Writing Al(Yeah, that's all it's called right now)

[Mitch]

[size=1][color=red] I might just scrap this, but then again, I might just go along with it as well. I hate how stereotypical Dena is, and her marriage with Daw is as well.

I did polish this piece up a bit last night, so it's in better condition. I plan on writing more of it. I want to make it a weird story. We'll see how it works.

Yeah...just read.[/color][/size]

[b][center]"Al"[Tentative][/b][/center]
1
Albert Munie wasn't Albert Einstein. He would admit to this without the single flicker in his eyes. Not a genius, always a bloke. That was his pet phrase which, like any pet, he petted?even fondled?even groped all the time. It was funny. The girls seemed to get a kick out of that one. Even if it was subtle.

Known affectionately as Al to his good friends, no, he certainly wasn't anything more than normal. Normal is about what anyone really is and can be?Al included. But all the same, normal people sure can do some amazing things once in a while. Even become heroes. Heroes?hah, heroes. The knights in shining armor that aren't even knights, and don't even have shining armor. Heroes. Those guys are just normal people too, they've just done an amazing thing. Or maybe a good thing. No one can really say. Al sure can't.

When you see Al, he'd like to see himself with your eyes. But eyes only look out from themselves and don't turn inward, letting you see yourself. They sure don't let you look through other's eyes either. Funny how as much as you think you know yourself, others can often tell you more. It's the same with Al, same with anyone. Heroes aren't heroes, you know. They're only heroes when someone says they are?they aren't perpetually heroes. They aren't them their whole life. Heroes aren't born, they're made.

And Al was born, he was made. He'd tell you with the biggest grin on his face that he wasn't created by anything but circumstances. He'd say he was born when his mother and father engaged in a certain circumstancial exchange; and that also, things went just right that a certain little guy that had a tail and a head found a certain microscopic egg and a certain combination happened that made a certain man.

Some people call it a miracle. Al just calls it circumstance. It happened because this led to that, and that led to another this, and this and that slopped together and wam! you had yourself there born and made and conceived right then. And since heroes aren't born, they're made, Al thinks, maybe, since he was born, he can't be a hero. Who would want to be a hero anyway? Albert would rather be the coldhearted, cruel-intentioned villain. That man whose main goal in life is to say a how-do-you-do "fuck you" to everything, and a how-do-you-do "there is an I in this, but no you in this. And the "I" spells Al, and Al says, kindly, 'fuck you.'" Fuck. The word sounded German to him. Sounded something like American cheese. How the hell can cheese be American, let alone fuck be German? Just because. No reason otherwise, really, thank you very much, carry on now babe.

Here he was, holding still there. Little muddy brown eyes, sandy brown hair, atrociously bold eyebrows?also brown as the word fuck sounded German. He was so goddamned brown. Even was wearing a brown sweatshirt that looked like itchy sandpaper. He looked at the picture. Is that him? How the hell does he look so goddamned brown? Brown, it was official color of dirty seems. Mud was brown, pretty much, and the ugliest muck you could ever look at; dirt, that stuff was brown too, messy as well, dusted all over you and made you feel all sandy; and Al, he was brown as brown could get, he was the most dirty.

It sounded so sexy. Dirty sounded so sexy.

Or maybe it didn't. He held that picture of him all brown, and looked at it closer, thinking young Al would move on it, maybe. Maybe he'd give some wink, the one that said, "fuck you" in the entire meaning of the phrase?all animal, deprived, and feral. Al looked closer and closer, to the point where he was just looking at a colossal brown blur. Nope, nothing, no movement. Not even from the colossal brown blur.

He held it away, seeing it all finally, not just looking at himself. He looked past the smart grin on young Mr. Albert Munie's face, and his brownness, his dirtiness. In the background. What was there?

A large sunset bruised the sky. And that's what it looked like?a bruise from the sunset. Away from the sunset's rays, the sky was its darkening blue; but once the dark sky was touched by the sun's rays, it was a purpleish red, one that seemed warming somehow, bruised but serene.

Al remembered that day. Remembered it quite well, in fact. Al wasn't any Albert Einstein, but he remembered that day. The one this picture was showing. It wasn't an eventful day, but it was a day nonetheless.

He put the picture down, put his horniness aside like a thrown dumbbell that weighed an insurmountable weight, and lay down on his bed.

Soon he slept.

2
Albert Munie was an Albert Einstein. He would admit to this without a single flicker in his face. Not a single spasm in his eyes, hidden by atrociously bold, furry animal's brown eyebrows would you get from him when he would say it or think it. He was Albert Munie to you, but an Albert Einstein he was to all.

Albert Munie hiked up the side of a hill, his parents up in front of him, his friend beside him, his brother and sister up with his parents. His friend's name was also Al?more specifically, Albertis Colesce. The name was quite a mouthful, but so was Albertis. Albert Colesce had atrociously large eyebrows, as if they were an injustice to all other eyebrows. His hair was gray, was died that way. He did not appear old; but, instead, he appeared the age of his friend, Al Munie. His hair gave him a quirky, semi-solemn appearance. The two looked quite closely like one another. And it was right to think that.

Sweat was coming down both their faces in a small start as their feet moved up and down, scraping the dirt in that little noise that just screams, "You're stepping on dirt! This is the noise I make!" Albert smiled at the thought, a small little smile that only he knew he was doing. He wished dirt [i]could[/i] speak, that would really be the day.

But then again, Albert Munie, he was dirt in the flesh. He was a dirty man-thing, a teenager, but a man-thing all the same. So it seemed dirt could speak, and it could scream that noise that says, "You're stepping on dirt! This is the noise I make!" Al was dirt personified, baby. [i]Personified[/i], meaning he was dirt in the flesh. He was breathing living lugging [i]personified[/i] dirt.

Albert wiped the sweat permeating on his forehead off, wiping the sweat now on his hand to the shorts he wore. The dirt still gritted under their feet, and the two friends still said nothing to one another, as if hell bent on getting done with the hike. Once there, they'd have a picnic.

Albert's parents, brother, and sister were still up ahead. His mother was a brown-haired woman, medium-sized; a still beautiful, but fading woman of thirty-nine. His father was built of steel, rock, and sadly, flesh. The man was a walking careening big bad meaning toting machine. He wore no shirt; his abs, well-defined, stood out starkly on his bare, shaved chest; his back was lively and moving muscles; and his face was chiseled, hardened, and always seemed graced in an ever-endearing look of stern, unprecedented strength as his hair, in a buzz cut, stood in brown stumbles on his head, further accentuating the sternness of his face. He did labor work, and had since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, even after they had died of extinction. Or, as long as Albert and known him, anyway. Same difference. His mom, Dena, and dad Daw had also been married since the dinosaurs did their little dance on the earth as far as Al knew.

Married twenty years, when Dena was just the ripe, plucking, luscious age of nineteen, and Daw twenty-five, they had been together ever since. Being married a reptile, scaly, twenty years, it took something reptile to survive something like that. To survive in something as-yet-unextinct. Their marriage was constantly changing, adapting, catalysting and moving; just like the dinosaurs, in one form or another, adapted and grew and flourished. It wasn't something meant to last forever. In fact, it was starting to fall apart; it was starting to die and become gone and extinct. Like the dinosaurs, like the dodo bird, it was starting to go.

When around Albert and their other children?Doyle and Angelica, respectively?they acted like all was fine. It was the best thing to do, the only thing to do. But things had been falling apart, and the pieces weren't coming back together. It was a lot like being caught on the edge of a cliff, Dena thought: it got harder and harder to hold on, and eventually, some day when you're just out of it, and your mind's off and away in la la land, you'd just let go. And down you would fall, too late, too gone, too lost, too out of it; down you'd fall, and then [i]splat[/i] you'd go as you landed on the hard, cold ground that was reality.

She was morbidly attracted to Daw's muscular body. She couldn't kid herself there. The way his body moved, the way he moved, fascinated her. It made her feel soft and seamless and flowing and, most of all, it made her infatuatedly aroused and amazed at Daw.

Dena wondered often if she'd just married Daw for his body? She thought she had. She also now thought she married too young, and that maybe it wasn't even love she felt. Was there even anything such as true love? Lately, she didn't think so. She thought maybe it was just some fantasized fairy tale. Or even a ploy to make life have meaning. She wondered how long the marriage would last. When would it fall apart? When would it die? When would it go?

Only the dinosaurs knew, it seemed?only the people that'd gone through this all knew. And about now, they were fossils.

She made a little smile in spite of herself. It spread on her cheeks like light spreads about a room; it was there one second, gone the next, was there just to be there. "We're almost there," she said to herself more than anyone, wiping off the sweat from her hairline that was slowly streaming down.

[KarmaOfChaos]

[color=deeppink]
Only from your weird mind, mitch.

This short story was full of half-hidden messages and a healthy dose of almost apathy. Instead of any sort of unique charater, any kind of anything out of the ordinary or in some way abnormal, the character is, indeed, 'the perfect normal.' Yet in his normalacy, he becomes strange and bizarre, to be so normal. And slowly, a sense of insecurity, almost self-hate begins to seeth just beneath the surface, evident in the insistance that he's 'just normal.'

The change from the first albert to the second was rather awkward, and slightly confusing. Surreal. The story begins to meld into the common tale of the couple who married for infatuation, and no longer feel 'love.' The woman even begins to question if such a thing as love exsists.

Very nice metaphor between the marriage and the dinosaurs. Good stuff.

Overall, good story. Confusing at one point, but nearly as bad as 567. *twitch *

-Karma
PS: Yes, I *AM* alive.
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