A Strange Moment of Inspiration

I spent the weekend preparing for NaNoWriMo, but not so much for my own story. As I've mentioned before, I'm a Municipal Liaison for my local region, and so I was making stuff for our Kick-Off Party. Like plot bunnies. I've been sharing that picture everywhere because it's adorable and I think I'm hilarious.

But, I did accomplish something story-wise. I have continued my trend of finding story inspiration everywhere. Even while performing the most mundane of tasks.

Let me set the scene. It's about 11:45pm, at a gas station that's long since closed up it's little kiosk. There's no one around. I turn off Bullet For My Valentine or whatever I was listening to, leaving me in relative silence. Until my ears perceive the mellow pop song that's playing over the gas station speakers, which at first sounds like the voice of some creepy little child singing in the dark. This momentarily scares the shit out of me, naturally.

This is where I was. This was the mindset I was in. So, when I got out to pump my gas, I noticed that the speaker right above me didn't work. It was just buzzing. And at this deserted gas station in the middle of the night, that was the most sinister god damn thing ever.

It felt like foreshadowing. Like the first thing that started to go wrong. First your speaker's buzzing, then you're opening a portal to hell. It happens.

This moment needs to happen in my novel. The lonely gas station. The middle of the night. The speaker that keeps buzzing.

Now, you might ask what's so creepy about a speaker that doesn't work properly. Well, ineffective sound equipment is terrifying. I'm kidding. It has to do with the kind of buzz. It's like interference.

Many years ago, I worked in a little office with a desktop computer. And any time my cell phone was about to ring, the computer's speakers would buzz, just like that. It's happened other times, with other speakers, but that's the most distinct that I remember it.

But all of this begs the question for the speaker in my story. If the buzz is caused by interference, what's causing the interference?

The answer of course is holes in space and time, and just, you know, the fabric of reality. Of course.

This is very good. It's like this story and its world was a wayward scarf caught in the wind, and I just managed to grab an edge of it. But really, this story is a wayward scarf. It has a few holes in it from rough encounters with trees. You can see right through to the other side, where a weird mirror version scarf exists. Some holes lead to other scarves entirely. One even leads to an afghan.

There is a point in many blog posts where it gets weird, and the fact that I'm writing it at 3am shines through. Typically there is no return from that point, so I just shut the whole thing down.

I'll see you Friday.