Writing Samples October 8, 2008

Last Memory Of My Mother
October 10 2008 ( I wrote this back in May when I was feeling particularly depressed about Mother’s Day)

Mother’s day is coming up soon isn’t it? Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so,what’s the word? Black? Dark? Moody? Typical? It’ll be thirteen years on mothers day. When she left. She didn’t die, but she left my sister and I . It’s so weird, sometimes I feel as if she really did die. Or that if I were to find out she was dead I wouldn’t respond appropriately. She has been out of my life sine I was 12. I do not know her. I still daydream about how I would have turned out if things were different, as we all do. If she hadn’t been
“manic depressive”. If my dad hadn’t been an “addict” ( to so many things).
The last memory I have of mom was on Mother’s Day 1995. She was being taken away in a police ambulance because she had had a manic episode while me and my sister were visiting her. I woke up in her house after sleeping off my rage towards her, she and I had gotten into a huge fight within minutes of my arrival at her house. No one was there. After waiting for three hours, I finally called my dad. He was annoyed that I was interrupting his day with his girlfriend, but finally after 15 minutes of screaming at him on the phone he finally said he would come to get me and wait for my mom to get back. It took him an hour to get there. She and my sister still had not returned, my dad called the police when he got there. The police showed up, my mom and sister soon after. Apparently while I was sleeping she and my sister went for a walk. She had an “episode” while they were out and according to my sister, my mother was hallucinating and saying very strange things that my sister didn’t understand. She kept saying that my sister was Jesus as a woman.That is all my sister will say about what happened, I don’t know if she has even spoken to her therapist about it, I hope she has, for her sake. The police took my mom to the hospital.before they left she walked over to my dad’s car where I was sitting and handed me a burger she had gotten for me during their walk. I threw it at her, called her something impolite, and she just kept saying ” Ok” over and over. She was disgustingly serene and I wanted to slam my hate into her obese face. I think at that moment I actually wanted to kill her. I wanted to see her in pain. She waved goodbye with an odd smile on her face and the police guided her into the ambulance. That was the last time I saw my mother. She moved to Washington soon after. I think her exact words were; ” I have no family here in New York.” I did not speak to her until three years later. She called, she sounded ok, like she was doing well, she then told me that she had had a baby. I have a sister on the other side of the country that I have never met before.


Last Memory Of My Mother by N.M.Millan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at nmmillan.wordpress.com.

A Friend Is A Stranger
October 9 2008

Writing Prompt: ( from Writersdigest.com) Your best friend has been arrested for illegally downloading music. While in jail, he asks you to go to his house and clear everything off his computer. As you start deleting files, you notice a folder called “Top Secret.” Out of curiosity, you open it—and are shocked by what you find. 500 words or less.

This is what I came up with:

” That was pretty slick you know.” I spoke into a phone that was attached to another phone and pressed against the ear of the young man in front of me. A slab of foggy plexiglass the only barrier between us. The only barrier keeping me from curling every one of my fingers around his gangly neck and slowly but surely crushing his esophagus. He offered up a crooked smile before responding to me.
” I don’t think I follow you Vega.” He said sardonically.
” You knew I was going to find that file.” I hissed through gritted teeth.
” I knew you would find it, yes. But I did not anticipate you would open it. It was labeled ‘ top secret’, I would have thought you would have respected my privacy.”
” Your privacy?” I shouted, slamming my fist into the plexiglass.
” No touching!” A security guard snaps from behind me. I try to relax.
” You had my entire life on your computer! Every thing about me, even things that I forgot about, all right there. My god Aidan, you were stalking me. Oh, and then there’s that terribly forged suicide note. Were you really planning on killing me?”
Aidan shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t even looking at me. Who was he? Twenty four hours before he had been my best friend. Caught and jailed for committing the “serious” crime of illegally downloading music. All I had to do was delete the files. I didn’t have to snoop but I did. I didn’t have to open that file, but I did. I could have stopped after finding the first couple hundred photos of me, but no, I had to keep clicking.
Clicking through my social security number.
Clicking through my credit card numbers.
My bank accounts.
My license.
The lease to my apartment.
My birth certificate.
My-but not really my- suicide note.
How soon would it have been before he carried out whatever he had been planning? It was of little comfort knowing that the file was now in the hands of the district attorney. I study Aidan for a while, I see the same familiar face that has been with me for years, but know there is something else taking over. It’s apprehension. It’s fear. He is a stranger now. I was always told never to talk to strangers. I hang up the phone and


A Friend is a stranger by N.M.Millan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at nmmillan.wordpress.com.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Cyclopes
October 8 2008

I frequently wander over to the writer’s digest website. They have tons of writing prompts and challenges, one of them is called ” Your Story”. They start you off with a sentence and you have to turn the sentence into a 750 words or less story. So this was my first go at it:

 

 (This was the starter sentence:) A man receives a package with no return address. It contains a pirate style eye patch and a note.

(This is what I did with it): 
     Is this some kind of joke? The man thinks to himself as he self consciously touches the glass eye in his left socket. His hand trembles as he reads the note:
    

        Dear Cyclopes,
        Keep your eye closed!
    Irritated, he takes the package to the curb with the rest of his garbage. He slams the package into the metal can, the echo ricocheting in various directions. 
  ” Hey Cyclopes!” A pubescent voice shouts from behind him. The man turns to find that he is being surrounded by four teenage boys. He knows these boys, they are the boys who; several nights after he moved into the neighborhood had spray painted his house with crude pictures of eyeballs and cyclopes. These are the boys who sneak up on him from the left side when he goes for walks and throw rocks and other nasty things at him. He had tried to press charges against them, but these boys came from wealthy families who hired good lawyers. They argued that due to the man’s limited vision, there was no possible way he could accurately identify these boys as his attackers and since there were no other witnesses, the case was thrown out.

   And now, here he is about to receive his daily dose of discrimination and harassment. 
 ” I heard the pirates were looking for you Cyclopes!”

   The man hears the taunt coming from the left of him. He knows what is coming and he doesn’t have time to stop it.  A large jagged rock the size of a golf ball crashes into his head. The man stumbles and falls to the ground, the sound of their laughter vibrates in his ear. He is completely helpless. He lays on his back staring upward with his good eye, listening to them laugh and holds his breath waiting for them to attack him again. 
   To his surprise, their laughter has now turned to agonized screams. The man sits up to try and see what is going on. A large figure that he can’t quite make out is now holding three of the boys by their shirt collars. The fourth boy is on the ground, the figure’s giant foot pressing into him as he tries to wriggle free. 
   Without saying a word, the figure reaches into his pocket pulls out a rock, similar to the one that had hit the man moments before; and flings it at the boy. It hits him directly in the left eye.
    ” My eye! Oh my god! My eye!” the boy screams. The figure turns to the other boys.
    ” Anyone else want me to take care of their unfair advantage?” he bellows at them, the boys are too terrified to respond. ” Leave your neighbor alone or I will be back.” He hisses, releasing his grip on their collars. He was gone as quickly as he had come. The boys run over to the man.
   ” Hey mister, you saw that right? We’re gonna call the cops and you can tell them what you saw right?” One of the boys asks. The man smiles and touches his good eye which is now covered by the eye patch.
   ” I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he says ” the note told me to keep my eye closed.”


Cyclopes by N.M.Millan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at nmmillan.wordpress.com.