I did not mention this in my introduction: I’m a wordy bastard. Sure, I try not to write, but when I do manage it, I tend to write a lot. This is why you may see author’s notes at the beginning of my stories. Though I do seek brevity in these notes, I may go on and on about things that no one else finds interesting. Feel free to skip them.

This is an excerpt from a larger–and incomplete–piece that I began working on for Nanowrimo. As I am lazy and try my best to avoid writing, I have failed spectacularly in that endeavor and have somehow managed to do far worse this year than I did last year. I’ve clocked in around two thousand words over the past few weeks and most of that is pure tosh. The chance of going further is slim and is, in fact, rather close to none. It was a strong start though, at least in my opinion, and that is good enough. May actually try to continue it eventually or maybe it will be another one to throw into the “unfinished” folder.

Without further ado, because the smart folk already took my advice and skipped this part, I present to you some of my terrible writing.


Something was buzzing in my ear. A fly? A bee? The fuzzy video of my dream showed it to be a teacher of mine from the ninth grade, a fat bitch with a tendency to scream when she wasn’t muttering under her breath. I remember her voice as a liquid punch to the eardrum. The buzzing was not a match. There I was, a little boy sitting in a desk that I outgrew years ago, being told off by a teacher that I hated so long after, her voice nothing more than a comical buzz. I would have laughed, except the buzz was in my ear and that worried my younger self, as if this hated bitch of a teacher had found a new way to torment. Panic. Alarm. Dear god boy, run for your fucking life before she eats your soul!

The dream turned to haze, then nothing more than a groggy memory as I moaned and groaned to waking. The buzzing did not stop with the dream, but continued on and on. My crusted eyelids refused to open more than a crack, my mind was thick, my mouth was intolerably dry, and there was a fucking buzzing in my ear that would not go away. A plague of locusts to annoy me to wakefulness, obviously. At least that was the first thought that managed to slip through the blockade. I looked this way and that, flailed a bit, and cursed like a sailor discovering he has some horrible cock rot. Then the bright red LED hit me square in the squinting eye: it was my fucking alarm clock.

My alarm clock had no reason to be on, I sure as hell had nowhere to go. My hand, numb from apparently being slept on, went forward without any knowing input from my mind and batted at the black plastic terror without much affect. The need for the buzzing to end was great, but my tired mind wanted to do nothing more than roll over and go back to sleep. A compromise was made. The hand stop batting at the clock and grasped it tight, dulling the buzz just slightly. With a screaming lurch I sat up, crusted eyes torn open, and launched the fucking thing across the room. Almost. The cord came from the wall and dropped it halfway across, but the little buzzing fucker rolled the rest of the way. Where it continued to buzz.

My eyes remained open, wide open, as I yelled to the heavens, “Fucking batteries!” The thought of sleep was burned away as my mind flared to life against its will. It sharpened to a holy terror of vengeance focused on the box of black plastic that refused to die. Blood pumping, head aching, cock swinging, I launched myself from the bed and headed for the window, scooping up the alarm clock along the way. The window opened smoothly and somewhere in the back of my mind I noted that I should probably have a lock on the damned thing. Traffic was slow, the alarm clock read 6:00 AM in blocky LED, and no one was coming. I flung the bastard out the window, smiling as the buzzing quieted as it fell to the street below to land with a loud clatter. The red light glared up at me like a death stare, but only until a box truck drove by and turned it into a scattered pile.

I smiled, but it quickly turned into a frown. The alarm clock, that most aggravating of necessities, was defeated, smashed into the realm of electronic death. In this, I had won, but I was awake, too awake to go back to sleep. In truth, though I had won, I had also lost. My head hung low in shame as I tramped towards the bathroom. I needed to piss.