A brief update on the never-ending story

My brains have been pretty much taken over by the epic story of epic-ness. I've been working for about a month now on this piece, and it's a fanwork. (I just had a Freudian typo, calling the piece a wanker.)

Anyway, despite all my brains being focused on this story, I find myself kind of struggling to continue with it. It's not an issue of plot. I know what's going to happen, and more or less when. My problem right now is that I'm slogging my way through filling in gaps. I have major events A, B, and C. (These letters are stand-ins for the actual long and complicated explanations of events...as if you couldn't tell.) I've written the events themselves. It's just hard to wade through all the stuff that happens between A and B and B and C. I even have a little bit of post-C stuff written.

I'm impatient because I want to get to event C already! I want to catch up to the present, which is C, as far as the story goes. At one point C was the distant and nebulous future...and now that it's here, I want to be able to lay A and B to rest.

I've been writing event C separately from the rest of the story. I've got nearly 3000 words in C and nearly 19 size-ten single-spaced pages of the rest...that's just under 12500 words! I'm a little overwhelmed, I guess? It's weird feeling overwhelmed by something I'm enjoying and accomplishing so much in. Usually I'm overwhelmed by the nefarious non-accomplishment of achieving nothing--I am blown away and intimidated by the idea of future successes. (I swear, I'll stop using the same two words over and over again sometime soon.)

Besides the catchup game, there's also the part where 90% of those 19 pages are pure narrative. I'm going to have to go back AGAIN and flesh it out with dialogue and sensory details and much more awesome language. Basically, I've got 19 pages of really detailed ideas that are all connected and form the framework of a story. (This is part of why it's so easy--and so difficult--to go back and work through empty spots in the story that should not be empty. Yes, there are some deliberate gaps, but there are a couple major places that have to get fixed.)

I had to go through the same process with part C so that it would be ready for a couple people to read it over. The detail-work alone doubled what I'd had to start with. Thankfully, I didn't need to do much dialogue as I'd already included it.

Ugh. No wonder my brain made me spell wanker instead of fanwork. Must go be a zombie-fied writer now. @___@

Out to Pasture: Repair Man Wanted

I actually finished this last spring. It's 2700-ish words long, and took an interminable amount of time to do. I'm still not completely happy with it, but it is finished regardless. I'm not going to keep going back to it; it's time to let it go and move on.

--Repair Man Wanted--

A woman used to live down the street from me. She was, I don’t know, some sort of mechanic or electrician. Linda. Linda Baker. She always dressed in old t-shirts or flannel button-downs with greasy jeans.

But her way of fixing things was different than anything else I’d ever seen a handyman do. It was more like faith healing. Granted, I’ve never had her fix anything of mine. If a toaster breaks, too bad. It goes to the garage to rust in pieces, and I buy a new one.

John, my neighbor, swears she can fix anything. He had her do his dryer, and I don’t mean anything dirty by that. She fixed his dryer, and it’s still running without a problem seventeen years later. The thing never so much as had a full lint trap after she looked at it.


So one day I’m out mowing my lawn and John’s trimming the hedges that make the fence between our yards, and he yells to me:

“Heya, neighbor!” He stands there, staring at me until I turn off the mower and walk over. I really want to finish the grass-- there’s this tussock of crab grass that grows faster than the rest of the lawn and I can just imagine it’ll grow another half inch before I get back to it. John’s a real talker.

“Hi, John.”

“So have I told you lately about my dryer?” He clears his throat. I make some sort of sympathetic noise, because what can you do? Tell the man no, you don’t want to hear about his damn dryer? It’s just not what good neighbors do. John’s telling his story, but I’ve already missed some of it.

“ …weird. I mean, I know that appliances can have personalities, but this is going over the line. It just won’t stop squeaking and rattling whenever I use it.”

“I don’t know, John. Maybe call a repair man?” I shrug, still outwardly sympathetic.

“A repair man?” He looks at me as if I’ve suggested his wife has just confessed to an alien abduction…on national television. “I wouldn’t let a dead repairman touch my dryer let alone a living body! Wait a minute, that didn’t come out right.” John scratches his head. He gets words mixed up sometimes when he’s upset.

“Over your dead body, is that what you mean?” I’m trying, here. I take a quick look at the lawn. The goddamn crab grass looks longer already. I sigh, and hope John doesn’t think it’s about him.

“Not really,” he says. “But it’ll do. I tell you, I don’t trust ‘em. They just don’t have the skills these days.” He rubs his nose and I wonder if he’ll notice that he’s made a little piece of hedge-leaf go up one nostril.

“Nobody knows what they’re doing. It’s like any old Joe walks into the Maytag or Sears and says ‘hey, can I have a job’ and they say ‘sure, no problem.’” John shakes his head. “I’m telling you, they just don’t have the know-how. Why, back when I was a kid…”

I’m pretty sure my eyes are glazing over when he starts reminiscing about the “good ol’ handyman” his mother called while his father was at work. I don’t think he’s really thought it through, that it might not have been his mother’s appliances that needed the skilled hands of the repairman all those years ago.

I keep getting drawn back to that crab grass. It’s sitting in the middle of the lawn, mocking me, because John just won’t shut up and let me get back to my yard work. Look at that! It’s practically waving at me, like it’s some sort of red flag, saying ‘come and get me, you big loser!’ John’s still chatting away, but now he’s thrusting his hedge-trimmers in the air for emphasis.

“…I’ll do,” he says. “I’ll call Linda.” He smacks the top of the hedge with the clippers, but the clippers bounce and he nearly takes off his own nose. John’s too excited to care.

“Hey Linda!!!” His yell echoes down the street to three houses away on the other side.

“Linda!!! ARE YOU HOME?”

I hit my forehead on my hand. He wouldn’t use the phone, oh no. He just has to yell. I glance again, longingly, at the lawn mower and that detestable grass. I think it’s growing just to spite me now. There’s no earthly reason for it to grow like that. Maybe I could mulch it out? But then I’d have to mow around a lump of mulch.

John’s still yelling, but I stop looking at the grass when Linda answers.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT JOHN?” She’s leaning halfway out a window on the second floor. Linda has something in one hand, a plunger, maybe. It dips down as her grip relaxes.

“CAN YOU LOOK AT MY DRYER SOMETIME?” He’s turning red in the face from screaming down the street. “I THINK IT’S POSESSED.”

Linda disappears from the window. John stares at her house expectantly. Sure enough, five minutes later, Linda comes out the front door and crosses the street. She jogs over to us. Her face is shiny with sweat and half her shirt is wet. I bet she’s good with crabgrass, too.

“I can’t do it today,” she says. She’s thumbing through a beat-up appointment book. “But I can do it Wednesday, noontime.” Linda wipes the hair out of her face and smiles at me. What a smile. She’s got great teeth. I smile back.

“Yeah,” John says, after a minute. “Wednesday is good.” He is struck, I think, by the remnants of her smile. It a hard thing to miss, when Linda smiles. Dave, who lives next door to Linda, swears she can cure a hangover with it. I haven’t tried that one out, but I think it’s entirely possible.

“Well,” she says. “I have to get back now.” She turns away and for a moment we’re both drawn into her swinging walk. We mumble goodbye to her ass.


It’s Wednesday and John’s getting ready for Linda. The scent of Tide wafts over the hedges, so I’m guessing he’s washing some laundry to put in the dryer. Did he take off from work for this? I snort as I imagine him explaining this to his boss. I know I couldn’t do it with a straight face, and I‘m way better at explaining things than John.

I’m on lunch break, hanging out with a sandwich and waiting for Linda. I check my watch: noon. I hear a door slam and look up. Yep. It’s her, dressed for the hot weather in a tee-shirt and cutoffs. She’s got streaks of grease or sweat on her ribs--as she breathes the stripes move with her.

Linda walks confidently, sneakers squarely hitting the sidewalk. It’s like she’s parting the red sea as she steps out and crosses the road--no fear of the traffic coming from both directions. Traffic? I shake my head. Old lady Bessler in her Buick and Jamie Kalvoda’s minivan aren’t really traffic. Still, they stop dead for her.

This might be my only chance to see Linda at work, which is why I’m getting a sunburn and the mayo is sliding out of my lunch. Dammit. I wipe my hand on the hedge as Linda rings John’s doorbell. I don’t have to actually eavesdrop because John is loud enough for the whole block to hear.

“LINDA! SO GLAD YOU COULD HELP ME OUT!” John grasps one of her hands between both of his. He gives her whole arm a welcoming shake.

“I come in peace,” she says. “Take me to your dryer.” Linda’s lips quirk up, but thankfully she avoids stunning John with her full smile. She removes her hand from his.

“Right this way!” John moves wildly in some vague imitation of bowing. He leads her around the corner of the house to the side door which opens onto the stretch of lawn between our houses. That lawn is crabgrass free.

I look at my lawn. That trumped up clump of weeds is still there. I tried mulching it to snuff it out, but now I just have a lump of dirt with grass sprouting out of it. It’s like a mole with long green hairs. I have to trim it by hand now, unless I want to kill my lawn mower or spray everything within a ten-foot radius with mulch.

I think about this until I’m interrupted by a horrible caterwauling screeching noise, like someone’s poured fifty pounds of nails onto a dozen cats inside of a spinning cement mixer. I sigh. That’s John’s dryer.

“SEE?” John has to shout to be heard over the noise.

“WOW!” Says Linda. She has to shout too. “I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVEN’T HEARD THIS ALREADY!”

I peer over the hedge when the noise cuts off. John takes his hand off the control knob and opens the dryer door. It’s a front loader with a door that comes down like a drawbridge. He pulls the clothes out and tosses them into a basket on the floor nearby. Before I realize it, he’s spotted me.

“HEY, NEIGHOR! HOW ARE YA?”

I don’t jump into the air, but I do drop my sandwich. I wave a hand at John, and he waves back.

“WANNA COME SEE LINDA FIX IT?” John makes big welcoming waves at me, as if I haven’t just been spying on him over our hedge-fence for the past half an hour. Maybe he didn’t notice me. Maybe he didn’t care. I know I probably wouldn’t if Linda was standing right next to me, smiling and making small talk.

I nod stiffly, like I’m being forced to go, but I round the hedge in record time. Linda’s getting down on her knees.

She kneels in front of the dryer, reaches her hands out, and stretches her arms into the opening. I imagine her fingers knocking about in that warm darkness, her hands striking the metal with dull plinking sounds. Is Linda testing for some invisible problem with her fingertips?

Personally, I think the drum is out of balance. That’d explain the louder-than normal thumping, anyway and, if it’s been unbalanced for long, it’ll wear the belts wrong, making for lots of screeching. I’m not a handyman, but I know that much. I wouldn’t be able to fix it, though. I had tried to tell John this, but he still wanted Linda to take a look. I don’t know why she thinks she can find out what’s wrong by touching the inside of the thing.

Linda comes up, then resettles herself, and ends up half inside the dryer. I swallow. Her head and shoulders and arms are all gone from view. She’s bumping around in there, but I’m much more interested in the parts of her still outside. Her torso twists and stretches. The streaks on her come alive, slowly crawling as her shirt rides up.

The really, really interesting part is her ass. It’s so nice and so there, in front of us. Her jeans are worn in all the right places and the fabric is pulled tight. I wonder if she does workout videos, or if this perfection is natural, or if maybe it’s because she spends so much time like this, on her knees with her arms buried in appliances. I take my eyes off it for a quick look at John. He’s starting to drool, poor guy. His brain has vacated the premises. I wipe my own face, just in case, as I return to looking at Linda.

Dammit. She stops moving, pulls herself out of the dryer, and unfolds to stand again. She wipes her hands on her shirt, leaving more streaks that slowly fade. Must be water. She smiles at us and John is stupefied again.

“Well,” Linda says. “I can fix it.” She keeps smiling at John. “I can do it right now, if you want.”

“Yeah. Now is good.” John clears his throat and shakes his head. “Go ahead, Linda.”

Linda takes the clothes from the basket and loads them into the dryer. She shuts the door, sets the cycle knob, and nudges John in the side with one of her elbows.

“You wanna do the honors?” She says.

“Huh?” John is so articulate sometimes. I feel embarrassed for him.

“Do you want to turn the dryer on? I can’t fix it until it’s running.” Linda takes a good look at John. “You feeling all right? You look a little sweaty.”

“It’s just the heat today…puts me off my lunch, you know?” John runs a hand over his face before attempting a smile. “Sure, I’ll turn the dryer on!”

What kind of fixing could Linda do with the dryer running? She could electrocute herself that way, if she has to open the dryer up and mess with the wiring. I frown just a little as John reaches out.

“Don’t look so worried. I do this all the time.” Linda whispers into my ear and I feel her lips brush against it. She pats me on the shoulder and steps up to the dryer once it begins its screeching. I wonder if she knows what she does to the people who own the appliances, if this is all on purpose or if she’s genuinely unaware.

I inhale and let the air out again. Linda’s hot, in her grungy repairwoman way. Or maybe she’s that much prettier because you can see she’s pretty despite the clothing and the wrenches and plungers? I don’t know.

What I know is this: she becomes the center of attention wherever she goes. Like now, where she’s posed just so in front of the dryer, it’s like everything in the room leads to Linda. The laundry basket, the washing machine, the doorway to the rest of the house, and even the bottles of detergent and fabric softener all align in such a way that Linda is the focus of it all. And, as she moves and puts her hands over the top of the dryer, not yet touching the surface, she exerts some kind of gravity and John and I are pulled in close. It’s like we can’t breathe until she breathes, though the dryer still screeches regardless of any special influence Linda appears to have. She claps her hands and breaks the spell.

“Now then,” she says. “Watch closely.” She smiles and winks at us.

John is speechless. I am speechless. Linda’s hands start, palms down, a foot above the dryer top. They descend. Ten inches up, her fingers spread out. Six inches and all her fingers wiggle and straighten out. At four inches her hands are perfectly rigid and straight: mannequin hands. Two inches and that perfect stillness spreads through her body.

One inch away from the surface, Linda stops moving entirely for a second, or two, or three. The noise from the dryer is at a deafening pitch. And her hands make contact with the metal. I exhale, not realizing I’ve held my breath until now. She lifts her hands up again and stands away. I hear something weird and turn my head.

I can hear John breathing. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and I turn to look at Linda. What the hell did she do? The dryer is quiet now, emitting only the faintest hum as the clothes tumble endlessly around. Linda smiles.

“What? You. It’s fixed? That’s it?” I feel as stupid as John looks right now. He’s stunned by the smile and probably completely pole-axed by the dryer’s lack of noise. It’s a wonder he hasn’t fallen over. I’m surprised my head hasn’t exploded yet. This is weird. No. It’s beyond weird.

“It’s fixed?” John asks. “Really fixed?”

Linda nods.

“I’ve got the magic touch,” she says, the smile still on her face. Linda wiggles her fingers at us, turns around, and leaves.

“Yeah,” I say. “Magic.”

John nods his agreement and we stand there, dumb in front of the dryer, looking at our hands and imagining hers.

Now what?

A shiny new blog for a shiny new era...

But seriously. I need the new blog to help me separate my for-profit/for-fun writing from my personal angst and turmoil that I spew all over my other online writing places. Thus, the Repository is born.

A repository is a place to store or archive things. This is excellent. I need a central place so I don't end up with eight different copies of the same piece. (Consolidating is such a pain, and I'm swearing off!)

I imagine posting mostly new things-- current writing projects and the like. I also want to put old finished things here. They deserve to be somewhere nice, not moldering away on my hard drive or, heaven forbid, fading off sheets of paper in a binder somewhere.

For all the transient nature of the internet, the things on it have a weird way of sticking around...