500 Words-day 6 (Mundy's Story Part I)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day. What follows is an alternative version of a scene from Sidewinder with a character’s backstory.

     Mundy remembered bliss like this before. This was the feeling he remembered from waking up from a nap, and then knowing he didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything and could even go back to sleep. He hadn’t felt that ecstasy until recently in his life when he took long afternoon naps on the cruise ship.  His life before that had never allowed for that.

     He made no effort to think about where he was, but hunger began to pique at him, and there were sounds happening around him. He felt that he was in a seated position and his eyes were closed. His mouth felt funny. He remembered something about his mouth. It had been hurting before, right? But when was before? What had happened? He remembered something else too, this thought had been with him all along. He had done some bad things, betrayed people. The bliss sank away, replaced by guilt. Yes, someone had hurt him, but he had deserved it.

     “What’s your name son?” a voice spoke.

     It seemed right that they would ask him that, whoever they were.  He wanted to admit how bad he’d been. 

     “I’m a sidewinder,” he said. Because that’s what he had been, a traitor.

     There was a commotion around him. Maybe they were getting ready to hurt him some more, but Mundy was still too relaxed to move. Let them do what they would.

     More questions came, but they asked about his past. Mundy found himself walking back on the streets of the core world he’d been born on. There was the shelter, the place with the beds and the food and lots of other kids. The girl who probably had been his mom who stayed for a little while, but then never came back. He tried to be included with other boys. Sometimes they let him and sometimes not. Someone kept taking his shoes. They had two pairs and he had none. He learned to hide food and eat it where no-one could find him. Sometimes he got out of the shelter.

     Out on the streets, he met some other boys who stole things. They learned that Mundy had an “angel touch” and could pick pockets and purses better than anyone. Mundy began to steal for them and they gave him shoes as well as food.

     Mundy sat in the chair in the dark with people talking to him. It felt good to answer their questions. Their voices were gentle. What’s more, it felt good to go back and recall these days. He used to think about them a lot, but he had never really had anyone who wanted to listen to him talk about these things.

     He talked more about how he had lived at the shelter, but spent a lot of time out on the street too. He lifted things from people, but he never kept anything to himself. What good was money to him? The gang he reported to fed him better than the shelter and that was better.

     Then one day he saw a man arguing with a woman. They were being loud and the man was distracted. Mundy sidled alongside him and waited for the man to move. Mundy matched the man’s movement pulled a heavy billfold, and slipped behind the crowds until he could run down an alleyway.  

     When he was a safe distance, Mundy opened the billfold. There was more cash in there, local currency as well as Alliance Credits, than Mundy had ever seen. There was no ‘dent and no code cards, just enough cash to buy maybe enough food to feed everyone at the shelter for 100 years.

     Mundy felt fear rip through his heart. He had robbed a crime lord.

  

500 Words-day 5 (Cancer)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

With most of my writing, I try to offer some kind of answer or solution to whatever I’m talking about. If it’s a life story, I might say how it changed me. I don’t have an answer today. It’s just what I’m thinking about.

     When Naomi was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors kept calling it Neuroblastoma, so I did too. When I called a friend out of state to ask for prayers, that was the first time I said it. “Naomi,” I said, then I paused with the realization. “Has cancer,” I managed to get out.

     Some people want to personify cancer or imagine it as some awful beast. They talk about battling cancer, fighting it as if it’s in a boxing ring, or maybe more accurately fighting it like a knight and a dragon. It’s all about winning the fight, losing the fight means losing your life.

     But I read something in of all places, a young adult fiction book. One doesn’t win over cancer for any other reason than the right medical care, the grace of God, and sometimes just pure luck. Sometimes those factors fall into place for people and the cancer is overcome. Other times…no.

So here I’m going to say something that I believe is true, no matter how utterly horrible it sounds.  Sometimes this happens: No matter how hard someone fights, no matter how much they want to live, and yes, regardless how much prayer is being lifted up, they die anyway. They die anyway.

Naomi fought like a furious animal sometimes when it just came to a needle stick. One time it took four nurses and me to hold her down. And when that happened, I couldn’t help but be proud of her. I saw what a fighter she was. If cancer was a personified being, she would have cleaned its clock. Naomi got superior medical care and responded to it. She went into remission twice. But the cancer kept coming back.

And prayer. We had friends around the world praying for her. I prayed all the time. Every time I saw a falling star I would say a prayer instead of making a wish. There was no shortage of prayer for her. But still, she’s gone.

I don’t like to imagine cancer as a monster to be fought. It’s human cells dividing and multiplying in a way they’re not supposed to. Cancer has no evil mind that malevolently selects victims, letting some live and taking others. And in many cases, it’s no-one fault that it happens. While plenty of cancers are brought on by unhealthy lifestyles, many others, including the ones that affect children, just happened.

And this week a family lost a wife and mom. There’s no making sense of it. She didn’t want to die, she got medical care and we prayed for her and she died from the cancer just the same.

I struggled for years with God over losing Naomi. And I finally had to just keep believing in His love and His sovereignty, regardless of what I felt. Some things, there’s no understanding. Why the fall of man included diseases that create empty chairs at the family table is something I will never understand.    

  

500 Words-day 4 (Lunchboxes)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

     Natural insecurities that can occur in a young school age kids can be overcome in different ways. Some kids try to be a part of the crowd, some bully. For me, it was often enough just to carry a lunchbox. At my little elementary school where I attended from Kindergarten to second grade, kids gathered at noon in the lunchroom. There was no kitchen, everyone brought lunch from home. You could brown bag it like some kids. The hippy boy with hair down to his shoulders used the same brown bag every day.

But most kids had metal lunchboxes. Some were rectangular and some were rounded on the top like a standard mailbox shape. In fact, someone may have had a mailbox lunchbox. Nearly everyone’s lunchbox had its theme. Many were Saturday morning cartoons or recent films. One’s lunchbox could be their individuality like a t-shirt or bumper sticker. That was the kid with the Scooby Doo lunchbox, there was the girl with the generic princess one.

We sat in the lunchroom and loudly ate, our lunchboxes open before us and we regarded them like the boxes of our morning cereal. Pictures of our favorite characters were displayed for us as we lunched on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sometimes there would be bologna or something else with cheese. The popular store-bought cookies brought envy, or one might have some leftover dessert stuffed into a flimsy plastic baggie.

The tumultuous din of the lunchroom continued unabated. School staff and volunteer lunchroom moms would try to encourage a quieter atmosphere on occasion. But it was like trying to hold back the tide. From time to time, one would hear a bag being popped like a balloon, which would stop the noise for a half second before it began again. Ironically, bag popping was a punishable offence.

After lunch we would go out to the playground to work off our energy. Our lunchboxes would wait in lines against the wall. Then we would carry them into the classroom where they would wait for the end of school where we would carry them home.

My 1^st grade lunchbox was mailbox shaped, but it had a schoolbus painted on it with Disney characters riding along. The day I got the lunchbox I felt like a big kid. (Kindergartners only went a half day and didn’t eat lunch at school.) I carried my new lunchbox around until I was requested to leave it in the kitchen until the first day of school.

Only a few weeks into the first grade, I got off the school bus and was approached by some big kids. I don’t know what they said or what I said, but I began to feel threatened. The lead kid was close enough to me, so I swung my lunchbox in an arc and brought it right down on the top of his head. He reached out and tore a corner off of a paper I was bringing home and I burst into tears. That got them running away.

The next year I saw a girl clobber a boy with her lunchbox and it looked like it nearly split the boy’s head open. Reflecting back now, the metal edge may have just cut him, but he had blood running down his head and we all just stared. I realized what a formidable weapon I had used on the bully a year back and was glad I hadn’t hurt him bad enough to get me in trouble.

The next school year I was at a different school in a different state. The cafeteria cooked us lunch. We could bring lunch from home if we wanted and I did once in a while in my Speed Buggy lunchbox from the second grade. The thing is, it took way longer to finish home lunches and the upper grades would be coming in before I was done.

I got bullied a lot more in that school and had no lunchbox. Even if I did, I knew better than to try to hit someone and bloody their head. But I missed the comfort and identity I had once had. But a new life had begun, and the old security was gone.

  

500 words- day 3 (Sidewinder Backstory)

As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day. The following is backstory not included in my novel, Sidewinder.

When humankind stumbled on the ability to travel at light speed, the galaxy suddenly shrunk. Population on Earth was reaching critical mass despite limiting laws. So governments began building jump ships to carry humans to other worlds. The time and cost of these ships was prohibitive and the energy it took to accelerate a spaceship to light speed without actually accelerating required a fusion reactor big enough to power a state. The fusion reactor would spend a year charging capacitors to make the jump. So the ships that were built were the size of small cities, empty skeletons with several passenger sections attaching on before the jump. 

     Jumps only happened once or twice every decade. Worlds were colonized, and conflicts rose up. For lack of a better term, the military dedicated to the stars was called The Space Corps. Wars were fought, with The Space Corps always possessing superior technology.

     As the years passed, space travel became more commonplace. New worlds were discovered and colonized. The less distance traveled, the easier. So worlds closer together became the centers for government, culture and commerce. The worlds allied into a loose federation called The Stellar Alliance.

Earth stayed out on the fringes with all its history and became something of a curiosity, where many humans would resolve to make a pilgrimage at least once in their life.   

     Out in other fringes other worlds lived in isolation, particularly the worlds with little to offer in trade. More wars started over economics than anything else, with planets vying for business with each other. One conflict grew to threaten the stability of the whole galaxy. One planet managed to capture another with excellent shipbuilding technology. Combined with new chemical lasers and charismatic megalomaniacs leading, the Petros system raided other worlds. That is when The Stellar Alliance and The Space Corps brought out a new style of spacecraft.

     The Sidewinder was like nothing ever made before. It resembled the flying saucers of Old Earth UFO lore. And it was powered by pushing against gravity, an anti-gravity ship. With the fresh technology came the ability to navigate like no other ship had. Inertia was blocked, so the ship could turn and accelerate without the pilot experiencing anything. The Sidewinder ships were so maneuverable that they were impossible to hit. Skilled pilots almost appeared to dodge the directed energy shot from enemy ships.

     With the Sidewinder ships, everyone thought the war would end. But Petros and its allies continued to fight. Driving them back meant going planet to planet. Space battles took weeks. The Sidewinders were large enough to be equipped with bunks and pilots, engineers and gunners slept in shifts during battles. Crew members struggled with fatigue. The Space Corps fitted Sidewinders for ground assaults and the war dragged on.

     Then one day an engineer named Jarlath Ivanpah took off from a carrier on the border and flew off toward Petros. Just weeks later, the enemy fleet had Sidewinders of their own. Jarlath Ivanpah had sold out.

     The Stellar Alliance negotiated a treaty with Petros. Worlds and trade rights were given over. But the war was ended.

     Jarlath Ivanpah became the most hated man in the galaxy. Even though a small minority were thankful the war was over, everyone still called him a traitor. Most people believed he disappeared to live on Petros. But there were other worlds, frontier worlds far away from everything, where someone could go and start a new life. And on one of those worlds, a man named Burl Appleton arrived just before the start of the planet’s seven year winter. He reportedly buried something out in the dunes, halfway between the world’s city and its spaceport. Then the winter began and people forgot about him. He vanished, hoping to start a new life when spring came.  

500 Words- day 2 (My Writing Goal)

     As part of my participation in My 500 words, I am posting what I write each day.

    It was probably about 10 years ago. As I sat at my computer one afternoon, trying to write, I shooed my kids away, telling them that if they ever wanted something better, they would leave me alone and let me write. I don’t know which job I was working at the time, it may have been the construction job which paid higher than anything I’ve ever had. But whatever it was, I had notions in my head that it was not paying enough, it was dead-end and I hated it to the point that the only way out was to try to make a living at writing something.

     I have since repented from those absurd notions. I have learned that even successful, published authors don’t usually earn enough from their writing to get by, especially if they have a family. I have also learned that good writing takes years of practice. I may have had a decent story idea back then, but my writing skills were unrefined. In the past decade I’ve studied the craft and practiced my writing, but I’m still just an amateur.

     Another notion I needed to repent from was that if I wanted to write, I could do it on a weekday afternoon. I had young children in the house. How realistic is it to expect them to leave daddy alone so he can try to do not just a little writing, but make a living at it? No, when I became serious about writing, I needed a few lifestyle changes. I had to recover from my unhealthy habits regarding the internet and be able to open a word document and just write. For this, I bought a cheap, used laptop that had no internet. It was a good start. But then I had to set aside time to write. I took my laptop to coffee shops a lot and wrote at home some evenings. It took a few years, but I completed a first draft of a novel.

     But as I grew to love writing more, I needed to make it more a part of my life. So I started getting up early. This morning I got up at 6 to complete today’s 500 word challenge. The prompt was to set a goal for this 31 day challenge. But to do that, I felt I needed to go back and consider what the goal of my writing is.

     I write because I love to write. But do I really hope to make a living at it, or even earn a little money? Why am I getting out of bed at 6 if it’s not to better my life? I’m not at all sure of the answer. Sure, it would be cool to be a published author and I can set a goal on doing the best I can to achieve that. But doing my best is as far as I can go. So what is my goal?

     My goal is to become a better writer. I will never be so good that there won’t be room for great improvement. And as long as I love writing, I will continue to pursue this goal.

     For now, my short term goals are 500 words a day. Next month, it will be 50,000 words in a month, which is just under 1700 words a day. And the month following that, it’s to finish the next draft of Sidewinder by the end of February. More on Sidewinder later this month. But there is an observable and measurable goal, and I just told the world. There’s no turning back now.