Yet Another Short Story

I wrote this up in about half an hour. It stars Alice, Bob, and Claire as well as some crap I picked up from a garage sale yesterday, and hopefully asks more questions than it answers. Fill in the answers yourself.

Contains copious literary and mythological references, and is rather purple for my style.

"I'm so bored," Alice said, kicking her heels up onto the leather couch. 

Bob looked up at her thoughtfully. She rolled her eyes. Not once in the thousand years she had known him had he ever changed his expression. 

"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps if you took those ridiculous glasses off you'd be able to see something to do, for once."

Alice huffed and pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead. "They are not ridiculous! You have no taste, sweetie."

She had purchased the large, black-rimmed dark spectacles at a drugstore back in the Nineties. Since then, she had never taken them off, except to shower. They were as much a part of her as her golden eyes or curvy figure. Despite the time that had passed, Alice looked almost just the same as she had all those millennia ago, when the universe was born. The same heart-shaped face and jutting chin; the same beautiful but cruel eyes; the same tiny, perfect nose. Her hair was new, however. After seeing a picture of two celebrities in a magazine, she had dragged Bob to the salon and forced him into getting his hair cut with her. 

She fluffed her flowing black locks with one hand while Bob looked at her, his eyes briefly showing the despise he felt after the haircut incident. 

"What?" she asked, tossing her head. "It's just one of my many quirks! How would you like it if I took that little sword away from you?"

Bob's fingers curled around the hilt of his wooden dagger. Wooden, yes, but no less dangerous. The dagger had been carved from the wood of Yggdrasil, soon after Lif and Lífþrasir climbed down from its branches. In China, it had been inlaid with a red dragon by Guan Yu himself. Bob had come into possession of it shortly after Alice had demanded that her new friend Charles right a book about her. He recalled this because Alice had insisted that all references to the vorpal sword be removed from the text, although one had slipped by. 

"I would not like that."

"Bet you wouldn't."

Alice drew herself up from the couch like a cat and crossed to the large bay window, which looked out on the city of New York. Bob returned his attention to the television. 

"How much longer?" Alice whined, flicking her sunglasses back onto her nose.

"I don't know."

"I think you do know, but you're just not telling me!"

Bob set down the magazine he had been reading in order to massage his eyelids. They had been over this a million times, at least. Bob knew as much about the Great Death as she did, but Alice wasn't ready to accept that. 

"When is Claire coming back?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do!"

"I honestly don't."

Alice stomped her foot in frustration and tossed her head again. Bob rolled his eyes. 

She skipped across the rug again to toss herself onto the couch. She opened a drawer in the side-table and took out a silver box.

"Alice, don't," Bob said, with the barest hint of frustration in his voice. Alice stuck her tongue out at him and set the box in her lap. 

"I'll do what I like with my box," she said, but didn't open it.

She knew she shouldn't, not until the Great Death. Then she, Bob, and Claire would all open their boxes at the same time, and only then would they know what great secrets the boxes hold. All they knew was that they and the boxes represented Ego, Superego, and Id. Bob and Claire had tried to explain to Alice what that meant, but basic psychology was pretty beyond her. 

Bob slid a hand onto the shelf below the coffee table. On it was his box—a dark brown affair, with gold and red inlay. It was substantially bigger than Alice's. As he picked it up, he glanced up at the light on the wall. It was simply a brass box with amber-colored glass in and a lightbulb behind it, but to Alice, Bob, and Claire it was their signal for the Great Death. If Claire couldn't open her box right after the light went off, then eons of struggle would be for naught. 

Bob had a right to be nervous. He had suspected for a while now that the Great Death was growing close, and with the recent disappearance of both Claire and her box? It couldn't be a coincidence. 

Alice, meanwhile, had let her mind drift to the painting on the wall. It showed three silhouetted figures in greeny-blue garb poised in front of a large orange sphere. A sun going supernova. The one on the right held her hands over her head, cupped around a small yellow box. The one in the middle, a man, stood with one hand over his eyes and the other hand brandishing a sword carved to look like flames. The third likewise shielded her eyes, but her other hand gripped a stoppered glass vial containing a pearly elixir. It was hard to see her, because the light from the supernova had begun to eclipse her, although the other two were sharply outlined. 

"Bob, look," Alice whispered, slightly hysterical. "Bob, look at the picture! Look at Claire!"

Oh, guess what! You know how one of my tags says, like, "If I had a sword," right? Well, now I totally do, lawls. 'Cept it's made of wood and is technically a dagger.

Clique

You may be shocked to learn that I, Omnia Clepe, Geek Girl Extraordinaire What Knows All The Nerd, was once a fangirl (and I use that lovely word with disgust, in this case) of the pre-teen epic series The Clique. But that was the past! Yes, a past in which I had not yet discovered my identity as a proud geek.

Now imagine a glorious summer day, me curled up under a large oak tree with my pink bookbag (Which I still use, thank you very much!), reading from one of the books in The Clique Summer Collection. How that image disgusts me.

I feel completely justified in calling it an epic. Do you know how many fricken books are in that series? 20, including the Summer Collection! Twenty books devoted to the trials and tribulations of middle school, as seen through the eyes of the Libby, Massie Block, and her Girl Posse. And, yes, those chronically backstabbing, boy- and fashion-obsessed prima donnas are in seventh grade. I think I'm gonna call serious bull on that one. What planet are they living on, anyway? I swear, the series should be a scenario in some sort of weird Lotus-Eater Machine. And I never really got a satisfactory answer as to why Everyone Hates Layne, other than she was slightly annoying to the Pretty Committee and didn't wear shiny shiny name-brand clothing. I rather liked her, in fact.

Honestly, I don't know what I ever saw in the series. Bile fascination, I suppose?

Fun Facts:

The Clique also refers to a group of Victorian artists, including Richard Dadd, Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, and a host of other silly names. Fascinating, innit?

One of the major ships in the series is styled "Clam" for Claire/Cam. Which leads to me want to shout, "Stay away from Clamburg!" while reading the TV Tropes page.

"Hi…don't care!"

A Note On Punctuation

Yes, boys and girls, today we're going to have fun with learning!

Punctuation is something that I, as an English nerd and mild Grammar Nazi, love to tiny little bits. Unfortunately, that is not the case for everyone, as I discovered last Friday.

Every October, the eighth grade class at my school does a project in which each student chooses a horror story to read and then writes their own short horror story. I could—and already have, as a couple of my good friends know—go on a long diatribe about more than half the class wanting to read Goosebumps, but I would rather focus on something that concerns me just as much. The lack of proper pronunciation in last year's stories.

Punctuation Exists For A Reason

Now, I'm fine with lax grammar in texting and IMing and whatnot. Even I do it. I'm almost as okay with lax grammar in emails and such, as long as I can understand what the other person means. That does not apply to the final copies of anything. We had to read some of the stories aloud in class, and I really wanted to stop and announce, "I really am a better reader than this! I'm only flubbing because I have no idea where this sentence stops and the other begins. It's madness, I tell you!"

I don't pretend to have perfect grammar, but some things are just wrong and should be corrected—don't worry about emails or what have you, I'm talking about things that might get you laughed at by future generations of eighth graders. Here are some simple rules for writing that might make it simpler to understand than you thought before:

• Periods tell the reader when to pause, because the sentence has ended now and the voice in your head can take a breath before going on. 
• Commas indicate a shorter pause, and also when to breathe in longer sentences. Don't, overuse, commas. The voice, in my, head, doesn't, enjoy, sounding, like Stevie, from, Malcolm, in the Middle—although, that does, make it, more, enjoyable. 
• The Greeks pioneered modern punctuation, like the above two rules. Lack of punctuation means lack of pauses.
• However, don't not use commas and punctuation or else you'll just go on and on without stopping and I mean this seriously I'm automatically holding my breath while writing this sentence and I don't know why. ALWAYS put a space after a comma, period, semicolon, end parenthesis, or end brackets. No, I don't want to hear it. ALWAYS.
• Quotation marks indicate when to change inflection, because you, the reader, is now repeating what the character said, even when reading to yourself. 
• Any time a character is directly quoted using a whole sentence, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. If it's just part of a quote, it goes like this: Suzie had said that she didn't want to "play so rough anymore," so Cameron backed off. If the partial direct quote is placed at the end of a sentence, it looks like this: Suzie's mom told him not to "flippantly dangle off those dangerous monkey bars." Cameron had no idea what that meant. This is always true in America, but other countries have other rules.
• "Yes," he said. If you follow a quotation with a "xe said" sort of thing, mentally write it without the "said" bit, and then just add it back in and change the period to a comma. Simpler: "Said" turns periods into commas. 
• Exclamation points should be used sparingly. You can usually get away with it in dialog, but only to get across strong emotion—anger, excitement…not usually sadness, though. Outside of dialogue, you really do want to shy away from it. Exclamation points mean excitement, and too much excitement can tire anyone out. In addition, a quote from Reaper Man: Five exclamation marks. A sure sign of an insane mind.
• "If you say said every time you speak, then that's just boring," I said. "If you use it right, it just sort of disappears. But do use, for example, whispered or laughed if the character is actually whispering or laughing their words." 
• "It seems complicated, but you'll get the hang of it," Claudia added.

• Don't Capitalize Every Word. That's Not How The Shift Key Works. Proper Nouns And The First Word Of A Sentence, People. You Just Look Like An Idiot Typing Like This.
• Random words Being capitalized changes How You read them. Just Look me in the Metaphorical Eye and Tell me it Doesn't.
• See that button up in the right-hand corner of your keyboard? The one in between 0 and =? That is only to be used for math problems and compound words, like right-hand. That is not how you make a parenthetical. Use -- if you have to, but for God's sake don't use -! (Aside note to Mac users: alt + shift + - equals —)
• Ellipsis…should be used…sparingly, lest you…wind up…sounding…like William Shatner… (Sidenote: Ellipses = Oval; Ellipsis = …)

Some mildly interesting Wikipedia pages on the subject of somewhat-obscure punctuation and grammar paraphernalia:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is.

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den.

Other places you can find poor grammar corrected (AKA Grammar Made Fun!):

Cake Wrecks

Reasoning With Vampires

Wanton Cruelty To The Common Comma

Image Link

Good Morning! Good News!

Well, not exactly good morning, as it is the middle of the afternoon, but Good Afternoon! Good News! does not a pleasing post title make. Anyway, I'm absolutely 100% positive that in the future someone will be reading this in the morning.

Maybe it's you. Are you the one?

If you are, hi! If you aren't…still hi!

Despite the rest of my week being rather irritatingly crappy, or perhaps just irritating, today has been Le Awesomés.

==>End egregiously warped French.

Well, it might have something to do with the fact that NO SCHOOL FRIDAY! :) Yeah, teachers' meeting or something. Don't know, don't care. However, the fact that I got to sleep until, er, six thirty instead of six fifteen was incredibly pleasing. Also, I got to lay in bed with my laptop—

"Don't you do that every morning?"

I was about to say, I got to lay in bed with my laptop for much longer than usual. Also, I received a coffee from my dearest, darlingest mother.

Oh! And I went clothes shopping and didn't hate every last minute of it! That's incredibly unusual for me. Maybe it had something to do with my successful discovery of the missing pieces of my Rose Halloween costume. No, not Rose Tyler. Rose Lalonde. (Major spoilers there, though! Do not click link if you ever have the slightest urge to read Homestuck! It is an extremely spoilerific webcomic.)

"But Omnia," you might protest, "Halloween is a month away! Surely you could have waited a little while?"

"No," I would tell you. "No, I can't. Because Saturday, September 31st is Archon, and I will not be going to my first real con without a suitable costume."

Also, I got Coraline on DVD and Psychology for Dummies from the library. Today was a good day.

Bleh.

Friends! Readers! Countrymen! Lend me your ears…

Guess what I did this weekend! Feast of the Hunter's Moon. I'd put a link there but I am incredibly lazy today (more on that in a moment) and if you're reading this, you must have access to a search engine, right? Well, I meant to leave behind a long, meandering post on Friday to tide y'alls over until I got back, but I wasn't able to. Sadface. (By which I mean, I forgot.)

So, the Feast was pretty great. Bought a lotta stuff, ate three bowls of Noodleables over two days, slept in the car…oh, yeah, and now I am very sick. Like, pounding-headache, already-used-half-a-box-of-tissues, cannot-get-out-of-bed-or-I'll-fall-over-asdfghjkl kind of sick.

Not. Fun.

I would actually rather be at school, feeling well, than in bed, feeling like crap, even if I do have peanut butter cookies.

Which is why I am incredibly lazy and can't seem to do anything but watch Futurama and eat food and read fanfiction. (Somewhat warped alliteration!)

BUT I have a lot of free time today! Free time that I can spend on my new Ultra-Super-Secret-Awesome-Project! I have a schedule worked up and everything. If it's not done by next week, I will be sad and mopey for a few days before I come up with a new Ultra-Awesome-Project!!!!!1!!! 


Uh…yeah. What was the point of this post?