Tag: creative writing

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 3: Temptation

Alias Leave a comment

Tungsten clouds flattened as they scraped along the dome of the stadium, the residual howl of their wind battling the sonic boom of the multitude for dominance.  Within the confines of the band section, instruments bellowed and slammed into the rattled air, stunning anyone unfortunate enough not to have earplugs, and shot their notes toward the field.  Cymbals smashed a vicious beat over the intricate, layered rhythms of the drums.  Fierce, dark waves from the trombones blasted forth in ominous fronts that seized the hollow wind and regurgitated it as menacing music.

 

And the TV station, as per usual, completely ignored them.

 

Hal chopped his arm back and forth to the explosive cymbal crashes, throwing his shoulder forth and thrusting his upper body toward the football players as though they would acknowledge him.  They were too far from the band, crouched as they were at the 45 yard line, and their backs were to the north end zone where the band gathered.  Of course, the chant wasn’t directed at the Michigan football players; rather, it was meant for the opposing team, who had just fumbled the ball in the most spectacular fashion.

 

Hal and the other drumline reserves were not allowed to chant along with the student section for a very specific reason, but nothing prevented him from singing along in his head.  The mantra was an adrenaline rush, a ferocious vocal tacked over an exhilarating spew of domineering energy and sound.

 

He unleashed his fury in the form of a scream that flooded his ears but was easily trounced by the band.  Primal, feral, in perfect time, it blended with the shout of the rest of the cymbal line, his one sheer thrill forgotten in the chaos.

 

He wished he was able to play along with the rest of the band, but the cheer was the closest approximation he could get this season.  A freshman in the cymbal line, he’d never really stood a chance to make the performance block this year, and he had only a small chance to make it next year.  He’d practiced incessantly, but he was inexperienced and not as strong as the upperclassmen, who performed advanced visuals with seemingly little effort.

 

Hal loved marching band immensely, loved the cymbal section (it was objectively the best instrument), the people in it.  Loved screaming and dancing in the stands every Saturday with his band friends.  But there was a tickle in his mind, a gnawing, nagging sensation at the back of his throat, the tiny demon that numbed his arms and chipped away his resolve.

 

At the moment, with his arm gouging the wind and his intense glare fixated on the football players pooling around the 45 yard line, he was a machine.  A maize and blue warrior launching an offensive against the wind and against silence, smushed between two of his fellow reserves who pummeled the air with similar malevolence.  All thoughts silenced except the two-word mantra and the swell of the trombones.  Tension building, building until it climaxed in a minor duo of notes, a final crash, and then–

 

Uproar.

Taya Goes to the Hairdresser

Micey Leave a comment

Hello, Micey here. I experimented with Taya’s hairstyle over this past week. I think I’ll choose the side bun as her new hairstyle. It’s more fun to draw than her current short hair. It has more dramatic potential too. I tried to make her new silhoulette different from my other characters.

I normally don’t do such a dramatic transformation, but I recently got highlights in my hair so perhaps it was on my mind.

LOG_002_PHAROS

Traveler Leave a comment

Points of Interest

The Pharos

An excerpt from The Pharos Stands Tall: A Testament to Survival, by Johann Brahe:

The tallest and one of the oldest structures of Station 1, the Pharos’ light can be seen from hundreds of miles away, guiding the way for colonists. The name itself came from the eponymous Pharos, the Lighthouse of Alexandria (of Earth’s Ancient Greek fame), which was the first such beacon and a symbol of a city at the crossroads of the ancient Greco-Roman world. 

The Pharos was constructed out of recycled parts of the first colony ship, the ISS Qilin, intended as a navigation tool in the early days of settlement. Nowadays, the light of the Pharos is mostly symbolic, an enduring testament to the perseverance of early settlers and an icon of the early colonial era. Even as beacons have become obsolete, many travelers still bring toy replicas as good luck charms on their journey.

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 2: The Last Band Geek on Earth

Alias Leave a comment

Amidst the spongy grass and gray pebbles dotted with flecks of quartz

Along paved trails that sluice through the leaf-frosted earth

Beside the brick structures segmented by imposing windows

Stands the last band geek on earth.

 

She stretches a bruised arm up into the sky

Bats at the wisps of cotton-like fog

Her hand fades into the silver and becomes the clouds

But her feet never leave the ground.

 

Tucked away behind the band hall and the slabs of pavement erupting from the dirt

Strewn across the coarse, fractured pavement and triangles of glass

Her wrecked

Resolve skitters along the slate aggregate and collides with dislodged rock.

 

And who is she,

Stretched betwixt the heavens and purgatory, lost in her own dust and her swirls of mist,

The engraving of her failure pressed into her flesh with nature’s stylus,

To dissolve in the muffled fall dawn and let her hair assail the wind?

 

Who is she,

Alone on the cement steps of the band hall with her uniform of sweatpants,

A phantom that is and yet never was

Destined for nebulae and neutron stars?

 

Who was she to believe

That when the band ascended into the constellations for their weekend away from Earth,

She’d journey with them?

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 1: Kendra

Alias Leave a comment

The wind whipped through Kendra’s thin excuse of a raincoat, and harsh droplets stung her cheeks and speckled her glasses.  Her arms were drawn into her sides as she stood, shivering, her feet planted in a 45-degree angle and the tips of her fingers red and numb.  Locked in her left hand was her cell phone with its shattered screen protector and worn case, opened on an intricate display of symbols and letters across a coordinate plane.  She squinted at the screen now, at the highlighted dot at the head of a thin lime line, the opposite end of which marked where she currently stood.

 

The wind picked up, flung a punch directly into her slight form.  Behind her, someone let out a curse he thought nobody else would hear.  He must have nearly shouted, since she could hear him well enough despite the thick foam plugs wedged into her ear canals.  Not that she blamed him.  She was biting back her own gripe, but she was saving her lips and breath for playing, and she did not have much air left.

 

A command made faint by the plugs in her ears prompted her to travel to her next dot.  Another backwards move–seriously?–in sixteen counts, and diagonally to boot.  Still, she scurried to the next spot on the field with haste, if only to warm herself for five seconds.

 

The hand holding her horn was frigid.  Even with the grease-stained, formerly white glove on, the low temperature, drizzle, and gusts brutalized her extremities, and it wasn’t like these gloves were meant for insulation.  They were meant for playing this damn instrument, a rental from the band hall with a sticking valve and perpetually flat tone, that she played outside of practice, oh, maybe once or twice a week if she felt like it.  If she thought she stood a chance, she’d practice harder, almost every day, but things had tapered off once she’d realized she wasn’t as good as the other kids in her section.  She’d tried to get her motivation back several times, but it just wasn’t there anymore, like she’d somehow given up.

 

Another direction issued from the tower compelled her to run back to her previous dot, phone in one hand and rain-slicked brass instrument in another, her ears stinging and the hood of her jacket flopping back, dodge a random cymbal player, and stand at attention, all while shoving her phone back into its pocket on the inside of her jacket.  They’re just marching for now, sixteen steps back with their respective instruments held aloft, yet Kendra found herself doubting her step size, her ability to march in time to the metronome.

 

This was for the homecoming game; everyone was in the show, regardless of how good they were.  Kendra was thrilled to be out on the field marching actual drill and learning music for a show she would perform, yet she could not shake the nagging notion, the mantra that sometimes kept her awake at night:

 

You’ll never be good enough for this.