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I realized I was writing madmax fanfic and I hope I can get this new one done before docbeard wakes up.
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Jun 13, 2015 09:21
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SkaAndScreenplays posted:I realized I was writing madmax fanfic soooo thunderdome??
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Jun 13, 2015 09:22
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SkaAndScreenplays posted:I realized I was writing madmax fanfic and I hope I can get this new one done before docbeard wakes up. this is kinda sloppy. your protag is pretty bland, and there's no story to speak of. He has a motivation, but it's just your character stating that he needs to do something but idk why. who is this docbeard, and why does the protag have to make a new thing? i dont know the stakes and this is just mostly telling. also submitting without a title and a word count just shows you dont care about your story. sorry for critting before judgment, i hope this doesnt sway your decisions judges
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Jun 13, 2015 10:31
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 Signups are closed. Sadly, this constitutes sleeping in for me, so y'all have til a little earlier on this on Monday to get your stories in. Given how good some of you are at reading, I look forward to seeing what you have to write.
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Jun 13, 2015 12:12
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docbeard posted:Sadly, this constitutes sleeping in for me Good god. You're one of those productive people aren't you?
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Jun 13, 2015 13:04
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Sitting Here posted:Signups are a different thing than submissions. Mr. Cab actually has all weekend to perfect his peerless prose. It's me, I'm the idiot. Sorry Mr. Cab!
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Jun 13, 2015 15:53
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Bad Seafood posted:HOMEWORK: The Emperor of Madness returns home to help his daughter with a math assignment in 400 words. Knowledge is Madness Prompt: The Emperor of Madness helps his daughter with her homework Words: 400 Emperor Xihilixchaubrihimicokikuk -- or simply Chuck -- was at his wits' end. He had come upon the one thing even his all-encompassing intellect couldn't comprehend, the one thing even madness could not engulf. "Common core?! What is this?" He writhed into a dozen gruesome shapes, shifting through the colors of the spectrum, even those invisible to all but the mighty mantis shrimp, a creature whose multifaceted eyes could see past the gray, dreary world of man. "It's simple," said Carmen, 5th grader and Daughter of Madness. "You only have to..." Chuck wailed as her words tore at his psyche, every syllable twisting into a frothing homunculus that gibbered at the core of his being. "Enough!" Chuck sobbed from the floor, his hideous and unknowable form curled into a fetal position, the floundering tentacle that was his thumb jammed into the puckered, tooth-lined sphincter of his mouth. "You recalled me from the wastes of So'Yurkctch for this?!" "Daddy," Carmen said softly but sternly, "you know Mrs. Hernandez said you and Mommy have to..." she paused and squinted her eyes in concentration as she recalled her teacher's words, "...'take a more active role in her, uhm, my education.'" Chuck clambered to the vibrating pseudopods he used for locomotion and tilted the undulating crystalline fractal structure that served as his head. "But your grades are excellent! You're at the top of your class!" "You guys are always working! Mommy's always doing her realtor stuff and you're always on the edge of human consciousness!" Carmen's lips pursed and she looked away. "It's like you don't even care." Chuck felt shame eat at the core of his being. He gently laid a clawed foreleg on her little shoulder and chittered soothingly. "Honey, times are tough. You can't support a household by yourself anymore, and with your little brother on the way your mother had to take a job to make ends meet, and..." Carmen pulled away, and thirty of Chuck's howling stomachs twisted at his little girl's tears. Chuck sighed, his vacuoles gurgling with acidic pus. "That's no excuse to ignore you." Chuck pulled his daughter to his loathsome form and gave her a loving hug. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I promise we'll pay more attention to you." "You really promise?" She looked up with teary brown eyes. Chuck nodded. "Good!" she said, brightening. "And now for the second question!" Chuck whimpered.
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Jun 13, 2015 17:58
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Screaming Idiot posted:Knowledge is Madness
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Jun 13, 2015 20:01
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Hank Armstrong: Metalsaur Slayer Prompt: Summer Blockbuster Words: 1495 "...the entire horse, Armstrong! The entire goddamn horse! You're off the force! Gimme your badge and gun!" Hank Armstrong grimly tossed his gun and his badge onto the chief's desk and favored him with a sneer. Hank had a face like a fist, crisscrossed with scars and stubble. "They was holdin' me back anyways." Hank took a swig from the beer he held in a hand that looked more like a calloused, hairy ham than an actual human appendage. "Get out of my office." The chief glared coldly for a moment, then averted his gaze. Nobody stared at that man-sized colossus without risking radiation burns from his sheer masculine power. Hank did so, forgetting to open the door. He left a Hank-shaped hole in the bulletproof glass. The chief sighed. "That door is coming out of your pay!" *** Deep in a subterranean cavern beneath the Hudson river, a madman ranted. "Zhey can do no-zhing to shtop us," said Braun von Wurstaburger, Chinese terrorist mastermind. "Und ve shall take zhe schity fur our own! Ve shall be zhe rulers! Ozzer schities shall beg us for mercy!" Braun turned toward a massive bulb filled with glowing green fluid; glowing eyes glared from within. Braun coolly adjusted his lederhosen as he studied his reflection in the glass. "My beast vill trample zhem! Und you, my friends, vill reap zhe benefits!" "Yo, Braun, how we know your monster under control, mang?" asked Guinness O'Malley with a quaver of his jowls. He was the leader of the most prominent Irish gangs in New York, and he never lost his old country brogue. As if on cue, the bulb cracked and leaked phosphorescent mutagenic fluid. A low, gurgling roar reverberated throughout the cavern, and Braun turned back toward the group with a gulp and a gentle adjustment of his thin spectacles. "...zhat is a very good kves-chun." *** Hank sat on top of his apartment building's roof, a six-pack in one hand, a bullet in the other. He juggled it between sausages fingers, a cigar smoldering between his lips. He admired the glint of the sun across the brassy surface and flipped it into the air, and in certain costly venues the audience would make soft sounds of amazement as it slowly whirled and glistened in eye-romancing 3D. Hank looked out onto the horizon and sighed as he saw the silhouette of immense monster outlined in the light of the setting sun. His eye twitched as its roar reached him like a sonic boom, and he nearly missed the bullet as it fell from the air. "Daddy?" Caitlin Armstrong, Hank's daughter, padded onto the roof and touched his beefy shoulder with a small, pale hand. "Mommy says there's a monster out there." "Yeah," Hank said, gently turning her back with a gap-toothed smile of encouragement marred only by the faintest of twitches in his left eye when the far-off beast let loose another ear-busting jet engine roar. "But don't you worry -- it ain't nothing." As little Caitlin went back down the stairs, Hank got to his feet and looked at the beers in his hand with disgust and threw them off the side of the building. "The time for beer is over," he said to nobody in particular. "The time for vengeance is now." After a moment's deliberation, he added: "Maybe I can make room for beer and vengeance." He leapt off the side of the building and caught his beer in mid-fall, then landed on a conveniently placed car, which exploded in a nova of broken glass and smoke and flame. A nearby child roasted marshmallows and waved his thanks to Hank. Hank grinned and fist-bumped the kid, accidentally hurling him into a convenient pile of cardboard boxes. Hank grinned. He loved giving back to the community. "My car!" Hank climbed out of the wreckage and took a deep drink of his beer, and spat out a chunk of broken glass. He turned toward the owner of the former car and shrugged. "Sorry, chief. But gravity is the only law I obey." The chief sighed, returning Hank's gun and badge. "Here. The beast has already devoured the military. If you don't arrest that monster, the president will nuke New York. The mayor's on my rear end; nuclear bombs are bad for tourism!" "Thanks, Obama," muttered Hank as he re-lit his cigar on the remnants of the chief's car. *** The beast surveyed the city -- his city, he corrected -- and gave a toothy reptilian grin of satisfaction. He admired the gleaming glass panes of distant corporate buildings, inhaled the mixed aromas of the myriad of multicultural eateries of the city -- his city -- and felt the warmth of the summer sun segue into the sultry humid night. He thrashed his tail and accidentally knocked down a newspaper stand. He grumbled. When I'm elected mayor, the beast thought, my first change will be to make these streets friendlier to the differently-abled, Annoyances aside, the beast loved his city, and he showed that love the best way he could -- by dancing to the unconscious rhythm of the city's heartbeat. His huge metal-shod feet crushed cars and small buildings, oversized steel talons tore shreds of stone and steel from nearby skyscrapers, and his roars were carrion-scented thunder. A new song drifted through the air, and the beast lifted one finned ear toward the source. Music. New music! Finally, a soundtrack for his campaign! One luminescent eye spied its source -- a burly man on a motorcycle, beer in one hand, badge in the other, a gun in his teeth. He somehow steered with his knees. A friend! Did they find his purpose? Did they learn that he had come to rule them? That was why he was created, of course. Pity he hadn't realized it until he'd eaten the jolly little Chinese man, but he promised to add his family to the new orphans and widows' fund proposal he'd sketched out on a convenient billboard. It was ready for review, though it lacked was his signature. He was embarrassed to admit he didn't yet have a name; he'd eaten his creator before he learned it. An orange blush glowed on scaled cheeks as he worried. "Your reign of terror is over, Metalsaurus Wrecks! I'm putting you away for disorderly conduct!" then man shouted around his mouthful of authority. The beast was pleased; he had a name! He was... what was it? Mayorsaurus Rex? He almost chuckled -- "rex" was already Latin for "king," and he wasn't a king, but merely a public servant! But he didn't complain. "Always a pleasure to see New York's finest on patrol!" the newly christened Mayorsaurus tried to say, but all that came out was a searing beam of orange-green plasma. drat. He'd have to do something about that speech impediment. That could cost him votes. *** Hank grit his teeth around his gun as he dodged the searing line of biological plasma that erupted from the monster's iron-toothed maw. He narrowed his brows until they looked like a pair of shy caterpillars meeting for a first kiss. "If you think bad breath is gonna beat me," he snarled somewhat incoherently around his gun, "then you got another thing coming. I let my Chihuahua kiss me every morning. Do you know where that tongue's been?" There was another gout of plasma, and a sweep of that steel-spiked tail; its tip collided with the motorcycle's front wheel and Hank leapt off the exploding wreck with a nimbleness that would have brought tears to the eyes of anyone watching. Even the beast looked impressed. Hank spat the gun into the air, chugged the rest of his beer, threw the can into a miraculously sturdy recycling bin, caught the gun, and hit the broad part of the tail running. The beast's bio-metallic scales provided a perfect foothold, and its thrashing couldn't dislodge Hank. "The law is the most potent force in the universe," Hank spat, bringing his badge upward. "Even more potent than gravity!" Hank leapt high into the air and stabbed his badge point-downward onto the top of the beast's horned skull. "You have the right to remain dead!" There was a booming roar, then an explosion of white-hot plasma as the beast's skull collapsed into its spine, and then another explosion as the rest of the body went. *** Marla Armstrong sat, worried for her husband. He'd been gone for hours, and she heard explosions. Then there was a crash as Hank fell through the ceiling, his clothing torn, his brow short a caterpillar, his badge melted. But he had landed in his Marla's lap, and he was fine. "I think I need to retire," Hank said after a while. "No need," Marla said softly, holding Hank tightly. "The chief wants the badge and gun back." "That's the third time this week," Hank groaned. "Damned horse."
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Jun 14, 2015 01:58
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Thank you. 
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Jun 14, 2015 02:04
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Potential 1081 words + 83 vocal + 300 penalty for vocal = 1464 words "My mother told me as a child to stop making faces; this idea that a simple action overdone may have irreversible consequences." "Pardon, Sir?" "It's a metaphor Benjamin, about your unwillingness to learn. You refute any and all criticism, deflecting it with allusions to a single past event." This is a conversation we've had before, him and I. I judged him in his attempt to enter to this career, a nepotism entry of the finest, allowing him in on the smallest of margins. Told him at his ceremony, rather offhandedly, that he 'had potential'. Everybody has potential, it's a meaningless concept to state like that. I, to this day, wish I had gone with my own judgement and denied him instead. The superiors, however, have advanced him along the ranks, covering his rear end with too many ended careers to count. I woke with a start. My headboard was shaking again. "Just a test Rock, go back to..." I paused, there were no tests scheduled. We were in the middle of diplomatic problems. Launching any now would easily end the talks and send us to war, test or no. I stormed into the control room for our silo, "Whose authorization was that launch under!?" "General Sneke's sir." "Not this again", I thought. 'General' Sneke was my old hire made a manifest nightmare. Now equal in rank to me, he often played politics with our jobs. He had never gone and done something so foolhardy, however. "Why are we doing tests now!?", nobody here could answer, simply following their orders, "We're in the middle of talks over these things, we can't be jeopardizing" I noticed that the displays were showing targets all over the world, a far cry from our usual tests. These were akin to an Armageddon launch. "I'm the commander of this silo, I'll make the decisions I will General Rock." I spun to see him, now sporting a third star. He had climbed in rank through his connections again, this time in mere weeks. "We're going with the Commander's suggestions. They can have their diplomacy, we will show them why we don't need it. We'll show them we can bathe the world in the glow." I just stared agape. "Not actually doing it old man, simply showing the capability. Regardless, I'm sensing some hostility to this idea. Security, remove the general if you would." I had no weapon, and no rank to push, so I went with the security. No sooner had we left the room, then it's large blast doors shut, locking us out. The guard on my left radioed in, wanting to see why. He got only a reply of a short scream and a gunshot before being cut off. The halls went red, the emergency lights had come on. There was another tremor, and then one more. The guards were now radioing and banging on the door about what was going on. I took this opportunity to run off for the engineering hall, all I needed was a console, any one. Getting in was a mess, nearly being trampled by the people running out. The tremors were now coming every 10 or so seconds. He had straight up explained his plan, locked me out and done them, what else could it be? I worked on the console as fast as I could, desperately trying to open the blast doors, when I saw them open on a nearby video screen. I grabbed a pistol on the desk and headed back. Running back, I came across an empty hallway. The guards were gone, and the room from what I could see from here was empty. I ran in, I just had to get to the controls and stop further launches, maybe it hadn't gotten to.. *THUD* I was stopped short by a rifle butt to my face. Sneke was there, he had just been hiding. "What are you doing!?", I managed to sputter out through the blood from my mouth. "Simply what I was hired to. You don't bring in anyone who gives an air of greatness, they monitor those. You just make up a rich young.." I took this opportunity to draw my weapon. "Ohhh, hoho, got yourself a piece in that short time huh." "Whatever I need to do to" "Stop this? Old man, I opened those doors. I'm not about to let you in if you can stop poo poo gently caress all. The last one launched as I hit you." I held the pistol at him as I realized what this meant. "Every one of those warheads has already done it's job, those new ones reach their targets in seconds, even across the globe. Now come on, I hate you, for sure, but the higher ups want you alive for some reason. I'm supposed to take you to the bunker before we leave this burning husk to rot while we wait it out." I couldn't move, I couldn't think even. The world was easily under huge clouds of ash and smoke, most people easily dead, especially if this was a coordinated effort. This silo had over 3000 ready missiles at all times, just on it's own. "Alright Rock, you're senile mind's had enough time to process. Newsflash, you can't stop them. Now come on. "No, you're right", I spat out some blood from my wound, "Even I can't stop those after they leave the silo hole." "Good to hear you've admitted it, now get your rear end in the bunker and we'll see what we do wi.." Cutting him off, "But I can launch more." He stared for a bit, wondering if I'd gone mad, finally sputtering out through laughter, "Oh, crabby old man Rock wants to blow the civvies up even harder? Hah! Okay, do it. There isn't going to be poo poo left either way." Finally reaching the console I'd been gunning for this whole time, I entered my code, the details and authorized the launch. The destination came up on screen; it only took him the seconds till the launch was under way to notice the target. "Woah old timer, all at the same spot. Who pissed you o...", trailing as he recognized the spot. The bunker was strong, but 100 warheads were, how you say, very convincing. "Wait, no. No. You loving INSANE BASTARD.", he yelled, bringing his weapon back up. "I can't stop the end. I can just make it equal." I saw him pull the trigger as the flames engulfed us both...
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Jun 14, 2015 20:35
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Baptism of Blood 1504 Words So, you know the whole story about Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland? He converted the King of Ireland to Christianity. Then everyone else followed. Well, I want to tell you a story, one I found while studying at the library at Maynooth College, where the priests train. So, are you ready? ¦¦¦ It was dark and stormy that night on Tara. The cold rain lashed at the door like a wild animal, scrabbling to enter. Everyone jumped when they heard the knocking, the banging at the door sounding as though the fairy-folk themselves were at the gate. Fiachra, the doorman on duty, rose to his feet wearily. He had been on duty for several hours already and had been thinking happily of his wife waiting for him at home. He opened the door wide to see what all the hammering was about. There stood an old man, bent over and bundled in a large woolen cloak. He was sodden with the rain. Fiachra quickly ushered him in, shutting the heavy door behind him. “Go there, sit yourself down. We’ll get you some stew to warm your bones after a night like that.” The old man just nodded his thanks, carefully lowering himself onto the bench with a sigh. The serving boy, Benignus, ran to get the stew. Fiachra was a gentle man but wouldn’t like to make a guest wait. That would be improper under the King’s roof. No-one bothered the old man either as he loudly slurped his stew, wiping his chin with his sleeve. Let the man eat in peace. Any news would come in time. The serving-boy sat opposite him, his young age giving him a trite more freedom. Benignus tried to peer under the heavy hood but could see nothing but indistinct features. He did make out some letters though, stenciled onto the man’s knuckles. On the right hand, “G-O-D-’S” and on the left “L-O-V-E”. His eyes widened at seeing them, causing the old man to pause and put down the now-empty bowl. In a hushed voice, the old man spoke to the nearest guard. The broad shouldered warrior shook his head and leant in closer. “I can’t hear you, old man, speak up. The night is wild and the storm carries your voice from me.” Again the old man spoke, this time louder. So loud in fact that all present heard it. “Bring me to the King.” At this, Fiachra turned. “It is late and the King is resting. Pray, wait until the morning.” The old man in his cloak again made his request, his voice loud enough to be heard through the long hall. “Nay, good sir! The King sleeps. Wait, we ask, ‘tis not long ‘til morning now. Then your audience will be granted.” “Patrick will not wait for King Laeghaire.” At the old man’s words, a deathly silence fell upon the guards. Heads turned and jaws clenched. Suddenly, several guards shot to their feet, hands on sword pommels, half-drawn daggers held tightly. Patrick, the man who had eaten with them and shared their stew shook his head. His voice was quiet but it cut through the room. “Let it be remembered that I came here in peace.” He stood, throwing the heavy steaming cloak from his shoulders as he did so, revealing his broad muscular back. His arms were decorated with green triskeles and his visage was fierce in the firelight. His eyes were wild as he raised his heavy wooden crosier above his head and growled at the guards. It was as though the storm itself raged in that room then. Men lurched at Patrick and he flung them away, bloodied and beaten, their screams cut short by crunching of bones. The great table was smashed in his throes, his legendary taste for battle showing now as his staff smashed skulls and breastplates alike. Men died in gurgles of blood and the straw-covered floor ran wet with it. Watching fearfully, the boy cowered in the corner as warrior after brave warrior flung himself at the dreadful dervish and met their gory end. Soon, none stood to oppose Patrick. Even kindly Fiachra who had only wanted to hold his wife one more time lay still, his head at an impossible angle to his body. A silence descended on the room. The servant boy trembled, afraid to look but too afraid to run. A guard cried out, gasping for breath. The heavy crosier swung down, ending his pain with a sickening thud. Then, from within, King Laeghaire came forward, his war oils reflecting the firelight. “You killed my finest men. You despoiled my house. You were made welcome and this is how you repay me?” “This is not your house unless God gives you leave to live.” Laeghaire strode forward, stepping over his bodyguard. Men in their prime, cut down like stalks of grass. He dragged his huge sword Cumhacht behind him. “Do you know this sword, Patrick of Britain? This sword is Cumhacht, Power, Will. I won this throne with it. Do you expect me to throw it at your feet?” Patrick eyed the King impassively, only speaking after a minute. “No, Wood-King, I want you to see it as what it is. It is Laige, weakness, failing. It is nothing.” “Must we fight, Patrick? Must we destroy this land?” “This land is dying, Laeghaire. You stand in the darkness and only I can bring the light.” The King raised Cumhacht and pointed it at Patrick. “Come then, demon, let me show you the old power.” The heavy sword swung in a great arc, the metal seeming to hum in the silent room. At the last moment, Patrick twisted and brought up his staff to meet it, metal digging into oak and stopping it short. He wrenched and pulled the King off balance but not enough for the great fighter. The King’s shoulder clanged into the green-tattooed mountain of a man, shoving him backwards. Patrick slammed a huge fist into Laeghaire’s face, smashing his nose. However, the King was strong, his strength borne of years of toil and training. He flinched but didn’t go down, instead he grabbed hold of Patrick and heaved him sideways onto the floor. The two, bereft of weapons, tussled on the floor, an unstoppable force versus an immoveable object. Any remaining furniture went flying as the two behemoths slammed fists and feet into each other, wrestling for dominance. Just as one would seem to be gaining, the other would turn the tables and then have the upper hand. Soon though the two were sweating and panting, the mighty fight taking its toll. Eventually, Patrick managed to push Laeghaire away, far enough to reach his crosier. Swinging it, he knocked the large King onto the ground where he pinned him with the end of the oaken staff. “I have won” he panted, “Kneel to your God.” “Never” the King’s head shook. “I can serve no gods but my own.” Laeghaire’s voice sounded weaker, small in the roar of the storm outside. Enraged, Patrick spun around, the heavy staff a blur in his hands. For a moment, Laeghaire thought he had met his doom and he closed his eyes. But no, Patrick instead brought the curved Crosier down onto Cumhacht lying on the ground a few feet away. The oak met metal and shattered it, the King’s sword breaking into fragments no greater than a man’s finger. Then Patrick said to Laeghaire, “Unless you believe now, you shall die quickly, for God’s anger will come on your head.” When the King heard those words he became very afraid. “For me,” he said, “belief in God is better than what you threaten to me, that I and my people shall be killed.” The druids were right, this man would take everything from him. He collapsed. Patrick turned to leave, a disgusted look on his face. At the doorway, the serving boy still lay curled, surrounded by carnage and gore. His sobs filled the air and Patrick’s ears. “Remember this boy,” his gesture took in the broken room and broken King “this is the age of the True God. The darkness shall be banished and I am the fire that brings the new light. Be my disciple and you will be saved. Do not cry. I am freeing you from the night.” Pulling his heavy cloak back onto himself, his back stooping under the weight, he opened the door and went into the storm again, once more a bent old man leaning heavily on a walking stick. ¦¦¦ You see, the church hid this story, buried it under rhetoric and family-friendly preachings. They subverted this account of an ancient day in March, 433. So the next time you see Old Saint Patrick at the top of that parade, remember this story. Oh and the one about how he got rid of all the snakes? Well, let's just say that the church fancied that one up too. But that, my dear friend, is a story for another time.
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Jun 14, 2015 22:31
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Honour Among Thieves, or Two Short Fights And Some Filler 1,488 words Edit: Consigned to the archive just in case. theblunderbuss fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Jun 14, 2015 22:56
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The Early Days of a Wetter Nation 1490 Words My mother never talked about my father, so I spent my childhood entertaining fantastic ideas of what he might have been: acrobat, reclusive author, Robin Hood hacker. As a young adult, after mom had passed and taken that secret with her, my guesses were more cynical: convict, addict, harassing boss. At no point did I ever imagine that my father was the King of Atlantis. Maybe it should have been obvious. I remember being able to hold my breath underwater for a very long time. One time I tried to find out how long. The lifeguard panicked, thought I was drowning, and dragged me out of the pool. I didn't swim much after that, and when I did I never stayed under for long. Eventually I started believing that he just overreacted. I knew I couldn't hold my breath longer than anyone else. I didn't believe it, at first. They had papers and a crown and a photograph of a man who, I had to admit, bore a strong resemblance to my reflection, but, well, mermaids and mermen? They had to drag me off to the beach and hold me underwater for half an hour before I even started to take the whole thing seriously. Merfolk don't actually have fish tails instead of legs. Those are special pants, for swimming and maintaining neutral buoyancy. A few centuries ago they probably looked like big fish tails, and were probably made from them. Today's version looks like half a wetsuit with the legs fused together. The only real difference between merfolk and other humans is the ability to live underwater: breathing water, filtering out salt, and handling extreme cold and pressure. Mom was a mermaid too, I found out, so I had all of the relevant genes. There wasn't much tying me down on the surface. As far as I'm concerned the only advantage Monarchy has over any political system is that when the leader dies there isn't a war to find out who's in charge. The downside is that when a royal line runs that war can happen anyway. I was my father's only child, so it sounded like their choices were down to me or civil war. I said goodbyes to roommates and friends with an almost true story about a job offer from a relative in another state, and started the long swim down to 'my' Kingdom. The Kings of Atlantis have a theoretically unbroken chain of ancestry all the way back to the people who were in charge of that disaster. Atlantis is long gone, though, wrecked beyond use and sunk to depths deeper than even merfolk can go. The merfolk live in cities built in huge submerged caves, and venture out into the sea around to hunt or scavenge or play. Modern Atlantean, as an underwater language, uses a completely different set of sounds than English or any other surface language, sounds I was unaccustomed to distinguishing and even less prepared to make. It took more than a year before I managed to reach a twenty-word tourist vocabulary. One of the Councilors knew English in written form, so we could communicate using a repurposed dive computer. I quickly learned to distrust his translations. During that year, the first priority, according to the Council, was selecting a name for me. Even if it had been pronounceable in Atlantean, Gene Hill wasn't a suitable name for a King. I decided to take my father's name, changing the equivalent of 'II' to 'III'. It was a controversial decision. His brief disappearance caused a major stink at court. Returning without his Queen and heir made it worse, and refusing to remarry was to many of the elite the final straw. The common people still loved him, according to the translated word of one councilor. The second priority was to find me a wife. The daughters of every connected merperson around were paraded before me. They were not unattractive, but I couldn't see marrying any of them. The pressure continued, with less influential merchant's daughters, mermaids who bore strong resemblances to women in my past, and great beauties among the commoners. Finally, I insisted on a bride who at least could read and write English. There were a few, mostly among the computer technicians who handled the Kingdom's shadow commerce with the surface world. There are more than twice as many mermaids as mermen. All of the aristocrats are mermen. Nearly all of the well-regarded jobs were held by mermen as well. Computer work was untraditional, and thus low-status, so the programmers were mostly women. I met with several, and hit it off with one. The wedding was far more extravagant than my coronation had been. On our wedding night, my wife warned me against consummating the marriage. Making minimal use of our dive computer, which she knew was being monitored, we communicated mostly through charades. As soon as I had produced an heir, even a daughter, she let me know, we would both be assassinated. The Council would find an infant monarch far more easily controlled than one who had been exposed to liberal surface values. There was a limit to how long we could go without producing a child before they would attempt to replace her. A year and a half into our marriage, by which time we were both comfortably in love, we decided we had stalled as long as we could. By then I had discovered my father's last message, and we had the beginnings of a plan. I learned a lot more Atlantean during that time, keeping most of my proficiency to myself. I learned a lot about how the Kingdom worked, or didn't work. The Council ran everything, and did not have much need for a King. They waited five years after my father died before they even began looking for me, in fact. The common people, for some reason, adored the pomp of the royal family, and so they kept it around and formally powerful to placate the masses. There was tremendous wealth under the water, mostly in the form of gold or artifacts from long-lost shipwrecks. That wealth could easily be turned into anything that can be bought online and delivered to a convenience store locker near a beach. Rather than improving the condition of the average merperson, that wealth did nothing but enrich the very richest mermen, the Council and their cronies. Even with all that wealth, they were still greedy for more. There were constant motions to attempt to salvage nuclear warheads from sunk submarines, for sale on the black market. Stopping these schemes from going forward was one of the few things I was able to accomplish as monarch, and that only because half of that group was sane enough reject them. There was a secret passage out of the Palace. It was how my father had left. His message detailed where it was and when it could be safely used. In laminated pages of notes left in a hidden compartment in the royal bed, he explained his actions. He apologized for not coming back to me and my mother. His escape from his mindeers once could be explained as corruption, negligence, or luck, but if they knew he could leave at will they'd have torn the building apart until they learned how he did it . He knew that I'd need it eventually. When my wife was three months pregnant, just beginning to show, we made our move. We'd timed our escape perfectly, leaving behind everything we owned. Anything could have had a bug or tracker in it. We took nothing but underwear, borrowed swimming tails, and traveling rations. We swam for days before we reached shore. From there things got easy, with a locker full of clothing and other supplies waiting for us and ample bank accounts and credit lines prepared. We took a train to the middle of the country, as far from the ocean as you can get. My wife has learned to speak English. She's calling herself Olympe. Olympe Hill. I sent an e-mail to the Council. An ultimatum. I told them about the letters with my lawyer, to be delivered upon my death. I told them that they had five years to stop hiding, to make contact with the surface world, to join the United Nations. Or I'd do it for them. And if they came anywhere near my daughters – we're having twins any day now – I'd make sure to mention the nukes. I couldn't change the system from within. If I'd tried to start a bloody revolution all I could count on was blood. Forcing them to join the global community wasn't perfect, but at least it made improvement seem possible. Besides, we live in a world where mermaids and mermen dance alongside manta rays along the coral reefs. What kind of monster would want to keep that knowledge to themselves forever?
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Jun 14, 2015 23:36
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U.S.G.P. 1,495 words The official solemnly put down the phone. He turned to the president and said "Miami's been sacked." "drat it!" said the president, furrowing his brow. "There's no time to waste. Get Priest on the phone, he's moving out tonight." "Yes sir", said the official, who started dialling the number. "Do you think he'll be awake at this time of night?" "He will. Priest doesn't sleep. He's a machine. The ultimate weapon. He has one purpose on this earth, and he is going to fulfil it tonight. He's the only man who can stop these ghost pirates." Thirty minutes later, John Priest was on a stealth plane circling over the Caribbean. Through a hatch, he could see the blackness of the night being pierced by rapid-fire explosions going off around a large 17th century frigate. "Are you sure you wanna drop down there on your own?" shouted one of the plane's crew, struggling to be heard over the roar of the plane and the wind outside. John took a drag on his cigarette, then tossed it out the hatch. "You'd only get in the way. This is something I've gotta do on my own." It was true, of course. There was no way to fight a ghost with normal means. Even the barrage down below was mostly for show. Ghosts were selectively corporeal, and damned hard to get rid of if they didn't want to leave this earth. If John brought along a squad of soldiers, they'd be putting their lives at risk for nothing. "All right, John. Shall I radio in and ask them to stop bombardment?" "No, I need the explosions there to light up the landing zone." "But that's crazy, you'll be landing in an inferno! You're gonna die!" John ignored the crewman and leapt out the hatch, deploying his parachute to slowly float down towards the hellfire below. John wasn't afraid of death. He'd faced him before, and he hadn't been too impressed. John landed in the crow's nest at the top of one of the frigate's high masts. Below him, the crew of the ship was running around, loading the cannons with ghostly cannonballs for another broadside. Occasionally a missile would rush through the night at blinding speed and explode on the ship's deck, not even phasing the crew. "Fire!" a voice cried out. The sound of a 20-gun battery rang in John's ears as the pirates fired their cannons into the darkness. The man who had given the order stomped across the deck, a giant with a huge red beard and an elaborate gold-trimmed coat, shouting encouragement at the crew as his boots slammed against the ship. "Reload those cannons, you scurvy dogs! The king in Spain won't know what hit him!" John jumped down from the mast, landing right in front of the startled captain. "You boys look like you've had a few too many bottles of rum! It's time to send you to Davy Jones' locker." John tossed a small bottle of tap water at the pirate. "With this holy water, I absolve you of your sins! Go to Heaven in peace!" All eyes turned on the ship. The captain looked down on his stained coat, stunned into silence. Then he let out a loud guffaw, joined by his boisterous crew. "Nice try there, matey! But you're not getting rid of us that easily." John grimaced. This had never happened before. Usually spirits only stayed behind out of desperation, eager to be released into the next life, and their exploits were quickly covered up by the government. "Why are you here, pirates? The age of sail is long gone, you have no business left in this world." "Yarr, but we do! Our black hearts still crave plunder, and we'll keep raiding and pillaging forever, matey. The only way you're getting rid of us is with cold steel!" "Then I'll use steel!" The pirate captain let out an amused snort. "Ha, very well! Someone throw this landlubber a sword!" One of the pirates pulled out a long cutlass and tossed it handle-first at John. John held out his hand to catch it, but the sword merely floated through his hand, clattering against the deck of the ghost ship. The ship broke into laughter again. "You might have a bit of trouble with the weapons on board, matey! The only thing that'll hurt us is ghost steel, and that's a little tricky for mortals to use!" John smirked and bent over to pick up the sword, this time firmly grabbing it. He gave it a flourish and said "I think I can get the hang of it." Anger flashed across the pirate captain's face. He drew a flintlock pistol from his belt and fired it at John, who dove behind a stack of barrels on the deck. John crouched behind the barrels as he heard the crack of another pistol, splintering a barrel inches away from his head. "Yarr, let's have at him!" John heard a pirate say. "Yeah, let's skin him alive!" another replied. "No!" said the captain. "I'll deal with him myself. Come out, landlubber, so we can cross swords!" John pushed over the stack of barrels, leaping over them while swinging his cutlass. The captain stepped back, parrying the swing as he kicked aside one of the barrels, spilling a torrent of ghostly rum across the deck. "Who are you, matey?" said the captain as he swung out at John. "I'm John Priest, Ghost Police. I'm here to take you down!" "I admire your spirit, Mr Priest. But you're not getting out of this one alive!" John nimbly dodged one of the captain's swipes by climbing up the netting on one of the masts. "Nor are you, captain! You're already dead. Why do you stay in the mortal realm?" The captain swung himself onto the netting. "Yarr, it's a lot of fun, matey!" "Don't give me that!" said John. "Back in the day, you could have gone to Tortuga with your plunder and revelled for days. Now all you have left is killing and pillaging. There's no fun in that, even for a pirate like you." "You know that there is, Mr Priest, or you wouldn't be here either!" "Not true" said John, balancing precariously on the yardarm of the mast as he parried the captain's swings. "I will pass on once I have done penance for what I did during my lifetime." "And what is it that keeps you here?" John grew silent. It had been so long, he scarcely remembered. But it had to be a good reason, otherwise he wouldn't be here. "Mind your own business, pirate!" he shouted, lunging at the captain. The captain veered off-balance, but grabbed a rope to stop his fall, sliding back down to the deck. John followed him, but the battle was taking its toll on him. As a ghost, he could not grow tired, but the captain was the better fencer, and John's position was getting worse and worse. He dodged a blow by climbing onto the ship's railing, and then down onto a plank sticking out over the side of the ship. "Yarr, a fitting end for you, to die on the plank like so many others", said the captain, leaping onto the plank himself. Desperately, John unleashed a flurry of blows, but the captain blocked him, then knocked the cutlass out of John's hands and into the water. "You fought gallantly, Mr Priest. I would have been glad to have you on my crew, but enough is enough! It is time to end this!" The captain sheathed his sword. "Let us offer each other absolution." John was confused. "What? You're willing to go?" "Yarr, we have both outstayed our welcome on this world. You were right, Mr Priest, my crew and I won't be satisfied fighting without purpose until the end of days. And you don't even know what you're fighting for anymore, matey. No matter how many souls you put to rest, the only one you really need to see absolved now is your own." The captain held out his hand, and John took it. They climbed aboard the ship, and the captain said "Mr Priest, will you absolve this wicked crew of their misdeeds, their evil and their treachery?" "I will." "Yarr, and I absolve you, Mr Priest. It is time for you to leave this place." John started to feel weak. He looked at his hands, and they were dissipating before his eyes. He looked back up at the captain, who was slowly turning into a wisp of smoke along with the other pirates. Before he disappeared completely, the captain said "If you ever want to cross swords again in the next world, matey, then come find me, and I'll give you another thrashing!" John smiled. If there was another world, he wondered what he'd do in it, now that he had been absolved of his debts. Perhaps he'd become a pirate.
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Jun 14, 2015 23:59
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Double Oh Heaven (1479 words) A time limit with deadly consequences must factor “There I was, strapped to a table, a lazer slowly making it’s way between my legs, ready to slice me in half. Pretty basic stuff really. Naturally my training kicked in. I kicked my heels together, producing a small mirror from my left shoe. I deflected the beam to cut my wrists free, then began untying my legs. That’s when I first heard the countdown. Doctor Severus had activated the self destruct on the sub. I had two minutes to find the second escape pod. Nothing I hadn’t done a thousand times before. That rotter though, he’d jettisoned off the second pod before escaping himself! Ah well, disarm the self destruct. Plan B. I worked my way to the control room, taking out a few oblivious flunkies on my way. One minute left, the darn thing announced. And what do I find there? He’s only ripped the reset button out the wall! The man’s an all round bad sport. Of course I got straight to work trying to wire something together. Thirty seconds, thirty drat seconds… Just twist these two wires together and… What do you mean am I sure I want to cancel the self destruct program? Press the second button to confirm? What second button? Ten seconds left? I couldn’t find it anywhere. Five seconds, and I was in a real panic. I mean, I was always out before they started with individual numbers. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Then everything went white... And that, my good fellow, is how I died. Done up like a kipper by that dirty rotter Doctor Severus.” “I see”, my interviewer nodded, his face still shrouded in shadows “So, it’s clear you was an exemplary agent, and indeed you died in active duty, made your way back to base and was recognised by one of our sensitives. But are you truly so committed to Her Majesty’s service that death itself couldn’t keep you away? Or are you simply after revenge?” “Well Sir, I really don’t know.” I said. “Ever since the whole incident I’ve felt empty. Less of a person. But I was always a loyal agent, and I can’t see what else I’ll do.” “Luckily, we have the perfect test.” He said, stepping out of the shadow. Ah, I’d seen this guy around before. Way above my security clearance. Rumour had it he ran his own spook squad. “Your mission is to shadow your replacement. He’s being sent in to take down Doctor Severus and avenge the legendary agent John Bane. If you are only in this for revenge… Well, you’ll just fade away once it’s over. You get your closure, we get to cross Doctor Severus off our list. Everyone’s a winner. If, however, you still feel you have more to offer, even after you watch the light go out in his eyes… Well, MI-0 may indeed have it’s newest agent. Welcome to the team, Bane. I hope we’ll be seeing more of each other. Please excuse me if I don’t offer to shake, it’s rather disconcerting when you chaps go all incorporeal on me!” --- I spent the next week in the training room, getting used to my new incorporeal form. I could move objects; I found I had a particular affinity to lamps. I learnt to project myself, to allow non-sensitives to see me for a few fleeting moments, although this always left me feeling drained. Unfortunately my replacement, Mark, wasn’t a sensitive, so passing on information was a no go. He also wasn’t going to be told that I’d be along. I wondered how many times I had a ghost buddy watching out for me during my missions. It was to be quite a straightforward affair though. I’d already retrieved all the info, all he had to do was go in, kill the good doctor and on the off chance he had actually started the whole Doomsday Clock thing, well, either he fixed it or I’d suddenly have a few billion new friends. The mission started fairly predictably. Mark spent a while in a casino cozying up the Doctor Severus’s blonde, leggy assistant. I assume there was some sort of seduction, but please; I have some class! Either way, he managed to get an invitation on board the doctor’s new yacht. A few hours later we were out at sea, in international water. Mark decided it was time to strike. I followed him as he made his way through the ship. Occasionally I’d make the odd noise, knock over a vase or slam a door to distract the guards, all the time wondering if some of the extraordinary luck I’d had in the past had been equally provided. On a whim, I decided to scout ahead to the control center. Habit forced me to cup my ear to the wall, even though I knew I could slip through it with ease. “his way to us right now. The pills I slipped into his drink should be taking effect fairly soon though.” Doctor Severus’s assistant said. “Now Doctor, remember your part in this. The board are putting a lot of trust in you! We need to send those British fools a lesson. He’s to survive, but barely. Bane was a hit job, this is merely reputation enhancement. We want their eyes on you. When the program is complete, you’ll be duly rewarded.” I gasped, stepping into the room. “Bane? You’re… But… Aren’t you… Dead?” She asked. Then the fear melted from her face as the realisation struck. “A spirit?” She made a strange gesture. “Avenus Munchus Sentinus!” Dark hands grasped at me, seeming to rise from the floor. “Poor poor Bane. First the good Doctor here killed you, and now I get to rip your soul to shre” The door crashed in. Mark strode over the bodies of unconscious minions. “Sorry Jane, you were fantastic, but the Doctor and me have to discuss business. Leave now and I won’t have to feel bad about killing y… y… you” he said, his gun suddenly shaking in his grip. Her concentration broken, I felt the hands slip from me. I knew there was nothing I could do for Mark though, so I fled. --- I hid in a wall just outside the control room, realising I had a choice to make. The beautiful, dangerous Jane, if indeed that was her name, who seemed to be pulling the strings. Or my killer, Doctor Severus. I’d only be able to tail one of them. Every mote of my soul wanted me to stay. Take on Severus. Avenge myself. That, and stay away from Jane. Quite frankly, she scared me. What was that? And what would have happened if Mark hadn’t burst in? My training won out though. I silently stalked her, keeping myself concealed inside walls as often as possible. She headed up onto the deck, then lowered herself down into a speed boat. I glanced around, noticing only one over speed boat and a handful of life rafts. Every last bit of my strength went into snapping the lines on the other boat before I slipped into the engine block, and stowed away. A few minutes later I heard her call out. I counted to ten, then followed. She had driven to a second, larger yacht. I started searching the place, looking for some information on her employees, or partners. Then I spotted her. A glass of champagne in her hand, and what looked like a live feed of Doctor Severus’s boat on a widescreen TV. I watched as Mark managed to regain himself, then escape an ingenious trap involving band-saws, a pool of piranhas and a couple of poisonous snakes. He escaped the torture room, found his way onto the roof of the yacht, spotted Doctor Severus slowly floating away yacht awaiting rescue, then assembled his sniper rifle. Moments later a red dot appeared on the good Doctor’s head, then expanded rapidly as a rather fast moving piece of metal traveled along the light’s path. There. I’d won. Revenge was mine. I could move on. In the distance, I saw the light. I turned to walk towards it when I heard Jane scream with rage. “This won’t do! That agent can’t survive!” she went down on her knees, pulling at a wooden panel. The light was pulling me away. I took a step towards it, then glanced back. A rocket launcher. She was struggling to get it out of it’s hidden compartment. It called me home. No more pain. No more work. Eternal rest. Paradise. But no. I couldn’t let Mark die. I turned around. I rejected the light. I am an agent of MI-0. It didn’t take much to smash the lamp into the back of her head. It took a lot more to bring it down again, and again, as her pretty blonde hair turned damp and red.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:06
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Born 2 Serve: Lob Harder Words: 1500 “You should think about wearing a paper bag over your head,” I said to the multi-eyed insectoid who stood close enough to be smooched. The translator speaker built into my suit chattered and clicked in its language. “You so ugly, you’d have to sneak up on your own reflection.” It laughed. At least, I think it laughed. The announcer boomed overhead, overpowering the crowd’s din with his rapid-fire radio voice. “Gooooood evening everybody, welcome to another exciting MissileBall match at the Iron Lotus Arena. I’m Vinyl Ritchie HIGH-YOOOO!” The alien chattered at me and my translator speaker-box said that my mother's bountiful weight was due to her love of high fat content foods. Bless ‘em, at least it tried. I proudly lifted both middle fingers high into the air as I walked to my side of the semi-permeable energy cage. Childish? Absolutely. I wasn’t competing by choice, so I'll act however I drat well please. “Tonight’s match is brought to you by Sandwich Prince! The best meat flavored food you can cram in your mouth,” Vinyl said. “Fans, just a reminder before we get started, fighting and other disruptive behaviors are permitted only for sections 325 through 475. Lucky dogs, HIGH-YOOO! “Drumroll please!” he continued, drumming his desk. The stadium crowd pounded their feet. “Countdown! Three!” A metalloid, featureless ball hummed to life and hovered in front of my opponent. “Two!” The stadium roared over Vinyl Richie and the sound crashed into my body. I removed an oversized metalloid racquet from my side and gripped it in both hands. I felt my suit pulse with energy as the bomb armed itself and anxiety clutched my heart. One of us was going to die today. 🎾 “One more time?” Kana had tugged me back to my feet. Irritated, I had pulled on my slave collar to let keep the metal off a nice sized welt. “This isn’t like the tennis game people back on earth played,” she had said. “If your opponent gets too close to you, beat them off. Their suit will freeze up for a half second, and most times, that’ll be enough.” I had refused to be cheered up by the crude jokes I usually loved to hear. “Lucky us,” I had said pointing to my collar, “we only get tased in the neck. I still don’t understand why I have to practice this stupid game.” “It’s tradition.” She had settled her lips into a hard line. “I don’t like it anymore than you do.” I had sneered at her. “You? You don’t like it anymore than I do? You get to stay here while I go get my rear end exploded because it’s ‘Quality Entertainment’! It’s stupid! Humans never win these games. And year after year we all cross our fingers, toes, titties and testes hoping we’re not volunteered for the ‘Human Dream Team’.” Frustrated, I had flung my racquet toward the edge of the arena and had been taken by surprise when it struck the edge of the energy cage and came back at me faster than I threw it. It’s alright though, my stomach caught the racquet and I was lifted off my feet so I could say hello to the ground. Kana’s face had slid into my vision with a wry smile. “This time it’ll be different. Those suits the Barclarians wear during the matches?” I had wheezed noncommittally. “We stole one.” Kana’s smile had widened, showing an impressive amount of teeth still in her head. She had almost half in there. “We can make our own suits to finally give us the edge we need to compete and we have a prototype just for you. We're still working on unlocking the secrets, but we have something that you can use. This upgrade kicks in when the ball is going fast enough.” 🎾 When I connected with the metalloid ball, my suit discharged a magnetic field that held me in an immovable stasis for a full second. Kana had told me it allowed the opposition some time for positioning while it charged the ball so it repelled from the racquet exponentially faster. I suspected there was a third reason when I connected with the ball a fourth time. If it wasn’t for that magnetic field, the speed of this ball would have been enough to easily rip my arms right off my person. The alien returned the volley at an unexpected angle. It left him going far too fast for me to follow. Crackles of magnetic power burst at the upper edges of the arena. I missed and the ball struck me in the small of my back. A small magnetic burst at the point of impact saved me from spending my last moments of the match in a wheelchair, but the force still knocked me to the ground. “HIGH-YOOOO!” The cheer from the stadium almost drowned Vinyl Richie out. “It’s three - two with the humans getting buggered from behiiiiiind! Ho ho!” I got to my feet and swung my racquet. With an electric crack the ball careened toward my opponent. He batted it sideways and the ball returned zigging and zagging. I jerked my eyes side to side trying to visualize the ball’s path, but I misjudged my timing and the ball struck me in the hand. There was a burst of visible energy and the ball hung motionless in front of me. “It seems Team Earth are gonna get thrown out early yet again, kinda like me when I drink HIGH-YOOOO! Ho ho, three to one!” I sure hope this isn’t illegal, I thought to myself and moved around the ball. I cracked it away from my opponent into the barrier a few meters behind me. I kept the racket still and the ball bounced between the two until I could no longer perceive any movement. And then it felt like a million needles slammed into my skin secreting lava into my bloodstream. Assisted with the power of all my muscles contracting at once, I screamed. My opponent jumped in surprise and the ball snuck under his racquet, hitting him low in the torso. I saw how the ball flew at him. I saw the ball. The pain faded and left an electric tingle in my body. The crowd sounded distant and tinny, like they were at the end of a tunnel. In slow motion my opponent got back to his feet until time snapped back to it’s regular speed. The big bug clacked its mandibles together and struck the ball sideways, hoping to catch me with the same move. Not in my house. The ball bounced to me at a leisurely pace. I imagined watching myself from the stands. The once slow and clumsy human now snapped forward, striking the ball upwards. With its attention skyward, the super handsome human threw his racket at the insectoid, striking and stunning it for a half second - just long enough for the ball to bang against its head. Once again time snapped back to normal by the time my racquet reached my hand. It sounded like the crowd’s cheers threatened to destroy the stadium by the power of their voices. “Ho ho!” shouted Vinyl, “If the human manages to win this, I can retire tonight and die a belligerant drunk in Vegas! Always bet on black HIGH-YOOOO!” The insectoid stared at me with all six of its nasty eyes. I would have liked to think it regarded me with respect, but knowing their race, it probably just wanted to eat me. He build up speed by bouncing the ball against the barrier behind it, reaching speeds faster than I did. I flinched when the volley exploded through the sound barrier. The ball struck my racquet, but I was too scared to angle it anywhere. The alien shared the same fear and the match devolved into a game of chicken. My world turned into a series of earthquakes with each return. BOOM All the glass in the stadium shattered. BOOM The ground between us was ripped upward by the vacuum of air trailing the ball. BOOM The energy cage that trapped me with my opponent sputtered out and died. Even with my upgrades, I couldn’t even perceive a smear of color as the ball basically teleported between us. There’s only one second between each return. When the ball hit my opponent’s racquet, I dove to the side. The force of the ball’s jetstream buffeted me half-way across the arena. In that same moment, opposite sides of the stadium imploded and my opponent was a geyser of alien bits and blood. The stadium was silent. “I QUIT THIS BITCH HIIIIIIGH-YOOOOOOOO-” Vinyl Ritchie’s voice was drowned out by the sound of the crowd cheering for the universe’s first human Missile Ball victor. I patiently waited supine on the ground until someone realized I couldn’t get up because of these pesky broken bones.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:28
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BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR 1131 words An overlit studio. An audience that didn't get into Jimmy Fallon. Another wacko to interview. A month into the production of her own show and Jane Chmielny already understood why Letterman stopped giving a gently caress. But she still had bills to pay, so she plastered on a smile and read the cue cards: "Marie Celeste. The Voynich Manuscript. Roanoke. For centuries we've been baffled by these enigmas. Tonight we are joined by Professor Jack Dakota who'll shed light on one such mystery..." She paused in disbelief, glancing at her producer Bill. He shrugged. "...the dinosaurs." Dakota grinned. "I prefer *action* paleontologist." She forced a laugh. "Sure. But really, the dinosaurs? Don’t we have the broad details worked out by now?" "Yes, well. But tell me, if dinosaurs have been on our planet for tens of millions of years, surely it was enough time for them to develop a civilization of some sort. Why can’t we find any evidence for it?" Oh boy. Why couldn’t it have been a creationist instead? "Because they didn’t?" Dakota smirked at her. Just one hand gesture to the security and he would be out of the chair and the studio. But no, they had four more minutes to fill. "Or their civilization was built on advanced biotech. Instead of metal and plastic, the dinoids, as I call them, crafted their technology out of plant, bone and sinew." There was Vicodin in her purse. It's been weeks since she had one. Today would be the day she reset that counter. Two more minutes. "Okay. If they were so advanced, how come they all went extinct?" The smirk widened. "Or did they? Or maybe they found a way to escape? What if what was left behind was just their fauna?" It was almost over. She couldn’t resist: "I am sorry, but this is ridiculous. You've pulling this out of your rear end. What evidence could you possibly be basing this on?" "I'm making educated guesses, Jane, same as any scientist. And here's one more guess. They're coming. Through space and time, they're coming.” BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR They came in the middle of the night. The security alarm blaring into his bedtime earpiece, Jack rolled off the bed to the right and reached for the gun under the night table. FEMA wasn’t taking him alive. Except when he practiced this before, the gun was there. poo poo. There was a woman with a severe face and a black suit standing over him. Behind her, men in camouflage pointed rifles. She pulled out an ID. "Professor Dakota? I'm Agent McWorr from NSA. We need your help with a dinosaur problem." BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR "What do you mean you have no idea?" The SUV must have been cramped with agents even before he got into it, but he was pretty sure McWorr just kicked him in the shin on purpose. He gave her a pleading look. "I don't! I was just trying to make a buck selling books and the aliens racket was already full, so I went with dinosaurs instead. It’s just creative non-fiction! Please, what the hell is going on?" McWorr scowled at him, her face lit from below by her smartphone. "Invasion is what's going on. Dinosaurs out of nowhere. And they've got weird powers. Pterodactyls with fire breath. T-Rexes with laser vision. Exploding velociraptors." She reached over to grab him by the collar. "If you’re lying to us you’ll wish we just kill you. Are you lying?" He shook his head. She hissed in disgust and exchanged a look with a burly commando to her left. "He's useless. Drop him off at the next bus stop. We've got better-" There was a sound and everything tumbled and there was pain, so much pain. BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR "I am impressed, mammal." The dinoid looked like a komodo dragon standing on its hind legs, if komodo dragons had feathers and hung upside down. No, he was the one hanging, his feet stuck into some sort of a... crevice in the ceiling, Agent McWorr hanging next to him, blood smeared over her face. The room was small and otherwise bare, the walls covered in some sort of weird chitinous material. He could swear he could feel a slow, steady pulse like a heartbeat through his ankles. "To deduce the existence of our civilization and our plans, not from evidence we did not leave, but from the shape of the hole that it made, that took intelligence we did not believe you mammals capable of. Not that it will help you much." Jack raised his hands in desperation. "Listen. We don’t need to fight! There's plenty of room on Earth for both us and you! Please!" The dinoid let out a furious hiss. "You should have thought about that before you burned through all of our loving oil." Jack blinked. "Oil?" "OIL!!" The dinoid leant close, trembling with fury. There was raw meat and rot on its breath. "We diverted a loving asteroid into our own planet to create it and travelled through a wormhole into the future to when it could be ours and for what?! You loving overgrown rodents don’t even realize what you've done. We could work wonders from it, extracted limitess potential from every drop… and you pumped it into cars! CARS! It took you two loving centuries to burn through what would have sustained our civilization for a thousand! If you'd stoked your furnaces with your grub spawn, it would have been less of a waste!" It shook its head. "No. We are wiping your parasite species out. Then, when the biosphere recovers from your centuries of misrule, it's time for a second asteroid. You won't be around for the second part, I'm afraid, but I'd like you to watch the first one. Welcome to the mothership." BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR "Dakota." McWorr was still alive, but she didn't sound too good. If she was lucky, she'd die before the dinoids came back. He whispered back: "We're hosed." "Yeah. They left the smartphone in my jacket, I can feel it. Can't feel my arms, though. Pull it out." "Why?" He reached out and, after a few tries, managed to latch on to her. "We didn’t see any motherships on our radars. They're stealthed too good." She broke into a fit of coughing, blood trickling out of her mouth and into her eyes. "Bet they're not jamming the phone, though. if there’s signal, call ‘Mom’ on autodial, say the passphrase ‘vermilion’, then tell them to nuke us at the phone’s location." He froze. “Nuke us?” She didn’t respond. He closed her eyes, found the phone after rummaging in her pockets. Pulled it out. There were no bars. Well, he had time. Maybe they’d fly over a tower before the battery ran out.
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Jun 15, 2015 02:32
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IT WAS A HOT DAY IN JUNE 1315 words It was a hot day in June when people began to congregate in front of the main stage. Their green fatigues gave the concrete a mossy texture from the perfectly isometric angle Frank and Nathan looked on from. Lying prone alongside each other on the concrete rooftop of the hospital Nathan pushed his infrared binoculars against his moist face: “18 degrees south south west, exactly 2.48 kilometres away from the target zone.” Nathan said. “Roger that, coordinates clocked in” Frank replies, adjusting the rifle’s tripod accordingly. Reaching for the radio hung on the epaulette of his urban combat military uniform Frank relays this information back to headquarters and learns their services won’t be needed for another quarter hour. Frank hoists his hot-belly off the concrete and rests his back against the slight edge of the otherwise flat roof then reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette. Staring out across the vantage point he pulls out a lighter from a pocket just above his thigh and lights it. “Tell me, Nathan, what’s your view on this whole situation?” Continuing to look through the binoculars, Nathan replies: “I don’t have one.” A brick wall. Usually it was out of fear of appearing AWOL, but more often than not they just hadn’t seen action before. Thinking back to all his past assignments he couldn’t think of a soldier who had seen combat and still traded their humanity for the beret and the myth. Action changed a man. “Normally you’d be right about that. I’ve always only pointed the other end of that rifle at people who deserved it. I was God’s wrath incarnate. Punishing the bad guys and prolonging the peace of the righteous. It’s just this time I’m not so sure.” Nathan turned away from his binoculars made stern eye contact with Frank and kept the gaze. It reminded Frank of the trained stare spotters often had while scoping out active war zones. “We’re here to prevent violence, not to cause it.” “Violence preventing violence, private.” Looking down at rally point Frank noted that it started to look less like a mossy field and grew more animate. He could begin to hear the indecipherable blare of megaphones and the dull drone of coordinated chanting. His watch read 1658h, the keynote speaker was due to arrive any moment now. Expectantly, the baseline static of the radio converged into a blip of momentary coherence: “ALL UNITS GET INTO POSITION” Frank slides back onto his belly and locks his shoulder against the stock of his M24. Gazing down the scope he stares through steamy curtains of heat to focus in on the horizon of a neatly paved road adjacent to the main stage. He concentrates on his breath, noting the sensation of the hot air as it brushes his upper lip, slides down his trachea and comes out again. The pain of the hot concrete against his stomach, the sizzling steel of the M24 against his shoulder, and Frank’s own sense of time soon give way to the relative gale of his breath. Fifteen minutes pass swiftly and inner serenity soon threatens to absorb him completely. Frank is standing on the edge of a waterfall. Jumping may be gratifying but absorption forbids focus. Frank tears away. Dust clouds become visible on the distant horizon as the ornate hood of a government car comes into view. “Showtime.” Nathan says, noticeably giddy. The President sat comfortably beside his aide in the third car unaware of Frank’s cross-hair beaming down on the unassuming blonde man beside him. This man was the president’s psychic. A devil on the his shoulder. The media proclaimed him “The Oracle of Washington” and, as far as the military was concerned, an FSB installation. The theory floating around at Langley was that the Russians began funding terrorists under as many different flags as possible in order to breed fear in the American people against an increasingly nebulous enemy. Backed into a corner the American people grew militant and voted accordingly. The president was a war-mongering lunatic and his shaman assured his conscience. Frank’s bullet was to be the first movement in a symphony of swift military control. He would execute The Oracle of Washington, knock Nathan out, and join up with his unit a hero. The country would finally be on the long road to recovery. Frank kept his rifle aimed at the Oracle as the cars formed a neat line by the road side. Secret service members swarmed out of the cars to clear a path for the president and his entourage. Frank’s window of opportunity would be microscopic. A two-hundred and fifty meter stretch between the vehicle and the stage amidst a rowdy crowd would make it the one of the toughest shots of Frank’s long military career. A difficulty born of necessity. The President steps out of the vehicle and waves before the Oracle slips out the roadside door and begins to make his way around the car to meet the president. Breathing in, Frank looks out from the top of the waterfall. Breathing out, he begins to focus on his heartbeat. The Oracle begins to walk alongside the President and away from Frank’s vantage. The Oracle’s head flickers as it becomes momentarily divergent from the President’s between discordant strides. Breathing in, Frank’s heart beats. Breathing out, Frank’s heart lies silent. At the 200 meter mark the Oracle falls a few paces back to share a word with one of the other members of the cabal. Breathing in, his heart beats. Breathing out, Frank’s trigger finger moves imperceptibly. Once, and then a second time. Seconds suddenly seem like minutes as the bullet travels through the air. The Oracle’s neck explode and his chest rips open to soak the surrounding Secret Service members with his blood. Taking his sore eye off the scope Frank is met with the realization that he has taken too long. Nathan has already pushed himself off the ground and is pointing his pistol that comes jarringly into focus as Frank rolls to his side to makes eye contact. In a calm voice Frank pleads, “Nathaniel, it’s too late. If you kill me now nothing will change, the wheels have been set in motion and we are its vanguards. What do you think will happen? Huh?” Frank is met again with his professional stare. “I’ll tell you what. You’ll be taken back to headquarters and I assure you, Nathaniel, your first assignment will be to seize congress with the rest of us. This is what a coup looks like dammit!” Nathaniel unloads two fatal shots into Frank’s belly. Frank’s body falls onto its back as blood stains his grey uniform and begins to seep onto the concrete. Nathaniel stares dumbly at the red stain as it slowly begins to infect Frank’s uniform with its colour. Just as swiftly as those bullets took Frank’s life Nathan comes thundering back into the reality of the situation. He is at the spot the Secret Service heard those shots come from. He quickly packs of his gear and runs towards the staircase leading to the hospital foyer. The foyer is chaotic. A nurse runs up to Nathan and tells him about the gunshots. Nathan says he heard them too and is working on the situation. The nurse leaves and no sooner than she does Nathan feels a hand on his shoulder. Turning around he sees its military. His name tag reads “Philips” and the insignias betrays high status. “C-can I help you?” Nathan says Glancing at Nathan’s name tag Philips takes a long breath “Are you the Frank O’Hare?” Philips says “Ah, Nathaniel, is it? I imagine Frank is dead?” “Y-yes.” “You were just being a good soldier, private. These things happen. Come with me, we storm Normandy tomorrow.”
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Jun 15, 2015 03:01
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The Termolenator 1500 /1500 words My father is tripping on LSD, splashing around in a kiddie pool wearing arm floaties, when the President steps up to the podium. “Dad! The President’s speech is on!” I call from inside the apartment we share. Cracks in the plaster run the length of every wall, a side effect from the “settling” that New York City has been experiencing. Each time the Earth groans and shakes, the city falls a few inches. “You mean the guy who ignores all the warnings I’ve been trying to give him?” asks my father. I roll my eyes at him. “My fellow Americans,” the president starts. “Our scientists have worked tirelessly to study the settling phenomenon. They have discovered a large abyss beneath New York. We do not know how deep it goes, but because of global warming, the thin crust over the abyss has started to collapse.” My father stands dripping wet in the doorway. “Bullshit,” he says. “Global warming’s fake. It’s the mole people.” “Not again with that, please Dad,” I say. My father already can’t hold down a job or have a steady relationship. He went missing for a few days back in ‘69. We found him in a manhole that somebody had forgotten to cover. Now I’ve got to support his crazy rear end when I should be focusing on my boxing career. The ground rumbles, cutting off the power. It’s stronger than the previous quakes. “The mole people are attacking!” He runs into the living room and to his old Army trunk. “God dammit, dad, there’s no such thing as--” The ground lurches. I make my way over to our government-installed handles that are fastened to the walls. I give mine a sturdy shake, and grip it tight. My father tucks something from the crate into his pants and runs to his handle. He grabs it, but it comes off the wall. “I think my screws are a little loose.” Before I can say anything, the ground gives out underneath us. It doesn’t stop. We are free falling amongst the bottles and empty pizza boxes that had been stacked around our living room. I see my boxing gloves and reach out for them. “This isn’t the time to be playing your little games,” my father shouts. “We have to disguise ourselves!” my father yells over the noise. I look out the window to see the blue skies and clouds replaced by a looming shadow. The rim of the crater blocks the sun. The entire city falls. “Disguise ourselves?” I say. “From gravity?” “No! From the mole people!” My dad pushes off the floating couch and flies out the front door. I can see him hanging on to the grass as his feet trail behind him toward the surface. He rips out large sections of the lawn and smears the wet dirt on his body. “Trust me, son.” I expect us to smash into the bottom of the abyss at any second, but to my surprise the city suddenly lurches and I slam into the ground. The sound of screeching metal and snapping rocks forces me to cover my ears, but within a few seconds the city grinds to a halt. I stand up and run outside. My father is still smearing dirty over his skin. “They can’t see good, only smell,” he says. “You have to smell like a mole!” I don’t say anything, and wonder if I can find his meds our mess of an apartment. He looks at me with sad, tripping-the-gently caress-out puppy-dog eyes. “Please, for me?” “Fine,” I said, “as long as you stay with me and promise not to wander off.” Last thing I need today is to have him fall to his death through another manhole. I sit down next to him on the lawn and grab a handful of dirt. There are worms wriggling around in it, and I close my eyes and stick out my tongue when I rub it on my leg. “Yuck!” My disgust is interrupted by the thumping of helicopter blades overhead. “We’re saved!” I shout, but my dad shakes his head. “Smear faster!” he says. “Don’t look up!” One of our neighbors runs out of his house, waving his arms at the helicopter. “Help! I’m alive!” he screams. Out of the ground moves three brown streaks. They tackle the man to the ground, and gnaw his face off. He screams as blood pools on the sidewalk. The helicopter turns and through the window I see a mole person. I shake my head and smear the dirt on even faster. After they finish feeding, the moles stand up and notice us. My first instinct is to run back into the house and grab my gloves. They’re fast, but I think I could make it and knock them out. I sit up on my knees and get ready to make a break for it. My father grabs my arm. “No,” he whispers. “Let me handle this. I’ve learned their customs.” I sit back down. The moles sniff the air and scamper over to us. They surround us, three hulking bodies of matted hair, long claws, and milky eyes. My father stands up and nods to them. “Sup?” he says. I cringe, sure they’ll eat us. They smell like dirt and death, and still have entrails hanging from their jaws. But instead of eating us, the moles nod back to my father. “You smell like human,” says the lead mole. “Yes, I ate many humans today.” “Good,” says the lead mole. “We will finish eating all the humans down here, and then attack the surface.” The lead mole has the thickest, longest whiskers, and stands a head taller than the other mole people. His blood-soaked fur is shinier and more luxurious than the others. On his waist he wears a belt with a sheathed knife with a handle made of human bone. They scamper back down the holes they came from. “Dad, I’m--” He cuts me off. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know.” He inspects me and nods. “You disguise yourself well. But we must get to the control room.” “Shouldn’t we just wait for help?” I ask. “We have to help ourselves. All of New York is caught in an anti-gravity beam. If we disrupt the beam, the failsafe will reverse the polarity, raise the city back to the surface.” My father runs out into the street and grabs a manhole cover. His muscular arms flex and the floaties burst. He tosses the cover to the side. He doesn’t seem crazy in this moment, but in his element. “Follow me,” he says in an authoritative tone, and disappears down the hole. I chase after him. The hole is dark and I hear dripping sewage. There has to be another way. Planes from above the rim swoop into the crater and fire on a mole-person helicopter, which explodes. I cheer, but my celebration is cut short by snub-nosed fighters streaming out of the walls of the crater. They fall in formation behind the planes and shoot them down one by one. Fiery debris rains over the city. Nobody can save us now. I drop into the hole and follow my father. We go deeper into the sewer system than I ever thought was possible. The human construction fades and the pipes give way to hardened mole tunnels. Eventually we crawl on our stomachs to the end of a tunnel. It overlooks a dim room filled with an array of control panels. Mole engineers scamper around, reading measurements and adjusting dials. In the center of the room a bright blue beam pulsates and shoots through the roof. My dad digs a block of C4 out of his pants. “I will throw this onto the beam, and then ignite it with this remote.” As soon as he says it, the remote is knocked from his hand by a large, furry paw. It shatters on the rocks. The lead mole stands over us, his fur blowing in the breeze created by the anti-gravity beam. “I thought I smelled primate bitches,” he says. I look to my dad. “I love you,” I say. “I love you too, son.” He pulls boxing tape out of his pocket. “I thought you might need this.” I wipe a tear from my eye and wrap my knuckles in the tape. I turn back to the lead mole. “Looks like you just dug your own grave, molether fucker.” I throw a punch that connects with his jaw. I trade blows with the lead mole, but he’s stronger. He pins me to the ground. “Any last words?” Past the mole man, I see my dad sneak up to the beam with the C4. “Yeah, gently caress you.” An explosion rocks the room behind us and the beam goes out. In the chaos, I grab the bone knife and stab it into the mole man’s heart. The city rises to the surface, and I start my long climb back home.
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Jun 15, 2015 03:30
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ATTENTION: I AM USING THE SIREN EMOTICON. Also something something get your stories in before my alarm goes off tomorrow morning at stupid o'clock something something.
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Jun 15, 2015 03:58
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Kevin Costner on the Tarmac (1120 words) snip. See archive. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 08:06
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On The Low End Of The Dial 1499 words It was fifty-five minutes past midnight, and Jerry Lucas was on a roll. “Alright all you seductive ladies and suave gentlemen, it’s time to wind it down for the night, this has been the Right Time Nighttime Hour with all your favorite neo-soul hits. My name is Jheri White, that is J-H-E-R-I, the H is silent but I am most definitely not, I’m comin’ atcha every night on the station where the day starts after dark, that’s KFWD 87.9 in Worcester-Boston, on the loooooooow end of the dial,” Jerry drawled, stretching out the “low” like a hot strand of caramel, his voice rumbling out the base of his throat. “Take us home, Angie Stone!” As the opening piano chords of “Wish I Didn’t Miss You” hit the airwaves, Jerry turned off the mic and leaned back in his chair. He could see Dan and his dumb swollen face behind the studio window. In a few more minutes he’d be off the air, and then he’d go from sultry Jheri White to Jerry Lucas, a freshly shat-out college grad with a Radio major, a lack of shoulders, and thick-framed glasses that made him look like either a Sufjan Stevens fan or Urkel. Out of the corner of his eye, Jerry saw one of the phone lines blinking. He turned his mic back on and hit the button. “KFWD, what’s your name?” Jerry said, his voice two octaves higher than Jheri White. The voice was feminine. “Hi, I have a request for Jheri White?” “Jheri’s gone, one o’clock is Dan and the Late-Night Buzz,” said Jerry. “You like Sublime?” “I have a request for Jheri White.” “Jheri’s not—“ “I have a reQUest for JHERI WHITE.” Jerry jolted back in his chair. He lunged to hit the button, hanging up the call. He sat still for a few more seconds. Jesus, that lady’s voice had dropped hard, like she’d transformed into an axe-murderer. As Jerry stepped into the hallway, he called out, “Dan, this loving wackjob was—“ He heard a gunshot. At the far end of the hallway were three men, dressed in black suits, staring at Jerry. Dan was crumpled in front of the ladies’ restroom, blood pouring out of the hole in his right temple. “Interference,” one of them said in a deep voice. “You will be eliminated.” Jerry turned and ran, bullets whizzing past his right arm. “Help! Someone help!” Jerry ran through the alley behind the radio station, his voice straining as he gasped for breath. His cell phone was in the studio, and the nearest police station was miles away. Jerry burst out onto the street. He looked for a police car, but all he could see was a white limo parked across the street with its lights on. Jerry raced towards the limo, pounding on the windows. “Help! I need a ride to the police station!” The passenger-side window rolled down. A voice from within said, “Get in the back.” Jerry flung the limo door open and crashed into the backseat. “Drive! Drive! They have loving guns!” A black woman with short hair sat at the front end of the limo, her hands folded in front of her. “Where’s the nearest police station?” said Jerry as the car drove down the street. “Calm down,” said the woman. “We’re not involving the police.” “What—“ said Jerry, his face frozen. “Who are you? Are you with them?” “I’m Angela,” she said. The woman reached behind her and tapped on the glass partition. She pointed to the large Polynesian man driving the limo. “That’s Opie.” Opie grunted. “And that’s Wendy,” Angela said, pointing to the passenger seat. A teenage blonde smiled and waved vigorously at Jerry. “And you,” Angela said, “are Jerry Lucas.” Jerry stared at her. “You know my name?” Angela tossed something over to Jerry. “You’re famous.” It was a Boston Herald headline: UNIDENTIFIED CITIZEN SEEN FLYING PAST APARTMENT BUILDING. Jerry looked back up at Angela. “So, is there something on page six about me, or…” “No, you have the right page.” Angela tossed another newspaper over. “This one, too.” Jerry read the headline out loud: “Bank Robbery Foiled by Car-Throwing Vigilante.” “That was me,” Opie said from the front seat. Jerry shook his head. “Look, I just watched a guy get shot, so if you could stop jerking me around and just loving tell me what—“ “Did you see who shot him?” asked Angela. “Three guys in suits. Looked like a wedding band. Look—“ “What else happened, Jerry?” “They—“ Jerry coughed. “Interference. They said something about interference.” “Exactly.” She pointed to the newspapers. “Your interference is causing this. Your vocal interference.” “Wait, you can’t mean…“ Jerry laughed. “Lady, we don’t even have a tower in Boston yet. I guarantee you almost nobody is listening—” “Jerry,” Angela said. “Those bastards that tried to kill you, they’ve been loving with people’s minds since radio was invented. Sending out their subliminal messages, keeping them from their true potential, imprisoned within their own bodies. And you’re the only one that can change that, the only one that can fight them on their own frequency.” Jerry looked at her. “This is absolute insanity,” he said. The limo stopped. “We’re here,” said Angela. Jerry looked around the small wooden shack. He saw a 1970s fridge, a twin bed, and a ham radio setup spread across two folding tables. “Yeah, so what am I supposed to do, exactly?” said Jerry, disgusted. “Use my magical brown note to call up all your superhero friends?” “We just want you to talk,” said Angela. “Put on your Jheri White voice. In return, we’ll keep you safe.” “Uh-huh.” said Jerry. “You realize that as soon as you leave, I’m going to find my way to the nearest road and flag someone down who knows how to dial 911.” Angela shrugged. “We’ll see. Wendy’ll show you the system.” She patted Opie on the shoulder, and they both walked out the door. Jerry stood for a second, then fell back into the metal folding chair, his head in his hands. “gently caress…” “Jerry,” said Wendy. He sat up straight. “Yeah? You need something?” “Definitely.” She grinned as she pulled something out of the pocket of her skinny jeans. “I never did get that request.” Jerry heard a voice very unsuited for a teenage girl, a voice like black mud bubbling below a cold lake, a voice the same shade as the inside of the hole at the end of her gun. “And now you’re going to fulfill it,” Wendy rasped. Jerry felt sweat trickle down his back. “Our uninterrupted message is the beating heart of the human race. The slow pulsing of blood in everyone’s ears that no one notices until it’s gone. We can’t let your interference go unpunished.” She motioned to the microphone with her gun hand. “Tell them. Tell all those who have been interfered with to come here, so they can be taken care of. Maybe we’ll spare you.” “This is nuts,” said Jerry. “You’re—“ He stopped. Interference. He grabbed the microphone and turned the volume knob. Wendy scowled. “What are you—“ He let loose a loooooow note into the mic. Wendy staggered back and moaned, clasping her hands to her ears. The door opened and Angela walked in. “Jerry, what’s going—“ “Watch out!” Jerry yelled as Wendy whipped her arm around and fired. The noise of the shot faded. They were all still standing, but now Angela was over by the twin bed, looking confused. “Angela?” Jerry said. Wendy aimed her gun at Angela again, and Angela was upon her, pinning her to the floor before Jerry had time to blink. “Run!” Angela shouted. “I’ll take care of her!” Jerry knocked the chair over and burst out of the shack, running to where the limo was parked. He felt a whoosh past his right side, and suddenly Angela was there, holding the rear door open. They jumped in as Opie gunned the engine. Jerry looked at Angela. “What was—you—“ “It’s your voice.” She smiled. “It gives people life.” “Where are we?” Jerry said. “We’re at Plan B,” said Angela. “Plan A didn’t involve us breaking the law.” She pressed a button on the stereo console. “Or getting double-crossed.” Jerry could see the tower out the window, the letters in glaring red light: KRQO-BOSTON Angela turned to him, holding a microphone. “We can jack their signal for five minutes,” Angela said. She pressed the microphone into his hand. “Do what you do, Jheri White.” Jerry grinned. “I’m not on the clock.” “Hey, you said you wanted a tower in Boston,” Angela said, smiling. “Now you’ve got it.” Jerry felt the sound well up from the back of his throat. “Hello, we interrupt this show for an emergency broadcast directed at all you broads and cats out there—you’re gonna want to hear what I have to say, because this is now Jerry Radio, that’s J-E-R-R-Y, on the loooooow end of the dial…”
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Jun 15, 2015 08:23
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The Last Hunt 1498 words The job hunt was not going well. Benjamin Savos sipped on his coffee and browsed his email inbox from the laptop on the kitchen counter. He only had one real offer, and Joanna wasn't going to like it. "Hear back from anywhere?" Jo sleepily asked, as she wiped the sleep from her eyes. "Not yet." He fumbled for the right words. "You're always welcome at the bakery." She reiterated. Ben's gaze fell on to the mounted tiger above the fireplace, then on the .45 Marlin Guide Rifle in it's display case underneath. He let a moment pass. "Another mauling outside of Crescent Valley." He remarked nonchalantly. "That's terrible." "Yeah. They're worried about a repeat of last season, especially after the search party didn't turn anything up. Mayor Tarant put up a private contract on the man eater." Jo furrowed her brow. "You promised you were going to look for a real job." "I am baby, but there's nothing for me." His empty inbox hung in the back of his mind. "I only have one skill to offer." He walked over to Jo and touched her arm. Their eyes met and he couldn't help smiling. His hand trailed down her arm and came to rest caressing her baby bump. "The pay is good Jo, it's a hundred thousand dollar contract. I know what I said but this way we can pay off the house. Settle our business loans. Our baby girl can pick her college." Joanna looked away. Ben's heart sank. "You lied to me Ben. People have died out there. What if something happens. We'll have no money and you'll be leaving us alone." She sighed. "I'll bring back up. I'm sorry. I need to do this. For us. I love you." "I love you too." Ben smiled and kissed her. She put her arms around him. They rubbed their noses together and smiled. Four days later, Ben found himself on a ridge overlooking the village of Crescent Valley. Fog spilled from the skeletal forest of Lodgepole Pine as if it had been eviscerated. His guide Leonard was inspecting a splash of blood in the clearing while his tracker Charlotte was skirting the edge of the forest looking for any trace of the bear. "Tarant pointed us in the right direction." Said Leo, "I still have my doubts about a black grizzly." So did Ben. The attack was witnessed by the victim's friend. His description was outlandish. A monstrous black grizzly that stank like rot with knives for teeth. "Poor kid got carried away. He just watched his friend die." Replied Ben. Leo stayed silent. "Over here!" Called Charlotte. Ben started over to her when he saw what she did, a tree missing a huge swath of bark. Ben nodded and glanced at the setting sun. "Okay, let's set up camp here for the night. Leo, find us some firewood." He signalled affirmative and headed into the woods. Charlotte grabbed Ben by the arm. "I need you to be honest. Why did you call me? You could've picked up any tracker in Bumblefuck Valley other there. Why wait on me and my red eye flight? Is this about what happened in India?" "No, I called you because of the bear hunt we did in Russia. I need the best. I need someone I trust." He could help but notice the way she laughed. "Good, because India was a mistake. It makes sense now, you need someone you trust so they don't steal your trophy." She walked past him and smacked his rear end loudly. His train of thought derailed. It wasn't true but he didn't have the words. He sighed and pulled out his tent. Their luck with the weather ran out two days later during the early night. The skies wept and the winds howled. The trees groaned and swayed around them. Charlotte took point and Leo was rear. They would usually have set up camp by now, but their game was close. They could hear growls in the distance. The beast was angry. Search parties would not dare get this close, the bear was not used to being chased so tenaciously. Its frustration was a poignant hook in an orchestra of raindrops splashing. They had to close the distance, but doubt was creeping into Ben's mind. Where they tracking a beast or following a trail of bread crumbs? Each time they reached the point of the last sign, the beast was always just a bit deeper into the veil. Now it had been some time since the last crumb. Did they lose the trail, or had they already received their final warning? Thunder shook the ground they were standing on, but there had been no lightning. A foul odour filled the air. Ben turned to look at Leo, but there was something behind Leo. A shade from which no light escaped reared up and roared. The man-eater. Leo's face went ashen. He reached down, holstered his pistol and slowly turned around. The bear was too close. As soon as Leo looked it in the eye it lashed out with one of it's power paws and unhinged Leo's jaw clean from his face. Charlotte screamed and Leo fell back grasping at his gaping maw. Ben saw the man-eater advance on Charlotte, so he frantically shouldered his guide rifle, flicked off the safety and fired. Too hastily, the shot went wide, but it caught the bear's attention. It turned to face him and broke into a loping charge. Ben's heart rev'd in his chest as he ejected the spent cartridge and chambered the next. He tried to bring it to a firing pose but the man-eater slammed into him at speed. The shot escaped into the canopy and the rifle tumbled into the darkness as Ben felt a sickening crunch in his chest. His breathe burned through his chest like fire. He gasped weakly and all he could feel was the warm moist breath of the bear on his face. Suddenly several shots rang out. It was Charlotte. "Come on you fucker, try a real challenge." The bear yelped, it had been struck. Charlotte took off away from the bear, but up the mountain. The man-eater was close behind. Ben regained his breathe and followed gingerly. As he reached the edge of the clearing he saw the bear catch Charlotte. She cried out as it ploughed into her from behind. Before she could regain her composure, the bear sunk his teeth into her calf. She screamed out. Ben ran out into the clearing. "Let her go! Charlotte!" The fire raged in his chest, his breathe robbed him of all his strength. His rubber legs were catching him as he fell forward, nothing more. The bear was dragging her now. There was a black pit at the other edge of a clearing. She saw him running toward her. He was desperate for her to say something, to tell him what to do. His heart stopped when she spoke out. "Run!" The bear had began pulling her into it's den. "Go!" And she disappeared. Ben ran faster. He could make it, he could still make it. He reached the edge of the den and hesitated to catch his breathe. He choke back air that reeked of rotten eggs. He steadied himself on the wall of the entrance and his hand came back black. An old coal mine. The kid was telling the truth. He stared into the abyss, straining his ears for any signs of life. He yelled for her. "Charlotte!" Nothing. The silence hung out in the air, and was punctuated by a gunshot. "Charlotte!" The ground trembled underneath him. This was different. Then he realized, that smell wasn't rot. It was a methane build up. His hand... Coal dust. He looked back up into the abyss as the gates of hell unfolded behind him. At first it was the size of a lit match in the distance. Within seconds is was a crashing sea of fire. "poo poo!" The geyser flung him into the air. Time seemed to stand still. Ben could only watch the stars pass through his fingers as the pillar of fire challenged their supremacy of the sky. He would never remember returning to Earth. *** It was the ugliest pelt anyone had seen, but repentant, spilling all it's former secrets. It's fur was as black as night, dyed that way by coal dust. It's teeth were jagged blades, many were broken, some down to the bone. The man-eater was a survivor. It had sustained it's jaw injury from another hunter's rifle. Derived of the means to catch it's prey, it turned to humans. The cub pelt beside it attested to it's success. They would be his last, but his attention always fell back to the mounted tiger above his fireplace. He lingered for a moment until a baby's cry shattered the silence. He smiled sadly and went into his daughter's room. "Little Charlotte, did you miss me?"
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Jun 15, 2015 08:57
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poo poo, cut it too close. Missed a couple obvious spell check errors and some word overuse. Oh well, see how it goes.
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Jun 15, 2015 09:05
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Goodbye, Nuclear Holocaust. 1498 words The winter solstice was due and Chicago was cold. I sat at my desk sipping a glass of gin while I stared at a note. It was written in a scrawl I didn't recognize. Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. Yet there is little color where the heart of the lion rests. Where the muses sing beside the river, come and see. Bald Yak Bald Yak. It couldn't be him. I had used to call James my Bald Yak. Had I mentioned this name to anyone else? I must have, but why would they want to pretend to be James? To hurt me? I didn't know. I was pulled from my thoughts by a bang. Another bang, louder. And another. Until a snap and a crash. Then the patter of feet. I had visitors and they had forgotten how to knock. Who were they? Why were they here? They couldn't know my plan, surely? Someone entered my office. Only his eyes were visible. In one step he reached my desk and tried to grab my hair. I pushed him away and snatched my glass, long empty of gin, and shattered it over his head. Blood flowed past his eyes. I shoved past him and ran out of the apartment past another stranger. I headed towards the stairs. No good. Hurried footsteps were climbing them. So I headed to the roof. More footsteps, but this time they were coming up the fire escape. I looked for a way out. The closest roof was ten feet away. Could I make it? I didn't have a choice. I took a deep breath, ran, and jumped. I landed awkwardly and limped away looking back to see the silhouettes filling the roof. I hobbled down the fire exit and I hailed the first taxi I saw. Where could I go? Where would I be safe. "To the Langham hotel." *** Inside the hotel I booked a room but I had no intention of staying there. I headed south across the Wabash Avenue bridge. I walked for a few more blocks and entered the third hotel I saw. I paid upfront and headed to the bar. I needed to think. And in order to think, I needed gin. As the bartender poured my drink the only other person in the bar decided to befriend me. I don't know if my current disheveled look turned him on or if he was just too horny to care. "You're Eleanor Grey, right?" "No." "Yeah, you are. That famous brain scientist. Thanks to your Mood-Setter my life is so much better! My wife no longer bothers me at all." He tried to shake my hand but I was in no mood for his poo poo. "You're mistaken. And will you gently caress off so I can enjoy my gin." And to his credit, he did gently caress off. I don't know how many gins I had knocked back but I was brought out of my swirling mind when the bartender asked me if I was a fan of Monet. "You've been repeating a quote he said. 'Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.' I don't think he said the rest though." Monet! Whoever had written that note wanted me to go see a painting by Monet. But why? With a little on-line research I easily figured out the rest of the note. The painting was one of thirty Monet had painted of La Cathédrale de Rouen. The paintings weren't overly colorful and Richard the Lionheart had been buried there. The note seemed childishly simple now. But two lines remained to decipher relating to the place of the painting. Before I could finish my investigation my phone rang. It was Andrew, my chief systems engineer. My eyes widened. Was this what I had been waiting for? I walked away from the bar. This was a private call. "I have the codes, boss." "How..?" "Well, we had to use the full system running the algorithm in parallel to try every possible key to decrypt the three-pass protocol they were using. We only just had enough computers. Now we can-" "Erase humanity," I interrupted. "Yep. USS Ohio is heading towards the Barents Sea. We can use this to convince the Russians that they are under attack. Once they are convinced they will not hesitate to use their three-thousand plus warheads to attack America. The first will be from the array of RT-2PM2 Topol-M's stationed in Siberia. We can divert the missiles to wherever we want once they have been fired." "I'll call in a few days and I'll let you know when I'll be in to use the key. Until then do nothing." "I can't even if I wanted to, boss." I checked my pocket. The authorization key was still there. Without it we couldn't implement the plan. Before I used it, I needed to do one last thing. Find out who was pretending to be James and why they wanted me to see a loving Monet painting. I headed to my room and as I passed the TV 'Incident at Langham Hotel' flashed on the screen. *** It was a cold, bright day in Paris when I arrived. The painting was at the Musée d'Orsay which sits right on the southern bank of the river Seine in the heart of Paris. I headed straight to the museum and easily located the paintings. There were three of them here. I studied them at length hoping not to draw stares myself. Eventually I noticed a different color on the side of the nearest frame. It was another note written in the same untidy writing as the first one. Dr. Haywood, Porton Down, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Salisbury, U.K. L414, B2. No more coded messages then. But I had no idea who Dr. Haywood was. I would be damned if I wasn't going to find out. Back at my hotel I called Andrew. He was unhappy when I told him I would be away longer. I needed some information to get into Porton Down, especially if I forsook the main entrance. *** My target stood at the entrance to building B2. I tapped the guard's back. He turned and I punched him square on the nose. He crumpled to the ground. The door opened with his security badge. I dragged him into a room and took his uniform, rifle and security badge. I reached area L4 without passing anyone. L410, L411, L412. A guard came round the corner. He would have passed me whether I liked it or not so I continued past L414. As he reached me, he nodded. Before I nodded back, he squinted at my name tag. poo poo! I cracked his head with my rifle and dragged him into L414. "Eleanor!" That voice! It couldn't be. "James?'" He looked exactly the same. "You're Dr. Haywood?" "Yes. Easier to entice you with a bit of intrigue." "Why?" "Well, recall the work we did together on pain receptors. I continued our work studying people who don't feel pain: congenital analgesia. And now we can control pain." "You managed to find the base change needed in the DNA?" "Yes, yes we did. We can suppress pain but we can also amplify it. That is why I need you to take the data and spread it. If only a few governments know of this then the potential harm is too great." This was huge. I could turn off suffering and then turn off mankind. James handed me the data. But then the guards arrived. *** A loud bang woke me. I was alone, tied to a chair and my head was ringing. I sat still. What had happened? Was I about to die? I needed to get the key to Andrew somehow. Another bang rang out. Then another. Five in total. Silence. A woman then rushed into my room. Her eyes were red and puffy. She untied me and helped me to my feet. We passed through a room bloodied with dead guards. "James? Where is he?" I gasped. "Dead." "Oh James... You worked with him?" "Yes. And he was my husband." *** We escaped from the lab to the nearby town of Salisbury, a small town with a cathedral of its own. I sat on a bench in its shadow, James' latest wife beside me. I had a call to make. "We need to hold off using the codes, Andrew." "No can do, boss." "Can do, will do. You need my authorization key." "Thankfully, we have it here. Your drinking buddy at the hotel swapped yours with a useless key." "You? And my apartment?" "Yep, I suspected you would change your mind so -" "No! We need to wait. I have something that will make our plan more humane." "That makes no sense, Eleanor. So goodbye." I placed the phone on the bench and held the data in my hand. I stared at it. After a moment, James' widow challenged the silence. "What have you done?"
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Jun 15, 2015 10:19
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Iron Pony Word Count 1500 The whine of the gears told Ria she was almost moving fast enough, the headlights shining in her mirror disagreed. With a deep breath she popped the clutch and cranked the throttle, a wave of relief washed over her as the roar of exhaust echoed through the parking structure. Like a shot she was off and racing for the exit. Ria’s helmet rang as she dragged her knee through a corner. She tapped the side of her helmet to answer as the exit came into view. “No lectures Marv, just directions. I’m hitting the street fast, blind and with a tail.” “Hard right kid.” Marv was always calm, “You’ve got about 5 seconds to do it without getting smeared across the pavement..” Ria’s visor adjusted to compensate for the streetlamps as her back tire struggled for grip through a turn taken far too quick. She rolled hard on the throttle hard and found traction. Marv chimed in again. “I’m blind until you get into the city so I you need to feed me some info.” Ria could hear his fingers tapping away at a keyboard as he paused, “What’s your speed and how’s traffic?” Ria did a rough conversion, the speedometer was in imperial - one of the many features which betrayed the age of her mount. “A buck-sixty I think? Not sure though. Traffic is pretty thick I’m going to need you to open things up a bit if you want me to lose this tail.” There was another series of keystrokes as she threaded the needle between two hulking transit drones. She smiled at the scene ahead of her. Hundreds of cars both occupant operated and automated parted before her as though she were leading her people to the promised land. The analogy wasn’t far off. “Okay, now how many are on you and how close?” Ria wished he hadn’t asked. “poo poo poo poo poo poo poo poo poo poo,” Ria fought to get the words out. Dread coursed cold through her veins like a terrifying drug as she spotted a trio of sleek black and yellow interceptors giving chase. Her eyes snapped back to the road ahead, she couldn’t look death in the eye. “Three, Incident Response Task Force,” She choked back tears, “I’m not going to make it back. Help me lose them long enough to make a drop, we can’t afford to lose this or everything we’ve worked for is dead like me” “Don’t be morbid kid.” Marv’s resolve did nothing to stay Ria’s nerves, “Too many people are depending on you.” Ria became infinitely more aware of the relic tucked in her jacket. Thousands of interviews, nearly a year’s worth raw video, millions of words in the form of leaked documents. The story of the century was stored on a fifty year old data drive. A dead format was the only thing keeping hope of a better tomorrow alive. “Now, before you get to the tunnel how much of a lead do you have?” It took all of her conviction to look again, Ria flicked a switch on the side of her helmet and a range-finder illuminated itself in her visor “Two hundred meters, they seem to be falling back.” Ria couldn’t believe the rumors were true. IRTF Interceptors, vehicles renowned for their speed and maneuverability were effectively useless off-grid. Their fearsome reputation brought on by a suite of signal jammers, cyber-intrusion hardware, and more control over traffic protocols than most military vehicles… all made possible at the expense of a proper battery. “Our source was good, they can’t keep up outside of the city.” “That just means you have to open up your lead. Once they clear that tunnel we’ve got nothing on them.” He laughed as he tapped away at his keyboard. “That should do it. Throttle up and rubber side down Ria, you don’t have long before the emergency power kicks in.” Marv had enough access to the Pittsburgh Traffic Authority control center to clear them a path, an edge that meant nothing if the interceptors got too close. “We’re going to radio silence when you’re in the city, trust me Ria...you can do this.” For the first time ever, Ria found doubt in her editor’s words” The last thing she heard on the call was the tap of a few keys. The amber light of the Fort Pitt Tunnel went black. Ria and became the only person the world, the machine which propelled her forward was her only friend as they cut through the darkness with the ease of her bike’s namesake. The roar of the engine echoed off the walls, a great cacophony that reverberated in her chest and swelled to match their terrifying speed. In the distance the faint light of the city grew brighter as she twisted the throttle to full open. The words of Hunter S. Thompson came to Ria as her front wheel left the ground, words that for the first time in her life held meaning. “Faster, Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.” The maw of Mount Washington spat Ria out onto the Fort Pitt Bridge. Despite having called Pittsburgh home for both of her decades, she never grew tired of the way the Golden Triangle looked at night. She blazed onward, too exhilarated to care that Marv and his computers no longer restricted the cars ahead -- Too resolved in her mission to be notice the interceptors emerging from the tunnel behind. She darted and weaved through the throng, taking for granted the agility and freedom the traffic around her had sacrificed in the name of safety. Ria smiled when she realized that somewhere back in the tunnel, she and the bike had ceased to be separate entities. Woman and machine were now one. She cut a sweeping arc as she merged onto the westbound freeway. Not far now, she thought, riding the lane markers so delicately they could have been a high-wire. The joy of pushing the envelope abandoned her as a truck slammed its brakes. Reflexes, sharp with the effects of adrenaline barely saved her. Reality hit all at once...Traffic protocols prohibited braking on the freeway. Marv wasn’t able to help her anymore...and she’d lost a lot of speed. She kicked into high gear and checked her mirrors. The fear which had been left behind in the tunnel had finally caught up, all three Interceptors were dangerously close, the blue glow of the co-driver’s console was faintly visible through the tinted glass of the windscreen. Don’t panic, she thought back to a retired IRTF whistleblower she had interviewed, the story that got her fired from corporate journalism, Their strongest tool is fear, and after that comes control. They’re not going to run you down with an interceptor when they can force an unsuspecting family hatchback to do it for them. She saw a gap in the cars ahead of her, a tight fit, but she could make it. Okay Ria, eyes on the road, not the enemy. She was back on the throttle. Through downtown she rode, swerving and braking, dodging and evading. Despite their best efforts Ria would not be brought down by an innocent bystander. No you bastards, the words in her head came out stern, If you want to stop me you’re going to have to do it yourselves. The last exit came up quick and Ria almost missed it, cutting off a delivery-truck which moments ago had nearly run her off the road. The turn was tight and Ria downshifted to cut speed. The engine backfired in protest as a radiator hose burst in protest. Ria cried out as her leg was scalded by coolant that had reached its limits. She didn’t have much time before the engine overheated. The exit ramp opened to another bridge, straight and flat and devoid of traffic. In her mirror she saw the interceptors gaining on her...ahead several vehicles she knew from the newspaper. She did the math in her head. No chance, she hoped she’d be good enough bait for the IRTF. Solemnly the young journalist tapped another button on her helmet. “Send Message To Marv: Couldn’t make it... The drive is with the bike, I won’t be.” The helmet parroted the message in a tone that was ironically cheerful before sending it off. Ria continued “Default helmet to factory settings: Confirmed.” IRTF wouldn’t be getting any names from her call logs. She reached into her jacket and tucked the storage drive into the storage pouch that was lashed to the fuel tank. She was positive the bike would reach her friends, fairly certain the drive would survive imminent crash thereafter. She stood up for a moment before freeing the steel pony which had carried her so far. Images from a leaked IRTF interrogation flashed through her mind as the ground rushed towards her in what felt like slow motion… She hoped the impact would kill her.
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Jun 15, 2015 10:52
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Captain Hank Rockford’s Space Adventures Episode 1 – Rescue of the Damsel Princess 1488 words When they had run out of torpedoes, Captain Hank Rockford ordered his crew to ready his exo-suit and fire him at the enemy spaceship instead. “Captain,” Lt. Dweebleheimer said, “navy protocol requires us to retreat and call for backup. Do you think propelling yourself into space at this stage is wise?” “Son,” Hank said, tipping his burning cigar with the corner of his mouth so that ash spilled all over the freshly polished bridge floor, “shut yer drat trap.” What Captain Hank Rockford didn’t tell his crew was that he was tired of it. Tired of the fancy bridge nerds, tired of their comm protocols and their new age of diplomacy and standardized sub-nuclear warfare. He was old guard. He was guts and glory. His ship could retire, but he would stay. Let someone else take command. He would walk through a blaze of fire, rescue the kidnapped Damsel Princess from the enemy ship and be home in time for supper, or die trying. The rocket port had not been properly cleaned in months. Hank dragged a finger of his battlesuit along the inner wall of the tube, revealing a trail of steel underneath the grimy fuel residue. “Tell the new captain to fire the janitor.” “Sir,” the weapons master’s voice burst through the suit’s internal speakers, “you are going to be propelled out of the stardock port at double sonic speed, approximating the tangent--” “Fire!” Hank said. His potentially last thoughts were how thankful he was to never have to listen to this stupid technobabble again. He shot out, the stars around him long, wobbly lines. There was no air resistance in space, yet he couldn’t help but clench his lips tightly around his cigar, lest it fall out. The intercom speakers blared up again: “Sir, there’s--” Crackle. Static. Hank had left his ship’s broadcasting range within about five seconds. Finally. A tiny pebble knocked against his visor. Hank activated his hand thrusters and swerved just in time to avoid a jagged piece of rock the size of a football. He barrel-rolled through the meteor field, rock and stone, ever larger, the size of a head, a man, a spaceship. He wasn’t going fast enough. The enemy ship was still a minute away. At least. He grit his teeth and knocked his shoes together, activating the boost modules on his feet. The subatomic fusion reactor in the back of his suit emanated an intense heat. The rocks blurred, ran together into undefined shapes. He barely dodged now. Left. Right. Left. Up. Each blink of an eye was another opportunity to crash and burn. The enemy ship opened fire. Laser beams ripped through space. Microbombs exploded all around, their shrapnel failing to catch up with him. Nano-atomic rockets buried themselves into rocks behind him, next to him, in front of him, dotting his rear view with tiny mushroom clouds. The debris lifted. Hank diverted all energy into his feet boosters and grabbed on to a rock twice as large as himself. He held it up. Explosions trembled through the improvised stone shield. A laser buried itself through the rock, leaving a hole for Hank to gaze at the enemy ship: a sleek, smooth box with a widened finish where jagged edges indicated a haphazard arrangement of engines and thrusters. A microbomb exploded right in front of him, a single tiny pellet ripping through the hole in the rock, through Hank’s visor, and shearing off the butt of his cigar. That did it. He activated his elbow thrusters to rotate around his own axis, faster, even faster, keeping a tight grip onto the rock until his senses melted away for all but the tactile sensation of his fingers gripping something heavy. And rage. To an outside observer, he must have been nothing less than a furious space tornado. He raised his hands over his head and slammed the meteor into their loving spaceship. The hull burst open inward, revealing a hall bathed in the irregular red siren light. His intercom picked up an open broadcast: ‘HULL BREACH ON LEVEL FIVE. ALARM. HULL BREACH LEVEL FIVE’. Foot soldiers in black uniforms zoomed past him, kicking, thrashing, screaming soundlessly, too busy with their death throes to use their rifles for a final shot at a true Earthian hero. Which was Hank. He crash-landed in the opened-up hall, ripping another hole into the back wall of the room. Surprised soldiers turned towards him. They looked down at Hank, up at the hole behind him, and then they were sucked into space. The vacuum pulled on him as well. He worked his thrusters, sped along the hallway, through the rapidly descending breach door and finally came to a screeching halt on the other side of the heavy supersteel seal before it closed. Noise. Air. His suit was unable to carry him through simulated gravity. He heaved himself up, took off his helmet, lit himself a fresh cigar. The alarm blared through the hallway. Footsteps. Hank extended his arm, waited for the first soldier to show his face and then gunned him down with his integrated laser chaingun. He inhaled. “Welcome to Cohiba Country.” As was customary when you met any kind of resistance these days, the guards retreated immediately. The nearby elevator was out of service, which might have had something to do with the ‘Rampaging Madman Alert On Level 5’. Hank punched straight through the elevator doors, jumped down the shaft onto the next cabin and shot a hole through the roof. They probably kept the Damsel Princess close to the ship’s sanctuary: the bridge. The buttons indicated that this was on the top floor. Now all that was left was momentum. He shot another hole through the cabin’s bottom, extended his other arm, and fired a tiny nuclear rocket at the shaft below. This time the wind did pull on his cigar. # Predictably, the guards had rallied at the heart of their ship: the front door to the bridge. There they hid behind sandbags, cyborgs, and exo-suits of their own, all guns leveled at the elevator doors in front of them. They opened. A mechanical suit flew right at them. Laser beams zapped through the air. Microscopic nuclear explosions rocked the sleek human figure. Its thrusters gave out. With an eerie screech, the suit crash-landed before them. A moment passed. Slowly, a handful of soldiers approached, their guns leveled at what they’d assumed to be Hank. The suit was empty. ‘SELF DESTRUCT ENGAGED. GOODBYE.’ Hank dangled below the malformed elevator cabin, taking a long drag from his cigar as he listened to the explosions, the fire, the screams, more explosions. Finally, silence, for all but the crackle of the burning remains of a subatomic fusion reactor explosion. Hank stepped through the leftover inferno. The door to the bridge slid open and a tall man stood from his seat in the middle of the room, indignantly raised his chin, and surrendered. “Step aside, sonny,” Hank said. He took a seat and broadcast the message of his victory to the naval fleet. The Damsel Princess was in a corner of her own: the infamously wise woman, clad in her bronze robe. Heiress to the throne of planet Damsel. There was a noticeable lack of shackles on her. “Have you come to return me to my slavers?” she said. “Your what now?” “My owners. I-- you know nothing of Damsel politics?” Hank shrugged. “It is mostly a formal title. I do not actually rule. They take you from your family, force you to endure the rites. For the people. The fire ants… I just…” "You mean to tell me that these people in sinister black uniforms were actually the good guys, and I was the bad one?" "What part of Rampaging Madman Alert escaped your understanding?" Just then, the smell of human remains mixed with Cohiba tobacco began to fill his nostrils. Way to go, old man. The bridge screen displayed a huge fleet that had warped into range: an exaggerated mass of frigates, destroyers and battlecruisers, a thousand times overkill and ten thousand times the strength of Hank’s new ship. His allies had arrived. Their commander hailed them; another uptight nerd in orderly uniform. “Change of plans,” Hank said. “Turns out the princess wasn’t kidnapped.” “That changes nothing,” the commander replied. “Our orders are--” “Screw the orders.” The man gasped. “Sir! That is in violation of comm protocol 52-BF4--” Hank turned off the screen. All he had at his disposal was a bunch of scared bridge nerds, a scared princess and the smoldering bodies on the hallway outside. Zero chance of victory. Tiny chance of escape. Maybe. He’d wanted to die in a hail of fire. But now, he felt responsible. And maybe he was. At least for all the people he murdered. “What now?” the princess said. “We get the gently caress out of here,” Hank said, and activated the manual control.
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Jun 15, 2015 10:55
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I am starting to stir toward wakefulness. Submissions close in 45 minutes.
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Jun 15, 2015 11:12
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Stockholm East Africa 1307 Words Simon looked the three Somali men in the eyes, one after the other. “I want to stay,” he said, “I want to join you.” He’d made the best of the situation, tried to bond with the three captors who spoke English, the ones who stayed back and looked after camp. The other hostages left as their ransoms were paid, until it was just him and a few Russians left. Then their government stepped in and they were gone, too. It was just him, and he knew he wasn’t worth a nickel to no-one. Describing them with the word pirate seemed ridiculous, even in the modern sense of the world. Abdi wore Gucci sunglasses and a Barcelona FC shirt with bleached and peeling decals. Bashiir played PlayStation all day, lounging in his hammock with a machete dangling from his belt and scraping on the gravel. He’d grown closest to the eldest, Maako, who let him send letters home to his daughter. “I have three of my own,” Maako had said, gesturing around the camp with the blackened metal barrel of his AK-47, “for them I do this.” Simon had a daughter too, and it was for her he’d gone to sea. He worked the computers and radios on the Sunrise IV, an ageing tanker flying the flag of Liberia, at once familiar and alienating, it’s single star reminding him of his loneliness. One more trips ‘round the horn and he’d have enough to pay off his child support arrears, and maybe then he could watch one of Caitlyn’s soccer games without getting arrested. He didn’t blame her Mom for not coughing up - until recently he’d have agreed Caitlyn was better off without him. The men didn’t move for a few seconds. Finally Abdi pushed his sunglasses up onto his head and laughed. Bobby, slower than his colleagues, took that as a signal to break into a grin. Only Maako remained impassive. “You are American. For us there is nothing else,” he said, staring into the air behind Simon’s head. Still, Abdi and Boba began to treat him differently. Abdi’s sunglasses weren’t trained on him so often, and Bashiir let him take the other controller for the PlayStation. The TV was under the verandah of the hut where the guns were kept, and Simon sat cross legged next to the Bashiir’s hammock, within reach of the machete scraping, skrrch skrrch skrrch, on the gravel. The sound grew quieter as the hammock’s swinging slowed, then it stopped completely, replaced by the heavy exhalation of sleep. Simon waited a minute, two minutes. He could smell the pungent spices of the fish stew coming from the corrugated-iron mess hut on the other side of camp. Abdi would be there, fussing about, making sure there was enough food to keep the returning raiders happy. Speaking of whom, Maako would be down at the beach right now, helping their speedboat into the low waves to scout for prey. When Bashiir started snoring Simon knew it was time. He hadn’t planned any further than sowing the seeds of his defection in their minds. The pirate’s big round head was lolling back in the hammock, exposing the skin of his neck, young and taught and smooth, paler than his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed in time with each snore. The machete was hooked onto his belt with a loop of leather, dirty with rust apart from the wicked edge. The PlayStation’s disc drive whirred in the background. Simon looked away. The guns were in the hut, with a gun he could threaten his way out. He held his breath as he padded away from the machete and Bashiir’s throat. The darkness in the hut was absolute, all the more so for the shafts of light and dust that pierced the gaps in the wall. There was a rifle on a table near him, long and angular and ugly. They were ubiquitous in his new life in the Somalian hinterland, so it took him a few seconds to remember he’d never held one, or seen one fired. Couldn’t be too hard. It was lighter than he expected, when he picked it up he upset a carton of bullets that had been teetering on the table’s edge. The noise wasn’t loud, but it was sustained, like the lines of dominoes he’d set up with Caitlyn. He exhaled when it stopped, and looked through a knot in the rough wood wall. The hammock was empty, the PlayStation controller carefully hooked in it’s netting. Then the light changed, and he saw the outline of a head and shoulders silhouetted in the beams of life projected onto the dirt floor. Bashiir was waiting behind the door. Simon aimed, shut his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The sound was louder than anything he’d ever heard, and the gun rode up out of his grasp and landed hard on the ground, spitting one more bullet with the impact. Bashiir’s outline was gone. He picked the gun back up, and on the third try kicked open the door, that caught on Bashiir’s lifeless leg. He looked at the Lexus they took to get supplies, it’s mag wheels all hosed up from the dirt roads. He’d have no chance by land. To get to the beach he’d have to go past the mess hut, past Abdi. He didn’t want to kill again, kill a man who took thirty minutes to do his hair, a man who made the best flatbread he’d ever tasted. But when the door to the mess started to open he pulled the trigger and held it, ready this time for the kick. His ears rang, but he didn’t need to hear to know it was done. The pirates had two speedboats, long thin craft shaped like daggers, with shiny inboard motors that sounded like the end of the world. The big one would be out, but if he took the little one north, hugged the coast, he might find a tanker or even a military ship- they patrolled regularly these days. He’d laughed when Maako complained they were ruining business. Simon ran for the beach. The track lead through a gap in the palm bushes that sheltered the camp from the beach. He turned off just before he reached it and picked his way through the undergrowth, trying to balance speed and stealth. He needn’t have. When he emerged on the beach he saw Maako’s gun resting on his folded shirt, just above the high tide line. He was kneeling, concentrating on something in the sand. He hadn’t heard the shots over the motorboat. “Put your hands up!” yelled Simon when he got close enough to be sure Maako couldn’t reach his gun, his voice breaking. He could taste salt, from the sea or from tears. Maako didn’t get up, just looked back over his shoulder. “You should shoot,” Maako said, voice still impassive. “You take the boat, they kill me. If you shoot me then my family is safe.” Simon took a few more steps towards him. He had been working on a sandcastle, with moats to funnel the tide and crenelated towers. Better than anything he’d made with Caitlyn. Simon started pushing the smaller boat across the sand into the water, which made a scraping sound he felt in his spine. “Please kill me,” Simon could see Maako clenching his teeth between sentences, “It’s better.” Simon climbed over the back of the boat and fumbled lamely with the motor’s pull cord, exhausted. He thought of the lawns he’d mowed when he still lived with Caitlyns mother. He pulled again and it kicked into life. As the boat sped up out he saw Maako clawing at the sandcastle, tearing down it’s walls. He headed left, counter clockwise ‘round the coast. He looked back once, but Maako was lost already in the distance.
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Jun 15, 2015 11:38
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Jun 15, 2015 12:13
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Orbituary 1499 words I hear it again. Knocking on the hatch, but there can't be. It's been days, a handful - maybe a standard week. My water is getting that tang that says the 'cycler isn't going to cut it much longer. Every sip I take makes my gut twist, anyway. Reminds me how long it's been since I had anything to eat. There's a protein bar wrapper floating in the corner of the cockpit roof. I've already licked it clean. A day later I licked it again, just in case there was any taste left. There wasn't. The black ships rode in on the sound of thunder. They were dropping in tight, hypersonic, fracturing the atmosphere deliberately as a softening up attack. The famous crystal towers of Eltrium were built well, but they were designed for beauty, not warfare. Their facades shattered when the shockwaves beat against them, and shards of rainbow razor pelted the streets below. I couldn’t see the result from the spaceport platform, but I could imagine it and my knuckles whitened on the safety rail. Those busy market streets below, packed with tourists from across the Inhabited Worlds… the plummeting crystal would explode into shrapnel on every impact. Another Skargon ship burst across the sky above the spaceport. I flung myself down by the rail, braced myself and blocked my ears. The pressure wave hit me like a series of whole-body punches and dust and grit stung my exposed skin. I climbed to my feet, only to be knocked over again. Munitions whipped in above me at a low angle, leaving a fan of ruler-straight contrails in the air. Something huge detonated on the far side of the platform and a rich, boiling cloud of black smoke leapt skyward. Reeling from the blast, I staggered for the Verity. My ship! Old and ugly, but undamaged by the explosion, and so she was beautiful. Our only way off this suffering planet. Venna was struggling with the docking clamps. “They haven’t given us clearance yet!” she shouted. “And they won’t now,” I said, waving vaguely at the control building. One of the towers crumbled amidst roiling flames and the whole platform shook. She swiped sweaty brown curls back from her face and glared at me. “We need to bust these off manually, do you get it? Break out the varch’ti cutting torch.” “No need,” someone said, and gave a harsh cough. I spun to face him, still a little unsteady on my feet. A ministerial guardsman in full blue dress uniform, leaning on my ship to hold himself upright. Curls of smoke were still coming off him and his left arm, shoulder and a good chunk of his face looked like overcooked tank-steak. He held out a terminal with an official crest on it in his good hand and tapped the screen with a thumb. The clamps disengaged with a thump and sank into the platform. He tossed Venna the terminal. “The… the data on that has to get to Capital. It’s everything we’ve put together on the Skargon attack fleet in the hours since we picked them up. Numbers, composition, tactics. Too late for Eltrium. Might do the rest of the Hegemony some good though.” “We aren’t going to make it into orbit with the Skargon fleet still coming in, let alone make jump range,” I told him. I felt bad for him. I hadn’t got it together enough to feel bad for myself yet. “Dace… this terminal…” Venna said slowly. “It’s got full gov access. To the orbital grid.” The guardsman grinned at her, despite the pain it must have caused him. He slid to the ground and rested his hand on his chest. “Yeah,” he said, addressing the underside of the Verity. “It’ll clear… a path for you. Don’t… waste…” He had nothing else to say. We made orbit, leaving a trail of Skargon wreckage and shattered satellite cannons in our wake, and then we burned for the Belt. If we could hit jump range, where the gravity well of the Eltrium star dropped off sufficiently for the drive to fire without instantly swallowing the Verity behind an unstable event horizon, maybe, just maybe, we had a chance. I check for leaks again. The roll of sealant tape is getting skinny, almost down to the cardboard core. If any of my hasty patches blow I'm in serious trouble. The hull's still solid - mostly - but there's only a trickle of power coming through from the plant, and all the stowage is gone. No oxy, no food. There might be something in the external pod, if it's even still attached, but I have no way of getting to it. My helmet and gloves went out in the first big rush of atmosphere. Stupid. Can't fix any of the systems without going EVA, either. Even if I had the tools. Even if there were still two of us crewing this boat. "Two contacts," Venna said, and her voice was a little worried. "There shouldn't be anyone out here." "Just miners running scared," I told her. I made it sound confident just to keep her chill. I don't like having her worried. "They’re going to be hiding from the Skargs. Won't want to get close enough for us to get an ID. We stick to the route, get to jump range ASAP, we're safe on our way to Capital and we’re heroes on arrival." “There’s Hegmony weapon and supply caches in the belt,” she said. “We have the terminal… maybe we should go carefully. Tool up a little.” “It’s taking a risk,” I said thoughtfully. Those two contacts blinking on the screen had my cheeks clenched against the pilot seat. “I’d rather we get out of here sooner than hang around.” She nodded. She didn't look convinced. She kept watching the sensors. I bumped the speed up a little. We had fuel to spare and no reason not to burn it. That knocking noise has to be something loose. Floating around out there, maybe some debris attached to the guts hanging out of this corpse of my Verity. Maybe I just imagined it. Maybe it's my heart knocking against my increasingly hollow rib cage. I hope it doesn't come any more. I don't want to hear it. "They're making another pass!" I yelled and I heard the turret servos whine as she spun it. I flicked a glance back over my shoulder. Her lips were pale, teeth bared in a grimace. Her knuckles were white on the grips. The Verity chugged as she squeezed the triggers. Systems screamed a warning tone and lights flashed red. The Skargs had decided we were enough of a threat to spend some missiles on us. "Going evasive," I said. "Gees coming." I spun us on our axis fast enough that my vision went dark at the edges, slammed on the burners. The boat groaned under the load and we both did as well. She kept firing, though. Never letting up. Chug. Chug. Chug. That banging, that varch’ti knock knock knock. I’m going (gone) crazy. Crazy with grief, crazy with fear. I hate the hard vacuum out there and I hate the fetid air in here. I hate the Skargon for being psychotically aggressive alien freaks. I hate Venna for being dead and I hate myself for still being alive. Not for much longer, maybe. "I have to get out there and fix it. Take a look, at least," she said. She was being reasonable. We were drifting unpowered. We were in deep, deep shuph’uu. "We're tumbling in an asteroid belt," I told her. I was being reasonable too. Pretending to be. "There's a lot of debris out there. Not to mention we're a big, fat target if any more Skargs come along and get all revenge-minded." "What are our options?" she said quietly. "You want to go out there wearing my suit? Know your way around jump drive internals, do you? Been studying on the lowdown I guess." I drifted up front. "OK," I said, without meeting her gaze. "Be careful." Something hit us, of course. Of course it did. While she was out there. It was big, whatever it was, and fast, and it either exploded on impact or it hit some tank or power cell that was exposed by our shattered hull. Smashed me into the floor, then the ceiling, then the dark. Maybe a munition that they left drifting picked us up when she fired up her cutting torch. Who knows? I never will. If I hear that knocking again I'll answer it. Open the door, see who's come calling for me. I hear it. I take a final breath, and I open the hatch. I’m not expecting to find Venna out there, floating in a translucent tube, but that’s what I find. She hitches the wrench she was banging on the hatch with to her belt, carefully, and then we hit each other, desperate arms flung tight, the impact making us spin around our common centre of mass. I can’t speak because I’m crying and laughing at the same time and the sounds are sticking together in my throat, but that’s OK, because she speaks for me. “I thought you’d died in there,” she whispers. I shake my head and crush her to me. She holds something glowing up in my peripheral vision. I turn my head and see the terminal. The screen is scratched but they make those things to last. “Made it to a cache,” she says. “Found a ship for us. Look like you could use some rations, too.” I clear my throat. “OK,” I say. “Let’s go be heroes.”
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Jun 15, 2015 12:17
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gently caress.
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Jun 15, 2015 12:18
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SadisTech posted:gently caress. loving gently caress.
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Jun 15, 2015 13:08
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SadisTech posted:gently caress. skwidmonster posted:loving gently caress.  EDIT: Google Doc for anyone kind enough to crit. SkaAndScreenplays fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 13:45
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SadisTech posted:Orbituary First of the three crits I promised. First, by Office’s count there are 1614 words – you should change whatever application you’re using to count them. I’m not going to run through the story and highlight parts that could have been removed. I think that you could probably do that pretty easily. Things I liked: -The action It was easy to follow and interesting, I genuinely enjoyed the ride through space conflicts, and the planetary ones are done in a very good way -Interactions between Characters Venna and Dace did not seem stilted, I liked the dynamic between them. They seem to know each other from years of experience. Sounds like there is a kind of mutual interest that is hinted at between them. Things I disliked: -The ending I’m not sure what kind of ship Dace was in. At first I thought it was an escape pod, which I think might have worked better for your story, but then he explains it’s a remnant of the ship, and he’s lost his helmet and has been patching it up. Additionally, there’s no atmosphere generation remaining, so he’s been out there a while. The question is, then, why is he able to open the door, with atmosphere being low already, without instantly being turned inside out? Its kind of a happy convenience that Venna was able to find a way to survive for what sounds like a number of weeks in her suit that was built, ostensibly, for repairing the exterior of the hull. Unless, of course, the ending was a hallucination, which should probably have been made more clear, somehow. -I hate the names of everything I’m sorry, and its not your fault, it doesn’t rip me from the story, but the names for things and people are so Pop Sci-Fi it hurts. -The Plot could have been told in a more linear fashion It wouldn’t have detracted anything from the story to have put the part where he is floating and waiting for rescue all at the end, I think. Its not that the parts where he is thinking have any bearing on the flashbacks we are exposed to. I listed this under dislike, but I really am indifferent to it. I think that if a story can be told linearly without ruining anything its probably best to do so. Like, obviously Memento isn’t gonna be told linearly, it would ruin it, but the Fifth Element is, and that’s fine. It also makes the end sound more like it has something to do with the beginning when done that way. Overall, it feels like the whole plot was kind of silly too, because why was a guy with top secret information just hanging out at the dock, with a terminal that was hooked into the network to release ships? On the whole I liked your story more than almost anything I've written, though, so I say good job!
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Jun 15, 2015 16:45
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An Investigator, An Accountant, and a Fistful of Bullets, 1453 words I walked around the bod, noting the ol’ fashioned BizSuit and missing face. Someone had snapped off the apparatchik at close range with a shotty. Eye Scan of the blood splatter said that someone had been sitting down behind him, and got a brain matter facial. A bit brutal for CorpSec, but clearly a practiced professional. Nothing too surprising yet. I slid back the Vid Gogs and looked with analog eyes. I hadn’t worked a Crim case since going freelance in ‘28, but it was just like riding a bicycle. Besides, I hadn’t landed a big case in a few weeks and was hungry. A P.I. can’t live on mistress followings alone. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who smelled money. The boys in blue were hands off this one. I had caught the bod from the IRS - Brainless here was a tax man meeting with an informant, which meant somebody wasn’t paying the piper. The Service would pay my fee, but only if I brought their man along. Flores was across from me, a mid-thirty career woman with a hand cannon. I noticed that she’d retracted her own glasses and was also getting an analog view. 5 minutes of business, and I had decided I didn’t mind her help. It doesn’t take long to tell who needed a babysitter and who could cut it freelance, and Flores was definitely a lady for the second category. “So no idea on the informant?” I asked. “Boss said Thomas was close to vest. Kept that way with all his informants,” Flores replied. “Can’t blame him, really. The Service isn’t rat-proof.” Figures it wouldn’t be that easy. Still, I liked our odds - our informant was still alive, somewhere. Once we got a name, it wouldn’t take much to track down their watch. Flores was already working the bod. She had pulled off Thomas’ wrist watch and was dumping locations, calls, and data. For my part, I was using my old PD access. They never shut me off the public camera feeds, thankfully. I didn’t expect to see our killer - no such luck - but a quick look at the local transients would be a start. “Got the dump?” I asked Flores. “Yeah,” she replied. “We moving on a lead?” “Local bum I know, right up the alley. Might not want to cooperate. You okay going physical?” I asked. Flores gave me an annoyed look, and I dropped it. Seattle had the most transients of any city on the mainland, so of course it’s Crazy Joe manning the street corner. Joe gave me one look and dashed it the other way. Flores was waiting for him, and sat him down with a hip check, elbow combo. He was still coughing up blood and curses when I caught up. “I ain’t got poo poo to say to you, welch,” Crazy Joe spat at me. “I don’t deal with two-bit shirks.” Flores slammed a fist into Joe’s gut, leaving him doubled over and gasping in pain. “Deal with her then,” I said before bring up a picture of Thomas, with his face. “Caught a bod - looking for whoever he was with.” Crazy Joe looked at my watch and scoffed. “You jacking me about a cocotte? Bright pink hair and a busted lip. Brothels right there, rear end in a top hat.” He pointed to a non-descript door down the alley way. I handed him tenner and watched him skulk off. “Found it,” Flores said, holding up a number out of Thomas’ dump. “He called in a side piece a couple time, and locations say he always came here. Lines up with when he was expensing for the investigation.” “Make senses,” I replied. “His informant is a working girl, so he sets up a bit of action as cover for their meetings. Explains how the cleaner with the shotty found him so easy, and why they didn’t off the informant too.” “She’s valuable property,” Flores said with mild disgust. Good - for what I was planning next, I wanted her angry. I hit one of the judges from the old days, calling in a favor. 20 minutes later, I had a Knock-and-Enter warrant for Flores, with me as a local advisor. I would have preferred a couple of boys in blue to come along for the ride, but it was a shaky case and I didn’t want to gently caress up the jurisdiction. Flores didn’t seem to take issue with the odds. I switched my Gogs to thermal, and tried to get a look through the door. Not much use, of course - best guess was two or three boys. Since it was early afternoon, they probably weren’t going to be on high alert, but I still didn’t like shooting blind. Then again, when did you ever have a perfect raid? I could tell this wasn’t Flores’ first rodeo - she had pulled some Boom Gel out of her bag of tricks and was applying it to the lock and hinges. Alright, fast and loud, at least we were on the same page. She pulled out her hand cannon - closer to a sawed-off shotty - and I took out my service revolver. Between her two shots and my six, we had enough stopping power to kill a tank. The only trick would be reloading. “Three, two, one, BREACH!” Flores blasted the door and sent it flying towards the door. She led the way, snapping off the two boys in the front before stepping aside to reload. I hit the third boy in the brain pan before he could get his pistol up, and started up the hallway. None of the boys had a shotty, I noticed. The brothel had a real dorm room feel to it, except all the doors locked from the outside. The cocotte must have been fairly high class, since each room had its own bathroom and kitchenette. We scared a couple girls busting in on them, but none of them matched Crazy Joe’s description. In fact, every room had a girl in it, except one. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach - they must been interrogating Thomas’ informant, and they’d been at it for a couple hours. The last door at the end of the hallway led into a nice little office space. The door beyond that led into an bare room with a cement floor and a drain. Inside, the cleaner had his shotty pressed against the informant’s pretty pink hair, while the pimp boss point a pistol towards us. It looked like he had a vest under his ice cream suit. “Seattle PD, drop the weapon. You’re wanted for murder, kidnapping, and tax evasion.” I tried to put on my best officer voice, while Flores kept her cannon trained on the pimp. “I don’t see any badges,” the pimp replied. poo poo. Flores snapped off both shots, obliterating his face. The cleaner raised his shotty, and I unloaded the five shots of my own. He unloaded the shotty into the door frame, before hitting the ground like wet meat. I had felt the wood splinter across my face - a bit of good luck for all the bad. The informant wasn’t even hit either, which was a nice little bonus. Flores took two leaping steps forward, and produced a knife from somewhere. She cut the cocotte loose, and pulled her forward. The cocotte still had bits of Thomas in her hair, and more than a busted lip. “Who are you?” the girl managed to croak out. “We’re with the Service, with Thomas. We’re going to get you out of here so you can testify against the bastards,” Flores replied. “She’s not testifying,” I said. “At least, not for the tax evasion.” Something had been bugging me for a minute, and was just now coming together. It was the guilty, scared look at the girl’s face that did it. “What the hell?” Flores asked, looking ready to hit something. “It was a scheme by Thomas to get her out. Right, Pink?” The girl nodded. “I knew Thomas back in college. We had Tax Law together. I got mixed up in some stuff here, and thought maybe he could get me out. He said if I was an informant, he could get me into Witness Protection.” “So he was going to dig up charges, and give her credit as the informant who broke the case,” I finished. “A whole new life somewhere in the flyover states.” “At least we got the girls,” Flores replied. “That’s not nothing.” “Yeah, that’s true.” It didn’t seem appropriate to mention how little my ten percent commission was going to be. Turns out, I was still going to be hungry.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:13
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hubris.height posted:First, by Office’s count there are 1614 words Google docs says 1614 as well. These things usually vary a tiny bit, but not by 8%
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Jun 15, 2015 17:21
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s7indicate3 posted:IT WAS A HOT DAY IN JUNE I wanted to like your story, because the idea of the President becoming deluded by the members of his staff and forcing a military coup is interesting at its face. Unfortunately, you become so bogged down in describing every loving moment of what its like to be a sniper that by the time Frank gets shot, I was hoping that Nathan would turn the pistol on me and then himself and end the loving thing. The Good: -A good plot idea I liked it, if it had been better executed I would’ve liked to read more of it. I want to know about the journey that took them to that moment, and how Frank fit into it, and less about Frank inhaling and exhaling -Characters sound like what they are I’m not sure what else to say about generic military sniper I and II other than that they seemed like Snipers, and that’s what they needed to seem like. Not a lot of cursory details are given about them, except that one is experienced and the other isn’t, but it works in this story. The Bad: -The Character of Nathan turns into an idiot? At the end of the story, Nathan is dropping all the lemons he is unable to hold because he runs into the Secret Service, who knew about this whole thing, I guess, and are totally cool with how it worked out. -I inhale deeply, and focus my attention -My attention is like a cool lagoon in the summer, moving listlessly against the shore -While the lagoon of my attention laps up on the shore, I emit a low hum, the low hum is -The low hum is the wind moving across the clear blue liquid of my attention I think you know what I’m driving at. I hated this, it made me hate your entire story and I ended up just speed reading it to get through it by the point where things began to resolve themselves. Keep it up though, because I think if you work at it you got chops, kid.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:51
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If somebody could give me a critique I would appreciate it, only please make sure to say things in plain English, because most of the time I cannot understand what the person is trying to say. Keep in mind that I did not go to college and have very little understanding in terms of writing jargon, and I don't know why things have made you confused. Its your brain I can't make you understand something even when I wrote it clearly. Just tell me your favorite parts of my story or maybe if there is a section that you do not like, but in all honesty I probably can't delete it out before I send it to publishers because that will make the story even more confusing for people who already understand it and like it.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:58
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