Your Story: The First Two Paragrpahs

Cool! Thanks for asking!

"The Dream of Safety"

“Don’t come back drunk again,” Jenny says, wiping down the counter in the kitchen, just so’s she doesn’t have to look at him when she says it. “Who wouldn’t be sick of it?”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Lucas says, and realizes he sounds just like his nineteen-year son. And just like Ben, Lucas is lying as well.
“Bollocks,” Jenny says, turning round, and venomous. There’s a second of eyes meeting before she goes back to scrubbing as if it’s her life’s work. He wishes they could both admit that she does this for other purposes than wanting a clean kitchen. Because she doesn’t want one, or doesn’t care about one, as long as he’s not about. He pictures her as much more at ease when he’s not there; he imagines she probably smiles. He tries to recall the last time he saw her genuine smile, and can’t. Maybe there was the once, but it doesn’t count because it wasn’t directed at him.

Lisa:-))

With Anticipation

2005 “Two Truths and a Lie” literary fiction
2006 “Slipping the Tracks” literary fiction (Winner)
2006 “Exit, Pursued by Bear” literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 “The Dream of Safety” literary fiction (Winner)

With Anticipation

2005 "Two Truths and a Lie" literary fiction
2006 "Slipping the Tracks" literary fiction (Winner)
2006 "Exit, Pursued by Bear" literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 "The Dream of Safety" literary fiction

Falling

Whenever people ask me about my background, I always tell them the same thing. My parents didn’t want me to grow up and so, of course, I grew up much too fast.

We always lived carefully.

Jamilah

Jamilah Kolocotronis

Islamic Fiction. Islamic Values.

The first bit of my first chapter is all fluffy dialogue with no description, so I will go to the first proper paragraphs:

Halloween had been over for four-and-a-half days, and for four-and-a-half days, it had been all anyone wanted to talk about. Claire tried to block out most of the noise, but it seemed that, for some reason, the people who attended her ballet school had actually mingled with the people who attended her boyfriend’s East End high school. No short distance separated the schools, yet Jack’s name was on every other tongue, and the whispers cushioning it were not comforting. Not comforting at all.

Claire knew Jack didn’t like her stance on sex. He vocalized his displeasure enough for her to think about it every single day. She wanted to wait. She didn’t know what moment she was waiting for, because she knew she loved Jack—or maybe that was just it. Maybe she was waiting for him to love her in return. But somehow she couldn’t see herself falling into his arms and spreading her legs because of one little word. It would make her feel happy and secure, but as of four days past Halloween, she didn’t know if she wanted to hear it. Would his voice make it seem fake? After all, he hadn’t been with her on Halloween, had he? He had been at a party. He told her that, in fewer words, and she knew before he left.

I'm in. But no jeering.

"A Saint Nobody's Heard Of."

Tuesday 4:16 pm

Henry walked up the steps, planning his night. As he moved under the flickering florescent lights lining the service stairway, his left hand slipped into the hip pocket of his coverall. His index finger touched the smooth outline of a pill. The plan began to solidify.

Celeste eased her wounded bicycle down the parking structure ramp. Every slow rotation of the wheels brought a sad, deflated sound from the front tire, almost a sigh, but more like a gasp. She walked the long downward curve focusing on the sounds all around her. There were so many of them. The drone of the florescent lights. The flop of her perfectly sensible work shoes onto the concrete. The distant echo of cars and people and laughter and quite possibly a train whistle filtered in to the giant subterranean structure and swirled around before settling like so many dry, fallen leaves. Mostly silent, but still holding onto the possibility of a crackle or two.

Chapter One
In Which We Begin

“Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning.”
- George Eliot

This is how it happens. This is not the beginning—who is to say where that is? But for the purposes of storytelling, the tale begins on a day early in October, in the current year, in Seattle. It is raining. It usually is, and somehow it seems better to begin on a day like any other than on a dark and stormy night, or once upon a time.

The smell of coffee permeates the air. Carterhaugh Coffee is warm, tiny, dark, the walls are painted orange. The tables are clustered together, but it’s mostly quiet. A low murmur, music in the background, the clacking of several keyboards. A modern day coffee shop. Laptops, though not much in the way of business men. Teenagers, artists, writers with rich parents and uncles.

2007 NaNo: A Slow Cartography - Finished at 60k
2008 JulNo: Hey, Jude - in progress

Prologue

Summer nights hold a boy's wonderment the way inky skies hold starlight; spilling strange and luminous curiousity all about.
Five year old boys toss expectantly in their beds twisting the sheet and plumping the pillow; eyes scanning through the window screen and across rooftops to the vastness of moon colored clouds. Every shadow postures riddles; every creaking limb sings whispers of lament. Then, the chilling knock scores thrice against the front door sill!
(Knock Knock Knock)
Or, is it a thump? A bump? Wood grain stretching like an ancient cat might mimic such a knock!
His mother, still beside the boy, rouses from her rest; silent,surreptitious, waking to the gentle taps.
"Mommy--"
"Hush--back to sleep...nothing here..." whispered in a tone too sure and knowing to persuade.
Moon spilled glow suffuses silhouettes; the knock reports an urgency in plaintive repetition.
Shadowed mother glides in barefoot along linoleum; rhythmic heartbeats in the boy's now heaving chest bring summer air inside sweet with honeysuckle charm.
The doorlatch lifts!
"Mom!"
"Hush--back to sleep!! Nobody and nothing!!" Her lying lips now poisoned with something worse than mystery; his mother whispers to a figure framed in view but hidden by the night.
An argument?
Secret, silken, soothing sounds rebuffed by mother's "No!"
A crow's "caw" rests in that "No!" Blackened, ugly, ostentation.
Persuasions follow in the tone; a capella secrets; odd-shaped keys are working on her "lock".
Fear comes now; the stranger's anonymity explodes within the boy's too troubled heart as mother does her turnabout. The key has found its nest; the lock surrenders as the door swings creaky wide and horror floods the room.
Who is it? Who is it? Who is there? The boy's soul squirms its curiosities!
"Hush--go back to sleep!!" The mother's shoosh comes faster than before.
The dark rectangle of a man on practised tiptoe finds the chair and like a troubling crow alights.
Mother now beside him, "Go to sleep--there's no one there. There's no one there!"
Tears well up and trust has shaken from its nestled resting place. Mother lies. Mother lies. The earth has tumbled to a fall and childlike fragile lullabyes are nothing but a serpent's tongue.
All the while the rocking chair has swallowed up who isn't there and paralyzing seizures grip the boy.
Staring, light-starved eyeballs bore into the swarming black; and nobody stares back...."creak" goes the chair....nobody stares back..."creak" goes the chair.
These thousand moments anaconda-squeeze the clock. Ticking; so molasses sloooow....."tick"..............."tock"..........."creak" goes the chair. Nobody there.
Only morning with its dagger thrust can penetrate the spectre's heart and tear away the curtain of his mother's lie.
A breeze rattles by like pythons in a leafy nest and somewhere the whistle of a lonely train bewails the sorrows of a little boy.
Who isn't there? Who isn't there?
Sleep persuades a troubled mind and easy goes the gripping hold on fantasy or fear. A watercolor brush of tinctures on an empty page go the sleepy strokes. Sleepy strokes and swaying boughs on summer nights with cricket calls and all the troubled world spins far away........
Mother's voice.
"You musn't say a word about last night--ever!"
Eyes opening; the boy is jolted to awareness and the "dream" is not a dream.
"But--who was that, Mommie?" pleading like a sinner at the throne of angry god.
"You mustn't say a word."
Then, all is still.

From "A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE":

Daryl Aschwin stood motionless before the large canvas, which beheld a portrait of him, not yet finished. He studied the oil painting with his usual fascination for the artist’s outstanding ability to create a mood through his use of light and shadow. With only one eye peeking out from the darkness, and with a slight curve at the corner of his mouth, he recognized the expression as one he had seen so many times before, usually when looking back at his lover through the bathroom mirror.

Daryl reached down and slipped his fingers around the handle of a palette knife, picking it up, and lightly scraping his cheek with it, all the while continuing to contemplate the painting. His mind was so far removed from his surroundings that he failed to hear the studio door open, and it wasn’t until he heard the sound of Matt Warren’s voice that he acknowledged the present moment. Daryl quickly dropped the palette knife back into the easel shelf, beneath the painting, and spun around to look at Matt.

...limegreensky

Don't know what the title is yet...

The venerable gentleman rubbed the bridge of his nose and thought about his childhood. It often happened that, when faced with an unpleasant task, a difficult decision, Theopanes the man would close his holy eyes and put his holy hands together in a gesture of contemplation. His bishops and pages assumed that he was lifting himself up in prayer, pondering the higher things of life. Only he knew that it was at these times that he was actually pulling himself back, back to the rocky farm of his father and grandfather. Back to himself as a boy named Demetrios.
Demetrios was born solemn and quiet, and solemn and quiet he would remain for most of his life. But on the rocky hilltops of Anatolia, far from the school and the church, he shouted and leapt and chased sheep, stood on clifftops and pretended he could fly, grabbed terrified lambs around the neck and sang loud songs in their ears. He showed no signs of his dignified destiny, this tiny, black-haired streak of cacophony and joy. His mother worried. His father taught him to prostrate himself before icons.

A rush and a push and the land that we stand on is ours.

From "The Case of the Disappearing Yarn":

Lily doesn’t think snails travel in packs and yet the dictionary gives a word for when they gang together – an escargotoire of snails. Yes, they gather at dinnertime, loitering beneath blankets of butter and fronds of parsley, so perhaps, it's a portmanteau word for "escargot abattoir". Perhaps there is a snail proverb, about how if you see other snails on your trail, you know the end is nigh.

Last night, Lily dreamed of penguins for hours. The backyard was filled by an aquarium, installed for “very serious research purposes”, not just so Lily could hang out with a penguin. In fact, there was a whole parade of penguins (did you know that is the group name? also, a rookery, colony or parcel), and by chance she befriended one guy in particular. He was dirty-white, like penguin mixed with pelican. Lily and the penguin swam together in the tank, and she figured that if she could hang out and do penguin things, maybe penguins could do people things, too, like join Lily at the table. She wondered whether the penguin would like snails, and whether he would peck at his slice of cake or just paddle in the frosting with his flippers.

Amanda Miller
daintilyfrosted.com

The first paragraph is the "beginning", the "present" of the story. The second, a memory, begins the insanity of about a third of the novel being flashbacks and another third being the wacky dream mentioned in the first paragraph.

The Texture of Silk

The shrill beep of the alarm cut into the man's sleep and he slapped the snooze button, careful not to wake the woman at his side. He was glad for the interruption, though it was never pleasant to wake up without finishing a dream. It had been a good dream, the one with frictionless pulleys and roses without thorns, but even in such a perfect dream world, she was not there. The man did not know why she was missing, and he felt her absence like an amputee's phantom limb, but she would always be there when he opened his eyes. Turning away from the early morning sun, he admired her as she slept, the way her hair lay across her face, lips parted ever so slightly. A roughened finger traced the line of the orange sunlight on her silky cheek, and she stirred, nestling closer to him. He smiled and kissed her forehead gently.

-----

He was a spring baby, born in April, and he was like a young squirrel. It was his birthday: he was thinking of taking the day off. His was one of those birthdays that had always fallen on some day he didn't have anything scheduled. It was disappointing. All his friends-- well, everyone who hadn't been born during (oh, the horror) summer vacation-- could skip school, and for that one day their parents would let them. They could complain about having to work on their birthday, but there were so many perks to being forced to be somewhere on that sort of day. Your teacher might give you a break on homework, or let you share cupcakes during class. The other kids would sing. "Happy birthday to you, you belong in a zoo! You look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!" At work, people would send flowers or balloons, and there might even be a whole hour in the morning dedicated to skiving off and eating cake in the breakroom. He had never been afforded the opportunity to have such pleasures of his own.

the Last Day in September

I stand with my back to the white wall that has the club logo and hold what I call the pose. Left foot forward, hands on my his with the golden cape flowing over my right elbow. I duck my head down just a bit, and look at the crowd with a half smile. Jimmy, my photographer, snaps a quick shot of me outlined in the only lights in the club. The crowd stops its scream and looks at me. They're holding their breath, waiting for me. I make them wait just a moment longer, and then I point.

“Your night of terror ends here, Captain Antarctic,” I say in the quiet moment of almost anarchy. I make sure to say his name with as much gusto as I can. I point my gloved hand at the only man in the blue parka surrounded by robotic penguins- Captain Antarctic. He's what the trades call a Super Villain. Note the capital letters. He dresses in a cheap knock-off of Han Solo in his Hoth gear, except instead of a Wookie he has robot penguins that breath fire. I don't get it either. I'm just here to stop him. My name is Eric Olsen, but you probably know me better as Helios.
I'm a Super Hero.

My name is Jerry Carson. I left home when I was 16 and haven’t been back, although that will soon change. All the Carson men leave home early and while most would claim that they never looked back, I have looked back many times. The Carson men leave because we can no longer live with another Carson man. We are all insufferable bastards. When I look back on the days of my youth, I know I was one too. I hope that I no longer am.
But now I am returning home, not because I miss it, because I don’t, but because I feel the relentless pull of home like I’m some sort of migratory bird, and because my father is dying. He’s not dying of anything in particular, he just is. He’s not old by some standards, late 70’s isn’t that old but by Carson standards, he’s ancient. We all die relatively young. We grow weary of being insufferable bastards I suppose, and let go early.

The darkness of night surrounded me, the streets engulfed by an eerie feeling. I hurried down the street, a back street that was rarely used and run down. I kept glancing behind me, checking right and left. Every shadow looked sinister, like the man who was out to kill me. The slightest noise made me jump and if something would breeze against my clothed arm, say a branch of a tree, I would freeze up and prepare for the worst. I was so paranoid.
But I had every reason to be paranoid.

I suppose that technically this is the first three paragraphs, but seeing as the second one is only a sentence long I'm saying it doesn't count!

These Three Remain

In the beginning it all seemed so simple. University was a laugh. Stancester was a beautiful cathedral city in the west of England. A degree in Maths was going to lead me into teaching. The Catholic Society was friendly and drank too much; the Christian Fellowship was embarrassingly evangelical but basically harmless; and the Anglican, Methodist, and URC Society was my spiritual home. And I knew exactly what God wanted.

Then I got elected President, and I realised how complicated it was.

Gina stared at the blinking cursor, moved her hands back from the keyboard, and, two at a time, pressed her fingers to the desk and raised them again. Creative writing, she thought, was not her strong point. She was a mathematician and administrator; producing amusing and informative prose was something best left to other people. Still, as ex-President, she had her responsibilities. She read it again. The last sentence did not seem quite accurate, and the whole of the first paragraph was a gross generalisation. Together they seemed to suggest that all the way through the first two years of her university career she had been blinkered, looking through rose-tinted spectacles. She imagined Peter saying, ‘Mixed metaphor,’ in affectionate disapproval, and laughed to herself.

The Spike Garden (A pointed person and the people impaled)

My mother had five sisters so I had five aunts, and the house had six gardens. Each sister had a garden of their own. There was the Rose Garden, the Green Garden, the Water Garden, the Spring Garden, the Fruit Garden, and my mother’s, the Spike Garden.
I never played there.
Now that all six gardens are mine, I wonder what should happen to them. I could decide, I could let nature take its course, I could keep the gardens as they are.

2003 Vindicta, 2004 Clown Down, 2005 Lavender Latté, 2006 Ulysses not found, 2007 The Spike Garden

My nano is titled "Sonic and Boom"

here are the first two paragraphs:

Our story does not start with a man, as stories commonly do, nor does it start with a woman. No, our story starts with a meteor. A small (well, relatively speaking, anyway) meteor hurtling through space at a speed that would ruin a $200 haircut in 3 seconds flat. The meteor is hurtling towards a planet that we all know and love (some more than others) the planet Earth. Why is this meteor important? Why should we care about it? That question is answered by a man.
Two, to be specific. They are found on Earth in the United States, in Solo City. Solo City is an odd place. In some parts, it is like a small city, with miles of desert on its outskirts, a forest, a dam, hydroelectric plant, and in some places it is like a big city. It even has its own Chinatown.

tis called:
Four Years at St. Thomas Aquinas; Memoirs of an Unthankless Job
"As a child growing up in the quiet suburban town of Davis, California, I would like to say that I learned the important things in life. I would like to say that everything I know I learned there in Davis, that these values that I have been taught were taught to me by the greatest minds in history. I would like to say that the professors that taught me at the University of California in Davis were the people that changed my life.
But to tell you this would be a lie. It would be as much a lie as to say that I grew up in Minnesota with my Uncle Alby and his large but overly energetic laboradoodle. Honestly I would have to tell you that the people that taught me the greatest values in life were not skilled professors, wise men from the east, a woman, a lover, or even a colleague. I was not taught by a grandparent or father or mother figure, I was not taught by any family member. The truth is that a classroom of sixteen year olds taught me. They taught me so more than I could ever teach them. "

~~~~~~~

Juno MacGuff: Ow, ow, @#$%ity-ow! Bren, when do I get that spinal tap thing?[...]
Bren: Well, honey, doctors are sadists who like to play God and watch lesser people scream...

He never drank wine; when people asked him what he sipped from the perfectly balanced wine glass in between his fingers he didn’t hesitate to tell them it was apple juice. Maybe a small part of him wanted people to pay attention to him and what he did. He got a small thrill of excitement whenever he said those two words, as if he was the ringleader of some secret society that all knew his secret.
No one was quite sure why he liked apple juice, because that was one secret he would never grace them with. He couldn’t quite understand it, but he felt that it was more than a secret to give away this information. His paranoia started just far enough away for him to smile a secretive little grin and whisper those magical words. No one tried to press him into this information, maybe because no one really cared. The world that pressed down on them was as harsh and dry as an African riverbed; the cracks showed where everything was falling apart.

Meoww. :]]

The_Latestt andGREATEST

o7 :: The Life And Times Of The Apple Juice Star :: Winnerr

Hey, ali_oop - I grew up in Sacramento!

I'm cheating, because I don't exactly write in any grammatically correct/paragraph recognizing sort of way:

Chapter: Wherein We Meet Our Main Character, and She Is Surprisingly Long-Winded

I don't believe in love at first sight. I never have. My friend Ben is a "romantic." He'll tell you I'm cynical: old, withered and cynical. Ben has a new girlfriend every two weeks, so I don't take his insistence too seriously.

Sure, you can be attracted to someone at first sight, but that's lust - not love. Not even like. You have to know someone before you can love them. So maybe you fall in lust at first sight - maybe you're lucky and the other person falls in lust back. Maybe after the lust goes away you find you still have things you like talking about, and you find you have common interests, or a bond over something. Maybe you stay together. Maybe you finish each other's sentences. Maybe you even fall in love.

But love at first sight? Impossible.

Soul Kitchen
Part One: Learn To Forget

“Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace--What you need is someone to take hold of you--- gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--- and I can! I’m determined to do it--- and nothing’s more determined than a cat on a hot tin roof--- is there? Is there, Baby?”
--Maggie the Cat; Tennessee Williams, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (New York; 1955)

Birmingham Post Herald
January 21, 1989

New Café Opens In Solomon

In a true “Fried Green Tomatoes” move, a new restaurant has opened on the site of a former McDonalds that had been closed in February of 1988. The Soul Kitchen, John Davis and Mark Harrison, proprietors, intend, as Davis told this reporter, “to show the town that, yes, there is life beyond McTowns and fatty food.”

Named for the Doors song, the Soul Kitchen is a lunch and dinner sit-down restaurant. Although Davis and Harrison are both only twenty, they promise good service, good atmosphere and good cooking. “Our parents are going to be breathing down out necks on that one,” said Harrison. “Especially Mrs. Davis.”

Davis’s fiancée, Maria Stone, said, “I have faith in John and Mark that they’ll do a good job. If they don’t, they’ll have me to answer to!”

According to the owners, the Soul Kitchen will be breaking even sometime this summer, if the eatery still holds favor by then.

-----------------
Et in Arcadia Ego.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Dr. Johnson

those much have been the most amazing two paragraphs in...the history of all time. =]
so so, he's mine. They are long, so sue me (please don't). I as of now still have no title. oooh weeeell.

Clyde woke up, already wishing the day was over as he slowly climbed out of bed; every muscle in his body tense and sore. He knew why. The screaming red cuts gracing him were proof. He sighed as he dragged his malnourished sixteen year old body to its limits just walking to the bathroom.

This wasn’t his house. No, not his. His house was filled with days of waking up happy and warm, a good mood already cementing itself into his head, making him grin as he went to breakfast, greeted with smiling parents. But his parents were dead. And this wasn’t his house. No. This house was perpetually cold, filled with grim days laden with tears and feeling like death warmed over. And Clyde grew up here for the last six years of his life. But even so, this still wasn’t his house. He had had many snowy days here sipping hot chocolate on the couch, listening to the rain in bed, and even hearing the sounds of a summer city through the open kitchen window while cooking. Still, there was something missing. All his memories of this house, no matter what day, included pain and tears. Wrists bleeding on the couch with hot chocolate spilled on the floor, slick with sweat trying to force his mind into denial by listening to the rain in bed, the summer sounds of this upbeat city his only companion for days on end. And he grew up here the last six years of his life.

"You're not used to that sort of trauma; no one is. Your mind just does this weird out-of-body experience, like you believe you're watching yourself do this.
But you're not.
But only sensible way to gain your bearing is to rush some logic and common sense, straight to the dome.
And after you sober the dumb out of your system, all there's left is some poor schmuck, fist deep in what I'd consider, my now ex-wife.
I say 'poor schmuck' because this is where is gets interesting.
I just snap. You know, you've taken so much crap through your whole life and finally, you let go.
Sort of like the Running of The Bulls in Pamploma.
All the preparation of constraining the bulls and steers, barracades to keep people safe, the inhabitions that allow you to be such a nice person.
All of that goes out the window. That tiny pin on the gate. Something that small, holding back all that fury behind the gates it has sworn to keep sealed.
And all it takes is one action.
One event to release the pin and snap those gates apart.
And once they do. It's chaos.
No one is truly ready for it. The people involved, nor the bulls.
What you get is an event that just 'happens' .
A situation so abnormal, you just have to accept it as reality.
The pin that used to hold the gates closed is now gone.
The gates snapped open; there are no bulls.
It's just me.
And I came right out of the gates with one of the wife's fist shaped dildos I found on the floor.
I gave the floppy, translucent arm shaped a mighty swing, and dislocated Daniel's jaw.
Yeah, I knew who he was.