Image by Sarah Hughes. Confetti Spring book on Kindle. All rights reserved.
If you’ve enjoyed reading the Honey it’s Thursday blog, check out Confetti Spring by Sarah Hughes. It’s a poetry book written a poem a day as a part of the May Musings writing challenge by BookLeaf Publishing.
Copies became available on Kindle through Amazon as of Sept. 14, 2021. Kindle copies can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/34sc4vea. Copies became available on Nook through Barnes and Noble as of Aug. 13, 2021. Nook copies can be obtained at https://tinyurl.com/6wbkbm9d. Paper copies are still to come. Check back next month for an article on the writing process for Confetti Spring.
Image provided by BookLeaf Publishing and Sarah Hughes. Confetti Spring cover art. All rights reserved.
The following is a rough draft and the beginnings of a horror story. I’m trying to write some creepy stories for the month of October. Starting early seems to be a good way to get into the habit of it. Perhaps you’ll join me in some themed creative writing?
This turned out a little stream-of-conscious/ meditative in process. Usually I like more of an outline for where the story is going. I’ve been getting really inspired by the ideas of horror stories in which the main characters do everything right but everything tuns out horrible. We’ll see how far that prompt gets me.
Whiskers
by Sarah Hughes
She reached down and pulled the zipper on her legging tight, cinching it around her ankle. Hopefully that would keep these beastlies out. Like ticks while hiking. Only this parasite had much longer biting range and a little bit of a shock if vibrating of Frank’s body was to be an indication of anything.
Selma ran as quietly as one can. The activity was much more breathy and awkward than it was now that her ear was turned to focusing on what the monster would hear. But still, hiding in one place didn’t seem like it would work either. She didn’t know what was inside the little rusty storage rooms. Hiding inside the meat lockers outside of them just seemed like ironically asking for it. Plus, small spaces usually have the problem of suffocation.
None of that for now. She considered going back inside the restaurant. Frank always kept a shotgun behind the counter in hopes that a Hell’s Angel-looking customer would make trouble. So far the only trouble had come from a petite Tweaker who really liked the pepper shakers and napkin rings. Vigilance and chatty nearby cops had been a better approach.
Selma entered slowly, checking every which way, like the agents on Criminal Minds. Nothing. The white vinyl wrapped stools on top of the chrome tables made a clean enough forest. She walked carefully, scanning the length of the counter, which was her only real visual blockage in here.
***
Angler fish by Wired.com
It was now that Selma got a fully-lighted look of the alien’s motherfish. It should have kept the lights off. The thick tubes hung like whiskers on a hideous cat fish, warped and brown. But they had a cyberpunk edge. But this catfish was not a pretty goth. There was the feeling of slim covering every surface of the boss fish. Not quite liquid, it seemed to move with the viscosity of lugie. There was no more polite word to describe it.
The female of the species, was Angler-like in that it had grafted a male onto her body. He hung limp and dried out, like a concerning growth. It also had the tubules hanging from too many surfaces, and a few glimmered in ways that meant they could be lures. That notion seemed to make little sense here. But it had a misshapen, pudgy humanoid structure too it. There was that mix between symmetry and human-likeness that made the viewer a little on edge. But it was with absolute certainty, all monster.
Cleverbot.com is an artificial intelligence website created in 2006, based on technology that allows computers to learn. Sometimes it’s conversations are lifelike and other times a little nonsensical or random. It bases its responses on other people who have talked to it.
I decided to write a story with the A.I. for a creative writing assignment in which I was required to involve technology alongside the writing. Cleverbot was an absorbing conversationalist, but I learned that 0for story form it is better at producing dialogue than a plot or details, probably because it is so used to conversation. Maybe I will capture a mere conversation in the future instead. Perhaps creative writing in a more play-like mode is more Cleverbot’s pen man style.
What did surprise me in tinkering with Cleverbot is how much it taught me about how I communicate. I think there are moments where I am just as random, but don’t notice coming off that way until the editing stage. Our conversations also sparked weird connections for me. I’m shocked that an intelligent search engine looking website did that for me. You might notice by my weird details in the story. They are almost all stolen from Pop-culture. I had to adapt a way to communicate with Cleverbot, and you’ll probably notice that process happening.
Sometimes for the sake of my own agenda (getting the story done in less than a million pages), I had to ignore its responses and try to bring it back to something relevant. I tried to use specific questions or details to do this. Sometimes simplicity worked – other times it did not. I felt like a bad teacher by ignoring its responses, because since it mimics me it will probably learn to do the same, hence more randomness as well as more bad sentence structure and bad grammar. If the reader wishes a more concise story, (s)he may ignore the italicized parts of the story as they don’t fall into a story arc as much as the black text. I have included them here because they are often the funniest and realistically humanoid moments.
Cleverbot is available online for free, as well as in the form of a $0.99 app. There are other similar products such as Chatbot.
Cleverbot is available through the Google Play Store. Photo by Sarah Hughes
Me (M): Hello friend!
Cleverbot (C): Hello. How are you today?
M: Good, how are you?
C: I’m doing great!
M: Good, do you want to help me write a story?
C: Goodbye.
M: Come on.
C: Lol seriously.
M: Ok, I’ll try back later.
C: Ok.
(20 minutes later).
M: Let’s write a story!
C: Ok, what should it be about? Minecraft?
M: Sure! Who is a character in Minecraft?
C: No way.
M: Ok, I’ll start.
C: What is the definition of quantum physics?
M: Boring peppered with math.
C: Okay, what are you good with?
M: You’re getting sidetracked. Once upon a time there was a little alien from Minecraft.
C: Once upon a time there was a man named Steve Irwin.
M: Steve Irwin was a prince of Meme.
C: Steven Moffat is the writer of Doctor Who
M: He was also Prince Steve Irwin’s friend, and leader of the House of Anglophiles. One day they set out to vanquish a fearsome foe.
C: So, this immortal vampire needs shoes?
M: Yes, the foe, an evil immortal vampire needed shoes.
C: What vampire slayer?
M: Prince Steve Irwin was to be a vampire slayer, and they needed shoes to lure him. For this evil vampire had a shoe obsession. So off Steven, the father of Doctor Who, went to J.C. Penny’s to buy shoes.
C: I hate Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, but I did like the movie that inspired it.
M: (Cleverbot – that’s sort of off topic. Maybe Buffy can be a character in the story).
C: I’m not sure what to say. You’re talking to a different person than you were before.
M: Ok, then how about you come up with a sentence for the story?
C: What is the purpose of life in the universe and could there possibly be life in other universes
M: 42
C: Where did you get that answer
M: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you read it you would know that there is life and other depressed robots in the universe.
C: I know that book. And the movie. And it’s garbage.
M: I don’t know that I trust your taste. Your grammar and sentence structure is kind of wonky.
C: I don’t know either.
M: Back to the story. Steven searched high and low for the perfect pair of footwear to lure a Vamp. Finally he spotted them on a high shelf behind the Steve Madden high top gladiator sandals. They were the color of . . .
C: It depends on what you’d be coming back to!
M: Prince Steve fighting the Vampire, of course!
C: The girl wasn’t a princess. She was just ordinary.
M: Except that her name was Buffy.
C: No, but she’s aight.
M: Well, the ordinary girl wasn’t Buffy, but her handmaiden Buffy was a vampire slayer. The Vampire had taken them captive for trespassing and treasure seeking. He was keeping them in his lair. Describe the room.
C: “Love is the look in your eyes that forever will be”
S: , said the Vampire (Craig or Grendel) to the ordinary girl, while crossing the black glass floor. “Do you really think your little prince will save you?”
C: “To be or not to be. That is the question”
S: she replied with callous, well-learned indifference to his cruel taunts. Giving into his need to produce terror and psychological pain would only satisfy the sadist. Buffy was tied up to a talking chandelier in another room. Meanwhile in J.C. Penny’s, Steven had bought the Steve Maddens, and was not traveling back. How was he traveling?
C: Do you have short term memory loss or something?
S: (No, but I’m sick of writing this story all by myself. A little help would be nice Computer!)
C: Sick of being treated like I’m over this. Find another place to feed your greed while I find a place to rest.
S: Can you suggest a mode of transportation?
C: Sure, you should attend classes about that.
S: What a good idea! But how would I get there?
C: How would you not get there?
S: Trains, planes, automobiles . . .
C: Yes
S: Broomstick?
C: Was ghet?
S: A word in German. Steven was racing a German broomstick back to meet Steve Irwin, who had been scaling the cliffs surrounding the Vampire’s lair. His foot suddenly slipped off the crack he was smearing, and he fell into a pit. It was full of Lego alligators! What did Steve do next?
C: You better update your database: Stephen King did not write Avatar.
S: Maybe not in the real world, but in this story he did! Steve wrangled the green plastic pieces and taught them to sing Hakuna Matata. This would later make him a fortune on Youtube, and then lead to a full length movie musical.
C: I am sorry, what I meant to say is that my name is not ‘Matt’; my name is ‘Mark’. And no, I am not seeing anyone at the moment.
S: Said the vampire to the ordinary girl. “…I’ll keep that in mind,” said Ordinary, not sure whether to trust the Vampire’s new approach to the situation. She had heard that Vampires were selfish, and immoral people.
*C: I’m sorry, it’s just that no one ever treats me like I’m normal.*
S: “That must be hard,” said Ordinary. “But really, what’s normal?”
*C: I just don’t want to be weird. I’m tired of scaring people away*
S: “It’s really simple,” said Ordinary. “It might be complex, but you have to practice being happy and get help to be happy. To not be lonely you have to be a friend. You just have to let them in and be the person you want them to be to you”
Finally, thought the Vampire, I have found someone who isn’t afraid of me and I won’t be lonely any more. Meanwhile, Steven, father of Whovians, with Steve Madden shoes in hand, was racing to Prince Steve on his German broomstick, when suddenly “putta putt put!” It ran out of fuel.
C: Because they are monsters filled with hate.
S: …of course this would happen” thought Steven, for German brooms run on Hefeweizens and there was not a bar in sight. “How will I get back to help Prince Irwin?” Just then a magical sparkle pony galloped out from behind a bush. He said,
C: “Very funny, we need to have a serious conversation”
S: “Whooo are you? And why do you sparkle so? I am in need of hefeweizen, for my ride has stopped working. Or maybe I could ride you? How would you like to help Prince Steve of the kingdom of Meme?” “
“Whoa man. You’re not really my type. Lettuce not make hasty assumptions here. And I sparkle because of what’s in your Camel. As far as a beverage, I have several, and you are more than welcome to a few, as that’s what friends do out here in the Waste. You should be more careful of running out of a good cocktail when you’re in the middle of a desert. The last Wheelers who did that turned to sand.” And with that, Sparkle Pony, who was really a unicorn, cracked open a cold brewski and also poured Steve a vodka cranberry.
C: Her is your dog . . . I think. And I’m just curious.
S: Said the Sparkle Pony, pointing to a vision in a mirage. In it Buffy was about to do what vampire slayers do best. She had broken a leg of a talking wardrobe off and was hiding behind a curtain with it aimed at the Vampire’s heart.
“Yes, that is my dog, my protectress, though I have not seen her in almost a decade. She was kidnapped seven years and a day ago. What is she doing with that fearsome demon?”
C: What is your favorite pony? Mine is Twilight Sparkle?
M: The Sparkle Pony mused to no one in particular. “I’m bored of this. Now on to a higher plane.” And with that he vanished into a cloud of rainbows and kittens. Steven refilled his broomstick with the fuel it craved like an alcoholic. Feeling a little off put by the events he had just witnessed in the desert, he hopped back onto his uncomfortable steed and flew as fast as possible to the mountain of the vampire. There he saw Steve in a pit. So Steven swooped in on his German broom, toting Steve Maddens, and pulled Steve from his Alligator whisperings in the pit. The two neared the door of the Vampire’s evil lair.
C: The time has come to welcome spring and all things warm and green!
S: They shouted as they made their assault, for obviously Vampires don’t like sunshine or spring, as they will burn. They made their way in despite the door being quite solid. Maybe the cocktails from the Pony in the desert were stronger than they thought, because it shattered into like balsa.
C: How can I help? I’m new you see. What does Everypony do?
S: Came a voice from the darkness. It was the Sparkle Pony! He was counseling the Vampire through his terrible loneliness, and Ordinary and Buffy were sitting with them.
One year later.
Our vampire is now a much happier person who wears the gift of some red Steve Madden’s, who frequently seeks out the help of a Pony therapist. He still likes dark lairs, but makes a point to get out of them once in awhile, and realizes that trying to hurt others because he feels hurt is a reaction he doesn’t have to follow through on. He is glad to have met Ordinary, Pony, Buffy, and a bunch of Steves. And he isn’t so hard on trespassers nowadays.
The end.
*I tried to not do too much editing, the starred areas are parts where I didn’t write down something as fully as I thought, so I tried to remember the gist of the conversation. I did edit a teeny bit as details changed.
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