fiction – Page 5 – Chrys Buckley

Affinity for Darkness – Prologue

November 23, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I’ve always been enchanted by darkness. It haunts me. It lures me. It holds my deepest fears. My deepest desires. Ever since I can remember it’s been there, playing with my mind.

My heart can melt just by being surrounded by a night scene. It’s inviting. It’s tempting. I wish for nothing more than to be able to become one with the night.

The stars. The skies. The far-off planets. It’s their mystery that intrigues me so. And their supreme beauty. The moon, too. It lights the night. Illuminates all the wonder.

The trees, the ground, scattered street lights, the wind—they fascinate me as well. Maybe it’s simply ply the way they look under the dark sky. It all just makes me think of dreams and nightmares. And oh yes, I love those too.

Continue reading “Affinity for Darkness – Prologue” →

Metaphysics, Samples, Writing

Psychedelic Strobe Lights – Dark As Roses 2

November 16, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Finally, he gets to it and I slump down in my seat, trying to look disaffected. I concentrate on a chalky spot on the board until he’s done with his overview. Slowly, I look around the room and I see a lot of tan, which means boredom. Crowley has a horrible monotone. No one is hardly paying attention at all. Often because I can tell how everyone in a crowd is feeling, I forget that they can’t tell my emotions. Even if they could—after all in a class of five hundred students, it’s entirely possible that someone else has the weird, focused form of synesthesia—I give off a very dim light. Usually a little grey indifference is all I see when I look in the mirror.

Finally we’re dismissed and I’m relieved. I get up slowly and take my time placing my books and notebook in my bag and putting on my jacket. I like to have a little peace without the colors every now and then. I watch the mainly pink haze slowly filter out of the room. That’s when I can guess that they have more classes. Pink is the color for laziness and tiredness, sometimes resignation. I see a lot of pink on campus. In fact, it’s the only other color I see on myself in the mirror. That one can even be bright at times, despite my dim nature. I wish I could make a career of being lazy; it’s the only thing I know I could be really good at.

After lingering for a moment to revel in the relief of no colors, I gather my things and head out to tend to my job, being Dear Abby for the newly formed campus entertainment newspaper. Actually, it’s Dear Lynn they call me here. In high school I was Dear Amanda. Kevin O’Brien, chief editor for the Campus Star, wanted me to use my real name. “But Iris is such a unique name, it goes well with fortune telling and wisdom,” he said. I thanked him for the compliment but insisted on anonymity. I do it for the money and the money alone. I don’t want anyone knocking at my door. It’s bad enough I see their troubles just walking down the street.

I drive to the newspaper office to pick up this week’s load of letters. Kevin smiles when he sees me come in. I know that boy thinks he’s in love with me. Sometimes people can really inflate their own yellow. I never see that happen with any other color, but they inflate their yellow when they think they’re in love and sometimes they try to hide the tinge of green, the lust, by covering it with the yellow of love. I’m not sure why, because yellow love is one of the most dangerous things there is. Kevin has it coming out of his hair and ears as if the sun itself were burning inside his skull rather than neurons—with proper wiring, I’m sure—as he says today, “Iris, you’re the reason we can pay the rent.” He thinks he’s in love with me but I hope he’s wrong. The colors get all messed up when they’re in love, like psychedelic strobe lights.

~~~

I haven’t done any more current fiction in awhile, so today I’m posting the continuation of my short story “Dark As Roses.” The beginning is here. This is a story about a girl who sees colored auras around people and is somewhat at odds with her psychic ability. At the end of the first section, Iris was sitting in a college psych class afraid that when her professor mentioned her condition (or what she thinks her condition might be), she might do something to accidentally give herself away.

Don’t forget, you can always check out the Samples section, including Older Works and Published.

~Chrys

Next Excerpt: A Somewhat Double Life – DaR 3

Samples, Writing

Josie – Sunshower Chapter Two

October 12, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

“Josie, I’m so sorry. Seth told me what happened,” Ray Ann said as soon as she saw me the next day, during our break between our first two sessions with the InfoMaster. We were in the Psych-Lab Wing, the most central spot when the cafeteria wasn’t open. White, windowless walls surrounded us on all sides. Above were large fluorescent lights that left not a spot of darkness, much to my dismay. There were large heavy doors on each side of the boxlike room. The one to the cafeteria had a green metallic number pad next to it-students needed to punch in their ID numbers to enter-that read “CLOSED” in electric blue letters across the display.

“Oh, so you’re speaking to me now? I feel honored,” I replied with a twinge of bitterness. Lately it seemed she was a friend when it was convenient for her, or when she felt it was her duty.

“Of course. I’m sorry about that dumb fight. It was all my fault.”

Continue reading “Josie – Sunshower Chapter Two” →

Samples, Writing

Computer Junkie: A Complete Short Story

October 5, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I love my computer. Since I’m what some people would call a “loser,” I don’t have much of a social life. But when I get on the computer, a whole different side of me comes out. I am no longer shy and dorky, but the queen of the chat rooms. I run three mailing lists and manage two newsgroups. My real hobby, though, is creating webpages. I am an expert when it comes to HTML, and many people do not know it, so the business is pretty good.

Life is always shoving it down my throat that I am never going to be a success, or anyone important, however. My older brother, Brian, is a professional webpage designer and a computer programmer. He gets paid a ton of money for doing the same thing I do, and all I get is lunch money out of it. Sometimes I envy him so much; Brian is everyone’s favorite guy. He was always the prize child. Now he is the richest guy in the family. I will never be anything compared to him.

At the same time, though, I can’t dislike him. He’s nicer to me than anyone else is. He makes time to call me at least once a week and listens to my teenage angst even though he’s been out of college for three years already. He is always doing special things for me like buying me little presents or sending me funny e-mails just to make me laugh. Even though I’m jealous of him, he’s really a great guy. And he can always help when the stupid computer won’t listen to me.

Continue Reading–>

~~~

Okay, this has to be the most embarrassing story I could post, but since I allude to it in my introductory post, it seems only fair to put it up. This is the one with characters named after members of Alice in Chains, one of whom speaks in song lyrics. I wrote this in 1997, back when my parents very first got the internet and I had no knowledge whatsoever of how the internet works so there is a bunch of made up stuff, and a lot of it is really dated. Entertainment purposes!

Don’t forget, you can always check out the Samples section, including Older Works and Published.

~Chrys

Metaphysics, Samples, Writing

Dear Friends: A Complete Short Story

September 21, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I walked slowly to my backyard with candles and matches under my arm. The wind howled and whistled in the trees. The dead leaves crackled under my feet. It was as dark as night. That’s probably because it was night. Halloween night to be exact.

We were planning to have a seance. It was rather strange, the way it came about. All of us, excluding Curt, had dreamt about it. I was first, last Monday. Since then, one by one, we each had the seance dream. We pretended to take this lightly, as a joke to see if our dreams were psychic or something, but we all knew how serious we were about it. We tried to keep it light so that we couldn’t admit to ourselves how spooky and terrifying it was. If only we’d truly known how terrible it would really be.

Even though Curt hadn’t had the dream, he was included. We couldn’t not inc≥lude him. He was there last Halloween when the whole thing began, along with Daniel, Alexa, Edna and I. It did bother me though, that he had no dream about it.

Continue reading “Dear Friends: A Complete Short Story” →

Metaphysics, Samples, Writing

Night of Evils: A Complete Short Story

September 14, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

It was to be a night of evils. I knew that the moment the sun set. As soon as the blues, violets, reds, greens, oranges and yellows drained from the sky it was clear. The evil vibes were almost tangible. Mystery hung in the air and fear was everywhere. I could taste the sadness and smell the sorrows. Horror and hatred weighed heavily in the clouds. It didn’t need to be spoken aloud, the fact was evident: Death was ready to strike. I knew all this and yet I went to the lake anyway.

I could get to the lake by taking a path through the woods that were in my backyard. It was so familiar and routine that I could easily get there blindfolded. Tonight, though, everything was different. I had trouble staying on the path, which had never happened before and really worried me. The wind blew fiercely, chilling the night air and making whistling and howling noises in the trees. I had to pull on a sweater to avoid the cold.

When I arrived at the lake, it was spooky as well. The full moon cast eerie shadows all over its surface. The stars didn’t seem to twinkle as they should. The sky had a strange reddish tint. No light from nearby homes shone through the trees, as it usually did at this time of night. The whole place had a somewhat grayish fog around it that reminded me of a dream scene in a TV show.

Continue Reading –>

~~~

I’m going back to delving into early work for some writing samples.

I thought of this story in particular because it was right about this time of year that I wrote this story. The year was 1997. I was a junior in high school and for a creative writing class, the assignment was to write our first full-length story. This started for me with trying to evoke the atmosphere. I can actually remember typing this up on my parents’ computer and doing some really funky stuff with the background and font colors to help match the atmosphere I was trying to portray, which I never felt I fully did. Some things in our minds, especially the very ethereal, just can’t be fully captured in words. So instead, I made a story out of it.

As always, you can check out other Friday Writing Samples that cover lots of different styles, genres and media, as well as other Older Works and Published.

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Josie – Sunshower Chapter One

August 24, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

“Josie, I’m sorry,” he said for the thousandth time. “Things just aren’t working out.”

My heart was being broken and I was reading a book. While he rattled off all the reasons why we couldn’t be together, I sat there with one ear on the phone, and my eyes on the pages of a book I had found in the basement of my house.

It was actually more like a diary than a novel. It was written by Janet Andrioli, who had apparently lived in my house almost two hundred years before I was born, way back near the turn of the 21st century. I was reading about her teenage years. Things were so different back then. Humanity had not traveled past the moon. Computers had required laborious typing to function; that seems so mediocre compared to the ones we have today, where you can give them voice commands. And people couldn’t interact with their televisions; I couldn’t live like that!

Continue reading “Josie – Sunshower Chapter One” →

Samples, Writing

A Star is Born: A Complete Short Story

August 17, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Sryall had once been a beautiful land, adorned with blooming trees offering many leaves. Serene waters were plenty. The sky above was a tranquil blue by day and a quiet navy blanket by night. Birds sang and animals frolicked in the grass. Humans lived, loved and laughed, generally enjoying the beauties and pleasures that life offered. The Sun rose high, not each day, but frequently, giving many great joy. The moon and stars gave comfort at night. Death was a sad event, for which were shed many tears, but it was often at the time of birth, to carry on the Eternal Cycle.

Life was simple then. People were free to express themselves how they wished. It was a period of great creativity. Much art, music, dance and writing were accomplished throughout the land. Imagination was encouraged. Dreams were seen as the gateway to unlocking the mysteries of the soul, something they truly believed to exist.

Continue Reading –>

~~~

Decided to do something a little different here.

I can’t post too much current material (a lot of times, writing posted on a blog is considered “previously published,” which disqualifies it for lots of places I might want to submit my writing pieces to) that I’m sending out (sporadically) and trying to get published. But I want to keep giving a writing sample every Friday.

So, what I’m doing is pulling up some of my early work and posting it here. Even though it’s mostly terrible and makes me cringe (like in a whole body shuddering, totally embarrassed cringe sort of way) to read it. I wrote a LOT while in high school, sometimes without deadlines or prompts. They were prolific years and there’s lots to mine. I feel like (hope?) my writing is really different now. A lot of the old stuff is sorta sci-fi-ish and not at all the kind of stuff I write now, but in the interest of posting something on a consistent basis, I’m going to embarrass myself publicly.

I wrote this one during my senior year of high school, and it won first place in my school’s short story contest that year. Fun fact: Winning the short story contest, as well as an essay contest, was how I paid for some prom-related expenses.

Check out other (incl. some more current) Samples, as well as Published and Older Works for more writing samples.

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

August 3, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I poked my brother sitting beside me. “Pssst, we only have fifteen more minutes,” I whispered. He pretended not to notice but I could see the smile on his face and knew he was glad that Junior Sunday School was almost over. I played with my pigtails, pretending to scratch my ear. Then I poked Davey again. “I guess Anne’s the favorite today,” I whispered. He still wouldn’t look at me but he stuck out his lower lip.

“Elizabeth, that’s enough! Stop disrupting your brother and start paying attention right this very minute!” Mrs. Ross’ voice was high and shrill, and she had a snarl on her face. I gave her a nasty look back. “And quit it with the pouting or you’re in big trouble, missy.”

She shifted Anne from one knee to the other and went back to reading us her Bible story. I growled under my breath. Anne lived next door to us. We walked to our first grade class together every day and she yelled at me because I played with flowers in the fields and chased the neighbor’s dog. “Lizzy, we’re going to be late,” she’d say like the whole world was going to end if we were late by even one little second.

I always said, “Then go ahead alone and be a goody-two-shoes,” but she never did. She stayed and waited while I climbed trees and picked dandelions and rubbed them on her arm and made up songs about the clouds. We were never late ever, I always looked at my Little Mermaid watch and made sure we had enough time to make it just before the bell. I liked to give Anne a scare.

~~~

This is an excerpt of a fiction story called “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” about kids who test the scary stories their Sunday School teacher tells them. I’m never sure exactly hwo to classify this one. The main characters are really young, so it could be thought of as a children’s story but I never really think of it that way.

~Chrys

Writing

Who’s Your Literary Soul Mate?

July 25, 2012July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Have you ever thought about this? By soul mate, I’m not talking about which character from fiction you’d want to hook up with or have as your lover (that could be another post), but which character feels most like you? If you were to undergo some sort of weird science disaster and somehow morph from your real life into fiction, which character would you surface as? Is there someone you’ve read whose voice feels so close to your own, who thinks your thoughts?

The character doesn’t have to have the same gender as you, be around your age or have any of the same life accoutrements that you do, just a character who, when you read, you recognize in some inner place as almost you?

For me, it would have to be Astrid from White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Our lives are nothing alike, but the way Astrid sees the world, the way she expresses things in her inner monologues, just describes ways that I have thought and felt much better than I ever could. I have some of these passages bookmarked with post-it notes. Every few years, I go back and reread White Oleander and it’s always a trippy experience to read someone thinking some of my thoughts and feeling some of your feelings.