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Post by Tensleep on Nov 3, 2009 20:46:54 GMT -5
Okay, I forgot it was November again. I know, I know - I gotta get an assistant or something. Special thanks to Aero for the wonderful prompt idea!
Rumble, November '09:
All About Dal
The man of the month is our dear Dallas Winston. He's tough, he's rough, and it turns out he has a heart in the end.
Write a piece (max. 7 pages, Any POV) about the man of the month. If you are really looking for inspiration, a birthday one shot of our dear dangerous Dallas could be interesting!
Please copy, paste and post your entries under this thread so we can all enjoy them! I know there are some awesome imaginations on this forum. So get writing!
Tens
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Post by DarryHasAFutureAndI'mInIt on Nov 3, 2009 20:56:18 GMT -5
Yes! Here it is! MY FIRST CHALLENGE!!! Birthday...ahaha, that IS interesting...oh, I must get started on this...
Insanity For Life!
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Post by whatcoloristhesky on Nov 5, 2009 21:12:00 GMT -5
Ohhh .... I totally maybe have an idea for this. Perhaps I'll actually get around to writing it this time?
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Post by Nittanylizard on Nov 6, 2009 19:04:20 GMT -5
I absolutely have to get something posted already, so I've gone back to something I jotted down sometime last year.
Hopefully it counts, haha, because it's more about Dally from another person's perspective.
Something Right
I was nine years old when I found out my dad wasn’t really my dad.
Him and my mom were having it out, yelling and throwing stuff and making me wish I could melt into the floor because I knew that old Mrs. Carson next door was listening the whole time. The next day she’d look at me all sorry-like and shake her head, and most of the other neighbors would, too, because she’d have gotten on the phone by then to them all how my folks were at it again.
Anyway, they were fighting over something about dinner, but it all turned around into some big deal about me, which wasn’t so unusual. Their arguments were a runaway train that tore off from the station with no real end in mind, twisting here and switching tracks there until you couldn’t even remember where it started; but no matter what it began with, it almost always for certain ended with me.
“Then do it your goddamned self!” my dad shouted at my mom, and he threw the mustard against the wall. In slow motion, a glob of mustard flew from the jar and landed on the wall; and when I sat there all quiet and watched that mustard oozing to the floor, Dad turned to me like I’d done something horribly wrong, which made me tense up because I couldn’t remember what I’d done.
“What?” he asked me, and I looked past him to the floor. He leaned in close enough that I could smell coffee on his breath. “You got a problem with me, boy? Then maybe you ought to go find your real daddy and live with him.” Mom gasped, but my pop kept going like a semi with the brakes burned out. “Go knock on ol’ Jimmy Winston’s door and see how happy he is to see you!”
My whole body jolted when Dad threw his chair to the floor, snatched his jacket off the hook on the wall, and stormed out the back door.
I’m not sure why, but it didn’t surprise me too much. Him not being my real dad, that is. The idea hadn’t ever occurred to me before; but after he said it, all the fights my parents had ever had just suddenly added up into something logical.
I could see it in my head, how it had probably all happened: her being pregnant and going to him with her big, dark, sad eyes; him telling her he’d take care of it like it was his own, and probably even meaning it; and then things not working out so good and her not being as perfect as he’d once believed. But he wouldn’t ever leave, because he’d made a promise, and Dad was real big on keeping promises, even if it killed him and everybody around him.
For as long as I could remember, when my dad got mad at me, he would look around for something to make him more sore at Mom than he was at me. Then, after he’d storm out, she would give me my fair share and tell me I’d ruined her life.
Until that morning, though, until that fight, when I found out he wasn’t really my dad, the things she told me when she was all bruised up and spitting mad hadn’t made sense to me. I mean, I’d always believed her, but I had never understood her. Now, I did: If I hadn’t come along, he wouldn’t have cause to feel disrespectful toward her. He would love her like he had before – before he knew that at least once, she’d picked somebody else over him.
The day after that fight, I looked in the phone book for Jimmy Winston.
I couldn’t find him, but there were six other Winstons, and two of them had J as a first initial. One of them lived pretty far south of us. I hoped that was the one, because I was getting pictures in my head of living in a big house with a pool out in the backyard and a dad who played ball with me; but when I took a bus to the address a week or so later and knocked on the door, it was an old guy with a pipe and a lot of gray hair who answered. I figured if he wasn’t my dad, then it must be the other one.
#
I was ten years old when I learned I had a brother.
I had been passing by the house at least once a week for nearly a year, getting glimpses every now and then of the guy I had found out was Jimmy Winston, when a kid I’d never seen before came up behind me one day and slapped me on the back of the head. “How come you keep lookin’ at my house?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I guess it’s a free country.”
“Yeah, well, it’s my house. Don’t look at it no more.”
I didn’t tell him until I was eleven that I thought we had the same dad.
It was one of those sweaty hot summer days when you just keep moving, partly in hopes that you’ll find a cooler place to be, but mostly because moving your body keeps the air around you brushing against your skin and drinking up that moisture.
“No shit?” he said when I told him.
I shrugged. “No shit.”
We’d started walking to school together a few months earlier, since he finally figured out he couldn’t stop me from looking at his house. Besides which, I didn’t pester him or nothing. We just walked together. Even now that school was out, we were still roaming the streets together. Nowhere to be, but everywhere to go.
“It’s what my dad says,” I told him. “And my mom don’t say no different.” It didn’t take a genius to figure that if my mom hadn’t gone with another man, she would have said so, and loud enough for Texas to hear it. Her quiet glares at my dad whenever he brought it up were admission enough.
“Huh.” Dally lit a cigarette. I hadn’t tried smoking yet, but Dally was a pro already, even though he acted like it was no big deal. Dally was one of those kids who didn’t care what the other kids thought, so nobody messed with him. He was tough and cool without even trying.
He made his mouth into an O and blew out a steady stream of smoke. “I ain’t surprised. He gets laid all the time.” Dally wasn’t the kind of kid who talked bad to shock other kids or grown-ups. Didn’t need to. He just told it like it he saw it, and most of the time that just happened to be more real than a lot of folks were ready to hear.
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug, “maybe we shouldn’t tell nobody. You know?” There were kids at school who said my mom was a whore. I knew she wasn’t, and that there was no other men she did dirty stuff with. But even if she did, and even if she was, it wasn’t something I was gonna let other kids say about her. It wasn’t any of their business.
Besides, it made me feel kind of ashamed of myself. I guess that's kind of funny, because I didn't do nothing wrong, but knowing that my mom went sleeping around made me feel bad about myself. Kind of in between, like I didn't really belong anywhere because I shouldn't have happened to begin with.
Dally nodded. “Okay.” He took another drag of his cigarette and sat against the hood of a parked car, squinting into the setting sun with a distracted look before turning back to me. “Okay, Johnny. I ain’t gonna say nothin’ to anybody.”
And that was the last time we ever talked about it.
I did meet Jimmy Winston a couple times after that, but I didn’t feel any need to tell him who I was. I mean, he didn’t seem to care much about what Dally did, so I figured he wouldn’t care much to know that he had another kid running around.
There was a time when I hoped he would say something that would make me want to tell him, like maybe something about how much he wished my mom was still part of his life, because he was a pretty cool guy. Kind of like a big brother more than a dad. He didn’t care if Dally drank or smoked or stayed out all night, as long as Dally didn’t get in the way when Jimmy had a lady over. But I saw the way he looked through me when I was around, not even remembering my name or that I’d been there from one time to the next, and I decided there are some things best left unsaid and unknown. Besides, my dad was still my dad, even after I knew that he wasn’t really.
Sometimes I wonder if Dally would have told me to go take a hike if he didn’t know we were brothers. I don’t think so, though. I think we still would have been buddies. Knowing, though, made it different. We never talked about it, but there was something else there – like how sometimes, a look would go between us that didn’t need spoken words. It was more like a jumble of thoughts that rang through as sure as if we’d spoken all the words: got your back, what they don’t know, goes without saying, brother, buddy, friend. Connection. Maybe it would have been there if we didn’t know, but I don’t think so.
Plus, even as we did our own thing and had our other buddies, I guess we always came first with each other. It was kind of strange for me at first, because I was never the kind of guy anybody flocked around to be friends with. But all of a sudden Dally was there, and we were like opposites, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was like I was a whole person because of him.
Before Dally, I believed my dad when he told me I was worthless and useless and would never come out on top, and I believed my mom when she told me I was the reason her life took a bad turn. After me and Dally became friends, I knew better. Because if somebody like Dally – who, by default, hated everybody he hadn’t specifically chosen to like – decided you were his friend, there had to be something right about you. Being his brother just gave it more depth. It was something we couldn’t break, even if we wanted to.
And neither of us wanted to.
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Post by Maggie Writersblock on Nov 7, 2009 11:14:23 GMT -5
Is there a favorite story button here? -looks around- No? Shoot. AAAAAAAAAAAAAh. I loved it!
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Jay
New In Town
Posts: 24
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Post by Jay on Nov 8, 2009 17:11:15 GMT -5
That was freaking AMAZING. Nittanylizard how do you come up with these things?!? True greatness of writing!
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Post by whatcoloristhesky on Nov 8, 2009 19:18:20 GMT -5
Hot damn, that was genius. Definitely worth procrastinating for.
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Post by Nittanylizard on Nov 8, 2009 20:50:26 GMT -5
Thanks, everyone . Glad you enjoyed.
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Post by blackcat2010 on Nov 11, 2009 21:25:01 GMT -5
My first time on here and I get to do a challenge on my man. wow this is a great day. I'll get started.
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Post by DarryHasAFutureAndI'mInIt on Nov 19, 2009 17:32:31 GMT -5
I've written about half my story and realized that it is wayy too long. Can I post maybe just the first part? And continue it eventually on ff.net? Is that allowed?
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Post by Tensleep on Nov 25, 2009 23:09:45 GMT -5
Darryhasafutureandi'minit: I'm going to call you DHF from now on, haha.
Yes, feel free to post the first part here and then give us a link to the rest when you have it up! We love it when stories grow like this.
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Post by DarryHasAFutureAndI'mInIt on Nov 26, 2009 17:48:09 GMT -5
DHF. Cool, I was wondering if I was gonna shorten it, or have to go by my stage name S-Path. I sure am glad I don't, haha. Okay, I think I'll type it up right now!
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Post by DarryHasAFutureAndI'mInIt on Nov 28, 2009 20:35:50 GMT -5
Wow. That took longer to type than I thought. Well, here is the first part of my entry, anyway. I'll post a link when the rest gets put up on ff.net.
I kicked a rock across the street that I was walking down and watched the chunk of stone scuttle over the cracked pavement before hitting the side of a building. The irony nearly made me laugh. That could easily be me, the cold, hard stone, hopping over the unstable, rough surface that is my life. Eventually, it seemed inevitable that I would be stopped, there would be a wall I just couldn't break through, and I would just ---stop. I mentally gave myself a smack around the side of the head. What? I never thought about things like that. I'm not really given much of a chance to think about anything; it all just happens, and I play along as best I can. It's not often I'm completely alone like this. There's always some old hood to talk to, someone to piss off or pick a fight with, some broad to pick up. And when I am alone, it's usually because I'm running away, going so fast I couldn't think if I tried. I wonder now, who would I even be, if I was a thinker. I wouldn't be me, that's for sure. But--- maybe, who I am right now--- isn't me anyway. Life just kind of happened- at a very early age, mind you- and chose my line of acting and being for me. I guess I never really got a chance. But--- if I don't even know who that is, doesn't that make it.... not me, then? Huh? I gave myself another internal slap. Because not only was I possibly being metaphoric and deep, I was just confusing myself. Come to think of it, maybe that's why Pony's so screwed up. He thinks too much, confuses himself, wears himself down... plus those slaps probably ain't too good on the brain, either. Speaking of slaps, I gave myself another one, and real this time. Damn! That hurt. I seriously needed to find something to do, and fast, before I drove myself insane. I looked around but didn't see anybody... man, what I would give to beat up a Soc. Huh- you'd think that they would at least have the decency to pay me a little birthday visit... ....At least then I wouldn't be thinking all profound-like, making sad comparisons of inanimate objects and life. Yeah, I wanted to beat up something right about now. Birthday- so I was 18 now, huh. Maybe by some weird (not to mention nonexistent) stretch of luck it would actually be a good one. I knew, though, that it wouldn't stay like it was now for long- it would definitely be eventful. Every year, it seemed if there was only one big thing that happened all year, it had to be on November 9th. With the exception of last year, when everything happened about a month and a bit earlier than usual. I started walking a bit faster--- to escape the bad memories that were starting to re-form in my head. Like a scrawny kid running away from the bullies in the schoolyard, I always found myself just barely escaping the things that bothered me. Knowing, that someday, they would all gang up and catch me, then beat the living tar outta me until it was dying tar. Ah, damn, there I go again... I heard the sounds of an old motor, and tires peeling over rickety asphalt. I turned around and was elated to see Two-Bit's ol' piece o' junk heading down the street. Yes!, I thought, because there's no such thing as a dull day with Two-Bit. I started walking towards the vehicle, raising my hand above my head to let Two-Bit know to stop. He didn't though, and when I got close enough to yell at him, he was stomping frantically at the floor, looking down at his foot with a panicked expression. I should have gotten out of the way, I really don't know why I didn't. I just stood there, staring at him, wondering what the hell was he doing.... I felt a huge weight slam right across my waist, my feet stumbled and I slipped on my heels. I fell to the ground, my bottom half now under the car, which was still moving. I scrambled to get up, but I was only onto my elbows when the bumper smacked my forehead and I blacked out.
I woke up in a strange place. It did seem vaguely familiar though... I just couldn't quite place it. That is, until I heard a knock on the door. That knock was very familiar. 1. For three years, that knock had been the sound of freedom, the knock that meant I could get outta this hellhole and into the real world... I got the shock of my life as I saw a whitish-blue blur fly past me and wrench the door open. As I slowly got up off the floor, I realized the blur had been... me. At ten years old. "Dad, Tom's here!!!" Mini-me yelled, and, getting no response, went outside and slammed the door. Oh no. I remembered this day, and I remembered it well... I opened the door and walked out, the two boys not even noticing as the the door shut a second time behind them. Was I... a ghost? I followed the two little guys, who were now walking along the run-down street full of shabby-looking houses, hands stuffed in their pockets. I certainly remembered Tom; he had been my buddy, and our groups had often hung out together. He was twelve. We were like Tim Shepard and I were now. Ha... Tim and Tom... oh, shut up! Tom, then, had extremely shaggy long hair, that was either black or dark brown, depending on the last time he had washed it. His bangs reached down to the tip of his nose. I had always wondered how Tom saw past the mass of thick hair; he never brushed it out of his eyes or greased it back. Neither did I, but my hair was so thin and light-coloured I could practically see right through it. "Hey, Tom," the ten-year old me said. "Hey Birthday boy," Tom answered, just as I knew he would. "Ten, huh. Double digits." "Oh yeah, man. Hey, you're a man now, you can start saying that, an' I can say it to you, man," "Sure, man," I tried it out, and it sounded good. I liked it. "And... bein' a man opens up a whole new world of possibility..." Tom drawled. "Oh, really, man?" I grinned. "Ohhhh yeah," he grinned right back, sticking his tongue through the space where his molar and eye tooth had been before he got them knocked out in a fight. Tom always did this when he was either really excited or about to do something dangerous. Or, in this case, both. I personally thought it made him look a bit like one of those deranged psychopaths that goes around licking their teeth all the time, but hey, to each their own. 'Wanna go celebrate your... graduation?"
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Post by Tensleep on Dec 2, 2009 17:38:29 GMT -5
Wow, there were some awesome replies to this - and yeah, I have been behind thanks to lovely exile. Liz: Interesting take on things. I can't imagine what goes on in your head . I like the idea, but I'm not too sure the characterizations are quite right there. Johnny had a very adult perception on things that disconnected me from the idea that this 16 year old kid was telling the story. I got the sense Johnny was an old man looking back. And I'm not sure where I got that, haha. Anyways, it is a good idea, but I think it could be great with a little tweaking on the tone and voice. Otherwise, excellent job! DHF: I can see where this is going, and I do hope you continue it because it is engaging! Taking it all back to Dallas watching the first time he started getting in trouble...wow. Very nice! I'll definitely read more just to figure out if he's dead. Keep on with the great writing!
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