Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Saturday, September 29, 2007 Lucid, A Short Story  After submitting my first short story to Answers.com's Creative Writing Challenge, I hadn't intended to write another one. But then one night, as I was jogging, my mind wandered off and I began formulating another short story incorporating the words from the second writing challenge. I usually contemplate software and programming challenges while pounding the pavement. But one mind-drift led to another and this story almost wrote itself over a few segments of my various routes, including the two cemeteries I often run through near the center of my town. Lucid The sun was flooding the room with its blinding rays, but it didn't matter. I was awake already and sitting on a bare floor. "Where am I?", I wondered as I rubbed my eyes. Yet I knew this place well. It was my room in the house I had grown up in, nestled in a sleepy hamlet just inside the state line. There was a fresh coat of white paint on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. There were no posters of simians swinging in the Sumatran rainforest on the walls, no bookshelves filled with my spy novels and stories of double-agents infiltrating fifth columns; not even a lamp. I slowly rose to my feet and walked a few steps to the window. The fields down below had a passing resemblance to the Kew Gardens. Standing in the room where I had spent my salad days, I was reminded of my faithful dog, Lucas, buried out back, who once helped me abscond with my father's pocket knife, and my parents, also long dead now. The reflection quickly turned into sorrow and I felt my eyes welling up, but I quickly turned my attention to the matter at hand, which was to learn how I had ended up there. The door leading to the hallway was closed. It had the same ghost white paint as the rest of the room. I turned the knob and pulled the door in. It opened with a frightening screech that echoed in the room. Horripilation set in. I froze, listening intently for any signs of life in the house. And then I heard it. Someone was coughing downstairs. The type wheezing cough that sounded so familiar, yet I didn't know why. I was a prowler in a strange house, only this was my house, at least the house of my childhood. It felt like a horrific opus. I passed the bathroom and saw the spiral stairway leading downstairs. Everything was white, even the house door. There was that cough again. I started my descent with my trembling right hand gripping and sliding over the banister. Sunlight was beaming in through the window panes above the house door. As I reached the bottom stair, I turned and squinted at the figure of a woman who appeared to be dusting the bare, whitewashed living room with a feather duster. She abruptly turned. "Oh, Jonathan, you scared me. About time you woke up." She appeared ashen and tired. "I left a bowl of gazpacho for you in the kitchen. Your father's been working outside since the crack of dawn. He could use a hand." "Hello Mother", I muttered as tritely as a child greeting a parent in the morning and then I realized the gravity of the situation. A fug of dust was billowing out of the room. I couldn't quite see the details of her face but there was no mistaking the voice. Was this woman really my mother? Was this an apparition? Was I dead? I stood there agog at the ghost of the person I had just addressed as "Mother". My mind was racing. "I'm in a dream. What do they call it? Yes, lucid dream. It's a lucid dream. I always wanted to have one. Now I'm right in the middle of it." I turned quickly towards the door and flung it open. The bright sunlight blinded my eyes, I could feel its warmth on my face. A man in a distance was hollering my name, "Jonathan, Jonathan". A barking dog was racing towards me. I felt my stomach muscles contracting, the way they do just before vomiting. "Lucas," I cried out. I opened my eyes and tried to swallow, but my throat was dry and throbbing. My fiancée was sitting on the edge of the bed gazing nervously into my eyes. She appeared exhausted. There were bright lights overhead. "Hello Jonathan, how are you feeling?", inquired a middle-aged, bearded man wearing an unbuttoned white overcoat. "We're almost done. I just removed your feeding tube. You might feel a little dizzy or nauseous." He then turned to the attending nurse carting away the apparatus, giving her rapid-fire instructions. The room was white and reeked with the smell of anti-septic. A heart monitor was blipping rhythmically above my bed. "Oh, Jonathan, you scared me. About time you woke up." I gave my fiancée a grimaced smile in response. "Who's Lucas?" short story,lucid,dreaming,ghosts Labels: writing <Lucid, A Short Story> // posted by rh 2 comments Tuesday, August 14, 2007 Answers.com Creative Writing Challenge  I'd almost forgotten about this, but an email notification from answers.com reminded me that I had entered the first-ever answers.com's creative writing challenge a couple of weeks ago. The rules were simple enough. Take ten words, pre-selected by answers.com, and write a prose, a poem, or an essay in your blog or web page. Hyper-link the words back to answers.com and submit the entry. And so, I decided to post a short story and to enter it in the challenge. My family liked the story, but of course there's a touch of bias there. Yet surprisingly this past Monday I was chosen by the judges as the runner-up and got a link back to my blog from answers.com's Hall of Fame page, and a $50 Amazon gift certificate to boot. Of the ten words, the only one I had no idea about was "melissophobia" which means an abnormal fear of bees. That's okay, Word's spell-checker doesn't know that term either. So in the end, the writing challenge was fun, educational, and, considering the $50 gift certificate, profitable. Answers.com is running another contest now. I may enter again, but better yet, I might ask my kids to take a shot at it. At worst case they will expand their vocabulary and hone their writing skills. Sounds like a win already. Of course, all those backlinks don't hurt answers.com either. writing contest,writing,short story Labels: writing <Answers.com Creative Writing Challenge> // posted by rh 1 comments Thursday, July 05, 2007 The Greedy Shepherd  Preface: A few days ago I received an email from Answers.com inviting me (and other recipients) to write an essay or a poem using 10 words they had selected and link those words back to them — certainly a publicity and SEO stunt. At the end of the contest they will judge the entries and pick a few winners. I was going to lambaste the tactic in this blog. Instead, for some inexplicable reason, I decided to take up the challenge and write a short story. I'm not much of a storyteller, although I did write a book about financial markets a few years back, but that's a different matter. This is my amateurish stab at a short story. I know, I won't quit my day job. There was a once a shepherd in Belize who took his herd to a field near his house everyday for grazing. The field wasn't the most fertile but there was sufficient grass for his sheep to graze on. His was a perfunctory task, but for all intents and purposes he made a comfortable living from his sheep. He would occasionally visit the local market and sell a few sheep which made him enough money to buy the necessities of life like food and clothes and, on occasion, a gift for his family, like a yo-yo for his young son. On another occasion he made a quid pro quo deal with the local beekeeper to provide him with honey for a year in return for a sheep. He had vowed never to change his way of life. One day, while leading his flock to the meadow, he met a stranger who told him about a field farther away where the landscape was more lush and the grass was ubiquitous and plentiful. The stranger insisted that on this new field the sheep would get fatter much faster and the herd would double or triple in numbers at no time. He kept filling the shepherd's head with quixotic ideas of wealth and status until the shepherd agreed to take his flock to this new field, abrogating the vow he had made to himself. It was an arduous journey but when he reached the new field, instead of the lush grass he found a barren land with scarcely anything for his herd to feed on. Disappointed and ashamed of his gullibility, he set out to make the return trip home, uncertain if his herd would survive the harrowing trip back. Just then a large colony of wasps that had been disturbed by the herd's arrival stirred into action swarming the shepherd and his sheep and stinging them about their faces. His brand of sheep, known for acute melissophobia, panicked and scattered quickly. Soon they were all out of sight, seemingly lost forever. The bereft shepherd began the long trek home, alone and destitute with thoughts of regret and penitence circling in his head. Midway to his home, he sat by the side of road to rest his tired and wobbly legs. He failed to notice that his head was just inches away from a large brown recluse spider who had become alarmed by the new visitor. As the spider moved closer to defend her territory with a deadly bite, the shepherd heard a faint bleating and quickly rose in excitement to scan the area. In astonishment he saw his herd, back together, slowly trudging back toward their old grounds. His joy was indescribable as he once again took command of his herd and safely guided every one of them back to their old and trusted turf. As he watched his sheep with satisfaction grazing safe and sound, he renewed his old vow and never again strayed his flock from the trusted meadow. Moral of the story: 1) Don't abandon a sure thing chasing after dubious promises. 2) Melissophobic sheep don't make good herds, but … 3) They can save a life. sheep,shepherd,herds,belize,short story,seo,publicity Labels: seo, writing <The Greedy Shepherd> // posted by rh 8 comments

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