"Niko catches up with his life" story

Drummer and superman. Raised on rap, little-league, piano, arcades, bmx, transformers, gijoe, nintendo; most friends came and went, several parents too. College kept the path straight but he never laughed harder; shook walls and windows. Side stepped at 23 and fell in love ever since.

Book of dreams [Assignment #2]

We woke up this morning the same way we've been waking up for months. There is sunlight, there are palm trees, but mostly there is a dull confusion and a sharper disappointment. Though we haven't talked about it for so long, we know that each morning upon waking we all keep our eyes shut a little longer, hoping that this time when we open them we'll be somewhere else.

Yasuo is the first to rise and enter the dream hut. The urgency of the pen's dry scratch on the parchment makes us optimistic. Perhaps Yasuo's dream was the one we've been waiting for. We search his face as he rejoins us, but see only the usual furrowed brow. In silence, the rest of us take our turns in the dream hut, recording all we can remember of last night's visions. The dream book has grown to a quite intimidating and disheartening size. Each page added represents another night with no answers.

It was Bem's idea to record our dreams each morning, in the belief that the memories we're all missing still exist in our subconscious. He talked about his hopes in the soft, hesitant voice we are all drawn to. We built the dream hut that day, grateful for a project with purpose.

Asha, who knows the forest best, gathered the wood. We all took turns chopping while Yasuo wove complex ropes of leaves to tie everything together. How strongly we hoped that by honoring our dreams with a home they would repay us! How strongly we hope still. Endless days of sun and salt have bleached the hut into a ghost of itself – fading as our hopes have faded.

Still, like this morning, like every morning – we dream, we wake, we write.

Daylight hours are spent in a more concrete fashion. We hunt and fish, gather firewood, make repairs to our shelters. We do most of this in silence; the talking takes place at night. As dusk falls, we converge around the fire, gnawing on dried fish and drinking the water one of us brought from the stream at the center of the island. First we read the dreams that were recorded that morning, searching for symbols, the reader leaning closer to the firelight, the other four with closed eyes and bowed heads.

We know that when everything could mean something, nothing means anything; that observation necessarily changes that which is being observed. Today is no different:

"Entry one: I am an anemone, anchored to the sea floor. I long for stillness, but receive only the endless back and forth of the waves. I can read the thoughts of every fish that swims by, and they all say the same thing: We are going to the place where Yasuo is buried. We have traveled around the world to see his watery grave. I laugh at them and try to shout 'I am here - Yasuo is here. I am not dead,' but I cannot shout, and the fish continue to pass.

"Entry two: I stand in the clearing at the center of the island. For reasons I don't remember, I begin spinning around. I find that as I spin faster, I begin to rise and hover near the treetops. The trouble is that spinning causes parts of my body to fall off. At first it's a few fingers and toes, but then I feel my shoulder begin to loosen. If I stop spinning, I'll fall to the ground and never see what is beyond this island. If I spin fast enough to see past the horizon, I'll have fallen to pieces. I choose to rise, and just before the last piece of me splinters off, I see the truth. The water surrounding our island is an island itself; at the horizon it stops abruptly like the burned edge of a map. I feel..."

We look up. "The sentence ends there."

The three other entries continue in the same vein: isolation, confinement, lost causes. We don't need to discuss them much – we understand that these are visions of our future, not our past.

None of us knows how we got onto this island, nor what came before. Also gone from our minds is the moment we discovered we were here. The knowledge of our plight feels known without being learned, the way a baby learns to speak. All we know are our names, or what we assume to be our names. Each of us, in times of silence, hears a single word humming through our body: Nysa, Bem, Onofre, Asha, Yasuo.

None of us knows how we got here, but that doesn't stop us from gathering nightly and discussing our theories. Tonight, as every night, we search:

Asha: "I've been thinking that what makes the most sense is that we are part of an experiment. I mean, surely you've realized that each of us is a different race? What are the chances that the five of us would end up here by accident? Imagine this: a wealthy, eccentric scientist holed up in her castle somewhere ranting to her son about the hierarchy of the races. She thinks this race is stronger or that race is meaner and aims to prove it. She laughs darkly, pulls out a globe, and spins it. She tells her son to put his finger on it, and his finger lands on this island. She finds us, erases our memories, and ships us here. I expect she's watching us all the time, waiting for us to fight each other or something. I expect she's pretty disappointed."

Nysa: "Although our plain clothes may belie this theory, I think we are all magicians. Not satisfied with optical illusions and parlor tricks, we focused on disappearing. Except there was some malfunction with our magical trunks, and we never reappeared. Or rather, we reappeared here. Do you think the audience members who witnessed our disappearance went home and hugged their children a little harder? Do you think our assistants still gaze into the trunks, searching for a glimmer of our faces?"

Yasuo: "Perhaps we still do exist in our former lives. Nobody is looking for us because they don't realize we're gone. Some parallel universe version of us is walking around in our clothes, kissing our families, spending our money. They know what they've stolen from us, but refuse to give it back. Maybe guilt comes to them in flashes when they see letters we wrote or a worn five-dollar bill folded carefully at the back of our sock drawers."

Bem: "I'm willing to believe that anything is possible, but don't you think the most likely explanation is a ship wreck or a plane crash? The psychological trauma and likelihood of head injuries would explain our memory loss. I know it's comforting to think that what happened to us happened for a reason. But it may be the simplest and most banal events that are true."

Onofre: "What if we came here on purpose? Sometimes I imagine that we are – were – all anthropologists, or botanists, rival scientists who believed that this remote island was home to a species of plant never seen by man. From our different corners of the world we raced here to be the first to discover it. We ran deep into the forest and found it – this plant that would bring us fortune. As we all hurried to clip off its blue flowers, it released a poison so powerful it knocked us unconscious and wiped away our memories."

Sometimes these stories make us feel better; sometimes we go to our slat beds feeling further than ever from the truth. Tonight, though none of the stories seems likely, we all feel as if we are on the cusp of something. It's a feeling that's been building for several days, that something is about to happen. The starlight seems more intense, ready to rip through the canvas of night. We swear we can hear every movement on the island, from the shifting of a grain of sand to an insect burrowing deep in the trunk of a tree. We stay up later than usual, studying each other's faces in the firelight, feeling like siblings or gods. The night passes quickly, and when we wake at dawn we are almost unsurprised to see five boats anchored just off shore, waiting for their passengers.

We sit peacefully on the sand, looking out at the boats as we softly touch each other's hair and take each other's hands. One by one we enter the dream hut and when we have all finished writing, we pass the parchment around, knowing even before we read it that every one of us has dreamed the same dream. We embrace one last time then wade out to our separate boats, leaving our huts, our footprints, and the parchment bearing our final dream:

Suffering on Earth was great. Those who hadn't died of war or murder were dying of disease and famine. Populations dwindled throughout the world. Tyrants seized power from a populace too weak to defend itself. Chaos and fear had taken hold completely.

At great risk to themselves, groups of people in five distant points of the globe came together. Their courage and hope was so great they could create a new kind of magic. They selected one among them to receive this power they had created: the power to bring peace, to start things over. They held renewal ceremonies for their representatives, dubbing them with names to carry them through their journeys.

To complete the magic, these groups drank poison, speaking the representatives' names at the moment of death. This created a force so great that a new divinity was created. These five people gathered together on a distant island to gain strength and awareness. When they were ready to begin their journeys, five boats appeared to take them to all corners of the earth, bringing peace, starting over.

A side note on assignments

I want to make sure no one feels held back from posting by wanting their pieces to be perfect. The stories we publish here are exercises and should be first or second drafts. The point is to get writing. We should read one another's pieces in that same light so we all know that and don't feel too intimidated or perfectionist to post anything.

I for one know I'm really rusty at writing fiction at this point in my life, so I'm not trying for award-winning stories or anything, just trying to rediscover that part of myself and get it going again.

If you don't feel like writing one of the assignments right now but want to take part, you could post something about what you get out of writing or hope to get out of it, what your favorite genre or format is, or what's been holding you back from writing.

Assignment #3

OK, so nobody found the last assignment inspiring, so I'm going to go ahead and post a third assignment. Please, if you have an idea for a topic or challenge that you'd like me to post, e-mail me. I'm up for anything!

This assignment is to write something 1,500 words or less about--what else?--the State Fair. Can be fiction, nonfiction or poetry; memoir, expose or food review; murder mystery, screenplay or guidebook. Any old thing--just send something in!

The Fickle Nickel of Fate (Assignment #2)

My father’s successes loomed large in my boyhood imagination. Mother would point out the first money he ever earned, a worn five-dollar-bill he’d gotten for washing a car, framed over the door of his old office, which had become my playroom.

She would spin the globe that still sat on his desk in the room and point out the countries he’d visited for business and adventure. She traced her finger down the mighty Amazon and always stopped abruptly at the point she said he was last sighted.

When I mowed the lawn for the first time she took down the frame, pulled out the five and handed it to me. The first money you’ve ever earned, she said. I found an old plastic license-holder in Father’s desk and folded the money carefully into it. I transferred that plastic card from nylon Velcro wallet to faux-leather wallet to brand-new supple Italian leather wallet as I moved up in the business world.

As I grew up, I assumed some of the tale must be Mother’s fabrication, but we did live well on money he’d left us. I enjoyed the fantasy and would tell it to my associates with a wink and a smile. Therefore it took me several seconds to recognize the face on the man wiping my windshield with a yellowed newspaper. I didn’t have time to feel but I did take the plastic ID holder from my wallet and I passed it through the window to him. His sun-darkened face and bleached eyes began to stretch and change as I pressed the accelerator. I thought I heard a triumphant or angry bellow behind me.

Now my rusty push mower runs over a newspaper on the sidewalk, over a photo of Father at a business awards banquet. I don’t believe he knew the bill’s true power or he wouldn’t have left it behind. I do, but he’ll never part with that one, so I’ll mow lawns and take fivers until I find one that works.

Jessica's life story v. 2

Lightning --> pendulum --> vapor --> starlight --> wood

Jessica's life story v. 1

I screamed of my existence then dissolved. Re-formed, chunked the pieces together. I cartwheeled away then plodded back home. Now I warble, I tremble, solidified yet still reaching out of myself.

Assignment #2

Write a piece (suggestion: prose fiction, but can be anything) up to 1,000 words, incorporating the following three elements:

* A five-dollar bill
* A woman and boy looking at a globe
* An island scene (beach, ocean, palm trees)

Admin privileges

I love the first assignments that have come in so far, and can't wait for more! (I do notice we have a fourth contributor now. Feel free to chime in, AW!)

I've granted all current contributors admin rights. I thought if you wanted to add links to the side, delete responses you didn't like or anything like that, you should be able to do it yourself. Please add Web sites judiciously! If you run across a writing-related site that you find genuinely useful, enjoyable or inspirational, that's the sort of site we want a link to. Nothing too gimmicky or completely unrelated to the task at hand, please.

I think it's time for another assignment, but if you join late, please turn in older assignments whenever you feel like it. Anitra is co-moderator with me, so I'll have to discuss the assignment with her before posting. Stay tuned ...

Anitra's life story

Born, traveled, fell in love twice, now trying to face unknown future without crying. So basically still travelling, but with more luggage.

Life story

Started prolific writing career young. Inspiration dwindled gradually. 1997: eloped with Anitra; 2005: roped Neil. Nearly died in 1996, temporarily curing thanatophobia. Now it’s back in full force and I feel I’m barreling toward death like Wile E. off a cliff, legs a circular blur, expression comically dismayed. Must chill.

The quiet life

"Don't make a fuss" are probably the words from my mum that have had the biggest impact on my personality. She was quiet, my sister is quiet, and I'm quiet. Not that there isn't much going on internally, it's just that we don't express those feelings too well...

The First Assignment

Welcome to The Heavy Pen, a meeting-place for several disaffected, uninspired, intimidated, isolated and/or unprolific writers to meet. We hope with our many hands, we can help you lift your heavy pen and get back to the satisfying business of writing for pleasure!

Our first assignment for all members to complete is simple: Write the story of your life. In 50 words or less. (Hey, I said it was simple, not easy!) You can of course employ any style, point of view or techniques you like.

I look forward to reading them!