“The clock was broken, so no one knew what time it was”

This is my story for the Fanpop Writer’s Group, based on the above prompt. Let me know what you think.

Broken Time

The clock was broken, so no one knew what time it was.

We coughed and spluttered still, that clock hadn't worked since the second time we reconstructed the thing. We all made sure to incorporate William's little syncing batteries in to our watches though.

I wonder what had gone wrong this time around. Time for the usual check up. I was in charge of that for his this mission.

"Will?" I asked, getting to my feet. "Yeah, I'm here...whatever *cough*" I pulled my device from my pocket and checked him off, as well as myself. "Juliet?"

Nothing. "Juliet?" Will shouted out too. "JULIET?"

Nothing.

"JULI-"

"Yeah, I'm here, shut up."

I felt a strange wrenching in my stomach and disposed of my stomach contents from my mouth. That happened often with this, I remember Will yammering on about temporal displacement or something along those lines.

We met up by the machine, as we usually did. I asked Will what had gone wrong, and he muttered something about me inputting the wrong trajectory details. Which, I may have done, his algorithms and things are sometimes hard to track and remember. Juliet set about on maintenance to fix it.

We were within the machine’s cloak, so no-one could see what we were doing. I recalled a close call back when Maya was still around when the cloak had been disabled by a fault and I had a lot of explaining to do.

Juliet emerged a moment later with her little machine that fixed the bigger one and informed us it was now working just fine. Will was the only one who didn’t always carry a little device on him, he somehow kept it all in his head.

With the absence of Maya, I’d taken lead of the “team”, so prepared for my second ever “leadership” speech ever.

“Right guys. We’re currently in…" I glanced at my watch “1950. Everyone has their vital information?”

They both nodded. We had information stored within our heads or devices in order to know who was prime minister, king or other certain important things of the time we were in.

“This is where Maya travelled to in the old machine, we’ve beaten her here, so should see her appear moments later to save her from dying within this timeline.”

“But won’t-“ Juliet spoke up.

“Yes, Juliet I know. The whole paradox thing. We wouldn’t have come back if she hadn’t been killed, so we wouldn’t have come here to save her, thus causing a paradox. I know. I know", but we have to hope it works.”

As I walked to the road to await Maya’s known arrival, I saw a brilliant flash of light, and another machine that looked far superior to ours arrived close by. Two men in identical blue outfits grabbed Will and Juliet, and I gave chase. One withdrew a weapon, and fired it at me. It’s odd shaped bullet sailed by me, and hit in to the chest of a woman behind me.

“…Maya?”

I turned to see her there, as she slumped to the ground. Juliet and Will shouted out, as the blue men’s machine went off where it came from. I knew this would happen, but it still shocked me.

I quickly withdrew the antidote needle from my jacket, and injected Maya as I had practiced, and her eyes sprung open.

“Maya, no time to explain. Take my hand, we have to save those two.”

Maya got up, staggering and we clambered back in to the machine and I set the controls for February 20th 2070. This is what I had known was coming and had been practicing for for many years. We’d save the whole team, and take him down.

I breathed in and then pressed the button as we began our descent in to madness.

“When I first met her, it hit me.”

This was my post for the Fanpop Writer's Group, which is a fiction piece based on the prompt above. I feel that my writing doesn’t get in to a good flow right away, but this only took me a few minutes. Hopefully you all like it. I also tried to not use any spoken word in this, and think it worked okay.

When I first met her, it hit me. The sudden realisation that I loved her. There and then, even before knowing her name or anything about her, I knew that I loved her. No-one else in the room seemed to matter, and people's voices were muffled background noise to me.

She walked over to me and started to nervously speak, but I grabbed her hand before she could and simply held it. A large gruff man sidled alongside her and said something I didn't hear.

I enquired as to what he had said, and he uttered a series of coarse and curse words against me and then strolled off with her, showing his ownership, as though something this precious could be possessed like a necklace.

I gave chase, and encountered them kissing in the icy wintered parking lot. Overcome with emotions of love, anger towards the gruff man and a small adrenaline rush, I swung my fist around at the guy who seemed a lot taller close up.

He crushed my hand in his much larger one as I let out a yelp of pain. I attempted to push my head in to his chest to knock him back, and though he stumbled slightly, it didn't have much effect.

As he shoved me back he laughed to himself, and spoke some words to the woman I loved. I saw a chance to run at him, and try to disrupt his balance and took it. Mid-run, I slipped on some ice, but continued to go, sliding in to the man with both of us heading for a larger patch of ice.

On reflection, I should have realised that the patch of ice was covering a lake. We both slid on, myself being flung further down and then scrambling to get out before it gave way.

The gruff man did not seem so lucky. The woman I loved was screaming and shouting his name, though I do not recall it. She exclaimed that he was unable to swim, as his large body sank beneath the splinters of ice.

I could only watch in horror as bubbles began to float to the surface, and then couldn't move as they ceased to come up any more.
I looked at the woman I loved from the other side of the lake, and she simply shook her head through tears. She may have been the woman I loved, but I had just killed the man that she loved.

I tried to shake away the tears too, and started to flee as others piled outside and the police sirens began. I've not stopped running since.

Pronunciation is the aspiration of this dictation

I always find pronunciation and slang really fascinating, as well as the origin of words. Do you know what a jitty is, or a snicket? Do you say right the way instead of right away?

Even take my own user name “PkmnTrainerJ”. How the heck do you pronounce the first four letters? Apparently even the Fanpop staff have debated it too.

Apparently papa pronounces it as “Pikmin”, whereas Dave corrects him and tells him it’s actually “Pokémon”, but said quickly. So kind of like “Puhk-mun” if you want to get it right.

Do you know any slang words that are much more local to you, or variations on usual words? I don’t know why I’m like this with words, I just am.

Blogs I enjoy

So, hopefully regular readers (Do I have any?) will have noticed the "blogs I enjoy" section to the right of this blog post. It might be a bit odd, and I know you're not likely to click any of them, without some kind of explanation, so that is this. I did feel a bit silly doing this at first, as it's blogging about blogs, but spudrph convinced me with a tweet.

Let's start with Mental Poo.


This is the one I think people would be most wary of clicking on, especially if there are children in the house or something. However, it is one of the most (if not the most) hilarious blog I have ever read. It's run by a Blogger blogger who goes by the name of Moog for short. He is a 40-year old American man, who has stories that make me laugh for days. He has kids, who being at the young ages they are, cause constant amusement to those who don't have to put up with what they're actually doing. Like the way you laugh at a mother who is losing control of her kids after walking by. Maybe that's just me. This blog is also updated almost daily, and I would recommend reading through the archives for an extra dose of laughter.

From one end of the spectrum to the other now. Let's talk about one of the world's greatest men. That is Mr. Stephen Fry.

As you might have noticed, Stephen Fry prefers to refer to his scribblings on the internet as "Blessays", for he does write enough on subjects for them to be essays. Stephen Fry is a very hard man to describe. Perhaps Wikipedia does a good job, but I will leave that to you to decide. As well as his brilliant blog posts, he also does a podcast, though he calls them podgrams. They are some of the best podcasts I have listened to and allow you to get a good look on one of the smartest men in the world's view on things, and then you realise he is suprisingly normal.

From that to a new blog (to me anyways) called Perception Roll.

First off, I had to print screen and steal that banner. Damn you having no image. This blog is run by many people, but I was linked to it by austenw on Twitter when I mentioned my own blog in a tweet. Austen seems like a techy geek, though he is swayed by Kingdom Hearts also apparently. It is a very geeky blog, much like this one. Maybe more so actually. I am enjoying reading it so far. Not quite as much to write about your blog, I'm afraid Austen, perhaps after more reading.

Now something very geeky on my part. Junichi Masuda's blog.

Actually, it's official title, as you can see is "HIDDEN POWER of Masuda". Masuda is in charge of all the music for the Pokémon games and as such some news about that appears on the English translation of his blog. Unless you're a Pokémon fan, you probably don't care about this blog, and if you are a fan, you probably already read it.

Okay, now a Fanpopper's blog, appropriately named after himself, or maybe it was the other way around. Anyways, it's Maybe a Starbucks.

Also another print screen pinch. This blog is run by fellow Fanpopper maybeastarbucks and is updated with video games opinions and news as well as his main obsession of The Simpsons. I have never known anyone more knowledgeable on The Simpsons than this man. He seems to favour the Nintendo Wii over other consoles when doing reviews and the like. Funny story about him. Many of us on Fanpopn wondered about his real identity before I discovered his blog. I assume that the URL provides us with his real name, though this may yet be another sneaky facade and lie.

Now the final blog, but that doesn't make it worse than the other blogs, oh no. This blog is run by a fellow Twitter-er, and is called Randomness.

It is another fairly new blog for me again. This blog is run by chunkyrican. This may sound strange, but I seem to have learned about her life through various tweets rather than conversations. Slowly these tweets build me a picture of the girl who does post what's on her mind. Moving on. Randomness often shows through chunkyrican's strong Christian beliefs, and though I am not "in" a religion or faith, their history and stories intrigue me. I guess like the above screen print banner says "You either love it, or you don't".

Well, hopefully that will convince you unadventurous people out there to check out the blogs that I like.

In the meantime, if you would like your blog featured in the "Blogs I Enjoy" section, send me the link in the comments and I shall have a look, and see if I enjoy it.

Also, there's now a funky gadget called a SiteMeter at the bottom of my site, so I can see how to increase traffic from all you lovely people.