So I was able to make it wide enough. How happy I am with myself.
Booth and Bones are called in when a garbage man collecting at a local park discovers a mummified body under his truck, with the neck and jaw crushed by the tire. Zack and Angela have to work together to reconstruct the face and identify the victim, which is made particularly difficult given Bones’ diagnosis of the clearly juvenile body with brittle bone disease (Osteogenesis imperfecta). This does limit the search field, and the mother of the missing boy is found. He and his father disappeared 3 years ago, causing his mother to believe her estranged husband abducted the son. Hodgins has no bugs to identify due to the mummified nature of the corpse, but he works on finding out what the unique type of melted substance on the clothes is from. He identifies it as rubber tire transfer, from a small type used in golf carts. There are also lead paint particles mixed in. Booth and Bones search for run down neighborhoods that still have lead paint in their houses, leading them to an area in Virginia where the groundskeeper of a Country Club has recently gone missing. They search his house, and discover blood. After searching the grounds, they also find his recently stabbed-to-death body. The basement also contains blood of the son and recently disturbed plaster walls. A nail discovered in the basement is a match to the mother. The reconstructed skull of the boy reveals the fatal injury was a blow to the head, caused by being dropped, and his Osteogenesis imperfecta made the fall deadly. The mother reveals she saw her former husband at her parents’ new Country Club, and found out their son was dead after confronting his father. Enraged, she killed him, buried him, and took her son’s body to the lake he most loved when he was alive.
Meanwhile, Bones has gone on a date with the new curator of the Jeffersonian Institute’s Museum. He is young, handsome, and highly versed on topics Bones is most interested in. Yet she does not find herself liking him. Angela however knows exactly what Bones’ problem is—she like Booth.
Sarah looks down at the names on her list – Henriques the Englishman, Captain Jackman and Walker D. Plank.
Sarah: Those are strange names, though.
She takes a seat at her table. HENRIQUES the Englishman appears in front of her. He’s a younger looking man with a patch over his left eye. He sits down across from her.
HENRIQUES:(smiling) Ya know, I may only have one eye, but I see you’re a catch.
SARAH: (confused) Um…thank you…I guess…(Trying to be positive) What…happened to your eye?
HENRIQUES: I lost it…in battle…I seized the Dirty Servant.
Henriques smirks and raises his eyebrows at her twice. He nods in approval of himself. Sarah stares at him in disgust.
HENRIQUES: She was vicious, but eventually I had her….
SARAH: Okay, ya know what… it’s time for you to go. (She whispers to herself, disgusted) Pig…
Captain Jackman, a younger man in his 30s wearing a black pirate hat with a skull and crossbones on it sits down across from her.
CAPTAIN JACKMAN: What a fine lass you are.
Sarah: (Pleased) Well, thank you, that’s sweet.
Captain Jackman: I’d take you for my booty…
Captain Jackman laughs a bit and smiles. Sarah raises her eyebrows at him.
SARAH: Excuse Me?
CAPTAIN JACKMAN:(still smiling) You’re the goods me’ dear.
SARAH: Ugh! Another one! I can’t believe this!
Sarah stands up from her table and pushes Captain Jackman way across the table.
SARAH: (furiously) These goods are not for sale!
Captain Jackman: (As he walks away) What a feisty wench.
Sarah sits back down again as WALKER D. PLANK, a portly gentleman with a long, black beard approaches the table. He smiles.
WALKER D. PLANK: Yo-ho-ho…
Sarah opens her mouth wide in a furry of disbelief and anger. She quickly rises from her chair and SLAPS him across the face.
Sarah: You’re all disgusting! You’re delinquents, you’re delinquents!!
Horrified, she goes back to the front door and the valet, and sees a normally dressed man, HOWARD.
Sarah: Oh my God, I can't believe those people, can you? I thought this was a going to be a normal dating experience. (Attempting to be seductive) You must have been mistaken too.
Howard: No, no I wasn't. I wouldn't want anything else at Pirate Enthusiast Speed Dating.
A WOMAN dressed as a pirate maid comes up and puts her arm around Howard. They walk through the front door as Sarah looks shellshocked. Walker D. Plank comes up behind Sarah and squeezes her butt.
Walker D. Plank: Arrr my pretty, I've come to commandeer your vessel and bring you to my port!
Sarah: EWWWWWWW!!
She runs through the front door with Walker D. Plank after her.
I saw her again. I thought I was completely over the entire mess. But it all came back so fast…
I began crashing at my friend's place about a year ago, I’d been kicked out of campus housing, as if that was a surprise. I needed a ride to classes, and he wrangled her into driving me up to campus…they were neighbors.
That first time, I refused to talk to her, started smoking all kinds of shit in the car. She just went and frickin’ took my cigarettes, all my stuff, tossed it out the window with the strangest look on her face. As if it all just amused her.
How the hell she did that without me socking her, I have no idea. Maybe I was too messed up to do anything but stare at her. Right then, I hated her fricking, goody-two-shoes guts.
But when I heard a honk the next day, I got up and went out. I don’t know why. All she did was alternately reprimand me, try to get me to say things, talk about her life, or just drive, watching the road with a strange smile on her face. All the jackassed things I did didn’t really bother her. Like she knew I shouldn’t do all that shit for my own good, but it really didn’t make a difference to her…or, more that my general demeanor didn’t put her off.
She was so different from, well, everyone. I had to start responding, to defend myself. We’d argue the whole ride—well, I’d argue and she would just talk around everything I said with that little smile on her face. Eventually it wasn’t even about the arguing, I just needed to talk to her.
A dreary February day, I got in the car and she wasn’t talking, didn’t have that smile. She finally broke down, told me her aunt had died. The person she’d always been able to confide in was gone. It should have been weird to be the sounding board, the confidant, but with her it was suddenly so natural. Though I suppose we’d had a relationship for a while, that contact was the start of THAT kind of relationship.
Just having each other’s company was the best thing. It certainly was the healthiest relationship I’d ever been in. But the fact that someone I cared about, whose opinion I valued and who I didn’t really want to see hurt, still couldn’t get me to stop all my shit wasn’t good. It wasn’t good for her.
But I was so stupid I couldn’t see it. And she cared too much about me to care what was happening to her. She still picked and prodded at me, only now it really affected her. She started looking drawn, didn’t have her special look. Except by then I didn’t notice.
By the time I was finally put in the hospital, she was too. I shouldn’t have been surprised, shouldn’t have let her get to that point before I realized what I had done. Yeah, breaking it off was best—though it took a hell of a lot of convincing myself before I finally did it. She kept saying I needed her. I did. I still do. But she didn’t need me.
Seeing her now proved the reasonable part of myself, or the part of her that she left with me, right. She looked like herself again. My one regret is that I was able to get so much from those months, while I can’t honestly say she benefited at all. It’s damn hard to see her, cause I’m a hell of a ways from being good enough to be in her life again. I may never get there. But I have to keep trying--for her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing anything, and in any form, is difficult. I always worry about finding exactly the right (or write, hahaha) words. Getting my feelings on paper, well, into sentences in some form or another, is excruciating. It's like when I was little, and would have a beautiful image in my head that I could never draw the way I pictured it. Other people's opinions bring a whole other layer of self doubt into the mix.
That's why the general, almost inherently known, guidelines of short story writing are so helpful. That selectivity is encouraged makes me feel not quite as insanely over-analytical. The other pointers are equally helpful. While longer works can definitely play with time in a more interesting and complex way, a sparse number of characters is something I feel helps most works, not just short stories.
However, as with any art, it must be allowed to flow naturally--which means story conventions are secondary to what actually makes a story work. Though for me that flow is usually glacial, even molasses-paced, and often full of back-tracking and self doubt, there has been much comfort provided to me through the years knowing that it is alright to start sentences with "and" on occasion, or more important parts of my work, though not necessarily conventional, can work.
