Stay on the Line, Little Bird (Chapter I)

Stay on the Line, Little Bird

By Larissa Thomas © 2026

This is Chapter 1 of a work-in-progress, existential horror novella I’ve been picking away at. Unfortunately, I need pressure and heat to get moving. So in a desperate bid to finish some longer works, I’m turning to bleeding rough cuts on a tiny stage with a micro audience under an unflattering spotlight. This is for an illustrated story collection I’m working on.

Stay on the Line, Little Bird (Chapter I)

Drop the eggs in water and wait a few days,
Then see how your Lake Monkeez grow and play!

I

The rope stung as I wrapped it around my uncalloused, pale flesh. Dare I bid the world adieu in such a tedious fashion?

I had to.
Something was missing.
I couldn’t write.
Never had enough time.
I’d quit my job.
Not that it was a real job.
Wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Jobs are for serfs, and I am a writer.

My “friends” had harassed me about trivia nights, baby showers, wine & whines. Somebody was always getting married or treading water in a relationship’s drawn-out dying breath or literally dying or knew someone who’d died and was fundraising and blah blah blah.

So I’d quit my friends.
Still couldn’t write though.

Joined special interest groups to see if I could plug into some narrative voltage. Learned a bit of tarot (unrewardingly more complicated than it seemed). Took a tantric breathwork class (don’t recommend if you’re sensitive to the scent of systemic gingivitis). Even lurked a BDSM meet-up, which also came with its own host of olfactory issues and was largely populated by bald dudes with hot dog necks in guyliner and barely-fleshed, wilted roses sporting scars like a cheap set of bangles from Claire’s. I’d tried seducing my first cousin one night just to see if I could generate interesting story material. All that manifested was an awkward Raymond Carver type mundane nothing at an eye contact-free Thanksgiving dinner.

Novel still didn’t get written.

I fumbled with the stained, braided yellow nylon. Was I about to make a mistake? The grand finale of mistakes in a one-act play of preventable failures.

My tech bro boyfriend had bemoaned my lack of consistent kitchen duty enthusiasm and commitment to regular subscription television lubrication. Didn’t spend enough “quality” time with him and he didn’t appreciate how frequently I drank (you would too, if he was your boyfriend). Or that I often spent the morning hours unconscious instead of rising with the rest of polite society, preferring to write well past midnight.

“Write,” he would say in air quotations.
So I quit him, too.

With as much force as I could muster, I yanked the rope ineffectually. I was surprisingly weak for such a colossal bitch.

This was the only way.

The noise, distractions, constant chatter and demands of modern life. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything, anyone, for any reason, anymore! How could I concentrate on my book when I had to deal with groceries and rent and birthday parties and work meetings and god the list was endless and I could never get away from it I couldn’t take it anymore!!!!!!!!!

“Fuck it!” I screamed, wrapping the rope around the metal cleat and pushing the boat off the dock with my sparkly vinyl eBay Airwalks.

I had no idea how to captain a boat, outside of some youtube videos I’d watched. But I’d thrown away half my possessions, broke lease and bought a one-way ticket to paradise off some hippie on an internet marketplace. He needed a quick OBO to “move to an ashram in Kelowna.” So the deal was done. Sink or swim.

I’d recorded a voicemail greeting for anyone who might notice my absence and care to check in: “Going away to heal from the trauma of how boring you all are and finish a novel. No signal. Won’t get your messages. You’ll be the last to know when I get back. Bless.”

A lone message came through right before my sojourn into peace and productivity. Chris, the only friend who was allowed to stay (the only friend interested in staying) liked to give me pep talks as if I was his child who kept failing to make little league. I listened as I floated into the future: “You don’t need to blow up your life to write a book. You just need to show up at your desk consistently. All you have to do to write is write, you spazz–”

The signal dropped before he could finish his sentiment. For the best. Not the vibe I wanted to kick off my fool’s journey (that’s a tarot reference).

I languorously embarked in my chariot (another reference); a rusty cabin cruiser with Krazy Glue fix-its and tacky, spackled add-ons. The hippie told me the boat was “magic” and held “secret fortunes” and I would have epiphanies and my “kundalini” would awaken. He was only letting it go for so cheap because his Ego was dead. He was a new man. Materialism was passé. Rerouting his powerful nut chi for higher callings instead of libidinal leaks.

These proclamations invoked fear that there was some kind of brain-damaging neurotoxin I’d be exposed to on board, but I needed to submerge myself in something beyond the ordinary- even if it came with health risks. The disappointing vessel would suffice if it could hold itself together long enough for me to write my stupid fucking book.

I crossed my fingers.

The cryptic hippie had also shared that if I was to follow the waterways the boat was parked in - which is exactly what I was doing because it required the least effort on my part - to never look at the night lights, and definitely never go looking for their sources, and absolutely under no circumstance talk to strangers over the radio. The radio was for emergencies only. He even went as far as to write me out his little rules on a piece of paper, which I’d stuffed somewhere without reading.

The cruiser casually drifted for hours, as I organized my insubstantial provisions, and cleaned the worst of the bohemian slime off the surfaces I knew I’d be touching, until I just gave up. Slumped over what was to be my writing desk made of poorly attached crates and a slab of plywood. It would be here where I would compose my greatest work to date. Really, my only work.

Not sure how long I’d been snoozing (a necessary part of writing), when I finally looked out the cabin window. I couldn’t see land anymore. Was I still on a lake? Migrated through some back channel to the ocean? Mega swamp? I was terrible at geography. Grasping anything mathematical, map-like or common sense was a non-starter. How far could I go off-course? I was in North America. The hippie had left me a map and I was sure I was somewhere on it.

The time was nigh, time to write.

But I needed something to get in the mood first. I stood in front of the fluid-specked mirror screwed into the wall. I looked like shit. I was wearing one of the seven nautical dresses I’d purchased to intensify the feeling of being a ‘writer at sea’ but I was serving aged-out, sex-trafficked castaway.

Music. A DJ set to summon a Muse. I’d brought my phone and its many playlists, but as I scrolled for something delivering swamp siren or ocean hottie, I realized most of my songs weren’t downloaded and I had no access to data.

I rifled through the stack of CD’s on the pile of stuff I’d inherited from the transcendent bum. I woefully placed “FUCK MIXXX: BLUNTZ ON THE WATER” in the ghetto blaster and pressed play.

“GAZUNGA! MI AMORE! Blip blop flap slap. Give it to me in the witch slit trap!”

I’d be needing wine tonight, as well. Surprise, surprise. After pouring a decent helping of cheap Cab Sauv into my mason jar, I draped myself over my cot and released an agonized sigh. To write, to write, what was I to write?

Retreating backwards in time made me furious. Flattening grief about the present paralyzed me. The future seemed unknowable in the least appealing way. I needed to conjure something fresh. Unmarred by reality, from the abyssal depths of my imagination.

My first impulse was to write about writing. The absolute height of tiresome cringe. Done to death. By every writer who’s ever existed. What more was there to say? The protagonist attempts to write their magnum opus and goes completely fucking insane? Oh, oh no. Are they haunted by their past? Do the ghosts of their creations cross the fiction-reality barrier?

Yawn.

I would begin my descent into wine-drenched madness once I made sure the radio worked, just in case I needed it.

I twisted the knob, notch by notch. Lingering with each tiny movement, listening intently.

Clicking.
Whirring.
Buzzing.
The device appeared to be functional, but to what end.
“Hello..ooo..oooooh,” I whispered sensually into the encrusted plastic mouthpiece.

Buzz.

“Any sailors out there? Species-curious mermen?” I said in a fake sea wench “accent.” Nothing.
“Woe is me. Guess I’ll just have to be sexy all by myself. A damsel in ‘dis dress, gonna slip it off cuz it’s so hot,” I laughed and got up.

It was getting dark, and with no compelling hindrances, it was time to write. Even though it was warm, a thin fog had formed on the surface of the water. Opening the door I peered out at the endless expanse, essentially a puny fish that could be picked off at any moment by anything with a vaguely predatory instinct. Or simply hungry.

I picked up my writing accoutrements and headed for the door to the deck.
The radio crackled.
In a baritone, barely audible voice: “…stay…”

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Chapter 2 drops Tuesday or Wednesday 🛥️📻🎣