I need to write, but I have nothing.

I need to write, but I have nothing. Why do I need to write? I wrote less than an hour ago, and again earlier today. Normally I would have attended class with Omnipotent and five other Venetians today, but it doesn't pick up again until next week. Too long! I miss everybody! I saw them, not everybody, but some Venetians a week ago, and we broke up even more recently than wold have if it had been a regular class day, but the space between then and now feels endless. I've made another friend over the last week. Thank you, Lilith. I mean, yes, I did know of you before, but only over the past few days have I really started getting to know you. Tangent. Why isn't the italics hotkey working? End tangent.

I need to write, but now I have something. Not enough. I need to talk. Can't talk. Writing will have to do. Math papers are waiting to be graded. They can wait. I have huge chunks of freedom tomorrow, and more on Tuesday, and more on Wednesday. Enough to finish grading easily, and then maybe to grade them all over again. Why would I grade them a second time except to prove a point, but not even then. There are other things I can do with my time. Like wonder if and how I'll be cast in Sweet Charity. Tangent. It's been a while since I wrote a long post like this one. End of tangent.

I still need to write. What to say? Names. Why not names? Peter. Trotsky. Tubal. Disconcerting. I am all these and more. Emperor of Carthage. Whoo, that's and old one. I forget whether Emperor of Rome (Poppet) was the first to bestow my title on me or I on him. I doubt he even remembers. I don't know why I even remember. It's pointless. I am afraid that any possible reason to remember is fading away anyway. I count on my fingers. Some 14 fingers, and 12 Venetian (+3 really, but they have, for all intents and purposes, disappeared). But as Finger 14 is rising, is Finger 1 dropping? I don't know what larger implications it would have, or even if it would have any, but I don't want to cut what may be my last tie to the first half of my life. No tangent this time.

ARGH! It's not enough! I still need to write! Why?! Why now am I possessed with this urge to write and write and wite and then to come back and write some more?! I'm going to look for and post one of those 50-word stories I had to write last year in Lit class. The funny one. Well, you might not find it funny. It's funny in a rather sick way. But the class and my Lit teacher liked it. I'll go look for it now.

Wow. I still have my notebook. My sad, ratty little literature notebook with six pages still attached and more written on the inside front cover than on the pages theselves. There's the beginning of on another poem in there, but I know I'm not going to ever finish it. It was going to be similar in style to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I didn't even like that poem. But what matter? It's just another half-finished project. Another dead sheet of paper in the mass grave of such projects of mine. I'll get halfway, or a third, or a tenth of the way, and then drop off. But on to the 50-word story.

"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't write the story," I said. "Sure you can," Dave replied. "No, my disease is preventing me from writing," I countered. "What disease?" "Leprosy." "If you're well enough to come to class, you're well enough to write." I lifted my arm. "My writing hand fell off."

As a bonus, here are the other three I wrote that day. Yes, there is an element of morbidity here. I was by no means the only one with a morbid mind that day. One classmate wrote about a guy who takes a bite of a piece of bread with "butter" that turns out to be sodium! And then there's the "Time for you to say bye-bye" story. Dave wasn't surprised. He said that when you need to keep it short, morbid is easy. Now on to the other 50-wor stories. Really.

I sat down on Santa's lap unable to keep a grin off my face. Jovial as ever, he inqured, "What would you like for Christmas, little boy?" Imagine his face when I replied, "A five hundred-page book on demonic summoning!" Yes, we Dungeons & Dragons players are often misunderstood.

The janitor watched the tax collector enter the building. His employer escorted the guest into the next room. After the door closed, the janitor sighed and went ot get his mop. He returned to clean up the mess, wondering why they never learned: Assassins' guilds do not pay their taxes.

Having finished off all my classmates, he killer turned to face me. I leaped for the window, but his strong hand plled me back. Terrified, I shrieked, "Why are you doing this to us all?" His response chilled me to the core: "What else to do on a rainy day?"

The third story there was not my only assassin-related piece of writing last year. When we had sentence-writing competitions (adhering to structural guideline XYZ), my sentences were almost always assassin-related. My sentences almost always won. Coincidence?

Here's an example I found just now. We each had to write an extremely short sentence ("I am smart," for example). We then had to expand our sentences to 50 words or more without using lists. Here was my end result: "In those sleepy hours just before dawn on a Wednesday morning, the cackling and emotionally disturbed assassin whose divorced parents had molested him in his youth, utilizing sodium and a barrel of lukewarm tapwater, immolated the homeless, hapless, weepy-eyed orphan clad in only a few scant, oily rags, who wailed and wondered what sick twist of fate had condemned her to this most gruesome, even by pyrotechnic stabdards, of demises." Really, I am not wrong in the head! I promise!

I also wrote essays attacking Thoreau (specifically, referring to him as "an arrogant little snot" at one point) and The Great Gatsby. I believe both received good grades; I know the Thoreau paper did.

Whew! My need to write seems to have been sated for now. Back to the math papers for me!