The Adventures of Little Timmy

Chapter 04 - Keep on Truckin'

2005-11-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

It was some time later. Some average, ordinary, uneventful days had passed. Timmy had gone to school and gotten mediocre grades. The hubbub had mostly died over the lightning incident. The novelty over pretending to receive electric shocks from him and worn off and he had returned to the cosy chair of obscurity.

Timmy had indeed read over the fine print but could not see through the legalese to find the answers to his questions. He had briefly wondered what lawyer had written it; perhaps he had traded his legal expertise for the opportunity to not spend his eternity in hell.

Timmy, like most people, had less than favorable feelings towards lawyers.

In the absence of certainty as to what would happen to him should he fail at his mission, Timmy had chosen to more or less ignore what had happened. The opportunity to die and be resurrected is not as easily exploited as one would think. If you try and use it as a party trick, it invariably makes people uncomfortable. Uncomfortable questions get asked.

So no, Timmy had not gotten any further in learning what his mission was. He had weighed his chances and figured that so long as he went around his business pretty much as usual he was most likely safe. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and clean up his act a little bit, of course. Be a little more respectful towards his elders. Help little old ladies across the street. Eat his vegetables. All that sort of thing.

It was hard. Timmy didn’t have anybody he could confide in. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any friends; he had a few. They just weren’t deep, dark secret friends. They were more the kinds of friends you felt comfortable swapping insults with or asking for answers on a tough assignment. If he tried to tell them he was immortal they would either blow him off or get genuinely freaked out. He had enough social problems as it was.

Timmy was only a few weeks into immortality and he was already finding it lonely.

Immortality is a classic curse. Many people find the idea of immortality initially appealing. It doesn’t set in until your first century has passed that you will outlive everything. Not just your friends and family, as if that weren’t bad enough, but entire civilizations rise and fall as you watch. You find some nice island where you can settle down and in hardly any time at all it’s suddenly part of some war-torn continent. You can make good money off of long-term investments, but there’s hardly any point.

Immortality is also a lot of work. If you aren’t careful, somebody will notice. Either you’ll be heralded as a prophet or you’ll be tried as a witch. Neither cases are favorable; prophets accomplish their utility by becoming martyrs. When you fail to become one, you just get locked up by whatever tyrant is in power. As boring as immortality can be, it is infinitely more so when confined to a jail cell.

There’s yet another problem with immortality. Many people falsely assume that immortality is a synonym for invulnerable. Nothing could be farther from the truth. An immortal being is incapable of being killed but is as susceptible to inconvenience as any other. Indeed, an immortal being is much more susceptible; a victim on the rack has the eventual escape of death available to them. No such escape exists for an immortal.

All this Timmy had been thinking while crossing the road. He really should have been paying more attention.

The truck, its driver crazed on caffeine and insomnia, clipped Timmy’s right side, breaking his ribs and splintering his shoulder. Timmy spun as he was flung some way down the road and skidded on the pavement. He had enough time to register the incredible searing pain before losing consciousness and, after a few moments, vital signs.

The one casual onlooker screamed hoarsely and rushed towards his mangled body in time to see something very strange happen. Before that, though, it must be shown what Timmy saw.

There was pain, unbelievable pain, and then void. Darkness. After a few moments, though, an incredible sight met his eyes, or what, after death, he used to observe visual stimuli.

There was a sign, bigger than galaxies, dwarfing solar systems, but able to fit between the cracks of atoms. It had incredible size but an odd feeling of lack of depth, as though if after making a trip of uncountable light-years to its edge, you would see that was as thing as a ray of light.

It fit comfortably into Timmy’s range of vision.

As he goggled at it, it flickered a few times. It seemed to be making a buzzing sounds, as if all the atoms in the universe had assembled to make a fly of godly proportions. Then it went out and the absolute darkness of whatever plane Timmy had been inhabiting was replaced by the darkness of eyelids thickened by blood congealing on them.

The sign had spelled out, quite simply, two words.

“Please Wait.”

The pain came back.

As Timmy was laying there, as this onlooker watched, Timmy’s body was mending itself faster than is physically possible, and with much greater efficacy. His ribs pulled back into place and rebuilt and strengthened. His shoulder socket mended and there was a sickening pop as his arm fit into place. His lungs re-inflated, his blood cells reproduced fast enough to put rabbits to shame, and the large amounts of skin that had been left on the road were replaced in a stomach-turning fashion as the flesh crept back over exposed bone.

Timmy gained consciousness and was aware of a few things. He was covered in blood, still warm, all his. His body ached. He was incredibly, unbearably, thirsty. He was still lying in the road. Somebody was watching him.

He raised a trembling hand in front of his face. Through a red haze Timmy saw sickening little movements as fractions of bone moved into place and knit, as tendons healed, as it inflated slightly as it regained blood and flesh and shape. Even his hair was growing back where it had been scraped off. He turned his head slightly so he could see who was watching him.

It was a girl. Timmy recognized her as Joan. He recognized her from school. She was his age but acted younger, as seemed to be the habit. She was watching him now with a look of mostly horror, part disgust, and, yes, some curiosity. Timmy, now mostly mended, pulled himself up, and stood unsteadily. He winced.

“That smarts.”

Joan fainted.

Timmy dragged her out of the road and propped her up against a tree. They were near a baseball field, so Timmy went and got a drink of water. He was badly dehydrated from his recovery; replacing all the blood he lost had been costly. Eventually his thirst was sated and he carried some back in his hands to splash on the unconscious girl.

Joan sputtered her way to wakefulness. Her eyes wandered, then focused on Timmy, and she glared. A wisp of memory occurred and she whimpered and scooted away from him. It was definitely an awkward situation. Timmy sighed.

“What are you?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he answered automatically. His brain kicked in.

“That is, nothing special.”

“But I saw you killed!”

“Obviously not. Must have been a trick of the light. I’m here talking to you; how could I have been killed?”

“Maybe you’re a zombie.”

“Wouldn’t I have eaten your brains by now?”

“You could be a vegetarian.”

“A vegetarian zombie?”

“Well, why not?”

“I… But…”

“Aha!”
Timmy stared at her. Even on solid ground, with a blue sky overhead and the smell of grass and dirt in his lungs, this conversation seemed far more unreal than what had taken place in Limbo. People were weird.

“All right, let’s say I am a zombie. What are you going to do about it?”

Joan hesitated. As a lifetime patron of the macabre, her knowledge of classic horror movie monsters came to her aid.

“I could shoot you in the head.”

“Please don’t. It wouldn’t work, anyway.”

“I could cut your head off.”

“That also probably wouldn’t work.”

“I could…bury you at the crossroads.”

“What, under the road? You’d need a jackhammer to get into it and I think you need a license to tear up roads anyway.”

Joan sat back and thought. Her eyes examined Timmy carefully. Besides his bloodstained, ripped clothing, not a scratch or bruise remained to tell what had happened to him. Amazingly she found herself completely unafraid. Timmy wasn’t threatening, even covered in blood, with a forced smile on his face. A little creepy, but not threatening.

“You’re Little Timmy, aren’t you? From school?”

“I’m not little,” he mumbled.

“So, you’re not a zombie. You don’t look like a zombie.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you a vampire?”

They both looked overhead to the sun shining through the leaves of the tree above.

“Never mind. You have to be some sort of undead.”

“I do?”

“Anything living would have been killed by that truck.”

“Do I look like an undead?”

“Well… No.”

“Maybe I was just lucky.”

“But you aren’t even scratched!”

“Very lucky.”

Joan glared at him.

“Look, you really don’t want to know. It was just one of those million-to-one-chances, or something, all right?” Timmy said, desperation beginning to show in his voice.

“Well… I don’t know.”

“Really, there’s nothing you need to know.”

“Fine, but I’m going to have my eye on you.” Joan got up and walked angrily away. Timmy just felt relieved. He didn’t think he was going to get away with it. Not that she really could have done anything; she’d be locked up if she had told anybody.

That still left the matter of his clothes. Almost half of Timmy’s shirt had been torn off, and a significant amount of pant leg had been torn off. Bits and pieces of shredded clothing could still be seen twitching in the wind, adhered to the road by congealed blood. What was left of his clothing was almost completely covered in blood, with bits of gravel stuck here and there.

Timmy didn’t know what he was going to tell his mom.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Nobody was home by the time he got home, so he was able to change out of his rags and bury the evidence in the backyard. He’d just have to hope that nobody would notice a missing set of clothes.

Timmy made himself a sandwich and thought about what to do about Joan. She didn’t pose much of a danger, but the last thing he wanted was somebody paying him undue attention. It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t choose to be hit by a truck, it was just bad luck that it had to happen in front of someone. Oh, for a hit-and-run without witnesses.

He’d just have to be extra careful. Look both ways when crossing the road. Stop drop and roll. All the doggerel safety tips of his youth. He doubted he’d be as unlucky as before, but he couldn’t afford an inquiry. Anyway, he would run out of clothes.

Maybe he could do something to throw Joan off the trail. With luck she’d just forget about it, but she didn’t seem the type. Maybe he could persuade her to leave off. There had to be something he could do.

Timmy would just have to wait and see.

Chapter 03 - Rebirth

2005-11-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

Timmy woke up to the steady sound of his heart rate, amplified through electronics. Looking around he observed that he seemed to be in the hospital. He was in a bed far more comfortable than his own and was, now that he checked, wearing the embarrassing paper gown. No one had noticed that he was awake yet.

Timmy lay back and thought. He could remember being struck by lightning, but after that... It all seemed like a dream. He hadn’t really been in Limbo, had he? But...

What was this paper next to his bed?

He just had time enough to read the first couple of words on it before a nurse entered and he thrust it under his bed covers.

“We’ve woken up, have we?”

Timmy nodded.

“Had quite the experience, didn’t we? Struck by lightning! I don’t know how you kids do it. In my day it was all we could do to go to school and stay out of trouble. But I guess times change, right? Everything seems to be going so much faster, with your fast cars and Inter-net, so I guess it’s only natural to go out and get struck by lightning. I’m surprised we don’t see more kids in here from being struck by lightning.”

The nurse talked in a non-stop torrent of words. Timmy just lay there and tried to stay afloat. The nurse walked over to the windows and twitched the curtains aside, revealing a beautiful blue sky and sunny day, the first that Timmy had seen in a long time.

“How long was I…asleep?” he asked.

“Two days now.”

“Really two days?”

“Yes.”

Timmy considered this. At least he had a legitimate claim for being out of school. The nurse left the room and Timmy was alone again. He reached into his bed and brought out the papers he had hastily stuffed there.

The title read “Waiver Form 462: Immortality.”

So. It hadn’t been a dream after all. Timmy was, in fact, now immortal, at least until he completed his mission, whatever that was. He didn’t feel any different, besides slightly groggy. That was probably just because of being asleep for two days.

The next day Timmy’s parents took him home from the hospital. He had spent the night there for observation, to make sure there weren’t any adverse effects from the lightning strike that manifested themselves. Timmy’s doctor didn’t think it likely that it would give him powers of electricity and/or magnetism but he felt he had to be sure. Timmy went the whole night without causing a black-out, so he was discharged.

The day after he returned home he went back to school. He had gotten his missed work done and had been forced to write a poem. He hadn’t expected a big welcome back party, which was lucky, since he didn’t get one. People treated him just the same as always, although there was the occasional comedian who would tap Timmy on his shoulder and then pretend to be electrocuted. The principle gave an announcement on the dangers of thunderstorms.

At lunch the kids Timmy hung out with were curious.

“What did it feel like?”

“Did you hair catch on fire?”

“Did your clothes explode off?”

The other kids paused shouting questions and looked towards the boy who had asked this. He blushed and stuttered that he had heard it happened. And no, he was not gay, so shut up.

Timmy waited until he could be heard and answered a few.

“It felt like a bomb going off, only every at once.”

“How do you know what that feels like?” asked Cameron. Cameron had a tendency for asking irritating questions.

Timmy ignored him.

“No, my hair didn’t catch on fire, but the paramedics did say I was smoking when they found me.”

“You know that smoking is bad for your health.” It was Cameron again. Timmy glared at him and continued.

“And no, my clothes didn’t explode off.”

Timmy resumed eating his lunch while the regular babble of kids at lunchtime flowed around him. Apparently they were discussing whether he needed a new nickname. Somebody suggested Sparky and somebody else threw a juice carton at him. Eventually consensus was reached that he would remain Timmy.

After lunch Timmy had English. If he was lucky he could avoid delivering his hastily scrawled poem and have a chance to write a new one that night. The assignment had said that it could be in the style of the author’s choosing. Timmy had done a haiku. He liked haiku. It had a simplicity that he admired.

Timmy skulked into the back of the classroom like he did day after day. Some people assume that kids who sit in the back are slackers. It’s often true. It’s partly true in Timmy’s case. Timmy isn’t the hardest-working kid you’ll find, but his desire to sit as far back as possible is largely out of a desire to go unnoticed.

It didn’t work today. Everyone started at him as he walked in. When he sat down, the kids in the adjacent seats scooted away a few inches. Since one of the kids was Cameron, he didn’t feel too bad.

After a minute the bell rang and Timmy’s English teacher walked in. Her name was Mrs. Morris and Timmy had the horrible feeling that she believed in him. Couldn’t it be enough for you to do the assignments and take the tests? Why did teachers have to get all personal about things?

Mrs. Morris walked to the front of the room and, predictably enough, asked for volunteers to read their poems. Timmy automatically hated anybody who immediately raised his hand. The teacher’s eyes scanned the room and in, a horrifyingly inevitable way, ended up on Timmy.

“How about you, Timothy? I’d love to hear yours.”

Timmy knew it was pointless to resist. After all, she had called him Timothy. He stood reluctantly and trudged up the aisle to the front of the classroom. He cleared his throat and read.

“Cherry blossoms fall.

”In the night, lightning flashes.

“I’m clinically dead.”
Mrs. Morris stood there, her mouth slightly open. She closed it after a few seconds passed.

“Thank you Timmy for that…lovely haiku.” She recovered slightly. “I had been hoping it would be a bit longer, though.”

Timmy mumbled an apology and went back to his seat. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him and kept his face low to his notebook. Around him would-be poets declared their love for daffodils and spring mornings a very emphatic and, Timmy thought, needlessly long-winded way. He had no problem with people’s fondness for botany. He just resented it being thrust on him.

Timmy zoned out and surfaced on some private shore.

He had a mission. But he didn’t know what it was. It’s an interesting philosophical quandary, really: Is it better to go through life unsure of whether we are serving any distinct purpose or is it better to know that you are, but not what that purpose is?

Timmy couldn’t decide. There were good arguments for each side.

On the first, not knowing if your life had any purpose. Ignorance is bliss, according to some. And there was much less pressure on you. You didn’t need to worry about what you did, where you ended up. You could concern yourself however you chose, dedicate your life to whatever cause you felt needed it.

On the other hand, the purposeless wandering could lead you to waste your life. Never sure of what you should be doing, or if things would be better served if you did nothing at all, you relegate yourself to the mountains of mediocrity, never having ambition or drive enough to do anything really great.

On the second, knowing you had a mission, but not knowing what it was. It gave you drive. You knew you were destined for something. The great voice in the sky really had boomed, had pointed the celestial finger at you and picked you out. You would either become famous for having carried out your mission or you would become infamous for your failure. One way or another, your fame was certain.

But! Gave you drive for what? To do what? Sure you’re destined, but destined for what? Knowing that you should be doing something but not knowing what induces neuroses on a level beyond comprehension except to a select few. It made it far more likely that you should fail. The thought that any action, and, indeed, every action you take would either put you nearer or farther from your goal would be enough to paralyze you into inaction. But inaction itself is not the solution, and itself guarantees failure, except in the few more backhanded missions.

Timmy thought he might go insane.

Around him the class’ focus had been brought around to the stylistic device of comparing people with distinctively non-human things. Examples such as the classic summer morning were brought up and dissected. The ability to use the device for both complimentary and derogatory purposes was discussed. Timmy made sure that he wasn’t being called upon to contribute and submerged himself once more in his thoughts.

So he was now immortal. That could come in handy. Just in case he needed to die at some point. Or pretend to die. Or die but not really be dead, at least not for very long. But inherent in that bonus was another problem. Since he didn’t know what his mission was, he wouldn’t know if he had completed it until he died and stayed dead. If his mission was something perverse like take a bullet for the president, he’d rather fail.

Wait. If he failed, did that make him mortal? Or did he stay immortal?

The man had said that he’d be immortal until he completed his mission… Did that mean that his mission was open-ended enough that he’d need immortality to complete it, his own life-span being insufficient? Or that it would be necessary to spend his pseudo-lives to complete it? Was there a chance of failure?

Timmy suddenly felt a pressing need to read the fine print on that heavenly waiver.

Chapter 02 - Death

2005-11-01T17:52:00.000-05:00

Timmy came to with a start. Where was he? What happened?

He seemed to be sitting in a chair. It was comfortable for the moment, but promised to get less and less so as time wore on. As images swam back and forth in front of his eyes, he tried to make sense of things.

The last thing Timmy could remember was an explosion like a bomb going off. The taste of tin. Then blackness, falling, a void...

And now he appeared to be sitting in what was looking more and more like a waiting room. It had an offensive flower print on the walls. The magazines in a rack on the wall had a familiar look, although now that Timmy looked closer, they seemed to have titles like Incorporeal Being Quarterly and Planar Residence.

The only other person in the room was a forbidding woman at a desk. With no other course of action presenting itself to him, Timmy got up unsteadily and walked over to the desk.

“Excuse me... Where am I?”

The woman looked over her half-moon spectacles at him and pointed at a sign on the front of the desk. In a simple but final style, in a typeface that looked like it had been chiseled out of stone, was the word “Limbo.”

Limbo. Timmy couldn’t handle it. He didn’t know what to do. It was stupid to stay standing there so he sat back down and waited for the universe to start making sense again, or at least resume not making sense in the way that he was used to. He tried to sort things out in his mind. He knew he had died. And now he seemed to be in some sort of cosmic waiting room.

Timmy had never been very religious. He had felt bad about it. He was never able to summon up the unquestioning faith that seemed to come naturally to other people. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to believe in anything that messed people about like how they were. He did sometimes wonder, if there was some divine entity in control, what it thought it was doing, and when it would stop.

Timmy is going to get the chance of an afterlife-time.

A door at a far wall appeared. There was no fancy fading in or out, no “Shazam!” or popping noises; where there wasn’t a door there now was. The door opened and a middle-aged, clerical-looking man’s head appeared.

“Timmy?” he asked.

Timmy stood up.

“Oh, there you are. If you could come into my office, there are a few things I think we need to straighten out.”

Timmy went into the office and shut the door behind him. It vanished in the same anti-theatrical way that it appeared. He looked around the office. It was a mess. He selected the only chair that wasn’t covered in papers and sat down. The man, who had taken up residence once more behind his desk, regarded Timmy over another stack of papers.

“I just have to make sure for the paperwork — you are, in fact, Timothy Clair Winslow?”

Timmy nodded gloomily.

“Good, good… Now, I suppose you’re probably wondering what you’re doing here. Well,” the man paused to take a breath and said, in an absolutely atrocious Jamaican accent, “welcome to Limbo!”

Timmy just stared. The man coughed nervously.

“Sorry, uh… The processing, er, process is usually made easier if people are at their ease during it. Now, um, where did I put your file?” The man turned from Timmy and caused a small avalanche of paper behind him. Timmy heard him cry triumphantly and turn around again.

“Now, uh… Well, this is odd. Most unusual.”

Timmy spoke for the first time.

“What is it?”

The man started as if he had forgotten that Timmy was there.

“It looks like you’re meant to go back to earth. I mean, usually, you die, and you stay dead. But, no, it’s very clear. It looks like you’re an immortal.”

“An immortal?”

“Oh yes.”

Timmy considered this. He had never felt immortal. He knew for a fact that if you cut him he would bleed like anybody else. Then again, Timmy had never tried dying. That’s what immortality is all about, really.

“So... I’ll never die?”

“Um. Not exactly. I suppose I was a little unclear.” The man straightened up. When he spoke again, there was brass in his voice. “You have a mission!

“And until you fulfill it you’ll be exempt from death,” he said in more normal tones.

“All right,” said Timmy, “what’s my mission?”

The man looked embarrassed.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me? Why not?”

“Mostly because I don’t know and partly because I’m not allowed to.”

“Then… How am I supposed to know how to do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“How will I know I have done it?”

“Oh, that’s easy. You’ll be mortal again.”

“So I’ll know because I’ll be dead and staying dead?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t strike you as at all unhelpful?”

“Look,” the man said defensively, “don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t make the rules. I’m just a servant.”

“All right, all right. I was just saying.”

They stared at each other for a while.

“Oh yes! Sorry. Almost forgot. Sign here,” he said, and thrust a paper and leaky pen at Timmy.

“What is this?”

“Waiver of the risks inherent of immortality.”

“What if I don’t sign it?”

“Then you stay down here for eternity.”

Timmy signed it.

As he finished the last flourish on his rather elegant signature he vanished. The man behind the desk sighed and walked around to get his pen back. Then he sat down again muttering.

“Paperwork, paperwork, always bloody paperwork.”

At that very moment, Timmy’s heart started.

Chapter 01 - In the Beginning

2005-11-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

The story begins, as so many do, with an awakening. Not an awakening in spirit, but simply the transition from unconscious to conscious.

As awakenings go, it was none too impressive. The clock-radio by the bed buzzed for several seconds before an arm snaked out of the lump of coverings on the bed and turned the alarm off. A few more seconds passed, and the lump quivered and twitched before discharging a boy onto the floor.

The boy is called Timmy.

He was named Timothy, but no matter how carefully he introduced himself, or how much he insisted otherwise, anyone, within five minutes of meeting him, began calling him Timmy. There was something about him that seemed to require it. The “Little” was an honorific in reverse.

Timmy pulled himself from the floor and changed into his clothes for the day. He stumbled into the bathroom, splashed water in his face, and glared at himself in the mirror. He left the bathroom, went downstairs, and burned some toast for breakfast. While scraping the butter on, Timmy glanced out the window.

It was raining.

Timmy was fourteen. It’s never an easy age for anybody and recently it had seemed like it was always raining. Timmy had used to like the rain. It seemed to freshen things. Everything always seemed so new after it had stopped. But when it doesn’t stop, things just get wet and rot. The rain also meant that Timmy’s bus to school would be late.

He finished his toast and pulled on his rain jacket. It was too small for him and was only waterproof on the inside; once water got in, which it did quickly, it couldn’t escape. Timmy looked for an umbrella, found one, grabbed his backpack, and was out the door. He splashed through his yard and down the sidewalk to his bus stop, where he waited.

After a few minutes the bus came and picked Timmy up. He found an empty seat near the back, sat down, and dripped. He looked out the window in time to see lightning flash and light up the sodden world.

“It’s beautiful out there, isn’t it?”

Timmy looked across the aisle to the boy who had spoken.

“Excuse me?”

“Beautiful weather, I mean.”

Timmy considered this.

“No. Not really.”

Timmy turned away and resumed staring out the window. A gust of wind hit the side of the bus, making it rock slightly. A couple of the more excitable girls screamed and Timmy rolled his eyes. The bus was in far more danger of being driven off the road by their maniac driver than by being blown on its side.

A few more stops and the bus arrived at Timmy’s school, Gerald Ford High School. The name said everything. The shoe-box-like outline of the building squatted on the horizon like a toad, occasionally illuminated by lightning. It looked like a Brutalist Castle Frankenstein. The unsettling curves and odd irregularities in its form made one imagine it was a nightmare of non-Euclidean geometry. It wasn’t, but was still pretty unpleasant to look at.

The bus stopped and kids flowed out of it like water leaking out of a dam. Timmy was the last one off the bus. He opened his umbrella and began trudging up the walkway towards the front entrance. The wind nearly pulled the umbrella out of his hands but he held on and fought for control as he approached salvation.

He was almost there. Just a few more steps. Then he’d be safe and dry and warm. But it was not meant to be. A gust of wind nearly lifted Timmy off his feet and sent him tumbling. He managed to get to his feet, only to be blown backwards again. Blinded by water and mud, Timmy flailed to keep his balance. One of his hands hit something and he grabbed on tight. As he waited for the wind to die down and his nerves to calm, a question imposed itself on him.

What had he grabbed onto?

Timmy’s hands examined it. A concrete base. Some sort of rope going to a pulley-like arrangement. Then a metal pole.

Timmy had grabbed onto the flagpole. The thought occurred to him that maybe holding onto the tallest metallic object around in a lightning storm was not a naturally tenable position, but it was too late, too late.

Lightning struck.

Timmy’s heart stopped.

Going live

2005-10-31T15:27:00.000-05:00

That's right, it's tomorrow.

I know I never ended up posting any character sketches or the like. I really had meant to, but never really found the motivation.

You can read more of my feelings on my personal blog's Halloween post.

This is going to be good. I'm going to do this. It's going to be done. Nothing will stand in my way. Oh yeah.

Ready?

What's all this then?

2005-10-16T22:05:00.000-04:00

This is going to be my official National Novel Writing Month blog. There's no content yet. I'm going to put up some character sketches or sommat at some point.

Don't wait up.

Post the first

2005-10-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

So this would be where content appears. Not yet, though.