A Throwback Thursday special: this is probably the earliest example of my creative writing. It was written for my Latin class during the Watergate era, after Spiro Agnew pled using a Latin term. If you don’t understand the references you are probably not old enough 😉
Bonus antiquities: written with a typewriter on a mimeograph stencil!
© November 2012 Betty Widerski
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 4 Part 2
“Hello, dear – do try to stay calm. My name is Yetzi, and this is my grandson Thomas. You’ve had an accident. Now to start off, what is your name?”
“I’m Allie – Allie Hofstradt. What accident?”
“I’m very sorry, Allie – it looks like you somehow fell down these stairs and hit your head. You may have injured your spinal cord as well.”
“Hey!” Tom interjected, “Can’t you tell what’s wrong with her? Like, if you are a ghost can’t you just… I don’t know, see through her, or pass through her body or something?”
Allie cried out, “Who is a ghost? Who ARE you people?!”
© November 2012 Betty Widerski
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 4 Part 1
“Why is it dark?” Allie thought. “Maybe my eyes are closed?”
She opened her eyes… or thought she did. There was no difference in the darkness and she wasn’t even sure her eyes were there. She picked up her right hand and passed it in front of her face… or thought she did. She still saw nothing. She considered moving her hand towards her eyes and touching her face – but was suddenly afraid: what if she tried that and found that her face wasn’t there?! Panic was starting to grab her by the (perhaps nonexistent) throat – where the hell was she? WHO the hell was she?
Suddenly she felt something touch her left hand. The unexpected outside input startled her but also brought great relief that she was not stuck alone in some featureless Limbo. Not caring what it was she somehow reached out, grabbed it tightly and pulled.
© November 2012 Betty Widerski
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 3
Tom scrabbled to grab the phone as it bounced down several steps. His first reaction was to go check whether the woman was alive, but if so he also knew time might of the essence. As he picked up the phone in one hand, with the other he was unclipping the hand mike on his shoulder attached to the portable radio on his belt.
“Base, this is unit 4! I’m on site. There’s an unconscious and bleeding female just inside the doors – looks like she fell. Contact local emergency services stat and tell them they’ll need a spine board and head immobilizer!”
Marty replied, sounding shaken but remembering to keep it official since this was being recorded at his end and would undoubtedly be turned over to local police for their later investigation:
“Base to 4: I’m sending an alert message to Malden 911 now. Is the girl alive? Are you alone except for her?”
“4 to base: unknown to both questions. The building lights are out and the alarm is still on. I locked the outside door behind me so I’m going back down to unlock it for the emergency crew.”
“Base to 4: stay outside at the bottom until someone official arrives – you don’t know whether she was pushed or attacked. If she was and that person is still in the building he could attack you next trying to escape! Leave everything for the cops to check out.”
© November 2012 Betty Widerski
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 2
The third shift supervisor in the communications center of Wacom Security woke from his fitful doze at an annoying sound, muttering imprecations under his breath. Though there was no one else around to hear him swear loudly, he knew better than to get into the habit of doing so. If he let loose the full extent of his irritation at the need to work three part-time jobs just to get ends within sight of each other, never mind meeting, he’d probably lose at least one of them.
[Please note that NO CHARACTER or SITUATION is “you” or anyone you know, even if it sounds like it – there are bits and pieces of experiences I have had, but no passive-aggressive intent should be inferred – I was just dumping things out of my brain as fast as possible to get to 50,000 words by the end of November!]
© November 2012 Betty Widerski
All Rights Reserved
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It doesn’t matter
If you want it back –
You’ve given it away,
You’ve given it away…
– Amanda Palmer, “Want It Back”
Chapter 1
Allie sighed as she slammed shut the door to the practice room. Once again her bandmates had arrived late, farted around, and left her to shut off the lights and lock up. The “you’re kidding me” moment of the night was that when the new drummer arrived at 8:05pm (to give him his due, ALMOST on time) he walked in and exclaimed, “You’re here!”
“Yes, I agreed we would meet at 8 o’clock, so I arrived by 8.”
“But I didn’t expect that,” he replied. Allie supposed that it was a good sign, even if a bit annoying that he assumed *she* would not be on time – she was vaguely aware that he also apparently played in a local community orchestra. Classical players worked on the assumption that saying “rehearsal starts at 7:30” meant “be in your chairs with your music stands and parts open and instrument ready to play at 7:30”, not the rock band assumption that you started rolling in sometime within 15 minutes of the stated hour.
Still, one band member arriving mostly on time didn’t make much difference when the others texted 15 minutes later that they were stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and would be there “shortly.” Allie loved having a good practice session, but not that it usually ended at 10:45 PM or later. She tried to get up at 5:30 AM to arrive at her day job by 8, so getting only five to six hours of sleep if she was lucky left her feeling trashed in the morning.
My new post-NaNoWriMo plan is to copy edit the novel and then post it serially here – it will also link to the new associated Twitter account and Facebook page. Or you may choose to subscribe to this blog directly – see the button at the top of the column to the right of this post.
What is this novel, you ask? Here’s the blurb:
Musician Allie got a great price when renting her practice studio in a building where tenants did not stay long. One night security guard Tom is sent to investigate why the building’s alarm has gone off, and finds Allie sprawled unconscious on the stairs. But when Tom’s long-dead grandmother starts telling him that Allie is in danger from something in the building things quickly get weirder and more confusing.
In mid-2012 I wrote my first piece of fiction. A contest was held by the Paris Review: they were giving away a bicycle to the author of the best under-300-word short story about this picture:
… with the added proviso that said story must be written in the style of one of these authors:
Elizabeth Bishop, Ray Bradbury, Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, or P. G. Wodehouse!
For some reason this seemed like a thing I could do (though I had not ever previously done so), so I did.
A Simple Mistake
in the style of P.G. Wodehouse