Song Lyric Stories

by Revis Edgewater

Like everyone else, I love music. Though we may listen to different songs, the way music resonates with us is probably the same. There’s some songs that pump you up, get you going. Some that tug at your emotions, that you feel deep inside yourself. Some that make you want to dance. OK, that last one is for everyone else. I have yet to hear a song that makes me want to dance.

Then, there are some that inspire you. Over the years, there have been many songs that have inspired me in numerous ways. A lot of my writing has been inspired by music in one way or another. My story Dead Set was named after a Sevendust song. I named another story (that I will probably never finish) after The Offspring song Gone Away. Even my pseudonym is musically inspired. Revis and Edgewater are both bands that I listen to quite often.

I’ve also gotten some story ideas from songs. I started writing a series that was a spinoff of Dead Set called Haunted Angel. I got the idea for it from a line in the Godsmack song Releasing the Demons.

What I’d like to do, if there’s a few of you willing to play along, is maybe do a series of posts based on this premise. Give me a line (or two, or three) from a song, and I’ll try to come up with a story based on it. They probably won’t be very long stories, enough to fit within a few posts anyway, but I will do what I can. Just leave me a comment with your lyrics. Be sure to include the song title and artist, that way I can listen to the song if it’s one I haven’t heard before.

Also, if you’d like me to give you a song lyric back for you to create your own story, let me know. I can think of a few that might make for some interesting fiction.

Dumbest Death in Film

by Revis Edgewater

Over the years, there have been plenty of dumb deaths that we’ve witnessed on the big screen. Just about every horror/slasher movie I’ve ever seen has had at least one death in it that was stupid, or pretty close to it. Maybe it’s the circumstances of the deaths that is idiotic. Or maybe it’s the choice the character made that led to their death that’s the issue. Either way, the death is just flat out dumb.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been plenty of stupid deaths on television too (Charlie’s death on Lost springs to mind), but for this post, I’m sticking with only movie deaths.

I can come up with a number of candidates for what I would consider the dumbest death in film history. There’s two I can think of just from the Star Wars movies: Han accidentally knocking Boba Fett into the Sarlacc pit and Darth Maul stupidly watching Obi-Wan fly over his head before being cut in half (yes, I know that thanks to later shows both of these characters somehow survived these deaths, but as far as I’m concerned they should’ve stayed dead). How about any of the deaths in Final Destination? Most of them were pretty absurd, especially the kid who somehow managed to strangle himself in the bathtub with a wire that had no reason being in the bathtub in the first place. Speaking of strangulation, there’s also the scene in The Butterfly Effect (I’m not sure if it was the theatrical release or the director’s cut) at the very end where Ashton Kutcher’s character goes back to when he was in the womb and kills himself by wrapping his umbilical cord around his neck so that he’d never be born to hurt his friends.

It would be easy to make an argument for any of these to be the dumbest death in film history, but I’m going to stick with the death that gave me the idea for this post in the first place. It takes place in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Any of you who have seen the movie probably know which scene I’m talking about.

The group of humans on the island have a couple of Tyrannosaurs walk into their camp in the middle of the night. They panic and run. A group of them run into a cave behind a waterfall (which I now question how they knew the cave was there in the first place). The dinosaur is too big to fit in the cave, so they’re safe for the moment, right?

Wrong.

One of them, a dinosaur expert, has a snake slither into his shirt. Does he grab it and get it out? Does he ask one of the others to help him? No. Instead of doing anything even remotely resembling smart, this guy freaks out and runs right into the mouth of the tyrannosaur.

Don’t get me wrong. I get being scared of snakes. I’m not exactly fond of them myself. However, if given the choice between having a snake down my shirt or being eaten by a very large carnivorous dinosaur, I’m going to take my chances with the snake. You don’t have to be a dinosaur expert to know that you can kill a foot long snake with your bare hands, but have almost zero chance of surviving against a 20,000 lb. tyrannosaur.

What about you, dear readers? Is there a movie death that you find to be incredibly dumb? Is it dumber than any of those I’ve mentioned?

No Longer Home – Part 3

by Revis Edgewater

The wolf, who was called Sharptooth by its companion, started walking away. John moved to follow, but stopped after a step. Did it want him to follow? Sharptooth didn’t tell the other wolves his location. That didn’t mean that it wanted John to tag along, however.

“Keep up, human,” Sharptooth said with a sigh.

John hurried to catch up to the departing animal. It took him a while, but he finally stepped into the wolf’s wake and matched its stride. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many answers he needed. Where was he? What was this place? Were all animals capable of talking, or was it just the wolves? And, the question that was perplexing him the most at the moment, how were wolves able to speak?

There weren’t time for questions at the moment, though. They had been moving at a brisk pace for some time now. John assumed that was so they could get away from the other wolves. No matter the reason, he was starting to become winded. He kept himself in fairly good shape, using the treadmill at his gym on a regular basis. Walking on the flat surface of a treadmill was very different from the uneven surface of the forest floor. He wasn’t used to having to dodge tree roots and downed branches while he got his steps in. Plus, the constant changing from uphill to downhill and back again was straining his calves.

Sharptooth stopped next to a fallen tree. “Rest,” the wolf said. “Your labored breathing will soon give us away. My brethren aren’t the only things to prowl this forest at night.”

He sat down on the tree. “I heard the other one call you Sharptooth,” John said. “Is that your name?”

“No, that is my title. I no longer have a name now that I am Sharptooth.”

“I’m John. John Livich.” When no reply came from the wolf, he asked a question. Any of the questions he was thinking about before would have been appropriate, but he found himself asking, “Why are you helping me?”

Sharptooth opened his mouth to speak, but closed it and cocked his head to the side. His ear perked up. John took a step back when the wolf bared his teeth in a snarl. “Make no sound, John-John Livich,” the wolf whispered harshly. “Follow me. If you can’t keep up, I can’t help you any longer.”

John looked over at the area Sharptooth had been listening. He didn’t see anything. When he turned back, the wolf was gone. A glimpse of Sharptooth’s tail disappearing behind a tree was the only clue as to where he’d gone. John took off at a dead sprint, determined to catch up with the wolf.

That didn’t happen. John was able to keep Sharptooth in sight for a time. His breath started to give out. He was still tired from their long walk and he didn’t have the stamina to continue for much longer. His pace slowed. Sharptooth was getting further and further away. Sometimes he’d even lose sight of the wolf for a few seconds behind a tree or over a hill.

Disaster struck when his toe caught on an upraised root. The little breath that John had in his lungs was blasted out when he hit the ground at full speed. His body tumbled over itself a few times before coming to a stop in front of a sapling. John took big gulps of air in while he tried to reorient himself. The first thing he noticed was that Sharptooth was nowhere to be seen. He thought about calling out, but then he remembered what the wolf said about not being able to keep up. He was on his own.

John brushed himself off and started running in the direction he thought Sharptooth had gone. After only a few hundred yards, he saw the wolf standing still, waiting on him. He caught up and was surprised when they didn’t immediately take off again. “Why were we running?” John questioned. “You said Sharptooth was a title, which suggests that you hold a position of rank among your kind. Couldn’t you just order them to not attack me?”

Sharptooth shook his head. “It wasn’t my people we were running from.”

As Sharptooth was talking, a half dozen new animals walked out of the shadows. The newcomers had them surrounded. Having almost no knowledge of animals, it took John a moment to place what they were. He and Sharptooth were surrounded by mountain lions.

I Love Writing…

by Revis Edgewater

…I really do. Writing is one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy creating stories, characters, and worlds. It’s incredibly fun for me.

There is one thing about the writing process that I don’t like, however… editing. I hate editing. I know it’s necessary. I know it has to be done. I just hate doing it.

Some of it is that I don’t like finding mistakes. Obviously, I make mistakes. I know that. But finding mistakes that I’ve made can sometimes be frustrating. Especially if it’s something obvious, something that shouldn’t have been missed as I was writing it.

Another thing I don’t like about editing is that I’m not the best at it. While I consider myself above average, grammatically speaking, I’m not an expert. I don’t know all the rules about sentence or paragraph structure. Hell, most of what I know about writing is stuff that I’ve carried with me since elementary school and I’ve been told that even some of that is wrong.

I wish I had the money to be able to pay someone to do it all for me. Of course, if I could find an awesome person who enjoys editing and wanted to do it for free, that would be even better. I know I’m never going to get them perfect, but that’s never my goal. Attaining perfection is impossible. All I can do is go over the things I write and make them as good as I can. That way, good or bad, everything I write is me.

And Then It Was Gone…

by Revis Edgewater

I was at the grocery store earlier getting stuff for dinner tonight. While I was walking around shopping, I saw something. What did I see? That’s the thing. I don’t remember. Whatever it was, it’s gone now.

I do remember that, at some point, I saw something that made me think, “I should make that into a blog post.” That’s when life happened. I had to put the groceries away. I had to go pick up Baby J from soccer conditioning. I showed Baby E what she needed to do when she moved clothes from the washer to the dryer. Then I decided to sit down and write that post I was thinking about at the grocery store.

But I couldn’t… The idea has fled into the dark recesses of my mind, probably never to be seen again.

I thought about it for a few minutes. It still didn’t come to me. This has happened to me so many times since I started this blogging thing. If I actually wrote every post I ever thought about writing, I bet I’d double the number of posts I have on here. Or, close to it.

Oh well. It sucks, but there’s nothing I can really do about it except tell myself that if the idea was that good in the first place, it’ll come back to me eventually.

Happy Birthday!!

by Revis Edgewater

I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish my older brother, Twindaddy, a happy birthday. We’ve had our differences over the years (although those were almost all when we were growing up), but I couldn’t ask for a better brother. He’s been there for me whenever I’ve needed him and I know he always will be.

Happy birthday, Twindaddy. I hope you have a relaxing, joyous day.