Daniel fretted over Dori until she was honestly getting annoyed about it. He sat her in the office, gave her an ice pack, offered to call an ambulance, offered to call a lawyer and did call the police. She didn’t want to press charges, but when Daniel told the cops about Smile’s wreck the week before, they ran him through their computer, found that his license was suspended, and went looking for him anyway. She imagined that the cops were getting kind of sick of seeing her name pop up every few days, but what could she say? It was being a really weird month. Read more…
Entries by Emmy Jackson
The thing that would replay itself over and over in Smile’s head, the thing that eventually made him so sick he actually vomited, kneeling humiliated over the stainless steel toilet of his jail cell, was that it was so easy. His first thought had nothing to do with shock or shame or horror, but more awe, at how easy it was to knock a girl down. He had just swung, and Dori had gone down. He’d seen twelve year-olds take harder hits than that. He hadn’t even hurt his hand. The realization went through Smile’s brain and was gone before Dori even hit the floor. Read more…
Smile was at Pandora’s when Dori arrived, cached quietly at a corner table and nursing a Coke. He was wearing a gray coverall she’d never seen before, and his hair was tied back. “Hey,” she said, swinging past the table before she punched in. “How’d you get here?”
“Khalid rented a car,” he replied, all but spitting the name out.
Dori made a sad-face, sympathetic to the upset in his voice. “He’s holding all of this over you, isn’t he?”
Smile shook his head, looking over Dori’s shoulder at one of the ceiling fans. “Go clock in,” he said.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Nothing. Go clock in.” Read more…
Brian wanted to come, but he had some other unspecified thing to do. Liz, on the other hand, seemed perfectly cool with the idea of taking her only day of the week off to wander around with Dori on her random business.
This didn’t make her feel any less weird. But then, it was probably going to be a weird day–she was on her way out to try and intimidate a newspaper, after all.
Dori picked Liz up at her apartment. She offered to drive, but Liz’ car was tiny. Dori didn’t feel like riding in anything smaller than her big old car just yet. They compromised, and Liz drove Dori’s car. Read more…
Dallas’ Lizard Lounge hosts a couple of noisy-stuff nights a week, under the name The Church. On Thursdays and Sundays, the DJs spin neo-gothic, industrial and electro (that’s according to The Church’s website) tunes in one of the cooler club environments I’ve experienced.
Being accused of kidnapping Taylor was too big a piece of news to be kept from Aunt Andrea, so Dori told her over brunch. Okay, so it wasn’t really brunch, just the usual super-late breakfast, but still. For some reason, telling on herself felt a lot like going to the teacher to announce that a kid had fallen off of the swings and everyone was saying she had pushed him, but she hadn’t. While she was making her report Dori wondered in the back of her head why she was so prone to random grade school and junior high flashbacks.
Aunt Andrea was predictably horrified. “I was afraid that girl would be trouble,” she said. “Sometimes I just get a feeling. You should probably talk to our lawyer.”
“You have a lawyer?” Dori asked, surprised.
Read more…
Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey
I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this book. I loved Blue Highways, Least-Heat Moon’s solitary journey through the forgotten backroads of America. Though Roads to Quoz is very similar in content, and the flowery prose is both creative and entertaining, the book itself failed to draw me in. Perhaps it’s a lack of a feeling of authenticity? The sense of navel-gazing is much stronger this time around, and the travels in this story were undertaken ostensibly to feed this very book, whereas Blue Highways had the feeling of being a personal odyssey that would’ve taken place whether there was a book deal in it or not. I don’t know if this is actually the case or not, but there’s something below the surface that makes Roads to Quoz feel more cynically mercenary at its heart.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Christopher Moore has yet to write a book I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. His stories are ridiculous and elegant, tightly-controlled bundles of absurdity that somehow never manage to jump the shark. Lamb keeps that streak going, with its story reportedly inspired in part by the question “What if Jesus had known kung fu?” according to the author’s afterword. In truth, though, Lamb comes across as a surprisingly thoughtful consideration of religion and history, and of the process through which both are created. Of course, it’s also got concubine-eating demons, an angel who thinks that everything on the television is real and a passel of hilariously clueless apostles, so don’t let the philosophy distract you, if you don’t want it to.
Liz and Nikki were getting together with some other friends for dinner, and Dori had to work, so they said their goodbyes and promised to meet again. Dori got to work feeling positively buoyant; Nikki was back, and her friend seemed cool, too. Nikki’s parting words had been to suggest that she and Dori go apartment-shopping the next day, if she was interested.
“Get a three-bedroom and I’ll move in in six months,” Liz said half-jokingly.
“Okay,” Nikki said.
Dori laughed. “I should start making decisions like that,” she said. “Just, bam, so be it. I am woman, hear me roar, and shit.”
“You don’t need anyone’s permission to run your own life,” Nikki had said, and then she and Liz left. Dori rolled the thought around in her head all the way to work. It was kind of empowering at first, but then she thought about it too much and by the time she got there, she wasn’t even sure what Nikki had meant by it any more.
Read more…
I’m not 100% certain about this one, which strikes a balance between too vague and too specific, and might not be as arresting as the previous challenges. It leaves the field a bit wider open, and presents less opportunities for mindless gore than before, though there are certainly interesting places to take it. But in the spirit of doing things differently every time, I’m going to go with it anyhow.
Based on the sentence below, write a story of anywhere between 500-5000 words. Genre, etc. are wide open. Using the sentence in the story itself is a plus, but not necessary. Meaningless bonus points are added if it’s the first sentence:
“As the door to the ice cream parlor burst open, I briefly considered the naked intern on the table in front of me and guessed that the agreement was probably off.”
As before, the best five submissions (+1 if something’s too cool to leave out) will be published here at Looking for Strange, with attribution and links to your website if you’d like. I now have the technology to include images as well, for any artistically-minded contributors!
Submissions are due 5/1/2010, and can be sent to me at emmy (at) elepent (dot) com. All submissions remain the property of the creators.
Looking forward to this round!
All in all, Nikki was one big happy surprise. She was still her moody, gothy self and that was okay with Dori, but she’d lost most of the hesitant, insecure girlishness that she’d been full of two years ago. In fact back then Nikki reminded Dori of the way Taylor was now, a little. Now Nikki moved and walked like she owned the world, in a good way. She was confident, meeting people’s eyes when she spoke to them and making quick, self-assured decisions. Nikki’s response to the story of Dori’s troubles with the football fans was immediate. “What newspaper?” she asked. “If you got hurt and people are harassing you because they printed an error, they owe you a lot of fucking money.”
“I don’t really want to sue anybody, though. There’s just something about suing people that bothers me. The whole idea of it. It’s just kind of lame.” Dori tried to cut a piece of her apple pie’s crust off, and wound up flipping it into her hair like a tiddlywink.
