Words for the day: 1487 (target was 2.5K)
T-shirt: It was write in your nighty morning!
Best music vibe: “Stonefield” self-titled album
“…sometimes it starts as a drop in the ocean and you don’t think too much about it. You don’t mean to hurt people.” Tabitha MacLeod
Welcome to the halfway point of the month! It’s hard to believe two entire weeks have passed by in a flurry of words and awesome camaraderie.
Today was one of those weird days where a scene came to me and I went with it, even though it’s from later on in the novel. Writing someone totally unhinged was a of fun, looping the conversation, riddling it with non-sequiturs, unexpected disclosures.
What I got out of the mouth of Lucas Hammond blew my understanding of the band apart. And now as I write (the morning after because my routine is totally shattered) I wonder if it’s the truth. Or if it’s a version of his truth which is so far removed from normality that it doesn’t matter is it’s actually true or not. It certainly makes the trajectory of Tabitha’s madness seem less extreme.
I put a small snippet up on Facebook when I was done yesterday and Lois Spangler commented: “I married him so I didn’t feel like a failure.” There is an entire social treatise wrapped up in this one line. And she is so correct. Only in this instance it comes with the added impetus of marrying someone so incompatible to escape the failure bred into her as a child who didn’t meet her parent’s expectations. Plus, in this paragraph I found out just what Robert does: a patents lawyer. As such they would be rolling in money!
I didn’t get back to the page in the evening. I spent the morning with homeschooling Mum’s at Alexandra Hills and the afternoon with Emily Craven. Both filled my soul so now, topped up with three rounds of awesome conversation (if I add in Thursday with Stacey) I’m word-powered to aim big on day 16!
Here is a little of the bizarre conversation between Tabitha and Lucas (Ham) Hammond.
* * *
“You come here too.” Tabitha startled and when she turned saw the slightly darker shape in the doorway.
“It looks that way.”
Lucas sat on the left hand side of her, the chair scraping through the night.
“I like to sit in the puppet master’s chair too.” Lucas drummed his fingers on the table top in an elaborate beat she struggled to follow. “We’re all his meat marionettes. He plucks the strings and we dance for him. Pinocchio Pinocchio, where art thou, Pinocchio.”
He moved about in his seat, the wooden structure creaking.
“You know where he keeps the booze. Something strong. Fuck, I need a hit of something.”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said, feeling waves of desperation and something else peeling off Lucas. “I don’t come down here to drink.”
“Why do you come down here then?”
His hand fumbled in the dark and clasped around hers, cold and steely and sweaty.
“To be alone. It’s easier to be alone here than upstairs.”
“Becca and Gordy won’t let me back in there.”
The slow crush of his fingers around hers gave her every reason to think they were sensible in locking him out. But now he was in here. With her. “Are you scared of me? I can smell your fear.”
“How about we raid the kitchen.” The false lightness of her voice made her fear he’d see straight through it. “I’m starving and you know, I owe you for the night you brought me up food to my room.”
“Let’s make shadow puppets.”
He let go of her hand and she heard the scramble and smash of things falling, or pushed, dropped, from the sideboard.
“Fuck it.” More smashing.
Tabitha slowly slid the seat out from beneath the table. If she ran…
“Tabby, ahhh fuck it hurts.”
“Lucas?” She stopped trying to move away from the table.
“Did Christian fix that bath?”
“Yes.”
“I think I want a bath. Will you run me a bath?” Tabitha guessed from the sound he was pacing. “The only thing I remember from MacBeth – Lady MacBeth all fucked up and scrubbing her hands. All of Neptune’s seas and all of that. I need a bath. Fuck it. Bath, yeah a bath. I wanna go swimming. But it’s too cold to go swimming. Yeah. Too cold.”
Tabitha sat afraid to break into his rambling conversation.
Pursuing Parallels 