The Smudge Machine

A testament to my enjoyment of the Smudge tool in Photoshop.

Christmas Sketches

An Excercise in Plot

“What should their money mean to us? Can we reap it? What matter if they are rich, we are captive! A man kept happy in ignorance cannot remain so once the curtain has been pulled.”

“But the world outside, Wyllem. If you see this land as a cage, and ourselves as captives, you must be sure we’d fare better outside than in, and in the same turn be content with the outsiders entering and making with Meil what they wish. I have seen the outside, have tasted its air, and I will tell you now that if I never repeat the experience it will not sadden me.”

“What are you saying, then? We should remain slaves to them, a breed of men to dance for their entertainment?”

“I am saying it is better to know your trap and still allow yourself to remain within if the choice of freedom is cruelly unnatural. You must know that you have been ensnared, from birth, in a world that is truer than anything the outsiders can forge with their steel and lightning. They have been twisted by their chemicals, crippled in harsh and horrible ways. If you must speak of a breed of men, speak not of those within the wall, for our blood runs with a purity that any without would fail to match. Meil is a sanctuary, and if you fail to see that, you will be a foolish king.”

“You are right, my good friend. As usual. I am merely frustrated with the choices you present me. They are not many, and none of them I like.”

“It is not the King’s duty to do what he should like, but what he should deem best for all of his people. Meil will soon be united under you, and you will hold the hearts of all whose faces look to you for direction. One person cannot stand against the good of the kingdom, be him peasant or king. Judge for the good of all who obey, and thus all you obey. The people are not yours, as so many kings have so falsely believed. You are theirs. So lead them wisely.”

“I have nothing but my best to give, and I must hope that it will be enough.”

“With the counsel you will keep, it will be hard to fail. When you forget, I will be there to remind you.”

“Min Erich? Even if we choose to remain captive, what will keep the outsiders from releasing us? From what you’ve told, they see us constantly, observing our simple happiness. Will we have to protect ourselves from those wanting us to leave this manufactured utopia so that they can take our place? How would we stop those who long to have the floodgates opened, so that they can taint this land with their hopes?”

“The questions you ask are wise. I do not know their answers, but when the time comes to decide the best courses of action, you will do what is right for your kingdom. Perhaps it would not be right to deny the outsiders a chance at happiness, but the cost to our own must be measured carefully. In the end, they are not our people. And we may be forced to defend our home."

Serializer...2

He saw his desk, the broken bleeding pen. Ah. A moment away from resuming his position in the chair, his bladder shouted up to him. It was full, achingly so. When was the last time I went to the bathroom? Or had anything to drink, for that matter? His answering throught was vague on the subject; he couldn’t recall a single specific memory of doing either one.

So, moving over things littering the floor as if he’d memorized their positions, he stepped into the little bathroom and sighed, dropping his pants. The seat was cold on his old flesh, and his bones had creaked mightily as he’d dropped all of his weight onto it. It irritated him, having to sit down to pee, but as old as he was he supposed it was a miracle he could still pee at all. The feeling of relief from the fluid’s exit was impossibly great, and Crim’s brows furrowed in consternation. He’d not noticed his bladder five minutes earlier, when he’d been getting the door or when he’d been sitting in front of his…his work. His hand twitched and impatiently waited for his urine flow to stop. I need it. I need to be sitting there, writing. Because something happens…to me. Something amazing. He drummed his fingers on the side of the toilet bowl, directing his gaze everywhere around the little bathroom. A tuft of white fabric got his attention. It was in the bathtub, floating toward the top of the water. That’s odd. The bathtub isn’t supposed to be full. Presently his urine store dried up, and he found himself free to indulge his curiousity.

What he found in the tub doubled his consternation. The head of a mop, without its pole, plugging up the drain. The whole tub filled almost to the rim.

“Marjorie! Did you put this mop in the bathtub?” He waited for the reply, the little footsteps hurrying toward him to make certain she knew what he was talking about, but they didn’t come. The store? She must be at the store. Shrugging, he reached his arm into the tepid water and gripped the mop, pulling it away from the drain. But it held fast, the suction of the drain overpowering Crim’s efforts. He tugged three times, each time harder than the last, and was a little surprised when his tugs yielded only a knocking sound. A rock striking the porcelain of the tub? But he could see nothing but the head of the mop and he gave one final heave, ripping the fabric and seperating the portion stuck in the drain from the rest. The water drained slowly, its exit hindered by the fabric still lodged in the opening. Crim knelt by the tub, panting. When Marjorie gets home…She must be getting senile, throwing mops in bathtubs.

His hand twitched again, and he stopped thinking about the mop at once.

Before he pulled a fresh notebook from the pile, he dropped the broken pen onto the ground and opened the drawer, gettting a new one from the stockpile he’d created. Then he leaned in and let his eyes skim over the last things he’d written.

The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

Where the word “pen” should have been was an inky mess.

A minute later the old man’s hand was working again, and his face had molded into an enormous grin.

My Answer

Dueling Pencils

My father and I made a little deal. He'll do a sketch, and I'll do one to match. I said I'd post the ones he made so people could see. And I'll post mine, too. For this I made another Blogspot address, DuelingPencils.blogspot.com....but as of yet it's not being used. I want to format it in a way that will take some creative HTML editing, and until then this is an acceptable forum. My father's first sketch:

And as for the last post, yes, expect me to post the second or third installments sometime soon. It's a story that's been in the works for a LOOONG time. So hopefully it will work out.

Serializer. Muahahaha.

The field below me opened up, a giant mouth of hot soil and fiery crimson petals. The breath it took first blew me upward, buffeting me against walls of wind and swirls of red. Then it was as if gravity and another force took hold of me, first wrapping its tendrils around my left ankle and right hand and then pulling me down, the reverse in direction so sudden that my eyes clenched shut and both of my ears popped. Rose petals whipped against my face, slicing my skin. When I opened my eyes again, the darkness lay below me like a giant bed of nothing. I could feel the blood being sucked out of my ears, and my stomach opened up, spilling itself through my screaming mouth.

“Mr. Crim! Open up, I’ve got to talk to you!”

No, something had changed. The wounding petals had voices, and they screamed at me. Crim! Crim! Crim! And I fell faster, a magnet for the bottom of the void.

“Mr Crim? Is anyone in there? It’s your landlord!”

The swallowing black then became a little brighter, and I picked up speed, hurtling end over end to the center of the world. It grew bright then, a slow red grade of light that seemed to bend around me, and a warmth akin to sunlight danced on my skin. The rushing air whistled through my busted eardrums, and then it ended. I was falling, racing with gravity and the demon force that yanked me down, and then I was sitting in a chair. Sitting at a desk, my hands driving a pencil across a field of white. Behind me,a series of muffled explosions sounded, and I recognized the sound of fists against wood. Turn around, I thought, there’s someone at the door. But my hands wrote on, and with a fluid ease that brought me a feeling of pure joy.

“Mrs. Crim, you in there? Either one of you works, I ain’t picky. Just gotta talk about the rent. You can’t hide from me forever, and I know you’re in there because I see all the traffic around here and you haven’t been out lately! Open the door!”

It wasn’t right; not the thing that was supposed to happen. The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

The old man opened his eyes. He stared at his hand, the one gripping the ballpoint pen. He watched as the tip, pressed into the paper so hard that it was heavily dented, snapped off and set the metallic black goo loose. His mind was empty, the only thing happening behind his eyes the process that inverted the images he saw. Finally a synapse fired, dropping a thought into his head with such violence that he sat forward, head swivelling as he tried to focus on everything at once, tried to find the source of the thought that had ejected him from his vegetation. It had been a picture, a mental image. A tall rectangle, dark and with a shiny…a shiny thing that stuck out. The old man was panicked in his confusion, but how could he know it? It was an unnameable distress, an incomprehensible feeling. His eyes filled with wetness at the corners, dropping tears down the wrinkled planes of his cheeks, and he continued his frantic and fruitless search for the thing that would make that feeling go away.

A sharp noise sounded at his shoulder, and he turned, finally seeing the thing from his thought. A thought snapped through his head, door, then another one, man behind door, these two followed by a hundred-million other little pieces of unconnected information that ultimately made up the man whose name was Jordan Crim.

It felt like his sanity was being returned lazily, a tiny piece at a time, and it was more painful, more mentally agonizing, than anything he’d ever gone through in his life. Which is why, when the process completed itself, his mind discarded every memory of it.

“I’ll stand here as long as I need to, it won’t help to pretend you’re not there. Mr. and Mrs. Crim, I need you to open the door!” More banging.

Of course, Crim thought idly, someone at the door. He rose from his chair, only faintly aware of the soreness in his hand and the neat little pool of ink flooding the pad of paper before him. He stepped across the gathered piles of similar pads, all full of the same dark, looping script (that much, already? Huh.), and came easily to the door. Pushing a few stray pads out of the way with his foot, he pulled the knob and stuck his head out the opening.

And found, looking up at him, the little man that managed the housing circle. Squinting red-faced through a pair of greasy glasses that made his eyes even beadier, the man Crim recognized as Hen Marshall was finally rewarded with the leathery visage of his current quarry. He was breathing hard, and gave Crim a half-satisfied look.

“…Ah, Mr. Crim. I’m here to collect the rent. You’re late by a week, and I’m going to have to get it sometime soon or…well, you’ve been here a long time but if you’re going to have trouble paying the rent, you might have to be put out. I don’t want that to happen…”

His steam running short, the little man looked up into Crim’s face, seeking help. What he found was a disconcerting blank stare, a stare of recognition and acceptance but not much more. There was none of the hurry-up condescension his other tenants had down to a science. Hen knew that, could stand against that. But this, what the man in front of him was doing, gave him the creeps. Crim was looking at him, recognizing him, and at the same time looking through him.

Hen momentarily shook off the vibe and his nostrils flared, catching the hot stink of rot. Meat?

“Oh, Christ. What is that smell?"

He pushed his head into the narrow crack that seperated Crim and the door, taking in as much information as his eyes could process. Notebooks scattered everywhere, ground littered with clothes and bags.

A change came over Crim then, so suddenly that Hen felt it in the goosebumps that broke out over his skin.

The old man’s head jerked back, and his eyes became lucid. He turned away from the door, closing it in the same motion; forcing Hen’s head back out. The little man’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he closed it and began to speak again, all former timidness gone in an instant.

“I’ll need the rent by the end of the week, Mr. Crim! And if you’re doing drugs in there or something, that’s not allowed and I’ll have to come back later and make a report.” With a small “hmmph,” Hen Marshall turned and waddled back across the street, to the house he shared with no one.

Crim’s sudden change in demeanor was due to something that might seem insignificant to anyone else. It was a wetting of the mouth, saliva glands pumping as if in response to the smell of food. A craving, but not for food. As he had stood looking down at the little man whose purpose had seemed so unimportant, Crim’s hand twitched, and his mouth flooded with saliva. There’s something I need to be doing. In the same breath he’d started turning, and the door he closed behind him was then utterly forgotten. Marshall’s voice fell on deaf ears.

December Has Begun

And that means you get to look at something else for a change. I think I may mean this post. Ha.

In the meanwhile, here's a joke I actually made up.

There are two friends. The first friend says to the second friend, "You're a liar and a cheat." The second friend says to the first, "You're a gentleman and a scholar."

If you don't get it, read it again. If that didn't work, you're stupid and there's nothing I can do to help your feeble-mindedness.

By the way, my sister's art opening was fab. Lots of people, lots of art, lots of alcohol. Good combination for happy happy.