Call of Doody: Part Two

Here it is, my intrepid readers! The next installment in our tale, the Call of Doody!

Call of Doody: Part Two

"A cigarette?" I asked. "Why do you have a cigarette?"

Alex and I were seated across from each other at the kitchen table, a legal pad and a pen in front of each of us, along with a pie tin that Alex thought would make a good ashtray. He had put on a visor and was currently struggling with the lighter he held up to the acrid Marlboro hanging from his lips. 

"A lot of great writers smoked." He mumbled around the cigarette, still fumbling with the lighter. "Mark Twain. Albert Camus. Frank Zappa. That sexy guy who wrote Secret Window."

"Here." I said, holding out my hand for the lighter. He handed it to me and I quickly wedged off the child safety tab with my pen and handed it back. It lit up immediately this time.

"Thanks, babe." Alex mumbled as he held it to the cigarette between his lips and took a deep drag, which culminated in a comically enormous hacking fit. I just watched, entertained.

"That 'sexy guy who wrote Secret Window' was Johnny Depp. And it was a fictional movie, you know that right?" I said, trying to hide my bemusement. "And why does it looked like you've already smoked half of it? When did that happen?"

Alex wiped at the tears that were now streaming from his eyes and set the cigarette in the pie tin. "I don't know, I didn't smoke it."

"Then who did?" I asked instead.

"I don't know." His voice sounded like gravel. "Cayden must have, I guess."

My nose wrinkled. "Cayden? What the--you got that thing from Cayden? That's so gross, dude! Get it out of your mouth, what's wrong with you?!"

"What?" Alex asked, looking genuinely perplexed by my reaction. "It's just Cayden."

"Exactly." I said "It's fucking Cayden."

Cayden was our upstairs neighbor and quite frankly I couldn't stand the guy. I mean, it's not like he was a bad person but he was the kind of guy who would take your wet laundry out of the machine at the laundromat and just throw it on the floor so he could put in his own load. He was the kind of guy who always had the sketchiest folks society had to offer coming and going from his place at all hours of the day and night, usually because they'd been invited to one of Cayden's frequent parties. He was the kind of guy who was always cornering you in the hallway so that he could regale you with the latest aggrandized piece of fiction he'd invented about himself. You know, the sort of stories I'm talking about:

"Bro, I must have laid 30 chicks last night. At the same time, man! Up top!"

"Bro, have you seen that thing at the fair? With the hammer and the bell and you hit it as hard as you can, right? Bro, I hit that shit so hard, I shit you not, the bell went flying through the air, man! Through the air! It hit some kid on the ferris wheel, they had to shut the ride down and everything!"

"Bro, this one time, I must have done like 50 lines of coke and drank 5 handles of this really great scotch. And man, this chick was blowing me and I was like, hacking into the FBI data base, right? Next thing I know, the place is surrounded by cops, man! I mean, surrounded! So I grab my airsoft gun and I pull my pants up--'cause this chick was still blowing me--and I walk out that the door and I point my air soft gun right at 'em and I say 'Playtime's over.' Just like that, man. Real badass. And those sons of bitches left, man! They fucking left! They thought that shit was real, can you believe it?!"

No, Cayden. No, I don't believe it. Or any of your other narcissistic bullshit anecdotes.

Am I petty? Maybe. I just know that whenever I'm around Cayden, my blood pressure seems to skyrocket.

"I mean, yeah, he's annoying." Alex was continuing. "But being annoying isn't a communicable disease, last I checked. I'm pretty sure they did a study on it and everything."

I cracked a smile. "Just don't expect me to kiss you any time soon. You've been contaminated."

Alex responded to that by licking the palms of his hands and then reaching across the table to swipe them harshly on my cheeks. I may have yelped in horror.

"There." Alex said, sitting back in his chair and grinning impishly. "Now we both are. You can kiss me now." He waggled his eyebrows and pouted his lips seductively.

"You are so gross!" I exclaimed, wiping the saliva from my cheeks with my sleeve. I was trying to sound stern but couldn't help laughing instead. "There's something seriously wrong with you."

"Are we going to write this story or are you going to keep flattering me?"

"I don't know. Are you done drooling on me?"

"For now."

"Ok then."

"I just thought you'd be happy I didn't go out and buy a pack."

"Yeah, but.....you couldn't have gotten an unused one?"

Alex shrugged. "He sold it to me for a dollar. Don't worry about it. This is just to get my creative juices flowing." Alex put the cigarette back in his mouth, picked up a pen and stared at the blank legal pad, his brow furrowed in concentration. I noted that he wasn't actually inhaling.

"I don't really see why all of this matters." I said after a few minutes of silence. "Neither of us can write and we're just trying to write the dumbest story we can think of anyway. Sounds like it should write itself."

"Hey, it's easy to write a bad story but it's not so easy to write a bad story that no one will like. Tons of bad stories end up becoming popular. Have you even heard of 50 Shades of Gray?"

"Yeah, I guess that's a fair point."

"And come on, you can write. You read enough, you got a degree in English. You use weird words like 'schism'. You just have to apply yourself." He reached across the table for my hand and gave it a squeeze. I squeezed back.

"Ok, I'll....do my best?"

Alex smiled and sat back in his chair. "That's the spirit! So where do we start?"

I shrugged. "You're asking the wrong guy."

"You have a degree in English!" Alex enunciated each word slowly, clearly frustrated with my lack of cooperation. 

I folded my arms across my chest and glowered, turning away from him. "If you mention my English degree one more time, I swear to god...."

"Well, what the hell did you learn?!" He was raising his voice now. "Isn't this all you studied?"

"I graduated with the lowest GPA possible!" I said, raising my voice to match his. "I barely paid attention! I just went to college to get my parents off my back, you're acting like you don't know this!"

"Yeah, but you had to have learned something while you were there! What, did you just dick around all day?"

"Yes Alex, that's exactly what I did, actually." I said, tersely. "And I was usually dicking around with you."

Alex didn't seem to know what to say to that. He just kept glaring at me for a minute before his expression softened and he let out a long breath.

"It is what it is, ok?" I said, softening my tone this time. "I can't go back and change it and this has to be done by tomorrow so let's just....let's just work with what we have, ok?"

Alex picks up on my cue to drop it and just says "Ok."

"Alright." I begin, calmer now. "So we need characters. A good guy and a bad guy."

"Right." says Alex. "And it's a military game, so they should be in the military."

"Right." I affirm. Then a thought. "...Or should they?"

Alex smiles, following me. "Yeah. Who says they need to be in the military?"

"Who says the military needs to have anything to do with it? We're trying to make the worst Call of Duty game ever, right?"

"Right!" Alex is quiet for a second and then he snickers. "You know what we should call it?"

"What?"

"Call of Doody. Doody. Like poop."

I laugh, in spite of myself. "That's so juvenile."

"That's why it's perfect!"

"Ok," I said, still laughing. "So let's work from there. What happens in Call of Doody?"

At the word 'doody'' we burst into a fit of snickers again.

"Ok, Ok...we have to stop doing that." I said, still snickering.

"Alright. Well obviously this game needs to be about poop." Alex said. "What if we did like...a character who was a giant cyborg sewer rat who shoots at people with his poop gun?"

I inclined my head thoughtfully. "Hm...maybe. That might actually be kind of cool though. What else have you got?"

"That's it."

"Oh." Well shit, now I had to throw out an idea. "Um...ok. How about...um....there's a toilet."

Alex waited for me to keep going. "Ok. And?"

"And....." A long pause. "There's.....a kid.....getting potty trained?"

Alex nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds pretty boring. It might work. Have you got anything else?"

"Um...maybe it's about a plumber?"

"Ok."

"And....he has a brother."

"And does he rescue a princess from Bowser at the end?"

"Oh yeah, that's the Mario brothers."

"Yeah. A plumber might work though. Like he takes his work very seriously."

"Yeah. And you just go around a sewer fixing pipes and stuff."

"It still has to be a shooter though." Alex pointed out.

"Right. Well maybe he has a.....sewage gun. And he.....shoots..........rats or something."

Alex nodded again. "Yeah....yeah, this could work. See, I told you you can write!"

I smiled , feeling a bit pleased with myself.

"It should have something offensive though, just to guarantee that people will hate it." Alex was saying thoughtfully. "Like maybe we should bring in Adolph Hitler or something."

"Do you have some secret desire to live out The Producers or something?"

"No, but think about it. We want people to hate it. What if they hate it so much they want it banned? That would be perfect!"

"Not Adolph Hitler though." I said, shaking my head. "That's been done to death. I don't think anyone really cares anymore."

"Well what if we made him.....holy shit, Mark, what if we made the main character Joe the Plumber?"

I screwed up my face, puzzled. "Who?"

"Remember? That guy who was famous for like a week when John McCain ran for president? And he keeps trying to stay relevant by saying ridiculous shit from time to time?"

"Oh yeah." I said slowly, remembering. "Is he controversial?"

"Well maybe not, but we'll do a parody of him. Make it super political, something that everyone will hate. Some games have something for everyone to love, we'll have something for everyone to hate."

"That's kind of genius, Alex."

He bowed his head in mock humility. "Why thank you, Mark."

"Alright, awesome." I was starting to feel some genuine enthusiasm about this whole thing for the first time. "Now we just have to hammer out the details. Shouldn't take too long."

And then there was a knock at the door. Five knocks, followed by two shorter ones. Shave and a haircut. That could only mean one thing. Alex and I looked at each other, despair written on our faces, and said it in unison:

"Fucking Cayden."



Stay tuned for Chapter 3! Same Bat Time! Same Bat Channel!

Love,
Ryssa

A Public Service Announcement

Well, you may or may not have noticed that I neglected to post at all yesterday. I've been doing some thinking (I do that sometimes) and I think I may have over shot with a goal of writing every day. When I first got the idea for this blog, I only cared about writing and didn't care if that writing was any good or not. At least...I thought I didn't care.

Apparently, however, I do because that Bam! Boo! haiku has been getting further and further under my skin since I posted it. That just isn't what I want this blog to be. If the majority of entries are just mindless pieces of turd that I churn out in 5 minutes because that's all the time I have, then what's the point? Any idiot can do that.

I thought I just needed to get in the habit of writing, but I don't. I do write. I write all the time. But I don't write stories which are what I really want to be writing. And unfortunately, stories take a bit of time. And if I were to write a story or a chapter of a story, every single day, I literally wouldn't have time to do anything else. At least, not if I also cared about quality. Which I do. A lot. Possibly too much.

So what I'm trying to say is that--regretfully--I won't be posting to this blog every day. However, I am going to aim for posting once a week, which I think is doable while still being challenging. But the good news is, I'll be posting more stuff that might actually be worth reading and the last thing I want to do is waste anyone's time with mindless nonsense. Lord knows, we have enough of that assaulting our senses every day, amirite? Quality over quantity and all that.

So with that said, I'm aiming to have the second chapter of Call of Doody up on Thursday at the latest (I already have a large chunk of it written, so it might be sooner.)  I'll see you then! And thanks for sticking with me on this mission, comrades. I salute you.

Love,
Ryssa

Bam! Boo!

Originally my plan for tonight was to continue yesterday's story Call of Doody. But let's be real here. I worked late, I'm tired now and the last thing I want to do is post something on the internet that I wrote in a sleep-deprived stupor. Ergo, I'm going to keep it short and sweet tonight in order to reduce the odds of embarrassment as much as possible. 

I've decided to write a haiku. This haiku is about my bamboo plant.

BAM! BOO!

Tall, green and growing
Alive against every odd
I love this damn thing


Is it my best work? God, I hope not. But hey, I said my goal was to write. And with so many days in a year, they're not all gonna hit it out of the park. I'll be happy if one does, to be honest. Making it a habit is an important part of this process, so for now I'm going to be content with the fact that at least I didn't do nothing and I'm not going to beat myself up over it. Hakuna Matata.

Good night!

Love,
Ryssa

Call of Doody

Welcome to my first real post! 

I'll be using writing prompts for a lot of these posts (because I haven't been inspired much on my own or else I wouldn't be doing this) and this one is from the Reddit community /writingprompts. The prompt is "For some reason you are now responsible for the story of the next Call of Duty - since you already have the money from all the preorders, you decide to not longer give a shit, and you write something ridiculous. People love it."

If you have any thoughts or constructive criticism, feel free to let me know in the comments! 

Call of Doody

 I hung up the phone with numb fingers. Alex was standing to my left, watching me for a moment before raising his eyebrows and holding his palms up, as if to say "Well?!"

"That was JR on the phone." I said distractedly.

"I know it was JR." Alex said, "What did he say? What happened?"

"He said..." I paused, still having trouble understanding what I'd heard myself. "He said he wants me to write the story for the next Call of Duty game."

Alex waited, probably to see if I was joking or not. I was at a loss for words so I just sat there and looked up at Alex who was still standing over me, waiting for the punchline. Finally, his face contorted into an expression best described as a mix between confusion and suspicion and he said "What now?"

"JR wants me to write the story for the next Call of Duty game." I reiterated.

"Why in the hell would he ask you to do that? Don't they have people who get paid to do that?"

I stretched out my arms in a shrug and said "Yeah, but I guess there's been some sort of upheaval in the writing department. Some sort of internal schism--"

"In English, please?" Alex cut in.

"Oh Christ, Alex, read a book, would you?" I continued before he could respond,"There was a falling out between the writers and JR and they all went on strike."

Alex scoffed. "Your uncle not playing well with others? I'm shocked. Why doesn't he just hire writers from some other company?"

"He said he doesn't have time. They're already way behind schedule and he says that professional writers care too much about research and brainstorming and all that other--and I'm quoting him here-'lame ass pussy shit'."

Alex rolled his eyes "Yeah, writers are funny that way."

"Well anyway, he said he needs the story by tomorrow. And he said he knows I have an English degree and I owe him one from when he bought me that trip to London last year--"

"I thought he said that was a college graduation present?"

I lowered my eyes and stared at my hands. "Yeah, so did I."

"God, he is such a dick, Mark. Why do you even talk to him still?"

"I don't know. I mean, yeah, he's an asshole but he's been there for me through some tough shit--"

"Like what?" Alex interrupted me again, "How exactly did he help you through tough shit? His idea of helping you was throwing money at you and then holding it over your head whenever he needed a 'favor' from you."

"He's still my uncle, ok?" My face was getting hot. Alex wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know but it still hurt to hear it out loud. It's true that my uncle was manipulative and self-serving but standing up for myself was never one of my strong suits. I didn't need to be reminded that I had gelatin where my spine should be.

"Plus,"Alex railroaded on. Once he started in on JR, there wasn't much you could do to stop him. "Didn't he serve time for embezzling from that fundraiser for poor kids?"

"He apologized for that."

"Oh sure, after he spent all the money on parties at his yacht."

"Dude--"

"Speaking of, did he even mention if he would pay you for doing this?"

"Yes! Yes, actually he did!" I threw out the number JR had given me.

"Are you kidding me?!" Alex was really incensed now. "That's slave wages! This guy uses money for toilet paper and that's all he can offer you?!"

"Well...yeah, I guess. He didn't really give me any time to talk or negotiate or....say anything really."

"That fucking guy..." Alex put his fists on his hips and glanced wildly around the room as if looking for something to punch.

"Well he said they haven't gotten as many pre-orders as they expected and that's all they can spare. But he's paying me upfront. He said he'd transfer the money to my account immediately."

Alex was dubious. "Oh really? Let me see your phone."

I handed it over and Alex quickly checked my bank account balance.

"Huh. Holy shit, he actually did something he said he would do." he said, sounding mystified.

"Yeah. I guess that means I'm obligated to write it....right?"

"You don't even play video games, Mark. How are you supposed to write one?"

"I don't even write, Alex! I only got an English degree because I didn't know what else to major in!"

Alex knelt in front of me and took my hands in his. "I know, I know." I was starting to get upset but Alex sat up a little taller on his knees so he could press his forehead against mine and gave me a reassuring smile, his anger at my uncle seemingly dissipated for the moment. I smiled back but I still didn't know what I was going to do.

"Can you help me?" I asked, my voice giving away more desperation than I would like. "You play a lot of video games."

Alex let out a little laugh and gave me a quick kiss "Dude, I play RPGs and fantasy games. Shooters are a whole different animal."

"They can't be that different." I retort.

"They are. Shooters have no heart. They barely even have a story to begin with." Then Alex's eyes lit up and seemed to look through me instead of at me. I knew that look. "Although...."

I waved a hand in front of his eyes to get his attention. "Although, what?"

His eyes snapped back to mine "I think I know how we can get back at your uncle."

"I...I didn't know we were trying to get back at him to begin with."

"Yes! He can't keep using you like this!" Alex stood back up and his voice grew louder and faster, like it usually did when he got like this. "I know what we can do! We'll get a whole bunch of rich guys to invest in this game, we'll sell a ton of pre-orders and then we'll write the absolute worse story line in the history of video games! Then when it tanks, we just keep all the money from the investors and the pre-orders, change our names and assume new identities in Bermuda."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. "Isn't that the plot of The Producers?"

He hesitated for a second, thinking "...Huh. Yeah, I guess it is."

"And don't they end up in prison?"

"Whatever, we'll iron out the details later."

"Alex, going to prison for fraud is not going to get back at my uncle."

"It will if we ruin his company and make them look like amateurs!"

"Well if we want to do that, why don't we just write a shitty game that's guaranteed to tank and leave it at that?"

"Wait, I have a better idea!" Alex continued as if he hadn't heard me. "We'll just write the worst game ever, let JR's company make it and release it and just let them look like idiots when it doesn't sell a single copy!"

"That's literally what I just said, Alex."

"Well it's a good idea!" He grabbed my hands again and pulled me into a hug. "Let's get writing! This is going to be a blast!"




To be continued tomorrow!

Love,
Ryssa

Introductions and Salutations!

Hello, friends!

My name is Ryssa and I'm an aspiring writer who has done too much aspiring and not enough writing. To remedy this, I've decided to write every day this year (or at least, as many days as I can realistically manage) and post those writings here.

Making my writing available for public view, regardless of how small the audience may be, will hold me accountable to some degree and I'm hoping I'll be much less likely to slack off. Because I have readers counting on me, dammit!

I'm also very self-critical and not too happy about sharing my writing with others. However, I'm not going to be much of a writer if I never let anyone read my writings, right? Right. So this blog will force me to quit holding everything so close to my chest and let others into my little big world.

The goal is simply to write. I don't care what it is or what its about, I just want to get in the habit of getting the words out of my head and onto paper. Or...the screen, in this case. So to that end, I make no promises about what you might see on here. Some of it might be essay-like commentary on current events or tv shows or whatever. Some of it might be poetry. Some of it will be short stories (or scenes from longer stories.) Some might be haikus. Some might be advice. And if I'm really feeling stuck or if I find myself out of time to write, I might just post other's writings that I enjoy (but I'll try to avoid that, I promise.)

I would also like to say that there will almost certainly be adult language and themes that are not suitable for work in some of my writing, so please read at your own discretion.

And last--but certainly not least--THANK YOU for taking time out of your day to read the words I write!

Love,
Ryssa