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Stranger Words

“Lit Up — June’s Prompt: Stranger Things”

“I can’t believe you suggested I read this shit.”

Dominique tossed her iPad onto the bedspread. Pale blue with Siamese kittens. Her bedspread. The bedspread that replaced Darth Vadar.

“They made a TV series.” Brett sat against his lumbar pillow typing on his Chrome book.

“They’ll make a TV series from any book that makes teen boys cream their jeans. Give them guns and tits and it’s a guaranteed sale.” She reached for her tablet. Chingmy Yau, her seal point, threatened to nose it onto their hardwood floor. “The heroine takes out 48 trained security guards who storm her post-apocalyptic efficiency apartment. Without reloading. She grins with every shot. How do you recognize a novice writer? Their characters grin, smile, smirk or chuckle every time they act.”

Brett held his hand over his shoulder and flapped his fingers — blah, blah, blah.

Dominique gripped her iPad like a softball to pitch at his head. “Is this what you want to write? Guns, girls and girls with guns? Do you want people to remember you as a pulp writer cranking out series by the pound?”

Brett sighed. A performance to match any child after hearing the word “no.”

“I want people to remember me as a pulp writer who sold series by the ton.”

Daphne hovered at Dominique’s shoulder. “Don’t you think it strange that you’re still obsessed with your ex?”

Dominique quit typing. Good old Daphne. Never a muse, always a critic. Just because she earned an MFA. Fat lot of good that did her, serving lattes to imperious neverwillbe’s for nine dollars an hour and a three percent tip.

“He’s the turd that clings to the back of your toilet. Hit him with a scrub brush and flush him from your memory.”

Dominique shut the lid of her Dell Alienware 17 R5 laptop with the Intel Core i9 chip running at 2.9 GHz with 32 GB RAM, a 1.5 TB hard drive and 17-inch display. Power users worldwide might envy her laptop were it not for the cuddly Siamese kitten who reached out with his paws from her laptop skin.

“He sold two million copies of Meat Suits. I’ll never write a novel that good. In a million years. I dream of pounding out prose as powerful as his.”

“You’re joking.” Devon scanned the paragraph once more. She covered her lips to stifle her laugh.

“You’re joking?” BJ crossed his arms, forcing the blood in his cheeks further toward his receding hairline. “That’s all you can say? You’re joking?”

Light from the Venetian blinds striped his face. Devon felt the room shift into a weird dimension of self-awareness. No wonder her friends insisted he was out of her league. More than out of her league. She lifted him from tee-ball to the Majors.

“You shout when I make suggestions. You’re shouting now.”

He tucked his hands under his shoulders. His face reminded her of a blowfish puffed in fury after too many people tapped on his aquarium. “Suggest away.”

Devon edged the page closer to BJ. He whisked his coffee cup away to avoid spilling on his precious child. “Teenage boys talk about turds in toilets. Not women.”

He drummed “Wipe Out” on the table with his fingers. “That’s a sexist comment. Women can discuss any topic they want.”

Devon rested her face against her fingers. Totally missing my point, she thought. To which he’d reply, that’s such a woman thing to say.

“Fine. The story’s her point of view. Right?”

He choked off a cough. Immature male dialect for “obvious.”

She tapped the page. “This paragraph lists every spec for her ‘power’ laptop. The same laptop you use for eight straight hours of Grand Theft Auto and five minutes of writing. In the next sentence, you mock her laptop cover. Does that sound like Dominique’s point of view?”

“It’s a rough draft.”

“You named her after your ex. The ex who made the New York Times’ ‘up-and-coming’ list while you can’t even sell ten copies of Meat Suits on Kindle. Your self-published novel.”

BJ carried his plate to the trash. He scraped her pancakes and sausages into the can. “What’s your point?”

“Did you ever forgive your parents for naming you BJ?”

“You used that trick in your last story.” Carol’s breath tickles my ear. She cradles our newest foster cat, an intact male the shelter told us was a neutered female. Since his arrival our house smells like a wino lives in our bedroom.

“What trick?”

She leans her face between mine and the laptop. She points to the line break marker. “The recursion trick. The reader discovers the current story is being told by someone in an other story. Through multiple levels.”

“It’s not a trick. It’s a device.” I lean into her with my shoulder, crowd her space so she’ll back away.

“Call it what you want. You fall in love with these little tricks and use them for your next half-dozen stories.”

My wife. My harshest critic. Until I need her opinion. Then she settles for “it was interesting.”

“In the other story, I used branched loops in a computer simulation. This story nests narratives within narratives. The narrators are oblivious to the narrator of their own stories. It’s a meta-thing.”

Which sounds sophomoric when I say it aloud.

“You should replace one of those paragraph markers with a drawing of an asshole.” She straightens and scratches the cats head.

I close my MacBook lid. “This isn’t a Vonnegut story.” On our television, CNN reports the GOP will vote next month to impeach a second Clinton.

“Tell yourself that.” The cats rub our legs. Feeding time.

I return to my story with no concern that Kilgore Trout will ring my doorbell. I’m in control of my prose.

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