"I'm not sure why every leaf must die,"

so said the cloud naively starting to cry...

his tears turned to ice and snow with a sigh

as he too disintegrated into the oneness of the sky

but we stood the test of time, for quite a while long

you, me and the tree, despite drab winter's uniformity

...there was a beauty in the waiting for all of us to see

as Spring came, dressing us once again, in resplendent finery

#ImNotSureWhyEveryLeafMustDie #Challenge #FreeVerse

One ship was sinking. Everyone was running in panic, and only one sailor was standing quietly and staring into the distance. When they ran up to him and asked him, why he was so calm, he slowly answered: "You see, we are in the open sea, we do not have boats, we will definitely sink, I simply don't want to spend the last minutes in vain and enjoy the sunset."

As a result, from the crew of 13 people, 12 died in panic, and only one died in placidity and serenity.

Calls from Within

Heaven sent & Hell spent

once swept together in creative swelter

now helter-skelter in this shelter

the windows whistle

the doors creek

stairs their 

secrets 

keep

#FreeVerse #Winter

01.05.2018

My body plunged downward.

With no lifesaver to hold on to, I

sank

down

down

down.

I felt my lungs shrivelling

The air was gathering and was begging for a release

that I refused to give.

The muscles in my arms and legs began to twitch

and sting.

All attempts to rise to the surface had been pointless

I just sank

lower

lower

lower

A heavy pressure was then set all over me

Like my own anchor,

I sunk myself

My arms went loose,

And my body went numb

My lips parted and freed its captives-

They escaped above me.

Silver spheres in the light.

The cold dark liquid then trapped me in its strong hold

And I sank

deep

deep

deep

into the blue sea.

#drowning #ocean #poetry #sinking #desperation

She wears her smile like a sash. No one asks her why, but she always frowns when the party ends. During the day, she is full of life. She dances and smiles, making coy gestures. At night the corners of her mouth never twitch up, and her body is still. She wears her hair in curls, her blue eyes are innocent, but she hates being the sweet-faced liar.

There is darkness in his heart

in his body and mind

and something underneath it all

that he refuses to call a soul

she stares at him

and gives a gentle smile

there is power under her humble spirit

there is strength pumping through her veins

his mighty cravings

are darker than the darkest, of the moonless nights

he is pure evil

to her purest of hearts

he builds a wall before her

ready to stop her undying efforts

his prison made out of shattered stones

that were once dreams

of all the souls that are now lost and bitter

now it is her turn, to bring her strength

into this dark motion

she comes closer

and touches his hand softly

he stares at her now

and sees the light forming in her eyes

and returns the smile

feeling the good all around them

slowly overwhelming his

heart, body and mind

and something underneath it all

that he can finally call a soul

If you don't love me in April,

Don't love me in May.

For I am not a season,

But an eternal day.

Please don't leave me.

I know it's hard. I know life's hard. I know this world has torn you down over and over.

But don't go. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. I love you. I love you. I love you.

God damn it.

Okay.

I know this isn't even poetry anymore or even a piece of decent literature. You've always been the better one at this anyways. It's just I don't think I can tell you how much I need you. 

You live on the other side of the damn world yet I can't help but think of you as my best friend. And I know life is such crap and that you just can't take it anymore. You don't deserve that. But I'm going to be selfish and tell you the truth. I don't deserve this. 

This pain of not knowing whether I'll see your face on my screen ever again or if you'll alive long enough for me to meet you in person. Counting days between our goodbyes is like holding my breath and praying that you'll be okay. That life will be okay.

But I know that life isn't okay. This world sucks. I know. I know. I know. Just please don't make this world worse for me.

Stay. For me, if not you.

CHAPTER 1

Let’s begin with that familiar phrase – no, not once upon a time, but the other one: It all started when . . .

It all started when… #1: I suppose it really all started when our family got our first computer – I was only five or so years old. It was a Tiger PC and it sounded like a chainsaw whenever we turned it on. We had to put pillows over it to drown out the noise.

     Despite its faults, I loved fooling around on that thing. We didn’t have Windows though; my dad morally objected to it during Microsoft’s monopoly days. So we did everything through dos (the command prompt, or terminal). Through this, I became proficient in computer code. By my eighth birthday, I had a greater command of the language of coding than I did of English, which, looking back, probably led to my social awkwardness. I didn’t have any friends in elementary and middle school. And when I say I didn’t have any friends, I mean it. I’m talking about sitting alone at lunch and no hanging out after school and definitely no spending the night at someone else’s house. That changed in high school, though. But I’ll get to that in a second. Back to computers.

     When my dad noticed my increasing mastery with coding and such, he began teaching me about hacking. He had been some kind of covert hacker for the government (he could never give any real details) for several years before settling into his intelligence analyst position, and thought it would be good to impart some of his knowledge onto me. It wasn’t black hat (criminal hacking) or anything. Rather, he brought home old computers to hack into for fun.

     And fun it was. Especially when he finally let me do some real-life hacking during the all-night mission he set up for me when I was in sixth grade. He booked me a room on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, which was the famous train sung about by the Glenn Miller Orchestra (yeah, I don’t really know who that is either, but everyone tells me it was a huge hit). The train was parked in the middle of downtown Chattanooga (Chattanooga, Tennessee – the city I’m from) and was repurposed as a hotel, a pretty nice hotel, too. He put me up in one of the train cars-turned Victorian guest room, helped me set up a computer work station, gave me a sheet of typed-up instructions and left. Me. Alone. The night was a blast.

     The instructions were pretty scant – I was to complete three related hacks, wipe any evidence that could be traced back to me, and last the night in the hotel room without getting caught. The three hacks were serious, though. Break into the video systems of the Big River Grille, Bijou Theater and the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium, and stream to their feeds the SpongeBob Squarepants episode saved on your computer.

     The jobs were pretty difficult – it took me a couple of hours just to get into the Lookouts, and once I did, I hacked into their security feeds as well to see the fallout. The night game of minor league baseball kept going, the players oblivious to the cartoon on the giant scoreboard, so I shut down their lighting system. Even though hacking into the security feeds and shutting down their lights weren’t in the directions, it was fun watching the confusion on the crowds and players’ faces, and the subsequent scrambling of the crews to regain control of their systems. After watching the scene for the duration of the SpongeBob episode, I relinquished control back to the proper owners. I then moved on to the Bijou theater (now a hipster rock climbing gym) and hacked all of their screens and played the same episode. I felt kind of bad for ruining the movie-goers’ experience . . . for about twelve seconds. As confusion reigned, I moved across the street to the Big River Grille and interrupted the basketball and baseball games on the various TVs behind the bar and surrounding the pool tables.

     After I finished, I deleted all my logs as my dad had taught me and shut down the computer. I lay down on the four-poster and attempted to go to sleep, but my mind was still buzzing. I was tempted to keep hacking. I knew I had the power and capability to have as much fun as I wanted, and I gave in to the temptation. But in less than ten minutes after I turned the computer back on, someone pounded on my door. I expected my dad to be on the other side. I was wrong.

     Two police officers greeted me with a high-beamed flashlight to my face. They asked me a couple of questions about what I was doing by myself, and what I had been doing the previous few hours. I stammered out a couple of pitiful lies. They didn’t believe me, of course, especially when they saw my computer station set up on the desk behind me. They cuffed me and stuffed me into the back of their squad car. I stifled tears all the way to the police station. Okay, I bawled my eyes out. Pleaded for mercy. When they walked me up the concrete stairs and through the opaque windowed double doors, my dad was waiting for me with a scared and disappointed look on his face. They started booking me – fingerprints, mug shot, the whole deal. Before they put me in a cell, however, my dad comes up and says, “Alright boys, I think that’ll be enough.” It was all an elaborate prank. “A lesson,” my dad said. I had to be careful and patient when hacking. I had to know when it was enough and when it was too much, too far. I had gone too far, and the police tracked me down. Or rather, my dad had been monitoring my computer the whole time and, as soon as I turned it back on, sent in his buddies from the force to apprehend me. Lesson learned. Sort of.

A small part of me wanted to kill my dad, but I was a good sport about it. I mean, it was a damn good prank and a damn good way to teach me an important part of hacking. And I still got to do some cool hacks along the way that I was proud of. But the most important thing I learned was that I had a dad. I was young, but not too young to know how rare it was to not just have both parents in your life, but to have them actively a part of your life. Unlike Jake, whose divorced parents screamed (literally screamed) at each other during school functions. Or Matt who had never known his dad. And so on. So, despite my youth, I had the capacity to appreciate things like my dad not just simply taking an interest in me, but loving me in a tangible, active way. And I don’t want to neglect to mention my mom. She was great, too. But, for the purposes of clarity and concision (and respect), I’m leaving her out of most of this story.

     Now, back to hacking. One summer day a few years later, when my parents weren’t home, I, like most youth of any generation, did things I wouldn’t normally do when my parents were home. No, I didn’t snoop around their bedroom looking for my dad’s porno mags (if he had any), or try on my mom’s underwear (hey, some kids explore their sexuality during this time of their lives). Rather, I decided to take my hacking skills back into the public domain. The temptation again poked its head up into my mind, and I again gave in to it. I picked our local bank down the street. Now, before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t hack to steal money or anything (I wasn’t that much of a degenerate [not then, at least]). I just wanted to see if I was good enough to crack a more advanced (than a restaurant’s) security. I was.

     When the five ’o clock news reported a security breach at Regions Bank, I knew somehow that I was screwed. My dad didn’t say anything at first, but he went to our office and, even though I deleted my logs, somehow found out that it was me. We had a long talk that night, or at least he had a long talk and I had a long listen. It was serious. It wasn’t a game like before. Thank goodness, though, he wasn’t barbaric like the other dads who took the belt to their children, leather on bare back. But the thought that I had disappointed him was painful enough for me. Looking back, I see that this was one of those defining moments in my life that you hear so much about. More so than the lesson I learned when I got fake arrested, I realized the potential power resting in a few keys, just a set of mindless movements of my fingers. It was a force, an agency of change for myself and others. It wasn’t simply about not getting caught. My decisions affected others as well. Too bad temptation has the innate ability to turn black and white into gray and make someone forget about possible/probable consequences. Rationalization is temptation’s first cousin.

It all started when… #2: Besides that talk I had with my dad, one of the other big moments in my life was during first period on my very first day of high school. It was the day I met Allison Rutherford. I remember her first words spoken to me, partly because of her magnetism, but mostly because she was the only person to approach and speak to me voluntarily.

     “Hi. I’m Allison, but you can call me Al,” she said.

     I’m pretty sure I confirmed the “love at first sight” theory. Too bad she didn’t have any corresponding feelings. She friend-zoned me for the next four years. But that wasn’t all that bad. Because my maturity level was ahead of my contemporaries, I very much appreciated a friend. And since I loved her, I thrived off every moment we spent together.

It all started when… #3: Hacking and love being established as a foundation, I now want to build off them and get to the crux of our story. Throughout our entire senior year of high school, Al and I made plans to move out west to go to Colorado University in Boulder. We chose that because A.) we both wanted to get out of the mosquito-infested, hades of the South. Chattanooga is beautiful, or so everyone says. But it’s mostly a tourist city. We have the Tennessee Aquarium, “One of the largest freshwater aquariums in the world!” and the world famous Rock City on top of Lookout Mountain. No seriously, it’s world famous. Have you never seen the red and black painted barn with “See Rock City” written on it? I once saw a picture of a birdhouse that was a “See Rock City” barn. The picture was taken in Iraq. I digress. B.) We decided that we were both travelers, nomads at heart. So naturally, we wanted to explore the world, and Colorado seemed a good place as any to start. Plus the Rockies seemed much more majestic than the foothills of the foothills of the Appalachians. Yes, I did just say ‘foothills of the foothills’ – the city is that insignificant. And C.) there weren’t any good colleges in Chattanooga. There was UTC (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) where everyone from high school with decent grades went. There was Chatt. State (Chattanooga State Technical Community College) where all the people who didn’t have decent grades but still wanted to make something of their lives went. There were a few religious schools where all the future priests/ministers/theologians, etc. went. And then there was Crockett State. The 13th grade. It was the cheapest school in Chattanooga, so anyone who wanted to extend the glory days of their high school years could just go to Crockett. Crockett did have a good football team, though. The best in the South, actually. But that just added to the typical school hierarchy: jocks on top, me and Al on the bottom. I mean, Al didn’t have to be on the bottom rung, but she valued friendship over popularity. Dang, I loved her.

     So we were headed to Colorado. But then (in case you didn’t know, the words but then signify a particular change of events that will alter the course of things, throw a wrench in our plans, if you will), my dad’s pay got cut in half, and Al’s dad left her and her mom. What did this mean? It meant that neither of us could afford to go to CU. Al’s mom had bad credit, so she couldn’t get a loan, and my dad refused to take out a student loan for me for some reason (every time I asked him why, he began spouting out big tax terms that I didn’t understand). This made me quite upset at him. And when I say quite upset, I mean really pissed off. I didn’t show it, of course. I like to stuff my anger. But what was worse than not being able to go to Colorado was that we both were forced to enroll at Crockett State, the most affordable option, the only affordable option. It was going to be a shitty year, but I was determined to not make it four years, or even two. I was going to save up money, or get a scholarship in something, anything, to get to Colorado, my dad and his pay cut and his taxes be damned.

     If you’ve paid attention so far, you’ve probably done the math, added things up. If not, let me spell it out for you: take the fact that I’m a very skilled, yet temperamental computer hacker, I was in love with my best friend, but neither of us could afford to go to our dream college. What do you think happened? That’s what this story is about. Mostly, anyway. There may also be this thing with another girl, and oh, some good ol’ deep and dark family secrets thrown in here, too. But enough with all this backstory and hinting at what’s to come – let’s jump into the real story.

CHAPTER 2

Orientation was a drag-party. No, not that kind of drag. The kind of drag in which a hulk of a man has your wrists knotted together and is pulling you along by a rope, dragging you. He’s walking so slowly, but for some reason you can’t keep up, so you fall to the ground, but he just keeps dragging you. So if you can imagine being dragged along face first on the ground by a big dude, let’s say your own dad (or mom), then you can know what college orientation feels like. At Crockett, anyway. I imagine it would be more interesting at CU.

     We skipped the “Discovery Week” of orientation and opted for the one day intensive. So instead of a week-long event of touring the campus, staying up all night making s’mores and listening to that one d-bag play his acoustic around the campfire, and sleeping in the decrepit dorms with “potential lifetime friends”, Al and I, plus my mom and dad and Renee (Al’s mom) spent eight hours in a lecture hall suffering a slow death-by-powerpoint. I decided that eight hours was better than an entire week, so I tried to stay positive.

     After learning about the exact incline of the wheelchair access ramps around campus, we wrapped up the lectures and began the official tour, which was pretty dead. Literally. Just like the rest of Chattanooga, the grass was crispy and dangerous to walk on barefoot, while the cicadas screamed (some idiots say they sing) in the giant furnace we locals like to call “outside”. I always wanted to do a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face of the numb-nuts who says “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” How about both, you dumb-ass?

     Anyway, the tour was pretty dead outside, but once we made our way to the main quad in front of the Student Activities Center (SAC, or Sad SAC, as Al called it), things livened up a bit. A fountain with about a 12-foot spray was the centerpiece of the quad and a few students waded in its overflow. In front of the fountain, a handful of guys were playing Cornhole, with the bean bags making loud thumps as they hit the slanted wooden boards.

     Inside the Sad SAC was even more lively. We were immediately greeted by girls sitting behind tables surrounded by poster boards and signs. One table was labeled IJM, another posted a sign that said “The Arts – Music, Theatre, Literature” with a subtitle of “A Wonderful Alternative to Engineering or Business”. The Sigma Deltas were grandstanding with kettle-bells next to the Crew team and their crew cuts, and to their right a pocket-protector was soliciting signatures to dissolve the Post Office. My head, instead of following the rest of my body, stuck to the Sigma Deltas in their black spandex shorts.

     “You’re ogling, Eli,” Al said.

     “No, I’m just . . . fascinated, I guess.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

At the end of the day, I was hacking my second-hand computer for the hundredth time as Al was lying on my bed reading some book way above my reading level.

     “I know I’ve asked this about thirty-six times, but are you still undecided?” Al said.

     “Yes.”

     “If you’re planning on getting to Colorado, you’re going to need focus – you need to show them that you have a plan. Why would they give an undecided a scholarship?”

     “Look, I’m just going to get my gen-eds out of the way, then I’ll tell them that Crockett doesn’t have the same level of education in my major-specific courses as CU does,” I said.

     “That’s actually not a bad lie,” Al said.

     We were silent for a few moments. I already knew she wasn’t going to change her mind on double-majoring in Art and English and double minoring in French and Religious Studies, so I didn’t return the question.

     “What if I don’t get to go to Colorado, and you do?” Al said.

     “Why would that even happen? If anyone can get a scholarship, it’s you, not me.”

     “Okay, hypothetically, then. Would you go to CU without me?” Al said.

     At that moment, a feeling of bitterness towards Al (not a completely new thing) rose up inside me. She seemed so selfish and thoughtless. Of course she couldn’t bear to lose her best friend. But she couldn’t see how much being around her was killing me. I loved her and loved to be with her, but it was tiresome as well – wishing for more than friendship, wishing she would finally see me as more than her “bestie”. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get out of Chattanooga: if she came with me, maybe a new environment could bring a new life for us together – actually together. But I was beginning to think it would be just fine if she didn’t come. I could move on with my life and find someone who loved me as much as I loved them.

     But I couldn’t tell her that, of course. “Not a chance,” I said.

I TOLD YOU ELI OXLEY, complete at 58,000 words, is an Upper YA Contemporary. My target audience is ages 15+. The story is geared toward both young men and young women.

I TOLD YOU, ELI OXLEY is a novel about guilt, money, hacking, temptation and family secrets. Set in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the story follows would-be nomad Eli, a brilliant hacker doomed to live at home and attend Crockett State University. Eli has never used his hacking skills for illegal purposes, but when he becomes suspicious of his father’s money problems, he decides to act, threatening the principles he once held dear, endangering himself, his family and his love, Allison.

Eli, though knowledgable with computers, is ill-informed in every other aspect of his life: he’s socially awkward, emotionally inept and sexually inexperienced. Maybe that’s why he can’t seem to get out of the friend zone with Allison. But will he even need to when the hot, physically forward blonde, Kara is coming on to him? Or what about when Al finally reciprocates his feelings? Then there’s the intriguing hacker fraternity he joins who may or may not be acting in Eli’s best interest. And to top it all off, a family secret he can’t ignore that goes deeper than just missing money. Eli struggles with his feelings for the two girls while retracing his dad’s digital footprints, digging for both answers and money. Will Eli get caught hacking his local bank? Will he get caught cheating on Al? In the end, escaping Chattanooga might be the least of his problems.

I was born in Chattanooga, TN. I served in the Army for five years, where I worked with computers at the National Security Agency (NSA). I have an MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction and a BA in English. I am a writing professor at Saint Mary’s College of California in the San Francisco Bay Area. I TOLD YOU, ELI OXLEY is my first novel, and it recently won a “Watty” award on WattPad in the category of Best New Voices, and currently has over 100,000 reads. I am also writing a sequel to it.

I can be described as a perfectionist with my writing style. I will think slowly and heavily on every word I write, making sure each word fits into the greater puzzle of each sentence, and each sentence fits into the paragraph, page, etc. But my deliberation does not mean less production. My typical goal for each day is a solid 1,000 words.

Other than reading and writing, my hobbies include taking my infant daughter on walks, watching as many movies as I can and occasionally playing video games.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration,

Best wishes,

Chase Manning

twitter: @chaseman777

WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/ChaseManning2