A screenplay sample. Comedy, Western.
Prose sample. Drama, Contemporary
A screenplay sample. YA, Modern Fantasy.
Breath
A fish in a plastic sack
Won as a prize
Searches with blank eyes
An exit, a hole, a crack
A fish in a glass bowl
Dying by what it breaths
It squirms and seethes
It dies, flushed down a hole
A fish in a glass tank
A life spent as flashy arts
Death where it starts
A three-second blank
A fish in a fast-moving stream
Plucked and fried alive
It huffs but cannot cry
But what if fish could scream
Don’t Panic
The 1984 Toyota Corolla rushed down the twisting mountain road, rolling heavily through every corner. With the wheel in his hand, the older boy wanted nothing more than to send his brother into a panic. The younger of the two refused to be moved, he instead grinned at the squeal of tires and urged for greater speed. The two laughed and cheered as the small sedan creaked and rattled. It was being pushed far beyond what it should be able to handle in its current state. Shot suspension, rusty frame, bald tires. But to them, it performed magnificently. Every road a grand prix, every apex the perfect corner. Outside, inside, outside. Heel and toe.
The corners linked together, they must be taken at just the right speed. Too slow and it becomes a Sunday drive, too fast…
Gravel spat out as the car ran wide. Two tires found themselves off road, dragging the car into a rapid spin. Road, rock, creek, road. The vision from the driver’s seat alternated as the four thin economy tires left smoking black trails. The black marks wove an intricate pattern that looked to end at a wall of rocks.
The boys both stared in a silent focus out of the passenger window. The car skidded sideways, shaved past the rocks, leaving nothing but a scratch on the rear bumper, and barreled towards its new destination, a sharp drop into a deep river.
Smoking tires hit grass, the leading rubber ripped from their metal cores, leaving two steel rings in their place. The bare rims dug into the shoulder of the road, abruptly halting the sedan’s crab walk, tipping the car up. The view changed. Balanced on two wheels, the brothers stared mutely out of the passenger window. A long drop into wet doom. Water flowed lazily in the deep beneath them, unimpressed by the excitement above. Neither boy screamed nor showed the slightest bit of panic, they both somehow knew that no matter their actions, their mistakes were already made. No take-backs.
A moment passed as the car stayed balanced, not falling in either direction, something out of a circus act. Then, weightlessness and a jolt. The sedan returned to the asphalt right side up, bounced on the shot suspension, then laid still.
The brothers looked to one another. They still lived. They weren’t going to die. But when their father found out what they did to the car, that could undoubtedly change. Both boys’ expressions turned to shock, then horror as they scrambled out and began panicking.
Now, seemed an appropriate time.
The Beat
Dale twirled his standard-issued police baton around his finger and caught it with a quick snap of the hand. It felt good. Weighty. It was made of a wood that was as dense as iron and felt as tough as it too. If he’d known anything about carpentry he’d know it was made out of a wormroot tree. The roots broke through hard soil and rocks in their search for water. This made for excellent, if a bit cruel, batons.
He didn’t honestly care what they were made of. That was probably why he had done such a poor job in the Guild. After his father’s connections got him into the upper echelons, he’d failed as a district manager, he’d failed as a store manager, as a clerk, and finally as a thug who’s job was to drive unwanted individuals out of local businesses. It was all just a bit too much for Dale. Too many people asking him questions, too many decisions that needed deciding. When he finished a long hard day of work, he’d come back only to face yet another barrage of questions he needed to know the answers to, and decisions that needed to be made.
Looking back, perhaps blowing up that artificer’s shop was perhaps the best idea he’d ever had. Yes, his father was absolutely furious, and also yes, the duke had wanted to hang him for the damage done to the city, but in the end, he’d escaped with a lengthy dressing down, and then sent off to be a policeman with the city’s regiment. His father was still adamant he should have a higher position. Dale could never argue with the man, but his screw up was too big this time. No more sudden promotions or
The policeman’s hall didn’t quite know what to do with him. Eventually they gave him a simple beat and let him loose on the city.
The streets? Simple. He wasn’t even a captain or a sergeant, merely a corporal. He could perhaps push his weight around in order to get a cushy, desk job, but no, he liked patrolling. He strode about, chatted with locals and took the free foods and drinks from shopkeepers who wished to have more police presence, and hit the occasional street rat or thug with his lovely baton. Best job in the world.
Dale paused in the alley to toss his baton in the air. Whirl, catch, black.
He awoke to a headache that seemed to echo back and forth across the inside of his skull. It lingered heavily against a lump at the back of his head. Dale groaned and touched it, retracting his hand with a hiss. The sun had set, and he was shaking from the cold. He pulled his coat over his shoulders only to find it missing. As was his badge, his hat, his pants, his boots, and to his horror, his baton! He fumbled in the dark, but found nothing except snow, grit, and the cobbles beneath himself.
Dale turned quickly, searching for his assailants, but quickly doubled over in pain. His head ached as if it had been split open. Judging by the dark splotch of wet blood on his hands, that very well might be the case.
“Bastards!” he shouted into the alley. Nobody answered.
He held his head and tried to think. He was… in the west of the city, just past Butcher’s Row. He was currently in his unmentionables and it was night. A flicker of worry washed up. This area wasn’t safe at night, but he didn’t have anything for thieves to take. The real problem was his dress. He’d faced embarrassment across his career, being shouted at, being demoted, but he’d never shown himself in such a vulgar manner.
He shook himself. Absolutely not! In public? The scandal of it! He picked through the trash at the sides of the alley till he found… something he could wear. From the discarded paper, muck, and rubbish, he found a bit of fabric. A coat, thin and worn, it was once a nice article of clothing, yet now was torn, patched, and burnt at spots.
Dale pulled the coat on and felt instantly warmer. It was, despite appearances, a very good coat. It even fit him quite well. He fastened the front to not expose himself and marched off into the night, barefoot and bloody, back to the Police Hall.
Frail Wounds
A feeling of discomfort, of something wrong
A discordant note, a broken song
But what is broken is not the end
For the open wound never mends
How do you blame those that have been wronged?
When you or I would play the same song?
How do you blame those that have been wronged?
How can you hate a child but praise a bomb?
Goddess of Creation
There are many gods and goddesses across the vast planes and multiverses and mirror spaces. They have two things in common. They are bored, and also so terribly busy.
To travel between worlds, to administer your flock across the different spacetimes, was truly a thankless and tiring task. Worshipers tended to lose faith after only a few hundred years of absence, and it took that long to go visit the neighboring plane and come back.
Perhaps if they had control of where they went, it would be fine, but faith could move mountains, and gods, on a big enough scale. -
You see, much of a god’s time is spent being pulled this way and that, like a taffy on hooks. Prayers, sacrifices, rituals would bring them ever closer to a planet, only for the faith to fizzle out, and send the god hurtling in the opposite direction. A god could spend millennia after millennia frozen in an eternal game of tug, halfway between nowhere, far from anywhere they’d rather be.
Re, the goddess of creation and destruction was a popular god. As such, she was eternally caught in a tug of war in the middle of nothing. Doing nothing, she somehow kept the faithful, but that only meant she was forever unable to move.
She had a plan. Energy built between her palms as she pulled on the very fabric of reality.
“Is that you Re? Are you still messing about with that?” said Fa, the god of weather. “We can’t do anything about it. A prayer comes up, and we must answer. It’s the price of becoming a god.”
“I can’t answer if I never arrive!” Re huffed, her breath turning a passing asteroid into so much space dust. “It wouldn’t be a problem if only one planet believed in me, but I’ve been stuck out here for thousands of years! I can’t go anywhere like this!”
“Re? Fa?” said Do, the god of nature. “Still out here I see?”
“Do? What happened? Weren’t you were doing well?” said Fa.
Do had been occupied lately with a planet full of a deep, wondrous forest, and full of tribes and empires who all worshiped nature as a god. Do had been happily tending to his newest flocks for thousands of years.
“Well, all good things come to an end, you know,” said Do bashfully. “They discovered steam engines I’m afraid.”
“Ah, damn them,” said Fa.
“I tried that! But once something like that catches on, it’s just so hard to stop.” Do sighed. “I just wanted them to be happy, but when they started making wrenches I knew it was over.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Fa. “Well, I’m sure there will be others soon.”
“No!” Re stomped her theoretical foot. “I’m done with this! The planets are too far apart! I say we put them all in one place!”
“And how will you manage that?” asked Do. He looked over the building divinity between her hands with suspicion. Re was usually quite good, but she could go a bit overboard sometimes.
There was a quiet pop as the universe flexed, and in front of Re, was a small planet orbiting happily around a star.
“Very nice, a small water planet, is it?” Do said politely.
“Look closer! It has life on it!”
“Like what, fish?” he focused on the small blue pearl and froze. “There’s beings down there, proper beings! You can create souls?”
“Of course not!” Re huffed. Gods could do many things, but to create life, true, thinking, faith-providing life was not one of them. “I just ‘created’ the same area here as it was on one of the planets! Like a hole in space! Now I don’t have to go anywhere! Oh! I answered a prayer! For the first time in ages!” She danced happily in place.
“Are you sure this won’t cause any problems?” Do asked.
Re waved him off as she answered another prayer, creating a mountain of cabbages near a small family who were facing starvation. “Wow! Oh they are so happy!”
There was a pop, and the world they watched became diluted, blended into a much larger mass. Two stars crashed into one another, and burned brightly as they died.
“Uh…” said Do.
Another pop, then hundreds more. Planets appeared one by one, and began breaking into pieces and parts. Like the universes largest jigsaw puzzle, the planets began knitting together to form one.
“Re… what is that?” asked Fa.
“Every planet that prays to me,” said Re with a wild look. “I meant to only grab one…”
More planets appeared, then more and more and more.
“Re! You idiot, every planet prays to you!” Do was frantic, using every bit of strength to push the world together, to balance things out, to keep those that lived, living. More magic, then more was pushed in. Soon a somewhat spherical planet was formed, a jumbled mess that spat on physics and wiped its nose with logic.
The power of gods kept it intact, and kept gravity from killing everything. Those on the planet’s surface had experienced the calamity of all calamities, but most still lived. With a deep, rumbling sigh, the world finally stabilized. Dozens of moons now circled overhead, as did six stars. All was kept from merging by a truly prodigious amount of unnatural power.
Re felt the rush of faith pour up from the planet. Not just a planet, THE planet. The world that held all intelligence, that held all life, was now one. It was breathtaking. Re stared at it with all of the crazed love a neurotic parent could give to a child. She reached out, to the prayers, to those calling her name, and was smacked promptly across the head by the arriving pantheon of truly pissed gods.
I’m a Wastrel With Words
They fall out of my mouth, they drip from my pen
They spill from my keyboard like buckets of sand
My mind is a thresher, beating the day
Pulling out words, something to say
To fill up the void, of a silent reprieve
That needs nothing at all, but I just can’t see
How to just sit
Enjoy the day
Relax with the world
With nothing to say
But every peace, I can’t help myself
I burden the air, and everyone else
It takes all I have, to just watch the day pass
Without adding my own useless chaff
I promise to be silent
I promise to be good
If only my intent
Would be understood
I want to be happy, without breaking the peace
I’ll keep my words, and offer you ease
My mind can be on, throughout the day
A torrent, a stream, a never-ending play
But all of the voices
Are all my own
Unspoken choices
Forever unknown