Solarainne 1

Hello Hack fans!

It's your friendly neighborhood Marcy here.

As you can tell, our writers' group is still warming up to this blog thing. So as we continue to work on our individual pieces, we will present some of our creative outlet assignments from meetings and such on this blog. (Some of which you have seen already.
This particular post is an unfinished, ongoing story that Bryan and I started writing last summer as a stress reliever at work. We've been e-mailing paragraphs back and forth, and letting it meander to see where it goes. So for the Blog, we're going to post a couple paragraphs at a time.

It is rough, cheesey, and random. Like my feet. So, I guess we'll call it a serial, because that sounds cooler that rough, cheesy, random and unfinished story.

Here's the first installment of Solarainne:

Connall threw his jacket on and zipped it as far as it would go. He could hear the wind screaming outside of the walls, and lamented that he had to leave the warmth of his dorm room to brave the winter chill. But alas, he thought, Mr. Durst's fiction writing class waits for no-one. While donning his fleece ski cap, he glanced at the calendar picture hanging by the door. Palm trees waved in sunshine over white sandy beaches. A margarita in hand, and steel drum music drifting on the air, he dreamed of digging his bare toes into warm sand. A Jimmy Buffet song worked its way into his brain, and the refrain would be stuck in his head the rest of the day. Heaving a huge sigh, Connall grabbed his bag and gloves and headed out into what was most definitely not Margaritaville.
No, this was indeed Williamsville, where sombreros are traded for stocking caps and a bite of wind can hurt more than the worm in tequila. There was at least one good bit of news awaiting him before he hit his professor's door at the University of Buffalo campus. He had to pick up his paycheck at Hooters around the block, and spend a few minutes basking in the glow of deep fryers and a woman named Pamela.
"UUUhhhhh... Pamela..." he drooled in his best Homer Simpson voice as the lock of the dorm room clicked. With a hop he shouldered his bookbag, stuffed his wallet in his coat, and dreamed of Hooters.
Glancing at his watch, he decided that suffering through class and then seeing Pamela would be a better course of action; it gave him something to look forward to. So he re-routed his steps to class and dreamed. Hooters and the beach. Somehow those two thoughts seemed to meld in Connall's mind, and kept him warm throughout the rest of his trek to class.
When he reached the warm building, he stripped a few of his layers off on the chair, and felt slightly overheated, despite the cold he had just come in from. He wondered why the brass heated class buildings to the high seventies or eighties. They knew that students overbundled for the upstate NY cold, and then huffed their way around campus. The insta-heat would most certainly put them to sleep. Didn't that seem rather counterproductive to classtime?
Mr. Durst began his review of the previous assignments he had graded and was handing back to his students. It was the same speech as always; "You all are capable of better writing than this. Why is it that you insist on not living up to your potential?" He passed by Connall on his way to hand Mandy Marco her essay. As he walked by, Connall noticed the familiar odor of his professor; stale coffee and minestrone soup. Why did this guy always smell like minestrone soup?
The smell intensified as Mr. Durst stopped in front of Connall, essay in hand. In scrawling blue ballpoint pen, there was a message on the top of the page, and Mr. Durst looked at Connall pointedly. The message said "I love you, sweetie." The last word was underlined twice.
Connall looked back at his teacher, who only shot a fleeting smile and a look out the corner of his eye before turning to the next desk, making his rounds. Connall's arm drooped and his pen fell to the floor. He could only shake his head, dumbfounded. The professor resumed his place behind his desk.
"Now class, this abomination of an assignment has left me utterly defeated," he said as each student held their breath for the hammer to fall. "You are all dismissed. Except for Connall. You stay."