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***the following is an excerpt from A Ticking Sound, which chronicles a man's struggle with mental illness***
Springing out of bed, i struggle to breathe with the strong metallic taste of blood in my mouth and with searing pain radiating from mid neck to the browline. my heart is pounding irregularly. Closing my mouth between coughing fits causes the pain to multiply exponentially but i keep doing it anyway. A bead of sweat falls into my right eye, stinging. i can feel it like it's real. "Maybe it is real."
"Something feels different about my face."
Empty, but my face was twice it's size.
"i've had another one of those dreams again. Another 'episode'"
"Am i now awake? Am i still asleep?"
i was shaking, terrified, soaked with urine. i can't make it to the bathroom mirror but somewhere amidst the clammoring i look down and the blood is pouring down my chest. The pain is so undescribable. Like the feeling of surgical rib spreaders forcing your jaws apart. "i've read about this somewhere. Sleep paralyzed. That's what I am. Maybe not though."
"How did it come to this?" "How do you stop it?"
A speeding train. A raindrop. Old age.
"i'm being controlled by a new someone"
"How did things get to this point?" Around the corner is the bathroom but my legs are giving out. Eyes watering,...stifling vomit but the mixed taste of bile and copper-like taste of blood forces me to puke and it goes everywhere. My knees buckle and now i'm forced to slosh in last night's half-digested dinner. Pulling myself up on the bathroom counter i can look.
"But only a glance. i promise."
"Flip the lightswitch. Electricity"
The word means so many things and one thing the same. Blood everywhere and a string of pink colored drool attached to my shoulder. Still coughing like crazy. One strong heave and the little pinkish-white bits tap the mirror. Probably two or three. Nothing but shards and gum where my teeth were. I'm staring at it. It's a shame. I hate my teeth. A solid five minutes. Another minute on top of that.
"Who cares about time?"
"Don't even think about doing it". "you don't have the courage and never did" "You can't change the course of destiny, so it really has nothing to do with courage"
By this time the pain is numbed by who knows what, and a strange magnetic force telling me to reach for the toenail clippers in the cabinet.
"i don't know who you are anymore." "This only happens in movies or in medical books" "What happened to the person that didn't have water on the brain? What is medicine? Stand up and be a man. You should be able to handle this on your own. Don't be weak, you fuck"
There's always been a happy medium but things have changed so much.
Without a second thought or flinch the file end of the clippers meet my gum and scrape bone. Like scraping a plate with a fork. Wincing with the expectation of extreme pain but it doesn't ever come. Starting with the canine tooth on the right side digging with the file.
"Stop it" "This makes no sense." "What's done is done." "i can take [pry] it out" "But, i didn't do anything wrong."
Jammed the sharp end into my gum underneath the tooth. With a quick hitting of the end opposite the gums the file is wedged with perfect placement.
"Don't do this"
In one quick motion my hand goes up and with a popping sound the tooth comes out and hits the side of the sink basin.
"Where did the pain go?" "yet another thing i've now lost" "i've always been here" "i've never left...i even scare away pain. can't even hold on to pain."
In a dreamlike state clipping away the hanging meaty parts of gum. Not a flinch so much but maybe the tightening of eye corners with anticipation. No matter what the anticipation doesn't stop. Never stop anticipating. A dreamlike state,...again. i hardly knew what happened. Something shiny is catching my eye.
"i still have several left to go"
But i'm fixated on something. It's the risk that I may not move from this spot for the rest of time that's fascinating. So many things have never come to fruition. "What's life anyway?"
"You're sitting the bench. You always have"
So i don't move. i choose not to. It's my choice. There are ghosts in my eyes. Five minutes go by, eight, eleven,...fourteen. There are ghosts in my eyes. For nearly two days i disappear into everything that means something to anyone. There's an insect in my ear. Water in front of me and i dive in. i disappear...into silky, red whirlpools. It's candyland. "i'm going to sleep. i'm going back to sleep."
i don't wake up. i'll never wake up. i don't want to wake up. It's scary out there. Sweet nothing. Sweet everything.
..................................................................................................
{Where did the line between reality and dreams blur? There was always a happy medium. Lines exist because we believe they exist. Times were different when we were kids but something happened and we don't know what it is. It's like being stabbed in your sleep. You have no time to defend yourself unless lady luck gives you adequate warning. I was almost stabbed in my sleep once. Saved by a creaking floorboard. Thank you shitty house. Dark, quiet, lonely fucking house. Sometimes the silence is louder than I'd ever imagined. It makes you wonder if despair is better than this. It's a whole different kind of hurt. Echoing the sounds of kids playing. The sounds of your kids. The tapping sound of dog claws on the floor. The smell of food cooking. The smell of me cooking it. The sound of your baby crying. The sound of your baby hurting.
Utter despair.
When we were kids we didn't have to worry about a thing. We were pure of thought and pure of mind. How much of where we land is affected by what happens to use when we're kids? It's impossible for anyone to really and truly know. It's the whole nature vs. nurture debate. No matter how the story ends, our destiny is our destiny and there's nothing you can do about it. That's why it's called destiny, you fucking fuck. Why even trouble yourself with things that don't matter? It's strife. Strife, and it's unneccesary. These are trying times and I'm trying. Maybe I'm lying to myself. Maybe everyone else is lying. Maybe I'm lying to everyone. I've been a liar as far back as I can remember. As a child I manipulated people. Sometime we play off people's emotions. What's the word for it? Sometimes we judge the situation by what we can get out of it. What we can get out of the people we're around. Like squeezing a sponge until you can't wring anything out of it anymore. Who's the sponge? Bottom-feeders. It's what our society is based on. Everybody does it. Sure they do. I'm no different that anyone else I've ever met in my life. There is no good left in this world. I know this with complete certainty, and with every fiber of my being. Or at least, I'm 99% sure...}
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| Author: Michael McClanahan |
Contributed by m_mcclanahan on Apr 29th, 2008
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On a hummingbird's ala, memories ascend.
Life intertwined with death.
I embrace you when I hold our children.
You join us in a flutter of wings.
http://fireflytree.blogspot.com/
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| Author: Marta Weeks |
Contributed by marta on Jan 10th, 2008
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After Life
Imagine living in a world where the human life span is 75 years and you know at birth the exact day you will die.
Human life has always been this way since recorded history, predicted life and death have become the norm and everyone has accepted it. Now imagine if one person lived past their 76th birthday. His extended life is complicated with heartache, betrayal and corruption, which result's in near suicide, revenge and murder. When asked about his after life experience, he responded, "I'd be better of dead".
I have had this movie idea for years and have finally put it down on paper in the form of a treatment. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the treatment, I would be more then happy to send you one upon your request.
BGF11@AOL.COM
Registered with WGA
Registration Number R17329
BGF11@AOL.COM
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| Author: William G Frei |
Contributed by wgfrei on Dec 9th, 2007
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My Script/Story/Idea is copied below. I have registered my Script/Idea (about 12 pages of the basic script/idea) with WGA website and received this certificate:
Len Mckee
Registered Item Information:
Registration Number : 1242295
Material Type : PROPOSAL
Intended Medium : SCREEN
Item Title : Earth's first broadcast from friendly planet
Filename : a broadcast from another world.doc
Submission Date : 12/3/2007 10:23:01 AM
The Announcement
The whole world is awakened one morning at 4 a.m. to an hourly, hour-long repeated broadcast “Announcement” from Earth’s nearest planet with intelligent life.
The Announcement is on all stations and in all languages. The world is brought to a stand-still. Their repeated Announcement is to end at 4 p.m. in time for all resumed news broadcasting. It consumes all peoples everywhere who have access to radio, computer or TV.
The male/female who narrate this Announcement are of a most beautiful and loving presence, especially the female - large captivating eyes. With their family of 3 children and strange pet (kind of a cross between grasshopper and cat) playing in background, they are obviously not ‘human’ but yet, so like us. Their intent was to lessen the 'shock' their Announcement would bring by showing they are human-like and also have children and pets.
Through the eyes of the female, the visual of epochal events are presented, as they address us. They disclose how this Announcement has been generating and permissions being sought for many years, and now “the long awaited day of their ‘contact’ has come.”
The disclose that each morning from 4 a.m to 6 a.m. they will broadcast small new increments of ‘their’ existence, and of ‘our’ past, present and future - from their perspective. Their educational presentations are most fantastic depictions as though live footage.
They caution us to discuss these things patiently and carefully, as much change will be forthcoming, and they do not want to shock us or overwhelm us.
We are invited to submit 3 questions by Friday 5 p.m. each week. The 3 questions are to be published on each Sat. and Sun. cover-story on all newspapers. "El-Shan" will reply to our 3 selected questions in each Sunday afternoon's 2 hr. broadcast.
>One question to be submitted from the floor of the United Nations (political);
>One question from the World Wide Council of Churches (religion);
>One question each week from The Globe—a forum of civilians, teachers and scientists (secular).
They have prepared websites for each group wherein there is opportunity for immediate world-wide participation in these 3 question submissions. There is quite the stir and jostling on just ‘what’ 3 questions are to be presented. Some governments and some religions cry out it’s all a hoax in effort to try to maintain control over their people.
The broadcasts disclose how events from our past have helped us to an awakening which has given us sufficient capability to accept, comprehend and implement the new. This Announcement brings unconsidered and unprecedented change to human 'thinking' and tradition. Particularly is the challenges presented to the 'business' of all religion.
Our Q & A time is to be most wisely used. Eventually, people of Earth are given a 'vote' as to whether the El-Shan broadcasts continue and live physical 'contact' to be forthcoming? .... Or, do we elect to block them out and go back to business as usual. They promise they will not intervene for 100 more years, IF we elect to forgo their assistance/contact.
The movie's crescendo is that final vote...
[This production is to be as though 'real' ... not as a movie. It is envisioned that there are no 'known' actors/actresses. All are new faces, as though this is actual and real. It is to be presented as though this 'will' happen. No typical hero's of the story. No dramatized violence or implanted sexual scenes just to beef up the ratings. If in weekly series, this could easily be a presentation such as the 24 series. If in movie script, the ending would be the resolve to continue education rather than the pressures to cease these broadcasts. It is agreed that 'not too much too fast' would be a wise strategy, and that actual 'physical contact' would come when all nations on Earth join in a World-Wide-Brotherhood, and are initiated as new members of Universal Brotherhood of Human"kind".]
by: Len G. Mckee
mckee.len@comcast.net
Phone number available by request.
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| Author: Len G. Mckee |
Contributed by Len Mckee on Dec 9th, 2007
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