Jillian Part 14 (The End!)

(Author's note: You'll notice there are two endings. That's right, boys and girls, choose your own adventure. I wrote one to keep in line with the assignment and to honestly try to tie up whatever loose ends I could, while hopefully adding something to keep the reader reading. The other ending, well, the other is what I REALLY wanted to write. So choose whichever one makes you happy.)

ENDING ONE:

Sometimes she was so jealous of Sabrina that she wanted to scream. They'd both had crazy upbringings, both had horrible things happen to them, and yet—Sabrina had somehow managed to put herself back together, and all Anna could do was fall further and further apart. She reached out and took the mug in her hands, the warm ceramic heating her rain soaked skin.

“I still can't find Lady Pussycat.” That wasn't what she had meant to say, but those were the first words out of her mouth. She forced herself to smile at Sabrina, to act like it didn't matter to her, like this was some sort of cavalier game, but her attempt at a smile only looked like a grimace.

“Anna--” Sabrina stopped herself, biting down on her perfectly pink lower lip. She clearly wanted to object to Anna's hunt for the mysterious madame, but knew that it wasn't her place to butt in. “What else? I know you're holding back.” She reached out, grasping Anna's knee firmly.

Anna was grateful for the contact. It was a lifeline, something drawing her in, connecting her to society, showing her that at least someone cared about her enough to reach out and touch her without wanting anything in return. “I'm pregnant.”

Sabrina's face registered shock, which slowly morphed into concern. “Honey, are you sure? Have you been to the doctor's and been tested there?”

Anna shook her head stubbornly. Sabrina knew she didn't have the money for that sort of thing. “Sabrina, this isn't like the last time, when I had that false positive. I've taken like, five tests.”

“But remember what the OBGYN said? You had that false positive because of your anti-psychotic meds, remember?” She squeezed Anna's knee reassuringly.

“Sabrina! I said it's not fucking like that this time! This time it's for real, I know it. I can feel it, growing inside of me. Under my skin. Like an alien.” Anna looked back up at her friend worriedly, with dark shadows under her eyes that showed she hadn't slept in a long, long time.

“I'm sure you're right, Anna.” Sabrina said soothingly. “How about you stay here for the night and tomorrow I'll take you to that women's clinic downtown so you can get some prenatal vitamins, okay?” Along with a real pregnancy test.

“Thank you, Sabrina.” Anna's voice had grown small, like a child who is falling asleep in their chair but won't yet admit to being ready for bed.

“I'll go make an appointment for you right now. Drink your coffee. And take your meds.” Sabrina stood, and then leaned down, giving Anna a warm hug. “We'll get this all sorted out. I promise.”

ALTERNATE ENDING:

Harold Bloom flipped the typewritten pages closed with disgust. He didn't know why he'd ever even opened this manuscript to begin with. He'd been on his way back home, walking down the street after stopping to buy a bottle of scotch when that nutty old lady had rushed up to him, grabbing him by the lapels.

“His blue eyes were like lasers in the night! Like lasers in the night!” She'd shoved the stack of pages into his bag, before declaring again, “Mark my words! Like lasers in the night!” She'd rushed off down the street again before he could even think of a way to respond.

They really needed to clean this city up.

He sat back in his well padded chair and took a puff on his cigar, slowly shaking the ice cubes in his empty glass.

It wasn't that the writing was complete garbage. It was just that there were so many voices, and so many plot knots. Damn, there were so many plot knots. They just kept springing up every three or four paragraphs, like the writer had no clue what had happened before that paragraph or what would happen after.

Schizophrenia. Or multiple personality disorder. That was the only possible way that poor old woman could have written something so insane.

Usually Harold would be angrier about something like this. He would rail and rage and write a scathing review in the New Yorker about how the riffraff on the streets needed to keep their creativity to themselves. But tonight, old age and fine scotch seemed to have softened his rough edges. He glanced down at the title page.

“Debauchery at the Golden Cherry Inn. A Tale by Miss Jean Brodie, in her prime.” What kind of nom de plume is that? Further proof that the woman had serious mental issues. Miss Jean Brodie, indeed.

He picked up the sheaf of papers and spun his chair around, dropping them unceremoniously into the raging fire, where they belonged. He then turned back to his desk, and picked up a book resting on the corner; it was by his favorite author. Himself.

He opened the cover, and began to read.

DeElla Part 13

Anna tugged at her hood, blocking her view of their judgmental eyes. Anna broke into a run as the rain began to fall harder, her boots splashing dirty water onto the backs of her legs. She rushed into a building, shoving past the yelling doorman; though she had been here so many times that she knew he recognized her. Her lungs burned and the clutched the sharp pain in her side as she made her way up the stairs to the third floor. Anna hammered her fist on the door of apartment 308. She fell backwards against the wall as the first sob escaped from her throat.

The door opened slightly, and an eye appeared above the chain, “Anna? Holy shit, what happened to you?”

The door closed, the chain rattled, and Sabrina flung open the door and dragged Anna inside.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?”

Anna sank onto a white couch, shaking her head and trying to catch her breath.

“Let me get you a towel,” Sabrina said, “how about some coffee too?” She was out of the room before Anna could answer.

As Anna slowed her ragged breathing, she looked around the pristine apartment. The white furniture and brightly colored pillows seemed softly nestled within the warm caramel walls. Lamplight reflected off of framed photographs of Sabrina – Sabrina camping with her family, Sabrina holding a diploma in a graduation gown, Sabrina glowing in a white wedding dress. Anna had met Sabrina seven years ago while they were both working at a dirty neon club in the city; Anna had bills to pay, while Sabrina was rebelling against an oppressive, conservative family. Anna still could not believe they were friends, but despite all of their differences, they shared a bond over their painful pasts.

“Here Anna,” Sabrina offered her two fluffy towels, and set two steaming mugs on the coffee table. “Now, tell me what’s going on?”

Caitlin pt. 12

She dropped her right finger into her glass, watching the wine form a tornado as she swirled. She envisioned a woman in a starch, white uniform reaching out to her from her glass, yellowed motel bed sheets torn from the corner of the bed, and in her left palm, she cradled a baby, naked and premature.

She swirled her finger harder, grinding the back of her teeth in sync with the swirling of the wine. Nurses, sheets, babies, sex, men, dirty bars, wine. nurses. . the images swirled through her mind as she raced her finger faster and faster around the glass.

"God damn it," she said to no one. "God damn it!"

The glass flew from beneath her finger and rolled onto the floor leaving a puddle of red by her feet, the glass unbroken.

The phone began to ring as she snatched up her jacket and shut the door behind her.

It was just starting to mist as she made her way down 22nd street. She pulled her hood over her head, shielding her face from the rain and from the five people gathered out in front of the building. They were chanting something in unison, she couldn't make sense of what they were saying. She didn't care. One woman extended a bright neon sign in her direction as she walked closer to the door. The woman's eyes glared through her. Anna tugged at her hood, blocking her view of

Garrard pt. 11

The woman in the faded photo was much younger than Anna’s mother had ever been. The framed photos at the house in Samson City had begun to appear only after Anna’s birth, with not one of them showing a life before children had entered the house. Anna often felt that this young woman might have never existed, that perhaps it was the children that gave her an identity in the first place. Now, seeing those same warm eyes staring out of a young, chubby face, seeing the bobbed haircut, the overly starched uniform, everything white and institutional, the soft hands directed at an elderly woman’s freckled arm—all of it hit her with clinical precision. So this was her mother—no, this was a young woman before she became a mother—working at the Sweetwater Nursing Home over three decades before Lady PussyKat was to give up her long career and spend her days staring out at the streets through an unwashed window.

What did this mean? Somehow, her mother had known Lady PussyKat so well that she had helped her secure a spot in the nursing home.

The thought made Anna suddenly tired, and she walked to the kitchen, poured herself a drink, and let the answering machine go.

“Listen Anna, I know someone who might be able to take it.” It was her sister Charlotte’s voice. She must have guessed about the pregnancy from their last few conversations. Great, just great. “There’s a girl in town who says she’ll take care of the baby, she just needs to get adoption papers.”

Anna spat her wine back into the glass. Another question added to a pile a million-high: Was this what the woman in the photograph, the woman who was to become Anna's mother, had done for Lady Pussykat?

Dayna - Part 10

the aisle of the bus to rip the baby out of his mother’s arms. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Knowing what she knew now about Lady PussyKat, and what she thought she was about to find out about the way their two fates were intertwined, she could no longer bear to think about breaking the bond between mother and child.

Anna shoved the door to her apartment open with her shoulder. The light on her answering machine was blinking. It was probably her sister calling again or one of those annoying credit card minions calling to tell her she owed them money in words she couldn’t even understand. She ignored the light and slumped into the chair at her makeshift cardboard dining room table, adding the latest nursing home brochure and the business card from the Golden Cherry Inn to her pile.

She flipped through the glossy nursing home brochures, the photo from the 50’s that was so yellow it looked like it had been soaked in tea for a decade, and the tiny matchbook with the letters LPC shimmering in silver script. As her fingers grazed the silvery letters, she remembered the day she’d found the matchbook and picture tucked away in her mother’s old flute case just 6 months ago.

“Ughh… What the hell am I gonna do now? FUCK!” She slammed her fist against the table, spilling her pile onto the gritty wood floor.

Anna knew she’d never have the answers she needed if she stopped now. She bent down to pick the papers up and then she saw it. She’d looked at that picture a million times since she’d found it, how could she have missed something so important? She bent closer to the ground in disbelief.

Eric- Part 9

She had to wait a half hour for the next bus. By the time another came, the day was already fading and the bus was filled with people on their way home from work. She had to wait for several of them to stumble out before she could board. A balding man pulled a little kid with a backpack behind him, sadly moving towards the Golden Cherry. Anna wondered how it felt to live at the Inn—not visit, not work. She imagined that balding father going up to the man at the counter for the first time, and when he asked, “For an hour or for the night?” the father had to say, “I don’t know. A night for now. Maybe longer. Maybe forever.”

Anna sat at the back of the bus. It was awkward while she walked, every eye on the steps she took down the aisle, but once she got to her seat she could see everyone else. More families were there. One little Hispanic girl with braided hair was stuck in-between her mother and father. She must have been the running type. So many of the others were solitary parents—two rows in front of Anna was a mother with dyed blonde hair, the roots growing out, and a baby held casually over her shoulder, like a fashion accessory. The baby stared at Anna for twelve minutes, sucking on its hand and playing with its mother’s hair, until the bus reached Anna's stop and she stood quickly, almost running back down the

Chloe - Part 8

Anna could feel her phone vibrating softly in the front pocket of her jeans. She waited a few seconds to answer, liking the feeling of electricity on her hip.

"Hello?" Anna had to yell over the jostling noises around her.

"Anna? Are you there?"

Anna slowed her walk, inserting her pointer finger into her ear so that she could hear the person on the other end. She squeezed the phone closer to her head, her hoop earring making a soft indentation into her skin.

"Anna? It's Charlotte. You need to come home now. You need...you need to stop all of this."

Subconsciously, Anna adjusted the front of her blue coat, buttoning her tight pink blouse all the way up to her neck. She could feel Charlotte reaching out from the phone, all the way from Samson City, to cover up her sister's exposed skin.

Anna tried to talk past the dark lump now stuck in her throat.

"Charlotte, I can't. Not yet. It's too early to come back. I have a lot I still need to, um, do."

Anna walked over to the building and rested her head against the cool brick. She felt like a child again, just at the sound of her sister's voice. Anna slid her silver heels off of her feet, wanting to feel the dark pavement beneath her painted toes. She needed to know that she was in a city - her city - and not at home with Charlotte, on their shared bed, holding each others hands as their father tore through the house around them.

"Anna, you know you can't," whispered Charlotte. "You can't stay there looking for this woman who probably never existed anyway."

Anna took a deep breath, slowly letting it out through her lips as if filling up a balloon. She spotted a wad of gum on the steps next to her, blue and wet in the shadow of the building. Inching over, Anna placed her heel gingerly into the soft goo, enjoying the stickiness of it as she moved her foot from side to side.

She needed something to stick to in this city. She needed something holding her back, telling her that, for right now, she was where she needed to be.

"I'm sorry, Charlotte. I can't come home. Not yet."

Anna hung up the phone, and continued walking.

Part 7 - Love and Lady Pussycat

Anna walked into the Golden Cherry Inn. The man sitting behind the reception area looked at her, unimpressed. Anna remembered seeing him before when she’d come in with clients.

“Hourly room or room for the night?” he asked.

“Neither. I’m looking for someone,” Anna said. “Angela Harris. She used to go by the name Lady Pussycat.”

“Lady Pussycat,” he repeated. “Didn’t she used to be famous a long time ago?”

Anna nodded. “Have you seen her?”

“I haven’t seen any old women skulking around here.”

“Shit.” Anna knew that old woman she’d talked to at the Sweetwater Nursing Home seemed loony. Another dead end. Disappointed, she turned to leave.

“Wait,” the man said. “Now that I think about it, I do remember an older broad came in by herself about two weeks ago. Took a room for the night and left the next day.”

“You don’t have any idea where she was going, do you?”

He scrunched up his face in thought. “Out of state. I remember she called someone on the pay phone over there. Said she’d busted out of a nursing home and was taking a train the next day.”

“Thank you,” Anna said.

As she left the motel, heading in the direction of the nearest train station, Anna remembered the first time she ever saw Lady Pussycat. It was an adult video that had been left lying around her childhood home – typical. But when she saw this beautiful woman – so in touch with her own body and so clearly enjoying every minute of sexual contact with others – Anna couldn’t help but fall a little in love with Lady Pussycat. It was a childlike love, of course, but Anna knew in her heart that Lady Pussycat had in some ways been her salvation.

Michael: Part 6

The bus jolted forward as it came to an abrupt stop, sending Anna into the bar of the headrest of the seat in front of her. As if the countless suitors and the pregnancy without a faint clue of a father weren't bad enough, the bitch named Fate must be laughing at this point: "Might as well crack Anna's skull while I'm at it."

Rubbing her head to ease the pain, she stood up from her seat just as the bus started pulling out of bus stop, nearly sending Anna to the floor.

"Wait! This is my stop! Hold the bus! WAIT!"

The bus stopped abruptly again, but Anna had caught her balance on the same bar that had thwacked her a moment before. She hastened towards the front of the bus, ignoring the driver's insult as she made her way quickly down the steps and out the door. On solid ground again, she stood before what might be the answer, her last stop for the day. The Golden Cherry Inn, a sleezy motel on the outskirts of the city. This had to be it. This had to be where she would find her.

Allen: Pt. 5

The man at the corner drug store…..Officer Lawford….Mr. Jacobs….the man who beat her…..the man with a red cross shirt….Hudson Miles….all those clients…..

She thought about them all. Men, each one of them. Men, in flesh and soul. As soon as one of their faces faded from her mind, another one materialized. Floating faces without bodies: it was as if all men were one collective Cheshire Cat, and she, like Alice, had fallen down a hole into Wonderland. For a split second she relaxed, thinking that the baby was no more real than the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts. Then the reality of it all—the baby, the sex, her life—launched her from Wonderland back into her moment, back into the bus: the plain, dirty, stinky, wet bus. She sat there feeling more alone than ever, despite that there were people all around her.

That’s when she knew she had to find Lady Pussycat now. That’s when she knew she couldn’t do it all alone. She needed Lady Pussycat’s help. Hudson may have been the father—she really didn’t know—and she may have loved Hudson, but even if she found him, he wouldn’t be capable of doing what Lady Pussycat could do. Lady Pussycat was a Woman. And now, more than ever, she needed a Woman.

Melissa: Part 4

It wasn’t always supposed to be this way. Anna sat on the bus and wondered how she let herself get to New York City, alone, angry, and feeling betrayed by her own body. I feel dead inside and yet, I’ve got a baby growing, she thought, disgusted by herself. She knew she was meant for something bigger, something better. That’s why she escaped the small town life she knew back in Ohio.

“Whatcha got there kiddo?” said the old man at the corner drug store.

“Nothing,” Anna said as she tried to turn her back to his gaze, knowing she could be caught at any moment.

“Did your mom send you in here lookin’ for somethin’?” he said, as he got closer, bending over her ten year-old frame.

“No sir, I…uhhh…I…” stuttered Anna, looking for a way to dart out the backdoor and into the alley.

“Listen, little Missy, I know you put something in your jacket and I want it back, ya hear? Now, gimme or I’ll call Officer Lawford while you wait for your dad to come pick ya up. Is that what you want Anna?”

Anna took a small rectangular box from underneath her raincoat and shoved it in Mr. Jacob’s chest, looking down at her feet as she alternated her weight between them nervously.

“What the hell is this for…a little girl ain’t got no reason for somethin’ like this. What kind of mother would have her baby steal a darn pregnancy test from my store? Go on, git outta here. I won’t say anythin’ this time but don’t lemme see you in here again. You understand me?” said Mr. Jacobs with his stodgy, three pack a day rasp.

Anna ran as fast as her legs could take her, running down the darkly lit streets, not knowing where she’d go or what she’d do. She knew she couldn’t go home now. Her mother and the man who beat the tar out of her were there, going at it like always. He didn’t want any more children but her mother thought it would make him nicer. Anna sat on a dirty curb, waiting, praying that he’d stay out of her bed that night.

Michelle... Part 3

Anna took a few steps toward him, but he didn’t break his gaze.

“What are you looking at?” She asked, surprised that the words came out of her of her mouth.

The man took a step toward her and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear, “I know who you are. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Anna said and pushed her way past him.

He tried to follow her, but there were enough people around that Anna could get away. The last thing she needed was another damn missionary telling her to change her ways. The way they tell it, she was an eight year old with a dream of fucking people for money. Sure, she was interested in burlesque, fascinated by it really, but that’s not why she ended up a hooker. The two weren’t connected at all. Sampson City, Ohio didn’t have anything for her and when she left, she sold her body because she couldn’t find a job.

She found a seat on the bus and let out a deep breath. She put her hand on her stomach. She hoped she’d feel some sort of positive energy. Haunting nursing homes, hoping the nearness of death would make this pregnancy go away wasn’t working. A baby was growing inside of her no matter what she did. Her twenty-seven years of life told her that because she didn’t want this baby, it was going to a normal pregnancy and at the end of it, there was going to be a kid she had to deal with.

Allie Bruce: Anna and the Pumped Up Kicks

           

Allie Bruce: Anna and the Pumped Up Kicks

        Still on the pot, Anna avoided thinking about Hudson Miles green eyes while untangling the iPod headphones from her purse with her left hand. The broken pregnancy stick stared at her from the trash like some kind of Egyptian sphinx she’d learned about in high school. The white stick loomed in the distance as she fumbled with her shirt and the cord. She stared. Not now, she thought. The “X” and the “+” sign started to turn into a Swastika, and with her right hand Anna frantically pulled half a tree out of the bathroom toilet paper roll to drown it. The truth was that she knew she was pregnant. She had checked one week earlier in the Eden Garden Retirement home, and another week before that in Happy Memories Home they were all positive. Even now she still believed that the nearness of death in the nursing home might have a ghostly affect on the pregnancy, and somehow it would illuminate a negative space in her womb instead of a positive one. Her mom believed in those kinds of things. Sighing, she lifted her blue turquoise cotton camisole and attached the headphones to the metallic green iPod shuffle fixated between her breasts in her navy laced bra. They weren’t as big as some of the others that she shared a stage with, but they got her mama's house and out of straight-laced Sampson City, Ohio.

            “Pumped Up Kicks” played from the touch of her deep purple nails. Anna made her way out of the bathroom and down the hall to the exit. As she stepped outside, she realized she had been sweating. The positive existence in her body projected itself onto the streets around her: Life-size scarlet "plus signs" walked up and down the sidewalk in mini skirts, business suits, and white laced oversized sneakers. She tried to block it out. Closing her eyes Anna tried to bob her head to the music and mumbled the words to herself, like she used to when her sister locked her in their closet at home for hours at a time. She hummed and sang, “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks.. mmm mm mmmm.” She didn’t know all the words, just like she couldn’t remember all the clients she had slept with in the last six months, except for Hudson, and they hadn’t even done it yet. She opened her eyes, and a man with a red cross shirt stared at her from the bus terminal. 

Alyssa's Post: The Search for Lady Pussycat

Six months before Anna discovered the truth about the infamous Lady Pussycat, she'd read the positive sign in the nursing home bathroom. Her search for Lady Pussycat, a renowned burlesque dancer from the 1950's, had brought Anna to the Sweetwater Nursing home in New York City. Lady Pussycat was responsible for the resurgence of the burlesque community, which had died out after Mayor LaGuardia's campaign against strip principals in the 1940's. Anna saw the two figures as mortal enemies: the transgressive dancer and the conservative politician. To Anna, Lady Pussycat was something of a professional goddess. Anna watched old recordings of her performaces, memorizing the measured movements of her body. She'd even tried to replicate the movements in her own dances, reveling in the control and precision.

Following up on a rumor, Anna expected to find a decrepit version of the soft, milky woman that filled her dreams. As soon as she arrived she checked the roster for Lady Pussycat's real name, Angela Harris. They had no record of an Angela Harris, ever. So instead of finding her idol, Anna was now crotched on the seat of a toilet, looking down at an eerily pink plus sign. If you turned the stick a certain way, she realized, the sign looked more like an X. She snapped the stick in half and placed it in the bottom of the trash. Her quest to find Lady Pussycat had to be postponed, because now she had a new mission: find her baby's daddy.

First Post: How To

Here we go, folks. You each get one 200 + word section of this first chapter of our "novel."  Remember, the goal is to introduce at least five "plot knots," or complications, or questions, that will be answered over the course of the novel.

Once you accept your invitation from Blogger, you'll have permission to post here.  The icons are pretty instinctive to use, with the same kinds of tools you get on your typical word processing program. 

Just for clarity's sake, put your name in the Post title, so we know who is writing when.  Don't forget to comment on each entry.

Our first 200+ words should be posted tomorrow, by 5pm.  Alyssa starts us off!  Good luck everyone.