OptionalFiction

It had been 12 minutes since Jane had gone to check on the weird noises coming from the attic. “We said we'd check on her if she didn't return after ten minutes,” offered Felix with some hesitation in his voice. He didn't want to go up there. Actually, from the beginning he had been against the idea of spending the night in this abandoned house. But when Jane and Steph had flirty stressed the pyjama party aspect of the night he had relented. “Well, are you coming?,” asked Steph, more to assure herself than to actually get going. She had stood up and turned on the flashlight of her phone. “Yup,” Felix replied getting to his feed. He grabbed his phone as well and turned on the flashlight as well. “You go ahead, you're the man,” commanded Steph. Felix gulped, but did not protest. He stepped over the Ouija board careful not to get his polyester pyjama too close to the candles they'd spread across the room. He made his way towards the hallway and didn't take his eyes off the door frame his white flashlight illuminated. When he'd reached the door he shone his light both ways to inspect the hallway. A slight draft went through from the cat flap down the corridor to the small round window the other end. It was swirling up dust through the air. A dresser stood against the wall with a couple of drawers half open. Most notably, the pull down ladder towards the attic was gone. The trap door was closed. Steph must have noticed the same thing as she whispered, “Jane must have closed it after herself.” Felix weakly agreed. He was desperate for any explanation that did not involve a murderer or ghost or any other fourth entity in the house with them. “Can you reach it?,” Steph asked. Felix tried to reach for the cord to open the trap door. He couldn't. He tried a few careful jumps, but the cord eluded him by just a few centimetres. He needed a few steps for a running start. He walked a few steps towards the door and turned around. With a running start of four steps he was able to reach the cord and grabbed it. The trap door swung open and the ladder unfolded behind Felix who had misjudged his jump and crashed into the drawer. “Fuck!,” he exclaimed in pain, immediately regretting the noise he had made. He pulled up his shirt and found big red scratch across his side, but luckily no blood. “Let's go,” urged Steph, clearly uneasy. Felix grit his teeth and began the ascend. It's just an attic, it's just an attic, he repeated in his mind. Finally he reached the top and poked his head through the trap door. He did a three-sixty. He spotted a lot of cardboard boxes and even more dust hanging in the air. No sign of life. No Jane, but also no murderer. He pulled himself completely up onto the floor and searched the room again with his flashlight while he waited for Steph to make her way up as well. She grabbed his arm and also started pointing her flashlight around the room. “J-Jane?,” he ventured. No response. Steph kept her tight grasp on his sleeve, but he didn't mind. This was freaking him out and it was good to have Steph close. The boxes were stacked high and basically formed walls around them. But in one corner there was a gab and the two slowly inched their way towards it. Suddenly, there was a strong pull on Felix' arm that through him to the ground while Steph began screaming, “Felix! Felix, something's got my leg!” Felix was pulled across the floor by Steph. He struggled to turn and face her instead of the ceiling. When he finally managed he saw that Steph's bottom half was hanging down the trap door. He had to drop his phone in order to grab onto her arms with both hands. “Felix! Do something!” Steph was screaming in terror. Tears were streaming down her face. His grip was slipping. Something was pulling her down, away from him. He tried to change his grip and in that moment lost her. She went down the trap door, out of view. The door slammed shut and he could hear her muffled screams below. He was in total darkness. His mind was racing. The phone! Had the light gone out? Where had it fallen? He suppressed his bodies urge to cry while fumbling around him for his phone. Then he felt something grab him by the leg.

I wrote this while listening to “American Prometheus” from the Oppenheimer Soundtrack on repeat. Although I would say that the soundtrack to the story might also be Roadgeek's “Towards the Sun”. Anyway, I learned the word “Fluffle” when looking up what a group of bunnies is called. It's not in any dictionary and more slang social media usage, but I think it's cute so I used it. Overall I'm very happy with this story. At least I put myself in a really melancholy headspace and got close to crying about having to venture out into the world and leaving those behind that once meant most to me. I'm only unsure about whether I should have ended the story when Tabby begins crying. I think that her starting out on her journey is a bit too hopeful. But if we leave her when she's crying still in the territory of her fluffle there's no actual departure. Maybe I should've let her make rest away from home instead…

It was the first day of spring. And that meant that Tabby Longfoot had to leave her warren. The previous night she had celebrated the coming spring with the whole fluffle of bunnies. There had been carrot cake and music and the little bunnies had put on a play. Admittedly the “play” consisted mostly of them jumping in circles and sometimes into each other, but much fun had been had. Afterwards, most of the fluffle had gone to their respective homes. Diego and Bonks had stayed, kissing and cuddling on the big swing until they'd fallen asleep. And Mommy Longfoot had stayed to get a head start with the cleaning. She was gathering together the crumbs and fixing the decorations that had come down in the whirlwind of celebration. Tabby had also stayed. She had hidden in the old stump. She had a big lump in the throat. Not just now that the festivities were over, not now that she could hear the terrifying calls of the owls in the distance. No, from the beginning when old Jollywig Earwag had held his opening speech Tabby had felt terribly lonely and scared. The worst part had been that she had nobody to talk to about it. It would have been extremely ungrateful to bring down everybody's mood with her feelings, especially when they were doing it all for her. The “Hello Spring”-celebrations weren't for anybody specifically, but over the years it had become custom to especially highlight and celebrate those bunnies of the fluffle that had come of age and would be leaving the next morning. This year Tabby happened to be the only one. Most of her friends had already left last spring. And of those younger than her she had only befriended a few. And then everybody had been celebrating her! There'd been “Tabby carrot cake”, some of the very young bunns had made a floral crown for her, Zippy had been her personal waiter and the play had been titled “The Fearless Tabby Longfoot.” She was the centre of it all, laughter and displays of joy all around her. And all she wanted was to cry. To throw up. To drown herself in the river. Now, sitting alone in the old stump she permitted herself to start slow and began sobbing. It was tough, after a long evening of keeping up a façade, to finally let her guard down. At first there were only a few sniffles. Her throat tightened and the first tears rolled down the grey fur of her cheeks. Finally she was able to let go. It wasn't dramatic crying, it wasn't loud. But she sobbed, sniffled and cried her heart out. She grieved the friends and family she would leave behind. She grieved the place she would leave behind, the burrows, the river, the trees and the old stump. She cried for a long while until she finally fell asleep exhausted. When she awoke a couple of hours later she found the community area completely empty. Her mother must've finished cleaning and Diego and Bonks must have also found their way home. The only thing she spotted was a knapsack directly outside the old stump. Mommy Longfoot must have prepared it for her. Tabby briefly checked the contents—some leftover carrot cake and a piece of soap. Then she swung the bag over her shoulder and set off eastwards, towards the rising sun.

I wrote this story on my phone late in bed last night (and am writing this journal the next morning). I want to try out a breadth of genres with this project and landed on “mystery” for this story. It's still a parody of the genre and not a real attempt. Maybe I should challenge myself to write something without a punchline or twist at the end. The joke of this story also changed a couple of times until it settled on an obnoxious detective. I had the idea of the presented motives becoming increasingly strenuous until a completely obvious suspect is revealed at the end (e.g. “Or was it this masked intruder holding a smoking gun?”). Another idea was for the detective himself to have killed him. I'm unsure if I've managed to sell the idea of the detective being some obnoxious nitpicker. It's a trope anyway so I don't know if a reader going in blind would pick up on it.

Detective Sumai locked the door. “Ladies and Gentleman, we've had a lot of excitement this evening, but I have figured it out. The murderer is in this room. But who is it? Each and every one of us had a motive to kill Lord Winslet. The obvious suspect would of course be the wife, Lady Winslet. Earlier today I noticed some white chips of paint under her fingernails. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then I saw the chessboard in the master bedroom. Black had won. A chess match turned deadly? Mayhaps. But let's turn our attention towards the next suspect, the gardener. While taking a leak at the back of the shed earlier, I noticed that for the past six weeks the Lord had been buying cheaper soil than before. Surely that was punishment for the shoddy work the gardener had done on the hedge around the back terrace. The gardener got angry and stabbed the lord with his garden clippers. Could be. But maybe the fact that the lord wasn't stabbed but shot tells a different story. The butler has resented Lord Winslet for a while now. You are probably wondering how I know that. Well, let me enlighten you. When I arrived earlier this evening and the butler took my coat I noticed him pulling on it a bit too hard for my liking. This leads me to conclude that the butler is letting his frustration shine through in the subpar butlering he's doing. Or maybe it was the worker that installed the windows in the mansion's guess bedroom. I noticed a very slight draft there. Not enough to tip off a regular person, but only one as observant as myself. The original goal surely must have been to get Lord Winslet to catch a cold from the draft and die from that illness. When this turned out to be a slow process which relied on a lot of chance—such as cold weather and the lord spending lots of time in the guest bedroom—you decided to hasten things along with a bullet to the temple. And I don't want anyone to think I'm not being rigorous in my work, so let's talk about my motives. Everyone knows Lord Winslet and I go way back. He loved to make fun about my excellent observation skills when he thought I wouldn't hear him. In a letter sent to his son he accused me of being nosy. And he called me a nitpicky complainer. To which I would reply that being nitpicky does already kind of imply being a complainer and that I don't agree with such a characterization of myself. Would I kill over it? Maybe. But I didn't. Lastly, Lord Winslet himself. Did he have motive for a suicide? I'd argue that the letter provides reason. There's an embarrassing amount of blood on here. And the text itself reads pretty cringe as well. Listen to this:

Oh God. It's that Sumai guy again. Why does he always come visit? He just complains about drafts in the house, the way the butler does his work, imperfect hedges, and he calls my wife's nails unclean. I have also seen him open my mail. He's making my life hell and he keeps ignoring the restraining order I put on him. I see no other way out of this. Sorry to my wife and son. I know you two understand.

Yikes.”

Obviously that story is a work of fiction. I wanted to try writing something that played with the relationship between fact and fiction. I also wanted to write something out of spite and I fucking despise Pokémon.

Okay, I know the challenge was to write a piece of fiction every day, but I wasn't feeling that spark today. I know it doesn't bear well for things to come to run out of juice after a week, but we'll see. Anyway, I thought I'd just tell an autobiographical story from my past. I've told it at parties a couple of times already, but maybe I can up the quality in the process of writing it down. I went to school in Germany where secondary school runs from grade five (around age 12) to grade twelve (around age 18). In my own second year the school introduced a “buddy programme” where older kids form grade eleven were paired up with the newly arriving kids from grade five. The goal was to give these new arrivals a person to turn to if they had some trivial problems. The young kids were referred to as “buddies,” the older kids as “mentors”. I was in grade six already, so I didn't get a “mentor,” but I did see these odd couples walk around the school yard during recess. Obviously most of these Buddy relationships quickly stopped and the kids found friends within their own grade and age group. But a number of them didn't. I remember being confused by seeing some of the little kids still tagging along with their “Mentors” a couple of weeks in. And the strangest thing was that these Buddy couples were the ones that seemed the most dysfunctional: The little kids would often be berated, made to carry backpacks or would awkwardly hover around a conversation their mentor was having with their friends. In hindsight I recognize the manipulation tactics that are now so often reported on in the context of toxic (often romantic) relationships. Back then it just seemed odd. But what elevated this oddness to a completely new level was when two “mentors” got into an argument. I never found out what the original dispute was about, but the important thing is that the two decided to settle it by having their little “buddies” have an actual fistfight. The poor kids were in too deep already and it only took minimal convincing for them to have at it. I can't give you the details of the fight as I wasn't present (and also it's two 12 year olds hitting and kicking each other), but I did see the loser after. He was just a bit bruised and mostly just a bit muddy. I was surprised to find a lot more buddies pairing up with their mentors again after that. When I asked a class mate about it she explained that the mentor of the winner had rewarded his performance by doing his homework for a week. There had been a couple more fights (all unprovoked, “just for fun”, as I could tell) until the mentors all got together and planned a big tournament to find the “best Buddy.” Thankfully the teachers caught wind of that before it actually happened and the buddy programme was shut down. When that didn't stop the buddies from tagging along with their mentors a rule was put in place that forbade “association of children more than two grades apart.” They had teachers policing the school yard and splitting up buddy-mentor couples. There still were four more fights before all of these relationships were ended, at least on school grounds.

The premise of characters in the story being able to hear the narration of their own thoughts tickled me. I decided for three characters as to be able to make the joke that after thinking that it's a limited perspective narrator the characters do hear another person's thoughts, but not the ones of the character that wanted it to happen to them. It was really difficult to find an end to the story though. There needed to be a payoff to either the joke or the mystery. I couldn't come up with a satisfying conclusion to either.

“Two cubes of sugar with yours, Jasmin?” asked Gina. “You know it,” replied Jasmin while Phoebe added some honey to her own cup of tea. The three had met once again for their Saturday afternoon tea party. “Cheers!” They raised their cups. “Here's to never forgetting our roots.” “To our friendship, here and now.” “To a future of fame and justice!” “Woo,” they all affirmed, lowered their cups again and took some tentative sips. 'Peppermint' for Gina, 'Autumn Delight' for Jasmin, and 'Angel's Touch' for Phoebe. “Oh, that's really good,” remarked Jasmin after a big sip. “You always say that.” Gina rolled her eyes. “Well, it's true. 'Autumn Delight' is the best tea flavour anyone has ever come up with. You can really taste the coming winter.” 'What's that even supposed to mean?' thought Phoebe. 'She always says that. Does it taste like brown leaves?' Jasmin and Gina turned towards her. They stared like they'd just seen a ghost. “What?” asked Phoebe nervously, “Have I got something on my face?” Gina blurted out, “Did you just think something out loud?” “Huh?” Phoebe took a moment to process the question, but couldn't come up with anything better to add than “What?” “You wondered whether my tea tastes like brown leaves, but, like, out loud,” Jasmin offered. “You're messing with me, right?” Phoebe laughed nervously. 'They can't really hear my thoughts. That's just silly.' “It might be silly, but we can definitely hear them,” replied Gina. “What! No. Okay, okay, wait. I'm gonna think of a number and you tell me what it is.” Phoebe closed her eyes and thought of the number six. A couple of seconds went by. “Well?” asked Phoebe. “You weren't doing it right. You got to think it out loud again,” protested Gina. 'So they can't actually hear my thoughts,' Phoebe thought, relieved. “So they can't actually hear my thoughts,” repeated Jasmin and Gina as one. Phoebe jumped up in shock, knocking over her chair. 'Am I going mad? What the f*ck is happening?' “Maybe you are. But if Gee and I can here it both then maybe it's us that are going mad?” offered Jasmin. Gina added, “And are you censoring yourself in your own thoughts? You are allowed to think the word 'fuck', Phoebe.” “Can you hear my thoughts?” asked Jasmin excitedly. The other two girls listened, but couldn't hear anything. “Nope. Maybe if you drink some of her tea? 'Angel's Touch' does sound ominous, maybe it's that,” suggested Gina. Jasmin quickly grabbed Phoebe's cup and downed the rest of the tea. She looked at her friends expectantly. “I can't hear anything,” said Phoebe and added in her mind, 'Maybe Gina can hear it and I can't, because I can already think out loud.' “Nope, I can't hear anything either,” admitted Gina. 'This is so spooky,' thought Phoebe, 'why is it me?' “Oh, I've got an idea!” Jasmin was suddenly excited, “what if we're in a story and Gina is the main character. And we've got a narrator that's limited to Gina's POV!” “Why would I be a main character?” asked Phoebe. 'On the other hand, I've always felt like I'm destined for greater things.' “Okay, girl, don't get too in your head now,” replied Jasmin. 'Well, I didn't want to say it,' thought Gina. Phoebe made a high pitched noise of surprise. Jasmin's expression switched to annoyed as she thought 'Ugh, am I really the only one that can't think out loud?'

Okay, that date is a lie. I wrote it on the 7th. But I'm catching up. There's two pieces in this text that are autobiographical. For one, the opening sentence. I got that greeting yesterday when I went to some store. The second one is my difficult-to-control urge to reply with “Anyways isn't a word.” which has burned itself into my mind after encountering the following joke somewhere on the internet:

Therapist: Anyways, let's talk about your problem with making friends. Me: 'Anyways' isn't a word.

I like writing (or playing) characters that are socially incompetent and extremely awkward. That's definitely also something that I've identified with in the past, but thankfully gotten over somewhat. I wanted the narrator to take Mike's perspective, but I'm unsure how well it works to have all his thoughts in the narration without being put in inverted commas or having them otherwise be differentiated.