Assignment for June 28
This is a chapter from my NaNo novel. I have not reread it or edited it since I wrote it. Be gentle.
2009. September.
My first day in the psych ward scares the shit out of me. After less than 2 hours of sleep, I feel a hand shaking me and what seems like shouting in my ear. It actually is shouting. “CATHERINE! The doctor wants to see you.”
It’s 7 am – what doctor arrives this early? I mumble an acknowledgement and careen into the bathroom with my standard issue toothbrush and generic toothpaste. I try to get the comb through my hair but it’s an exercise in futility. The light in the room is terrible and the dark circles under my eyes look like bruises. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked this bad – even right after giving birth to my sons. I give up on the comb, brush my teeth, and stagger out into the fluorescent hallway. People are moving around. Some of them have a weird, shuffling walk. The first person I see is a chubby woman dressed in a pink sweatshirt and purple sweatpants. The sweatshirt is stained and her hair is thinning and standing on end. Her mouth hangs open and her eyes are dead. No one is home, though I force the words “Good Morning” out of my mouth of sand. She moves her eyes in my direction and sneers. Immediately after she goes back to her dead look and shuffles down the hallway.
I don’t belong here.
Fay is the first nurse I meet. She’s the loudest person I’ve ever known, but she never stops smiling and laughing. She gestures to a chair and hooks me up to a blood pressure cuff, takes my temperature, and asks how I slept. She also has the most interesting way to saying her words. I mumble an answer around the thermometer in my mouth, and she yells to me, “Make sure you get to breh’fast . . . need to eat, girlfriend!” She pats me on the back and points to a door down the hallway where I am told to line up to meet with the doctor. No one tells me what kind of doctor it is, so I sit quietly and try to blend into the wall.
I meet my next two guests of the ward then. I am scared shitless. The first is Bella, who is singing “Amazing Grace” at the top of her lungs. The other woman is pacing around and has a huge frog tattoo on her neck. The frog is intersected or really, more dissected, by a horizontal scar that runs from just below her ear to the other side of her neck. (Later, I am told I do not want to know how the scar was received) She is extremely agitated and keeps saying, “FUCK THIS NOISE!” in the direction of Bella. I find out later her name is Mandie. “GODDAMN, shut the FUCK UP!” she screams at Bella. Bella sings more loudly, humming and nodding her head. She’s also clutching a bible.
I don’t belong here. Seriously.
I hear my name being called, and I almost run for the door. Turns out “the doctor” is the medical doctor, there to be sure I don’t have a cold or difficulty breathing. He does the usual doctor things, looking me up and down, feeling my glands with his ice cube hands. He declares me “fit as a fiddle” (except for my descent into madness!) and sends me back down the hallway for medication time. The line now stretches down the hallway, and I go to the back of the line. More shuffling and more than a few people who haven’t showered in at least a week.
The common theme in line seems to be “hurry the fuck up so we can smoke”. Willow Hill has the most outdated medication system. Even in my depressed and sleepless haze, I’m analyzing their system and finding ways to make it better. The smokers, which make up 90% of the ward’s population, grow increasingly impatient. More “fucks” are muttered and one woman actually shoves the guy in front of her when he moves too close to her.
I make it to the window finally and am given double my dose of antidepressants. I haven’t seen the psychiatrist yet, so I’m not sure who made that decision, but I swallow the pills anyway. The pharmacist stares at me, then points to her mouth. I realize what she means. I stick out my tongue and bend my neck back so she can see I did swallow my meds.
Still don’t belong here. Why wouldn’t I take my pills? If I really wanted to die, I’d have stayed home, contemplating mixtures of household medications and figuring out what magical combination would put me out of my intense misery. I’m weak, but strong enough to get help when I need it.
Breakfast means we are unlocked and, like kindergartners, walked down a long hallway to the cafeteria. We eat in shifts – the juvenile ward first, then us, then the army’s PTSD group. Rubber pancakes, thick syrup, gelatinous eggs, and an incredible realization: there is no caffeine it the cafeteria. Tea, decaf. Coffee, decaf. Water, apple juice, orange juice. My head is already splitting from withdrawal, but there will be no relief today.
I take my tray and try not to calculate how many fat grams and calories are in front of me. I sit down alone at a table and start eating. A few minutes later, Faye yells to me, “Hey, we don’t sit there. Sit THERE.” Apparently we are only allowed to sit in one section of the cafeteria, so I stupidly grab my tray and walk to a corner, trying to avoid everyone and everything. The majority of the ward sits together at a very long table. They are chattering and eating and sometimes swearing. It occurs to me that not everyone is crazy. The “crazies” sit and drool listlessly. One boy – he’s not a man, he looks like he’s 18 – has trouble holding his silverware without shaking, but he’s still able to converse about a book he finished on the first atom bomb. For the first time I realize there is a fine line between medicated and over-medicated, and I definitely want to stay on the medicated side of that dangerous fence.
My first breakfast is a silent one. My head is now going crazy again.
Fat, fat, where is the gym? I can’t eat this, but I’m so hungry. Can’t puke either, the nurses are watching. I’m going to gain 30 pounds here. I am so alone. None of these people like me. They stare at me, and they stare at the new guy with his crazy hair. Why are only his big toes painted? Why are his toenails painted anyway? He’s huge, he’s hairy, I’m scared. Are my jeans tighter? They have light yogurt. I can just eat that. I think I’m going to be sick.
After breakfast, we line up and head back to the ward. The majority of the patients make a beeline for a door that faces what can loosely be defined as a “courtyard”. It’s more like a prison’s outdoor area. It’s the smoke break area, and the only time we are allowed outside. I follow them and watch the cloud of smoke take over the courtyard. I go to the furthest corner but it’s raining. I get wet while breathing air, still tinged with smoke and frustration and sadness. Some of the women are hugging each other. One of them is crying at the end of the table, and a few patients circle around her, patting her and stroking her hair.
I wander back inside, where Bella the bible lady is watching the single TV. It’s a religious show with a lot of singing and bad hair. I am contemplating returning to my bed when my name is called and I’m ushered into meet with Dr. Patel, my assigned psychiatrist.
Dr. Patel is a tired looking woman, but she’s sharp. For the next 30 minutes she digs and paws through my mind, asking questions, listening, writing a lot of notes. She asks me again to contract for safety, and I agree.
“How are your moods? Do you find yourself acting impulsively?” Dr. Patel scribbles something, then makes eye contact.
“Well, I’ve been told I’m impulsive. I just prefer to consider myself decisive,” I respond, then laugh. She doesn’t crack a smile, so I reign in my need to giggle.
She asks about my depression. I tell her it’s crushing me. I tell her I’m separated from my husband, and I can’t think straight. I tell her that at night, I stay awake while my brain roars like a freight train around the room, demanding my attention. I tell her about my eating disorder. I don’t tell her how sometimes, in the middle of my depressions, I will become ridiculously energized and happy, almost spastic, and will clean the house until my fingers ache and my nose burns from the smell of bleach.
There are more questions. She pauses a lot, then makes eye contact. “I upped your Zoloft to 100 mgs,” she says. “I don’t understand, though, why you haven’t been under the care of a psychiatrist.” Stern look, in my direction. “From now on you must be under a doctor’s care. No more getting pills from your OB or your general practitioner. This is too important. You must manage your condition better.”
It’s odd that I don’t ask her what my condition is. I assume she is talking about my depression, something I’ve been carrying around in my body for 20+ years. She dismisses me and says she’ll be back tomorrow. She tells me to plan on at least 5 days here, depending on how I do. She tells me to rest, but doesn’t prescribe me anything for sleep. I also find this odd, considering not sleeping is a big part of why I’m here, at Willow Hill, with the smokers and the crazies and the freaks and the other people who look just like me.
I’m starting to think I belong here.
I was a teenage super hero
This is a story I have been working on for over a decade. I haven’t touched it in about a year and I have other notes and a partially completed script for the first issue if this were to be a comic book. I originally envisioned this as a 12 episode series for HBO or Showtime. I had it formatted but it didn’t translate all that well into wordpress.
What happens to a family when it suffers an emotionally crippling loss? How do the members of that family deal with one another? Will they move away, become alcoholics, wallow in depression or possibly step up and try to make everything better? How do humans react to loss? Now what happens when such a tragedy befalls a family full of teenage superheroes?
Tyler Matthews (18) – Telekinesis
Lives in a loft in San Francisco with three other people (his band). Two girls and a guy. He was the “team leader” and even though he left his family he’s replaced them with a surrogate family of sorts. Works construction during the day and plays lead guitar in a band at night. He spends all his time trying to fix his friends problems because he doesn’t want to deal with his own. He uses his powers to help him on his day job but he keeps it and his past a secret from everyone. One night after a gig the band is assaulted and Tyler uses his powers and experience to save them all. When he tells his friends his story the audience will learn it at that time. After learning about his past his friends try and talk him into going home to deal with his issues and family. He finally decides it is time to go and deal with his family and assures his friends he will be back in a few days maybe a week. Once he gets back to L.A. he learns his entire family is broken, not just him. He tries to take charge which puts him at odds with Ashley who actually has been in charge for the entire year he’s been gone. He goes to rescue Amanda and loses control and almost kills her dealer/boyfriend.
Amanda Matthews (16) – Concussive Energy Blasts from the palms of her hands
After her parents lost it, honor student Amanda found guidance in an older man. She fell in love with a 26 year old bouncer at a local club. He uses her for a plaything and got her addicted to heroin (on Vedas orders) so she could be more easily controlled. Her parents don’t notice that she disappears for a week at a time but Ashley does. Amanda has spent the last six months stealing money from her parents to pay for her drug addiction. Ashley, finally fed up, makes sure Amanda can’t access the bank account anymore. Out of money, her boyfriend forces her to prostitute herself to pay for drugs. When Tyler gets back into town he finds her and uses his powers to beat the crap out of her boyfriend and he takes her home against her will. The heroin has mad her body too weak to produce energy blasts. Her family forces her into rehab which she does reluctantly. Once she gets out of rehab her mom OD’s on pain killers and she runs back to her boyfriend. He is furious and beats the hell out of her. She lets loose with her energy blasts but they are too weak to do much more than stagger him. She closes her eyes and tries again but nothing comes out, from behind her Veda blasts his and kills him making Amanda think she did it. She panics and steals his drugs and money and hides in an abandoned building where she nearly OD’s. A mysterious stranger who we never get to see saves her by dropping her off in front of a hospital. When her family shows up she has been charged with murder
Ashley Matthews (13) – Super Speed, limited flight
Realizing her parents were too devastated by their feelings of loss and guilt and feeling responsible herself, Ashley takes over completely as the “grown up”. She makes all the financial decisions, she writes all the checks. She cuts Amanda off from the family bank account because of her drug habit. She visits Jason every Sunday after Church. Ashley is in danger of failing the 8th grade between her numerous absences from dealing with her mother and her borderline grades. Her mother tends to make huge messes all over the house when left unsupervised so instead of doing homework Ashley has to clean the house. She has developed a minor drinking problem. It’s not an every day thing but when a day is especially stressful she tends to drink until she falls asleep. When Tyler shows up Ashley feels threatened because she’s been the one in charge for almost a year, especially when Tyler brings Amanda home, something Ashley has been trying to do for months. She feels vindicated when Amanda gets arrested and blames Tyler but the blame quickly turns to guilt.
Richard Matthews (dad) –ex air force
Richard no longer shaves or combs his hair and he rarely takes a shower. He spends all his time trying to find the alien who gave his kids their powers because he thinks the alien can cure Jason. His investigation is being closely monitored by his superiors as they evaluate his mental status. Eventually they will determine he is a liability and give him an honorable discharge and deny him access to their information. He will then spiral even further into depression and he will spend most of his time at a bar getting drunk. When Tyler finally confronts him, Richard crumbles weeping to the floor begging for forgiveness. Eventually the family will gather at Jason’s bedside and his power will be transferred to Richard.
Jason Matthews (15) – Mild telepathy, psychic backlash which causes victim to fall into something like a coma
During the last “adventure” the Matthews brood fought a powerful telepath who turned Joshua’s powers against him leaving him in a vegetative state. He will never wake up, his brain is completely fried.
Katherine Matthews (mom) – ex nurse
She never recovers, spending the rest of her days in a haze until she accidentally OD’s on pain killers.
Stan (alien) – looks like a bald fat middle aged guy, (George Costanza)
When we first meet Stan he is hiding out among the homeless in L.A. He’s sleeping in a n alley when four gangbangers surround him with guns drawn. He’s a bit of a smartass and he shoots three of them in the gut and beats the fourth one for info. He finds out the “other” four know about him and where he is. He realizes its time to stop hiding and take action. He attacks Tyler in S.F. forcing him to reveal his powers in the hopes that it will send him home.
ORIGIN- (This will all be shown in flashbacks in part four. None of the origin will be revealed at first)
Richard and Katherine met when both of them were stationed at the same Air Force base in Nevada in the early 1980’s. Eventually they married and started a family.
Rick Matthews spent his entire life in the Air Force, eventually becoming a test pilot for experimental aircraft. Five years ago he test flew an aircraft the U.S. government had found crashed in the desert a few years earlier. While flying the craft Rick received a message from the original owners. It said that there was a terrible danger headed towards planet earth and the people on this ship were part of an intergalactic peacekeeping force. Unfortunately they couldn’t spare more resources than one ship and one pilot to come to earth and warn its peoples about the comic dangers. After the message a small door slid open on the control panel revealing some sort of alien artifact. Curious, Rick removes the artifact from the console, places it in one of the pockets of his jumpsuit and returns to the base. When he arrives back at the base his family is there and he runs into them on his way to a briefing. He stops, excited about what happened on the flight and he starts to tell his wife about what happened when the youngest child Ashley pulls the artifact from his pocket (going through her dads pockets has become a habit for the child). While their parents talk, Ashley shows the artifact to the other kids and they all try to take it at the same time. Once all four of them have their hands on the artifact it emits a blinding light and a loud boom.
After everything settles and they all realize they aren’t under attack, the kids step forward and tell their parents what happened. They give the artifact back to their dad and the military runs a complete battery of tests on them and determine that nothing happened to them at all. Several weeks pass without incident and then one night Richard gets a phone call in the middle of the night. He is told by his superiors that something has happened and the base had fallen under attack and one of their high security prisoners had escaped and for their own safety, he should bring his family back to the base. Being a follower of orders, he wakes his family up and tells them all to get dressed. Just as they are about to leave for the base, someone starts pounding on their back door. Drawing a gun, Richard goes to check it out and as he opens the door an alien falls through it, almost knocking him over. He tells them where he is from and that the kids now possess the powers that were meant to go to four adults. Unfortunately the powers are non transferable and they are stuck with them. On top of that, they are the Earths only defense against a new menace that has already started popping up, super villains. His enemies also sent a ship and a similar artifact that will give powers to four people who would use them for evil. The difference being his enemies ship didn’t crash as his did and his enemy wasn’t taken captive by the military and studied for years before he was able to escape. Most likely the other four are already out there and using their powers to amass wealth and power. He goes on to tell them that someday soon they would be called upon to save the world not only from the “other” four but from a much bigger threat.
For the next few years the Matthews family honed their powers and hunted the other four. In their last battle (nearly a year ago) they came across a serial killer with the same powers as Jason. They fought him for a long time but he finally managed to get the better of them all and in the end, used Jason’s mental sensitivity against him and switched off his brain, leaving him a vegetable. After this devastating defeat the other three kids gave up the super hero gig and went about their lives. Unfortunately their regular lives had moved on without them. After realizing he wasn’t going to graduate, and after a huge fight with his father about going into the military, Tyler packed a bag and moved away. Amanda fell in with a bad crowd and turned to drugs to deal with her problems. She spends most of her time in various underground clubs and abandoned buildings around L.A. Ashley blames herself for the entire thing since it was her curiosity that gave them all powers to begin with. She has taken over all household duties because her mother fell into a deep depression after Jason was hurt and much like Amanda has turned to drugs and alcohol, in her case the legal kind. Rick spends his days going over every scrap of information the military managed to extract from the alien and anyone who was involved with the interrogation. This is where the story begins, a shattered family a year removed from a horrible loss.
SAN FRANCISCO PEOPLE
Nina – Tyler’s sometime girlfriend and singer for his band.
Mick – drummer
Rae – bass
Sam – owner of a local bar
Chuck – Tyler’s construction boss
Various construction coworkers
Various bar patrons
VILLAINS
Four people in their mid to late 20’s, ethnicity unimportant. They have the same powers as the Matthews kids but since they are a bit older they have managed to hone them more easily and are a bit more powerful than the kids. For the most part they do their own thing but they know they are bound to one another so they keep tabs on each other. None of them trust the others except Anti Ashley who loves Anti Tyler as a father figure even though he abuses her horribly.
Quinton- telekinesis
Megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, believes he was given his powers to save the righteous, believes that he is above the law and is better than human and therefore does not have to answer for his crimes, believes his powers were given to him by God.
Reno- mild telepathy, psychic backlash which causes victim to fall into something like a coma
Serial killer, ADHD style impulse control problems, completely unpredictable and most likely insane.
Veda- Concussive Energy Blasts from the palms of her hands
Manipulative, very attractive, uses sex as a weapon and treats people as things, she keeps track of the Matthews kids and is responsible for getting Amanda hooked on drugs.
Crystal- Super Speed, limited flight
Severely abused as a child, emotionally crippled, schizophrenic, and incapable of making her own decisions. Used as a tool/slave by Quinton.
PART 1
Dream sequence
Intro Tyler in San Francisco
Intro Ashley dealing with her mom
Ashley at school talking to counselor about days absent
(This is a rough draft of the beginning of the first episode)
- Exterior nondescript
Dream sequence; quick cuts, hazy picture. Amanda and Ashley are unconscious on the ground. In the foreground is Tyler on his hands and knees coughing up blood. He looks up as the camera pans extremely fast behind him. We see the top of Tyler’s head from the back and in front of him Jason falls limp to the ground, eyes staring up at nothing.
Cut to- interior Tyler’s room
Close up of Tyler’s eyes snapping open. Camera pulls back to reveal Tyler in bed next to a woman. As the camera pulls further back we see they are on a mattress on the floor. Tyler is wearing boxer shorts and a necklace with what is left of the ALIEN ARIFACT. He sits up suddenly and the girl beside him stirs a bit. She turns over as he gets to his feet.
NINA:
S’matter?
TYLER:
Nothing, go back to sleep.
Cut to- interior Tyler’s loft
A curtain opens, it is the “door” to Tyler’s “room”. He lives in a loft that doesn’t have any walls. There are two curtained “rooms” set up side by side and we can see through the cracks in the second set of curtains that there are other people living here as well. Tyler staggers over to the kitchen area and grabs a pack of cigarettes off the kitchen table, a well used piece of 70’s era furniture. Tyler’s wallet is also on the table. Tyler leans over the stove and lights a cigarette with the burner. He sits down in one of the mismatched chairs and pulls a newspaper clipping out of his wallet.
Dissolve to- the Matthews house, the newspaper clipping Tyler was reading is framed and hanging above the mantle. As the camera pans across the mantle we see many happy childhood photos, sporting trophies, science fair awards and the other half of the ALIEN ARTIFACT. Adjacent to the living room is the dining area where Ashley sits intently reading a bank statement and once she finishes she drains the rest of her coffee as she stands. Her mother sits on the opposite side eating applesauce completely oblivious that she’s managed to drop as much on her terrycloth bathrobe as she has eaten. Ashley takes two pills out of a bottle on the table and puts them on her mothers’ spoon.
ASHLEY:
You take those mom and I’ll see you after school. Maybe you’ll feel like going to the store with me.
KATHERINE:
Make sure your brother eats his breakfast. He hasn’t been feeling well lately.
Ashley looks away from her mother with tears in her eyes. She nods to herself and kisses her mom on the head and grabs her backpack off the table and heads out the door.
Cut to- Interior school guidance office
Ashley knocks on the door and the guidance counselor waves her inside.
COUNSELOR:
Ashley Matthews, we need to have a serious discussion about your future.
ASHLEY: (sitting down, her voice a little shaky)
We do?
COUNSELOR:
Is everything ok at home Ashley?
Cut to- interior Matthews kitchen
Katherine has dropped the jar of applesauce and instead of cleaning it, she just walks away.
Cut to- interior counselors office
ASHLEY:
Everything is fine. Why do you ask?
COUNSELOR: (picking up a file off the desk and flipping through it)
Well, we’re only halfway through the school year and according to this you can only miss two more days before you automatically fail for the year.
ASHLEY: (shocked)
Seriously?
COUNSELOR:
Yes Ashley, seriously. Now I ask again, is everything ok at home.
Long pause
ASHLEY:
My mom has been sick and I’m the only one who can take care of her.
COUNSELOR: (leaning in, actually concerned)
What’s wrong with her?
ASHLEY: (looking around as if for an exit)
I’d um… I’d rather not say.
COUNSELOR: (sitting up and taking a long look at Ashley, as if to size her up)
Tell you what, if you can bring these grades up to the level you were at a year ago, I’ll see what I can do about doing some home schooling at least for a little while.
ASHLEY: (happy)
Really? That would be SO great. You have no idea how great that would be.
COUNSELOR:
I mean it though; a year ago you were a straight A student and now you’re barely making C’s. In fact, looking at these interim reports, you are in danger of failing two of your classes.
ASHLEY sits staring at the floor, biting her nails nervously. Her eyes dart quickly back and forth between the counselor and a spot on the carpet.
Ashley goes to the ATM to get money, finds out there isn’t any, says angrily “Amanda”
Intro Amanda passed/strung out at her boyfriend/dealers house (Dandy Warhols – Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth)
PART 2
Ashley cuts Amanda off financially
A talent scout wants Tyler’s band to cut a demo
PART 3
(This is a scene that will be the opening sequence to part three)
EXTERIOR – night in a dirty alley full of sleeping homeless people
Cut to-
Stan, a chubby, balding, middle aged man who looks like he could have been an accountant before leaving society behind and moving to this alley. He’s bundled up like everyone else in a mish mash of discarded clothing to try and keep the heat in. He is snoring softly lying under some newspapers. Several shadows fall over him and we hear the distinctive sound of four guns being cocked.
Camera pull back and swing around to show four young men of various ethnicity sporting gang colors aiming guns at Stan. They all stand with a kind of swagger and just as it seems like they may start to shoot Stan opens his eyes and casually looks up at the men.
STAN
What’s up fellas? Did I forget to pay my rent?
The four youths look at each other amused, and then back at Stan who has gotten a little more comfortable putting his hands behind his head.
STAN
I’ll tell you what, you guys tell me who sent’cha and I’ll let you all go, otherwise three of ya is gonna get shot in the gut and the other one is gonna get a broke face. Your choice.
All four gangbangers start laughing but before they can react Stan whips two pistols out from behind his head and shoots two of the men in the stomach. He rolls backwards as the two still standing put several bullets into the spot he was laying. Stan leaps up and flips behind one of his attackers and the other one accidentally shoots his partner in the gut. Stan drops the wounded man and kicks the last attacker’s legs out from under him, bending his knee backwards and causing the man to fall flat on his face on the asphalt. Stan stands over the one with the broken face, looking somewhat amused.
STAN
Told ya. (he turns his would be killer over) Now tell me slick, who sent you?
BROKE FACE
I ain’t telling you shit old man.
STAN
Geez kid, that’s too bad because, as I’m sure you know, the cops don’t really come down here so unless I take you and your friends to the hospital, you’re all gonna die from those gunshot wounds to the gut you all got.
BROKE FACE
I don’t got no gut wound.
STAN (smiling sweetly)
No, not yet.
Amanda’s dealer/bf makes her hook to get drugs (Atmosphere – godlovesugly)
Intro Veda, the supplier where Amanda’s dealer gets his drugs
Tyler uses his powers to save his friends (end of episode/issue)
PART 4
Origin Story
Ashley’s 14th birthday, nobody remembers, she celebrates with a bottle of wine while listening to something mellow (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – People Ain’t No Good)
PART 5
Tyler comes home
Tyler and Ashley argue about Amanda
Tyler finds Amanda
Richard is told he is being discharged from the military and his clearance is being revoked
PART 6
Tyler takes Amanda to rehab(Flaming Lips – Do You Realize)
Richard spends all his time in a strip club at the bar with his back to the girls drinking non stop.
PART 7
Tyler confronts his dad
Amanda gets out of rehab
Tyler, Ashley and Amanda go to group therapy as part of Amanda’s rehab
PART 8
Mom OD’s on pills and vodka
Ashley blames Tyler
Amanda runs back to her dealer/bf
PART 9
Veda frames Amanda for murdering her dealer/bf
Amanda hides out in an abandoned building and takes too many drugs, Stan takes her to a hospital, doctor tells Amanda “you lost your baby” which is a catalyst for real change in her
PART 10
Stan shows up and tells the Matthews kids about what they have to face. Tyler gets pissed and tells Stan to go to hell. Amanda says she thinks it’s the right thing to do and talks the rest of the family into it. Stan tells Richard that he has to transfer Jason’s power to himself if they have any hope of winning. Stan tells them that doing this will most likely kill Jason.
PART 11
The remaining family gathers at Jason’s bedside and Jason’s power is transferred to Richard. Jason dies.
PART 12
The family prepares for the big fight each in their own way. Ashley goes to church. Last scene of the series is the Matthews family standing on a rooftop in LA across from their counterparts, everyone powers up and blackout, end credits.
Opening Day
I may not make it to this week’s meeting since I’ll be on my way back from Blacksburg, but I wanted to contribute something anyway. I hope you all enjoy it. – Dan
Daniel slid his finger underneath the flap, feeling the waxy paper crinkle in his fingers as he pulled against the glue that held it sealed shut. He was sitting crosslegged on his bed, in a room whose walls were adorned with the symbols of his heroes: a Chicago Cubs pennant, the Wade Boggs poster he had gleefully liberated from a well-worn copy of Sports Illustrated for Kids, and the shelf with his very own baseball glove and the foul ball his dad caught for him at the local minor league game.
His mother had given him permission to ride his bike down the hill to the Minute Mart for the very first time, and he could spend his allowance on whatever he wanted. His eyes had wandered past the racks full of chewing gum, bubble gum, and candy as far as the eye could see; he even passed up Necco wafers — his favorite! — until he found just what he was looking for. There, sitting neatly in a rack next to the cash register, was pack upon pack of baseball cards. The labels’ bright primary colors shouted their names at him:
“Topps!”
“Donruss!”
“Fleer!”
It felt like an eternity. How could he choose only one? So many decisions! Daniel pressured himself, knowing that every minute that passed meant one less minute he could spend with his new purchase before dinner. Which one would it be?
Finally, swayed by the offer of one stick of bubble gum inside, he plucked a tightly wrapped package of Topps cards from the rack and paid for his selection. Pedaling furiously home, his mind had already begun to wonder what surprises lay inside the package, tucked securely in his hip pocket.
Now, sitting on his bed, he could barely contain his excitement. Daniel’s hands trembled as he unsealed the pack. The bubble gum, which had cracked into many small pieces, tumbled out onto his lap. His dismay was soon forgotten, however; he turned over the cards one by one, each revealing a new name and face, and each image giving Daniel’s imagination one more opportunity to walk next to his heroes.
Book Jacket Copy: “Heathen Slut”
“Welcome to my country, heathen slut.”
Casey Quinlan has spent her life breaking barriers – she takes after her dad, a US Navy fighter pilot who was among the first to break the sound barrier.
She spent grade school as the perennial “new kid” as her family moved from coast to coast following the fleet.
That experience came in handy when she was part of the first wave of women broadcasting engineers hired by US networks to prevent being sued by the gender police.
Getting arrested in passport control in Riyadh as she arrived to cover the Gulf War in 1991 gave her the title for her memoirs – the book you hold in your hands, “Welcome to My Country, Heathen Slut,” is the hilarious story of how she won over classmates, nuns, co-workers, rioters, and even the Saudi national police.
Beating the odds when facing armed dudes, nuns armed with rulers, cranky old-skool TV guys, and even breast cancer, Casey’s story of life on the front lines of change and gender politics will make you laugh, make you think, and make you glad you bought this book!
Introduction to Fiction, Part 1
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the drain in the floor.
The sound of running water was the first thing I heard.
Which made me realize that I was under attack. By a fierce amount of cold water, which was hitting my back, and really annoying the fuck out of me.
“Wake up, princess. Don’t want you to drown while I wash the bourbon stink off you.”
Gee, thanks, dad. What would I do without you?
Maybe sleep off the my-head-is-in-a-vise hangover you woke me up to?
“Gaaahh” was all that came out of my mouth, though.
That, and a more than sneaking suspicion that what would follow that syllable would be whatever was left of the aforementioned bourbon if I didn’t close my mouth.
Why the hell had I gotten so far into the bottle last night?
Oh, right. The new client. Who was also my old lover. Who had tracked me all the way to Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Florida (it exists, and it’s hard to find) to beg me to help him stay alive.
“C’mon, princess. Kyle’s gonna be here in an hour, and you have to be a sentient being when he does,” said Mike, my father and now my partner in business – and sometimes crime. Fishing Expedition Investigations, LLC.
After 20 hard years in the NYPD, winning my gold shield and losing at every attempt at a personal life, I’d retired to MOFN, FL to team up with my dad, a retired Navy intelligence officer.
Dad had originally planned his retirement around a marina and fishing-guide business – that was before the market crashed, taking a good chunk of his retirement fund with it. Now he had his Navy pension, the marina, and a fishing business that had drowned in the BP rig disaster.
And me.
I climbed up the wall of the marina shower room – crap, I was naked. Double crap, I was in the men’s shower, too. How the hell had that happened?
Last night was a black hole, with flashes floating up to the top in what seemed like random order.
Kyle and me, in the marina bar, the band playing the usual buffet of Buffett and Marley.
Walking on the docks after I’d had way more bourbon than is recommended before walking on things you could fall off of.
Oh. My. GOD. Kyle and me…making out? Or is that bourbon-induced psychosis? Because I would have to be psychotic to even consider revisiting the disaster that was Kyle-and-me ten years ago.
“I need a drink,” I said to Mike.
“A double.”
Plumber-like, She Approaches the Blockage…
I’m not on one of those insufferable bast…lucky people who, when confronted with a blank page, can just fill that sucker up with an endless stream of words.
Are you listening, Nora Roberts?
My coping strategy for blockage is very plumber-like. If you’ve got a blockage, it’s as important to get the flow going again as it is to determine the blockage. Anyone who’s had to troubleshoot a sewer line knows this at the cellular level.
When I’m working on a writing project, and the pipes lock up, I write some kind of non-project-related bullshit (a comedy bit, an email to a friend, a comment on an online piece, pick one, pick several) until the blockage dissolves and that crack whore I call my muse comes back from her little binge.
That said, some binges last longer than others. In those cases, I stack up useless comedy bits and online comments like cord-wood. And all my friends get plenty of updates…
Self torturous writer’s block Fandango!!!
I’m in trouble.
It’s been several months since I’ve been able to write anything of substance, and I have no idea what to do. Well, I guess that’s not strictly true: I DO know what to do; I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. Pretty screwed up, huh? In most other things in life, I’ve been able to pick myself up by my bootstraps and move on, but this isn’t one of them. I guess a little background is in order.
In my teens and early to mid twenties, I was a musician. I would write a lot of poetry and I wrote a lot of songs, some of which I’m still very proud of. I played in a rock band that achieved a moderate level of success in my then home state of Indiana, and we were on our way to bigger and better things. However, the lifestyle caught up with me, and I had to extricate myself in order to have any sort of future. Once I moved to VA and got sober, I tried actively to do the band thing here, but it just never panned out. I was too picky on whom I’d work with and the standards I had. For years, I did very little creative stuff. Fast forward 14 years, a marriage, two kids (one autistic), divorce, and single fatherhood. I was working at a job I really enjoyed that allowed me a tremendous amount of freedom. I had started to get some ideas (really, I had been scheming this one for a few years now), and I got laid off. Now, while that really sucked in a lot of different ways, I finally got off my ass and started to write, only to find that I really enjoyed it.
No words can describe this: perhaps some of you have had the same experience, but writing began to re-awaken that creative spark inside of me, giving it an outlet that I had not had since the last time I was in a band (early 1999), and I was digging it. I would write for a few hours a day. Some of it crap, some of it good, but I was writing. Writing fulfilled something in me that I can’t put into words. I knew I had found what I was supposed to do. I could tell that my technique, my technical skill level left a lot to be desired, but my ideas were solid and I believed in them. My novel was floundering a bit when I found NaNoWriMo (which is where I met some of you).
I LOVED NaNoWriMo. The pressure was on, and it wasn’t easy, but I did it, finished my book with a day and a half to spare. Some of it was pretty sparse, as I (then and currently) believe I’m an “add to” writer rather than a “cut down” writer. A lot of the books I had read on novel writing (Stephen King’s book was an immense help to me) had touted the virtues of leaving a manuscript completely alone for awhile upon completion, so I did. For a month or two, I was working on ideas I have for a fantasy epic: sort of a story about redemption and a “riches to rags” rather than a “rags to riches” story. It was going along nicely when the well dried up.
This post is more than I’ve written in the last 2 months combined. Part of it is that I was used to unlimited writing time, and now since I’m working again, I have very little time. Part of it is some weird mental block that just about makes it impossible to write, at least in my head. And that’s where I think the secret lies.
It’s in my head.
That’s not to say that I don’t have real problems or that I’m entirely sane or anything: what I mean is that when I let the idea that I can’t write build up in my head and I do nothing to contradict it, then I can’t write. This post itself is an attempt to eradicate the writer’s block that I’ve been experiencing. I guess what I need to do is to just write. I need a goal. Let’s say, at least 500 words a day. I know that sometimes it’s going to end up being 500 words about how I have no desire to write today, but it’s better than not writing (I guess). Part of it is that I have to get over the idea that I’m not a writer. I AM a writer, I’m just at a very basic skill level and I’m really not used to all this yet.
So my next question is “What do I write about?” I don’t think I’m ready to start writing and editing my NaNo book yet, but I gotta have something to write. I found this neat little podcast called “Writing Excuses” (you can get it for free on audible.com or iTunes). Basically, the show is 15 minutes long where they discuss some aspect of writing, and then they give a writing prompt. Though I haven’t done any of the exercises yet, it does present some good ideas.
Basically, I just need to get off my ass and write! I can agonize and philosophize and strategize all I want, but I need to fucking write! (Oops, I said “fuck”). I don’t believe there’s a shortcut, and there damn sure isn’t some magic phrase or formula that’s gonna make me write. I need to ignore all the internal-antagonist crap that tells me I should just give it up and work at McDonald’s; there is quite a lot of that for me, and I’m willing to bet that I’m not unique in that regard. There are no shortcuts. There is no way around this. I have to go through it. I just need to write!
Sorry if this post seems over-long and superfluous. I bet you can’t tell that I’m using this to get my daily word count in, huh?!?!
Its like my brain ate too much cheese
The thing that kills me is that I have good ideas. When I am alone in my car at three in the morning the ideas flow out of me in a torrent but by the time I get home the torrent is finished and all those fantastic ideas have flowed down river never to be seen or heard from again. The frustration from not being able to remember these ideas causes me to sink into a pit of self loathing and despair which of course triggers my inherent laziness and voila! Writer’s block.
Music seems to help me deal with this problem, specifically if I can remember what I was listening to when these fantastic ideas appeared in my brain. Sometimes a memory will trigger from the music and more often than not I write something that I feel is far inferior to that magical idea that I can’t remember. Of course that makes me wonder if the idea I had was great or if maybe my fuzzy memory of this ephemeral idea is perhaps making it seem like a better idea than it really is. That is when the paralyzing self doubt comes in and I give up and watch Buffy for the 75th time.
I haven’t really found a good solution to my writer’s block but I keep at it. I figure one day I will accidentally write something great much like I expect to win the lottery every day. It will totally happen. I swear.
Below is something that I wrote for a blog back before we were calling them blogs. We called them “opinion boards” and the op boards I started at focused on professional wrestling and then morphed into more pop cultureish websites. We had a discussion on our message boards about writer’s block that prompted me to write this.
Writing at opinion boards is a hobby for most of us. Actually, I’d go so far as to say that writing at opinion boards starts out as a hobby for all of us and at some point it stops being a fun diversion from life and becomes a chore. Something to dread. People quit, people come back but usually when they come back they aren’t the same, they lack whatever they had at the beginning. I have figured it out.
We aren’t writers. Plain and simple only about 5% of us are honest to God, writers. The rest of us are just relatively smart people with a word processor. The problem that we non writers have is that our ideas are limited. The “good” posts are finite and once we reach our limit, the ideas go away and we’re left with a void in our head and then writing for op boards becomes a chore. Usually that’s when new boards are formed or people “retire” from what is referred to, more often than not tough in cheek, as the “scene”.
The ideas run out which cause tempers to flare and friendships that began with the best of intentions flounder in our personal mediocrity and wither away until those relationships we held so dear are nothing more than a painful memory. An echo of something wonderful that now sounds hollow, almost frightening in that empty spot in our minds. We tend to dress it up a bit, make it out that we are the ones in the right or that we have suffered some grave injustice that makes our former friend a horrible monster, completely devoid of the qualities which made them a friend in the first place.
Pitiful.
Self Serving.
Reliving days of yore when we were the king and all the forum kids bowed down to worship our ramblings and funny pictures making us, for a moment in time (fifteen minutes if you will) immortal. Our words are destined to live on in the thoughts of some stranger hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away and that feeling of power is intoxicating. So much so that in our effort to keep that feeling alive we push out all our ideas in a relatively short period of time. Maybe a year, maybe a month but much too soon for the frail human ego to handle. And in a moment, a single instant that seems to last forever in a second, it’s gone. The well dries up, the fields of wheat wither and die in the heat of our despair and we are once again mortal.
How do we stop this? What steps can be taken to ensure that this fate does not befall us? You can hang about the forums, making sure no one forgets your name or the fact that you used to be “elite” and are certifiably “old skool!” Or perhaps you post once a month in a self indulgent rant about the good old days when men were men and posts really meant something. In the meantime dredging up the carcass of departed sites, stinking of decay with a hint of nostalgia. You could even complain loudly and often about how the current crop of writers don’t have the same spark, the heat, whatever it was that WE had “back in the day” at whatever site we used to write at before it went away or turned to porn to sustain itself.
None of those seem like fun or even entertaining ways to go about gaining the longevity we desire, even if they are all very common and happening right now. Don’t misunderstand, this is not an aimed attack at any one individual, I came to this conclusion after a two month writing drought that forced some much needed introspection.
I need to switch gears here for just a second and address the 5% of us who are writers. There are only a few of us who ever go beyond opinion boards. A select group who have true talent and who’s ideas don’t just dry up. I can think of two names off hand, two you may disagree with and most likely, with what you believe to be good reason. Brandon Stroud and Matthew Randazzo. Certainly there are people who will scoff at this, call me a fool or a kiss ass. What I mean when I say this is that these two have brought themselves up from the “scene” and moved beyond it. Randazzo keeps a website with his work as a portfolio for publishers. Brandon has been approached by actual media publications of the print kind and not of an electronic nature. These two have outgrown our little realm and while Brandon still has a bit of fun writing for one of these boards, it’s easy to see that his inspiration is far from “used up” after four years of internet writing.
If you aren’t one of these lucky few don’t despair, it’s not that big of a deal. Write for as long as you feel the inspiration and then stop. If the muse strikes you again post something, if not it’s all right. Just try not to be “that guy”. There’s nothing more sad than a pissy ex board writer trying to relive the glory days that never were.
Losing My Religion…at the Vatican Museum
I’m a cradle Catholic: born to a long line of Irish Catholics in New York and Pennsylvania. I didn’t have any other frame of reference through my grade-school years, since those were the days before Vatican II – attending a church that wasn’t Catholic was a mortal sin.
There are mortal sins, venial sins, and “your mother’s gonna beat your ass” sins. Mortal is a mortal lock for the maternal beat-fest.
I spent my childhood doing two things: following the fleet (my dad was in the first generation of Navy jet fighter pilots) and pasting nickles, dimes, and quarters to little holy-card boards for The Pagan Babies.
Say the phrase “pagan babies” to anyone my age who went to Catholic school in the US, and you’ll hear some version of “OMG – I musta given them $500 by the time I graduated from 8th grade!”
Fast forward to the Easter of 1968. I was attending Central High School in Bushy Heath outside of London (the American School of London wasn’t accredited state-side yet) and, for spring break, there was a school trip to Italy. Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples – with Easter Sunday in Rome.
I went. It was terrific, in spite of the fact that it was a ****ing bus tour from Milan on.
Rome. The Vatican. St. Peter’s Square. Absolutely unbelievable to stand there and think of all the Catholic – and Christian – history that’s taken place there.
Easter Sunday mass, I attended in the rain. It was so crowded that the standing-room I found was clear across St. Peter’s Square from the balcony where Pope Paul VI said mass into a mic fed to speakers throughout the square.
The next day, still gobsmacked by history and splendor, I went on a tour of the Vatican Museum. The young priest who guided my group (random, all Americans, I was the only high-school age kid) led us ’round what seemed like an endless series of rooms, each with more incredible art than the last.
Lest you think I was art naif, I spent my childhood in the National Gallery, the Tate, the British Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Met. If I was impressed, it’s ’cause it was bloody impressive.
At the end of about the 20th room, the young prelate puffed up and said, “what you see here is less than 10% of what the Vatican holds. Most of the collection is in storerooms around Vatican City. We simply don’t have the wall space to display it all.”
I heard a skidding sound in my head.
I asked him why, given the church’s constant keening cries for money for the poor and starving of the world, they didn’t sell some of it to feed said poor and starving.
He glared at me, puffed himself up even further, and spat, “but this was given to the CHURCH for the greater glory of GOD!”
Forty-two years later, almost to the day, I count that as moment that I turned my back on religion.
Religion always comes down to passing the collection plate, and buying real estate.
Faith is most powerful in homeless shelters, in the laughter of a child, in comforting the sick, in staying at someone’s side as they die.
Fuck the Church.
My Reflections On Being A Christ-Follower
From the time I was a small child, I have been involved in the church in some way, shape or form. But throughout the 21-and-a-half years I’ve been around, my perspectives on what it means to be a follower of Christ and how that applies to my life have definitely been very fluid. I’ll start by saying that that my faith is my rock and something I hold very close to my heart. Let me take you on my faith journey, or, well, roller coaster ride.
When I was about eight years old, I made my own decision to be Baptized. I went to a very small, close-knit church off of Francistown Road, West End Christian Missionary Alliance Church. It wasn’t something my family or I were ever really attached to though. My mom had always gone because my grandparents went there. After they died in 1996, I guess she finally felt it was time for us to move on. We ended up at West End Assembly of God. Compared to West End Alliance, this place was beyond massive. Long story short, we liked the church, but we were always late (it’s a signature Dickerson family trait) because of the distance from our house in Wyndham.
In 2003, we got a mailer from what was then Glen Allen Community Church (now Richmond Community Church). The building had just opened right across the street from our neighborhood. Ironically enough, we ended up going because my dad saw the mailer for the church’s grand opening, featuring an international supermodel as guest speaker. “We could check it out,” he said. Hey, it’s one way to get people in the door.
RCC is a peculiar-looking building, black brick with glass and stainless steel accents. We soon found the services are about as modern as the exterior of the building. Rock music with thumping bass and electric guitars, songs from the radio that tied in with the week’s message, multimedias produced in-house, etc. My whole family loved it.
Flash forward a couple years, and I began getting involved in the Impact Arts ministry, which is basically the church’s multimedia team. I ran the software that produced the live video shown during the service, put videos, graphics and text on the wall through the projector on Sunday mornings and ended up working in the field weekly to help produce the videos shown on Sunday morning. Consisting of two HD video cameras, boom mics and other equipment, they really made a production of it. Then came the editing, which I also did, back in the church’s studio. All told, I ended up volunteering up to 40 hours a week (yes, this was back when I didn’t have a job, in the summers of 2006 and 2007). It started to take a toll.
I began to learn the fundamentals of volunteering. The Technology Director was a manipulative guy and no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get over the guilt trip he put me through when I tried to volunteer less.
Shortly after this, in 2009, I left RCC for Redemption Hill Church in Lakeside, who meet at Linwood Holton Elementary School. I met some of the nicest people in my life here. But something didn’t feel right about it.
Lone and behold, I ended up back at RCC, where I am now. After my round-the-world (ok, Richmond) trip with churches, I have some changed perspectives on religion. The biggest thing I learned is how people can turn someone off to religion. The Tech Director at RCC hadn’t turned me off to religion, but he did to that entire church for a while. Those who act hypocritically can do the same thing (practice what you preach… sometimes literally).
The next thing I learned, for myself, is that I was choosing a church for the wrong reasons. It ended up being social in some way or another many times. If I got along well with people I met there, etc. I was more likely to stick around. And while that’s important, there’s obviously much more to it.
The third thing I learned, and the summary of my whole realm of experiences with this, is that to me, spirituality is much more important than religion itself. Yes, I do think it’s very important to be in a nurturing environment where you’re uplifted and encouraged along your path growing as a Christian, but it’s the personal relationship with Christ that’s most important at the end of the day, really.
Either way, I think I’ve found my home at Richmond Community Church. And while my opinions and observations about religion may continue to be somewhat fluid, at least I think I’ve found a more permanent home base from which to ride the roller coaster.
Write Club Twitter Stream
- #WriteClubRVA will be held tonight at Cafe Caturra in Short Pump at 7:00 p.m. See you there #RVA!
- Agenda for #WriteClubRVA on Monday, June 7 has been posted! See you 7:30 at Cafe Caturra Short Pump - http://is.gd/czMfQ
- #WriteClubRVA is on! 7:30 p.m. at Panera in The Summit Shops (between Cox & Gaskins near Innsbrook). All are welcome, see you there!
- oh and ps - there will be an assignment :-) #writeclubrva
- next meeting coming up on monday. vote on location! i can't wait to see you all.