And Ever Closer

I found out today I officially get to be on a panel for the Texas Library Association (TLA) conference next year. I'm pretty excited. It looks like I will actually be on two different ones. I really need to work hard to know my stuff. I can't wait.

I've been thinking about the Ten Minutes I wrote yesterday and how I struggled with it while I was writing it because I don't really write for adults usually and it seemed to be going that way. I guess I could take it and make the next creature a teenager or that the main character turns out to be a teenager. That would be interesting. Overall, though, I think I really liked what was going on so far. Who knows what happens next?

I'm not too crazy about what I wrote for today's Ten Minutes, but I stuck it out, and here it is:

Keys raining, always raining in this place. Not it seems but it always is. Never allowed outside. Wet would destroy the fragile connections of my skin to skin to muscle to bone leaving me as less than ash, A compete compatibility connection with the grass and the ground. It’s perfectly shorn, though. I wonder who does that. Do they wear suits? Is not everyone like me? My mother smokes. Has smoked. I don’t like it. She is too calm. When she smokes. I don’t feel…well, safe. Really. Not at all. It’s creepy the way she looks at me. When I ask her for something. So I stopped asking for things. I wait for the butler to get it. The butler is perfectly timed to meet all my needs. But the butler isn’t human. Am I? Why does my mother smoke? Maybe she can’t handle me. Maybe I’m the creepy one. The unreal creepy one. Maybe.

The grass, maybe it never grows. I don’t think I grow. Just circuitry of some kind I suppose. But if that’s true why do I malfunction so often?

Black ooze I saw it once oozing since that’s what it does.

No, not like that.

Maybe the color wasn’t really black, but I paint it that color so I won’t know what it is. Ignorance is not bliss, but I can function in it.

Circuitry burnt.

That appears with the ooze. Maybe it isn't really called circuitry. Who gave me that word for it? That man. I wonder if he was my father.

The butler is coming.

What time is it now?

Time for the rain to stop.

Hurry and put everything away. Can't be seen with this. A plan to make the rain stop so I can escape. No more creepy smoking mother. No more butler. No more of any of this. I wonder if I make the rain stop, will the grass grow? Will it whither? Like me in this place.

The butler has arrived. Bringing a check up. What other functions does he have, I wonder.

I’ve read in books. Book. The one I have said there were many books once upon a time, but now there is just one. Well, one other and this one. This one is not allowed, which is why I have to hide it. I wonder who else has seen this book. It says that the rains were not always here. That there were days of no rain and plenty of sun and breeze, a breeze. People would darken in the sun. Now there are machines for that, but no one really does that anymore. Not much need.

I submit to the exam. The butler will report his findings. All normal. Normal for me anyway.

The book I stole also talked about snow. Snow and blizzard and cold. I think what I feel is cold, but that is not the word for it anymore. Now it is called temperate. But I feel cold. I can see it on my breath. No one else can see the cold in the air. No one breathes smoke like I do because I am the only cold one here.