Creative pursuits are a practice, and you have to show up for them or they won’t show up for you. Last month, I made sure to answer a writing prompt every day in June. I showed up, even when I really didn’t want to, because the next couple of months might mean a step back from creativity in favor of wedding and grad school preparations. Of course, the second you release any expectations on your creativity, story ideas flow, so we’ll see how I do. After all, a novelist haunts these bones.
A cockroach at the Roosevelt
He was dapper from his itty bitty top hat to his shiny, spindly feet. He had an English accent he’d been working on and liked to walk it out for anyone who would listen. No one would listen, though. He thought of the accent like a dinner jacket that didn’t really fit his frame or match much of the Roosevelt’s decor, especially not the bar where he spent most of his time. Not that the jacket made him respectable to hotel patrons who weren’t pleased to see something like him lingering near the barback. He had a lot of hope, but not a lot of brains.
The nape of her husband’s neck…
…was beautiful with an ice pick in it. It was the perfect accessory for every outfit. Coco Chanel would approve. She admired her handiwork, her creative eye, her precision in placement. It was perfectly centered, bifurcating the skull. Putrid green? Match. Sapphire? Match. Red? You better believe it. She was happy to have dressed him in white linen, allowing the red to spread across the back as a mosaic. As it dries, the color deepens and goes better with her manicure. She is a vain thing and she accepts this about herself like any other fucking Leo. Coco Chanel did say to leave one thing at home, so she left her husband and now she will look so good. Funny how life works that way. Of course, a drop of blood gets on her satin gown, ruining it and her evening. Her face pulls down in a frown and she pushes him to the floor. None of it goes now.
Being chased by a killer
The man in the White House tells me what to with my fucking body, and he would watch me die if I’m not breeding his children. If I am breeding his children, he’ll send them off to war. He wants my children, the ones I don’t want, and grind them up in the political machine. “Let me see your tits,” he says. When I deny him, he says, “I’ll rip off your tits, then, you slut.” The mother, the whore, the hideous thing they want to consume. I am being chased by a thing that hates me, wants to rub me into nothing. “You are everything, you are nothing. You are the vessel to be filled.” Atwood told us Under His eye, and maybe she was right. But maybe she wasn’t. God is a woman, and she sees you. She sees you. She sees you. She sees.
Write about the scene at The Kasino Club, the only bar in Stanley, Idaho, on an ordinary Tuesday night.
When Stanley told me he wanted to stop pouring Miller, we thought he was crazy. When he wanted to stop pouring Yuengling, we knew he was crazy. He became more interested in wine, particularly Chardonnay. He went there once when Linda was sick with stomach cancer. She smoked enough pot to keep her tasting snails and pork cheeks and whatever else those people eat. But Stan? Stan let himself fall in love with wine. Loving something like that made letting Linda go not easy but palatable. When they got back from Linda’s farewell tour, he closed the bar for six weeks. That was expected. How can you run a business when your wife is running down the clock? When we got back, though, with Linda laid to rest, we were shocked to find the Kasino Club had been given new life: white walls, green and white checkboard titles, and a new chalkboard with forty-fives wines, most of which no one could pronounce.
bam