Clearwater

Here is a story I wrote a couple of months ago for a monthly contest called Furious Fiction. It's pretty fun and free and open to anyone in the world, so, you should enter!  This was for April's contest, I believe. The prompts were- in 500 words or less, write a story that begins in some kind of queue;  have the words CROSS, DROP and LUCKY; and it must include a map. Oh and you have like 55 hours from the time the contest opens to close. I basically wrote a fictionalized version of some true stories that happened to me back in my hitch-hiking days. At the end of the story I'll show how I changed things up:

Clearwater

Two days of not seeing a soul, and now there was a queue to thumb a ride. Where did they even come from? We were in Northern British Columbia, far away from anything except bears and trees. I’d slept late, in my little tent, off in the bush, and now I returned to my spot on the side of the highway to discover that I was third in line.

And number one didn’t look eager to share.

“You have to wait your turn,” he said. “I was here first.” There are many beautiful adjectives one could use to describe this man, but in that moment I could only think of two: big and scary.

“Actually, this is my third day here. It’s really dead. I had to strike camp so...”

He strode over with calamitous fury, grabbed the cross hanging around my neck and snapped it off. Shit. I held up my hands. “You’re right. You were here first. I’ll wait.”

I took my backpack and sat down a short distance away. The other guy, number two, had watched the whole thing impassively. 

A truck approached, and my ‘friend’ stuck his thumb out. The truck pulled over. Unbelievable. How lucky could you get? That should’ve been my ride. Number two catches my eye, and we shake our heads.

“You’re up,” I said.

“There’s a Greyhound due, I’m gonna flag him down. Driver takes cash if you wanna come.”

“Thanks, but I’ll wait.”

The bus shows up as promised, and number two exits stagecoach right.

Eons later, a ride. Young guy, rusty Datsun, loud music. Perfect. Immediately he started talking as if resuming a conversation we’d been having for years. I did my best to keep up.

“Space elevators presuppose a technology that doesn’t exist,” he said. “But electromagnetic catapults could drop shit right on the moon for a fraction of the cost.”

“Very true. Yes. I agree.” And so it went. Finally he remembered to ask:

“Where you headed?”

“Edmonton.”

“You’re going the wrong way!”

My stomach dropped for a second, but no, east is east and west is west. I knew the way. Space Elevator was equally convinced he was right.

I pulled out my map. “You came from Clearwater, yeah? Here. And picked me up by Vavenby. East. See how the river is to our right, just like on the map?”

He didn’t see. He careened around a slow-moving tractor as if he had been catapulted to the moon. I wrestled with my conscience. Every minute he remained unconvinced was another minute closer to home. But. Poor kid. He was heading away from his spaceport.

I tried one more time. Karma. “Look, that sign says Avola, 23 kms. The map shows Avola east of Clearwater.”

“Oh shit, you might be right. Hey, there’s another hitch-hiker, let’s ask him!”

It was my old friend Number One. 

“You know what? My mistake. We’re going the right way.”

I smiled and waved as we passed.

END

Alright, so. Let's see. I really did catch a ride with a guy who was going the wrong way, and I really did have to pull out a map to show him. But I didn't do any dick moves, I just was honest, which kind of bit me in the butt actually. Lol. He picked me up in Clearwater and wound up dumping me on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, which is where I was stuck for a while. Eventually I caught a ride up a ways to the next exit, which is where I did find myself sharing the road with two hitch-hikers in front of me. But the highway was so dead I wound up going into the bushes and setting up my tent. And later that night the much bigger of the two fellow hitch-hikers stomped into the bush and loudly tore off a branch of a tree and I thought for sure he was going to club me to death. Instead he . . . didn't do anything that I could tell. I have no idea what he did because I was hiding in my sleeping bag and never heard or saw from him ever again. Phew! So in real life he never got into any kind of altercation with me but I definitely remember that feeling of helpless terror.

Oh! And the conversation about the space elevator- a version of that really did happen with a hitch-hiker that I picked up one time near Houston, BC. See, the teeny tiny BC town Houston has the same name as the huge Texan city where they do space stuff so buddy thought Canadian Houston should contribute likewise.

 Air and Nothingness' new anthology opens for submissions today. Are you going to send something? I can say that I am working on something. I think I will be able to finish it in the time allotted- although it's a little more ... ambitious ?? maybe than anything I've attempted before. Kind of space operatic, and as much as I love space opera, it's not something I've really tried to write before. But I have a pretty cool alien organism and setting and even a way to fit the spiritualism aspect in, so. Just do my best, right? 

I've been running again, back up to 10 kms now. I've found that running that distance is pretty consistently reliable for activating the really good creative mindflow that happens sometimes, where you're not fighting it, where the words just come. You can see the story, and how it needs to be written. I wish that could be done with just having a second cup of coffee, and very occasionally it does- but not in any predictable  or reliable way. And so I run. Urg! No, it's good. It's got all the benefits right? It's just so hard. Like writing. Urg!

I wrote a story earlier this year for an open call that didn't get picked up. It was for the theme of Industrial Revolution. Industry is a thing I know about, right? And my mind was kind of thinking about the River Styx and Charon because of Megaflora, so I wrote a story about the Styx and stuff. It was fun to write, and I think successful, and it was about a very specific thing- should I talk about a story that is unpublished and unavailable? I see how that isn't the most useful thing to read about. Hmm. Well, you can always stop reading right? No trouble at all. Ok, I will keep writing about this. I guess spoiler alert for a story you have no way (currently) to read. 

The theme of this story is very easy- it can be boiled down to a thesis statement: progress should have cured death but instead it optimized killing. I even say that right in the text at the end, disguised as poetry. I bring this up because it's useful to have such a thesis for a story, it points you where to go and how to write it, but sometimes I don't always have a theme, or at least something that can be said in one simple statement. This current story, doesn't have that. But it does have a central big theme. It's just too big! How to boil it down. Or how to figure out if it needs to be boiled down, or is just asking some big questions ok? I know the answer to that one. Urg! The answer is the same as it always is- write the damn story and then rewrite it so it's good. Sometimes I wish it was just easier! 

Urg!!!