A Short Story.

This I'm posting because a friend of mine told me to write another short story. Well, I had and I hadn't. I had already started writing another short story, but I had never finished it. I never really had a solid idea of where it was going, and I never really had a solid grasp on what it was even about. Now it just sort of reads like the opening 4 paragraphs of the first chapter of some book.

It is about religion, and I don't know why. I'm not religious, nor am I religiously atheist, so I don't know why the subject constantly pops up in my writing. I don't mean it to.

Anyway, here it is if you're interested:

“And they have brought the wrath of God upon us. They have created a utopia. Just as we wish to, but theirs is not for the worship of Jesus, our lord and savior, it is not for God, the one true God, the God of the Israelites, and the God of you and I. NO! They have created a Utopia for Satan himself. Sinners run rampant, The women are whores, the men are immoral, and all the children illegitimate. Is this the world you want your children to be brought up in?”

Apparently it wasn’t. My family followed Samuel Parker into the hell that he called “Paradise on earth” in order to escape the tensions and so called “Sin” of the modern world. It was where I was born, where I spent my childhood, not knowing of the outside world, and then, in 2023, the year the US army decided to take military action against the horrors going on within our “paradise’s” walls, where I watched Samuel Parker sacrifice my mother and father (along with 50 or more other couples) in order for God to protect us from the wrath of “Satan’s Army” as he called them.

Perhaps it was the sight of my mother and father slitting each others throats with the knives stained (maybe not physically) with so much blood from so many people. Or maybe it was getting my first glimpse of how these so called “Sinners” lived, and that the outside world (or their “Utopia of Satan”, as Samuel called it) was a much more peaceful, and loving place than the utopia he had created. But whatever the reason, on that day I abandoned religion.

I was thirteen and when rescued from Samuel Parker’s hell (as it later became known) I was placed in foster care. Five years passed, and nearly as many foster homes. Each one worse than the last. Every time they tried to instill a sense of faith in God, hope in prayer, and security in knowing that the afterlife brings better things. But I never bought it. After seeing the hell that Samuel Parker established in the name of this same God I should now love was enough to turn me off of the idea of religion forever.

But I am now eighteen. I am eighteen and never have to live with another fanatical religious family. Looking back, I can understand why they tried to place those religious ideas in me after what I had been through. I know that Samuel Parker’s form is not the real religion that drives so many other people, but in my mind if there is a God, then he allowed those events to unravel, and therefore he is not the one I wish to commit my life to.

It still sort of wraps itself up in the end, despite me thinking I was going to return to it. Strange...

Lyrical Poetry!

Finished:
This one is going to be sung similarly to a song by Okkervil River called "Plus Ones" it's a really good song. These lyrics I wrote right after listen to that song for the first time... it wasn't really the first time to listen to the song, but it was my first time to REALLY listen to the song, anyway, here it goes:

What do you see
In his eyes
They’ve put you through
A hellish time
And now you turn around
Back to me

You’ve always been
The one I want
But you’ve played games
With my heart
And now you leave me hanging
Like a tree

Sometimes you don’t know what to do
And I know what your world is coming to
You tell me that you just don’t know
What you want to have anymore

(long instrumental thing)

Sometimes you don’t know what to do
And I know what your world is coming to
You tell me that you just don’t know
What you want anymore

I tell you
That I’m right here
And I will never leave
Don’t fear
For it will ache your heart
To think of that

‘Though I love you
More than he
I know things
that you can’t see
And to be with you
Would hurt you more.

Sometimes you don’t know what to do
And I know what your world is coming to
You tell me that you just don’t know
What you want anymore

Unfinished:
The following is a blatant rip of of Bob Dylan's style. If you don't want to see someone butcher the greatest lyricist to ever lives' style, please look away from your screen immediately. This one is not finished yet:

I call for everything to be returned
You say you don’t care
I say “So I’d heard
But this is the end, girl
And to our separate ways we must go”
And to that
You just whisper “no”

“What is your basis
For the end of our relations”
You cry to me as I leave the room.
I stop and turn around
To see your frown
To which I just respond
“This is the end of us together
And the beginning of us apart
The beginning of something new”

You throw my things all across the floor
Crying out “You can just find the door”
I say “I should” “I would if I could”
And, “don’t throw that, it’s made of wood,
It could break”

(harmonica)

That's where I stopped with that one. I hope to finish it later.

Love (A Short Story of first kiss, first love, and inner peace)

I wrote this a while ago, and have decided to finally post it. I've been reading and rereading it since I wrote it months and months ago (actually it's probably been about 4-6 months now), and have decided that it's good enough to post, in fact considering I haven't experienced any of the things I talk about (love, first kiss, complete and total feeling that all is right with the world) in this I'd say I fake my way through it pretty well.

so, here it is. It's called "Love (A Short Story of First Kiss, First Love, and Inner Peace)"

I turn the corner and there she is. Her face like a Goddess. No, not like a goddess, she is a goddess. Her perfect brown curls trailing off her face like shaves of the darkest chocolate you could imagine.
And then she smiles at me.
Her teeth are as perfect as you could imagine, two rows of the whitest pearls I’ve ever seen, like the bones of skeletons on Halloween her teeth glimmer back at me.
She runs up and hugs me.
Why do I deserve this? Why was I given a goddess? The very definition of beauty is standing in front of me. She wants me. And I can’t even imagine, in my wildest dreams, a girl half as beautiful wanting to spend a single second with me.
She opens her mouth to speak. Rattling off theories of Nietzsche and Socrates, her voice is perfect. Her intelligence matches her beauty, if it were physically possible, I would say surpasses, but I know better.
She doesn’t want me. She can’t want me. Perhaps this is a dream. I could pinch myself and wake up.
I do.
But I don’t.
I don’t wake up.
Now she’s laughing. She saw me do it. I explain to her what I was doing. She understands. She actually understands.

******

If there is a God, I don’t worship him. If there is a greater being out there, I don’t believe in it. I haven’t been to a church since I was 12. I haven’t wanted to go to church since even earlier. This girl can’t be a reward. I haven’t done anything a controller of things like this would want to reward me for doing. And I sure as hell aren’t perfect enough for this girl. She doesn’t seem to care.
The next time I see her she says something, something to make me laugh. I laugh.
The smile fades from my face and I look away. Not for long. Just a second. Just long enough for her to know that that leg of the conversation is over. I look back towards her and flavor explodes from my lips. Coffee and cigarettes. I’ve never tasted anything as wonderful. The twang of her lip gloss helps as well.
I’ve never been with anyone like this before. Not intimately. Not like this. It’s my first kiss. I’m 16 years old, and it’s my first kiss. Thankfully she seems to be leading. I don’t know where to go next. I follow her. Her mouth opens. I open mine. Her tongue enters my mouth. In the past I had always assumed this moment would be awkward. Maybe even disgusting. But I have never before done anything that felt so right, that tasted so wonderful, that gave me this feeling.
I have been with her three hours today. My friend set me up on the first date.
Before last week I had never really even been able to talk to a girl without feeling inadequate, feeling pathetic. But Sam. Sam is different. I finally feel like, for once, perhaps everything is right with the world. Nothing could kill this moment.

******

I follow her to her room. We both lie down on her bed. Our lips break for the first time in what feels like hours, but I know to only be a minute. I wonder if I should have brought something. I wonder if she expects certain things out of me tonight. I wonder if she wants me. if she really wants me. She doesn’t. We just hold each other. It’s a cold December night, and we only need the warmth of each other’s company. But it’s better this way. I don’t need to be inside her. We don’t need to be one. Whenever we’re in each other’s company we are one. That is when I realize what Sam and I share. This is love.