The Blogfest of Death!

Today's blogfest is... The Blogfest of Death! Hosted by Tessa's Blurb. Be sure to go read the other entries which I'm sure are wonderful! I'm going to do my best to get around to everyone's entries, but there are a lot so it might take a little bit.

My entry on this lovely Sunday is from a work that took me several years to write and still, after many plot revisions, topped out at 28,000 words (yikes! too short!). I still like it, but it was truly most important for learning purposes. However, someone dies in it! Woohoo! Okay, not really happy, but for the purposes of this blogfest it is. And to correct myself, the death actually occurs before this scene. ( I hope that isn't against the rules...)

So here you go! I hope you enjoy...

Ruth may have been informed of where they were going, but the moment she saw her brother’s red pick-up truck in the middle of an intersection smashed against another car, surrounded by debris, truth began to register, and she forgot about everything else.

A wreck had indeed happened, and that was Robert’s truck.

A tow truck was beginning to load the vehicles, and Ruth stared at the seat in front of her, hoping Robert’s truck was totaled and going directly to a junk yard. She didn’t think her stomach, or her heart, could handle seeing it a second time.

The police officer was speaking, but Ruth didn’t hear much. Her parents nodded along like obedient students, but when Ruth leaned over to her mother beside her and, whispering, asked where they were going, her mother responded with a shrug and tears.

Eventually Ruth saw the hospital further down the street and began to understand. They must need identification. Maybe we are saying goodbye.

Tears still hadn’t formed. The irreversible reality was gradually settling in Ruth’s crowded mind—but the grief hadn’t sunk in. She sat more in bewilderment than in a state of hysterics.

She had also forgotten that Jake was in her class when she was called to the office, and he was probably wondering what was going on. So when she saw his name on her ringing phone she ignored it, having little desire to speak to him about anything as huge as this.

A minute later, ten minutes later—she wasn’t sure about time anymore—her family was walking through the hospital doors and Sam was running toward Ruth—enveloping her in a hug.

And she cried.

Cried for her brother whom she’d never see again.

Cried because she was so much happier to see Sam than she would have been to see Jake.

And she cried because as Sam was holding her he was whispering, “It’s going to be okay. God has a good reason for this. Give Him time to explain,” and suddenly she no longer knew what she believed.

Ruth had always been a staunch supporter of “everything happens for a reason.” Every world catastrophe she was able to pass off as there being some greater reason she just wasn’t privileged to. Even her parents’ divorce—as abrupt and unexplained as it was—was reasoned in Ruth’s mind as for the better in some way, at some point in time.


It was how Ruth dealt with everything. But suddenly, when real catastrophe had struck her—not people in other countries or people she had never met—it all seemed like such crap. How would anything really be better without her brother?


Through her tears she glanced around the emergency room, looking for other people crying. Her eyes fell upon a mother and her young son, running alongside an entering stretcher. All Ruth could see was blood, but her mind saw the man as someone to blame. He was the driver, she decided, even though he may have come in from the other side of town.


Had Sam’s arms not been around her; had Ruth not felt, for just a moment, so safe and at peace, she would have chased after him. 

Blogfest time!

So, I just found out about the "I can't say it" blogfest hosted by Shelley @ Stories in the Ordinary today, but it fits in so well with my WIP that I couldn't resist entering.

As a preface, I would like to say that I will definitely get to everyone's entries, but it won't all happen today thanks to that whole job thing. But I can't wait to read them all!

Okay, I'm not going to give much back story on this... I'm just going to share it. Here you go!

I was armed with my lemons, and when he asked about them I just said I really like the taste, which is ridiculous. Just because a person likes chocolate doesn’t mean he keeps it near him throughout his entire shift. But Justin nodded along like I was normal. Again, what is normal?

Since I really enjoy making drinks he took all the sweeping and table cleaning duties, and in the few moments customers weren’t lined up in front of the counter we talked about school and classes and going to college and how Austin and Dallas are different.

Dallas is definitely the better city, but he begged to differ. And the final blow came when he asked why I was here then, in Austin, and I had no response. Instead I ran to the bathroom. I actually didn’t need to throw up that time, I just needed space from the lies.

Sometimes I feel squandered by them, as though they are originating outside of me rather than within me. And sometimes I feel like that game at bowling alleys that convinces you to keep dropping in tokens or quarters because that block is sliding back and forth and eventually, for the right person, there are just enough tokens piled up that the block has nowhere left to go and pushes a handful of them over the edge. The lies keep piling up and eventually I just won’t have anywhere left to put them.

Eventually they are all going to come spilling out and I have the sense that the final lie that does the trick is not going to consult me about the time or place it slips out of my mouth.

(Also, because of the whole work thing, I'm posting this late Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Shhhhh don't tell)

Beach Scene Blogfest!

I have never done a blogfest, but when I heard about the Beach Scene Blogfest over at Rachel Bateman's blog, I knew it had to be my first. See, I love lakes and beaches so much that I decided to write my novella for my fiction class about a family at the lake. It wasn't one of my best ideas because I've been working on it since March and, since I'm in Chicago and summer has rudely kept itself an arms length away, all it made me want to do was go to the lake.

In fact, this is a picture of the lake I love so much:

Anyway, the scene I was planning on using is one of the pivotal scenes towards the end, but when I reread it I realized that out of context it doesn't feel very "beachy." So I'm going to use this one instead. I hope you enjoy!

            When we are parked at the beach, Clarissa and I take Samantha to the shore and decide we’re going to do what we remember her loving years ago, when I was probably only five.

            “We’re really going to dig a hole?” Samantha asks.

            “Yup. None of this sun-tanning boring crap. This used to be your favorite, right?”

            Samantha nods, a smile slowly forming, and Clarissa doesn’t wait any longer to get started. “This is going to be our biggest hole ever!” she cries.

            And it is.

            We each build our “home” into the walls once the hole is so deep water is pooling in the bottom. I have a pillow formed behind my head and armrests complete with a cup holder. We get one of the beach umbrellas and prop it up in the center, so we all have shade.

            Our heads are below the ground level of the beach and from a distance you wouldn’t even know we were here if the umbrella weren’t giving us away.

            Mom walks up to us and leans over. “There’s my children! Here’s some sodas.” She’s brought each of us our favorite, and I’m glad I can put my cup holder to use after all. “Can I join?”

            “Nope, this is only for us,” Clarissa says, and Mom smiles.

            “Okay, well it’s already four so we’re packing up in an hour or so.”

            We nod and wave goodbye so that she actually turns and leaves. I take a sip of my root beer and settle back into my spot, paying no attention to the sand in my hair and crammed underneath my fingernails from the digging. That is, until I see Clarissa, from the corner of my eye, grab some of the muddy sand from the bottom and fling it at me. It misses, but Samantha sees it too, and there is only a single moment where we pause before mud is flying between us all.

            In the midst of war simple things are forgotten, like the fact that even though the sand in the wall is the easiest to grab, eventually all the support will be gone. So we look like muddy aliens, covered from head to toe, when our hole collapses and becomes wider but shallow. Too shallow to be awesome anymore.

            I start running towards the water, escaping, and my sisters follow. I run even when my feet reach the water, and I keep going until my feet are behind me and my face hits the water. When I stand up in the lake, Samantha and Clarissa are beside me and Samantha is wrapping one arm around each of us, pulling us tight until we squirm away. “I think this sand will still be in my hair when I move in,” she says.

            “Here, maybe this will help,” I say, and I pretend like I’m going to help wash it out, but with my other hand I grab some sand from near my feet, then I spread it all over the top of her head.