So, this is not like previous blogs. I’ve decided to reengage in the world of creative fiction writing due to a perfectly timed combination of exposure to massive amounts of science fiction (attended my first Star Trek convention last weekend) and finding myself at home, sick, and bored today (probably not unrelated to attending the convention).
Anywho, here is what my imagination spat out today. I don’t know where it’s going yet. I did not edit this because, as soon as I started to re-read it I realized that if I started editing it I wouldn’t be able to stop until I felt like it was “perfect” and that will be… never. So, I’m going to throw it out there, piece by piece, and just see where it goes with no idea of how long it will take to get to where it’s going or how I will even know when it has arrived. I will probably craft a separate section for these entries in my blog but for now, it’s just going up as Installment 1 of Mind Wanderings.
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Shane’s hands were shaking as he looked down. Well, really they were Kat’s hands but Shane was experiencing them as his hands. It was not the first time he had been displaced in another’s body; the displacement was not what caused him to feel so nervous. This experience was terrifying because it was the first time Shane had been “inside” anyone other an immediate family member. It was always such an intensely personal experience and had only ever involved his parents or siblings and so he had assumed it would only ever involve his close family, those he had known most of his life and with whom he shared DNA. He had never expected something like this to happen.
Now, he found himself seeing the world through Kat’s eyes and this was terribly upsetting because of how much he had longed to do so. He felt profoundly guilty for having ever desired to know her inner workings. Shane… Kat… was holding a book. He looked down as his… her… shaking hands and realized it was a journal. It was Kat’s journal and Shane felt shame nauseatingly waft over him as he noticed the urge to read it. He thumbed the pages, noticing that only the first third of the journal had been written in but that, in addition to the bound pages, notebook paper, folded to fit the size of the journal and covered in sprawling cursive, had been stapled throughout the beginning of the book. “That’s what she’s doing in class,” he thought to himself, remembering how feverishly Kat had scribbled in her notebook in the classroom. He had assumed she was taking meticulous notes but now he would know that she was covertly creating journal entries to add to this book later.
He set the book down on the bed where he… Kat… was also sitting. In the end, it was not his moral compass that steered him away from reading her private thoughts. Rather, it was his own adolescent self-consciousness that made him terrified to what she really thought about him, or worse, that she didn’t think about him at all. He could feel her consciousness at the back of his. It was like a little tickle or the beginnings of an itch, distracting and a bit annoying but manageable. She must be confused and soon, she would be frightened. That’s when the itch would become less unmanageable, more uncomfortable. He wanted out of here, to go home to his own body. He tried to focus on where and what he had been doing before finding himself jolted into Kat’s body but he continued to feel both elated and ashamed at being where he was and that made focusing quite difficult.
Then, suddenly, he was back at his desk, in front of his computer. His cat having just landed in his lap had provided him with enough of a jolt to bring his mind back to his own body. He felt relieved, disappointed and embarrassed
Courtney Makes Lemonade 