The Unstableself, "Coming soon"

To fill in soon.

The unstable self "The voice"

Jack walked down the street pondering what to do next. His girlfriend had just called it quits after five long years of a mostly happy relationship. Obviously they had had their ups and downs but there were way more good times than bad. Filled with rejection and self loathing he had taken to the streets to clear his mind. Jack abruptly stopped.

--

I cannot believe she just 'decided' to break up with me. This is bullshit. Why would she do this to me? It was about that time, as I walked down the street, wrapped up in my thoughts that I first heard it.
"Jack walked down the street." At first I thought I was just hearing things so I dismissed it and went back to my dark thoughts but it didn't go away. I listened as it began talking about my break up and feelings. Hello? What the fuck is going on?  I looked around trying to find the source of the voice to no avail. "Confused, Jack looked around cautiously" I had entered a park and figured someone I knew was playing a trick on me with some kind of voice throwing device. The park appeared to be empty though. And who would be doing this anyway. Who would know about us breaking up? WHY DID SHE BREAK UP WITH ME?

--

Reminding himself of the breakup sent Jack into a bottomless hate spiral that made him momentarily forget about the voice that was dictating his movement. "I can still hear you, I just don't care right now."  Feeling like a used diaper and not wanting to continue on with this walk in the park for fear of running into some happy couple Jack sat on a nearby bench and put his head in his hands. He thought back on the last few months wondering if there was anything different that he could have done to change all this. Perhaps it was all just fate and it was inevitable.

--

Great now I am going crazy. This is not what I need right now. Her words still reverberated through my brain. "It's not you it me. I feel like we are growing apart and our lives are going in separate directions." What the hell does that crap mean anyway? I bet it was all a cop-out. She probably just wanted to go fuck somebody else. Why does this voice keep talking to me? And why does it talk about itself in the third person?

--

Jack ran down the street hoping to out run the mysterious voice but it followed him through the city. Jack did not want to deal with any of this today. First there was no milk, then he got dumped and now he was hearing voices. "That's it I am going to kill myself" He decided to kill himself. "That's what I just said." Jack caught a cab to the edge of town where the old dam still stood. The quarry had been drained a long time ago and now the remains served as a popular suicide spot. Jack climbed to the apex and looked over the edge.

--

Well, it seems like a cowards way out and most people will probably think I am emo for killing myself but I swear to God I will not listen to this for the rest of my life.

--

It was then that the voice spoke directly to Jack for the first time. "My child, rest easy. Take heart because this, like all other problems in life, will pass."

--

Wait, all this time God has been speaking to me? Why would you do that AND why do you talk about yourself in the third person?

--

Haven't you figured it out yet? God just likes fucking with you guys, its better than HBO. Also, God likes to talk about himself in the third person.

The Unstable Self

Write a story that alternates between the I and the he or she (or name of the narrator), making sure you don’t confuse the reader with the switches. You might also consider other ways of indicating stability –voices (in italics), commands. Or out of body perspectives. Why would this be useful or necessary? Imagine a situation where a character is under such stress that he cannot think straight – or perhaps she’s madly in love and doesn’t carte if she thinks in standard-issue thoughts. Josh Russel, the author on Yellow Jack, supplied the basic idea for this exercise. 500 words

I believe that attached third – person narration is the most accurate representation of how we think and live our lives, but many late – twentieth-century fiction writers came to distrust the third person, seeing it as the method of popular and genre fictions, which accepted the nineteenth-century notion of a stable fictional world and the suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, we rarely use the I in thoughts during everyday movements and activities. The first-person pronoun is provoked by others; it bursts out when you need to differentiate yourself from the surrounding world of other egos. Psychologists say that most people cannot remember new names on first hearing them because they’re replacing the stranger’s name in their minds with their own names as a defense mechanism.

The late Anatole Broyard wrote in The New York Times many years ago about a friend of his who had recently retired from psychoanalytic practice. The friend turned to reading novels because he missed “all the details of being and doing.” “Tell me,” Broyard said, “what do you miss most? What did your patients give you that fiction doesn’t?” His friend thought a while (and we should note Broyard’s implicit catty criticism of fiction – he was one of the regular reviewers of it for The New York Times) and said:

Most of all, I miss incongruity. A psychoanalyst, or at least this one, is constantly refreshed, even sustained by the gorgeous incongruities that people produce under stress. Such a wrench of perspective is a measure of our range, our suppleness. Occasionally a patient will go through the kind of abrupt self-transcendence that’s one of the glories of our species. Without transition, she’ll leap from the disgusting to the sublime, from the petty of mundane to the wildest shores of human sensibility.

My most common criticism of much contemporary traditional fiction is that it does not reflect these wrenches of perspective. Look for the musical sound of abrupt self-transcendence. Play with the idea that your football-playing character can move from relentlessly monotonous statements to a warbling and even girlish delight in his voice when he discovers the first violets peeping out on his mother’s backyard.

Unreliable Third, Pound

Pound

There Zane stood, looking dejected and alone at the bar, ignoring the music, pulsing and pounding through the air like a rocket attack into London Square circa 1944. So of course Klaus sidled up to him, approaching him as he did all things, crabwise and oblique, for fear of spooking Zane into leaving.

“Dude, put your phone away, you're out to forget about her, not make drunken texts in the middle of the night to a chick that didn't appreciate you anyways.”

“Of course you'd say that as you're always making drunk texts, but furthermore I lack a crucial prerequisite in making a drunken text, namely, being drunk.”

“Well, maybe we should fix that, y'know, loosen up a little, let your hair down, wash that sand out of your vag. I got the solution. Its perfect. Jagerbombs! Or maybe an A-10, c'mon man just relax!”

“I guess this round goes to you... along with the bill, and only, only if you get a water for yourself, you're going to hate yourself in the morning.”

“Psh, whatever man.” Klaus turned to the bartender and ordered 2 Jagerbombs apiece, just enough to get Zane a little drunk when his low tolerance was considered, and just enough to get Klaus himself approaching buzzed.

“To Beginnings! And Endings! And all that crap with everyone in between!”

Zane carefully, painstakingly even, downed his pair of shots as Klaus slammed his down the breech and into the barrel of his stomach.

“Cocked and loaded bro! I saw this chick eye-fucking you earlier, man, she was a sweet piece of ass, the bartender pointed her out to me. She's got a stellar fucking tramp stamp bro.”

“Uh-huh, and I'm sure she loves to be described like that.”

“Well you obviously need more shots.” Turning to the bartender Klaus put up two fingers and kinda twirled them, 4 more shots appeared and disappeared. “Follow me dude, trust me, you'll thank me in the morning.”

“Right, thats what I always do, I thank you for taking me to the sleaziest bar you know.”

“Nah man, this ain't the sleaziest, the chicks here have to leave their tops on, now c'mon, I need to introduce you to Cori. She's more your type than mine, but I'll take the hit and go for Ms. Tramp Stamp 20-11 while you waste your time.”

Dragged protesting through the crowd to an island Zane is introduced to two little petite blondes, one whose name he doesn't catch and Cori. “Not so bad” Zane thinks to himself, “She seems to be almost as disgusted with this place as I am.”

So they talk. Cori, is a 5' nothing, pretty despite her slight overbite, college junior into Politics, having an opinion, Star Wars, D&D 3.5, and most definitely not Nirvana. Zane thinks he's found paradise on earth, despite the provocative “dancing” of his friend Klaus that can be glimpsed through the crowd.

The night continues, Klaus and Ms. Tramp Stamp showing the club how this type of music got to be called “Pound”, while Zane and Cori begin a real connection. Drinks come and go, time comes and goes, and finally all 4 go home together back to Zane and Klaus' apartment.

Things happen there on the couch, again on the table, the kitchen floor, the bathroom, and then finally again in the bed. Followed by sleep. In the morning Zane wakes up in his 1 bedroom apartment, looks over at Cori snuggled up against him and asks “When did you get a tramp stamp?”

Decided to go for a hopefully more humorous and slightly less crazy take on this assignment. 607 words, counting the title. Out of curiosity, who do you relate better to?

Unreliable Third, One Night Out

This is it; this is the one, the cute little thing from downstairs. Today is the day. All I have to do is walk up to her and… the boy looks over the girl’s shoulder as she gets her mail.

I can’t do it.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks away.

She wouldn’t be interested in me anyway. I’m way too boring. We probably have nothing in common.

Wind whips at his face while he walks to the gym. The girl poking and prodding his subconscious like one of his guildies on a drunken rampage. All that he knows is that she lived on the floor below him and sometimes watches TV loud enough to hear it in the hall. Somewhere in that head full of Mountain Dew and Doritos he sees the perfect mate. Most people would just want to fuck her but all he wants to do is eat dinner with her and maybe show her the song he had been working on that week.

In a fit of what can best be described as frustration he takes to an elliptical machine ignoring the stares of passers by. After spending an hour avoiding mirrors and staring he goes to shower off the salt and stench. The clock in the locker room reads seven thirty; he has time to get some dinner before his raid.

There is always one hot chick working the register at the Taco Bell near the boy’s apartment. He waits in line with everyone else, but she is always boring a hold in his head. Once he saw her joking about him with one of her coworkers. She is nothing like the girl living a floor below him.

“Can I take your order?” the hot chick asks impatiently.

The boy looks at her for a minute, “Um… a number seven, chicken with soft taco, baja blast, cinnamon twists, and potato burrito.”

He checks his bag once he’s given his order, his order was filled correctly but they seemed to mix his order up with someone else’s because there is piece of paper with a phone number and girl’s name. The boy shrugs and heads back to his place to raid in peace.

As he walks past his angel’s apartment he can hear her watching Ruroni Kenshin through the door. The smile on his face disappears as he turns on his monitor, lays out his dinner, and clicks on the WoW icon. Normal friends would try to get their friends to stop such behavior labeling such friends as “shut ins” and forcing these people to go out for drinks or come over to watch movies. His friends aren’t normal; his friends are level 85 champions of the Horde.

One opens a chat window, “Dude, did you ask her out yet?”

“Nah, she’d never be into me,” he types while shoving a burrito in his pie-hole.

“You’re such a pussy. But seriously, all you have to do is ask her out.”

Nothing dropped from bosses in the raid as usual so our boy decides to go back to Taco Bell to mop up his tears in tasty grease. Hot chick is not at the register, she is replaced with douchey guy who sometimes works nights. The boy orders his food as per usual and walks to the pick up area where he notices the girl downstairs. The girl sees him and looks at her feet.

“Um, you live upstairs right?”

“Yeah, I, just wanted some food so…” his voice fades away.

“You wanna come over? We could eat and watch movies,” she sounds far away but is standing next to him.

“Really? You don’t think I’m disgusting?”

“For eating at Taco Bell every day? No, I think you’re pretty hot.”

Unreliable Third "This is only here till I can do better"

Claire slid her long fingers between the blinds, trying to peer out into the yard. The setting sun, setting at the right angle burned at her eyes. The bright light and warm glow from the sun made even going outside on a winter’s day a hassle. If only it would all go away. Sliding on her brown brimmed hat and and her obnoxiously fluorescent pink sunglasses, she raised her jacket’s hood over her face. She double-checked that the Flash paper, matches and playing cards were all together and slid them delicately into the pocket of her coat.

Finally, a break from monotony. Clair thought as she light her cigarette.

Claire started her walk to the hospital. The children's wing was letting the EMT volunteers come in and do small things for the children today. She was sure that her magic tricks would be a hit with the children. After all, what child didn’t enjoy the momentary escape of a magic trick or two.

Screams of laughter echoed down the halls. Claire ran down the hallway, quickly towards the sounds. She burst through the doors, just in time to see two nurses laughing as the children were brought into the room, clapping.

They look happy, Claire thought as she smiled, they’re cheering me on.

Claire took out her cards first, giving a small bow, she shuffled them amazingly. Walking up and down the isle, showing the kids, her amazing card tricks. Taking turns to allow small groups to witness her trick and ask questions. Quickly, she brought out her next trick. Claire gave the bright colored kerchief, hiding in her sleeve a quick pull. The kerchief line didn’t budge. She smiled, wearily for a moment before tugging harder. Claire tugged so hard, kerchiefs flew about the room, in an explosion of color. The children laughed. Claire scanned the crowd, with a sad smile. In the corner, the small brunette child in a white sweater dropped her cup to the ground, in a coughing fit. The rest of the children moved out of the way as Claire took a deep breath, and headed towards the girl. The child’s face fell as tears welled up in her eyes as her skin began to grow pale, her monitors, screaming. The children grew silent, as they tried to move out of the way, cowering under their covers, crying. Claire smiled moving on with the show, as she began to light pieces of flash paper in amazement, as she raised her wand in the air, a piercing pain took to her chest as the lights flickered to black.

Claire woke up in a strange room, the pain in her chest burning as she found her arms bound to her sides.

“Hello Claire, It’s good to see your awake.”

Claire looked at the doctor perplexed, she didn’t seem to recognise her.

“Do you know where you are?.” She said, Claire nodding a little. “Your in the ER. Do you know why you’re here?”

Claire thought back over her day. with a smile. “I was preforming magic.”

“No, Claire, I wish that was the case. You came into the children’s ward Christmas show. Unfortunately, you began to shut down, some of the children’s respirators and monitors. Others, you beat with your wand, before sitting down on an empty bed and setting the room on fire. When they tried to remove you, you began screaming and yelling and threatening more children. They had to take you down. Fortunately, no one died. Unfortunately, You’re going someplace where you can’t hurt anyone ever again. ”

Unreliable Third 'It happened'

It finally happened, Damn Zombies. Jake sighed as he put a bullet between the eyes of the last of his family members. It came just like he had always known it would. It came without television warnings. It came without police barricades and televisions warnings and looting; though there is always time for looting. He began to gather his family into the backyard for the burning. After the pile was completed he doused them with gasoline and tossed a match. There is nothing quite like the smell of burning flesh. All at once Jake new he was going to loose it and double over emptying his stomach onto the grass.

The morning had come like any other, Jake finally decided to get out of bed around ten o’clock and stumbled to the kitchen to find something to eat. He settled for some cereal and an orange. As he was eating he thought it was strange that none of his family was around, especially because it was a Saturday and no one had anything to do that he knew of. It was when he was finished his food and was loading the dishes that he heard it: A thumping coming from his sister’s room.  He crept up the stairs to investigate the mysterious noise. He knocked for courtesy and the thumping stopped. Michelle? I am coming in. He waited for some sort of acknowledgement. All was silent. Then she began to pound and scratch at the door. She sounded almost subhuman. He tried to open the door for fear that something was wrong but she was exerting a surprising amount of pressure against it for someone so small. He heard desperate, almost angry grunts and moans emitting from the room. Now worried Jake backed up and kicked the door like he had seen in the movies. The first kick seemed to have stunned the creature on the other side of the door, A second knocked the door off it’s hinges. He charged in to the room to see his sister falling back and stumbling over a laundry basket. She flailed about trying to right herself. She looked pissed. Jake, having grown up around 4 girls and being the middle child knew it was damage control time. IamsoosorryMichelle,Ithoughtsomethingwaswrong.IheardallthenoisesandeverythingandIgotworriedandIguessIkindaoverreactedbutcanyoureallyblamemeImea- It was then that Jake noticed his sister’s fingers. She had literally clawed them to the bone. He could see the nails peeled back on themselves, the small white nubs wrapped inside the flesh. She charged at him. With no door to slam in her face he sprinted down the hall to his parent’s room. They were still lying there in bed. He began to shake them to tell them the awful truth of the morning. His mom was the first to wake embracing him in a comforting hug.  Jake was glad to have the familiar touch but something was wrong she was hugging a bit too long, a bit too hard, a bit too restricting. Then she felt her hot breath on his neck, and heard that now familiar groan he broke away just before she was able to sink her teeth into his precious neck meats. His dad woke up with a yawn and she was on him in a second. Jake seized the opportunity to arm himself. He crawled under their bed to find the gun case and quickly loaded clip and slammed it home. He rose slowly and aimed, said a prayer and pulled the trigger click. Nothing happened. He then realized the safety was on. He disengaged the safety and fired. His dad began to rise and Jake was quick to fire again. The rest of the family was quick to go.

 Jake reflected on the morning’s events as he headed back inside from the fire. Suddenly there was a pounding on the front door. Cautiously he crept to the front door. He could see a police officer’s uniform through the glass.  The officer called in Sir, we have reports of gunfire in the house. We are coming in. The cops burst in and saw Jake bathed in blood and gun in hand. He was screaming about the zombie outbreak when they hauled him away. The neighbors gathered on the corner to watch the events. An old lady was quoted by saying: He used to be such a nice young man.