Just vibing
Kia ora, friends!
So, I don’t write as much as I want to, or as much as I should if I ever want to get anything finished, but that’s why I made a substack; to try to get myself writing more, and to get better at it. I also don’t read as much as I should; right now I have nine books out from the library, I’ve had them for a couple weeks already and so far I’ve only read a little bit of one - Crash Override, by Zoe Quinn. It’s a terrifying read, documenting the ordeal she and many folks went through during Gamergate. I recommend checking it out, but it’s pretty intense. I also have Paper Girls 1 and Sex Criminals 1 that I am super excited to get to, whenever that happens haha.
For this post, I wanted to share a little excerpt from one of my works-in-progress that I’m really happy with right now. Please be aware that there is a bit of coarse language here - nothing super offensive but if you don’t like that sort of thing, it’s present here. There’s also a brief mention of conversion therapy and transphobic parents. Just giving you a quick heads-up.
As yet I don’t have a title for this project. On my computer it’s in a folder simply named ‘Book’. But it involves a multiverse, time-travel, the far future, magic powers, vampires, mechs, life and death situations, trans girls and lesbians. It’s still pretty rough but I wanted to share an excerpt from a chapter I have tentatively titled ‘Quake’, about Erica and Bianca; two gals being pals after a minor earthquake has struck while they are at work.
Bianca MacKenzie, a 22-year-old part-time cashier at a local supermarket, sat in the staff room above the store she worked in, mindlessly scrolling one of her social media feeds and chewing on a piece of jerky while she waited for her alarm to go off, signaling that it was time for her to return to work. It was her first break of three, during an unusually long, 10-hour shift. A co-worker had called in sick, so Bianca offered to pick up the extra hours as it was a Friday night and she had nothing better to do, so she figured she might as well get paid. It was winter, and anyway she lived in Christchurch, so she had absolutely no desire to go to any of the dingy bars in town, alone, on foot, in the freezing cold. She figured she’d do some extra hours, go home, be in bed by 11pm and asleep by 1am, then get up early and do some of that gardening work she had been meaning to do for months. ‘I’ll do it this time, for sure,’ Bianca thought to herself as she went through her plan in her head again. Bianca was startled her out of her daydream by the shrill sound of the alarm on her phone began emanating loudly from the tiny speaker, and she quickly tapped the button on the screen to stop it. She pocketed the device, picked up her jerky packet and put it back into her backpack then headed towards the lockers to put her backpack away.
Just as she reached the locker and started fumbling in her pocket for the key, the ground began to rumble – softly at first, but then suddenly became more intense. “Shit. Earthquake.” she muttered and headed back to the staff room to get under the table. “Fuck. I’m on the second floor, aren’t I? Fat load of good this table is gonna do me if this gets any worse.” When the shaking finally subsided, Bianca crawled out from under the table and looked around the room. It had felt like an eternity, but when she looked at her watch, less than two minutes had passed. Some dishes had fallen off the bench and shattered, and a notice board had fallen off the wall, but she couldn’t immediately see any structural damage, so she figured it was probably safe to head downstairs. In all the commotion she had decided that she was in fact not going to finish the rest of her shift, ‘fuck that’, so she headed for the customer service area where she hoped her manager would be so she could tell him she was leaving.
When Bianca reached the bottom of the stairs and walked out into the customer area she gasped. Some of the stock shelves had fallen over, and bottles of wine were smashed on the floor. “Oh my god,” she heard herself say, but felt like it came from somewhere outside of her. She was stunned. Looking around, Bianca saw a relatively clear path to the front of the store, so she took it, going quickly but carefully until she got to the end of the aisle. Several of the front windows of the store had shattered, and there were a few cars in the parking spaces outside with alarms blaring. Steven, Bianca’s manager, a tall young man with combed-back black hair stood by the door in a hi-vis vest, hurriedly motioning to staff and customers to evacuate the building. “Guess I don’t need to tell him I’m leaving then!” Bianca said under her breath as she approached him.
Steven called out “Bianca! Thank god. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Good. Okay. We’re just trying to get everyone out before the fire service gets here to check for damage, and look for anyone who might be trapped. Have you seen Erica?”
“Erica? No, last I saw she was at her till serving customers before I went on break.”
“Okay. Hopefully she’s outside already. She smokes, right?”
“Yeah, she does.”
“Alright, well you get yourself outside. I’ll come and do a roll call soon, once we’ve got everyone out, then you can go home. Someone will ring you tomorrow if it’s safe to come back.”
“Okay.”Erica was Bianca’s best friend. They had known each other since they were 5 and 6 years-old respectively, as their parents had been friends back then as well. They had both been to the same schools, the same concerts, the same parties, had the same jobs; Bianca and Erica were, as Erica’s father had once said, annoyingly, ‘sisters from another mister.’
Their parents’ friendship had ended around four years earlier, when Bianca came out as trans. Bianca’s parents had disowned her after trying to force her into conversion therapy and refusing to use her true name. She was devastated, but Erica and her parents were incredibly supportive and allowed Bianca the space to be who she was without prejudice.
Bianca and Erica went everywhere and did everything together, but it wasn’t until the last couple of years that they had realised they had romantic feelings for one another. They had moved into a new place together last June and for the first time they had a home that was theirs, just theirs. They were renting, of course, but it was home. It was sanctuary.
I can’t tell you much about where these ideas came from, though some are expanded from little details I remembered from a dream, and some are inspired by something I thought of when I’d had a bit too much wine. Who knows where thoughts come from? Sometimes I’m even surprised by something I’ve written when I read it back weeks or months later, or I have an idea for something and go to write it down and then realise I’ve already written it! The creative process is weird.
What have you been reading/watching/playing lately? Let me know in the comments, or hit me up on social media: I’m on Cohost @gamerswift13 Twitter at @gamerswift13, Mastodon at @gamerswift13@tech.lgbt, Instagram at @gamerswift13 and Hive at gamerswift13. I haven’t figured out how to add a direct link to my Hive account yet, if you know how, let me know!
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Ka kite anō au i a koe! See you again soon. 💚