Category: Earlier Writing

Posted on in 2012, Earlier Writing, Literary, Sci-Fi, Short Stories

Reckoning

(Authors Note: This piece was originally written in 2012. It has been edited because there are some thematic issues I have with the text looking back. Part 1 remains largely intact as it wasn’t too awful, looking back. Part 2 required some severe editing. The piece was originally written in my Year 12 Literature class. It was an attempt to ape the novel ‘Atonement’ in its style and plot elements. Brownie points if you can spot the other literary references)

Part I

Perhaps he should not have come at all. Something about this meeting felt incredibly forced. She had sent him a message. Clemens St, Tuesday, 7pm. In her usual fashion, she was infuriatingly brief. Did she mean he was to wait outside on Clemens? It was a cold New London night and he hadn’t had the forethought to bring his jacket. No, she definitely meant the café. It was their place. The café was irrefutable a fact in their relationship as the war, and if there was one thing Milton know about her it’s that she was as sentimental as she was fanciful.

April turned into Clemens St, her brand-new heels clicking along the pavement and digging into her heel. She had half a mind to take them off but she persisted. She couldn’t appear weak in front of Milton. It had been five years; no contact between them. True, the war had not made things easy. Upon seeing her again, he would probably wring her throat. He was the type. The man had a violent streak, and his years in the army were unlikely to have satiated his bloodlust. April was drawn out of her thoughts by the realisation that she was supposed to be looking for Milton. She looked around. Clemens St was no longer the bustling street of eateries it had once been. All along the street there used to be little cafes with idyllic, outdoor dining areas. Half the shops were now closed, the other half were little more than rubble. The German had bombed New London, and Clemens St had suffered for it. Then she saw it, the humble little café they had visited years ago. By some stroke of luck, it still stood. Open, waiting for her entrance. Back when they were on friendlier terms Milton had stared bewildered at the French name of the place. Boire, she had told him, It means to drink. Of course, the word on his boorish tongue, he had mispronounced it. She had laughed. What had made her laugh in those days now made her wrinkle her nose in displeasure. Indeed, there seemed to be little to laugh at these days.

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Posted on in 2011, 2016, Current Writing, Earlier Writing, Extract, Fantasy

Maelstrom – A Look Back at My Writing

I’ve decided that this week I’m going to return to a piece I wrote around 2011. During 2010 I had a lot of spare time because I had open contempt for my VET IT course (It wasn’t what I expected and in terms of knowledge base it was either too basic or too advanced). Anyway, during that time I wrote a work of fiction that in some way a response to Twilight. It began life as a script but quickly morphed into a novella length story and at 30,000 words is still the longest thing I have written. I finished the work in 2011 and rather enjoyed it. However, on reflection, the main goal of the text (to satirise the Twilight scenario by making the Edward character intensely unlikeable by every metric) somewhat failed whereas the interesting plot threads still hang on to me to this day. There were many subplots that rather interested me and might be worth returning to. So, without further ado, here are the two pieces of writing separated by five years.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Fantasy, Scripts

You Can’t Get Ye Flask – Audio Play

[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]

Scene: 1

(THE NARRATOR SOUNDS LIKE A GPS AS VOICED BY A WOMAN OR PERHAPS SIRI, HER VOICE SOUNDS DISTANT, AS IF COMING FROM A PA SYSTEM.)

SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY

NARRATOR

You awake in a room. You hear the sound of dripping water, though it’s not clear which direction the water is coming from. There are three clear directions NORTH, EAST, and WEST.

LEXI

Go NORTH.

NARRATOR

You go NORTH. You drown. As you drown you think that the dropping water must’ve come from this room.

(COMPLETE SILENCE FOR A BEAT)

SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY CAN BE HEARD AGAIN

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Together At Last

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. FUNCTION HALL – COAT ROOM. DAY

A woman in a bridal dress, TEGAN, is sitting in the coat room. The walls are lined with immaculate black suit jackets. A man, TREVOR, dressed in a black suit saunters by the open door of the coat room, a bottle of champagne in his hand. He pokes his head inside the coat room and spots Tegan.

TREVOR

(to Tegan) Hey, I found you.

He pops his head out of the coat room.

TREVOR

(shouting)

Hey guys, I found…

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Tegan’s Preamble

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. CHURCH – SIDE ROOM. DAY

A bride, TEGAN, stands in front of a full-length mirror looking herself over in her bridal gown. She lets out an exasperated sigh.

TEGAN

This is it. The big day that everybody dreams of.

She walks to a chair in the room and sits.

TEGAN (CONT.)

That’s what people say anyway. Do I really want this? God, I sound like such a fucking cliché. A bride having doubts on her wedding day.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Scripts

White Wedding – Trevor’s Speech

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2015]

INT. TREVOR’S APARTMENT. NIGHT

We see a dingy apartment filled with all the marks of single-dom: empty pizza boxes, couple beer empties. We are positioned behind a armchair positioned directly in front of a massive TV. The blue light of the screen illuminates the apartment. We can see a figure, TREVOR, sitting in the chair, his head poking just above the chair. We then focus on Trevor’s from the perspective of the TV. Trevor is sitting, numbed out his mind watching trashy TV. His phone next to him lights up and starts ringing. His ringtone is ’The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel. He looks at the phone screen. We see the contact: MUM. It is accompanied by a candid photo of a woman in her mid-50s. He answers.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Literary, Sci-Fi, Short Stories

Monolith

[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]

As the sluggish train carried him into his work the skyline cast a dark shadow over the dreary landscape molded by the winter. It was an inescapable aspect of the city that was well known and oft parodied by its residents. The mood of the city became exactly like people outside it imagined it did in the winter months. Those travelling to work were covered in black, scurrying about in such a rat race that from above they must’ve looked like ants, ants tracking the same path every day. As he thought the train arrived painfully slowly into the city.

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Posted on in 2014, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

Mantis

[Author’s Note: Originally written August 2014]

He caught sight of her at the bar. She stood there, flame red hair and tall. Bright green eyes alight with excitement. She smiled at laughed with every man around her. Her teeth smiling bone white against the deep red of her lipstick. He looked at her, too beautiful for him but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. She whipped her head around the bar and caught his eyes. He felt that as he looked into her eyes the two shared a moment. With just her eyes and a tilt of her head she made a movement that he knew meant ‘come hither’. He moved to the bar. She watched him as he moved, carefully and resolutely. She silenced the man next to her with a move of her hand. She smiled sweetly at him as he approached. He took his place at the bar next to her.

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Posted on in 2015, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

Art is for Wankers

[Author’s Note: Originally written June 2015]

Leaning against the rail, his eyes wandered casually to an ANZ billboard above him. The slogan sat there. Live life the way you want it. One of those advertising statements that meant nothing because they can’t say what they want, Give us your money. It was good to know that three years of university had given him the ability to detect bullshit. He could’ve saved himself the money if he’d known that that would’ve been the only thing he’d retained from his course. Well, that and that small A4 piece of paper that hung in his apartment stating that he, Michael Alan Smith, had earned his Bachelor of Arts. In his head he responded with his major instantly. It was a reflex, sharpened for years when people at parties asked the same questions. He could quote the questions from memory.

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Posted on in 2014, Earlier Writing, Literary, Short Stories

The Girl at the Station

[Author’s Note: Originally written May 2014]

“Why here?” he asked the girl.

She was seventeen or eighteen by the looks of it. He was an age older compared to her. Sixty-five, not yet old but not so young either. The girl had applied a makeup that made her appear pale. Her blonde curls hung down, stopping around her chest. She wore a black hoodie and jeans to keep the cold out. It didn’t seem to help. The place she had elected to meet him was the grungy train station in the town he had grown up. A city close to the state capital and of decent size, but still not notable enough to be known to international visitors. The station looked as if it didn’t have enough cleaning staff to maintain a pristine setting. The ground of the platform was clean enough, rubbish that had been dropped in the last hour hadn’t been picked up but it was part of the regular mess of public spaces. The rusted corrugated iron roof, with what was probably a storied history, hung with cobwebs clinging to its darkest and driest corners of the inner roof. They stood on the bridge that hung over the main tracks leading to the nearby major city. The bridge was only crossed by people trying to get to the far platform, to board trains that planned to take a more rural trip. The nineteenth century looking clock hung over the station telling those who still bothered to read analogue time that it was about twelve past twelve. The station was almost empty except for people who had arrived early for the quarter to one train. The morning commute had subsided and the evening return was still hours off.

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