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rainbowfic2015-06-21 03:47 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-06-21 03:47 am
Octarine
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Spenser, Corwin, Martin. (In that order!)
Colors: Octarine
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Light the Flamethrower), Canvas, Miniature Collection, Pointillism, Saturation, Fingerpainting.
Word Count: 1436
Rating: Highish PG-13 or very low R?
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: One night, three minds, many thoughts.
Notes: Any and all thoughts you wish to share are fine! This is just an experimental something I whipped up so I could do the special color. :D (I think I used all those styles correctly?)
I probably couldn’t even name the fucker that invited me to this gross-ass house party, but when everyone starts filing out, I only follow them out of some ambient sense of obligation, thinking “I’m not sure where it happened, but we’re probably friends, and I want to stay behind tonight,” all the way back to the main drag.
*
Since I didn’t want to go home, I just kept walking, until I found myself on a familiar street, the one where Tyler and I almost got arrested, for either vagrancy, or, I don’t fuckin’ know, Night-Shouting or whatever.
*
I don’t know if I’m motoring along like this because I made myself paranoid about having to talk to cops, or if I’m running away from something bigger, or if I’m actually running towards something, or if it’s because this is just the way I fucking walk, and I should stop overthinking every goddamn thing.
*
Fuck, man, if I got caught in a drive-by right now, all my shit would finally be squared away.
*
One stray thought, and I spend the next half hour mentally goading the world to do its worst, telling it that I’ve already done worse to myself, telling it that, with all I’ve done in the past few months alone, I probably have it coming and wouldn’t take it personally.
*
At least work is easy, but work is always easy; you just have to think of it as manual labor, you just have to think of it as getting your hands dirty, and it’s not like you’re even lying to yourself, because dirt is all it really is, all we really are, we can’t be anything else, nothing can, the smell of salt and iron in the air is the same smell of ore veins and mineral deposits deep in this spinning Earth that will eventually reincorporate us all, and I’m just helping it along, I’m just doing God’s work.
*
I don’t even believe my own justifications, or even really half the shit I think, my brain just kind of spools out all these stupid manifestos of its own accord, and I get caught up in them, little pieces of me flying off everywhere as I’m buffeted on all sides by the terrible speed and splendor of this grand hurricane of words.
*
The words may be nice, but I know I’m not, that I’m a Bad Person, which is a weird, thought, because I still feel like I’m more or less a regular guy, but I guess that’s how they all feel, isn’t it?
*
I decided that I was too cold and tired and bloody and sweaty to keep being a bad person right now, so I decided that, just for tonight, I wouldn’t be, that I wouldn’t even check my work e-mail; that, for however long it lasts, I’d play at being (more or less) a regular guy.
*
When you don’t sleep, the nights last forever, and you have to convince yourself that you’re colder than you are so you can light a trash fire without admitting you’re afraid of the dark, and then you just sit there like a moron for a while, inhaling burning styrofoam and waiting for the sun.
*****
My right eye scrapes against itself, more than yesterday, but not enough to really feel like more than yesterday, and I won’t know if I’m waking up at mid-morning or midnight until I open the blinds.
*
The last of the day is holding onto the blue horizon for dear life; and, having gotten my answer, I step out onto the fire escape to smoke, watching the light tumbling up and away into the void.
*
I was never sure if there was some kind of law about wandering around aimlessly after dark, but it’s not like I can help when I woke up, and I have to do something with the “day,” such as it is, so I take my dark-wandering ass down to the shitty twenty-four hour diner for Coffee and Nothing.
*
I forgot to use my eyedrops in my own bathroom, but I had them in my coat pocket, so I situate myself in front of the mirror in the diner’s grubby bathroom, where the faded black graffiti on the soap dispenser reads: “Jeff WASN’T here HA HA!!!”
*
My coat pocket also, apparently, contained an ancient memo pad, full of semi-legible grad-school-era plans that I don’t remember making, that don’t fit into myself as I know him, lost days, days that might as well have been lived by another me, wherever he is.
*
I always have to hustle the fuck out of the diner, because a particular hobo hangs out on the sidewalk out front, and ever since he figured out I have cigarettes, he won’t give me a moment’s peace.
*
I can’t believe other people have so much control over their faces; even before the accident charred and stiffened about a quarter of mine, I could never do all that much with it and basically had to guess which half-assed wooden mask goes with which situation, like the feels-smiley-enough grimace I just flashed at that convenience store clerk, waiting for her to tell me that it’s alright, that only cokeheads ever actually make that face, anyway.
*
Someone, on the way into what I always assumed had to be a whorehouse, almost dropped their keys down a grate, but ended up dropping them on my foot instead, and as soon as they’d bounced off my shoe and onto the sidewalk, I got the hell out of there, fast, before I had to pick another goddamn expression.
*
Everyone tried to do their best with me, so I don’t really know how my life turned out like this, other than that no one ever tried anything I could quite slot myself into.
*
I tried my best, too, but I never quite figured out what I was doing, so I don’t do anything, lying back on my mattress, smoking, staring-in-theory at a ceiling I can only extrapolate through the darkness, counting the hours until grey light frames my blackout shades; until this world moves on without me.
*****
I’m not squeamish or some shit, but waking up in the dark and having to drag a tarry black clot the size and shape of your airways out of your throat isn’t exactly an optimal start for an optimal day.
*
I’ve been going around acting like I’ve gained some greater understanding, but really, it’s just more data to misinterpret, more complexity that language can barely articulate.
*
If I was still living at home, I’d be hearing my parents in the next room, but here, it was some guy yelling at his friend over the phone about a car last night, and tonight, it’s no one.
*
I wasn’t even awake an hour before my mind slipped out through the back door of itself, me going on some wild adventure without me, neither of us knowing where exactly I’d been.
*
The last time I tried to take my pills with the tinny hotel tap water, I wound up regurgitating most of it, so I rattle downstairs to the vending machine; still broken today, but this time, someone just as fed-up as I am pried it open with a crowbar, then passed me a can.
*
Before death knocked me sideways, I was breezing my way through life, all going as planned right up until it ground to a stop, so I look out at the crater and kind of feel like it gets me.
*
A guy in a room a few doors down is smoking on the upper walkway, and when he makes some crack about me wearing the same clothes for three days straight, I lock eyes with him and ask, in the most fake-sounding friendly tone I can muster, what the fuck he just said.
*
There’s this book about a guy who they kept alive for about a quarter of a year, even though he had radiation sickness so bad his body couldn’t remember how to build itself, and since I’ve been here, I’ve read it about six times.
*
Moving up here was a shitty choice; I know this, and I know people are probably worried sick, but really, that’s why I had to get the hell away from them.
*
I can’t interrogate the world from this perspective, but I think I know someone who might stand a chance, and when I try and fail to integrate it all, I always get the idea that I’ve somehow failed him, too; me with the world’s-eye view of the world he’d been chasing down, and able to do exactly shit-all.
Story: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Spenser, Corwin, Martin. (In that order!)
Colors: Octarine
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Light the Flamethrower), Canvas, Miniature Collection, Pointillism, Saturation, Fingerpainting.
Word Count: 1436
Rating: Highish PG-13 or very low R?
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: One night, three minds, many thoughts.
Notes: Any and all thoughts you wish to share are fine! This is just an experimental something I whipped up so I could do the special color. :D (I think I used all those styles correctly?)
I probably couldn’t even name the fucker that invited me to this gross-ass house party, but when everyone starts filing out, I only follow them out of some ambient sense of obligation, thinking “I’m not sure where it happened, but we’re probably friends, and I want to stay behind tonight,” all the way back to the main drag.
*
Since I didn’t want to go home, I just kept walking, until I found myself on a familiar street, the one where Tyler and I almost got arrested, for either vagrancy, or, I don’t fuckin’ know, Night-Shouting or whatever.
*
I don’t know if I’m motoring along like this because I made myself paranoid about having to talk to cops, or if I’m running away from something bigger, or if I’m actually running towards something, or if it’s because this is just the way I fucking walk, and I should stop overthinking every goddamn thing.
*
Fuck, man, if I got caught in a drive-by right now, all my shit would finally be squared away.
*
One stray thought, and I spend the next half hour mentally goading the world to do its worst, telling it that I’ve already done worse to myself, telling it that, with all I’ve done in the past few months alone, I probably have it coming and wouldn’t take it personally.
*
At least work is easy, but work is always easy; you just have to think of it as manual labor, you just have to think of it as getting your hands dirty, and it’s not like you’re even lying to yourself, because dirt is all it really is, all we really are, we can’t be anything else, nothing can, the smell of salt and iron in the air is the same smell of ore veins and mineral deposits deep in this spinning Earth that will eventually reincorporate us all, and I’m just helping it along, I’m just doing God’s work.
*
I don’t even believe my own justifications, or even really half the shit I think, my brain just kind of spools out all these stupid manifestos of its own accord, and I get caught up in them, little pieces of me flying off everywhere as I’m buffeted on all sides by the terrible speed and splendor of this grand hurricane of words.
*
The words may be nice, but I know I’m not, that I’m a Bad Person, which is a weird, thought, because I still feel like I’m more or less a regular guy, but I guess that’s how they all feel, isn’t it?
*
I decided that I was too cold and tired and bloody and sweaty to keep being a bad person right now, so I decided that, just for tonight, I wouldn’t be, that I wouldn’t even check my work e-mail; that, for however long it lasts, I’d play at being (more or less) a regular guy.
*
When you don’t sleep, the nights last forever, and you have to convince yourself that you’re colder than you are so you can light a trash fire without admitting you’re afraid of the dark, and then you just sit there like a moron for a while, inhaling burning styrofoam and waiting for the sun.
My right eye scrapes against itself, more than yesterday, but not enough to really feel like more than yesterday, and I won’t know if I’m waking up at mid-morning or midnight until I open the blinds.
*
The last of the day is holding onto the blue horizon for dear life; and, having gotten my answer, I step out onto the fire escape to smoke, watching the light tumbling up and away into the void.
*
I was never sure if there was some kind of law about wandering around aimlessly after dark, but it’s not like I can help when I woke up, and I have to do something with the “day,” such as it is, so I take my dark-wandering ass down to the shitty twenty-four hour diner for Coffee and Nothing.
*
I forgot to use my eyedrops in my own bathroom, but I had them in my coat pocket, so I situate myself in front of the mirror in the diner’s grubby bathroom, where the faded black graffiti on the soap dispenser reads: “Jeff WASN’T here HA HA!!!”
*
My coat pocket also, apparently, contained an ancient memo pad, full of semi-legible grad-school-era plans that I don’t remember making, that don’t fit into myself as I know him, lost days, days that might as well have been lived by another me, wherever he is.
*
I always have to hustle the fuck out of the diner, because a particular hobo hangs out on the sidewalk out front, and ever since he figured out I have cigarettes, he won’t give me a moment’s peace.
*
I can’t believe other people have so much control over their faces; even before the accident charred and stiffened about a quarter of mine, I could never do all that much with it and basically had to guess which half-assed wooden mask goes with which situation, like the feels-smiley-enough grimace I just flashed at that convenience store clerk, waiting for her to tell me that it’s alright, that only cokeheads ever actually make that face, anyway.
*
Someone, on the way into what I always assumed had to be a whorehouse, almost dropped their keys down a grate, but ended up dropping them on my foot instead, and as soon as they’d bounced off my shoe and onto the sidewalk, I got the hell out of there, fast, before I had to pick another goddamn expression.
*
Everyone tried to do their best with me, so I don’t really know how my life turned out like this, other than that no one ever tried anything I could quite slot myself into.
*
I tried my best, too, but I never quite figured out what I was doing, so I don’t do anything, lying back on my mattress, smoking, staring-in-theory at a ceiling I can only extrapolate through the darkness, counting the hours until grey light frames my blackout shades; until this world moves on without me.
I’m not squeamish or some shit, but waking up in the dark and having to drag a tarry black clot the size and shape of your airways out of your throat isn’t exactly an optimal start for an optimal day.
*
I’ve been going around acting like I’ve gained some greater understanding, but really, it’s just more data to misinterpret, more complexity that language can barely articulate.
*
If I was still living at home, I’d be hearing my parents in the next room, but here, it was some guy yelling at his friend over the phone about a car last night, and tonight, it’s no one.
*
I wasn’t even awake an hour before my mind slipped out through the back door of itself, me going on some wild adventure without me, neither of us knowing where exactly I’d been.
*
The last time I tried to take my pills with the tinny hotel tap water, I wound up regurgitating most of it, so I rattle downstairs to the vending machine; still broken today, but this time, someone just as fed-up as I am pried it open with a crowbar, then passed me a can.
*
Before death knocked me sideways, I was breezing my way through life, all going as planned right up until it ground to a stop, so I look out at the crater and kind of feel like it gets me.
*
A guy in a room a few doors down is smoking on the upper walkway, and when he makes some crack about me wearing the same clothes for three days straight, I lock eyes with him and ask, in the most fake-sounding friendly tone I can muster, what the fuck he just said.
*
There’s this book about a guy who they kept alive for about a quarter of a year, even though he had radiation sickness so bad his body couldn’t remember how to build itself, and since I’ve been here, I’ve read it about six times.
*
Moving up here was a shitty choice; I know this, and I know people are probably worried sick, but really, that’s why I had to get the hell away from them.
*
I can’t interrogate the world from this perspective, but I think I know someone who might stand a chance, and when I try and fail to integrate it all, I always get the idea that I’ve somehow failed him, too; me with the world’s-eye view of the world he’d been chasing down, and able to do exactly shit-all.