500 words for the Parking Lot Confessional’s 500 Club

Word. So I’ve finally written a little sketch inspired by one of the weekly writing prompts provided by The Parking Lot Confessional, a cool blog about writing comprised of two-thirds people named Amy and one-third S.C. Green. The Amys (McLane & Nichols, here listed alphabetically to eliminate any perceived bias ) are two fantastic writers I know from Jim Sallis’ writing class. Every Thursday “The PLC” as they call it, posts fresh prompts for our writing pleasure. These prompts are also useful for those mired in writer’s blook.  Aside – I elected to let the typo “writer’s blook ” stand as I kind of like it. Writer’s blook must be a sound-alike for “writer’s bloke,” which can only be a down-on-his-luck foil for a victorian wordsmith. Or maybe not.

Regardless, they call these posts the 500 Club and here are the truncated rules:

1. Choose a prompt.
2. On your blog, write a 500-word story or scene based on the prompt.
3. Post a teaser to your story in the comments below with a link to where we can read the rest.

So here’s mine. It’s a little toss-off I wrote very quickly based on the following prompt: 1. Write a scene involving a character preparing for or leaving on a trip. For whatever  reason, as soon as I read the prompt the first line popped into my head and the rest soon followed, just a fun ditty. Word up The PLC, yeah you know me!

I could not find the friggin nose plug. So with wires from the waterproof electrode skull-cap trailing behind me like techno dreadlocks, I scavenged for the least important yet essential piece for my journey. The Roucher Deprivation Goggles indented my forehead waiting, at the ready. The mouth seal, breathing tube and oxygen had been tested. Saline levels and water temps were good, and the nutrient drip was on standby if needed.  Alpha-inducing osculation tones were queued and the capture sequence had been establish to harvest the raw feed as from the gorga-btye stream of data the electrical system of my brain would conduct.  We were primed because the apertures in our phase-space and theirs could only be synched so often. We also knew that even when the timing was ideal, connection and interface was rare.

Herman and Annabelle were at the instruments, Herman flapping his gums chomping on something called gum.  The camera’s were rolling.  Later I would chuckle at the sight of me scrounging around for the nose bits, flapping in the skin suit like some glam-rock future-naught. Despite how funny it looked on the re-back, nothing else could begin until the nose plugs were sourced.

The plugs had been painstakingly molded from an IR scan of my nostrils, lovingly 3-d Mapped and then printed with Ever-Putty ^tm_.  Truth  be told   they looked like two flaming orange boogs, but they made my nasal orifices water tight like nothing else and I could not submerge without a seal. Why the hell hadn’t we invested in two?

On my hands and knees I could her the aperture closing, knowing we would soon waste 43 Gorton Credits all for not being able to locate a squirm of Ever-Putty ^{tm .} Our dual leaders, The Right and Left Head would not be pleased. More like the Right Head would be unhappy but understanding, while the Left Head would be furious.  We might lose funding. I could be de-classed. Just for a dang fluorescent slab of snot.

Just then the wind-up chimed six bells, something theorized but never experienced. If the data from the apertures could be believed, the phases had momentarily converged, ideal conditions for interface.

The digi-re-back shows a desperate man in a wet suit make a choice. The re-back shows me run over to the instrument panel, grab ol’ Herman by the kisser and squeeze his mouth open into a pucker. It shows my fingers clamp down on his tongue and pinch a pink ball floating atop it like a wet puppy nose. I seize the old world gum like a pink pearl. I rip the gum in two while running toward the tank. I forcefully shove the sticky wet stuff in my nostrils, paddle up the tank ramp and splash into the chamber. The last image on the playback before the rainbow elexetron feedback shows Herman seal the ring and start the drum. The last re-back footage of the Bubble-Gum-Plug-Convergence.

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~ by 15wattLasVegas on September 26, 2012.