fiction. sorta.

Fiction is not often shared on blogs. The format does not always lend itself easily to extensive characterization, and many people look to blogs to answer their questions quickly, rather than to be presented with more.


Photo by Charlie

What blogging does offer to the fiction writer is an opportunity to try out characters and plot lines on a willing audience. The people who read my fiction posts are not the largest section of my audience, but they are some of my most loyal supporters. I created the "fiction. sorta." category for those posts of mine that are purely fictional as well as ones that concern real people and real events, but have been changed in certain ways to allow for more freedom with the details of plot.

Some of my favorite posts from this category are listed below:

The full archives for "fiction. sorta." are listed below. Have fun looking around. And if anything bothers you, just remember--it's only fiction. Sorta.

Dim Bulbs, Bedroom Community

by anna on 05.01.2009

New here? You may want to subscribe to the (free) ABDPBT RSS feed. For an explanation of how RSS subscriptions work, please see this explanatory post. Or, you can sign up to receive new ABDPBT posts by email (also free).

Chris was a foot soldier in the Coke Wars of ’97, but when he enlisted he was already a three-time loser. Surfing, selling, and stealing had already bested him, so by the Fall of 1996, he had long since laced up his Doc Martens, packed up his Social Distortion collection, and rolled up and over for the proverbial Tour. They were happy to have him. He had always been the most promising of their group, and when he, too, failed, it was a triumph of sorts, a tacit endorsement of their way of life, whether Chris would acknowledge it as such or not.

Battling valiantly against the post-apocalyptic backdrop of the spare living space of somebody’s mother’s house in Lotophagi, a realm beyond the reach of time, ambition, moral development, and fiscal responsibility, Chris held his own in a quest for? death? destruction? the results were hazy. Lotophagi was no kind of place. More of a sleepy stupor than a real location, Lotophagi was most notable for a group of inhabitants who had vowed, silently, unconsciously, never to leave it. And though it boasted the kind of natural beauty that one might see on a postcard, the vows were not made because of these attractions, but rather because they had become unwitting slaves to it–out of apathy, lethargy, the tendency never to move again once ensconced within its foggy confines.

Like any ragamuffin rebellion, the Coke Wars were fought with whatever improvised weapons could be procured at a reasonable price, which is to say free, or next-to-free, compliments of the kinds of shady connections you develop as part of the underbelly of a small town when you have never thought to leave it. Necessarily, video games were played, King Cobra malt liquor was drunk, and whatever illicit substances they could procure from the guys at Pizza King were ingested. Few lines were drawn. Everyone pooled their resources, but nobody turned up their noses: the appellation of “Coke Wars” was, therefore–like many historical events–constructed after-the-fact, and merely the romanticizing of a shared past by those who had lived through it and needed it to mean more than it ever could.

The plain fact was that cocaine had outclassed Lotophagi. They would never be the kind of glamorously debauched people you meet in a Bret Easton Ellis novel, or more especially the movie based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel: they were a decade late, a couple hundred thousand short, haphazardly clothed in whatever free swag View definition in a new window they could pilfer from so-and-so’s cousin, who was sponsored by Rip Curl. It is a strange thing to class people by their ability to afford and procure illicit drugs, but then Lotophagi had seen worse. And how else could you think of them?

[click to continue…]

2 Comments TWEET THIS EMAIL THIS

Be Nice

by anna on 04.29.2009

[singlepic=556,560,560,,center]

Though she had never been into dolls, in most ways, Charlotte Sometimes could pass for an ordinary girl of six. She did not like them–not baby dolls, not princess dolls, not even the politically incorrect Barbie, or her dowdy friend, Skipper–not the dolls that ate and peed, sat and cried, smiled and cooed. It wasn’t political–dolls just weren’t her thing. And though she did think of herself, even then, as a very small forty-year-old, it would be decades before it would occur to her to pathologize her disinterest in dolls and other things pink and girly. For now, she busied herself by arranging the stuffed animals she had always preferred into an elaborate arrangement on her pale yellow bed, a furry contrast to the canary flower print of a wallpaper she did not choose, inventing different games to play that didn’t reflect on anything essential about her, at least so far as she knew.

It would be said that she was an agreeable child, and this is unsurprising, since she sought to do what was expected of her whenever possible. Though she could not yet articulate the thought, she believed that, perhaps, always doing things exactly right would be what led to her ultimate salvation. And so, when Charlotte Sometimes was presented with the rare occasion of a play date at the home of one of her contemporaries, she would agreeably (as ever) play with the dolls that she didn’t understand, dressing them in their outfits, acting out their elaborate imagined courtship scenarios, always agreeably taking on the less coveted of roles, until it was time for her to go home. And though the dolls would not have been her own choice, she learned to adapt, and so was able to make just enough friends to appear to be a normal little girl, if not the social butterfly of her class, then at least a friend of one of her friends.

Though she had forged a mission statement for herself to be agreeable, there were still those times when Charlotte Sometimes felt compelled to assert herself, to let her true thoughts out into the light, however dangerous it might be. Not, perhaps, on the topic of the dolls–because what harm could come from her indulging people by agreeing to play with them? Nor did she feel obligated to discuss the other trappings of girlhood that confused her, the pink, princessy, sparkly things that all of her friends seemed to love but which left her cold–because even if she was missing something, she reasoned that she was also good at pretending, and at convincing the others that she was just like them: she could see that people saw what they wanted to see. Nevertheless, there were times when something would come up that compelled her to say something–directly–which exposed the thoughts and feelings she sensed were not so plainly agreeable.

[click to continue…]

4 Comments TWEET THIS EMAIL THIS

Jean-Paul Sartorialist and Simone DeBoringWear: A Love Story

by anna on 04.03.2009

The thing about Anna and Mr. Right-Click was, that for all they had in common, there were those ways in which they seemed to come from different planets. Their tastes in clothing, for example, could not have been more opposite. Anna’s style was sedate–WASPy, even, though in recent years, time and the complication of spit-up had led to some changes from the khakis and J.Crew dress shirts she had favored in her youth. Her style now was somewhere between what Blue Bee Clothing in Santa Barbara calls “California Lifestyle,” and what she called Straight-Up Suburban Mommywear, and though she might wear overpriced t-shirts and jeans, she was too fearful to delve into the more fashionista of choices she might have seen in the Savvy section of Nordstrom. If she could have fit into them in the first place.

And where Anna might choose jewelry that was more boring even than her clothing: the same pair of stud earrings every day, along with a wedding ring, watch, and the occasional–very occasional–necklace or bracelet, Mr. Right-Click would lament his somewhat limited choices in jewelry, as a man, and yearn for her to choose something more bling-y, some yellow gold, just once, just for him. And though he had his cufflinks and diamond wedding ring, he longed for the day that tie clips came back into fashion, and tried to soothe his inner need for flash with those clothing caprices that were still allowed to him. And mostly, as a successful professional, the leeway for Mr. Right-Click’s fashion experimentation could only be found in his choice of shoes.

[singlepic=530,560,560,,center]

Mr. Right-Click was a man who wore shoes that forced people to choose sides.

He wore shoes that people could not gloss over. Not every day, not for all situations–but on those occasions where he wanted an extra kick, he wore the shoes and would claim that people complimented every time. And perhaps they did, but couldn’t that be because these shoes assaulted you, forced you to take a stand? Surely there existed also a silent majority that despised the shoes–it was only the ones who loved them who stood up and were counted. Those who spoke had wrestled with their feelings on the shoes, decided they liked them, and–what’s more–liked him for wearing them. This was why they said things like, “I like those shoes,” with resignation, as if to dispel, in that moment, every last smidgen of doubt from their minds, having ultimately resolved that yes–against all reason–they endorsed the shoes.

And perhaps Mr. Right-Click was right to argue that people saw the shoes and figured that he must be successful, to be wearing such shoes! One man had even said, “Good for you, for wearing those shoes in this economy!” So maybe they were impressed, instead of fearful that, as had been suggested by Anna’s brother, if they did not admire the shoes, Mr. Right-Click would pull out a tommy-gun from his overcoat and reenact a scene from The Untouchables. Because it could not be denied that the one other time in Anna’s life that she had seen someone wearing these shoes, that person had been Jack Nicholson, and though she thought it odd at the time, she had easily resigned herself to it. “Well, he’s Jack Nicholson,” she had observed, as if that explained everything. Maybe the man made the shoes, rather than the shoes making the man.

And maybe, just the same, there were people who saw the shoes and thought, “Well, he’s Mr. Right-Click.” And, as was the case with Jack Nicholson, that was all the explanation that they needed.

7 Comments TWEET THIS EMAIL THIS

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →