Category Archives: contemporary

September 23, 2010

A Red Flag to Add to My White One

By Avery

I’ve been thinking about this whole moving thing. The town Mom and I are headed to is called Tyne. I can’t even find the fucking place on a map–which is strange enough, right? Add to that how this whole moving situation came about, and it gets even stranger.

Mom gets a phone call a couple of weeks ago. This nursing home in Tyne needs a RN supervisor and wants to know if my mom wants the job, starting ASAP. Whoever it was said something about getting Mom’s name from a reference, but was totally vague about the source–like they just pulled her name from a magic phone book and didn’t want to admit it.

I’m wondering why her? Don’t they have enough people scrambling for a job as good as that over there? I Why do they need to call hospitals in Montgomery County? And, as far as I know, she’s the only one they approached. It just sounds weird, doesn’t it? I mean, this is a recession and all. I’ve heard of universities luring professors from one school to the other–that’s how my dad got his last job–but nurses? Maybe it does happen and I’m just not aware of it. But, something about this isn’t sitting right with me.

I know. It’s not like it’s a haunted ghost town that’s trying to suck my mother into it because she’s some sort of conduit to the dead, or something. My brain’s not completely rotted from horror movies. I guess I’m just jumpy right now. Since Dad, I’ve been more worried about her than I should be.

Mom would be ever-so-pleased to hear of my concern. That is, if she’d believe it. We don’t really get along, at all. I could’ve scraped her jaw off the floor with a shovel when I said I wanted to move to Tyne with her. Her expression was like someone had just stomped Santa Claus in front of a kindergartener. That alone was almost worth the daily doses of nagging bullshit I’ve had to hear since she said I could come along.

I keep having these dreams about my dad. Someone said that would happen a lot in the first year. I hate that, “The First Year.” Like there’s going to be a Last Year. Like he’s on a business trip or in the military. There’s no Last Year for him–except for last year. The First Year; what a load of crap. Anyway, in these dreams, he keeps calling out to me in a panicked voice. It always wakes me up suddenly, and then I can’t shake the feeling he wants me to do something. Add that to feeling the weird urge to go with Mom and watch over her, and you can see why I’m thinking her new job offer is on the shady side.

I don’t fucking know. I’m just tired, I guess. Does dreaming all night disrupt your sleep patterns? Maybe I’m just having delusions from being clinically exhausted.

Clinical exhaustion. That excuse sounds so much better coming from the mouths of publicists for coked-out celebrities.

7 Comments | posted in contemporary, ebook, fantasy, kindle, novel, release, Resonance, smashwords, urban

September 20, 2010

First Journal Post of Resonance Murphy

By Avery
My friend, Avery, says I should put something better as the title.  But, I don’t know what to put.  I mean, you guys don’t know who I am, or why I’m here.  You might think it’s just Avery doing this, or something.  She thinks you’ll get it.  But, for all I know you could be riders of the slow bus.  We haven’t exactly met, have we?  So, I figured I’d put you all on a low curve and spell it out for you.  If you handle it alright, next time I’ll give it a better title.  
If there is a next time.  
I don’t know about this journal thing.  Seems like a waste of time.  Avery seems to think having some sort of outlet for my feelings (the exact word she used was “rage”) will do me good.  She said it’s not magic, though, and not to expect typing a few sentences here and there to screw my head on right.  Just for that, I’m letting HER field all the comments left here.  That’s what she gets for shooting off at the mouth.  
So, anyway, I’m Resonance Murphy.  I’m twenty-two.  And, yeah, I still live with my mother.  I don’t like school, jobs, or society in general.  If it turns out I like you, you can call me Res.  If I don’t, well…  I guess that’s not the best way to welcome you to Avery’s old blog.  She might get pissed if I drive you all away in the first day.
Speaking of getting pissed, I need to.  Badly.  See, I’m standing in the middle of a road and one of those wheel loader things has been scraping up all of the life garbage behind me and pushing it forward.  Until now I’d managed to move ahead just enough so that mess piling up behind me never touched me, but the road has suddenly dead-ended.  And I’m standing up to my neck in shit.  If that’s not reason enough to get shitfaced, well, I don’t know what is.
A few months ago, life was good.  Well, it was fine.  Decent.  No big complaints.  Now, everything’s screwed up.  I’ll spare you the soap opera-y details, but, the short version is I’ll soon be moving away from D.C. to the Delmarva Peninsula (that’s that weird tongue flapping off the side of Maryland and Delaware).  It’s totally backwoods.  No more clubs, no more hanging out with my best friend, Spider, no more salons, decent places to eat, no more life as I know it.  Yeah, you’re probably thinking being twenty minutes from the beach is hardly an exile. Well, maybe for you. I couldn’t care less about oceans or sand. I don’t surf. I don’t sunbathe. In fact, I don’t venture into fresh air until the sun has set–and then only if every surrounding square inch is covered in concrete.
My mom’s already on my ass to change my look so I can find a job in overall-land.  She thinks blue dreadlocks are going to get me unwanted attention, give people the wrong impression.  I’m thinking it will give them just the right one.  Besides, who the hell cares what color my hair is when all there’ll be for me to do is de-beak chickens or shuck corn?
I could stay. I think about it. Hell, I daydream about it.  It’s the one thought that lets me get up in the morning.  Even so, I know I’ll leave in the end.  Something is making me want to go with my Mom.  And it’s not just about Dad, or the cash-cow leaving me high and dry (but, if we’re being honest, it is a factor). Mostly, though, it’s something else.  I keep having these dreams, and the other day, when we first visited Tyne–
Nah.  I told you I’d spare you the drama, didn’t I? 
Enough bullshit already. Moving to oblivion. Finding a crappy job. And that’s the end of it.
East Hell, here I come.

4 Comments | posted in contemporary, ebook, fantasy, kindle, novel, release, Resonance, smashwords, urban

May 7, 2009

Mixing Fantasy and Reality

By Avery

When I was little, I hated those squat, rainbow-hued My Little Pony toys. I was a huge fan of horses (yeah, what twelve-year-old girl isn’t?) and I had a collection of sixty-odd Breyer horses. You know those horses–prancing Morgans, preening Tennessee Walkers and galloping Arabians, each perfectly detailed and accurate down to the grooves in its hooves. I used to play with them by the hour, using Barbie as an accessory. In most little girls’ worlds Barbie was the main character and the horses would have been pets. But not me. Barbs was second-string, there to advance the plot, if at all. Most of the time my horses had human-free adventures. My pretend Mustang herd galloped across the open plain (the green shag carpeting of my bedroom floor), made friendships, were hunted, trapped and escaped back to freedom. And there was no place in that scenario for short-legged pink ponies with purple hair and stars on their asses. As much as I enjoyed fantasy, it had no place among my “reality.”

And yet that kid eventually grew up into the chick who digs blending modern life with the fantastical. I’m not sure how or when it happened. Maybe it had something to do with overdosing on too many sword and sorcery tales. Quite possibly Joss Whedon had a significant hand in the deal. Then again, maybe it was growing up to discover the enticing mysteries of adulthood were nothing more than chains which would tether me to a daily reality that was far less than mythic. In the midst of work, finances, housecleaning and insipid routines, I think I realized everyday life lacked the mystical quality my childhood held. Toadstools were only a sign of a fungus in my lawn, rainbows meant that it had finally stopped raining, and lightening bugs were just insects trying to get their freak on. And that loss of the “what-if” portion of my imagination must have had an impact, because somewhere in my mid-twenties I ditched the mainstream novels I had been planning and went genre.

While the mundane details of my daily life still exist on a grand scale, I now have an alter-existence where the strange, wondrous and mystical happens in the modern world. It’s like gaining back a lost bit of my childhood, a forgotten piece of me.

My horse collection is in my niece’s possession, now. But, I can still see every one of my old friends in my mind. And the next time I let the herd roam free, you can bet there’ll be some pink, yellow, and blue rumps mixed in with the rest.

12 Comments | posted in contemporary, fantasy, modern, writing