Corners - A Short Story

Writing Prompt: Write about someone that was buried alive.

I’ve always despised enclosed, suffocating spaces. Yet there I was, in an enclosed, suffocating space buried several feet under layers of dark soil. Consequential to hours of incessant shouting, my throat and lungs were raw and tense. In a vain attempt to soothe the pain and conserve the remaining air, I breathed slowly and deliberately, consciously inhaling small sums of oxygen and subsequently holding my breath. However, even in small doses, with each spurt of air I inhaled, claws scraped my flaking lips and slithered down through my esophagus, only to puncture my already coarse lungs.

  

           Although each inhalation was punctuated by such fits of splintering anguish, as I lay in silence, detecting my haphazard breathing pattern, I realized that I had never considered that the interiors of coffins could be so comfortably furnished. I relaxed and allowed my eyelids to drift to a close, actively prodding and poking my surroundings while delighting in the soft, padded frame of my confinement. Contorting into a curled position, I patted what felt like a blanket covering my lower body and pulled it toward my head, simultaneously nestling the side of my head into a thick pillow.

As comfortable as the coffin’s interior was, as I relaxed, numb to the excruciating pain I had endured for hours prior, I lurched upright, slamming my head into the also padded overhead casing of the coffin. Shuddering, I quickly recovered and concentrated my efforts into escaping my enclosure. Sucking a breath in, I heaved upward, my shoulder rising to shrug against the ceiling of the coffin. Unsuccessful, I tried again, but crouched and braced my legs to provide extra support and leverage. As I strained my neck, tensing every tendon and fiber of my body, my legs soon collapsed and I lay motionless and silent. Raising my hand, I caressed my palm on the ceiling of the coffin, feeling no difference in the overhead casing save for minor creases it had suffered following my attempt to escape.

Returning to a prostrate position, as I squinted, attempting to make out any distinguishable detail from the coffin’s interior, it was only then that I noticed how penetrating the darkness of the coffin’s interior was. I was essentially gazing into a dense, velvet nothingness that folded and twisted around my limbs. I viciously clawed at the darkness, desperately trying to peel away any layer of blackness I could, until I felt an odd protrusion on the far end of the coffin’s overhead casing.

My heart thundering and beads of sweat crowning my forehead, I shifted my torso to face the condensed protrusion. With an outstretched palm parallel to the floor of the coffin, I fingered the ceiling until I brushed across the fine lettering. Punctuated with spaces and capitals, I traced the lettering with my fingernail, struggling to make out the sentence I assumed it displayed. After laboring over the inscription, I finally pieced together the poorly written sentence:

         Corners are escape.

     

      Without thought or hesitation, I stroked the spines of each corner of the coffin and heard latches snap with each brush. As I reached for the final corner of the coffin and snapped its corresponding latch, I heard a soft ringing overhead.

   

             As the ringing stubbornly proceeded, I awaited another sound, a voice, a shovel. Alas, still, that was all I heard. I resorted to counting seconds on my fingers in intervals of ten, allowing monotony to reduce my disappointment.Nearing four thousand, I heard it: chink. I had heard it. I had heard the sound of freedom, of rescue, of escape. I knocked and beat on the ceiling of my coffin in response, and was rewarded with the satisfying sound of another chink. Gnawing on my fingers, I hopefully listened for more sounds, removing my fingers from mouth only after the coffin was heaved open and I gazed into the cold, shallow eyes of a bearded man. Sharp wrinkles and creases accentuated the corners of his eyes and lips, and his stringy, fraying hair was caked with grease. Without a word, he hoisted me from the coffin, and scanning the vicinity, lay down into the coffin himself, oddly gesturing to me that I should close the coffin.

     

    Vigorously shaking my head and denying his unfathomable request, I silently strode away, tripping over a bell I had not noticed, the bell that had been my salvation.

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Dishonesty and Taking My Own Advice

I recently wrote a post listing strategies I recommend to boost productivity during the long summer days. Although these techniques are helpful and (most likely) effective, I personally can't vouch for their efficacy considering I haven't utilized or practiced them myself. And because I recently returned from an extensive vacation and consequently neglected blogging in its entirety, I decided to test the tips I gave myself. In hindsight, I probably should have tried and tested these tips prior to writing an advisory post about such techniques.

1. Make a Schedule
The first technique I explained in my previous post was creating a summer schedule. This summer schedule to which I refer is not created by randomly marking a blank calendar or chart, but by taking one's school schedule and substituting summer activities for classes. Although apparently complex, this process is actually quite simple and summarized in the image below. I actually thought this was the most helpful of all the techniques I listed, because I've personally had some difficulty staying on task for prescribed amounts of time. (Outside of school, that is.)

2. Turn Off Notifications
Now, this was a relatively easy one. I've never had any issue ignoring the (few) notifications I receive across all of my devices. However, being a computer and technology incompetent guy, the most difficult part of this procedure was figuring out how to disable notifications in the first place. Although I toiled in the settings of my devices for extensive periods of time, I finally figured it out after returning to a manual. This technique was quite helpful in limiting distractions. Although insignificant for myself, I understand how helpful this strategy would be for those that find themselves constantly wandering to their devices, drawn by the illuminated screen and the banners flashing across its surface.

3. Get Organized
This task proved to be quite difficult, primarily because after returning from vacation, my family and I moved to a new temporary house for a month. Consequently, all, and I mean all of my belongings are stowed away in storage or in poorly labeled boxes. (I'm to blame for that one). However, having a set of essential items in my backpack, I finally managed to gather enough materials to create a makeshift, haphazard environment for my summer productivity.

I may have mentioned in my previous post that I had used these techniques and strategies beforehand and they were supremely effective. And if I do say so myself, they are. However, I obviously should have used these strategies before advocating them, and for that I apologize to the select few readers that are viewing both this post and also viewed post preceding it. Until then, I sincerely wish you the greatest of luck in summer productivity, and if these tips were of any assistance to you or someone you know, make sure to leave a comment.

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How to be Productive this Summer

Now that school has finally finished, I find myself at home and primarily unproductive. Mindlessly watching videos and sleeping are two such unproductive activities consequential to the lack of organization and order in my days. I've now learned that with all of this time on my hands, it is imperative that I avoid all couches, mattresses, and electronics, lest I cannot pry my body from a collapsed, resting position or my eyes from a glowing screen.

So, as I thought about any sound advice to give regarding summer productivity, I finally compiled a list of short tips that may aid you in being productive this summer.

1. Make a Schedule
So, I decided to try something interesting: I took my old school schedule, which lists a starting time of 8:15 and ending time of 3:00, and substituted productive summer activities for the classes on this schedule. Thus, my productive activities are equally divided into eighty minute chunks while leaving the afternoon free. However, minor adjustments should be made to compensate for differences in eating times and of course, unnecessary periods for passing between classes. Furthermore, by following a summer schedule that parallels your schedule for school, the transition back to school in a few months will be seamless.

2. Turn off Notifications
Now this one is more difficult, as it requires a concentrated and constant effort to resist enabling notifications again. However, as I have found, by disabling notifications, whether from social media or even e-mail, it is significantly easier to resist returning to these distracting applications and thus detracting from your summer productivity. This is so because the purpose of notifications is to subtly encourage the recipient of such notifications to return to their corresponding application. And, if you're like me and receive constant updates on various platforms and systems, then the cycle is seemingly never ending. But once you disable those pesky notifications, productivity will be easy.

3. Get Organized My final piece of advice, although probably goes without saying, is to remain organized. It's easy during the summer to become disorganized and disordered, but by adopting a pattern of organization during summer similar to that of the school year, you'll not only be productive during the summer, but be prepared to return to school in the fall. Furthermore, by consistently organizing materials prior to beginning a specific summer project, you subsequently limit unnecessary interruptions and distractions.

I hope that this was a helpful post, (because if it wasn't, I wasn't very productive in writing it). Although these steps are all beneficial in bolstering summer productivity, this isn't the only way to be productive during the summer. I advise you to combine these ideas with your own to produce a summer program that is personally effective and efficient. And with that, make sure to enjoy your summer as well.

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List of Must-Reads I Haven't Read

As the school year now concludes, my English teacher decided that as a gift of sorts, she would compile a list of her favorite books and present the list to us. After briefly glancing over the list, I recognized the majority of the books listed, but had only read a few. So, if you're looking for something to read, take a look at this list and see if you feel, perhaps...inspired.

(All titles I have read are listed in bold. I didn't bother indicating which works I recognized because that's just about all of them.)

Novels
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Giver - Lois Lowry
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The Last Lecture - Mitch Albom
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
Emma - Jane Austen
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
1984 - George Orwell
The Stranger - Albert Camus
War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Rabbit Run - John Updike
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brothers Karamazov - Fyodore Dostoevsky
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Ulysses - James Joyce
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Care
Night - Elie Wisel
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Stories of Eva Luna - Isabel Allende
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
The Passionate God - Rosemary Haughton
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Odyssey - Homer
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Prince - Machiavelli
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Inferno - Dante Alighieri
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Cider House Rules - John Irving
The Green Mile - Stephen King
No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
The Princess Bride - William Goldman

Now that is quite a list. And a long one at that. Also, according to this list, apparently I've been reading the wrong books for my entire life. Now I guess the next thing to do would be to actually read the books on this list. But truthfully, this post should more accurately be titled "List of Must-Have Reads I Haven't Read (and Most Likely Never Will)." And I don't know that for certain, but I'll more likely than not start making my way through this list when I have the time to do so, (as in summer or retirement.) Until then, the best of luck on your journey reading and let me know in the comments which novels you have read too.

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Wallowing in the Water

The day I've been dreading the entire semester has arrived - the day when we started swimming during PE.

Now I must admit that because it was a scorching, blistering day, that swimming was refreshing, at least to an extent. Swimming has never been a great talent or skill of mine. Sure, I know how to swim. But if I had been on the Titanic, I'd guess that my chances of survival would have been close to zero. However, if I was asked to relax in the hot tub with my friends for an hour or two, that I could definitely do (and very well.)

There were a couple swimmers/water polo players in my class that obviously swam competitively from how practiced (and fast) they're laps were, but I was content with wallowing in the water. Then again, I certainly wasn't the worst swimmer in my class since some of my classmates were asking me how to swim certain strokes.
                                                       
The pool at my school is actually pretty nice. As in, there are definitely worse bodies of water to be swimming in during a PE class. My greatest hardship swimming during PE would be breathing. The pool at my school ranges from thirteen feet deep to around six feet deep, and because I'm only about 5'4", I'm sure you can guess how difficult it was to keep my head above the water.

But besides the obvious difficulty I experienced while treading water, swimming was actually a lot better than I had expected. We didn't play any games or something fancy like water polo, but it was hot enough that swimming laps across the pool was perfect.

I was fortunate enough to have remembered both a towel and swimming trunks, because there were several kids in my class that forgot both. The majority of them that forgot these swimming (essentials?) just swam in their PE uniform shorts and called it a day. And I would've thought that drying off would've taken forever too, but with all that heat bearing down, I think just about everyone was dry pretty quickly.

Well, I heard that tomorrow we'll be playing water polo, and I'm not quite sure what my opinion is on that. Hopefully there aren't any (good) water polo players in my period, because I've heard from the classes last semester that the experienced water polo players are no joke, as in, throwing the water polo ball behind their backs to score or something ridiculous. (And by ridiculous I mean that I wish I could do.) As for now, I should probably go and practice my own little water polo routine in the bathtub in preparation for tomorrow.

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My First Ever AP Test

Like many other students across the nation, AP testing began today. However, the AP test I completed this morning was not only the first AP test that was administered this year, but my first AP test ever. And I'll have you know that the test definitely earned the title, "Advanced Placement", because the AP test was hands the most difficult test I have ever taken. And that's saying something considering I've already earned D's on several other AP Chemistry chapter exams.

The test began around 8:45, but we entered the testing room around 8:00, not that it really matters. What does matter is the fact that as my classmates and I waited outside the testing room, nervously laughing and chatting, I realized that I had forgotten both my student identification card as well as the card with my AP number. Consequently, for the next thirty minutes, I was scanning the group of people, looking for someone that didn't have their wallet or that wasn't showing someone else those two items (which I still did not have.) 

I was legitimately concerned that I would not be allowed to take the exam. I mean, it is an AP exam, so I was sure stuff like that has happened before. I briefly thought about walking home, but considering it's a thirty minute drive, I figured that wasn't really an option.

So I just went along with it and by the grace of God, I didn't need either items and was able to just take the exam. On second thought, maybe it would've been better if I had been caught without my identification card and my AP number...

Once we finally entered the building to take the test, we were assigned seats. Yes, assigned seats. But now that I think of it, that actually makes decent sense. Either way, as we were filling in our addresses and our names, I couldn't help but notice that my hand was trembling. Like shuddering, as if shock waves were rippling across my palms. Then, to ineffectively calm my nerves, I clenched my pencil, only for it to snap. Don't worry, I brought around ten in case of that exact situation. 

                                                 

We soon started the multiple choice portion of the test, which was some of the most difficult AP Chemistry material ever presented in front of me. (I'm hoping for around fifty percent. If I'm lucky.) After a quick ten minute break, we then took the free response portion, which was strangely easier than the multiple choice, (probably because I was doing all of it wrong.)

Now to bore you some more, the format of the test was:

 60 Multiple Choice Questions in 90 Minutes

+7 Free Response Questions in 105 Minutes

=a whole lot of time spent being tested on a subject I'm not very fond of

And if you plan on taking AP Chemistry this upcoming year, there's more information about it here. Not quite sure why you'd want to, but to each his own. And next year, when you're crying yourself to sleep every night (like I will be doing tonight), don't say I didn't warn you.

As a side note, I'd like to mention that because this test is such a big deal, my high school gave everyone that took the test this morning the rest of the day off. So I guess that's the major positive, (that and the fact if, if I do well I'll get some college credit.) And to all of y'all that took the AP Chemistry test this morning and still have more to come, I wish you luck! 

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Personal Art Gallery

Just in case you haven't already seen my recent art pieces, I formatted this post as an art gallery of sorts so that you may get a chance to peruse my masterpieces. (Just kidding, they're decent, but by no means spectacular.)

(Also, because I had some difficulty organizing and positioning these pictures into the display I wanted them to be, this post won't be as seamlessly put together as I had hoped it to be. My apologies.)

The first piece, a graphite drawing, depicts the hand of my sister as she delicately clutches a twisted rose. Although I wish that I had made the background darker and the petals of the flower lighter, I am content with my drawing. And I must say, this is the best (and only) hand I've drawn.

The carousel horse below is a pen-and-ink drawing, and was thus created by dipping a nib into a bottle of ink and then creating dots. So yeah, this entire, and I mean entire, image is created from meticulously blotted dots.

The final piece I completed this year was a scratchboard. I've always been fascinated by drawing fire and smoke, so I decided to create an image of just that - a burning candle with billowing tendrils of smoke. The most interesting part of this medium was that unlike the pen-and-ink drawing, in which no dark value can be taken away, for scratchboards, no dark value can be added. Consequently, if too much is etched away from the scratchboard, nothing can be done to add value in troublesome areas.

That concludes my display of artwork for the semester. I hope you enjoyed viewing these pieces as much as I enjoyed creating them!

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