both flow and clarity.  DO NOT claim such pieces as distinctly your own, but DO be proud of the scenes you create, of the scenes you recall.

I think that covers the basics.  Let us begin!

Warm Blanket

The blanket was warm -- soft, even -- and the rope was smooth.  Likely it was made of polyester or some derivative. She doubted it was made of silk, but the thought that some measures had been taken to see to her comfort was… well, it would be comforting if her welfare had also been of concern.

Closing her eyes, she tried to remember last night.

The coffee shop was well lit and the crazy man hadn’t dared to follow her in.  He’d stalked her for two and a half blocks and she was taking her time at the 24 hour diner, letting him mosey on after the next hapless victim to be out at night.  She didn’t need an escort; she needed a society that didn’t think such things were harmless.

The diner was tended by a sturdy looking waitress and a beefy looking chef that, after finishing her toast with jam, had returned to the front where the pair were playing some sort of competitive game on their phones.  Six booths behind her, in the corner, a man in a nice suit with a woman’s handprint on one cheek and lipstick on the other nursed a cup of coffee. He didn’t seem the least interested in her, instead alternating between hunkering forward and leaning all the way back to stare morbidly up at the ceiling.

A fly buzzed near the front door.  Millie sipped her hot cocoa quietly, not wanting to encourage her stalker by glancing at him, but secretly wishing to look out the window and ascertain if he was gone.  There was something about this place, with the scent of scrambled eggs and too sweet syrup, with the old but clean brown plastic booth cushions and the slowly rotating overhead fan…  She wanted to get up and leave. She wanted to go home, slip into her sweats and oversized T-shirt, and watch Jurassic Park on Netflix. She yearned for the bag of baby carrots in the fridge, wishing she could rip open that bag like the vegetarianasorous rex she was and toss those screaming bullets of carotene and fiber down her gullet.

Instead, she was trapped here, in this convenient hole of a diner, waiting for the guy with the dark bluejeans, red shirt and awful smell to move along and harass someone else.   The whipped cream on top of her cocoa started melting. She turned the cup a little and licked at the hot ceramic, glancing up to make sure no one had seen her self-indulgent display.  

She sipped at the cocoa a little more, startling and getting a little whipped cream on her nose as the front door jangled open.  Millie glanced over at the pale - almost pure white - skinned woman and blinked a few times before glancing at the waitress and her cook.  The two hadn’t stirred more than to turn away a little as though they had felt a faint chill. Millie set her cocoa down and considered making some sort of noise to alert the woman to this patronage but decided against it; if the diner staff didn’t want to make money, she most certainly wasn’t going to turn them in to their mothers.  

The woman let her fingers glide over the cheating man and his eyes rolled back in his head.  She smiled down at him for a moment, then gestured as though inviting him to remove himself from the booth.  He did as bid and stood still for a long set of moments, blinking in the faint flicker of old bulbs. The cook glanced up at him and opened his mouth, then gazed at the woman and looked confused.  His phone made a small noise and he attended to it again. Millie stared hard at this woman now and picked up her cocoa defensively.

The pair walked from the diner and Millie fought the compulsion to follow them.  It seemed the man was in danger, though she couldn’t place why. Still, she was a plump five foot four with no martial training and eyes that the creepers said were like portals to heaven.  The most she could do was scream or maybe call the police, but, aside from his eyes, he hadn’t exactly resisted. The conversation played out in her head and she decided against being put on the prank caller or loony bin watch lists.

About twenty minutes later, as her cocoa was almost half gone and she contemplated getting a replacement, the man returned and sat again in his booth.  His sleeves were rolled up and his hair was a bit dishevelled. His dress shirt had three buttons undone and was untucked. His neck and wrists were covered in what must have been a dozen raised welts -- insect bites, Millie told herself -- and he looked pale and a little bit disoriented. The waitress saw him and her disingenuous, default smile faltered, the cracks showing at the edges, as she quickly walked over and filled his cup with coffee.

Not sure about any of this, Millie got up, asked for a refill on her hot cocoa, and crossed to the restroom.  She washed her hands twice, once with hot water and once with cold, reapplied her lipstick and thin layer of masquera, double checked that her mace was within easy grasp, and returned to her seat.  There were sprinkles adorning her cocoa now.

She finished this, glancing at the wall clock.  One am. Hopefully, the worst of the crazies were all either asleep or distracted by now.  Carefully, she double checked her mace and crossed to the front cash register to pay. A few moments of idle, almost scripted chit-chat later and the obligatory statement about being careful and the unthought pledge to do so, Millie escaped back into the night.  Her home was four blocks away. She considered running, but she always ran out of breath at two blocks and she had to climb two flights of stairs. Besides, fast movements attracted predators, right?

Danger lurked in every shadow, yet the streets, although not empty, did not reveal anything more threatening than a skunk clumsily pawing through a plastic trash bag.  Still, it was not until she was in her home with her doors locked and her sweats and T-shirt on, a small alluminum bat on the floor in front of her, that Millie began again to feel calm.  It was a little too late to start watching a long movie like Jurassic Park so she instead selected Planet Earth, Deep Blue Sea from her collection and set it to a random point in the middle of the disk.  About five minutes in, she went to her bedroom and opened the window. She was four stories up and the fire escape was by the kitchen window, so she knew nothing was getting in through the screen. Still, she picked up Fuzzbee, a stuffed animal her Ex had given her three weeks ago, just days before he’d said she was too clingy.

As she hugged Fuzzbee, she ran her tongue over her teeth.  Ick. While it was delicious to drink, leaving hot cocoa and whipped cream unbrushed was a bad idea.  She picked up her toothbrush from the left side of the sink where she always left it, put the mint toothpaste on the bristles, brushed until she felt clean, rinsed and set her toothbrush back on the left.  She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair a few times before setting it on the counter. The white walls of the bathroom seemed empty, hollow somehow, now that it was only her stuff in here.

She returned to the kitchen, threw some popcorn in the microwave, and sat down again, watching a pod of whales swim somewhere where the water was a pale blue.  She cuddled her fluffy bee and closed her eyes, listening to David Attenborough list on, his voice both soothing and compelling. The microwave dinged. She opened her eyes and set walked into the kitchen.  It would be nice to see the bright yellow and black in the morning over oatmeal and blueberries.

Some sort of glowing octopus with weird hook-like claws was doing an ornate dance on the television.  She smiled and got up to retrieve her snack, pouring the contents into a glass bowl with a dolphin motif.  The red octopus was just fleeing as she returned and she began munching on her treat. She lay back and began to drift off.

A bright light brought her back and Millie realized the show had ended.  She yawned, picked up the few spilled pieces of popcorn, tossed these and the few remaining kernels in the trash, and set it in the sink.  She stared at it for a moment, then ran a little bit of water in the bottom so she wouldn’t have to work hard at cleaning it in the morning.  She smiled, shaking her head. It had been a crazy day, and no mistake. Laurel had done something to the printer and the thing had left a huge ink stain on the boss’s shirt.  He had not been pleased, to say the least, and Laurel had run out of his office in tears.  In the cubicle next to her, Ron had left his divorce papers out in plain sight when he had gone for lunch.  No one said a thing when he returned, but the rumors had buzzed like chainsaws over break.

A bit of kernel was stuck in her teeth and Millie sighed and sloughed her way to the tiny bathroom.  Her boyfriend had taken his Sharks shower curtain with him when he’d picked up his stuff, and she’d replaced it with a cheap white one from K-mart.  She’d get something with animals or dinosaurs later, she supposed. Her mom or one of her girl-friends would send her a gift card for her birthday or Christmas or, heck, she might just get a bonus before the end of September.  She’d been working late every night for a month.

Poking at the kernel with her tongue and stumbling with fatigue, she looked at the counter in the bathroom for her toothbrush.  Huh, she must’ve been a wreck when she got home. Silly, now. She picked her toothbrush up from the right side of the sink and dislodged the kernel before turning on the night light and reaching for her brush.  Huh, on the floor? Well, she’d been tired. It was natural that she’d been clumsy.

Bending down, she picked up the brush and studied it.  Her hair was a rich auburn, but there, right at the edge, was a silver hair.  Her brow furrowed in a semblance of anger and frustration as she picked the offending thing out and threw it into the toilet.  She flushed this for good measure and brushed her locks angrily, inspecting the brush again. No more gray revealed itself. Good.

She walked to her bed and paused, wondering why the window was closed part way.  She was sure she’d… no, but that was all right. It was fine like that. She lay down on the bed, sat up, and tucked herself in.  In the morning, well, it was Saturday already. In a few hours, when she awoke, she would clean the house. Putting her belongings in order was supposed to help her put her life back in order.  She smiled as she fell asleep.

The morning light was unwelcome, but at least her Fuzzbee was tucked in close.  She snuggled into the stuffed animal and woke up, carefully blinking against the sunlight that flooded her room.  She smiled and made her bed, then glanced at her wrist. There were two small, raised bumps. They didn’t itch like mosquito bites and they didn’t hurt like spider bites, but they were small.  She hazarded that they would die down before lunch today.

Millie smiled, turned on the radio, and made the bed, placing her Fuzzbee in a place of honor in the middle of the bed.  She smiled and dressed, picked up her gym bag, and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast. There was the bowl with the popcorn in the sink, and there was a cup… huh.  She washed the two dishes and stared at the cup for several long moments before setting it to dry.

After breakfast, she cleaned up, left the house, locked the door, and walked down the three flights