R.W. Ridley's Blog, page 26

Lou’s Diary – Entry 17

The Last Creyshaw: Book Six of the Oz Chronicles – daily word count (Oct. 11)

You’ll notice I missed yesterday.  Tuesday and Wednesday are my freelance days, so I get happily (because I get paid) distracted by another writing project.  As far as Book Six goes, I’m trying to weave aspects of Lou’s diary in there, so there’s a little finessing going on right now.

The Last Creyshaw: Book Six of the Oz Chronicles – daily word count (Oct. 9)

I had a relatively unproductive day on TLC, but I still picked up a percentage point, so I’ll take it. I had a startling revelation today about the story.  Something that had not occurred to me until tonight.  If I can bring myself to do it, you all are going to hate me.

The Last Creyshaw: Book Six of the Oz Chronicles – daily word count

As usual, I am off to a bit of slow start, but the pace will pick up. I have 5,000 and 6,000 word days ahead of me if the past is any indication. And remember, this is a rough draft at the moment. As I’m writing, a little voice in my head is saying, “Oz wouldn’t say that. You would, but Oz wouldn’t.” So, it will take some time to work myself out of the process.

Lou’s Diary – Entry 16

The Last Creyshaw: Book Six of the Oz Chronicles

Guess what I did this morning?  I worked on Book Six.  Yes, I did.  Guess what I’ll be doing every day for the next 40 days or so?  Finishing the first draft of Book Six.  Yes, I will.

That is all.  Yes, it is.

 

Lou’s Diary – Entry 15 (text version)

I left the fire tower this morning to visit my pile of body parts.  After reading the first half of Floyd’s journal, I realized my pile deserved a name just as much as his.  Why should it be forced to spend its days and nights freezing in the woods without a name?  That isn’t fair.

And yes, dear diary, I have lost my mind.  I cannot stop thinking about that stupid pile of mangled bones and rotting flesh.  I needed it.  It needed me.

So, my pile of body parts needed a name.  The only problem was I couldn’t remember what the right hand looked like.  Was it a man’s hand, a woman’s hand or did my stack of assorted limbs and feet and joints have the hands of a child?  Did I have a junior in my midst?

My pile was waiting for me just past the tree line.  I approached it feeling almost giddy.  I couldn’t wait to give it a name.  I peered through the spaces between the collection of severed body parts, looking for the hands.  Muscle, skin, fur, and innards seemingly clung to each other for warmth.  It was so, so cold.

A few minutes of intense looking went by until I finally spotted a hand.  And I was in luck, it was the right hand.  It was wedged in tight between some bones.  I couldn’t  see it clearly enough to make out if it was a man, woman or child, so I found a stick nearby and worked it in between the carefully placed gore.

A rush of warm air hit me in the face.  I pulled the stick back and nearly fell to the ground.  I inserted the stick again and the stream of air returned.  The pile was breathing on me.

I pulled the stick back out, steadied my nerves and hurriedly stuck the stick back in the pile and desperately tried to uncover the debris around the hand so I could identify it.  I had to name my pile.  It deserved a name.

I cleared away enough to see a fingernail.  It had a spot of faded pink nail polish.  It was a female.  I almost jumped for joy.  A female!  A girlfriend.  My own ghoulish pile of meat and bones girlfriend.  I knew right away what to name her. Valerie.  I had her back.  I had my Valerie back.

I felt a smile form on my face and was about to go back to the fire tower when something clicked in my head.  The hand – it was familiar.  I looked closer, my face even brushing up against a clump of hair stuck to piece of flesh on the pile.  It startled me enough that I reared back.  When I did, a flash of memory came to me.  That hand.  I knew that hand.     I’d seen it before, holding a knife in my face.

It was Fury’s hand.  This wasn’t my pile at all.  This was a new pile.  I scanned up the mound of various parts and saw the severed head of Pain camouflaged by dirt and dried blood.  His eyes opened.

Lou’s Diary – Entry 15

Lou’s Diary – Entry 14 (text version)

I couldn’t bring myself to read Floyd’s diary today.  I’m tired of his obsession with the Gore.  And that’s exactly what it is, an obsession.  He writes over and over again of being drawn to the piles of body parts.  He needed them.  They needed him.  He described being away from them as a little pinch in his brain.  The longer he was away the more severe the pain.

He went back to the aquarium a dozen times in two days at one point.  He couldn’t even explain it.  He knew it was stupid.  He came closer and closer to not being able to leave each time.  He really knew he was losing it when he started naming the piles of body parts.

The piles were made up parts from both animals and humans.  Each pile had enough parts that, if assembled, would make a complete two-legged creature.  They were mismatched parts that had no business being together.  One pile would have a horse’s leg, a man’s left foot, a bear’s torso, etc.  The next pile would be different creatures, but the same types of body parts: feet, legs, torso, arms, head.  The only parts each pile had that were the same were the hands.   Every pile had two human hands.

A lot of times it was obvious that the hands didn’t come from the same person.  Floyd identified each pile by the right hand.  Most of the time he could determine if it was a man’s hand or a woman’s.  Based on that, he gave the piles names matching their genders.  Children’s hands made it tough.  If he found one with a child’s right hand, he’d go by the left hand.  If both hands belonged to children, he just called it Junior.  Luckily, he’d only come across that once.

That was the pile he was most drawn to.  He always found himself standing in front of Junior, waiting for it to speak, to tell him what to do.  Junior had a cow’s head, so he wasn’t sure if it was even possible for the pile to speak.

He figured out at some point that Junior did not like the hands it was saddled with.  They were small and fairly useless.  He didn’t know if Junior had told him this or not.  Not using its cow head with its cow tongue to tell him, but by using some kind of mental mind trick.  Junior was saddened by its pathetic hands.  The other piles didn’t respect Junior. They taunted Junior.  They were cruel to Junior.

Floyd felt badly for Junior. He left the aquarium one day and went to the kitchen of a nearby restaurant and searched until he found a very large and very sharp knife.  He set the knife on a table in the dining area of the restaurant and promptly forgot why he had been looking for it.  An image of Junior’s cow head flashed through his mind and he remembered why.

Floyd wanted to give Junior a new set of hands.  His own.

He went outside, ran to the riverbank and tossed the knife into the water.

Lou’s Diary – Entry 14