Writing
I've been exploring a new medium in creative writing this year, and have found it to be a refreshing addition for my creative process. This has not only been an endeavor in personal reflection, but learning the mechanics and techniques of storytelling has benefitted me in how I think about other design frameworks. I have included some of the stories I've been working on this summer from a fiction writing class.
Scorpion King
“Give it back!” Caroline instantly recognized her younger sister’s shrill voice coming from half a dozen rows ahead. Last period band class had let out a bit late, so a few of Jade’s classmates had accompanied her to the bus stop, where they sat together in a cluster. Now they gaped up from their seats, as Elsie, an obnoxious brute of a girl on the school softball team, taunted Jade.
“Come on, jump a little higher!” said Elsie. Caroline recognized her from the eighth grade wing, where her cackle of a laugh reverberated throughout the halls. At nearly six feet tall, she towered over her seat back as she jiggled Jade’s trumpet case in the air — a bully’s trophy. Her robust arms jerked the case up higher each time that Jade made a reach for it. She reminded Caroline of a frantic bird as she hopped around in the aisle.
“Give it!” said Jade. Her frizzy blond curls jolted with each leap, her dainty arms stretching higher. Elsie was unrelenting and had gathered an audience, the other kids glad it wasn’t them this time.
Up until this point, Caroline had been lulled into a trance by the swaying wheat field outside their window, its hearty emerald blades at a sharp slant, steeling themselves against the breeze. This same hot and persistent wind forced its way into the open windows of the bus — the dense, balmy kind of wind that belonged only to the central plains of Oklahoma. It lifted her auburn waves and exhaled a weighty breath over her face. She had been in the middle of contemplating what exactly it was about this place…
In the small town of Okemah Valley, something about the terrain and the people was just a bit more rugged, more tough, more mean. Caroline thought of the dusty armadillos crossing the road that her mother had stopped for on the way back from the paint store a few days before. They had screeched and lunged toward the car, flaunting their plated shells, while Caroline really knew that their armor served only to distract from their vulnerable underbellies.
It had long been their parents’ dream to buy a place with land for the kids to run around and explore, to have the space to become themselves. They had purchased the property in Okemah Valley for a bargain, as it was a place neither growing nor shrinking, but was thriving as a predominantly agrarian community. Stretches of wheat and canola fields were stitched together by the historic Main Street, still boasting some of its original Western false front buildings with intricate brick patterns and storefront windows
glittering like jewel boxes.
This was the end of their second week at the new school, Caroline in eighth grade and her sister, Jade, in sixth. Their two older siblings, Michael and Judith, had been inducted into the mysterious world of high school, their lives becoming more intertwined as they bonded over cross-state road trips for grunge concerts and the passing of clandestine cigarettes. Chase, the baby of the family, had started first grade, leaving Caroline and Jade to navigate together the purgatory that was junior high in a new town. The idea of its strange, awkward, and scary in-betweenness made Caroline quiver. The thought had barely sifted through her mind when she heard the yelling.
Caroline froze, shocked by the scene — her brain couldn’t process that the distraught little figure bobbing up and down was her younger sister. Jade was fierce and mercurial, and had never been subject to bullying. Though small, she was a natural leader, and would effortlessly corral the neighborhood kids for hide-and-seek in their safe cul-de-sac back in the suburbs.
Jade, accepting her physical disadvantage, whirled around, her eyes frantically searching for Caroline. Their gazes met, and Jade’s pleading, liquid amber eyes paralyzed Caroline even more. It felt like one of those dreams where she was on a quest trying to reach her destination, yet she kept getting delayed by a slew of impossible roadblocks. The ferry wouldn’t depart. The car broke down. The muddy river turned thick like molasses. Time itself slowed to a crawl. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t will her voice to call out to Jade.
Right at that moment, the boisterous laughter of the kids watching and Elsie’s continued jabs caught the driver’s attention.
“Hey! What’s going on? Back in your seat, now!” he said as he slowed the bus and glared in the rearview mirror at Jade’s reflection, which stared frozen and defeated from the aisle.
Jade collapsed into her seat, arms crossed, and began to tremble. They were coming up on their stop, about halfway through the route, so Caroline quietly began moving toward the front of the bus. Her stomach hollowed, holding only deep despair as Jade slipped from her seat, head down while she made her way to the door. As Caroline passed Elsie’s seat, the girl smirked and thrust the trumpet case into the aisle, nearly tripping her. Caroline scowled back and grabbed the case as she made her way off the bus behind Jade.
Flooded with shame, she said, “Jade, I — “
“I hate you!” said Jade through hot, angry tears. She wrenched the trumpet case from Caroline’s grip and took off in a defiant run, bolting up the gravel drive toward the house.
Caroline crumbled inside at the stinging words. Even in their most heated arguments, they had never said this to one another. It was an unspoken agreement that the two of them, navigating this median of adolescence together — not yet women, but having crossed over the threshold of girlhood — would remain a team. Always. This hurt with a pain that she hadn’t known before.
The next morning, Caroline entered the kitchen to find Michael and Judith eating cereal at the breakfast table, the two of them laughing at a photo in the latest edition of Thrasher.
“Zoo York. I don’t ever get these ads,” said Michael, shaking his head. The two-page spread featured a monarch butterfly layered cryptically over the map to an unnamed city. The veins in its wings morphed into streets, a couple of the lines transforming into the tributaries of a river snaking along one border of the town. Caroline studied the image for a moment, thinking about the reaches of Okemah Valley. She wondered if it would ever become so familiar that she could draw the streets with her mind, trace the curves of the river from memory.
“Hey, squirt,” said Judith as Jade passed through the kitchen and scooped up her backpack next to the door. Jade turned to face the three of them as they huddled around the table. Her gaze landed first on Judith, then Michael, and finally shifted down to the magazine. Caroline looked up and felt a softness in her throat, knowing that in this moment, Jade had all the power to dissolve the wall of glass that still divided them. She could see her mouthing a response back to Judith, but the volume had been turned off. Caroline’s hope hung in midair as she longed for their eyes to meet, but then she watched on like a distant spectator as Jade turned on one heel, swinging her nest of curls toward the door to catch the early bus to school.
During English period, Caroline grappled with the in-class writing exercise for their assigned novel, The Outsiders. Mrs. Simon had written on the chalkboard in her slanted script, “Compare and contrast two characters from the novel. How do their roles contribute to the story?”
Caroline contemplated Dally’s tough exterior and how he shielded his emotional wounds by living a life of violence and anger. She thought about the interesting tension in his relationship with Johnny, who was more capable of expressing his pain to the world through his vulnerability and sensitivity. The characters were drawn to one another like magnets, for each had qualities that the other sought out. To her, both characters had valuable strengths that contributed to the story. Which was better? To guard oneself and adopt a thorny exterior which, in Dally’s case, had become synonymous with “resilience” or, to bear your pain openly for others to see and understand? This, for Caroline, also meant that you were resilient. It was more difficult to show weakness than to cling tightly to your emotional armor, she thought. She smiled and handed in her assignment to Mrs. Simon, chewing on these questions as she headed home for the day.
She had memorized the bus route by now and decided to try walking home, navigating by the yellow-tagged stops along the way. After over an hour of walking and a couple of recalculated turns, she finally saw the house set back off the road, beckoning to her like a beacon. The golden hour sky had deepened to a burnt ochre and the lights of the house beamed out against it, reminding Caroline of a jack-o-lantern.
After making it inside the refuge of the property fenceline, she noticed for the first time a faint footpath that veered off one side of the gravel drive and sloped down into the sweeping field that ran alongside the house. This was the first time she had ventured away from the flat, grassy table that held the sprawling gray farmhouse and main yard. The heat of the Indian summer had burned well into the day, making it pleasantly warm, the breeze now tempered by the stillness of late afternoon. The footpath divided the recesses of the land, leading Caroline to a spot where she could see nothing but the landscape in all directions from a slight ridge balanced over two bowl-shaped fields.
Peering down into one of the sweeping dishes, she stood in awe of the tiny sparks of light all around, yellow orbs pulsing like a nebula suspended just above the ground. The fireflies seemed to move in unison, their blanket of light dipping every so often to dance atop the blades of the swaying Johnson grass. The sky had now turned to a molten crimson with swirls of copper clouds hanging right above the earth, heavy as if they were the force pushing the sun ever lower toward the horizon.
Caroline turned in a slow circle and took in the rest of the scene before her with a dreamy gaze. The ten acres were glossed with golden mounds that gave way to low thickets of green brush clumped along one side, all cradled by a white pipe fence. Hackberry trees leaned from the banks of the creek and dipped low over the water, their branches forming snaking tunnels along its path. Coral and fuchsia wildflowers dotted the rolling landscape, growing more unruly near the water’s edge.
Caroline straightened, snapping out of her trance and swerving around to look up toward the house for anyone else who had witnessed the magic of the fireflies’ dance. As quickly as they’d emerged above the grass to hover in their silent glow, they continued their ascent up into the sky, perhaps to float among the stars.
Caroline felt an instant urge to find Jade and recount the scene, as they often would do in these moments — they were always the first to tell one another about a new hide-and-seek spot or a secret crush. She began retracing every detail with her mind, and then noticed a small tug aching beneath her breast. She felt betrayed and duped, a stone landing in her gut as she remembered their argument.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, replaying Jade’s hurtful words for the hundredth time. She turned back along the ridge, following the path up to the house, the moon now rising to quench the warmth of the afternoon. Now she moved along the walkway leading to the front steps, hearing the voices of Michael and Judith as she neared the screened porch.
“Should we scare the shit out of them?” she heard Judith ask. “This place can be pretty spooky at night.” They were conspiring over cans of beer on the front porch swing, gazing through the open front door at Chase coloring on a large pad of paper while Jade flicked through TV channels. With their parents spending their first night out since the move, they saw a perfect opportunity to antagonize “the three little ones,” as they still called them.
“Nah, I think they would blackmail us,” Michael said, nodding toward the two Bud Lights already crushed against the table, as if making them smaller were any less obvious. “I’m trying to talk Mom into letting me take my bike out to the lake trails this weekend.” Caroline startled them as her head popped up from the darkness of the front steps.
“Jeez, Care, where have you been?” asked Judith. “We were worried about you.”
“Just exploring,” answered Caroline. Her eyes were beginning to feel heavy from the long journey home.
“Ooh, little pioneer girl”, Michael teased, jabbing her lightly in the arm.
“Something like that,” said Caroline, smiling.
“Mom and Dad went out with the Smiths after work,” said Judith. “Come inside and have some pizza.”
Caroline followed them into the living room, where the pizza box still lay open on the coffee table. Looking around, she realized that for the first time, they were all together in this new place, surrounded by the vastness of the land. Somehow, they were still penned in in a peculiar way that felt comforting, rather than isolating. There were layers to the spaces around them. The great expanse of the town of Okemah Valley, its fields with rows of crops stretching out seemingly to infinity, the sweeping pasture of their property, a boxed stronghold with its unwavering fence line, the charming front yard glittering with dandelions where they were already planning family picnics, the porch a cozy retreat for cooler nights. And finally, this room, where the sturdy white beams of the vaulted ceiling stretched around them like the ribcage of a warm, gentle beast, embracing them as the new pulse living within.
Caroline was shaken again from her thoughts as Chase let out a terrified yelp and scrambled onto the sofa into a panic, his drawings left scattered to one side.
Jade followed, her legs quaking as she climbed to the arm of the sofa for a better look. “Oh, my God, get away from it, I think they sting!” she said.
“What the fuck is that?” said Judith, backing away toward the wall by the kitchen.
Marching in a straight path along the base of the coffee table, its erect tail waving like a scepter, was a sand scorpion the size of a teaspoon making its way through the center of the room. The elusive creatures had only ever appeared on TV and in the occasional nightmare. It seemed to have materialized out of nowhere in the living room. Michael, who had pronounced arachnophobia, had already bolted for the front door, his chest heaving with deep, panicked breaths.
The scorpion now challenged them from the middle of the living room floor, raising up slightly on his legs, pincers swaying in a side-to-side rhythm, as if commanding his subjects from the throne. His glassy amber shell glistened under the light of the TV. Careful not to startle the self-appointed chieftain, and frankly, not knowing how to handle the intrusion, the four of them shuffled their way along the wall past the kitchen until they were out on the front porch.
Judith tucked her legs up next to Michael on the porch swing, stroking his back to help slow his breathing. Chase joined them there, nestling his small frame into the space that remained in the corner of the swing. Caroline took a spot on the adjacent bench next to the three of them, pulling one of the porch blankets out of its box. Then, she felt a warm body next to hers and recognized the sweet scent of Jade’s apple shampoo. She wrapped the blanket around the two of them, cradling her under one arm. There, they all sat in silence until they saw the sweeping of headlights as their parents pulled into the drive.
Mr. Sandman
Angela awoke with a heaviness above her. She managed to roll over onto one side, forcing a rusty squeak from her cot. The rest of the barracks was silent, save for the occasional stirring or sharply drawn breath between the low booms of artillery and the distant roaring of F-16s. By now they all mostly slept through it, but for some reason Angela was coaxed into a hazy half-awake state, perhaps due to the impenetrable heat. She realized she had fallen asleep in her fatigues, and slowly slipped out one leg, then the other.
She pulled back the canvas window flap at the head of her cot for some air, and was greeted by the undulating brick-colored mounds of the Registan Desert. Peering out across the rippled waves toward the horizon, she could just spot the rocky peaks at the edge of the plateau where their camp was situated. Smoky waves of heat billowed just above the ground, making the sparse golden tufts of vegetation seem to sway, which reminded her of the grassy coastal dunes back home. The arid heat threatened to push its way further inside, to the only refuge they had from it. She closed the window flap and nestled back down under her frayed thermal blanket. In that kind of heat, you were better off covering up so as to avoid having your skin singed merely by the air passing over it. She gradually drifted back into a deep sleep under the comfort of the cool fabric.
When she awoke, voices were volleying from somewhere across the room. Two people. She realized they were coming from the TV.
“And Mark, tell us more about the situation there just outside the village of Khanashin in the southern part of the Helmand Province,” said a female news anchor, her crisp red blouse framed neatly in the square of the TV.
“Well, Susan, unfortunately we just received news that a convoy from the Company C, 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment was attacked in an apparent suicide bombing today, killing four American soldiers and one civilian, while some other bystanders w—”
Angela punched the off button on the remote, reducing the picture to a white orb that hovered for a moment in the center of the screen before fading to black. As a soft dusty light filtered through the gauzy linen curtains, she struggled for a moment to tell if she was caught in the shadowy glow of dusk or in the misty yellow of early morning. She had fallen asleep long before dark while awaiting the 9:00 evening news. The trill of a jackhammer across the street provided the answer—the crew working on the neighboring business’s sidewalk was just starting for the day.
“Man, I must have needed that,” she said to the ceiling fan, stretching and making her way to the bathroom for a shower.
She packed a woven straw tote with her striped beach towel and an oversized hat, stepping out into a perfect July morning. She had gotten an early start, so parking was easy and the beach was still calm—just a small family of birds and a couple other sunbathers had settled near the dunes. A hazy marine layer still hovered over the glistening turquoise water, just allowing the sun’s first rays to begin beaming through. Perfect timing. She stretched her towel out over the sand, digging her toes deep and covering her face with the brim of her hat. Every now and then she felt the tickle of salt in the air hitting her nose, as the warm breeze began lulling her back to sleep.
She awoke to the cold spray of water on her arms and chest.
“Come on, Angela! Wake up!” said a familiar male voice, milky blue eyes coming into focus as she raised her head. Sergeant Lee. He crouched over her with the medic bag at his side, a spray bottle clutched in his right hand, the smelling salts in his left.
Her eyelashes danced in a rapid flutter, shaking off the droplets of water that had sealed them shut. Her hairline and neck were drenched, either from sweat or from the misting bottle, or maybe both.
“There she is! Here, drink this,” said Private Bates, extending an olive canteen of water. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, gulping the cool water between gasps of bone-dry air.
“How did I get out here?” she asked when she’d caught her breath, now looking over the toes of her boots to the camp buildings radiating in lines around the three of them.
“You fainted over by the showers—we think it was just a few minutes,” said Sergeant Lee. “Private Bates found you on his way out of the dining tent. It’s a good thing you weren’t out in the sun for too long.”
She nodded, but before she could formulate a response, the menacing whoops of mortar alarms pierced the leaden air, jolting Angela and the sergeant to their feet.
“That’s a Red Alert! I repeat, Red Alert!” Sergeant Lee blasted into his walkie.
The three of them darted across the sand in a straight line, with Sergeant Lee in the lead, Angela on the heels of Private Bates. She stopped for a second before they descended the makeshift ramp, taking in the panorama of the grainy ridges all around them. With a deep breath, she stepped down into the bunker, taking refuge for the third time that week…
The Last Rites of Summer (Intro Only)
“Shhh—not so fast,” said Heather, hands up in protest inside the back door to the house, her eyes widening and checking the upstairs hallway for signs of life.
Abigail waited a few beats before trying the creaking door again. It was the only way out that didn’t risk waking their cousin John, who’d tossed around on his cot as they’d crept past. As soon as Abigail could swing the old spring-loaded trap of a door wide enough, they slipped out and signaled to the rest of the girls through the screen. One by one, they came stumbling out onto the porch, rubbing at their eyes and clutching their sleeping bags, shoes dangling by the laces from their hands.
“Ok, here’s the plan,” said Heather as the six of them slipped into their tennis shoes and yawned in succession. “Everyone stay in pairs and follow the new path I made. The one we normally take is muddy, so pay attention.” The oldest of the girl cousins, it was now her duty to indoctrinate the youngest girls in the last rites of summer.
From there they set off on the annual pilgrimage to The Shack, which was tucked deep in the wooded half of the eighty acres their grandparents had lived on for four decades. As was tradition, they had stayed with Grandma for the girls’ sleepover that marked their last weekend before school began. They had spent the afternoon learning how to make plum jelly, followed by Grandma teaching them the recipe for her famous hand-tossed pizza with homemade sauce. Abigail turned her thoughts back to the warm light of the kitchen, the sweet smell of pizza dough rising as they watched the pot simmer with each sprinkling of oregano and garlic. She thought of the friendly bunches of grapes embossed in a deep violet on the white glazed tiles and longed for the comforts of the house.
Now they were far from that haven, making their way through the dense stand of trees, which looked like black lightning against the inky sky. They were bathed in silky moonlight, rendering Abigail’s skin a cornflower blue, strange figures dancing on it as they passed under the twisted branches. The briar tunnels reminded her of sharks with rows of teeth jutting out in every direction, while Heather knew just where to duck and where to step over them. After a half hour scramble through the tangled brush, they had found the line of the creek, which Heather used to guide them to find what they were looking for.
“It should be here,” she said, “not too far off the creek.”
They waved their flashlights around, trying to catch a glimpse of it. Abigail pointed her beam down into the creek and could hear the tinkling current bobbing over piles of river pebbles. It was as if now that she could see it, the water had come to life, and the gnarled roots jumped out at her, arching higher from the edge of the bank. She could just make out the remains of a forgotten fishing rod, its reel a flaky, rusted corpse.
“Here it is!”, said Bebe, the youngest of the girls, shining her light on the door of The Shack. Its heavy wooden outline rose up, the peak of the roof mostly obscured by the thick vines that surrounded the creek. It had been built with scraps of plywood and boards from an old schoolhouse that once sat on the property. Traces of red paint remained in the feathering lines of the aged wood. Heather straightened slightly, impressed that Bebe had been the one to find it. Bebe stood proudly on a mound of dirt, her blonde hair still in messy pigtails. She steadied her light so the others could pass, a triumphant smile crossing her lips. Children had a way of being able to imagine things that weren’t there, but that they knew must exist. At some point in life, the inhibitions began flooding in, slowly replacing that sense of wonder.
Family Wivestales
Never bring an old Christmas tree into a New Year.
Swallow water upside down to get rid of hiccups.
Press a silver butter knife to your head to make a bump go down.
Use raw onion to temper a bee sting.
Eat a tablespoon of black-eyed peas for good luck in the New Year.
Hang a bag of water with a penny inside on the porch to ward off flies.
Never set your handbag on the floor or ground.
Spread yellow mustard on a burn to prevent blistering.
Turn in a complete circle before entering a hotel room.
Suspend a threaded needle over the wrist of an expectant mother to determine the baby’s gender.
Sew a new set of pillowcases for good luck in the New Year.
Never have watermelon and milk together.
Sprinkle sugar around the trunk of a tree to bless a new home.
Never open an umbrella inside the house.
If a bird hits the window of your home, trouble lies ahead.
Eat a grape at each strike of the clock for good luck in the New Year.
Never celebrate your birthday in advance.
Chew on a piece of pineapple to heal a wound in the mouth.
Hold a penny on your tongue to cure a headache.
Don’t give a baby a haircut until its first birthday.
If you spill the salt, throw a pinch of it over your left shoulder.
Hold your breath while crossing a bridge or passing a cemetery.
Put butter in your coffee for good luck in the New Year.
Above all, always listen to your grandmother.