Short Story / NO JOKE! Send Help.
I signed up for plentyoffish.com. It’s like match.com, but without the fee. I uploaded my picture. This was my blurb about myself, that appeared on my profile along with my pictures that I’d carefully chosen. I cook and I surf. I used to have long hair but I cut it. I read a lot. I play some basketball. I didn’t tell them I write for this blog. I didn’t have an answer for what I did for a living yet. I decided I would come up with one when they asked. The beauty of starting out a relationship over the internet. You can craft every phrase before you deliver it. You can consider everything. Every half truth nuanced.
So we started talking back and forth. There’s this wink function on the website where you can electronically wink at someone and they can choose whether they want to acknowledge that wink and/or wink back. Sometimes things get misspelled. But now, they get misspelled on purpose. Anagram has been forgotten. Acronym is paramount. R u c-ng wat im c-ng. IDK, I digress.
I think it’s a little ridiculous, but I like it in theory. After all, someone had to be the first to contract do and not. I rarely capitalize the i’s in my emails. I’ve even incorporated NVM’s (nevermind) and NMP’s (not my problem) into my everyday talk. At the coffee shop, the book store, wherever.
The she I was chatting up had the screen name of cutenlexy25. Her name, Alexis. She had four or five pictures on her profile. All candids. She had different hair in every picture, all mahogany. She had several different smiles. Under “favorite books” it read “I don’t read that much and even I know the Davinci Code sucked.” I liked her and I hoped she was intrigued by the mostly beach side pictures of my three years younger self. Adventure shots: me kayaking, me holding a surfboard, me in the jungle. That was when my hair was long and mostly blonde. Its cropped now, and brown. But my beard still comes in a hazy red and its hazy red up until my bi-monthly shavings. I put this all on my profile, you can check. You have already? Okay, so we’re on the same page.
She must have been looking for someone tall and irish. She found me, and the conversation was half way decent. She asked me out. That was part of the experiment. They had to jump in the boat. It was one of the requirements. She was the 4th and the goal was 10. Fishing with Dynamite: Ten Dates on Plentyoffish.com. I was going to try and sell the piece to one of the tabloid magazines before I ran it. Sometimes I could get a little bump in my normal income, which was comprised primarily on advertisement revenue from my website on top of the occasional bar tending shift. Once in a while my articles get bumped up the totem poll on digg.com and that’s when the advertisers start calling.
She told me to meet her outside this coffee shop. She told me to be there at 12pm and to be wearing a cowboy hat and a scarf around my neck. Like a bandit would wear, she told me. So I can recognize you right off. I got there a little early. Ordered a decaf. I thought it terrible luck when the second cowboy hat and scarf walked in the door. I thought it odd on the third and fourth. Fifth. Tenth. Fourteenth. The others started to gravitate towards eachother, figure things out. I knew what was happening so I got a quick refill to go. We had been rickrolled, that was all. Somebody lured us all to this spot in this getup. I walked out of that sea of plaid (red plaid, she wrote, wear a button down plaid shirt) I got the refill to go and walked out to the parking lot. Three police cars were empty and flashing, their occupants having left them to better train their service issued revolvers at my chest. “Hands in the air.” I dropped my coffee.
*****
I put the add on craigslist. I was selling an autographed copy of Sandman #3. The Gaiman sandman, not the Kirby one. I met Gaiman at a writers workshop in Princeton. I had one of his books in my bag, he was kind enough to sign it. I’m not really into getting autographs, but it was like I didn’t even have to seek this one out. It dropped in my lap.
She wanted to know if I had issues #13, #18. I have the whole run, and I told her as much. She asked what I looked like. The link to my myspace profile. I changed the song before I gave it to her. Elizaebeth Spektor something or other. Maybe “Samson.” She thought I was cute.
The emails turned to gchats. Cutenlexy25 was embarrassed to ask me to go to Cowtown Rodeo. It was something she’d always wanted to do, and had no one to go with her. She asked me to dress like a cowboy. We’d meet at the coffee shop off of I-95. They had commuter parking. If for no other reason than to bring issue #3 for the exchange. See where it went from there. We’d meet at twelve. Some officers took the comic from me. Can you make sure its being handled carefully?
******
Listen, are you going to charge me for the pot? Give me the ticket already. Your not going to tag on an intent to distribute. Three grams in Marlboro cellophane is nothing. Hardly even personal consumption. How long are you going to keep me here? Can I have the pipe back? It was a gift.
She wrote in to this stoners website I check out sometimes. They’d been having a field day with Obama’s internet town poll. Potheads crawled out of the woodwork to ask about legalization, jury rig that as a top question. But anyway, she was going against the grain, with her posts. Moral stance aside, she couldn’t believe there was no way legalizing pot would do anything to help with the economy. She put it in this perspective. The government gave out 170,000 million in bailout money. The bonuses everyone was complaining about were for 165 million. Even if legalizing pot brought in upwards of 200 million, it wasn’t anything that was going to stem the tide. 165 million is what the companies threw away after they’d eaten their fill. Crumbs and lint at the bottom of Uncle Sam’s pocket.
I replied to her post. Gave her big ups, you know, for speaking her mind. And speaking it rationally. Some people get so wrapped up in this hobby, it gets to be religious for them. All that fervor, and she was just a voice. When I found out she was from the same town, I invited her out. Even if it wasn’t for a lay, I figured we’d have some good conversation for a little while. The hat and bandanna? Her idea. I didn’t get it either. I rolled with it.
*******
I don’t do well with people. Well, with a lot of people. Crowded places, the super market, the mall, the book store, I get dizzy, I start to hyperventilate. The internet, its great for me. Amazon.com, I can order shoes, a month’s supply of granola, and whatever DVDs and CDs I don’t just rip from a torrent site. My local grocery store, for a fee, will deliver the items which I find on their website and put a check mark next to. The invention of paypal, well, that was like them accidentally making penicylin and seeing all unintended good it could do.
I’m fine with the idea of people. I like them, individuals. Babies, old people, everybody. There’s just got to be a very specific amount of them in the room. Two or three. Four tops, other than myself. There needs to be air on my face, a glass of water nearby, and I’m fine with up to 4 people. In Warcraft, my friends are legion.
I’m a level 70 gnome mage. Most people pick the nuke talent tree. Fire spells, flaming meteors, burning elements. You can do a lot of damage that way. As long as you don’t mind having a drink after every battle. My guy, he’s a little unorthodox. He’s an ice-mage. He outlives his opponents. Chipping away at their health like any other deliberate war of attrition. If things get hairy, I cast this shield spell that encases me in ice. Lets me heal. I can watch my quest mates pick off the little swarming beasties while I recoup. She was a human paladin, fully armored and at my side.
We were in the same guild, both of us had heard the dungeon quest call. After we destroyed Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern, we agreed to gear up and log off for the night. I was as apprehensive as the next guy when she asked me out. What are the odds that two people in the same guild were from the same city? There are plenty of quests in WoW where you need some special ornament to travel safely. I didn’t think twice about the bandana. I wasn’t ready for the crowd of ten gallons.
********
I was promised work for a Saturday. Almost as good as overtime at 15 per. I didn’t ask what the job was, just what I should wear. Be prepared for sun, dust, and wind. You tell me how to dress for that. It was supposed to be a long day…I was getting a coffee. I thought these other guys were there for the job too.
**********
10-19. In a heist part The Sting and part Sneakers, a Wachovia Regional Branch was robbed of over 55,000 dollars, in cash and travelers checks. The group who robbed the bank were all dressed identically, in full cowboy attire. “It was like being in Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota,” said one witness, “this is why I never use the drive up.” Amanda Pennyshire, age 8, said it was better than Disney. One lucky hostage won our twitter tipster jackpot, announcing the crime first hand as it happened. This is the transcript.
11:48 NO JOKE. I’m at the Wachovia in the strip mall off Delaware and South. Men with guns are holding up the place. Call 911. NO JOKE.
11:49 They promised no one would be hurt, but I don’t believe them. 3 gunmen. Between 5’10 and 6’0 tall. All brown hair. Wearing cowboy hats. Jeans. Can’t see their faces. Bandanas.
11:51 They just hit some lady across the face. Her eye is bleeding. Be sure to check out my blog later. If I make it through this, that is. Gerry, if anything happens
11:51 my password is the same place my black dog ate your math homework in 11th grade. Yes, that math homework. Please get my internet affairs in order.
11:53 Gunmen just left, carrying bags of what had to be money and jewels. Looks like they went into the coffee shop across the parking lot.
12:30 All over now. Thanks everybody. Waiting around for my turn to be questioned. The cops surrounded the coffee shop, went in, and brought out all these guys in handcuffs and plastic ties.
12:31 There must be twenty of them, all dressed like the robbers. That’s going to be a s---show getting straight.
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The story is really good, and interesting, and funny. I think it could be a little bit clearer though. Maybe organize it differently. Aside from that, I really enjoyed it.
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I liked this, but I couldn’t figure out why you did this for research. And you kind of lost me at the part where times and dates started pouring in. I did like the ending however.
“What a shitshow. About to be questioned. What a shit show”
Okay there were a few like spelling and grammar mistakes that seemed strange but maybe you just overlooked them.
I REALLY like this story. I love how all the gunmen answer the questioning and how the twitter part at the end clarifies everything. This could definitely be published because I think it’s very original. Great job!
Comes off brilliantly. Great story, one of the few I really enjoy reading on urbis.
Couple of grammar, syntax and basic spelling errors as well as missing punctuation (if you want examples I’ll provide them) but I thought they were quite a subtle way for the reader to get an extra je ne sais qua, familiarity, with the differend voices.
The twitter stream at the end is ace. voice and style are spot on. Just the way a post-modern technophile encountering their mortality for the first time would. The password hint, though, doesn’t seem to lead to a specific word, but again I read this as a human responding to pressure and fear and not being totally on the ball, and that’s fine.
Love it
Josh
this is very good indeed. i think the voice changes are obvious enough for the reader to no what’s going on.
I love Chopin and Cather
– “Online winking, on this particular dating site, goes like this: needs a colon because you are introducing something.
Under “favorite books” it said, you need a comma. You are introducing dialog.
it said , “It read”
and even I know the Davinci Code sucked. I believe you should say “but” instead of “and”.
“How do you think I got there? I drove. How am I supposed to know that..” Okay i am helplessly lost. Listen you must transition better. Who is he talking to? Where does he want to go with all his posessions?
I enjoyed this and you are a proficient writer but wouldn’t it have been stronger if you showed all this action instead of telling us about it? You might think about that suggestion. Please make your transitions clearer and make sure you use correct puncuation. Good luck, Sandi
“comics out on the table at thre coffee shop,” I told her but she insisted I wear”
Careful :-P
LMAO! Okay, seriously, it started off confusing as hell, seriously confusing, you’re going to need to do something about that, perhaps start each paragraph off with “Paul”, “Dean”, “Luke” etc. That might help.
But the end! The END was classic. Brilliant set up. Poor guys :-( I bet they didn’t say that one coming! Bar that little error at the start this was comedy gold, I actually laughed out loud when I realised what had happened to the buggers. Well done, seriously seriously well done!
I’m a fan!
I spent a good two thousand, twenty three hundred words wondering what plenty offish might mean.
10-19 looks to much like 11:48; in the final formatting, I’m sure there’s something you can do to keep that from being confusing.
Still not sure about what “The Sting” and “Sneakers” means.
Did anyone have to go out and buy the stuff to wear?
service-issued revolvers (Had to read that sentence three times to understand “service” went with “revolvers”)
This story is a riot. Totally unexpected.
Great pace, good humor, excellent pay-off. I ignored the syntax and technical stuff per your reviewer’s notes.
I think this is publishable as is, although I do have one small nit-pick. You need to write this in more than one style. All of your points of view write in the same minimalist, short sentence, no-nonsense style. I don’t think that all these different folks would have the same tone, the same kind of voice.
Alternate with styles specific to each character. Maybe long boring sentences for the WoW character, dreamy confused and vague sentences for your pot enthusiast… I think you get the idea.
regardless I gave this a 9 out of 10.
I love the story line – it’s current, relevant, and clever. In your instructions you said you don’t want grammatical specifics, so let’s look at exposition and structure. The beginning POV is a definite hook, and it’s not until you get into subsequent scenes that the problems arise.
It took until page 5 to get what you were doing. The reason is simple. You’ve got different characters all using the same diction and sentence rhythms, so it was hard at first to understand. The narrative voice for each character is not succinct enough. On second reading it’s clear and fun, but that won’t get you published or high marks for structure. Some dialogue would help differentiate. One or two lines – nothing more.
Also, the ending might serve better if there was a wrap up by the original character. I know this solution is less edgy, but the emotional payoff for the reader will be better. Reader’s like to feel complete. The alternative is to build a piece of that final payoff into each scene, triggering with a completing phrase in the last 911 call. Either way, the ending is currently hanging out there in emotional space.
This story has tremendous potential. Once the structural issues are worked out, I could see it getting placed.
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