Origami and Hand-grenades - Fiction

[FullFrontalBuddha]

I'm going to modify this, just for continuity's sake. Of course, I welcome comments, criticism and questions otherwise I wouldn't have posted it in the first place.

My apologies for the long break between postings, it's a work in progress, so what I originally conceived of as a short story consisting of a paragraph or so (basically the start of the story) began to become a story.

I don't have an outline or an ending in mind, I'm making it up as I go along, so it may evolve as it progresses or it may just end up being a work of improvisational fiction. So, with that introduction out of the way....

[rollergirlblue]

:: waiting for the next page ::

[rollergirlblue]

i really like this buddha

[thefirstbardo]

I'm going to have to read this at home, but I will read it.

[TomLostMonkey]

I really like this - it's well written, intriguing and contains a lot of interesting thought. My only crit would be that each section feels like the start of a chapter, rather than a continuous narrative. There's a bit too much mystery, and not enough payoff. Overall, though, I'd love to see where this goes.

[FullFrontalBuddha]

Thanks for the input, Tom. I guess my intention is to have multiple viewpoints for the narrative; Miranda, the trouble-shooter, and the...whatever they are. Hopefully, as I flesh things out, it will come together into a coherent storyline. I'll do my best to pull the concurrent narratives into a cohesive unit (huh-huh, unit) and I've got some idea as to where things are going, but I'm still developing the story in my head and different things I read, see or think are helping the story progress.

Once I've finished the next few sections, I'll post them so maybe that will give things a better sense of fluidity. Thanks again for the comments.



I've only written a little bit more of the story so far, but it's been a while since I posted anything new so I wanted to add it. Please continue to comment and hopefully that will make for a better story in the end. This is sort of an experiment anyway. So, I'm going to delete the previous posts and then re-post everything in order, so at least the comments to this point won't be in the middle of the story if you're reading it, or re-reading it.

Again, thanks for your input. I hope the finished product is worth it.



01-28-10 update:
I haven't posted any additions for a couple of weeks, and I had thought maybe I could finish the story before the premiere but I don't want to rush it just for that reason. I've got another little bit, so I'll add that just to keep it going. Still working on pulling everything together, but I do have a cohesive element that I'm trying to work out and bring everything together in order to wrap the story up and explain things.

[FullFrontalBuddha]

Origami and Hand-Grenades

You wouldn't normally associate that level of large-scale devastation with such a little girl, but you know how kids are these days.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't really her fault since we started it. It was her or us, and it's looking more and more like it's going to be us. What was left of my team wasn't in any condition to continue pursuing the target. Hell, they weren't in any condition to do anything except lay around bleeding, thinking that they should have listened to their mothers and chosen a different line of work.

I dragged myself upright and looked around at the smoking crater that, until five minutes ago, was the Port Authority Terminal for the Staten Island Ferry. Behind me, lower Manhattan looked like a sand castle stomped on by an angry child. As I sat there, I wondered what my day would be like now if the Powers that Be had just left well enough alone.

Elsewhere, Miranda just played with her doll.

[FullFrontalBuddha]

She was left on her own to play by herself a lot, but Miranda didn't mind. Her friends were plenty interesting as far as she was concerned, even if she didn't quite understand them. One of the strangest things about them was that they weren't always where she expected them to be, but she could always find them. Sometimes, that was the best part of the game; figuring out where they were.

The big ones were easiest to find, of course. Not because of their size, like you might think but because they made a different sound than all the others. It wasn't a sound exactly, it was more of a pressure that she could feel in her ears as she got closer to one of them. And they were slower than the little ones, so they couldn't hide as easily. And if they tried to get away quickly, they always knocked things over so it was relatively simple to figure out where they went.

The little ones were much more of a challenge to find if they wanted to hide, they weren't nearly as clumsy as the big ones. And they wouldn't always listen to her. The big ones would do what she wanted them to, but the little ones could be stubborn. She liked the challenge though, because sometimes she had to sort of trick them into doing what she wanted them to. She knew she wasn't really tricking them, but that was a part of the game too.

Today everyone was cooperating very nicely, and when they were all together, it was kind of like a song. Not exactly, since it wasn't really a sound, but more like when you stood in front of a speaker when the music was turned up. The big ones were like the low notes and the little ones played the high parts.

None of them had names, as far as she could tell, but she never had any trouble telling them apart. They all had their own 'notes' and even if they were all together like now, they were all very different. They were her friends and she could count on them being there for her. They listened to her.

Well, most of the time they did.

[FullFrontalBuddha]

The first indication that something was wrong was that nothing was wrong.

Now this may sound counter-intuitive at first, but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. There's always something wrong, ranging from disaster-sized problems like floods and earthquakes to localized problems of civil unrest, hostage situations, hell, even a traffic jam. That was the problem...there was none of that. It was as if the whole world just took a day off from its problems. Everybody's lights were turning green, which should have meant that someone's light had to be turning red but for some strange reason, that wasn't a problem either.

Now, everyone likes to think that they want things to go smoothly, and there are some people who actually enjoy not having some kind of problem, but the majority of us have never encountered that sort of effortless perfection, where everything just goes...right. So we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it's human nature, or maybe it's just the unfamiliarity of it all. Whatever it was, it made me nervous as hell. I'm a problem solver and when I've got no problems to solve, I've got nothing to do. I don't handle boredom well, it makes me cranky.

And in the past 20 years, I've never seen a day where some nut wasn't trying to blow something up, or didn't walk into a building and start shooting people for no reason. It's not that I was hoping for something bad to happen, it's just that it always did anyway and now that nothing bad was happening - anywhere - I had a really bad feeling that that meant something really bad was about to happen. If that makes me sound like a pessimist, that's your opinion. I call it realism.

I'd love for people to get along, and help each other out of the goodness of their hearts, but let's face it - people suck. People have sucked for thousands of years and they'll most likely continue to suck for the next thousand, if some crazy bastard doesn't manage to blow us all up before then. So getting back to the problem at hand, people don't just get over that over night. But somehow, that seems to be exactly what's happened.

Something was terribly wrong.

[FullFrontalBuddha]

Miranda was like a tiny conductor, imperiously directing an invisible, silent symphony.

The big ones almost always got along, so they required the least effort in the way of direction. The little ones were capable of performing on a more intricate level, but that necessitated a greater level of control as well. Imagine a little girl's tea party on the scale of a large wedding and you'll have a fair idea of what she was trying to coordinate.

She played them all so masterfully, as they danced like dust motes in a beam of light. She couldn't actually see them, but she knew if she wanted that one there, then she just had to wave her arm just so and think about where they should be.

It never occurred to her that it was strange that she could control them, or that it was strange that she had these friends in the first place. With the unassuming innocence of a child, she most likely believed that everyone had their own accompanying cadre of...friends, servants, playmates? She never thought any more about their role in relation to her than she did about the fact of their unusual existence.

Miranda knew her friends were more than figments of her imagination since she had seen them directly affect things and people around her. They were perfect companions, because they were always there when she needed them and if she needed protection, she didn't even have to ask. She didn't want to ask them to do that anyway because she was worried about someone getting hurt.

Like that boy from down the street that pushed her down one time. He didn't get hurt, exactly. At least, there were no cuts or bruises that she could see, but he never bothered her anymore. In fact, he would cross to the other side of the street if he saw Miranda playing in the yard, or sometimes even turn around and run in the other direction. She didn't feel that badly about it though, since he was so mean to her.

Miranda was playing a game with her friends (much like she was now), waving her arms and making faces, seemingly for no reason, when the boy saw her. He asked Miranda what she was doing and she told him.

"I'm playing with my friends, they dance and make music for me."

It wasn't exactly dancing, since she couldn't see them, and it wasn't really music either, since they didn't really make any sound, but that was the best way Miranda knew how to describe her game (she was only six, after all).

The boy laughed at her and told her she was being stupid, that there wasn't anybody dancing and that there wasn't any music either. Miranda promptly stuck her tongue out at the boy and proceeded to ignore him. As she resumed her game, the boy watched her for a short while before laughing again.

"You're weird, that's why you don't have any friends and no one wants to play with you."

Miranda didn't like that at all, so she responded crossly "No I'm not! I have plenty of friends, and just because you're too dumb to see them doesn't mean they're not there. No go away or I'll have the big ones chase you off!"

If only he had listened. If he had just left her alone.