Looseleaf, Spiral, Chain

*CHp. 1...A Tale of Two Lives...*


Disorderly chaos and black-stained sheets covering the floor. When you take a step your heels are coated in ink and pierced by pens that have run dry but that he'll never throw away. Every page is sacred, every pen is history. Even though you'll never be able to find the page you're looking for, new stories are created every day simply by him accidentaly putting a page from one story into the climax of another.

Constant change.

Ceasecless creation.

And on the his bedroom door written in ink (black only, never ball point) is his name, Looseleaf. But he'll also respond to "MARTIN!!!" but only if his mom says it, and only around dinner time.

[Edited on 2-28-04 by Scat]

It's 2.37 am on a February morning.

He hated that dry cold. But he trudged through it anyway. He had a meeting.

With looseleaf...and two others he had never met before.

He still never knew why he listened to this kid. Losseleaf was a punk ass kid who seemed to have the world on a string, a golden string at that.

His real name was martin, but nobody had the guts to call him that. He left that behind last year. When something happened between loosleaf...and those two other guys he was supposed to be meeting.

It was 2.58 am on a February morning.

And he was meeting the rest of his life.

"ONCE YOU KNOW THE RULES YOU ARE FREE TO BREAK THEM."

Thats the sign that was posted on Losseleaf's doorway. But true to honesty, his Mom tried to take it down every day, the ever insistent Looseleaf put it back up every day in defiance of his Mom, who wasnt really his mom.

Why was he here? He knew that Looseleaf was jjust one punk riot kid who just started fights witha nyone who pissed him off. But Looseleaf had said something in that note, something that said "recalled to Lo-Life?" something that got him thinking that maybe Looseleaf was only the first shot to be fired. There were two other jacques here at work, two other beasts he had yet to meet.

what are you talking about

Excellent writing, Scat. I like your style, but could you please make the entries longer?

DE

yeah- iw as planning on it, ive got the whole first chapter done....just gotta put it up

3 knocks.
3 muses.
"Looseleaf?"
Nothing came from behind the wooden door and the rusted hinges.
"Oi, Looseleaf."
"Yeah, what do you want?"
"It's me..."
"Great description, piss off."
"The kid you gave the note to...you know...recalled to-"

The door swung open and none other than Looseleaf, the mohawked, piecred, tatooed punk ass who looked like he belonged in a music video, was there to greet him, with a clear green bottle in hand.

"Print! Get in here. Come on."
"Print? Wha-"
"Get in."

The room was unlike anything he had ever seen. The floor, covered in sheets of paper doused in ink. ...Looseleaf...
Stacks of burnt out punk CD's lined the corners of the mousy living room.
There were at least four boomboxes.
And a 6 pack with someones name on it.

"Print- this is Mom. Mom, Print."

Mom, obviously not Looseleaf's mom, was about 25, almost a decade senior of Looseleaf.

"Shake hands, hug, kiss, f***, whatever."

"Martin, shut up. Sorry about him."

"MY NAME IS LOOSELEAF."

"SHUT UP MARTIN. Geez, your freggin Charles Darnay comes to town and all you can think of is you stupid f****** name. SHUT UP MARTIN."

10 minutes passed.

He walked into another room in the apartment, opened the door. And took a step back.

Stacks and stacks of notebooks. Bent wires and calloused fingertips from being pierced by broken, twisted metal. If you were to pick up one of the spirals and flip through the pages, sheets would fall out due to being drenched in ink. Everything organized by subject, style, and then chronilogically. No one would ever suspect such organization to be the home of such a mastermind of lust and lunacy. This is Spiral's room, or Daniel to everyone aboveground. But even to the underground he's still masked, the emo kid in the corner with the grey jacket and greasy brown bangs.

Still secret.

Still Spiral.

The Miss Defarge of their revolution...

Meeting Spiral was nothing new, they had met before, but he knew Spiral as Daniel, of course.

What was peculiar, however, was the fact that Spiral and Looseleaf were accomplices. They seemed to be a perfect dichotomy, Looseleaf being wild and spontaneous with a temper to match, and Spiral being shy and secluded...but still knitting.

Over an hour passed, sitting around with empty bottles. He felt he was slowly being weaved into a web without realizing that he was the insect of the most liberating spider ever written.

Print, with his new newly acquired name, knew that something was oing on here, something more than kids sitting around in an empty apartment. And there had to be a reason for Looseleaf's and Spiral's odd pairing, he just didn't know what the reason was.

...Then she walked in the door.

"Looseleaf. Spiral. Mom."

She looked around the room, grinning, eyes ablaze, wallet chain notebook shoved into her back pocket.

"Ahh...Print!"

This was Chain.
The Golden Thread.

She kept a hand-sized notebook, like the bibles that the curbside preachers use. Walking into her room was like walking into a never ending time capsule of evolution and revolution. The walls, cieling, door, shelves, and drawers were covered in photos of her most famous work. Around 20 photos depicted the day of the Bay School Heaphone Massacre, where, in defiance of the no-CD player policy at the school, Chain and the 7 Dwarfs passed out headphonesto the entire school body. By the end of the day, every student walked through the hallways, singing their music at the top of their lungs, spoting dangling headphones. Other photos portrayed tagging, murals, group art, one line, 60 second novels, wheatpastes, car paintings, shoplifting expeditioons, sign tapings, and every other illegal hijink that Looseleaf, Spiral, Chain, and occasionally the help of the 7 Dwarfs and their follwers.

Plain clothes, plain jewelry, bright red shoes, bright red hair today, black hair tomorrow, blue the next, usually topped with her zoot hat. Chain was just Chain, aboveground, underground, all around. Unpredictable, unexpected, uninvited, but always welcome. Her slogan: maybe starving, but never speechless.

So the puzzle finally fit. The infamous trio was explained.
Looseleaf, Spiral, and Chain.
The Fighter, The Scholar, and The Voice.
Th punk a**, the emo f***, the skanker.
3 realms.
3 styles.
1 insect...Print.
So the puzzle didn't quite fit after all.
Because he didn't even know what the picture was supposed to be.

It was 6.47 on a February morning.

He hated that dry cold.

But Print wasn't thinking about that right now.
Instead he was thinking about Lo-Life, and how by 2.30 pm on one February afternoon, everyone else would be too.

It was simple, the Lo-Life Uprising. Loosleaf's latest threat. Spiral's latest poetic justice. Chain's latest brilliance. And Print's first flight from aboveground. His first dream finally becoming reality. The allamerican boy, football star, track star, baseball star, head of this club, president of that club, 4.5 GPA, college bound, and editor of the Bay School newspaper, Hi-Life. But to Looseleaf, Spiral, and Chain...he was Print.

He had classes with all 3.
3 muses.
3 books.
Shop with the fighter, in wchi the two constantly debated over government, anarchy, and rioting. That is, before Looseleaf ended up punching somebody for pissing him off.
English 4, AP, with the scholar, in which they often exchanged verses and one liners. But Print knew him as Daniel, like everyone else above ground.
With the voice, newspaper- editors period. Print, being head editor, haad to throw out most of Chain's work simply because it was "too controversial" and "too radical" for the school apper. It was also too perfectly brilliant, in Print's opinion. Print had his own stash of articles that he had never dared to show a soul. Nobody knew about these...nobody but Chain, of course.

The Fighter.
"You're a f***ing anarchist, man. and you sure as hell know you're ready to riot against society and this bullsh** they like to call an educational system."

The Scholar.
"Honestly, are you prepared to hide behind the white picket fence of the American Nightmare any longer? Let's paint the fences, let's lucid dream. Dream in ink."

The Voice.
"I read your articles."
I see that spark and I feel that fury, that hidden agression leaking through you.
"You have the power, your have the ability to do this, you can change something."
I know you want to change the world.
"Riot. Dream. Revolution. We can show these people what they never thought they'd want to see. We can show them the truth."
Your truth, our truth.
"We can feed them art, anarchy of the mind."
WAKE UP PRINT.
"Wake up! You have one of 2 dreams you may choose. You can either live and die according to the standars of their society, or live and never die...without boundaries or fear."
It's time for you to stop hiding those papers, it's time for you to publish them. It's time if you want it to be.
"What are you going to choose? The Hi-but-Hidden Existence or Lo-Life...uprising...fantasy....life?"


And thus began the Lo-Life Uprising. And thus began the recalling of Print from the American Bastille. And thus began the beginning of the endless uprising...all from Bay School and the 3 muses. Looseleaf. Spiral. and Chain.


*CHAPTER 1....THE TALE OF TWO LIVES...*


(this makes so much more sense if youve read a tale of two cities.....)

AGHHHHHHHHH THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SHORT STORY AND NOW ITS NOT...DARNnnnnnnnnnnnn

It's perfectly fien. CONTINUE WRITING!

DE

what do you think this is leading up to?

Probably some sort fo rising action, a less ambiguous conflict, a climax adn resolution with some luck.

DE

Chp2. ...A Very Brief Meeting With a Portrait of The Future Artist as a Young and Confused Youth...

"Personally, I'm in love with Stephen."

This random remark by Chain broke the silence between the trio and their adopted orphan. Looseleaf and Spiral merely chuckled at the statment while Print raised his brow in confusion.

"Stephen?"

"What's your favorite color of rose, Print?" The strangest question Print had ever been asked by the strangest person he had ever met.

"UHh...red, I guess...."

"Mine's green. Because there can't be green roses, but maybe somewhere in the world there can be.... Unfair and cruel, or cruel and unfair?"

"What?"

"End with a beginning or begin with an ending?"

"Wha-"

"White, white white, what do you think about white?"

"I don't-"

"Have you ever heard the moocow or the baby tuckoo?"

At this point Print was exhasperated. He looked back and forth to Looseleaf and Spiral for answers but found none. Until he finally looked Chain in the eyes.

"Thank you." Something about the way Chain said this made Print feel as if being recalled to life was not at crazy as he might have imagined.

Maybe it was pure insanity that made him walk up to Looseleaf's door, sheer lunacy that made him smile at the thought of Lo-Life.
Insanity, lunacy.

Lo-Life wasn't Chain's brilliance...it was his own. Chain just gave it a name...

Print's stepped slowed.
"For what?"

Chain stopped, swung around, and smiled wide.

"For taking both presses from your hair and finally painting your own portrait. For telling Dante to stop turning from one to the other, to stop turning at all, to simply pave a new path. For dreaming so intently that when the train came to a halt you had forgotten you were meeting your future, you had forgotten leaving your past, and you had forgotten how you moved from one to the other."

His eyes looked into Chain's deeper than he had looked into anyones. The two were still, facing each other, breathing each other's souls. 3 inches apart. Where were they walking this morning? Where had they been yesterday? Where are they now?

"I think I'm in love with Stephen too."




At this, Chain smiled, laughed, and ran to catch up with Looseleaf and Spiral, who smiled, laughed, and turned their gaze toward Print, who smiled, laughed, and ran to meet them.

Print was meeting them a million times over.

And he began to concieve that he had met The Fighter in every scream, The Scholar in every dream, and The Voice in every attempt to run.

Print was meeting them a million times over.

And didn't want Stephen to leave anymore.

since when has there been a "scholar" title on ATS????? i just realized this like 5 minutes ago, i knew there were fighters and writers and moderators blah blah blah but i never saaw scholar...awesomeeeeeeeeee