the bathroom window

Cole sat and waited and watched and hated each of the uniform-clad students that dripped off the buses and slithered in long lines into the school. He only had one cigarette left from the pack he'd nicked from X and it dangled from his lips, getting increasingly damp and bent as the morning aged into afternoon. If it wasn't smoked soon, it'd be the wasted spoils of a particularly daring bit of burglary, but Cole's lighter stayed in his back pocket and the soggy cigarette drooped toward his chin.

SQ
Working on: Rescuing Mari from the docks, bringing her back to Atlantic Ave for the final battle.
Word for this chapter: 1560

Have somehow miscalculated my score so that I'm 1000 words behind my previously estimated word count. Am back from my folks' house, am clean and have on fuzzy socks, will be making a second cup of tea. Am certainly not wasting time futzing around on DreamWidth. Nope. Definitely not doing that.

SQ
Working on: Walking along the boardwalk as Mari comes to terms with her little death and Simonsant and Nine flirt/fight.
Word for this chapter: 89

Chugging along in NaNo. I've fallen a bit behind, but I'll be able to catch up this weekend. It's almost halfway done!

I'm not as happy with SQ as I was with TTBtM last year. My writing's just so bare bones; all my sentences are the same and my vocabulary so limited. I have a hard time writing descriptions. Reading Catherynne M. Valente makes me desperate to come up with metaphors and similes like hers, but I don't have her lyrical ability. One of the folks in my writers group said he didn't like my metaphors/similes - Too forced and awkward. Gahhhhhhh I have these images in my brain but somehow they get muddled up and crappy when I translate them into writing.

Blarggggggggggglepants.

There's a distinct form of happiness that can only be found in listening to classic rock while strolling htrough Central Park on the first real warm day of spring. The snap of the drums provide you with a steady walking pace and when the chorus comes in you're sitting on a pleasent rock placed perfectly in a shady spot a few feet from the path where you can dance as best as you can in a sitting position, safe from any critical gazes.

It wasn't so much that the dragon was gigantic, spouting flames, and had teeth as long as daggers that concerned Lady Knight Edolphia, but that it was capable of speech. And that that speech was in words that she could understand. And that those words that she could understand were part of a cheesy joke.

"So an orange spotted toad and a Fizburther's dove walk into a tavern..."

To her benefit, Lady Knight Edolphia did not turn 'round and run as fast as her silver plate covered legs could carry her as soon as she saw the beast. She waited until after the punchline to do that.

Frankenstein had been flawed in his uncertainity. He doubted, he feared, he whined, he cried - I had no hamartia.

What did he know of creation and birth? Of pain and death? Frankenstein had never been in labor, rivers of blood streaming from the furthest depths of the human body - the mother's blood and child's combined - with all time and sound and sight stopped. What was Frankenstein? Addled and foolish, dreaming of sex and dead parents while the monster stirred and stumbled. Too much man, too little god.

Tabitha smoked cigarettes purely to piss off the mortals. Each inhale mocked them - what did she care? She danced outside the realm of death. And man, sometimes that really made the humans mad. What are you doing, screamed the dark looks that they sent her, and how can you get away with that?

Circe caught her smirking and clucked her tongue patronizingly. "It makes you smell like shit," she pointed out, "Even you can't escape that."

"So what?" Tabitha squatted and pushed the red tip of her cigarette into the cement. "I'll take a shower when we get home."

The witch rolled her eyes, a motion that missed completely by her companion. A cat sitting on the wall noticed however and mimicked the action. Circe smiled at that and reached over to pet the creature gently on the head. "Makes your clothes smell, too." She added as an afterthought.

Tabitha grumbled and stood back up. "So I'll wash them, too. Damn, woman, is logic lost on you completely? Lord what fools these mortals be." Stretching, Tabitha sighed contently as her back popped. Feeling better, she apologized for her rudeness by raising the tone of her voice and offering a bit more on the neutral topic of Shakespeare. "One of my greatest achievements was Hamlet."

Circe was too busy to acknowledge the boast. She closed her eyes and placed the palm of her hand on the cat's forehead for a good couple of second before giving a smile and sigh of relief. "He has a good home," she told Tabitha, "And I've put a spell on him to protect him from cars."

"Good." Taibtha waved at the cat who nodded his head in return. "His owners should put a collar on him, though." Satisified that the matter had been closed, Tabitha steered the conversation back to herself. "As I was saying, Hamlet-"

"Best thing ever, yadda yadda, I know." Circe interupted. "We've heard it all before."

Whether Julie knew it or not was but a moot point. Stephan had her trapped so intricately that any twitch that she made (let her smile! Let her cry!) would bring the silver ceiling down upon her and her blood would drip like winter rain.