« The Musical Journey | Main | Hello! Who are you!? No really. »
The Utopographer: Chapter 2
By Billy | June 26, 2008
Well I have been VERY busy lately, what with starting a new job, participating in my brother’s wedding, and organizing a camping trip with 6 friends that was most successful. Excuses aside, I have finally found the time (made the time..) to get around to coming up with another post for all my loyal (all two of you) readers. This is potentially the second chapter of what I’m called The Story of Brahman, (since that name is totally arbitrary) but it has some intrinsic problems.
Before I go any further, I will advise anyone who is not caught up to try the first chapter first. This will be filed under “The Story of Brahman” at the bottom, in case you can’t find the posts in the future.
The narrator in the first chapter mentions an experiment held by Dr. Margana– the outcome of which I will keep vague until the time comes. The problem is that this chapter set up implies that they (at least a handful of them) have survived the experiment. Since I will be revealing this in the next chapter, I’ll spill the beans now that the experimentee’s honestly thought they were not going to make it through the duration of the experiment. I’m trying to decide whether I want the readers to be under the same impression or not.
I want to make sure I can legitimately find a way to express certain personal qualities about the characters- which is very easy to do if I utilize diary entries like chapter 1 along with dialog with 3rd person narrative. I am now trying to engineer the plot such that I can keep these people’s surviving a mystery until it happens, but there are surely other options that can perpetuate the mystery, like: these characters escaped somehow, or even were released through a lottery system like the movie The Island or something.
The surefire way to keep the outcome of the experiment a mystery, my original intent, is to make the entire story in record form, both using voice and video recording as well as written record. Still a possibility, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Anyway– Yes I’m getting to the story soon. If you have any comments or suggestions, do let me know.
Chapter 2:
“You want my honest opinion? It’s good and all but nobody wants to read this shit.” He said as he always speaks; sandwiching the sentences between long cigarette drags. The child sitting to the left of him in the booth let out an unintentional peep of protest at the man’s choice of words, which earned him a cold, piercing glare and an exhale of smoke in his face as a reply.
“Do you think people in years to come will get the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ reference? I was thinking of comparing myself to Gilliver and the Lilliputians and then considering The Wizard of Oz, and even Dante’s Inferno. I want this to be a piece of literature someday. These details are very important. Do you think I should invoke a muse the way Milton did, so as to say, “Listen up. This is as important as those epic legends!” I almost think I need–” But he had been interrupted by the chain smoker across the table.
“Look Phillips, It’s like I said. Even if they knew your story was true: nobody wants to read your gay little diary. Especially with all that philosophical mumbo jumbo you’re throwing on ’em. Secondly, nobody is going to believe your story.”
“It’s your story too!” The boy interjected, “it’s all of our story. And I think we should all have a chapter in his book.” The boy gestured for the book, and contemplated its empty pages. The one hundred and ninety nine unused sheets of paper were to represent their pasts; an impossible task. “We’ll let them decide if they want to read it or not.”
“That’s right. And even if nobody reads it at all, I feel the need to do this for myself, too. C’mon Alex, what have you got to lose?” Alex looked up at him under a heavily furrowed brow while smoke seeped out his nostrils. To the child next to him, he looked like he might turn into, if he wasn’t already, a dragon. “Hey, hey. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that no harm could come from helping me write this down.”
“I don’t have time for this shit,” he said, placing particular emphasis on the last word as he turned and made eye contact with the boy.
“Right, like you have some place better to be, I suppose?” The voice came as a surprise to everyone at the table; she had almost been forgotten, sitting there so quietly until now. “Now I aint sayin’ I’m ready to sit and talk about this, either, but I know you aint got plans for a while, on account of the rest of the world thinkin’ you’s dead and all, not that anyone cares one way or another. Probably the way you prefer it anyhow.” She had the courage the writer was so clearly lacking; standing up to Alexander Trunkenkuss is asking for trouble. Sandy was already in it and had nothing to lose.
Without a word, Alex took one last and exceptionally long drag of his cigarette, smugly snuffed it out on the cover of the diary, stood up, and stormed away from the table. He hadn’t left the diner parking lot before he turned around and marched back in.
“Look. I don’t care what any of you do. I’m leaving this god forsaken wherever-the-hell we are. I hope you all have nice lives. All but you.” He pointed directly to the young boy. His tobacco stained index finger hovered inches from the child’s nose. The boy was petrified. “Yeah, I hope you die an early, painful, and very lonely death. No, no, no, no.” He spoke softly at first, but his sentence made a crescendo; he had become maniacal. “I hope you live to be a hundred. Yes, I hope everything you ever love is ripped from your hands and that you spend every waking moment looking at those empty hands wondering, ‘how did I let it slip away?’ I hope you consistently wake up from your dreams and. And you believe for a while that you still have them; those things you love, but then you’re left to realize the truth. And then you go through the whole process of losing them again. Mmm.”
He broke eye contact with the boy, turned, and chugged the second half of the young lady at the table’s coffee as he mocked her southern accent saying, “I’ll be seein’ y’all ’round, now.” He quickly changed character back to his usual self and said, “but hopefully not. You worthless puddles of slime.” As he turned around, he bumped into a waitress who couldn’t have been more than 16 years old. “You clumsy whore!” He yelled, as he knocked the tray she had just barely kept balance of out of her hands and onto the floor. She joined the young boy in crying, not even trying to hide it.
That time he made it past the parking lot. Alex Trunkenkuss had been let loose into the world; No money, no mode of transportation, no idea where he is, and worst of all— only four cigarettes left.
—–
Just for the record, I’m terrible at choosing names and, if you didn’t notice already, Trunkenkuss is a very near approximation of the German words for drunken kiss. Cool character name suggestions are also welcome.
Topics: The Story of Brahman, Works of Fiction | 1 Comment »
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:46 am
I’m probably a very horrible person for saying this, but… my favorite part was when he threatens the kid! It was great! Very choice imagery! Kudos!