Thoughts from the Rock
By the Fall 2013 Creative
Writing Class of UW-Rock County
Copyright © 2013
All rights reserved.
THE AUTHORS
LeeAnn Severson
Becca Tracey
Jeremy Brooks
Heather Barker
Derek Wettstein
Judas White
Courtney Gies
Emily Polglaze
Joshua Buroker
Collin Wise
Cory Winters
Laini Medina
Leah Jackson
Kenneth Tessman
Danielle Wilson
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
- Ernest Hemingway
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to graciously thank their teacher, Ken Brosky, for pouring his blood, sweat and tears into the publication of this project.
Life Starts Now
by Laini Medina
Tomorrow holds great expectations. All of my hopes and dreams will unfold
in the Next four years.
Life starts now, this moment that I’ve waited years for.
It’s happening, there is no stopping it.
Some will cry tears of joy. Some will cry because they are leaving
all they know.
Some will be lost without the usual crowd, but most
will find themselves, spread their wings and learn to fly alone.
This moment I’ve achieved it on my own, I’ve worked and waited
I prayed to be here and now that I am.
I feel nothing but sincere self-pride. High school graduation, a moment of joy.
My life starts now.
new plan
by Laini Medina
The life I planned, the plans I made, are now completely changed.
There is no going back, it has been taken away.
Replaces with a life time of responsibility, worry, fear, pure joy and true love.
Pitter patter of tiny feet, and a cute button nose.
Little hands that fit in mine.
A little piece of me to love for all of time.
“My Life” it’s changing now, the plans I made and all of the goals I set are being replaced.
My wants, my needs no longer belong to me.
Your well-being, your happiness, your life is what my goals will be.
My baby girl, a gift from god, brought into my life at a moment when
My life had really just begun.
I love you more than anything, you mean more to me than I mean to myself.
I haven’t met you but I love You.
You are my life now.
Ruthy
by Laini Medina
I’ve waited nine months for this moment.
I tried to picture it in my dreams and I tried to prepare myself.
It was impossible.
A moment like this can never be re-lived.
It happens only once but it will say with me forever.
I loved you before I met you.
And now I can’t picture my life without you.
Love at first sight, true unconditional love.
My daughter, My love, My world.
All mine
by Laini Medina
I have watched you grow
From a tiny little baby to my perfect little lady.
The way you smile when you’re happy and the way your eyes glitter when you laugh
Brighten my world.
The way you curl your tiny big toe and the super cute way you crinkle your nose
Make you so special, so unique.
I love you peanut, you’re perfect, and you shine.
I can’t imagine life without you; you make the rainy days fade away.
When I’m with you nothing in this world matters.
I look at you and I see pure perfection.
A perfect baby girl with crazy hair and big bright eyes.
An angel sent to me from heaven, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful,
You’re all mine,
grow
by Laini Medina
I dread the day you grow up and move away.
The day you no longer need me to wipe your nose.
When you’re too big for me to sing you to sleep.
When you don’t want me to kiss your boo-boos.
When mommy’s hugs are no longer the best.
I dread the day that I’ll hear you say “I got it mom thanks anyway”
I plan to raise a strong and independent, self-confident, amazing woman.
A woman who won’t need anyone else.
Who will take pride in standing on her own two feet.
A woman who is proud and who has come a long way and has herself to thank.
I dread the day you’ll drive away, with your bags packed and a college freshman brain.
I dread the day you graduate, when you walk down the aisle, when I’m forced to give you away.
My perfect baby girl will grow into an amazing woman, who won’t always need her mommy.
Who won’t want to spend the day cuddling and watching Barney.
I dread the day my little girl walks away and comes back a woman.
So for now I cherish the silly moments I put down what I am doing so you and I can play.
I treasure these days because soon they will be gone, never to return.
My baby girl will sadly grow; you won’t always fir on my lap.
But I will always be your mommy and you forever my little perfect Peanut Boo.
I love you honey and no matter how much time may pass
My love for you will only grow.
I love you Natalie that is something you should always know.
“The Story of the SOn”
by Kenneth Tessman
“Tommy!” Ian said quickly into the phone. “I need your help.”
“What is it?” Tommy asked. It was easy to sense the urgency in Ian's voice. “Are you in trouble?”
Ian stood in silence as he looked at the horrible scene before him– the scene he had caused. “I– I fucked up,” he managed to choke out.
“Shit, man,” Tommy cursed. “What did you do and what do you need?”
“I can't tell you here. If anyone digs up this phone call tomorrow it'll be worse for me.”
“Shit, it's that bad,” Tommy mused. “How about we meet at the usual spot,” he suggested.
“Yeah, that'll work.”
“Good. I'll see you in twenty minutes.”
“See you there,” Ian said before hanging up.
He avoided looking at the floor. Because of what lay there, Ian knew he would never see his home again. This was the price he paid for his choice. It was a once-in-a-lifetime sacrifice that he could no longer take back. Now all that was left was for Ian to retain his freedom, as well as his life.
Come to my office. I want to speak with you, the message read. Just a short text on Ian’s phone from his father. For some reason it seemed strange, but the boy could not figure out why. His father sent him serious texts often enough, even from a short distance like this one, telling him to remember to do this or that or asking if he was busy at a certain time. Ian read the message over and over for several minutes and repeatedly checked the details of how and when his phone received it. Nothing looked strange, but the unusual, ominous feeling persisted. Finally Ian decided that he had done enough worrying and the only reasonable thing to do would be to comply and see his father to ask what he wanted.
Before meeting with his father in the study, Ian took a trip to his bathroom to make himself more presentable. He washed his face a
nd combed his black hair into neat waves. Finally he leaned over the sink to look at himself as he always did.
As a mix of four ethnicities, Ian Imagawa was truly a “Child of Terra.” His Hmong and Caucasian mother along with his Japanese and Hawaiian father left him with honey-colored skin and a motley of features that still somehow compiled into a handsome face. It was people like Ian that led ethnologists and others to theorize that one day, most people on Earth will have races and ethnicities so mixed, they will only be reasonably able to consider themselves as “Terrans: the original peoples of Earth,” much like how not long before, European-Americans had become so mixed that it became futile for individuals to trace any heritage back to one or two main countries, and acquiesced to being referred to as simply “Yankees.”
Ian didn’t mind being called a Terran; it was what he primarily considered himself to be. It was awkward and annoying to list his four ethnicities every time he was asked, so he found ways to avoid it and dodge the question. Besides this, he spoke the Terran language at school– a constructed language intended to be based on English but much easier for the world to learn, but was so heavily modified from the original it was almost as different from English as German.
Realizing he had drifted off into thought, Ian recomposed himself and left the bathroom for his father's study. His father worried him sometimes. Mr. Keisuke Imagawa was a radical activist for Terran superiority and the expansion of the Terran Empire. He had previously called decreased relations with the Hearth Alliance to allow Earth and its colonies to grow and thrive through independence. Recently, the man had changed his stance and now called for a rational war against Hearth, stating that it was the only way to keep the old Hearth Alliance in check and allow Earth to advance and take over the position of the primary interstellar empire in the known galaxy. Ian had even heard rumors that his father was on terrorist watch lists in the USA. It was reasons such as these that led Ian to the decision to keep some distance from his father in recent years.
All of these thoughts were remembered as Ian opened the door. His father sat behind the great stained-wood desk facing Ian. Tall bookshelves stood regally against almost every wall. They were filled with official records of census data, transcripts of court hearings, and law codes, but also novels and other literature. Against the wall on Ian’s left, however, there were no shelves and no books. Only a beautiful katana that was given to the Imagawa family more than two hundred years ago and crafted by the legendary Masamune family of swordsmiths hung there in its scabbard with the sharpened edge of the blade facing upward.
His father’s desk was unusually bare. Ian was used to seeing drafted speeches and similar papers strewn about its surface as well as the computer screen brightly lit and displaying either a written work in progress or an internet source to be studied. But today, the computer was shut down and all documents were neatly filed away. Mr. Keisuke Imagawa sat with folded hands and perfect posture, completely undistracted during the short wait for his son to arrive.
“You needed to speak with me, Father?” Ian said as he closed the door behind him.
His father sighed. “Son, you are not talking to an alien. Speak to me in English, or even Japanese.”
“Oh, yes, Father,” he said, complying and now speaking English. His father never spoke Terran, but often tolerated Ian’s use of it, even when talking to him. Over time, conversations where each of them spoke a different language to each other became more normal. But once in a while his father would say he’s had enough of universal assimilation and demand Ian would speak one of his two native tongues.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Ian repeated his question, now to his father’s standards.
“I think you know something,” he said with conviction. This, along with the sentence’s direct ambiguity, gave Ian an ominous feeling that made his back tense in anxiety.
“What do you mean, Father?”
“I think you have recently discovered a secret, but are hesitant and confused about how to act on it,” the man said. Ian wished his father would proudly look away– look everywhere except at him just like a mighty father would look at his son in a movie. But Mr. Keisuke Imagawa’s gaze held firm on Ian and made him feel extremely exposed and uncomfortable. The man could have been reading his son’s thoughts as they pulsed right under Ian’s sweating skin.
“What secret would that be?” Ian asked, knowing he could not conceal his terror.
“Do not try to lie to me.” His father’s face showed complete calmness. Unlike Ian’s, it was an unreadable face that could intimidate the most skilled poker players into surrendering their cards in shame. “Do not try to lie to me when I have the answers. Today, I know everything important that you know.”
Ian said nothing; he just sat in scared silence. His father spoke again, “Since you aren’t going to, I will be the first to say it.” Ian had the impression of his father leaning in closer to his face even though he did not budge an inch. “I know you’ve discovered the bombing plots.”
Ian wished he could run. He wanted to run out the door and down the stairs and escape into the streets and alleys and shops of the city he knew by heart. But he could not. He was trapped in the study with his father who knew all the secrets that mattered. Even if he ran he could not escape and nothing would be solved or made better.
“Yes,” Ian admitted sheepishly. “I know.” It started yesterday with a casual remark by one of his friends in a complicated context, but it raised a question that haunted Ian: was his father a terrorist waiting to happen? Later that day Ian entered his father’s office while he was out and snooped around the papers. Such an act was so forbidden to Ian, that his father never even declared a punishment to him. As he searched, he found some political hypothesis his father had saved as well as a few personal reminders and a map with some architectural data of a certain public building in China. No matter how hard Ian looked at it, all the evidence pointed to the planning of a solo project by his father for an act of terrorism with political consequences. Among the papers Ian also found a gun. It was a black handgun which Ian had never seen before. Possessing this was a heinous crime in Japan, one which by itself would surely land his father in prison. But the terrorist plot would have worse consequences. If revealed to the police, his father would face certain execution.
Ian had spent most of the night which he found the terrible discovery awake in bed, terrified about the choice of either betraying his father to the law to be hanged, or letting possibly hundreds of Chinese citizens suffer the fate of being buried alive in a collapse of rubble, which of course could possibly lead to a war where millions or more would die. Ian spent every hour he had trying to find a third solution, one where both his father and the civilians he intended to kill would all be safe. By the time his father sent the text message the following evening, Ian had still found none.
“Father, you have to stop.” Ian pleaded.
“Why?” his father asked severely.
“Because you are going to get yourself killed.”
“A suicide mission is an honorable way to die.”
“No!” Ian interrupted. “Not like this! Both China and Japan will want to see you hanged.”
“I don’t think you understand, my son. I will not be alive to be hanged.”
Suddenly Ian understood. His father had known all along the consequences for himself and had found a way to negate them.
“They must never know who caused the destruction,” the man continued. “This will place doubt in men’s hearts and fingers of blame will point to the sky. Hearth and their alien allies will face threats of war, and even if war does not come, they will be forced to surrender some of their power to appease us. Either way, we win. Nations in the past have been pushed to the brink of war and beyond by similar incidents. Just look at what the sinking of the Lusitania did, or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.”
“The world was different then.”
“Yes, it was. But I understand what it is now. All of my studying has led up to this climax, and you will not stop me.”
“You can’t just murder people!” Ian exclaimed.
“It is a sacrifice,” his father said with calm conviction. “They will not know they are making it, but they will die so the rest of us can be free. If they could see the results themselves they would be proud to have made it.”
Ian knew there would be no swaying his father. Perhaps he had known all along. The man knew so much and had thought long and hard about his actions. But even so, knowledge does not equate to ethics. Earth and Hearth were at peace, and a prosperous peace at that. Ian’s father dreamed of ambitious conquest, for prosperous peace was not enough for him. He may be right that advancement and expansion of Earth’s power would grow stronger with a war with Hearth, or at least with an uneasy peace, but that did not mean that it was fair, or even right.
“I can’t let you do that, Father,” Ian said.
“What will you do? Call the police?” He opened the drawer under his desk and produced the documents, blueprints, and pistol. “The only evidence that exists is right here. It can disappear in minutes. I haven’t even purchased the explosives or plane tickets, and you’ll find no accomplices either.” Any other man but Mr. Keisuke Imagawa would have smiled at his own cleverness and the advantageous position he held.
“In fact,” he continued, “why do I even need these?” He withdrew from his pocket the book of matches he commonly used to light the incense on his late wife’s altar. His hands crumpled the pages and dropped it into the aluminum wastepaper can beside the desk before carefully placing the match in a strategic location within. The edges and wrinkles of the paper quickly spouted flames and an orange glow reflected from the inside of the metal walls.
“I’ve memorized all that is important, and I’ve since realized I don’t even need the gun. I can be rid of it soon if I want. Either way, there’s not enough evidence to convict me of any grand crime.” He leaned in close to Ian. “I’ve thought long and hard about this. I’ve even taken you and your actions into consideration. Even…” He looked over Ian’s head at the katana on the wall. It was almost credible that most people who have met the man have said that Mr. Keisuke Imagawa could read minds, for Ian was just thinking about the sword too.
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