A Cage Without a Key

The fog is like a cage without a key. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Fog sat heavy on the horizon, a cloak of condensation hiding the secrets of the city, of its inhabitants, of its past. The streets were empty, the air silent. An outsider might have thought that something was amiss, but in this city, in this time, the scene was commonplace, more normal than not.

Within one of the boarded up buildings lining the abandoned streets, a little girl sat quietly at a small desk. She carefully traced the outline of her hand on a yellowed sheet of paper with a stubby red crayon. Over and over again, she traced, methodically, almost hypnotically, until the sheet bore the indentation of her ministrations.

The adults around her paid her no mind, interested only in their own affairs, but she felt no loneliness, no sense of longing or need. She just kept tracing her hand.

The building she occupied somewhat resembled a home but was a mere shadow of its former purpose. Furniture was strewn meaningless around the room, lopsided, upside down. The desk that the girl sat at was the only item that seemed to still have any sense of import, a relic from a different time and place.

Across the room, one of the adults ran into an upended table, the resulting sound that resonated through the largely empty house startled the occupants. The little girl finally stopped her tracing, dead brown eyes lifting towards the source of the noise. A thought skipped through her empty mind, a fleeting piece of her humanity grasping at anything tangible.

Loud.

The woman who caused the commotion stared blankly at the table then grunted and shuffled away. But the little girl was mesmerized. Carefully, she put down the crayon, which was almost completely used up anyway, and rose from the desk.

She had grown used to focusing her broken mind on a single task, much like her tracing, so she managed to dedicate her energy to making her way across the room, motivated only by that single coherent thought.

Loud.

When she arrived at the table, she pushed at it with her hand.

Nothing.

She tried again, this time pushing harder. A squeak resulted as the edge of the table scraped across the hard-wood floors.

Noise.

A smile tried to work its way across the girl’s broken face. Her mouth twitched with the effort. Those nearest to her stopped to watch, forming a small and awkward audience around her and the table.

She lifted her leg a fraction and kicked the table with all her might. This time she re-created the sound that had initially startled them all. And this time she did smile.

Loud. Noise.

“Loud noise.” She said in a quiet voice that was rusty and hoarse from lack of use.

The adults moaned their agreement and went back to shuffling aimlessly.

But the little girl was awakened, as if from a dream. She remembered the day of the outbreak. The panic in the streets. The rush to quarantine the infected. She remembered being herded into the random house, being separated from her parents. The men in masks had shouted at her to “move it!” She had cried for her mother.

Once inside the house, there had been panic. Adults rushed around, yelling at each other, yelling at the men outside. The doors were locked, then immediately boarded up from the outside.

They were trapped.

And the little girl remembered that they had been trapped for a year or longer.

Reeling from the rush of memory and feeling, she looked down at her cold, gray hand and finally knew that she was dead.

Author's Note: This week we were to be inspired by one of two pictures for the Red Writing Hood prompt. I chose the picture below, which gave life to my zombie tale. New Orleans always sparks my imagination. :) This is the 600-word prologue of a longer piece. 

Of Fruit Roll-Ups and My Little Ponies and Not Growing Up

I’m not a grown up. 

I still love fruit roll-ups. I have one everyday at lunch. Sometimes, I have two. If they still made the ones with little cut-outs, I’d eat them by cut-out, smallest to largest…or least favorite shape to favorite shape. I eat a lot of things in such a precise, scientific order. Sweet Tarts? Green to Orange to Blue to Pink and Purple. Pink and purple are my favorite Sweet Tart colors, but despite that, those are not my favorite color colors. See, I’m not a really girly-girl kind of girl. Until it comes to My Little Ponies. 


Growing up, I was the kind of kid who played in the dirt more than with dolls. I wasn’t a big fan of Barbies unless it was for cutting off all their hair and switching up their heads and bodies. I was what you might call a tom boy, but like with any other label or stereotype, I didn’t quite fit in the round hole perfectly.

I was one of those rare little girls who fell in love with horses at an early age. I know. A little girl who loved horses? It’s pretty shocking. My Little Ponies were pretty much a given for me to adore. I watched the cartoons, played with the toys. When I see a My Little Pony at Wal-Mart now, I still have to stop and marvel over its pretty hair and colorfulness. Deep inside, I have a nearly overwhelming urge to buy one, rip it out of its package, and gallop it across my bedroom floor. I do manage to resist. Most of the time. I think they look so different now than they did when I was a child that I can fight the temptation. But…

I’m not a grown up.

When I go to antique or thrift stores and see the My Little Ponies from my childhood, the First Generation Ponies, I cave. I might even seek the suckers out. Of course, partially, this is from a Pony Renaissance that occurred late in my teens. During this Renaissance, I bought up a boocoodle of ponies and sold the suckers on eBay to adult collectors. You didn’t know there was an underground My Little Pony collecting movement? Oh, lemme tell you. 

Via
I probably want this t-shirt. Because it speaks the truth.

There are hundreds of collectors out there. Little girls like myself who grew up but still miss the whimsy and fun of a colorful toy pony with a colorful tail to brush. It’s true. And like collectors of pretty much anything else, these peeps are serious. I once sold a My Little Pony on eBay for over a hundred bucks. Yep, a single pony that I had paid like a dollar for from some unsuspecting thrift store owner. 

During this brief stint dealing ponies, I made over a thousand bucks, and anytime I see a “vintage” pony in a store now, all I want to do is buy it and play with it and then sell it for way too much money. It’s a sad reality, I know. But again…

I’m not a grown up.

I do things like watch Disney movies and sing all the songs at the top of my lungs.

I get ridiculously excited at the prospect of going to a fair and eating my weight in cotton candy, funnel cakes, and corn dogs and riding The Scrambler until I puke.

I buy a new stuffed animal on almost every vacation I make. Particularly if it’s a Disney vacation. And I may or may not sleep with those stuffed animals, along with my cats and my husband.

Speaking of Disney vacations, my husband and I try to go to Disney World every two years. We went there on our honeymoon. We don’t have kids, but we enjoy it just as much as a kid would.

I love visiting zoos. Take me to a zoo, and I’ll skip around like a kid. One of my favorite things to do in this world.
I eat things like potato chips and popcorn for lunch.

I still believe in things like magic and happily ever after. Fairy tales that come true. Villains who are eventually conquered.

Technically, I may be a grown up, but...

I’m really nothing but a big kid at heart. And I like it that way. So I’m gonna stick with eating a fruit roll-up at lunch everyday. To be honest, I think it may be keeping the old age at bay.


What makes you "not a grown up"?

No TV for Me (Kind Of)

Never, did I ever, think I would be saying that we cancelled our television service.

But the world is changing. Our nation is changing. It may be subtle, but it’s happening none the less. Necessity may be forcing the change at first, but eventually, I believe we’ll be glad we made certain changes, glad that we came full circle and back to basics. My husband and I cancelled our television subscription a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it’s true. We still have a TV, but now we have no cable or satellite. We made the decision based on a necessity to save money, but as I suspected, we’re pretty glad we made the change.

Sure, it was rough-going at first. Adjustments were necessary. My morning routine of flipping on the television while Jeremy and I got ready for work was turned on its ear. Now, instead of the sound of Matt Lauer and The Today Show, we listen to the sounds of coffee brewing and slow, early-morning, sometimes incoherent conversation. I missed the TV routine for a total of about five minutes, and then I began embracing the fact that sometimes the sound of silence is the best sound of all.

We also had to revamp our nightly ritual of eating supper in front of the television. I can hear you all cringing now, and I don’t blame you. I cringed a little when I wrote that. I was raised in a household where I sat down to dinner every night with my family at the table. No TV. No cell phones or other distractions. Just family and togetherness. Having been raised in such a house, I was surprised and disappointed in myself when Jeremy and I started eating in front of the television. One or two suppers here and there evolved pretty quickly into a nightly event, and suddenly, my good manners and upbringing were a thing of the past.

I wish I could say that no TV has reformed us from our ways, but alas, we still gather around the coffee table in the living room to eat. Instead of watching TV, however, we now watch movies and DVDs. We just couldn’t seem to give up the habit of being entertained while we ate. But hey, I still have hope. It’s all about baby steps after all.

In addition to a newfound love and renewed appreciation for our DVD player, we are also enjoying the gifts of technology. For most of our television watching needs, which includes mainly my obsession for Glee, we’re trying to stream our favorite shows from the internet. Can anyone say Hulu? (LOVE!)

I find it pretty ironic that going “back to basics” and getting rid of our television service has caused us to become more tech savvy, but again, it’s saving us money, and in today’s economic climate, saving money is the name of the game.

With the cancellation of our satellite service, we have trimmed our household needs down to the bare essentials. Electric, internet, cell phone, mortgage, insurance, and car payment are the only bills we have left. We’ve never had a home phone, so we save money there each month as well, and now that it’s finally cooled down, we’ve turned off our air conditioning for even more savings.

Truth be told, we could probably trim our household expenses down even further, but I feel really great about our changes, especially the television decision. So far, it seems to be working out wonderfully. Ask me again in six months, and I may be whistling a different tune and begging for my remote control back, but for now, I’m glad to be cutting some corners and finding that we really don’t need it all to be happy. 

Author's Note: This post was written in response to The Lightning and the Lightning Bug prompt "Never." The idea was to begin your piece, whether it was fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or otherwise, with the word "Never." As in, "Never forget to bring a towel to the sauna." I hope you'll click the button below and check out this truly awesome writing community. We're small, supportive, and fun. The linkup is available through Wednesday, so if you don't have a post ready now, no sweat. Come link up anytime between now and then. Hope to see you there!

"A Strange Journey": Censorship and The Rocky Horror Show

Censorship:

1.  An attempt to deprive us of what may deprave us.
2.  A decision made by ONE to force certain values on ALL and to limit or block what ALL is exposed to in the name of morality.
3.  A limit on personal freedoms and the right to choose.
4.  Something that makes Katie Ross MAD. Like, REALLY, REALLY MAD.

via

I’ve been on a tear through the last week or so. Like, so mad that I’ve been unable to think straight, much less type a coherent thought. I’ve talked about how passionate I am before, and there are few things that incite more passion within me than the nasty little subject of censorship. Now, from the definitions provided above, I would say there’s no arguing which side of the censorship coin I fall on, but to be perfectly clear, I find the idea of censorship and the thoughts and reasoning behind it to be despicable in the worst way.

Nevertheless, I did hesitate to write about this particular topic. Not because I’m afraid of sharing my opinions. Nope, if that were true, I wouldn’t make much of an opinion columnist. I mainly was concerned about writing on this particular topic in this particular setting, because I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed for my community, for my elected officials, for the fact that a stereotypical view of the South and its people is being supported by the actions of a few.

But I can’t hold my tongue any longer. I would just like to preface this by saying that there are many open-minded people living in my neck of the woods. We may be outnumbered, but we’re down here.

What’s all the fuss about? Well, the mayor of my fair city decided to cancel a stage show in our Cultural Arts Center for fear he’d “get run out of town” for letting the show go on. He objected to the content from a rehearsal video posted to Facebook by one of the show’s cast members. The show was “The Rocky Horror Show.”  

For those unfamiliar with “Rocky Horror,” it is a stage musical/farce (with a film version that’s the longest running movie in history) with strong sexual, bisexual, and homosexual themes. It’s definitely a musical for adults; there’s no argument there. And when the city agreed to allow “Rocky Horror” to be performed in our Cultural Arts Center, it was agreed that there would be age restrictions on who would be allowed to attend.

Well, now that agreement is a moot point, because someone decided that the stage show didn’t reflect my community’s “values,” and as such could not be performed in the community’s Cultural Arts Center. Never mind the fact that I’m an adult who can make those kinds of decisions for myself. Never mind the fact that the show was going to generate revenue for the city. Never mind the fact that the city had already agreed to allow the play to be performed. None of that is relevant, because one individual, an elected official who is supposed to make decisions for the good of the community AS A WHOLE, decided based on one rehearsal video that an adult-themed show with an adults-only audience didn’t fit into his mold of our community.

Needless to say, the backlash from this decision has been far-reaching. A Facebook movement has over 3,000 members. A fund-raising campaign with the aim of finding the show a new venue has raised over a thousand dollars. Stories on the cancelled show have been featured on PerezHilton.com, Billboard.com, The Huffington Post, and many, many more news and media outlets alike.

I won’t bore you all with more ranting and raving on why I personally think the mayor’s decision was the wrong one, but I will say this: I don’t believe anyone has the right to take away my ability to decide what may or may not be “good” for me to view or see. Censorship is alive and well in America, and until we can become more accepting of others and ourselves, it will be alive and well for a long time to come.  

Skip Me Over

Single White Female Seeks No One. Because I don't need anyone. Least of all, do I need you, flipping through these ads, looking for a cheap one-night stand, or whatever it is you're looking for. I’ll tell you what you’re looking for: Not Me. Not Me cause I’m independent, bull-headed, opinionated, strong-willed, dramatic, hard-to-handle.Your worst nightmare.

I like cats and books about ghosts. And tables. I have the strangest affinity for tables. Take me to an antique store, and I'll find a table I must have. Guaranteed. It'll be my downfall. I'll go into debt buying tables and hoarding them. You see, I'm neurotic in some of the worst and the best ways.

I’m Not Easy. I’m selfish and self-absorbed, constantly looking for ways to make your life miserable, or that’s what you’d end up thinking, so skip me over. Don’t dial me up. Check out Britney three ads down instead. She likes to be used. She enjoys being bossed around and dinner at cheap Italian restaurants. She’ll be your doll, all dressed up and perfect, while I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, hair sticking out every which way, crooked teeth, no tan. Britney’s better for you anyway. Y’all match. You look good together. You make a handsome couple. She suits you. It’s true. Plus, she’s easy, and I’m not. I’m anything but. I will complicate your life to no end, but if you can handle me, if you can handle a little bit of crazy and a little bit of mean. If you can handle a complex girl, with a complex complexion (cause I do get zits, man), who’s anything but easy, then I’m worth it. I’m your girl.

But if not, don't waste my time or your's. Just skip me over.

Everyone else has.



This week's Red Writing Hood prompt had us writing personal ads for our characters. Click the button above to check out all the amazing responses. 

PS - I totally missed my one-year blogiversary this past week! So have some cake and thanks for sticking around to read my words and watch me grow. Much love!