Simon lived in a tiny town in the hills outside of Jefferson, North Carolina. He was a good child and lived with his family in a house on the southern end of the only paved street in town. It wasn't paved down where they were though. Past their home, the road trailed off into the distance, curving west toward the highway that led into the big city. If you were to go north on this little road, you would end up in the center of town. If you continued even further north, you'd end up back on the same highway the south end leads to. This tiny town was comprised of the one paved road with a number of smaller private roads where the homes and farms were. There was a church, a cafe, a bar and a general store. There was a school and a doctor's office. This doctor was also a dentist. Many of the gaping holes in the town's collective smile were his doing. He was the only dentist in town and if you couldn't afford to go into Jefferson to have your teeth looked at, you went to him. Unless you just waited for the tooth to rot and crumble out of your mouth bit by bit, of course. Which a number of people opted for after witnessing the excavation of a loved one's jaw. Not a terribly reputable man. Many of the town's women went to each other for advice on sensitive matters and relied on folk remedies rather than go to Dr. Mollohan.

Simon was healthy as a child, as was his brother Andrew. The youngest, John, was not so lucky. Pale and Weak, he didn't take part in the excitement of youth that his brothers so willingly reveled in. Their mother had a troubled pregnancy with him and quite frankly, she wasn't thrilled with the idea of a third child. She may or may not have cursed the fetus inside of her and prayed for a miscarriage on a number of occasions. Such was rural life, one could not just go out and have things "taken care of" unless you wanted the rest of the town to fall just short of lynching you. Things got out and rumors would fly. Even a legitimately failed pregnancy was up for gossip that would leave a lady's social standing in shambles. And so John was brought into this world and he didn't let out a single cry untill days after he'd been loosed unto the universe. Simon on the other hand, screamed relentlessly for weeks after his birth. Day and night with no regard for location, he screamed and cried and bawled and wept, pausing only for sleep, feeding and the occasional, concentrated expression of shitting his diaper.
Andrew was an entirely average and therefore uninteresting child.

Their mother was a woman of mouse-brown fire. Externally, she was reserved and bland as anything, but internally she was a fabulous example of frustration and repression. In church she was the most enthusiastic of worshipers, shouting and laughing and singing and babbling right there in her spot in the second row with her children staring wide-eyed next to her. She married beneath her. In fact, Marion was a city girl. She met the father of her children when he started cat-calling her every day from the construction site she passed on her way to work. It was all very romantic and dramatic. The disapproval of her family egged her on in her misguided and youthful rebellion. She was a young lady out to prove her freedom to do as she pleased! She found no interest in the sons of her parent's friends because they were dull in her eyes and more importantly, she wanted to find her own man. Not someone matched up to her by her family. So she ran to the hills with Jonathan and took him as her groom in the little box-shaped church on the main street of his small town. She soon realized the mistake she'd made after Simon was born. Through the spastic desperation of being a dissatisfied child, she retained a ferocious faith in God and lived her life strictly by the rules laid upon her by Him. She didn't believe it was right to up and leave everything behind. She'd made her bed and she had to lie in it. Things were hard until the children began appearing. She almost left and ran crying back to her parents a number of times, but it wasn't right in her eyes to abandon her husband. Even if he sometimes raised his hand to her.
When the boys grew older, he raised his hand to them as well. Always according to age and ability. If Simon was sick, Andrew was next in line for a beating. John was at an advantage due to his ill health- He rarely received anything worse then a belting around the knees and a good yelling at. Jonathan broke his eldest son's nose on more than one occasion. Marion became more and more resigned as the years passed. By the time Simon was 15, she was almost totally subservient to Jonathan. None of the children remembered her much differently and quite frankly, Marion didn't remember herself much differently either.

here's my finished short story. i originally titled it 'life on other planets is difficult', like the neubauten lyric. mostly because it suited the nature of the story and i wrote the first draft of this during the 6 months where i listened to literally nothing but neubauten.

i think some of the transitions between paragraphs are weak, but i just can't weasle it around anymore at this time. i'm sure teh whole thing is pretty weak, buut i'm calling it finished.i'm not all THAT concerned with this as it hardly tops 3000 words. i'm more interested to decide whether its worth trying to stretch out intoa whole novel...
it also has some problems with dialect continuity, but tp be totally honest, I JUST DON"T CARE. i've been fucking with this set of words for 2 years. i'm sick of them.
what a horrible attitude. i'll never get anywhere with that! for shame!


( life on other planets is difficult )

this is an excerpt from the first short story i finished in 2004. most of it is total crap, but this piece of it is ok. i only slightly edited it because it was really awkward in spots. i intend to elaborate a LOT.
just for the sake of not feeling like an idiot, the story does not end the way this piece would lead you to believe.

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so here i am now, sitting on this dumb rock by these railroad tracks. i'm waiting for the train but the train don't stop here where i'm sitting. i saved up almost all the money from the last few paychecks and i sent it all to mama so she would have enough money to last until she could get a job or get my brothers to do it. so now i'm just waiting here on this rock. i don't want to spend the rest of my life doing this and i can't go back home. i got a new name and everything now. but its not so much that, but i still feel bad for the things i did to get me here. and it all started with that one stupid walk on that one stupid night when i couldn't sleep. i shoulda' just got a drink of water and sat on the porch like usual. but no, i had to go out and walk and meet up with that bum who just had to jump me and i just had to go and kill him. pastor daniel should have left me alone. old men ought not to go around touching young men like that. and he kept on doing it too. what was i supposed to do? i couldn't get away from it because he knew about what i did. but see? that's what sin does to a person. you do one thing and it just leads to more and more. i don't feel bad for pastor daniel, but i feel bad for what i did. i feel bad for that bum too. that never shoulda' happened because i didn't have a real reason. i miss mama and my brothers and i miss dad. but i can't go back. so i made up my mind and i'm just gonna wait for that dumb train.

i woke up to the sound of my door opening, but i didn't let on that i was awake. i slit an eye open and saw grandpa standing in the hallway outside my door. fumbling with his underwear. slowly and uncertainly he lowered them to his knees and proceeded to piss on my doorframe. i watched in horror as the inevitable future dripped onto the carpet and spread slowly into my room. my space. another door opened somewhere and a shadow made its way quickly to grandpa, asking if he was ok, cutting off mid-sentence. grandpa was led back down the hall by dad as i feigned unconciousnes.
a few minutes later i heard scrubbing sounds and dad cursing the world this way and that. the sheets covering me went cold like they were afraid to be near my faulty genes. i sat up and asked dad what happened.
"nothing, simon. i'll tell ya in the morning."
i lay back down.

you see, this is the way things go in my family. and me being part of my family, i will go that way someday too.

edward never thought of himself as a particulalrly wild person, but on his 18th birthday he got a tattoo.
he strode boldly into the first sleazy tattoo joint he came across downtown, slapped $50 of birthday money on the counter and stated "i wouold like a tattoo of a skull on my arm, please.". as he said this, he twisted slightly at the waist and pointed to his right bicep.
20 minutes later edward strode right back out of the shop with his new symbol of green and wobbly rebellion. suddenly it occured to him that getting a tattoo was not rebellious in the slightest. everyone got tattoos at 18 years of age to symbolize their passage into adulthood and he was no different. he could have at least gotten something interesting in place of a skull. a telephone. or a tube of chapstick. edward decided to keep this revelation to himself, that he might chuckle inwardly, imagining the joke was on society and not himself.

i was drunk. i drank a 5th of whiskey and went out in to the woods at daybreak. the path shrinks and clears with teh seasons. this was midsummer and the path was nerarly invisible for the ferns and weeds, but even in my innebriation i remembered where to turn and where not to. i'd been traversing these woods since i was old enough to walk. when i was 5 years old i was bit by a snake here. not poisonous, but it was painful and i ran screaming back to our backyard where my father was chopping fire wood. at 19 years of age i was taken back here by pastor daniel. that was 12 years ago. i know these woods. i know myself. i know my way 'round a 5th of jack. the sun continued rising and i contined further into the woods.

my father died in a freak construction accident when i was 22. shortly thereafter mama died. she gave it up after dad went. she stopped cooking and cleaning and eventually quit breathing. she'd always been bitter about marrying into a hard rural life. my brothers left town then. they went to live in the city with out aunt and uncle. on dad's side. andrew's a cook. i think he's fixing to marry his girl. we haven't heard from john since he took the bus to the west coast a few years back. i'm the only one of our family still living in this little town. my great granddad built the house and dug the well. i got all i need here.

i tripped on a tree root and landed on my face. i might know these trails, but if i go down whilst under the influence, i'm going down good. tasting dirt, i pushed myself up and crawled over a large oak tree to my right. sitting under its canopy i watched the shadow of the sun creeping higher over the mountians to the north. everything was still pale and blue from the cloudcover. i touched the blood on my arm and wiped it off on my undershirt. i got skinned good on a fallen branch when i went down. i believe i fell asleep then.

i dreamed that fat, shiny beetles were crawling through my hair and raccoons nibbled at my boots. when i woke, the sun was high above. a drop of sap had fallen into the palm of my upturned hand as i slept. i collected myself slowly, made it to my feet and started on my way back home.

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this is so much more in line with the original simon material i was writing bcak when i started on him about 2 1/2 years ago. its good to know those ideas are still in there somewhere. they're just gestating and festering into maturity.
very. slowly.