capri0mni | :::Sigh::: (and a squaring of shoulders)

Back on January 2nd I wrote in this very journal:

I think facing my fears is the key... Writing essays, and even poems, allows me to stand back from my subject and view it as a pattern of light and shadow, and shape and texture -- very beautiful patterns, and sometimes, very complex -- but still viewed from outside. But in writing fiction, I have to get inside the mind of a vulnerable, flawed character, and experience all the pain and joy that character feels for myself.

So even if I only write one scene a day, I will write some fiction every day.

Well, the year is barely a quarter of the way through, and I've already failed at that resolution... I've let days (and, lately, weeks) go by without writing one word of fiction. A good deal of my writer's block may indeed be plain, off-the-shelf generic brand laziness. But I think a good part of it is also that old fear... the fear that I "can't see what happens next" in a story, and so I don't move a muscle, just as if I were blindfolded in a crowded room.

But tonight, I just suddenly realized something: I'd somehow got stuck on the idea that I can't start a new story until I finish the current one. That wasn't how I wrote when I was a kid... my notebooks were full of half stories and only begun stories, and sketches of characters faces that I might put into a story someday, but never did... Sure. I had hundreds of unfinished stories. But I also had dozens of finished ones... if I got stuck on one story idea, I'd jump to another, and back again. That was back in the day when writing was nothing but pure pleasure, a game, and play. That's what I want it to be again... so why not use my old writing meathods -- the ones I had before writing was something I got graded on, and submitted for critique or publication?

No reason -- no reason At All!!

And so, in that spirit, I submit the following scenes. I'm thoroughly stumped about what happens next, and I may never figure it out. But that's okay.

In the meantime, other story ideas are sitting in a waiting room (painted that icky-institution green) with their hands folded quietly in their laps, waiting their turn.

That is no way for story ideas to behave. So while I open the doors and windows for them, and prod them into running around like lunatics in the sunshine, I offer the following for your enjoyment:

"Jack, would you fetch me a pail of water? It's time to do the wash."

"Aw! I've done that for the last two weeks! It's Jill's turn."

"Well, you're bigger than she is, and she's afraid to."

"Why should she be afraid? I'm the one that got hurt!"

His little sister piped up. "We didn't just fall, Jack!" she said. "We were pushed!"

"No, we didn't fall --I did. You just rolled down the hill after me for fun."

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not! And we were, too, pushed!"

"Ma! Jill's talking nuts, again! Better call the men in the white suits!"

"Enough!" Dame Dobb thrust the pail into Jack's hands. "The wash isn't going to do itself. If you want to go to school still reeking of that skunk cabbage you walked through, that's fine with me. Otherwise -- go get some water!" And she pushed Jack out the door.

Jack shrugged and walked up the lane to the well. He made a show of complaining, but actually, he didn't really mind. Ever since that day, the trip to the well was the one time his little sister didn't tag along behind him, and he was grateful for the time alone.

"Heh," Jack muttered to himself, "one thing's for sure -- that kid has sure has an imagination! Who woulda pushed us, her little invisable friend?" And he laughed.

But it was something of a forced laugh. Jack hated to admit it, but he was starting to get a creepy feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sun was setting. The shadows stretched long and blue before him. And up ahead, the full moon was just starting to appear over the crest of the hill, showing the well in stark, black silhouette. It would be truly dark before he got home. Jack pulled his coat tighter 'round his shoulders with his free hand, and shivered. Maybe it would be better just to go to school in dirty clothes...

No. No, he wasn't going to be a baby, like Jill. And he certainly didn't want to go home to his mother without having done what she'd asked. He wouldn't be able to sit comfortably for days. He squared his shoulders, strode up to the well, put the bucket on the hook, and lowered it into the water.

When he tried to raise the bucket, however, the crank wouldn't turn. He reached out and grabbed the rope, to try and jiggle the bucket free of whatever it was snagged on.

Someone -- something -- pulled back.

Jack's impulse was to let go, as if the rope were a lit match burning his fingers. But he couldn't move his hand. It was stuck fast. The whatever-it-was pulled again, harder this time, and Jack felt himself losing his balance over the edge of the well, and tumbling headfirst down the dark shaft.

In a split second, he felt his face hit the cold surface of the water, and braced himself for his life to flash before his eyes. But the surface of the water was all that was there -- like the skin of a soap bubble. Beyond it, a cold breeze was blowing. He was still falling, but he was falling through air, and landed, with a painful, bruising thump, on a damp forest floor.

Jack took a breath, just to make sure he still could, shook himself and staggered to his feet. The hill was gone. The well was gone. The rope and bucket were gone. There was no one there who could have pulled the rope, either. He looked up in the direction he had just fallen, and gazed into the tangled lacework of tree branches, and at the full moon shining directly down at him.

Midnight.

"What now?" he thought. "Do I just stand here, and wait?" And he answered himself: "Don't be silly." and he started looking for a path through, and out of, the forest.

He didn't notice the pair of glowing eyes focused on him from the shadows...