Yup, Still Going At It

Just in case you're wondering... yes, I'm still working on NaNoWriMo. And I'm only one day behind, and only that because I took yesterday off after hitting the half-month point. Maybe I'll say something profound about this later, but for now... well, I'm still working on it.

~Paul

NaNoWriMo begins NOW!

What, that loser's coming back to try NaNoWriMo a THIRD year? That's right! And this time, the approach is different. In previous years, I came into the whole deal with a very good idea of what I wanted to write, and an intent to write well.

That didn't work out so well.

So this time, I didn't start with anything in mind. Well, somethings tried to creep in, but I hit them with baseball bats, bound and gagged them, and threw them into a mental closet. Today, I just started writing and saw what came out. I'll post today's labors here for anyone who hates themselves enough to read it.

Chapter 1

In an endless expanse, a being in silver robes drifted quietly. Or, he tried to drift quietly.

“So then, the planar quillboar, he was all, no, I’ll get you first! Look, I even have a ginormous club! Ha! But I was all, no you don’t, cuz I have a moon I can throw at you!”

Azarael, Angel of Death, Keeper of Secrets, The Blind Who Saw All, stretched his wings, and turned away from the center of the endless expnanse—the shimmering portal—and looked at the monkey who was regaling him, or attempting to, with tales of derring do.

“Have you nothing better to do, Jisha?”

Jisha did a backflip—for the fun of it, Azarael was sure Jisha would say had he asked, even though they both knew Azarael knew that Jisha knew that movement was relative and really nonexistant out here. It didn’t stop Azarael from turning from the portal, though, and it certainly didn’t stop Jisha from doing backflips. Ever. “Of course not. What could be more important than yacking at my favorite stiff?” Jisha asked, smirking.

“Well, I do have something better for you to do. Take a look at this.” Azarael turned back to the portal, stretched his wings, and spread his arms. He began chanting in an ancient tongue, forgotten by all men since Adam and all women since Eve. The Angels still remembered, though. They were not bound by the same fettters as mankind.

Jisha’s hackles rose as he listened to the ancient, noble tongue—sibillant hisses mixed with overpowering vowels and declarations, reaching not only into language, into ideas, but into reality itself and shaping the world.

Of course, the chanting wasn’t strictly necessary, but Azarael always liked creeping Jisha out. This was something that Azarael knew that Jisha didn’t know. The chanting thing, not the creeping out thing—they both knew that Azarael liked creeping Jisha out.

The portal flashed as a thousand supernovas, ripping into the endless void they floated in with the light of searing death—and it revealed the millions of shapes hovering in the distance, whether a mile or a billion was impossible to say in a void with no point of reference. They could’ve been specks or larger than universes, but what was certain was that they hung over the last bastion of the Angels, and they did not mean well. The light of the portal faded, and this time it held an image rather than a flat circle of light.

On the shimmering field was a young man, tall and dark-haired. Azarael spread his wings one more time, rising up as he did so, and pointed grandly to the being before him, spread across a portal a thousand miles across. “Behold, Jisha! This boy is our salvation! This boy shall be the prophesied one to restore the our foolishness to glory! This is our redemption!”

Jisha looked and blinked. “But.. he’s EMO.” It was true. The young man was decked out in studded belts and tight black clothing, his dark hair looked dyed, and no non-emo would go with that oh-so-stupid haircut that parted on the side and fell over to completely block vision from one eye.

Azarael sniggered. “The workings of the Infinite are mysterious, Jisha. Do not question the chosen vessel. Also, damn straight he is.”

“What do you think an emo can do?”

“A hell of a lot more than you think, Jisha.”

“And you want me to do what with him?”

“Find him. Help him. Put up with his emoness if necessary.”

Jisha sighed. “Well, at least he’s not a goth. ‘Life is a bowl of pain that shatters when it drops, when it drops from a thousand feet and a cliff so high it bleeds black agony in deepest darkest spring of eternal suffering that haunts my waking mind so hard it screams and bleeds and none of you understand me go away.’ Oh, so horrible! Why do they write poetry? They can’t write poetry! DON’T TRY TO WRITE POETRY!”

Azarael twitched. “You know, in Japan, white is actually the color of death, not black. So people who want to be creepy go around wearing all white.”

“And... you’re wearing...” Jisha looked Azarael’s silver robes over. “I don’t want to know. I really don’t want to know if you write poetry. Please tell me you don’t.”

Azarael burst out laughing. “So easy... so damn easy to wind up! Wow. For a monkey, you’re really twitchy. Now get out of here, furry one. And no more quillboars on the way out!”

Jisha rolled his eyes, saluted, and dived for the portal. He plummeted, at speeds well in excess of both an unladen swallow and anything we conventionally achieve on earth, and soon became a speck above the emo’s left ear. Jisha suddenly passed through the portal—letting out a burst of light as ginormous as the first and once again lighting up the menacing shapes that hung in silence, waiting their moment. When the light faded, the portal—its energies temporarily depleted—held only the darkest, dimmest light, barely indistinguishable from the void that had always hid it.

In the darkness, the Angel of Death waited.

Chapter 2

Wilson sat in the cafe, nursing his drink. The Cafe was mid-sized and pleasant; a few interesting neoart pieces claimed various parts of the wall and a few sculpture stands about the place, the music was soft and calming, and the steady whirr of the drink machines blended well with the sound of laptops clacking at the urging of their owners’ fingers. Wilson himself fit in pretty well; a dark red dress shirt and khaki slacks, necktie removed after the workday, a simple but nice black trench coat to keep away the rain as soon as he steps outside again; a professional but not stiff hairstyle, probably with a bit too much gel and somewhat spiked out as young men fresh into the work force will do to try to retain some level of cool. Simply another person escaping the world of work at the end of the day for a few minutes of relaxation and possibly creativity in a convenient cafe.

Of course, not everyone was a top-secret government agent who did not, officially, exist. There hadn’t even been movies or books written about his branch of the government—not using its real name, at least—because not many authors felt the urge to mix spy novels with high fantasy, which was absolutely absurd of course, let the bloody “speculative fiction” geeks worry about fantasy and we’ll keep our guns and fast cars and unrealistic Hollywood portrayals of espionage work, thank you very much.

If those authors could have seen some of the files on Wilson’s laptop computer, open on the table and currently displaying a game of Freecell, they either would have berated him as a lunatic or assumed he too was writing a novel (which gives him license to be a lunatic). Of course, first they’d have to get past the many layers of security, most of which were rigged to delete everything and make the computer blow up at the first sign of trouble.

Wilson hated his laptop. He’d had to replace it ten times in the first month of his job. He was a lot better now, but every time he opened it up to give the proper passwords he still winced in anticipation of a sudden detonation followed by a trip to reconstructive surgery.

Out of habit, he scanned the crowd surreptiously; in his experience, it wasn’t really worth it, since no one really even had an inkling that his branch of the government existed, except perhaps the Illuminati, if the Illuminati were in fact real, which he wasn’t ready to rule out yet. But still, better paranoid than dead. Even if the Illuminati probably wouldn’t take to grabbing people out of the streets, and if they were, well, who was going to stop them? They were the fricking Illuminati! Council of The Enlightened! Shadowy Force Directing History! They Who Shall Be Given Capitalized Titles! They could be watching him right now, deciding whether it was his time to simply...disappear. Whether he knew to much. Whether he hadn’t been able to learn enough. Whether he had selected the appropriate drink, or whether his sudden shift to tea instead of coffee today had foiled their attempt to poison him. Tomorrow he would get hot chocolate. And the day after that, he would go to the cafe down the street. The next day, back here for a cookie, no drink. Then he would drive across town to Red Lobster and eat there instead. He had it all planned out. They could never get him.

Out of nowhere, a ball of fur collided with his face. Wilson suddenly found himself on the ground, breathing through a mat of muffling dark hair, or trying to breath anyway, and rolling around. They found him! Screams broke out from the other customers; the fur suddenly left his face, and he could breath. Air! Sweet blessed air! The Illuminati were not going to suffocate him to death!

He rolled to his feet and pulled his vest gun just in time to see—a monkey. His gun dropped. How did a monkey get in here? Why did a monkey get in here? Where in the world did a monkey come from that was actually close enough that a monkey could feasibly get into a Seattle cafe? The monkey looked around and gave a little monkey smirk at all the other customers, who were hiding behind tipped over tables, drink counters, and a fallen light fixture.

“Wow,” the monkey said. “If I can do that kind of damage just by missing the portal center by a few miles, I wonder what I could do if I really put my mind to it?” The monkey darted toward the door (grabbing a hot chocolate from a table on its way out), and disappeared into the street. Wilson slid his gun back into its hidden holster before anyone noticed. The other people were babbling about animal control, cute fuzzies, and the possibility of nearby circuses.

They, of course, had not heard the monkey talk. They were far too mundane, by their own insistence, for that to happen. Wilson sighed, returned to his laptop, and began pulling up a file on monkeys. His workday was not, by any means, over.

Chapter 3

The Angel of Death smacked his forehead in frustration, then readjusted his blindfold. “Dammit, Jisha, can’t you just make a single dimensional shift without causing mayhem and picking up a bunch of tagalongs?”

Chapter 4

Calvin hated his name. It just didn’t seem to fit him. The problem was, he wasn’t sure what name would fit him. He’d wasted time, plenty of time going over the list and seeing if there was anything worthwhile. Benjamin? Ha. Victor? Did he look ready to punch someone’s face in? Fred and George were right out. He probably could’ve come up with some old Celtic name with some semi-appropriate translation if he really tried, but the fact was that he really didn’t care to. Sure, “Kieran” may mean something like “little dark one,” but did he really want to explain that to everyone who asked where in the world he had gotten a name like “Kieran”?

The solution, after many unfruitful hours of slapping out long lists and scratching everything out again, was to just go by “Cal.” Sure, it made him sound like a bloody jock, which was almost worse than the alternative, but still. Calvin.

“Hey, Mal.” Then there was Andrea, who just called him “Mal.” In return, he just called her “Rea,” though that also had something to do with the threats on his life when he used her full first name. Mal stood for many things. Most of them made no sense, at least not when used with Calvin. Malevolent. Some made no sense to someone who was not in on the joke. Malaclypse the Third. Some simply made no sense. Malagigel.

Andrea slid open the screen door and let herself in. Today, she was in a thick, Victorian-looking black dress with silver roses embroidered across the shoulders and down the arms. She claimed that black dresses during regular days helped her think and reminded her that she was different than the unenlightened masses. Calvin claimed it made her look hot, in a gothy sort of way. She certainly had the hair for it, too—long, naturally midnight black, tending to cover her eyes when she wasn’t looking, obedient to her whims. She was deliberately vague on how she achieved the obedient part. If pressed by Mal, though, she just said it was a secret.

“Hey, Rea.” He chucked the list of names away from the couch, swung himself back into a sitting position, and made room for her. She gathered her skirts up and took her place as though it were a throne. That was another side effect of wearing thick Victorian dresses. Andrea had to be slow and stately and absolutely sure of where all her fabric was, or she would manage to step on it with the not-so-Victorian combat boots she had underneath. Calvin wasn’t sure how she managed that, either.

“Very carefully, Mal. Very carefully.” Having completely seated herself, Andrea swung her feet up onto the couch and nestled into the space between the cushion and the thick, plush arm rest. “And give up the name thing. Mal works as well as anything. Better than everything.”

“Yeah, but that’s for you. Not everyone can use that name.” Calvin mirrored her pose so they could face each other, more or less, sharing the middle cushion for a footrest. “Besides, I’m not even sure anyone’s noticed that you call me that.”

Andrea shrugged. “Then they don’t pay attention, though that really comes as no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention all along. So, how’d the test go?”

“Which one?”

“Yes.”

“Math sucked, English was alright, I guess, Chem sucked.”

“And?”

Calvin winced. “And the motorcycle nearly killed me. Note to Rea: Don’t ride motorcycles. Note to self: Punch John. Other note to Rea: Punch John.”

Andrea arched an eyebrow. “Surely it wasn’t so bad you want to burn the forest down?”

“No, but a bonfire might be good. So, these special modifications he wanted to test with a light rider, apparently they all blow if you go above twenty.”

Andrea looked up over skeptically. “Blow up? You’re still here, right?”

“Okay, so blow up is too much. They still conked out and made the cycle fishtail and crash.” Calvin used his right hand to pull up the sleeve on his left arm, revealing a large bandage covering his shoulder and upper arm. “I managed to walk away with just this, but I’m still pissed at him. He promised to fix it, but I’m not getting back on that damn bike of his.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Andrea teased. Sooner or later, you’ll hop on and you know it, and it’ll probably be inside of a month.”

“Will not!”

“Will.”

“Won’t, and if I do, I’ll get you a CD. If I don’t in a month, you get me a CD.”

“Deal.” Andrea stretched and stuck her hands behind her head as a cushion. “Man, that was easy. Free CD for me.”

Calvin just rolled his eyes. “So. What about you? Where were you at lunch and after school? I thought you wanted to see John’s test.”

Andrea smiled, ran her tongue over her lips, and paused. “I had... an... interesting day. Yeah, interesting. I don’t have many of those.” She paused, glancing away from Calvin for just a second. “Normally, the days are depressing... but this, well...”

Calvin smirked. “You okay, Rea? Tongue tied doesn’t suit you. Want me to untwist it for you?”

“Maybe later,” she joked. “You see—”

At that moment, the screen door Andrea had walked through burst into shreds as a horde of screaming ninjas swept into the room.

~Paul