Search Results for 'seem'

“Is that lamb head on the menu?” asked Connie with a grimace on her face. “I can’t believe it.”

“It looks like it, dear”, retorted Sophie offhandedly. “Don’t look at me like that, I’ve seen and eaten worse.”

“Ewh”, said Connie, “I don’t want to know.” She was not quite honest, her reporter blood was thirsty about good and juicy stories. But she was not here to interview the temp, and the menu was leaving her perplexed. “What’s Hrútspungar ?”

“You don’t want to know”, said Sophie, “Trust me.”

Connie craved some vegan food and they didn’t seem to have any vegetables in the hotel restaurant. She pouted and finally gave up. “Take whatever you want, I’ll follow.”

“You like to live dangerously”, said Sophie.
“Whatever”, retorted Connie with a sigh. She put a hand on her round belly. “It may be an opportunity to begin that diet.”

Sophie snorted. She never believed in diet. She had tried them all, just for fun, but she eventually found the rules boring and just forgot about the whole diet business.

“Nice beehive hair Ladies”, said the waiter with an appreciative look at their heads. “What will you order?” he asked opening his small notebook.

Sophie smiled at the compliment and closed the menu. “I’ve been told you had a special”, she said.

The man tilted his head and looked at the old woman with a hint of surprise in his eyes. He shrugged as if it wasn’t his problem after all. Connie gulped, expecting the worse.

“Two Svið with Gellur”, he said scribbling something in his notebook. “May I suggest some Brennivín?”
“You may”, answered Sophie. “It can help us gulp the whole thingy”, she explained to Connie.

“The common error is to go for the head and dismiss the eyes”, said the waiter. “They may surprise you”, he added before leaving.

Connie looked murderously at Sweet Sophie, whom she would have renamed Sour Sophie in that moment. The old woman had an air of satisfaction on her face. “Why on earth would you pick that ?” asked the reporter.

“Oh! That was part of the instructions in the letter”, answered Sophie with a shrug that made her beehive tremble.

Someone had told him once : “Catastrophes are like meteor shower, they come in flocks.”

Jeremy looked with dread at the smoke coming out of his computer. He had been writing an important e-mail to his new boss at the bank and was about to click the send button when it happened. The tech had said there was a current surge affecting the whole building. Everyone was in deep shit at the moment, they had to close the building to angry customers, and someone in high place was certainly worrying about the intangible money the bank was manipulating daily.
Oh! and concerning all his data, considering the smoke coming out of the machine, it was certainly irremediably lost.

Jeremy sighed. His last relocation a few hours ago had made him a 36 year old salesman in a not so well known bank. His ID said he was called Duncan Minestrone, but he couldn’t let go of his old identity and kept on thinking of himself as Jeremy. And he didn’t feel that old.

His memory of his former life, before the relocation, was fading away. He didn’t remember well what he was doing and what were his passions. The only thing he was sure is that they had confiscated his cat, Max, when they gave him his first identity and he had been on the look for him ever since.

It wasn’t easy, especially since every other day he was receiving a new identity in his mailbox. At first he had found it odd and not so easy : as soon as he got accustomed to a new persona, he would have to change again. He feared he would soon lose track of who he really was. And he wasn’t sure about what all this was about.

The phone hanging on the wall rang. It was one of those old public phones. Jeremy had thought it was only for decoration. The tech was looking at him.

“Are you going to pick up ?” he asked.
“Me ?”
“Of course! The phone is in your office, isn’t it ?”

Jeremy hesitated but eventually got up from his desk. The phone was calling him, but he didn’t really want to take the call. What if it was more problems. They come in flocks.
It was one of those old ringing tone caused by a mechanical bell inside. The speaker was shaking furiously. Jeremy couldn’t help but notice the dust on the machine.

“You’d better take the call”, said the tech.

Jeremy picked up the apparatus which a greasy feeling in his hand.

“At last! Duncan, in my office! Now!”
It was the voice of his new boss, Ed, and he didn’t seem very happy.

At first, I think the continuity will, by design, seem to be disjointed. The reader will start off confused. But yes, I think there will start to be things that carry over as he begins to remember and assemble a personality that transcends the individual stories. This eventual personality, may or may not match up with his original personality from before the coma…probably not…but he’ll definitely begin to remember who he was. And perhaps there will be a meaningful contrast between his new transcending personality and his old real life personality.

The idea is that each story puts him/her in a situation and there’s always something about that situation that resonates with him/her. That resonating is a clue to their original real life from before the coma started.

And so the aspect that resonates becomes a part of the transcending personality and begins to carry over into the next stories.

There’ll probably be situations where there’s a conflict between the transcending personality and the story personality that he/she naturally wants to flow with.

Like, the story that they’re in might have them as a female in Greece, and he/she wants to flow with that story, but the transcending personality is there in the back of the mind, resonating as a male, for instance.

This would be like an allegory for multiple lives, perhaps, but without bringing up reincarnation, and encapsulating it into a story that any reader can believe and resonate with. Almost like tricking the reader into learning something about multiple lives and essence.

Sophie looked dubiously at the shampoo bottle. It was smaller than the ones she was used to in the US, and It was written kókosolía. She had no idea what it meant but the picture underneath looked vaguely like two big coconuts.

She opened it, pressed the bottle to smell what was inside, then poured a bit of the white substance into her palm. No doubt there was coconut inside. She touched it. It was very oily. Maybe it was not shampoo after all. She looked at the other bottles. None smelled as good as the first one. She decided to give it a try.

After her shower she felt rejuvenated. It was like the old times, with her husband Bob they used to travel a lot and stay in all kinds of hotel. She always loved that moment when she was drying her hair and Bob would sneak in behind her and take her into his arms. She sighed. Nope, that would not happen today.

She almost jumped when she realized her hair was inflating. She had very thin hair usually and they were rather close to her head, but today it looked like they had a new life. She wondered if it would deflate as soon as she’d stop the hot hair. She hesitated but it looked almost done. She turned off the power and the hair stayed up.

She heard a knock at the door. She wondered who that could be.

“Sophie. It’s me”, said Connie’s voice.
“A moment said Sophie.” She put her old clothes on. She didn’t take much with her in her suitcase, she didn’t have enough room for clothes with all her apparatus. She checked her hair one last time, still up. Then she opened the door.

They looked at each other and said at the same time : “Oh! You used the coconut shampoo too.”
“Let’s have diner”, said Connie. “As for the hair, I bumped into other guests, and the ladies all seem to have the beehive haircut.”

It’s the Wall of Watches, where the last remaining heart beats of the condemned live on, refusing to be forgotten. The wall itself is high, with chains crisscrossing it’s face to keep a patchwork of boards in place. Threaded into the chains, however, were the watches of those who died at the wall.

The watches hung from each other. There would be one watch attached to the chains and then more watches would be strung on it’s bands. It was a practical solution to diminishing real estate on the wall, but it was metaphorical as well, representing the interconnection of hearts and souls.

Most watches were mechanical, but wound by the movement of handling. On the day of their death, or if they expected it, they’d run to the wall and fit their watch to the chains. Well-wishers would visit the memorial and handle the watches to both keep them going and to remember their loved-one once more. As long as the ticking continued, it was said that their heart remained beating in this world.

The guards would walk the condemned men past the wall to remind them of the people who came before. Dissenters.

As a line of men shuffled past the wall, an inmate leapt out of line and furiously fumbled with his watch, trying all he could to attach it. There was always one. One guy would become so overwhelmed by the empathy of the symbolism, would connect so strongly with the wall, that he’d leap out of line and attach his watch…an act which would be paid for by immediate death.

A guard watched with a certain pity. The orders were to shoot on sight, but he would let them have their last act. Right as the band slipped through the buckle, a shot was fired and the inmate fell in a lump.

All of this seemed so familiar to Aaron…or was it? Is this where he was supposed to be? He had a sudden moment of clarity while standing in that line, watching his fellow inmate fall. What was he doing here?! It was one of those moments that hits you. What in the world is all this bullshit?!

He loosened the belt on his watch as he drew closer to the wall, not wanting to seem suspicious. He would attach his watch, willingly and premeditated. Their expectations of him would not hold him ransom…rather, he’d use their own expectations against them. They would not kill him. He was in control. This was his time. This was his life. He was taking it back.

And, right as he slid the belt through, he got one last look at the black face of the watch…

“Where the devil is everyone?”

Miss Bossy Pants looked around the empty office with a mixture of disappointment and confusion. She had been anticipating the surprised looks on her colleagues’ faces at her unannounced return —she had no illusions about her popularity and knew better than to expect a joyous reunion—but the room was disconcertingly empty.

Hearing the door behind her, she spun around in relief. It was the new guy, Prout, carrying a brown paper bag and a take out coffee.

“Hello!” he said, hoping he did not sound as awkward as he felt and wondering if he could back out the door again. He had only met Bossy a couple of times and found her bluntness disconcerting. Terrifying, even. There was no reply, so, taking a sip of his steaming coffee, he bravely persevered.

“Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

“Are you the only one here? Where is everyone?” snapped Bossy Pants.

Ricardo took a deep breath and focused on a wilted pot plant on the window ledge.

God, I hope I don’t start rambling.

“Connie and the temp, Sophie, went to Iceland … something about following a lead from Santa Claus and I’ve not heard from them since. And Hilda … I don’t know where Hilda went to be honest. She emailed me a few days ago wanting to know what to feed Orangutans.”

Bossy had paled. She seemed to shudder slightly and put out a hand to steady herself on a nearby desk.

“They eat mostly fruit,” he continued, “but other stuff too of course. Insects and flowers and stuff like that. Honey I think, if they can find it I guess, and bark. And leaves. Mostly fruit though.”

That’s probably enough about the Orangutans. She is clearly not into it.

“I got a bit held up actually; there is a young boy outside drawing maps. Quite young … youngish. I am not sure how old really but he was little.They are bloody good too—there is quite a crowd out there watching him draw.”

“Iceland,” whispered Bossy, her face a deathly white colour.

“Yeah, Iceland. Keflavik … Miss Bossy, are you sure you are well enough to be back? You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good … attractive of course … I don’t mean you look bad or anything but you do look sort of pale. Are you okay?”

“Santa Claus.” Bossy sat down slowly.

“Yeah … I know, a bit crazy, right? They seemed to think it was a really hot lead.”

“Stupid idiots; the lead wasn’t from Santa Claus— I will bet my life that it was from that depraved scoundrel, Dr Bronkelhampton! I heard through the grapevine he had gone to Iceland with a new identity after the Island fiasco destroyed his reputation—we covered the story at the time and it was huge—and now he is clearly after revenge. Dear God, what have they got themselves into?”

John placed himself down on a crooked old chair at the table, with journal in hand, and stared out the window of his cottage. As he sat there, the imperfect glass of the window distorted his view slightly, but noticeably, almost unconsciously, and he swayed in minuscule displacements or perhaps shifted a bit to take a sip of his black coffee, giving the effect of a liquid world – to someone of imagination, of course. To those with no imagination, the window was rubbish and needed to be replaced.

It’s been a relaxing weekend for John, who, on his working days, finds himself as a writer. This is, of course, if you were to think of any days as those in which you might suddenly stop writing or ignore inspiration. In that respect, every day is a working day. However, this weekend was a special one for himself.

The writing that got him money was of the technical sort, dedicated to dry manuals and instructional fare. His passion, however, lent itself to the imagination. No doubt, he still adored the natural world and it’s workings, but he found himself nearly dead inside after completing a project for work. This, invariably, lead him to his personal expeditions.

Every few weeks he’d save up enough money to take a train or bus to another location, picked nearly at random, just so he could get away and bring color back into his life. This cottage, with its imperfect windows, was one such expedition.

So, he sat there for a moment, playing with his perception through the window, and then shifted his attention through it to world outside. A breath of beauty swept over him and he was inspired. In his journal, with no expectation of the entry living beyond those pages, he wrote:

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest is a forested, mountainous area – if you’re apt to call these green, low laying perturbations in the Earth “mountains”. The cool-yet-comfortable south-easterly winds blow through the Wystlewood trees, whistling as it goes. Some would say the forest sings.

Wystlewood trees “sing”, as it were, due to the way the wind passes through their decomposing trunks. While alive, the trunks of the trees have a hard, fibrous outer wood, while the inner portion is soft and sponge-like, saturated in chemical that simultaneously grabs on to water and repels insects. When the trees get old and begin to die off, they tend to remain upright for some time as the inner sponge decomposes. This leaves a hollow void where a particular caterpillar takes refuge, unaffected by the repellent chemical that a fungus slowly decomposes into an edible source of nutrition.

These caterpillars leave behind a secretion that the decomposing fungus in the tree requires. The relationship between the caterpillar and fungus is symbiotic in that regard, both feeding each other. We call these caterpillars “Woodworms”.

When the caterpillars are ready to cocoon, they climb out to one of the old branches and hang themselves from a cord of twisted threads at least a foot long. When they are ready to come out, they bite through the cord, dropping themselves to the forest floor while still in the cocoon. The cocoon and all drops below the foliage of the undergrowth, where the moth can come out into the world under cover of green leaves and the shimmering violet flowers of the Spirit Flower – a color scheme that the moth shares.

The Spirit Flower is a rhizome with a sprawling root structure that tends to poke it’s way into everything. It has small violet shimmering flowers in umbels that in any other case might be white. The leaves are simple with a jagged margin, alternating. The stem is on the shorter end, perhaps a foot tall, fibrous and slightly prickly.

There are a few flowers that tend to dominate the undergrowth, Spirit Flowers being one. Sun Drops and Red Rolls are additional examples, the former a yellow droopy flower and the latter a peculiar red flower with a single pedal that’s rolled up in a certain way that would suggest a flared funnel with wavy edges.

The flowers and trees enjoy the soil here, a bit sandy and rocky, but mixed with a richness created by the mixture of undergrowth, fungi and bacteria. The roots dig into the soil, slowly stirring it and adding to it’s nutrients. The fungi eat the dead roots and fallen foliage and the bacteria eat the fungi and everything else, of course.

The whole matter leaves a note of scent in the air that cannot be described as anything other than that of the Wystlewynds. It’s perhaps sweet, with Earthy undertones and an addictive bitterness. The whole place seems to elevate one’s energy, sharpening the senses. You want to sing with the trees, or perhaps play along with a haelio (a flute-like instrument created with wystlewood).

Miss Bossy Pants contemplated her pale and wan appearance in the bathroom mirror. She wondered if she was well enough to turn up at work today.

Don’t want anyone else to catch anything off me…

However, It was important they did not lose momentum with the competition out there chomping at their heels.

“There is too much talking about writing and not enough actual writing,” Bossy grumbled to her reflection while she dealt to the under eye circles with some concealer.

Of course, that was Hilda to a T; always yabbering on about some stupendous idea for a story but when it came to actually putting pen to paper … well that was quite another matter.

Connie had started out with some potential but was becoming increasingly aggressive and alienating her leads.

How many times must I tell her that clenching her fists and refusing to make eye contact makes her appear shifty and untrustworthy? Bossy slammed some lipstick on her mouth with unnecessary force.

And that new staff member, what’s his name?

Prout, that’s right.

Bright enough but a bit of a moaner. Bad for morale all that moaning. As for sweet old Sophie, the temp, she seemed to be losing more and more marbles by the minute.

Hilda woke up rubbing her jaw, recalling the odd dream about pulling a splinter of bone out of a hole in her mouth where a molar should have been. There had been a sharp point sticking out of her gum, and she pulled ~ and pulled ~ and the bone shard that appeared in her hand seemed much too big to have come out of her mouth. What does that symbolize, she wondered? She was sure miss bossy behind the scenes pants would have something wittily disparaging to say about the imagery. But then an idea struck her: perhaps it was part of the Polar Molar story that she was connecting to.

Hilda had been wanting to join the new Dream Investigation course for reporters, but felt the need to practice first before joining the class. There wasn’t much point in attending with no dream recall at all. Not much point in joining with just the bare bones, so to speak, of a rudimentary isolated snippet of recall either. Perhaps she’d go back to sleep and try to fill in some gaps. If she was late to the office, she could say she’d been following an unexpected lead on the story.