- sebmojo
- Oct 23, 2010
-
Legit Cyberpunk
|
These Things Happen
(813 Words)
I was little and she was big and she said me that I was just scaring myself. Great first line.The TV told me that the storm was bad and that we needed to go. Mama told me that’s why I should just watch cartoons.
Let Mama worry about grown up stuff, she said.
I said Okay, Mama but it was hard. I had to turn off the TV cause there was warnings even on the kid channels. When I laid in bed I could hear neighbors banging away boarding up their windows with hammers and nails. I sat in our window and watched people leave. Mister Dumont knocked on the door and he asked Mama if she needed help bolting everything down and she said that would be very nice.
Y’all thinking about leaving?
Naw, Mama said, too much hassle. We’ve been fine before.
You’re probably right, he said.
Folks always make something out of nothing and especially if they not from here. They don’t know.
You’re probably right he said again but Mister Dumont ended up driving away anyway. Through a knot in the wood I thought I saw him look back at me but he didn’t wave or nothing. I remember wishing I was in that car.
We slept in our car for a long time.
I sat in Mama’s lap on the drive home. This line and the one before it is very confusing; I thought they were at home?It wasn’t scary like leaving. It wasn’t raining so hard you couldn’t see. The sky wasn’t black like death like the middle of someone’s eyes. The whole wide world wasn’t screaming and coming down on you. It was just quiet. But that was scary too. Different scary.
The buildings had gone and gotten really old. Trash was every which way I could see. And now there was these big pieces of broken metal. And broken wood. And there was stuff so alien I couldn't even guess what it was supposed to be in the first place.
Mama where are all the trees?
So much stuff was missing it was confusing. Sometimes I thought I knew where we was but then stuff would look wrong again. I didn’t make sense. Why would somebody take telephone poles? What would you do with them? Maybe folks was making new houses with them.
Is all the houses bad like these ones, Mama?
I felt her muscles get all stiff and tense underneath me. When she didn’t answer I put my head against her and felt her heart thump. It was beating so fast. After some time she ran her fingers through my hair and that was nice. After some time she whispered Please, God. God didn’t say nothing back.
When we pulled up there wasn’t anybody. No people. There wasn’t no plants or trees or anything green and natural neither. If it wasn’t graffiti it was brown like Mama’s hand that was trembling in mine. We had to step over piles of garbage just to get close.
Where’s our front door?
I don’t know, she said softly.
The water mark on the walls was bigger up than my shoulders. It was still damp, too. The carpet was so soaked it was like walking in mud. Every step was slow and squishy and squirted water out underfoot. It was fun to walk in and I was happy not to be in that car anymore. I was happy that I was finally home. Mama let go of my hand and left me in the living room and I poked the carpet and created little pools of water with my fingers. this is a great para, you really nail the childness of the narrator
No. Lord, no.
What Mama? I asked. I didn’t know where she was.
No. No.
I found her in her room.
No, Mama kept repeating, no no no.
She was just sitting there and staring at this soggy book that was in her hands. She was turning pages that were warped and covered in fuzzy mold. They were gross.
Do you remember Mawmaw? she asked me without looking up.
Yes, Mama.
You remember what she looked like?
I thought hard. Mawmaw had met Jesus a long time ago when I was even littler. She would always hold me close and kiss me. She smelled really good. Her clothes always smelled like the kitchen. Gumbo. She made the best gumbo.
You remember her face?
Mawmaw had big black hair and painted nails. She was so much bigger than me. Big hands. But what did she look like? Did she look old? I couldn’t see her face.
No, I said.
Mama buried her face in her hands. She sobbed. The book was open on the floor and I looked but there wasn’t nothing there. Just blurred colors inside little squares. I asked her what was wrong but she wouldn't answer me.
Mama?
I tugged on her arm and she grabbed me. She told me that she loved me. She held me so tight that it hurt.
You have a solid premise here, but you sort of flub it by channelling it through the kid, because he's not the one feeling the emotion so it goes flat. I'm sure you could get the sort of dramatically ironic sorrow you're aiming for, but you need to do it some other way.
This is my submission for the sad story prompt.
Secrets of the cairn [650 words]
I am on a mission of utmost secrecy. There is something big out here, deep in the forest behind my childhood home. I like these two lines - they tell me enough to make me want to know more My father spoke about it, and the words a man chooses to speak when words are few and final and come hard through sighing breaths are assuredly of great importance. I repeat the conversation in my head as I inhale the musk of the trees, searching for clues:
Unfortunately this is flimflammy. Keep complicated constructions like this out of the first para, unless you absolutely need them.
“The woods, behind the house… you remember? Hiking. Our rock. The see-saw tree. All that?”
“Yes.”
Little was said before then, and little after this. So I conclude that there is something big out here. Something important, and something meant only for me. Not just the rock, the large boulder at the edge of the field we ate sandwiches on once, I passed that a while back, along with the fallen tree that lays over the stone wall and across the path. I made my inspection and did not find anything. There were no signs, no etchings, no X to mark a spot where lay buried a box of journals, notes, instructions. I recall detailing those landmarks on my printer-paper maps. I drew dozens of them, perfecting the cartography of these woods, even though I could walk them by memory alone. I had placed my own X’s on those maps, X’s where I had left Matchbox cars, GI Joes, or other pieces of some scheme I was constructing for myself. Those mysteries were solved long ago. But there remains one other waypoint, one more landmark among the trees here, and because the sun is sinking and the ferns are rising I bend low, counting the steps, but assuredly these paces account for two, maybe three of a child’s gait, so I am closer than I think-- I like the picture you're painting here. But words that do not help a story, hinder it.
And there it is. In shallow leaves on the gnarled and sprouting earth lies what remains of The Bridge Across the Brook. I recall helping build this simple crossing with him. I don’t remember why we did it, other than to have built a thing. It would only benefit me, though I imagined then there were perhaps other wayward travelers of these Uncertain Properties behind the neighborhood. So I watched as his axe made loud, smacking strikes against the bases of the choicest candidates, and then we dragged them to the brook, leaving our hands marred with pine-scars and pitch. Nine young pines, young back then anyway, laid down like candles, now snapped and peeling, gripped by mud and under weeds and hidden from most things. Nice.
It seems like there should be more fanfare in this, so I wait. I stand quite a while, watching the decaying logs in silence. A plane drones overhead; the sound of cars on the nearby road gusts through the branches and the reeds. The mud and stones of the brook, its water no longer flowing, would take me only a few stretching steps to cross now. I listen harder, to the spaces in between the trees, and stare into the darkness of their gathering farther out, where the path dwindles and where I was never allowed to go. The sun is gone now, and the forest is a sort of blue. I close my eyes. I listen for something big.
When I open my eyes again my throat is hard. I nod a few times, my acknowledgement to the unpresent, and turn back. I follow the barbed wire fence back to the old house, its windows glowing warm over the greying yard.
Someday, when my paths in the forest have faded out, and all these woods are razed to make the properties more numerous and certain, someone, some construction worker will find that cairn of rot, I expect. They will be perplexed by this sudden arrangement in the dense chaos of the trees, and wonder when and why and by whom it was put there, of all places, for the use of no one, and only I will know, and, I promise, I will tell them nothing. It belongs to us. I actually think you've said all you need to say without the last para.
I like the subtlety of the point you're putting across here, but you can afford to be a lot more honed. Still, a solid contender.
The Dance [862 words]
They spent their evenings dancing, never moving out of step, never faltering, never slowing. The nights were cold, and they found what warmth they could from each other, their clothes, now ragged and worn, offered little protection, but neither complained. This strikes a very elevated elegiac tone without really earning it.
Both had seen terrible cruelties, inflicted by people with twinkling eyes and kind smiles, people who looked like them, with sorrow on their lips but madness in their hearts, coldly following the orders of the great machine.
The great machine had raged its way through the countryside, destroying everything in its path. No happiness could exist under its jackbooted presence, only fear, and grief. No one was left untouched by its steely gaze.
The machine had come to their village several months ago. It had scorched the earth and taken the unworthy. They had hidden, enveloped by the velvet-dark forest, and the machine had passed them by.
They had seen, though. They saw how the machine tore through the village, burned down homes, violated men and women and children equally. Some, the machine took, some it simply used and left.
The people left behind were bitter, and afraid, and would not let them return to join them in the warmth. The people said they would bring the machine back upon those left behind. They, with their dark curls and dark eyes drew wrath. The people spat at him, and crossed themselves at the sight of her, warding off the curse she carried with her by accident of birth.
They could only come back under the comforting wing of darkness and guided by the kindly moon, to steal eggs and milk, dancing like motes of dust through the shafts of moonlight, lingering in the shadows to watch and listen, and creeping back to the forest to eat.
He would cook for her, and she would sing the songs they had learned from their mothers, so softly and sweetly that he thought the whole world would weep, if only they would hear her.
Sleep came more easily for him than for her, and she would spend the coldest hours pressed against him, her will to continue ebbing with each breath of sharp, night air.
Deepest winter came, and they knew it was time to move on. They walked, exhausted and starving, through the days and nights, their ears straining for any sound of the machine, until they reached the next village. The machine had left its gruesome calling card behind; twisted bodies littered the earth and beasts lay slaughtered and flyblown. All was silent. She waited, crouched like a wary animal, concealed in the undergrowth, while he picked his way through the trail of suffering to a barn with a wide open doorway. She watched, with held breath, as he slipped inside. Minutes passed, and she dared not move, until finally, he gestured for her to follow.
The barn had loose floorboards, covering an earthen floor. He dug a hollow, deep enough for both of them, replacing the boards above it. They took the clothes from the dead, lining the pit with them. They slept warmly within, a deep and dreamless sleep.
The morning brought a frost. He hurried, mouse-like, to the ramshackle buildings of the village, and mustered his courage to look through the shattered window of the cottage closest to the barn.
The occupants were dead, laid in a regimented row, each one with a neat bullet hole, a red flower blooming in each lapel. Beyond them, in the pantry, he saw great hanging hams and cured sausages. He stood, staring, his stomach betraying him, rumbling loudly. He slipped inside, and gingerly took down a ham. He knew she could not last without it. He felt the eye of God upon him, and prayed forgiveness. He crept throughout the house, searching for clothes and blankets, when a glint of light gave him pause. In the bedroom, lying on the bed, a haphazard pile of jewellery, watches, eyeglasses and gold coins, the sheer volume of which he had never before seen in his life. Beside it, neatly laid out papers bore the insignia of the machine.
His breath catching in his throat, he stumbled back through the house, all his grace forgotten, clutching the ham to his chest, stealing glances over his shoulder as he ran. The machine was coming.
He wrenched open the door of the barn, his hands slipping and dropping the meat in among the dead and the decay.
They lay together, in the pit, the boards carefully replaced above them, and held each other.
The machine came, as they knew it would. Boots outside. Voices, clipped and harsh, getting louder.
They lay still, and breathless.
The machine entered.
Voices shouted in a language they could not understand. The machine was tearing up the boards, one by one. Boots hammering, showering them with grit and dust and dirt.
He wiped away her tears, and held his hand tightly over her nose and mouth, and waited. She did not struggle.
Goodnight, my darling, goodbye, he said.
Light flooded the pit, and he was lifted, up and away into the cold embrace of the machine.
And the dance was over.
I didn't do any edits because it's competent enough prose, but there's a failure of anything actually happening. The characters are ciphers, so their death has no weight. You decided not to give them any dialogue which was a mistake, I think. Also the dance really isn't paid off. And why bother with all the 'machine' stuff, just call them Nazis; we do it all the time.
Sad story time, with macguffin
The Door
294 words
Jane and Wren are seventeen years old when Jane disappears for the first time. Jane is filling out a ballot for class superlatives. Most Likely to Succeed. Best Dressed. Most School Spirit. She almost pencils in her candidate for Best Smile when her body twists sideways and brings the school desk down on her neck.
In the hospital, Wren cries. Jane smiles. "Don't worry," she says. They hold hands. "I came back."
Wren and Jane are mirror images. As tots in matching dresses, clinging to one another's hands, the grownups all told them, "You must feel so lucky." They exchanged glances, and the grownups grinned and cooed.
From the top bunk at bedtime Jane sometimes said, "Don't shut the door." Wren, scoffing a little, would always comply.
Now the years pass and Wren calls it "stepping through the door." Because when this happens Jane is gone. Departed. Out the door. Wren is cradling Jane's head upright as her sister's body contorts. Incisors bite the soft lip. Wren cups Jane's chin. Her palm fills with blood.
Wren is used to counting now. Jane is gone, she knows. She waits for her to return. Jane stares at her. "Who are you?" she says, as Wren clenches her fingers, trying not to stain the couch.
"Do you understand?" she sometimes says, and Jane does not. "Stay here," she says, and Jane's body stays, as Wren washes her hands. And Wren sits with her, waiting, as Jane's eyes list along the ceiling. Waiting for the door to open.
"Where do you go?" Wren thinks of asking, and does not, when Jane returns. They cling to one another's hands. Their foreheads touch.
"Don't shut the door," Wren sometimes says, and, for now, as long as she understands, Jane complies.
This is a tight piece, and I have no specific edits, but I feel like it's missing an extra layer of metaphor or (preferably) action to really land its balletically precise punch. I think maybe the vagueness of that last sentence is the problem - it's very equivocal, and 'Jane complies' is weak. And not really sad, as my clumsy rodentine buddy observed.
Saddest story, written in worst prose.
to my wife (on our anniversary)
1000 words
I always thought I was a different kind of person. That I would love and love forever like I had when I was younger - that I would hummingbird between people and cities and families, whirling around in a perpetual cycle of new love. That I could not be settled.
Now I am settled with you. Now we are the picture of domesticity: we so easily and frequently, buying a bed together, hosting dinner parties. We on bicycles to the north pond in summer. Curled like smoke on the blanket, <= pro simile books for each and in the lull of our wandering minds between paragraphs, laughing dogs and ducks to watch. After summer, we in autumn cardigans and fuzzy eyes; we lacing fingers together loose like the threadbare sneakers we slip on. Cradling tomatoes at the market. Bouncing goodbye kisses off cheeks. this is kind of deliberately twee, but you pay it off nicely when it gets to the death bit
Before, long ago, we were what you're supposed to be before settled. Before we I was happy naked under thin blankets in your college bed. I rode the bus all night to you. I wrote you poetry and cried on the telephone. You got high, I got drunk, and we rocketed along, leaving sparkler trails through the nights behind us. Later you went to India. I moved into our first apartment alone. I had no parents; there were two flights of stairs; it was ninety degrees on the first of July. A coworker packed my boxes and bare mattress into his pickup, then later unpacked them. I had no words to thank him. I tried to say it by not asking his help hauling boxes. I shook and the blood thumped in my face and I did not vomit and hauled another load of books up another stair.
When the last of it was up I stood catching my breath, the coolness of the rooms like just-turned-up dirt. <= another one, you have a knack Fresh. Ready. The nicest place I had ever lived. I opened the box nearest me and began to settle in and was done with the last box before I stopped to eat.
I was alone in our apartment then.
You came back from India, packed up your childhood. We drove from your parents' house straight down the lake shore. After the boxes up the stairs and the suitcases in the corner and the shoes slipped off at the door - after all this we stood in the kitchen and marveled to have come home together, to acknowledge that home was now for two.
I have omitted certain facts, though, and home is for three.
There is not a ghost in our apartment but there is a death. There is your death. She sleeps curled beneath the chair at the desk we do not use. When you were fifteen you tried it the same way, with a rope and a stick and some good leverage. You are an engineer. You have tried it in our apartment. While I was at the market fondling produce or at work late sighing exaggeratedly. You have put a rope around your neck and a stick through a rope and then through the slats of the chair at the desk we do not use. And you changed your mind, disassembled it all before I was home; and you are still here, but so is your death.
She is in the kitchen, just around the wall, clicking a lighter once while you are outside smoking. She reminds me that someday, when ambient noise resolves into a lighter click again, I will be without you. Your death wears the pink lace dress you have not worn yet and may never wear. She is in the broadest clean part of the wood flooring, in the way the light strikes it at early afternoon on a lazy Sunday, in the promise of all the Sundays I will ever have that you may not.
I did not see her at first and then I saw her in her entirety, in her promise and malice, in your daily silences and stares and lank hair on unwashed pillowcases. In these small signifiers but also in the greater tide of it, in the way a year has slipped past. All our quiet domesticities barely break the surface before losing to the current. I am fighting but you are not and your death breaks the tie. She is a mermaid weaving a bed of seaweed. She sings to you from the drain in the bathtub while you hate your face in the mirror. She promises dreamless sleep, a home at the bottom of the waterfall. Your crushed body will turn bioluminescent and rival the stars from the bottom of the lake.
Who am I with my voice cracking and drying to dust in the sun? Who am I, calling you back to a ground that still shakes beneath me? The nicest place I have ever lived holds an orphan, a death, and a wound.
You split open before me every night and I am ashamed to admit that I do not always mend you. Sometimes I try and fail. Sometimes I try to fail deliberately, as if I can provoke you into anger or fear, into anything beyond your desire for her. Sometimes I succeed and for an hour or a day we are there again, two alone in the bower of trees at the pond, pointing out herons; we are there in the parking lot with our foreheads together promising to each other. Sometimes we are there but always we return home. Always you sink fetal into her embrace. I settle and sigh like continental plates, feel the rawness at my edges. We are fused together in pressure and fire. I am married to you and you are married to her.
At night, in the nicest place I have ever lived, in the bed we chose together, we lie with our backs to each other. A space/a presence between. The future rustles through my dreams like a soft wind carrying the scent of funereal lilies. hoooo tight tight tight
As someone noted this skirts the poetry/prose divide and I'd like to see how you write when you're not doing that, but a very strong story.
The Cnidarian Question (936 words) Wut.
Thousands of miles of bone covered by a coloured skin, slowly turning the bleached whiteness of death. The sky screamed infernally overhead burning deeper and deeper through the ancient reef. I AM ZOGDOR THE SCREAMING SKY I COME FROM INFERNUS, LAND OF HELL It was the time. Unknowing, each mouth kissed the sea, releasing motes out from their stomachs that drifted into the ongoing storm happening beneath the foam. The cells that caught one another began to change, drifting down far from where they began onto a sheet of rock. The polyp grew a mouth and began to grow another, attached by a tiny membrane. And these copies would go on to grow another copy. With identical mouths they snared plankton, reaching upwards on a limestone skeleton towards the shifting sky. This is way too involuted for an opening para dude. You're leaping and screaming and turning and drifting and snaring idek
In it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS borders there was a creature making it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.
The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily poo poo was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.
On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.
Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.
The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.
The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's IT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it'sIT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it'sIT'S IS ONLY EVER SHORT FOR IT IS life ended. But then again, neither could we.
Yeeeeeup that's some quality nature documentarying. Also melodramatic, overcomplicated and ploddy. Next time write about people talking to each other imo. Oh and 'it's'? Only ever short for 'it is'.
Time to lose!
Civil War (911 words)
Eleven days. It had been eleven days since Joseph had known safety. Eleven days on the road, eleven days tending to this infant. Joseph knew the baby was starving. He only wished he could do something. Weak start. If you find yourself writing 'he only wished he could do something', then delete it and have your character actually do something.
“What's your child's name?”
“He's not mine,” Joseph said. The soldier by his side leaned over and smiled at the infant in his arms. Joseph jerked away, waking the baby. The baby's wails reached every pair of ears in the convoy. These days it was hard to trust anyone in uniform. Though, nobody in this unit did anything abhorrent yet. Joseph let the soldier have a look. “I just found him-”
“On the street, in his dead mother's arms, as you were fleeing the city, right?” The soldier tried tickling the child's nose. The iron on his finger on scratched the delicate skin, escalating the child's protests. “Sorry,” the soldier said. Joseph was too busy rocking the boy back and forth to hear. He shuffled away from the soldier. Toxic, all of them.
The soldier fished for something in his pouches. He retrieved a banana, a bit misshapen from the days of marching. “Here.”
“You think he can eat this?”
“It's for both of you. If he can't eat it, you need the strength.” The soldier forced it into Joseph's hands. “The name's Morgans. Trooper Morgans. Don't worry, we'll be at Hillcrest by the evening. Promise. Imperial honor.”
Joseph snatched the fruit away from Morgans' hands. As little as Joseph trusted him, soldiers had easier ways to kill a refugee. Joseph tried to play a game, waving the banana through the air like a toy and landing it in the baby's mouth. The only metaphor he could craft was a spear sailing towards its target. How grisly.
Dozens of iron-clad bodies rattled at once. Morgans' too, standing at attention in an instant. Joseph had no time to think. He gasped, feeling a cold hand grab him by the wrist. Something else cold was shoved into his hand.
“Defend yourself if necessary.” As Joseph looked down at the knife he held as a spear sailed by his head. Joseph did the only thing a sane man could do. Throwing himself at the ground, he kept his head low. Shrieks from the baby's lungs complemented the battle cries of dying soldiers. War was in the air, and all Joseph could do was wait for it to end.
Something heavy fell on top of his back. With a grunt, Joseph tried to take his mind away. Maybe he could act like a real father and comfort the baby. In a hushed voice, he tried singing the only song he knew.
“Listen children, to a story
That was written long ago
Of the kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore
They'd have it for their very own”
Blood oozed down the sides of his face. Trying to ignore the corpse on top of him, he kept singing. The spears repeatedly jabbing into whatever body was shielding him made that difficult. At least the baby's cries became laughter, like the rocking of their bodies was some kind of game. As he nearly finished his song, another voice cut off the last line.
“We've secured the hostages,” it yelled across the plains. With the sounds of fighting no longer in his ears, Joseph wanted to move. He could barely budge with the armored body pinning him down. Eventually, something threw the weight off his back and Joseph rolled over.
“Arming civilians, to make us think they're combatants. The insurgents will stoop to anything,” the new soldier grumbled as he snatched the knife by Joseph's side. The soldier's hands pulled Joseph to his feet. Joseph could only look to the body, face down and punctured with a hundred holes, wondering if that was Morgans who tried to save him. He'd never know.
“You're safe now,” the soldier said. His accent was thick, but Joseph could still understand most of the words. “The insurgent army won't be hiding behind you anymore.” Without asking, the soldier's armored hands beat at Joseph's rags, trying to shake off the dirt. “We'll get you to the nearest refugee camp, and you'll be absolutely safe there. Promise. Imperial honor.”
“How far is Hillcrest?” Maybe this one's second opinion would bring better news, Joseph reasoned. The soldier's answer brought no hope.
“No, Hillcrest is held by the insurgents. They'll use you as a hostage there. We need to march to Shield's Valley.” The man wasn't even looking at Joseph anymore. He looked back and forth, barking the occasional order at his fellow soldiers.
“How long...” Joseph trailed off. Somehow, he knew he wouldn't like the answer.
“Eleven days. Nine, if we make good time.” The soldier spouted off the words like it was no big deal. It probably wasn't to him. To Joseph, it may as well have been an eternity. The soldier leaned in towards Joseph's body, smiling at the infant in his arms. “What's his name?” the soldier asked with a chuckle. He held out his hand. “You can call me Lieutenant Morgans.”
“Get away from me.” Joseph cradled his son as he leered back.
Eleven days. Another eleven days before Joseph could be safe again.
Okay, the writing here is tolerable, but it's not really a story. Have your next character risk somethign and overcome obstacles to achieve something. And a complete failure of sadness, ofc.
sebmojo fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Oct 24, 2013
|