I woke up screaming just after three this morning from a dream I couldn't remember, tearing into blankets partially covering me as the fan rocked against the roof (note to R: please let's get it fixed before we have a Donnie Darko moment involving a ceiling fan instead of engine.) I waited, but no one came running to placate me. Then I remembered I was twenty-five and long out of the age range for NIGHT TERROR and NIGHTMARE emergency services.
The universe likes to balance shit out. Case in point: earlier this year I greedily performed a ritual to bring me money for superficial reasons; a few weeks later my mother died and I received a check from her life insurance company (um...oops?). Case in point (times two!): I'm one of the 8% world population who has a perfectly symmetrical jaw line, but I'm also one of the 6% of adults who never grew out of night terrors.
I thought the bottom of the barrel was sleep paralysis (something I experienced twice as a teenager, both scaring the lucid dreaming SHIT out of me), but I was wrong. Nothing's topped waking up screaming (and not knowing if you're the one screaming so, naturally, you scream even LOUDER and HARDER to determine if it is) on the floor in a pitch black room in a strange, deserted house with your husbands grip so desperately tight on your arm that it immediately left bruises.
To this day I still have NO IDEA what I was dreaming about (a common symptom of night terrors), how I fell off a bed that was nearly three feet off the ground, or why I couldn't stop screaming - even though there came a point where I knew I was sprawled on the fucking floor with my husband clawing at me as if I was dangling off a cliff to my death. I tried capturing the confusing horror of the event in Abberlaine's story Until Sleep (the first story I wrote after my mother's untimely death), but I later learned you just can't put that sort of shit in words. Seriously.
Needless to say, we packed up our shit and slept uneasily at my mother's house that night and I was lectured to NEVER AGAIN EAT CHEESE BEFORE BED, EVER (apparently that doesn't help.) I grudgingly agreed even though I REALLY FUCKING LOVE MUENSTER (dude, you can't get it over here in the UK!) because I wasn't the one who got white hairs thanks to the ordeal (I got every shitty ass gene from my mother EXCEPT the one that makes you go prematurely grey.)
Anyway, this isn't just another lame attempt to make me look a super genius (night terrors + zero emotional intelligence + violent temper + perfect jaws = SUPER GENIUS, OBVIOUSLY!) it's actually GOING somewhere. Or was SUPPOSED to go somewhere until I began rambling about sleeping habits that no one really cares about. Right now my conversational skills are about as sharp as those retarded plastic 'safety' scissors, so please bear with me.
STRESS.
There, that was succinct! STRESS and EMOTIONAL DISTRESS bring on night terrors, and since we know I'm a robot incapable of real emotions we can blame my most current episode on the former. Last night's episode is the byproduct of nearly 14,000 words written in a week, which doesn't necessarily seem a lot unless you know that some novels are only 60,000. In just seven days I've written almost a quarter of that, which is something I haven't done in fucking YEARS.
The good news is I've got enough material to cover my ass for the next month (and then some), the bad news is my ability to appear coherent is running on empty. R offered to do the update this week but I waved him off thinking I could handle the responsibility. And I was clearly being delusional about it, since I've already written something like seven hundred words and I haven't even managed to get to the story.
SO I AM, getting to the story that is.
There are some characters that are important, and then there are some characters that are REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT - like Charlie Benway. Without Charlie there would be no 'Benway Bunnies' (quite literally!); the foundation which my writing was based on. Through out years things about characters inevitably change and evolve but three things have already remained constant with Charlie: she despises the size of her tits, her love of guns borders on fetishism, and she has a dangerously short fuse.
She's so fucking popular that when I mentioned I was considering removing her first story (which, incidentally, is one of the first ones I wrote) I was met with a wave of homicidal threats thinly veiled as indignation. Rather than provoking the vengeful wrath of Charlie fanatics I let the story stay even though I cringe every time I'm reminded of it. One of these days it'll be sacrificed to the almighty EARLY WORKS folder, but only once my safety is assured by bodyguards.
Short Fuse was the fourth story written on my ill-advised writing rampage and, I think, it begins to show exhaustion on my part (I came back with full force the next story, but only after I took a day off from writing). The switch between pure narration and dialogue isn't as seamless as I would've liked, up until that point I was really pleased with how the story was flowing. Once Melanie appears things start to get choppy, and once I realised that I began panicking (hence the really abrupt end). I'm disappointed with the story because I knew it could be A LOT better, but I realise that my expectations were a little off since I had been working for DAYS without a break. It'll be better next time around, so please hold onto your letter bombs and rethink about sending Mossad my way.
To read Charlie's newest story, Short Fuse, click here. Or, of course, you can go the long route to big boobs and guns (but why would you want to?) by hitting up the Benway Bunnies section of Fiction. Short Fuse is listed under the 2005 header just above her sister's latest story, On the House. Charlie's graced and narrated many a story so if you're all about Benway love then make sure to look her up in the Character Index.
I'm now going to pass out, someone please remind R to wake me up for next week's update if you don't see it by Saturday evening. Thanks.
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