5 MWE

What was it but a disaster? Never insulted--but never encouraged. What was it but a mess in a ravine? She was in a ravine--and muddy. She could not have guessed how clouds would drift in the sky. Clouds are not against the sky. The sun is not against the sky. The leaves on the trees are not against the sky. When the ravine became a mess, it no longer interested the people who had first noticed it. These people were not essential to any kind of math. They were not necessary as far as the leveling of mounds go. They simply ate what ended up on the plates they had made themselves. They knew not to put things that had hidden airpockets into their kilns. It was an airpocket. An airpock. An airparrot. An airpatrol. He saw the word antsy and thought nasty. He kept thinking it, though he knew he wouldn't win the next hand of cards. The cards had been slicked with petroleum jelly. They played their game underwater. He did not enjoy the taste of lychee.

What she said was not tasteful--nor was it nutritious. It was not healthful. It was just a cruelty she could get across with her breath. She asked him to find a mucous membrane on her and he did. He had no trouble finding a mucous membrane. When he found one on her, he asked her if he could put an etching into it. That was, after all, his art. He wanted to perform his art. He did not mind if anyone watched his performance. That he did not mind was not unusual because so rarely did he perform his art for anyone--and so often he did it in a darkened room. His dark and darkened art. Children sold mangoes on the side of the road. They sold mangoes and lychee. One child had a large burn on the side of his leg. The other child had a plastic bag full of clear liquid. This liquid was water presumably. "It is seawater," the child informed people. These people were certainly not normal. They had mercy on their faces. They had blotches on their arms that looked alarming.

She was in haste because it was most comfortable. With a little bit of sand in her stockings, she couldn't think. What was it? How had she been heckled on the beach? She had been on the beach--and it was then that she had been heckled by a man. The man had come out of the ocean with his hands full of glass. This was not seaglass--stuff rounded off and tumbled. It was freshly broken. He had it in his hands--and then he heckled. She had not been ready. Her mother had once called all her ranges narrow. All her interests were narrow. She, at least, had never been called hideous. Never such. On the rail, it was. This was the time that the glass broke. How did it break before it ended in the sea? What it was was something mistaken for a breed of cat--a breed that had been made and documented on the television. So much yowling--we had to turn the volume around. We had qualms. We were reluctant. Someone had painted out windows white on the outside, so we had to take our razors and scrape. Someone had painted our windows white on the inside--and oh how our house stank.

5 MWE

He was not a journalist, and he was not rude. When he tamped sugar against a chairleg, he used a piece of wood. Once, after a thunderstorm, very early in the morning, he looked into a spoon and saw the shape of a dog. It was a breed of dog. The dog was a certain--but unidentifiable--breed of the creature. He sometimes was puffy. He learned to swim at a late age. He, an adult, learned how in a large pool with children. Most everyone in the pool was a child except for him. There he was--learning to swim. His sister had learned to swim when he was a boy. His parents had bought a special one-piece suit for her. The suit, all about it, had pockets that could hold chunks of styrofoam. Each styrofoam chunk was about the size of a hotdog bun and could slide into one of those pockets. There must have been twelve of those pockets. The idea was to remove one stryo chunk as the child got a little better at swimming. His parents, though, removed only the six stryo chunks that were on his sister's stomach. So, when she went in the pool, she was forced on her face.

Such that there was burning. There was stinging. Five rows of people in orange plastic seats--and all of them sprayed with a Police aerosol. He had an urge to eat something. He was responsible for the failure of the crop. He could have washed the rocks, but he didn't. He left them as he had found them--covered with filth. Very rarely was he rowdy. He never got his levels right. He wanted to learn how to speak harshly. He looked for lessons but never found them. She wore shirts that had pills in the armpits and under the breasts. She had jewelry from her grandmother, but she never wore it. An old man has rubberbands looped around the handcontrols in his car. The old man makes odd handsignals at a younger man. The younger man cannot interpret the handsignals. What was there ever to say? There was no curiosity present. It was not yet in existence. Instead, all he felt was the spit on his teeth. He was ready to cut open a belly to see if it had license plate in it. Turtle shells. Anything moving and metal and shined. Who was it shined by? He wanted to be shined by his friend.

He made a concrete structure that went up 100 feet. The concrete structure was just open. It was a building with no top and no floors in it. It was just an empty rectangle that went up 100 feet and was on its side. He had this structure, and he filled it with dirt. He had eight sons, and he told them that the first one to dig from the top of the structure and make it out a door on the bottom would be the only one to get an inheritance. So those eight sons. They tried to dig, but their tunnels would so often intersect. Some of the sons dug in earnest--but others were really only in it to ruin what was going on. Some of the sons died in their tunnels. Did any one of them get to the bottom and through that door? One hundred feet of dirt to dig down into--and all your brothers digging down, too. The one to get through it all will be the one to get my fortune. But the joke was that all eight of them killed each other trying to get down. The old man was left with no sons to leave anything to, and he was too old to have any more sons. He saw what he had made. It was very simple. A concrete structure that went up 100 feet and was filled with dirt. His structure was simpler than things made by other people thousands of years ago. All his sons dead--or maybe they weren't all sons. Or maybe anyone could have gotten involved.

5 MWE

He crouches behind a frond. The ground around the frond is icy. He has seen something that is icy. He saw an icy vehicle, but he crouches behind the frond. The vehicle he sees is a Nash Airflyte--a car that you--that he--can sleep in. Make all the seats go back, and you can sleep in it. He crouches behind a frond. He would like to acquire a book, but he does not know where he should go. He heard about a place that makes eggs a certain way. People are trained to make eggs, but what do they get? They do not get to eat their mistakes. Their mistakes are fed to big dogs that are black and brown and have orange eyes. What has been said of his disciple? It has been said that he smells like vegetable matter beneath his robes. It has been said that his knowledge of mathematics is stellar. It has been said that when he dances his hips, not his feet, are leaden. What can one do but crouch behind a frond? He lights a lantern and prepares for a night of icy crouching. He wishes he had the manikin he stole.

The clothes that he had made fell apart so easily. The clothes that he made were deadly because they did not protect against the cold weather. Against cold weather. Against the cold weather. Whatever he said was false. She thought he had tripped on the concrete, but he had not tripped. He didn't tripped--just looked like he did. He didn't really trip. This was how it happened: it didn't happen. This is what he said: he said little to nothing. What he hated to eat: nothing. He ate just about everything that was placed in front of him--even experimental eggs. Now, for three hours, he had to sit athwart a simpleton. He felt the warmth of the simpleton as he sat athwart him. The person seized. The person had a pertness. None of this was timely. It was all untimely. What it was was perverted--but not to the point that it couldn't have been on the stage. It was just enough to me warped. It. Something. What. This. It was warped. Something was sad. What it was was sad. This is abstract to the point that it cannot be performed. What do you call that smile of yours?

The protagonist is a prescription in this case. In the earlier draft, there was no protagonist. No protag was there, so what was decided was that a protag must be prescribed. This protag--it was decided--must be on the younger side and must have a severe physical ailment--something readers would understand and latch on to. This protag must be on the verge of finding fortune. That, or the protag should lose a vast fortune first and then spend the rest of the time getting himself ready for a vaster one. He should get some people together and get them to pray in a place that is not a church. He should get them all in an abandoned building and get them to pray. The grass out front the building is very tall--some joke and say that it is wheat. There is a drained swimming pool in the backyard. The pool collects rainwater and mosquitoes grow inside. This abandoned house is not something the neighbors like. They do not see it as romantic or haunted. Hainted. They see it as the start of a blight. But a bunch of people are in it, and they pray. They smell like vegetable matter because that's what they had to get through.