"Multiply Untitled Story by multiple writers" Part 2

This entry was written by j, the original can be found here.

 

Oh fucking hell. Pablo thought.  Is nothing sacred anymore?  It's my goddamned honeymoon for Chrissake.  Can't they even wait until it's over?

Of course he noticed them.  True, he's distracted than usual, smiling wryly to himself, but artists, even the laziest ones, have a keen eye.  Details, it's all about the details.  He certainly didn't appreciated it when they first showed up at Concorde Square.  Romance is fucking hard work with these bastards around.

"Mm?.. " he responded sleepily to Lea.  

"There's someone at the door!"  she whispered more frantically.

"Someone?" he sat up slowly.  His mind raced and wondered how he'll play this out with Lea.  

"Yes, I heard noises...." Lea's voice trailed off and she looked a bit embarrassed.  "I.. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but I'm almost certain someone knocked.. but it was only one time and I.. I'm not sure..." 

Three fucking times Pablo mentally corrected her.  First time when they were in the balcony kissing, second time when she was about to climax and the third time at fucking 2:15am.  

"Let me check.." he started to get out of the bed when she put her hand on his chest.

"No.." she said, "I'm sure it's nothing.. I.. I just need a glass of water."  And she stood up and reached for her robe.

Pablo pretended to yawn and shut his eyes.  He could hear the rustling of her slippers as they made their way to the kitchen.  The faucet running.  The glass laid down on the counter tile.  Her sighing.

Even in the dark he could see doubt on her face and relentless curiosity that needs to be satisfied.  Perhaps she didn't mean it but he knew she kept secrets from him.  He half wondered if its was because she knew he kept secrets from her as well.

He thought about the long scar on her thigh he discovered months ago.  "I was such a tomboy when I was a kid I got that jumping over the fence" she said.  He trailed his tongue over it and nibbled her skin.  Whip?  Knife?  He thought of the options.  It definitely wasn't the fence.

She was trying to be quiet now.  He almost felt the air move when she crept up to the front door.  She might actually open it and check out what's going on.  

"Lea?" he called out.

She stopped in her tracks and quickly returned to the bedroom.  She removed her robe and went back to bed with him.

She nuzzled under his arm and sighed.  Soon she was asleep.

He knew they slipped the key underneath the door and she found it.  Goddamit.

 

 

 

"Multiply Untitled Story by multiple writers" Part 1

 

Lea was admiring the waterlilies in the purple pond when she heard the television. Or, what she thought was the television. They sounded like muffled yelping and distant raining. Maybe she had left the television on.

 

The noises were inching closer. Somebody was definitely calling away. Lea was distracted and decided to wake up.

 

Lea fluttered her eyes open to the dark of the room. The television wasn't on.

 

She did not remembered turning on the television before sleep. Lea could not even remember sleeping. In fact her head felt heavy. It was alcohol. Lea remembered it had been a bottle of champagne. Intoxicated, she and Pablo had discussed art. After all they were in Paris for their honeymoon. She loved it when her groom spoke with fiery passion and gesticulations on Rembrandt and Van Gogh. If Pablo had knew about her dream, he would have claimed that Lea was in an Monet's painting! Pablo had lived and breathed art.

 

Lea heard something trailing off like the wails of police sirens. She couldn't believe she was right here in Paris! Pablo had chose France and Spain for their honeymoon. It's the 'Picasso Journey', he proclaimed. He had wanted to follow the artist's development from Paris to Madrid and Barcelona.    This was their first night in Paris and everything had been wonderful. They had cruised along the Seine river in the sunset and had dinner on the Eiffel Tower. Drunk and madly in love with one another, they went back to their hotel and had crazy rockstar sex.

 

Lea closed her eyes and smiled widely. Two whole weeks of Picasso, wine, sex and shopping, she would need all the energy she could muster. Maybe they could even conceive a child in the most romantic city in the world...

 

Then in the dark, she heard a sharp rap on the door. It had left swiftly the way it had came, almost as if she had imagined it. But the residual blunt in her ears had cast a sturdy ripple that stirred her awake.

 

Lea sat her tired eyes up and waited for a second knock. Or a buzz. Or a voice informing her of a room service she hadn't ordered. Their room was classically kept, with exquisite wallpapers and an large oak door. It had a bolted cylinder lock and had to be opened noisily with an iron key.

 

Maybe a guest had walked past their room and brushed against their door. Lea listened for slamming of neighboring doors or the metal cage closing for one to get into the tiny elevator. There were none, save for Pablo's snoring by her side.

 

Lea turned in the bed, sandpapering the blankets and faced the door. It remained ten feet away, solid bolted with a thin ray of light streaming beneath it. The uninterrupted light showed that no one was at the door. It must had been the sound of water pipes in the bathroom by the door. Old buildings do that sometimes. Hotel Violette was at least fifty years old. Lea had read the hotel's history at the reception while Pablo was checking them in two nights ago. Pablo had difficulty in communication as he spoke little French and the elderly receptionist spoke minimal English and was quite deaf. Lea swore that she could remember the name of the receptionist. His name had sounded like a cough.

 

'Jacques.' Lea smiled triumphantly as she closed her eyes lazily and snugged the covers closer.

 

Maybe old Jacques was making his rounds along the corridors.

 

To fully assure herself that she could go back to dreaming, Lea decided to check the door again. It was a preservation instinct of hers; checking gas before leaving her house, logging on emails before sleep or texting her assistant before the end of the day to reassure that she was infallible and invulnerable. The urban lioness in the downwind. Lea looked at the door for the final time and saw something disturbing enough to sit up straight as an arrow at the edge of the bed. Pablo groaned in protest as he rolled over to the other end. 

 

The light beneath the oak door was disconnected. A pair of shadowy feet broken the line of light.

 

What was the damn time? Lea breathed heavily. Suddenly the room had became claustrophobic. Three, four am? She remembered Pablo bringing her back to their room around midnight. Had they locked the door? Completely? What if the spring in the lock was loose and the door was not fully locked? Was their lock an easy lock to pick? All you need was a hairpin. Maybe they should have gotten a hotel with cardkeys in the beginning. Lea thought about Nellie from accounting. When Nellie had her honeymoon in Switzerland, someone tried to break in unsuccessfully. Nellie's husband had the chair against the doorknob. The person fled when the chair was making too much noise and woke Nellie's husband. The shadow beneath the door stood still. Lea focused her sight on the brass doorknob, half expecting it would be agonizingly twisted to open. Then burly men with accents would rush in with shinning knives and plastic cables. There were nothing viable in the room to defend themselves with. Maybe Pablo could still hurl the table lamp and put up a fight, but they would eventually gut him like a lamb and spilled his blood all over the velvet carpet. This was Europe after all. Crime did not exist with solely with pickpockets, tourists had been kidnapped, raped, organ-harvested and traded off as sex slaves.

 

The shadow as if read her, moved away from the door. The horizon of light resumed uninterrupted, running from one end to another seamlessly.

 

Lea sat there staring. She realized that the alcohol in her body was completely purged by both adrenaline and her running imagination. She could felt her forehead moisten. What now? Is the person still there? Is he pretending to leave? Would he return again when she sleeps?

 

The only way to find out was through the peephole.

 

But Lea didn't want to look through the peephole. What if she saw something? Something or someone just leaning close to the door and stared back through the concave lens. Eyeball to eyeball.

 

'Pablo, honey!' Lea hissed and shoved her husband's shoulder. 'Wake up. Now.'

 

'What is it?' Pablo mumbled to his bride. 'Is it morning already?'

 

'Someone's at the door.'

 

 

The Placebo Effect (1)

 

The plan came from the idea that was called The Lotayo's Hold and it was a very simple idea.

There were a few suggestions to how the idea got its name from but nobody could afford to guess anymore these days, not when the dead were eating this planet alive. Nobody call each other by names anymore, they now called each other by the places they came from or the ones they were going. That notion alone suggested the depravity of the situation. Nobody knew how it began or when, but the day when CNN broadcast their reporters being eaten live in a refugee camp in Magadan, Russia on April's Fool day, it became the day that God played the biggest joke on mankind.

Lotayo's Hold was really named after a Mr. Lotayo who was a former businessman in Qingdao, Taiwan. He was rebranding classic melodies before April's Fool day 2011 and two weeks after that day, Lotayo was left to fend for himself in a junkyard behind his record company and ate rodents for survival.

The Lotayo's Hold was discovered when three reanimated found a way to get out from the recording studio where there were no more people to eat and surrounded Lotayo when he was having the first bowel movement since April's Fool's day. In the midst of knocking around one another, throwing his feces at the zombies and stumbling over garbage, Lotayo found himself then staring at the undead who were staring at the ground together. The three reanimated just stood there the whole afternoon staring at the same spot in front of them. When the day broke, Lotayo returned and realized that they mesmerizing by a looping tune that was playing from the defected disc-man.

The song was Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.

Two weeks later, Lotayo found his way to the local CDC and presented his findings on how to subdue the undead. The government then granted him twenty million dollars, a group of paramilitary and two weeks to perfect The Lotayo's Hold.

The idea was a simple one. Despite the lack of blood circulation and respiration, zombies' brains were still firing electrical impulses. Some music was found to be able to influence it or in science's terms, enabling a disturbance to their electrical impulses not unlike an epilepsy. Lotayo's report found that music with zingy repetitions like a triple loop of one chorus to three verses then a bridge or an instrumental solo worked best. Most zombies were found to be affected by rapid percussion as well.

Zombie's genre was rock after all.

Eleven weeks later, Brian Molko was summoned to the American CDC and why Brian had asked why, he was shown three clips.

The first one showed a sealed room with twenty zombies and Stairway of Heaven was played. Four undead went over to the radio and stood trembling there while the rest ignored them.

The second one showed a sealed room with twenty zombies and Radiohead's Paranoid Android was played. Seven undead surrounded the radio while the rest went on their ways.

The third one showed a sealed room with twenty zombies and Placebo's Special K was played . All twenty of them surrounded the radio, some were swaying along and one had even tapped its feet to the rhythm.

The plan that came from an idea named after a Qingdao businessman was a simple one. Summon all the undead to an island with Placebo's music and nuke the island.

That's ridiculous. Molko said.

He was then shown another three clips.

The first clip showed a harbor broadcasting Placebo's Meds and dozen and dozen of zombies swam towards the harbor. The tally showed that seventy one undead attended that broadcast.

The second clip showed a hologram on top of the Eiffel Tower broadcasting Placebo's 2009 Nurburg, Germany's concert. The tally showed eleven thousand undead had scaled the tower.

The third clip showed a live tribute band playing Placebo's Every You And Every Me in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The tally showed two billion undead attended the concert.

This is ridiculous. Molko said.

The plan was a simple one. Placebo is to hold a concert two days later the shore of an island in the north, with their songs broadcast live another seven islands southeast, west and mid-west of the globe, a total of fifty thousand nuclear bombs would be detonated on them.

The plan was called The Placebo Effect.

 

Movie Review on Grown Ups (2010)

 

I wanted to title this entry "Grow up, Adam Sandler", but recoiled as it struck me that by not growing up was what make people love Adam Sandler.

We are trying to pick a movie for date night Wednesday. It's either Grown Ups or Going The Distance. Drew Barrymore versus Adam Sandler. Who can forget them in The Wedding Singer (1998)?

'So how?' I've asked my date, 'You gets to pick.'

'Kay.' Huiling replied, 'What is what?'

'One hand you have Barrymore which you seen and like her for her klutziness in Music and Lyrics (2007), 50 First Dates (2004) (again Sandler and Barrymore) and well, all her movies, she 's a sotong. This film is about two couples who met in a bar, liked what they seen and hooked up. The chick then gets to leave town and they opted for a long distance relationship. By which it is a good reflection on both theirs and the real couples' stuggle to love each other through phone sex, mails and text messages. It's a love story which can summarise and define true romance at the end of our date and allows us to go aww... on the way home.'

'On the other hand, Grown Ups is popularly funny, hopefully with David Spade and Chris Rock because you know that with Kevin James and Rob Schneider, it's all about drat physical comedy. Falling over stuff, bumping their heads, getting hit in the crotch, sleeping with grannies, stepping on shit, falling into shit, falling onto shit or getting wasted. But looking at the amount of stars in the show and the movie length of 100 minutes plus plus, they wil cram in as much face time that it can only come out as a show about friendship, family and Rob Schneider eating shit.'

'Well?' I asked.

'The funny one.' She gave.

The movie was just I anticipated. Almost.

Kevin James fell over everything. It was Spade that fell and ate shit, not Schneider, but Schneider gets to sleep with a granny. It is a film about lots of in-your-face forgetable physical comedy and an staggering screentime for Salma Hayek's boobies. She gets two stars for the movie for that.

Stars Rating:  

 

 

Happy Birthday to Me. Thanks For Asking.

by Ah Kiat on Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:24am

 'The Big Bang Theory' is about four genius geeks and celebrates social awkwardness and the ultimate nerdage. At twenty seven and held Masters and PHDs; they worshiped Star Trek and invented Klingon Boogle, they swore their weekends on Wii Bowling Nite, Halo Nite and War Of Warcraft Nite, they debated furiously on superheroes and supervillians and they had gotten rejections from every single ladies they met.

Their story speaks to me.

I'm twenty seven. Though I did nothing paramount like driving a Mars Rover 65 million miles away, discovering a planetary body and named it 'Planet Bollywood' or solved subatomic particle equations and string theory and dark matter. I'm still a geek in so many ways.

Top of the head I can fight you to the death on why Superman is wussy, deconstruction the science and magic of Marvel and DC and how The Matrix is the most important movie in Nineties. I'm a huge fan of Doremon in which I can prove it with my double library of all it's running series and long stories collections. The most expensive and useless stuff I bought was Vertigo tarot cards. (I don't even believe in tarot reading, yet the pack is so bloody cool to miss) I've squandered at least four of my best years in LAN gaming (and they were the best years). My secret dream house accessory is to build a bat signal at my balcony, my secret to-do-list is to learn hadoken and my secret identity when I'm drunk is 'I am the Batman!'

As meek is conventionally inheriting the world or in other words, the market is increasingly targeting nerds as a dynamic spender with results from Comic-Con, Superhero Films and gadgets, it is their social awkwardness that very much still appeal to me.

I'm squarish, loop sided, myopic and look like something you would sweep out at spring cleaning. It's so much worse in secondary school. Raging hormones and unmanageable curly hair is not a good mix. Girls became a large part of my life and the saddest part was they don't even bother to look at me. I remembered telling my first crush I like her and her first instinctive response to girlfriends was 'eew'. Things go pretty much downhill from there. Girls orbit around me so that they can know my better looking friends or they will tell me in the end that 'Oh, but I see you only as a brother'...

But like all lucky nerds, I have some fond memories of 'The Goddess', 'The Fling' and 'The Sun'. Then again, that's tale for another time perhaps.

The bone of this entry in reference to the future is not about girls (I'm married), or how much I could mind-wrestle you with comic book details and trivial, it's about embracing geek personality whole-heartedly. Because no matter how much you shake down a geek, lecture him about severity of reality and dress him up as a jock wannabe or even married him, you cannot take the geekiness out of him. The ultimate geekiness is about losing interest in reality, friendship and embrace solitude with a bitter but self-assuredness.

You can condemn me about my deprivation of the matter and I'm simply returning to my roots. This birthday onwards I resolve to stop pretending to be the person I am not, or want to go to places I don't belong, or submit to the lifestyles I should be having. Most importantly, I will not longer take a interest in what you like, in who breaks your heart, in what lame excuse when you blow me off or bother to conceal the fact that your taste in music, movies and books are so shitty that you might as well wear a toilet as a hat.

The Draft 1

'Ington.'

A boy, no more than ten looked up from his robot he was holding. He looked no different from the children in the hospital's playroom. Quiet and reserved. There were hardly playing in the small room of dollhouses, plastic trucks and jigsaws. They were the children of their malignant parents.

'Are you Ington Khiang?' A thin man in navy army uniform approached Ington at eye level. Ington couldn't stop noticing the Tree emblem on the serviceman's sleeve, even as Ington nodded, he wanted to reach out and touch the Tree.

'How old are you?' The serviceman asked. His voice was tender with kindness.

It's a Lantern Tree. Ington decided. His mother had always informed him about the need for Lantern trees in this world. According to her, lantern trees were different things to different people. But they were essentially the anchors of the world.

'Are you alright, boy?' The voice concerned.

Ington decided that his own Lantern tree would like a lot like the one on the sleeve of the serviceman. Not the part about "Kingdom First" which was bold in golden threads under the Tree, but the shape that embodied it. The Tree was shaped like a fish. A diving fish head-down, with flaming tails in every directions upwards.

'Do you know your mother is sick?' The serviceman asked, looking closer at Ington, hoping to jolt a response from the boy.

Lantern Trees are the anchors of the world. Their roots held the ocean floors together.

'Your mother, Ington.' The serviceman collected himself and gave, 'Your mother is very sick and will not hold out soon. Do you understand what I'm saying, Ington? Your mother is passing on soon.'

They looked at each other for a while.

The branches of the Lantern Trees held rainbows of dreams. The leaves rustled as the world breathe. Chest to chest, shoulders to shoulders.

'Ington?'

Ington closed his eyes and could no longer identify the questioner. He thought he heard his mother in the light of the canopies. He had asked his mother once, on why were the trees different things to everyone.

Because there are no such things as Lantern Trees. Ington in the eye of his mind, remembered his mother's grin as she said, 'At least, not yet.'

'Ington?'

Ington opened his eyes and stood up from his chair. He held his robot to his chest and asked, 'Where is Mummy?'

The Serviceman bought Ington into another room adjacent to the playroom. A different room from the usual rooms Ington's dying mother was in. This room was filled with equipments and people. The people were formal, tired and have stopped whispering to each other when Ington  entered the room.

Ington found his mother in the bed, eyes staring blankly into the ceiling. He had never seen a corpse before and it frightened him a bit. Mostly because the person on the bed did not look like his mother at all. Colors were drained off from her skin and she looked like an unfinished wax doll. Ington heard the formal people switching off the monitor which was giving a high pitched zinc noise.

'Ington, do you want to say something to her?' The Serviceman brought Ington nearer to the bed. The formal people around his mother appeared having problem closing her eyelids. Her eyelids kept flopping open to the ceiling.

'At least, not yet.' Ington remembered his mother telling him. He placed his robot on his mother and stared blankly on the floor until they bought him away from his mother.

 

raknax.multiply.com

'Is there room?' I asked, eyes darting from my feet back to his pebble sized rings on his knuckles then past the lobe of his left ear ring. I counted four topaz rings, one ivory ear ring and the multiple dews forming on the dust of my boots.

'Members only.' The bouncer snorted and waved me away.

''No. You don't. Are you new. No. You are not new. I..I know, I mean I knew you, Terry, James, no, You are fuck, I can't, I don't.' I heard myself breathe. Rapid and empty breaths. I clutched the book across my chest tightly, clawing them with my nails.

'Shit. You are him.' The bouncer recognised, 'Whatever happened to you? You look like shit.'

'Is there room?' I pushed again.

'I don't know.' The bouncer suddenly unsure of what to do, he swung his wall of torso around for assistance. 'Man, it's been too long. You know how it is. People left and they don't come back.'

I looked at him, stared at his aviator shades and saw my thin eyes webbed with redness, clots and desperation staring at him.

'I just take a seat. I will not be of trouble.' my lips quivered. 'Please.'

'The bouncer looked back at the back of the bar, lighted up, shook his head to himself and went off a bit to smoke in the drizzle.

I let myself in the dark cave of the bar, finding my way with memory of the place. I found a dry spot by a wall of glowing table and sat down.

'Did you come to find me?' A hostess in her apron fished out a 2B pencil from her hair and approached my table. I gripped the spine of my book tighter. 'No?' She puckered her moist lips, 'What a shame. What's your order, boy? Same old?'

I stared down the shit-eating tablecloth and said nothing.

'Let me surprise you then.' She suggested, then turned around, 'Oh. I forgot. You hate surprises. But then again, you hate everything.' She smiled.

'It's not true.' I gritted my teeth. But she didn't hear me.

I put my dog-eared book on my lap and stared at it for a long time. I waited for my heart to catch up.

And I waited for the skies to break. Be it night or day, just break so I can see. I can see the stars or the sun or some light to tell me that I can. I can what? I shut my eyes. My eyelashes scratching my my cheekbones.

So I can write.

The book fell off my lap and onto the black floor. Flipping away 400 pages of whiteness. Nothing was written.

The hostess with a name that I could not remember fetched the book for me and laid a beer across my table. 'There you go.'

'I love you.' I glanced at her timidly.

'No.' She stood with the hip angled and a hand on it. 'You don't.'

'I looked back down and drown my beer.

'I hate you.' I said.

'I can live with it.' She walked off. 'Let me get you some more.'

'I can live with it.' I repeated and opened my book. I felt better. I clicked on my pen and stabbed the page with it's tip.

I'm waiting for my friends, two of them.  I hope they show up soon.