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Jun 24, 2020 01:06
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Paul Nash - Landscape from a Dream https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-landscape-from-a-dream-n05667
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Jun 24, 2020 02:27
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in on the off chance there's anything to be in by sunday
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Jun 24, 2020 20:18
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It's been a long time, but the reminder that this place may not be here anymore soon made me feel like coming around. in
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Jun 24, 2020 20:29
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 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING TOXXES As of right now, I am removing the requirement from this thread that people  to brawl. With the current news about Lowtax, it seems unreasonable to cling to a rule that would put people at odds with their own morals re: giving money to an abuser. HOWEVER. People still like a little bit of external motivation, so allow me to introduce a little idea we've workshopped in Discord:  The donation toxx! Basically, you will toxx, but if you fail your toxx, instead of getting banned you will post a screenshot of a $10+ dollar donation to the charity/org of your choice. do not do not do no DO NOT use this thread to discuss this. Do that in discord. if there are questions that need to be resolved in-thread, I will post an update. Discord link: https://discord.gg/nkFUKt Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 24, 2020 |
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Jun 24, 2020 20:34
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MockingQuantum posted:in Rene Magritte - The Annunciation https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/magritte-the-annunciation-t04367 The Shortest Path posted:It's been a long time, but the reminder that this place may not be here anymore soon made me feel like coming around. Max Ernst - The Entire City https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ernst-the-entire-city-n05289
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Jun 24, 2020 22:27
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 In.
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Jun 24, 2020 23:00
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In.
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Jun 24, 2020 23:02
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Surreal year anyways, I'm in.
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Jun 25, 2020 00:04
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hexwren posted:
Joan Miro - Still Life with Old Shoe https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80555 Flesnolk posted:In. Salvador Dali - Metamorphosis of Narcissus https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dali-metamorphosis-of-narcissus-t02343 Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Surreal year anyways, I'm in. Leonora Carrington - The Temptation of St Anthony https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/collection-of-lorenzo-h-zambrano-n09230/lot.17.html
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Jun 25, 2020 02:14
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In, for ruin, and a red dawn
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Jun 25, 2020 03:01
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in because i love you all and if i never post here again i'm going to literally cry. hit me with with a flash please. Thunderdome and the people who make it up helped me get out of a very dark time in my life, and the process of becoming a better writer with you all has made me a better person. i don't know if this is the end of SA, but I don't want to miss a chance to tell people who matter that i love 'em.  WRITE, DRINK, AND BE MERRY, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE
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Jun 25, 2020 04:48
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In. Imua. Imua e nā poki‘i a inu i ka wai ‘awa‘awa, ‘a‘ohe hope e ho‘i mai ai.
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Jun 25, 2020 07:08
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sebmojo posted:In, for ruin, and a red dawn Diego Rivera - Symbolic Landscape https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/40-6551/ Sitting Here posted:in because i love you all and if i never post here again i'm going to literally cry. hit me with with a flash please. Dorothea Tanning - Some Roses and Their Phantoms https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-some-roses-and-their-phantoms-t07987 Flash: Your story takes place IN SPACE Tyrannosaurus posted:In. Imua. Imua e nā poki‘i a inu i ka wai ‘awa‘awa, ‘a‘ohe hope e ho‘i mai ai. Paul Nash - Habour and Room https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-harbour-and-room-t03206
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Jun 25, 2020 12:45
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I wish I could enter this round but I'm actually traveling this weekend (Malaysia has Covid-19 under control it seems, so driving interstate is fine). Nevertheless, thank you, Thunderdome. You're the best sub-community of Something Awful I have joined. I met people here I'm glad to call comrades and hopefully lifelong friends. Some of your good words brighten my day and I reread stories in the archive. Some of your horrible words brighten my day too, I just don't admit it. But usually they make me mad, lol. I owe a TON of crits, but work and personal life makes it very hard to commit. Thunderdome made me remember when I was in high school writing really bad writing. I was in loving Elfwood, lol, that's a revelation to some of you who weren't on IRC in the early years of TD. I was one of the first writers in Wyvern's Library before that whole site went crashing down from the owner's ego and some really vigorous "fiction moderating" (I don't even want to go into that haha). But sorry that's a tangent. Thunderdome made me remember when I write for fun, and part of that joy comes from the joy of improving and looking at my own bad words and thinking, "wow these words are bad but they are less bad than my previous bad words, and my current bad words can be improved by fixing the quality of bad to those words." And the joy of looking at other people improving. Love it. Thunderdome got me published. My first published piece was something I wrote with a bunch of domers helping me with the first draft, because I was in some other online writing community (that's dead, lmao) and I HATED their bad, bad, bad words. Someone there noticed and I got in a local magazine, then I got in books, on a radio play, online, and I'm hoping to get in more as time goes by. I've said before sometimes I feel like I'm not hardcore enough a writer, because I'm not like "I must write!" or "I must do this to eat!" or "I must do this for the art!". I just like to think of weird poo poo and write them out and see whether people like the dumb weird poo poo I come up with. I'm told this is a dumb thought to have and it's so good being in a group of writers who are like, do what you like, man. Also, when I was told to join Thunderdome the first time, it was Stuporstar who came to me and say, yo stop writing those fiction posts in PYF because the people there don't deserve you. Thanks Stuporstar. Thanks the main crew keeping this all together - thanks Sitting Here, thanks Kaishai, thanks Crabrock, thanks sebmojo, thanks muffin (the only goon I've ever met other than), thanks DocKloc (the only other goon I've ever met), thanks all of you, there are too many of you to name, but thanks. Thanks. Thanks.* *That's one of my signature, the 3-time repeat stanza** ** That's my second signature, writing too much that the effect is lost. lol! Thanks.
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Jun 25, 2020 14:17
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ill second rhino's comments and say that thunderdome literally changed my life i joined when i was a lovely high schooler 6 years ago (jesus christ) and i cannot describe how important thunderdome is for me. i mean, as a writer, it is an amazing community that helped me start from the literal bottom to becoming an actual published author. but what thunderdome gave wasnt just a place to write, be critiqued, and do the critiquing, but is also a community with amazing and caring friends who would listen and truly care for each other. while i wouldnt be an author without thunderdome, i also wouldnt be the person i am today, and thunderdome was instrumental in being a safe, caring, and honest place that helped me grow so much as a person. a lot has happened for me in the loving 6 years since ive joined, but ive never regretted joining thunderdome and meeting and talking with all the wonderful people here. its hard to say how much everyone in thunderdome has helped me, and for that, im insanely grateful. i hope this little community keeps chugging along somewhere, somehow, someway. regardless though, i just wanted to say all of this, and say how much i appreciate everyone's amazing work in keeping this group going. not only in its ability to develop new writers, but also as a place where friends can gather talk, laugh, and be honest with each other. thank you so much everyone who is a part of thunderdome. youre one of the best things in my life.
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Jun 25, 2020 20:45
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I joined Thunderdome as an edgy teenager who wrote prose-poems and got mad whenever somebody didn't get MY STYLE and now I'm an award-winning professional author who runs his own press and drat man that journey was like 99% TD
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Jun 25, 2020 21:11
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Likewise - I discovered TD when I was in college and I'm so glad I joined in. You folks are skilled and dedicated writers who are both eager to help and welcome in new people but at the same time will absolutely call poo poo writing poo poo, which I think is a really healthy dynamic that can be hard to find. It's certainly helped me to challenge myself and improve as a writer - I recently put the finishing touches (for now) on a 125-page play that I know would not be nearly as good if I hadn't been writing stories with you all for so long before starting it. It feels like a weird coincidence to come back right as the forums might be totally over soon, but if that is the case I wanted to thank you all for the encouragement, the crits, and the healthy competition. Regardless of whether the site keeps going, this is a community I'm glad to have been a part of.
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Jun 25, 2020 21:26
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I don't think the forum is going to die, but I hope you all are doing well nonetheless.
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Jun 25, 2020 22:24
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I also want to express my love and appreciation for this competition and its community. I'm not as advanced in my creative journey as many of you -- being in TD has taken me from "decent hobbyist writer who writes once in a blue moon" to "hopefully pretty good hobbyist writer who writes regularly" -- but just the fact that TD has me writing stuff on a regular basis has been a huge improvement in my life, getting back to doing something I love. This community is genuinely helpful and supportive in a way I think is rare, and I enjoy reading everyone's stuff, even the less successful works -- I love to see people out here creating and taking risks. This is a place full of good people and good energy, and I'm here for whatever happens.
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Jun 25, 2020 22:36
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For reasons that should be apparent I'm not doing bans at the moment. If you have failed one, make a donation to a worthy cause and pm me a screenshot, and I will probate you for three days at a time that suits.
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Jun 26, 2020 01:08
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uh oh
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Jun 26, 2020 02:52
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Jun 26, 2020 03:51
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Signups are now closed! Also this is your reminder that the deadline for this one is Sunday midnight  GMT + 1 so please plan your last minute sprint accordingly.
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Jun 27, 2020 00:03
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you will wait for the rest of your life Word count: 1500 Brother, call me Revenger. When we were young we would play games in the summer gardens and throw ourselves around and sink into the flowerbeds, with a great blue sky which held our little fragile and gave us so much time. There’s time enough now. Now I’m watching a different sky as I’m laying on my back in this rickety wagon that trips and jumps with every stone in the road. My lips are parted so I can feel the cold on my teeth and my hand rests on my abdomen wound which at its own digression globs and spouts thick dark scarlet blood which seeps through my fingers like tar. This road and this wound leads to you; they lead to the hilltop sanatorium where you’re presently skulking about and I am being delivered there on this wagon; I am an unbreakable owl and I am delivering our sister’s revenge to you. In disguise as a common madman I will make myself a thing of roots and suffocate you until you’re so far below the ground even the worms can’t reach you. The wagon has come to a stop and when I turn my head I glimpse part of the asylum’s white stone façade. The horses are making their noises and I can hear many multiple footsteps in the gravel and then the voice of the wagon man, the unwitting collaborator to my scheme, as he’s telling somebody about the lunatic who in the town square cursed the heavens and waved with menace a horrid knife and then turned the knife on himself. He identifies me as that lunatic and the shaven heads of four or five orderlies enter my vision like eggs. With piston arms the men jostle me prone from the back of the wagon onto a linen stretcher and I feel the fabric hairs tickle the back of my neck as I am carried with the dignity of a Pharaoh inside your hiding place. The shadows climb up and down the walls like waves as I am rocked side to side in my cradle. I remember when we were children and we lived in our house. Our sister, and you and I, we all shared one big room, where we would run our hands over the warm wallpaper where the sun landed as it travelled through the arched and noble windows, and in the rays of light danced whole companies of dust, swirling and swooping at the command of our arms. There was such sweet laughter from our mouths and in our innocent love bloomed a thousand daisies all through the space that made our bodies. I’m in another room now, much smaller, and two blank nurses are picking and prodding and dabbing little cotton buds on the wound I gave myself in the town square. My neck is crooked and my head angles upright on the stretcher linen which now acts as my pillow. The door creaks open, and Daddy walks in. His hair is greyer than before, and now he wears a doctor’s outfit – perhaps he is here incognito, as I am. With unfamiliar stride he approaches the foot of the bed and wraps his hands on the bars – I can see the hairs on his knuckles. I remain impassive in expression – I must not reveal that I know him for my disguise to stay intact. Thankfully, he is impassive the same, as he addresses me as a stranger and starts introducing the sanatorium as if we were totally new. That’s the kind of trust you can place in your Daddy – and just as he could’ve outed me in my room, he also has the opportunity – as I watch him release his grip and take his leave – to go to wherever you are hiding and warn him of my coming. But I do not think he will. He always liked me better than you. After what you did. I am shook alive for one moment – a gasp leaves my lips and I spy with dread the needle which the nurses have plunged into the milky flesh of my arm. There is time enough only for my eyes to roll back before I am shot to the mines of morphine sleep. Back in halcyon nights, we would sleep the three of us to one grand bed in our big room. There was ample space for each of us, and we would sink closer to heaven in those generous sheets. The cool night air would drift in through the window and set blooming the sheer white curtains before landing like delicate touch on our foreheads. I turned to our sister, saw her serene and peaceful, and felt the whole world rise and fall with her breath, and then I turned to you, my brother. Some of the hairs on your head elected to wave in the breeze – and one of your eyelashes had tumbled down and landed on your button dot nose. Very carefully, shifting as little as I could, I reached over to your border and with the deftest touch I could manage wiped away the eyelash with my thumb. You did not wake, and I was happy. I wish I had seen back then the wild dogs which had marked their territory in your cracking and bubbling head. I’m limping down the sterile corridors of the asylum and searching wing to wing the monstrous avian corpse you inhabit. Each face is mechanical, made of sharp edges and periodic elements. Beneath heavy lids or stonework brows, eyes like candlewax are peering back at me. I’m mumbling your name under my breath, rolling it between my teeth and wincing as it sticks to my gums like a tick. I can see an empty storeroom and I retreat into it, careful to silently shut the door behind me. I’m holding up my hand to my mouth and whispering your name into it, to expel it from my tongue. Beneath your name is our sisters’, which is sweet and musical to speak. I lean back and let the wall take my weight as I ponder on the name. It was when we had all reached adulthood that you finally spun your trap and did what you did. I was at my job in the city when they told me. Quite suddenly and without forewarning, you had appeared at our sister’s door, and using your human disguise to get you in, you proceeded to take her from me. You spat on her miracle and cut all her daisies, and the knife that you used was silver in the moonlight. You made abattoir with your infernal pistons, and you shattered the two little mirrors in her skull. It’s heaven that they caught you then – and when you were dragged away a wondrous light filled the room, and in death our sister was as radiant as in life, and all the spores were spinning around the scene. After I am force-fed mushy medication I am being jolted and pushed into a great hall. The inmates, dressed in drab overalls, make a crowd which congregates in front of a stage at the far side. On the stage, in front of red velvet curtains, is a glittering microphone and stand. I am annoyed by the breathing of the apes around me, and though my eyes flit from form to form looking for you, I cannot help but feel helpless. Then Daddy walks up on the stage, and my spirits are lifted, just for a moment. He greets us as patients, he wishes us all well. He clears his throat and rubs his chin. He explains in his baritone voice that we are gathered for the purposes of our own psychic and cultural wellbeing, and in pursuit of this purpose he will momentarily recite the words of a poem written by a mysterious author, and that he expects us to ruminate on the meaning of these words. He then says he will begin, and then he does so; Daddy, please, hear this song that I sing In your heart, there’s a spark that just screams For a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep And love all you have left like your boy used to be Long ago wr I see you peeking out from the corner of the scene. I burst into movement, navigating this maze of the braindead like stormy waters – I am rolled and battered by the tide, and I see you slip away into a nearby corridor. The dam breaks and I am breathing free. Your long shadow signals where you are, and I sprint ahead. I round the corner and I see you silhouetted in the sun-rich doorway. We move in syncretic bursts and as the vines scour the walls my lungs carry me out to the courtyard. The gentle breeze rustles the leaves and many loving flowers bow towards me but you’ve disappeared behind a tree. I turn left and right. There’s a surgical scalpel in my hand. The wind carries your voice, the sound of which rises from the depths of my memories. “I thought I heard you call my name, when you thought you were alone.” There’s your footsteps now. There’s your voice. There’s my miracle. This is for my miracle. They might later identify the wounds in the courtyard as self-inflicted, but Daddy will set them right. Heaven knows they sent me to revenge her. Next time I’ll sleep underground. I’ll keep her hearth where you can’t find me.
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Jun 28, 2020 00:24
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Paul Nash, Landscape from a Dream 1337 Words If Thunderdome was a Surrealist Painting of Words I don’t belong in this story. At least the “I” that none of you really know. To you, I’m a pseudonym, a person who attempts to write good words and take criticism from other pseudonyms who attempt to do the same. I mean I could be a pimply-faced teenage boy who just whacked off to a tittie magazine before starting to write this, or a middle aged woman with a masters degree in writing whose twenty-something son told her about a group that does writing comps every week. Let’s go with that one. So, here I sit, a middle aged woman who has been given a surrealist painting by Paul Nash, Landscape from a Dream to be exact, and I’m challenged to look into the painting, let it speak to me, and create good words, words to entertain, or make one think, but whatever I do, don’t be boring, or God forbid, don’t write a story that doesn’t go anywhere. There is a description of said painting that goes something like this: This painting sums up Nash’s surrealist work and Freud’s notion that dreams are the gateway into the subconscious, and there’s a hawk, and there are some spheres, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually like the painting. It’s calm and it’s serene, even though I have no idea what the gently caress it means. But that’s OK. I really don’t give a horse’s rear end about Paul Nash’s subconscious. I do, however, on occasion, care about my own. So, I thought about my dreams. Often times, and I suspect this is true of you too, I forget them unless I write them down, which I’ve done periodically over the years, especially that time I was really into dream interpretation back in college, but mostly they ended up being about stress about money, stress about grades, stress about sex, stress about keeping a dream journal. However, there is one dream, and mind you it takes slightly different forms, that I have had recurringly over decades. It’s the one where I am on a journey searching for something, but I never get there. Perhaps you have had it too. I have been through subways, up mountains, in subterranean mazes, hallways, lots of hallways, jungles, fields, and, well you get the picture. I’ve read that it’s not so much the objects that are in your dreams that are important, or even the people, as often very strange people show up in my dreams, I won’t even go there, but it's the feeling you have during the dream. In these dreams I always feel frustrated. That may not be obvious, as I discovered when I talked to a friend who, in a similar dream felt excited and hopeful, even though she never got to a final destination. I asked her why and she told me the journey is a process and it’s not necessarily about the destination. I thought about that, but the next time I had the dream, I was still frustrated. At this point, no doubt, some of you are thinking, or even saying out loud, what the gently caress is this? And, I really don’t blame you. Surrealist art isn’t for everyone either. I mean, I ask you, how many of you have been to an art museum? Do you look at every painting equally? Of course not. I have been to quite a few museums in my day, and I tend to like a wide variety of styles, including surrealism. Still, I do not stand and stare at them all. I ‘m drawn to an image or colors or lighting, so I linger. Others I ignore. For some reason unknown to me, they don’t catch my eye, or even repulse me. So what? I have plenty of other paintings to gaze upon, paintings that cause an odd sense of pleasure deep inside me that I also cannot explain. It is not that I necessarily understand what is going on in the painting, or the intentions of the artist. I just like the drat thing. So, some of you, maybe many, or all, hate these words. So be it. Move on. I won’t take offense. Oh, I used to. I poured my heart into my first loss here, and yeah it was weird, OK really weird, but it had a beginning, middle and end, it fit the prompt, and in the end, I thought it was kinda funny. It wasn’t a still life, that’s for sure. It was, in retrospect, a surrealist painting of words. I wouldn’t try to get it published or anything because I didn’t write it for that purpose, but I reread it the other day and it made me smile. Literally, the corners of my mouth turned up. Oh, what was the story, you wonder? I will refer to it as the timetraveler-searching-for-his-cactus-brother story. If I was an artist, I think I could paint a picture of that story and pull it off as a painting called Landscape from a Dream. The judges took a knife to it and so now it hangs in the museum with shreds of canvas dangling down, this way and that, and some people think that’s part of the painting. But that’s called contemporary art. Where was I, ah, yes, frustration. The thing about those dreams is that they always happened when things weren’t going quite right in my life, my awake life. To me this makes sense, and I’m assuming to Freud as well, though I can’t ask him because he’s dead, and even if he was I couldn’t because as an American I can’t visit Europe, which makes me wonder if he would use the internet in which case I guess I could ask him, but let’s just go with I can’t. Thing is, I’m pretty content with my life right now. Not frustrated. I know this seems impossible since the world is imploding at record speed, but I lie not. I have been more creative and calm and free of any ailment, including a cold for over three months. So, not surprisingly, no dreams, except for that one where I got tested for covid and had a swab stuck up my nose. No worries, it came back negative. This made me wonder how hosed up artists’ lives were, I mean the really good ones, the surrealists for sure, that they not only had super bizarre dreams, but that they thought the public would like to see them represented as melting clocks, and morphed trees, and windows on the coast with hawks and spheres. Then, the epiphany came: if their lives were all rainbows and unicorns, we wouldn’t have the great art we have today. That art, thrives on hosed-upness, or at any rate, life being poo poo makes for more interesting art. So, being in my current content state, and trying to make good words, is not unlike a guinea pig spinning around on his wheel, yet I’m still here, writing. But, don’t fret, I’m almost done. I’m in this story, and I have no business being in it, not really. But I am because Thunderdome is a surrealist painting, and like it or not, I’m a part of it, and so are you, and these are my words, and they will be archived and last forever, or until the plug gets pulled, which I hear rumor it may because lowtax may be brilliant, but he’s also a pig. Or, should I say “may be” a pig, innocent until proven guilty. In which case I will consider it a temporary exhibition. But, in my dreams, my words live on, and it really doesn’t matter if you get it or not, or like it, or hate it, or if I lose or DM this week. Because what we do is subjective, but if it’s from the heart and soul, it has worth, even if that means it hangs from the refrigerator with magnets from Disney World or the Grand Canyon, or one that says, “Eat me,” instead of an art museum.
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Jun 28, 2020 15:27
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prompt: Rene Magritte - The Annunciation https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artwork...nciation-t04367 Monument archive MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2020 21:14
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other people 1496 words Archived. Tyrannosaurus fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jan 8, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2020 22:34
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La Belle Dame Sans Merci Prompt: Rene Magritte - The Blank Signature https://www.renemagritte.org/the-blank-signature.jsp#prettyPhoto 1024 words When I first spied the mortal at the meadow brook, bending to pluck a flower with her long dark fingers—it was then that I decided to take her for my own. I took my time watching her from the woods that were my domain. The mortal loitered along the brook, pacing the banks, absentmindedly weaving a garland of wildflowers. I remember that she kept looking all about her, seemingly waiting for someone. A lover, perhaps? She was comely enough for a mortal, with her russet skin blushing coral in the afternoon sunlight, her tight, poufy curls floating about her head like a storm-cloud. I imagined she had a boy in the village, some blushing, gangly beau who wooed her with awkward rhymes and fumbling hands. I had drained many such youths over the centuries—some had even written of me, I knew, shortly before their deaths. No matter, I thought: she would scarcely remember her lover after I was done with her, let alone meet with him today. Had I but known the fate that awaited me, I would have left her to her pacing and garland-making! I scarcely required any effort to knit my guise that day, for it was one I’d spent many decades perfecting. It was deceptively simple: a pale lady astride a chestnut horse, copper hair set off by a lavender riding costume from another age. Pretty enough, but with only a fraction of my true fey beauty. It’s most effective to not to dazzle one’s quarries all at once, to overawe and frighten them away, but to surprise them by degrees, draw them in before springing the trap. I was quite proud of myself as I rode out from the forest that day, startling the mortal from her work. I allowed myself a smug smile as I caught her eye, then spurred my chestnut straight back into the trees. I wove my path through the forest, not only between the trees, but between the mortal world and the fairy realm. How shocking it must have been for the mortal, to see me and the horse fading in and out of view, our bodies occluded by nothing but air! I knew she would follow, she had to. Curiosity, that ever-fatal curse, has always bought mortals to my grotto: my place of greatest power. Even as I set a path towards the grotto, I heard the mortal tearing through the forest behind me, her heavy breathing playing counterpoint to the steady tread of her boots. Mortals were so obnoxiously noisy, I thought—but I smirked regardless. I had her! Reaching the grotto with plenty of time to spare, I allowed my guise to slip just a little – enough to let my true eyes to shine forth, mother-of-pearl in the darkness of the cave. I arranged myself artfully across a flat rock and waited. Only when I heard her noisy approach did I let forth my fairy song. I sang to the mortal of fruit-laden boughs and flowers that carpet the meadow, of birds sweet-calling, of lover’s whispers, of the sunlight fading in reds and oranges and pinks and yellows into cold, blue night—to draw her ever close. Soon she came into view, still panting from her run. Her storm-cloud hair, backlit by the sun streaming in through the cave entrance, seemed to glow as she came to me. Now I saw her eyes were obsidian, shining with purpose. The mortal was more beautiful than I had first thought, I realized. It was rather a shame, then, that I would drain her soon, take the coral blush from her skin, strip that shine from her eyes. The mortal would survive my kiss, linger a few months, perhaps even a few years. Perhaps she would even be inspired to write of me, as some of my swains and maidens were, before her untimely death. But die she would, her remaining life force added to my own, sustaining me until my next feeding. As the mortal drew close, I leaned towards her, ready to press my baleful lips upon her. Her blow smote across my face like a thunderclap. A sickly-sweet odor, like cooking meat, wafted forth, and as I touched my cheek to find it hard and crispy I realized the blow had burned me. I fixed bleary eyes upon the mortal to find a horseshoe clutched in her hand. “Cold iron!” I cried. “But how did you—” “I was ready for you, bitch.” Even the mortal’s harsh voice was as lovely as frost on a corpses’ face. “Your song didn’t work on me. I took a tonic of verbena and St. John’s wort before I went to the meadow. Keeps fairies from controlling you.” “But why?” Her obsidian eyes were icy now, fixed pitilessly upon me. “Because of what you did to my dad. When he came out of the forest twenty years ago, he wasn’t the same. Got real sick. Doctors couldn’t figure it out. But before he died, he told me. He told me about the beautiful, merciless lady in the forest who’d lured him into a cave, kissed him, killed him. You!” She lunged at me then, pinning me against the rock, the horseshoe at my neck. “But I learned some things about fairies since then. I know how to stop them compelling me, hurt them, curse them.” “You wouldn’t.” The mortal laid the daisy garland she’d made upon my head, and I understood then the trap she’d laid for me. “With these flowers,” she said, “I bind you. In the name of the fey of wood, brook, and meadow, I bind you. By the power of my righteous anger, I bind you to this grotto. I bind you to remain here for every year you’ve drained from a mortal. If you leave, may you be smote to ash!” “But—but that will be centuries! I’ll starve! There—there will be nothing left of me!” “Good,” the mortal said. Her look was cold, but her obsidian eyes—those gorgeous, venomous eyes—couldn’t hide their triumph. And then she, that beautiful lady without mercy, turned and left.
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Jun 28, 2020 22:37
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Prompt: Wifredo Lam - Dark Malembo, God of the Crossroads https://www.artsy.net/artwork/wilfr...-the-crossroads RE: WHAT IS SHE DOING DOWN HERE 1320 words Oh, now you want to talk about it? Fine. Let’s talk about it. That Sunday was dinner and movie night. We made goulash, she was very helpful. The movie was great. And yes, okay: afterwards Roisin went out to the beach and reshaped again. So maybe she did become a deep red starfish, this time with three hundred arms and a wide-irised eye on the base of each, and maybe she did start heading towards a very specific point on the bottom of the North Sea; but that’s not the problem here. Firstly, I’m not the one who used to bring their work home. Secondly, we both know why she keeps doing it. Surely you haven’t just noticed? Don’t you have sensors down there worth a poo poo? I see you’ve got internet. She’s been changing as she goes deeper, every dive’s lessons feeding back into the design. It’s getting bigger, stranger. The latest thing: now she spins constantly and silently like a sub’s propeller. You tell me what animal that is. This time we were headed to the edge of the midnight zone and I was worried: if she slipped down into the black I’d have to go loud. Yes, I reshape as a dolphin, even though I told you I’d rather drink bleach than do it. It’s all very amusing and you can spare me the I-told-you-sos. She made it for me: roll that around your mouth instead. You’re off making people into crab-shark assassins and manta-squid shocktroopers and all that, and our daughter showed me how to reshape into a dolphin. Even though that means I come too. Her words glowed in the dark, let me pick her out in the gathering gloom. I told you it was fine mum she said, in spiraling lines of red across the nearest hundred arms, and leveled herself out. She’s spliced in octopus skin since I started coming. Easy in easy out. Her central mouth opened impossibly wide, undulated, and disgorged the bluelight camera. A couple of arms flicked it on and began taking pictures of the space below. Just recon today. I rolled myself over and looked down. Nothing but the faintest speck of pale light, unknown fathoms away. I chirped. ??? Still dont speak chirp. Pls let me upgrade your ride before i die of shame. She bloody well knew what I meant. I chirped again. Ok promise ok no deeper i said already ok. The thick water caught the light of her words and held it close, like it might try and run. Roisin’s instrument clicked and hummed. Whatever she could see there with her bluelight cameras and infrared eyes was just the void to a dolphin. So instead I tried to listen with my whole head, like the real dolphins do. Just the usual vibrations, the deep churning of powergen and aircyclers. Im serious tho because theyll hear it later when were closer. I twisted my head and gave her the Look as best I could. SAID LATER MUM LATER DOES NOT MEAN NOW OK. (You see the problem? What am I to do with a sixteen-year-old intent on approaching a very specific point on the bottom of the Irish Sea - give her a good chirping to? She has your reshaping tech, your love of bolding, and more besides) I chirped one last time, authoritatively. We would talk about this little outburst later, when I had a larynx. But when the sound went out into the water it bounced back all wrong. Something was moving down there. It hit my ears as a thick struggling. I looked down. That faint light was getting brighter, coming closer, bobbing wildly like it was on the end of a line. I waved a fin at her. We were too close. But she had turned her attention to the readings, and she didn’t see anything until Mike came looming out of the dark. I remember that weird little kid lurking out on the beach when you still visited, guarding the submarine. The tattoos are still there on his arms, for Christ’s sake! I could hear the water rush differently over the raised skin. Mike the anglerfish-man opened his cavernous mouth and revealed those long dagger teeth, his limbs thrashing in place of fins and tail, going for the kill. How would you have liked that, Frank? Our daughter landing down there in a rain of arms? I put on a burst of speed and launched myself forward. I rammed him head first, knocking him back - it’s not like I had arms - and got between him and Roisin. She had twisted herself into a new shape, her arms pulled back behind her like a squid’s. I chirped. But I don’t think he speaks chirp either. Instead of backing off the fucker sank his teeth into my left flipper. Blood spiraled into the water. I screamed, a loud piercing shriek that must have set off every bottlenose in a hundred miles, and that’s when she hit him with the inkjet. He let go and span away, trailing black and red. She fired another jet, smothering Mike’s spindly lantern. He flapped his hands wildly, trying to clear the smog, and then she dove through it and was upon him. A hundred arms held his two fast, another hundred closed that hellish mouth, a few spinning off severed; the last hundred were a rippling sea, twisting and striking and also still holding the camera. He didn’t stand a chance. Two arms curled around the long thin lantern’s stalk. Then she pulled. It came off like a plucked flower. Mike recoiled, his hands feeling for the bloody stump. Colour flashed across her skin. gently caress off Mike she said. She remembers him too, you know. Mike took one more look at her, drawn up in combat stance with inkjets primed and three hundred arms ready for trouble, and he turned tail and flailed back down into the darkness. She turned to me and laid a single arm on my torn flipper. Mum you ok. I chirped quietly, flexing it, wondering how baseline it really was. It’d hold, for now. She turned over Mike’s lantern in her arms. The light at its tip fizzled weakly. Not bad kit, she said, and jammed it into her skin. There was no blood. Instead her flesh met the addition eagerly, pushing up and around the stalk until it held firm. The light flickered once then shone brightly. Her circular mouth twisted into something I know to be a grin. Easy in easy out she said. She swallowed the camera whole and gripped me with her arms, the rough suckers softly clasping to my skin. Then we swam upward and homeward, Mike’s lantern lighting the way, before the crab-sharks caught our scent. So I’ll be straight with you, Frank. If it were up to me I’d rather you just stayed down there forever. But we have a child together, and that changes things. You were a lovely father, but that’s not the problem here. We both know what the real problem is: she’s better at this than you are. She doesn’t just turn a guy into a cobra-seal and call it a day. Every dive she refines the shape of herself, prepares it for her objective. And she’s getting closer. So here’s what I think she’s doing. She’s giving you a choice. Either you can come out of your lair and actually talk to your daughter, man-to-custom design tactical starfish, or you can try and stop her. But I don’t fancy your chances. Hide if you want. When she’s ready, she’ll come pry you out of there like the meat from a mussel and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. You want to know what she’s doing down there? What the hell are you doing down there, Frank?
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Jun 28, 2020 23:29
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I See You Prompt: Toyen - Objekt-Fantom https://www.wikiart.org/en/toyen/objekt-fantom-1937 1,389 Words A voice rang in Rosanna’s head: Don’t go back there It wasn’t a voice she’d ever heard. There was something about it, some flat and inhuman quality, that made her stomach turn, and she set her tray of dirty dishes down on the nearest empty table. She sat down, put a hand to her head, and took deep breaths. Forty-seven seconds later, a fireball erupted in the kitchen, screaming out toward the dining room and lashing the restaurant with a wave of heat. Rosanna sat petrified, nails digging into the cheap plastic tablecloth. A low, anguished moan trickled out of the kitchen window. - - - - - - - “I’m really fine. I just need some time away.” “Well. If you’re sure about that, dear.” “I am.” “I just can’t help but worry, after all you’ve gone through…” “Mom, I’m fine. I wasn’t even hurt.” “Maybe your body wasn’t hurt. I knew something was up when I came to see you, I shouldn’t have left.” “I just need you to feed Mitzi, is that all right? Twice a day if you can. You know where I leave the key.” “For how long? I don’t understand what’s going on…” “You don’t have to understand. Can you just please do what I’m asking? I’ll be back as soon as I can.” “Okay. I guess I can do that.” “Thank you.” “Honey? “Yes, Mom?” “I’m praying for you. I know you don’t believe like I do, and that’s all right. I can accept that. But it really does help if you let it.” “...” “Okay?” “Okay, Mom. Thank you.” - - - - - - - Rosanna looked at the nightstand. She set her Scotch on top, slid open the drawer, and saw exactly what she knew would be inside. The weathered black Gideon’s Bible stared back at her. She looked back at it, her mouth flat and tense. She picked it up. All right, she thought, if you’ve got something to tell me, then tell me. She flipped the pages, feeling the feathery sheets flutter against her fingertips, and stopped at a page that felt right. She looked down and read the first verse that caught her eye. “Those who guard their lips preserve their lives, but those who speak rashly will come to ruin.’ She stared down at the words, reading them over and over again, trying to squeeze out some drop of meaning. After a time, she dropped the book back in the drawer and slammed it shut. - - - - - - - Kristen had shown off pictures of her chubby baby every moment she could. Even Rosanna, who was not generally a baby person and doubted she’d ever want kids of her own, had to admit he was a charmer. Impossibly round cheeks, glimmering eyes, a mischievous little smile that knew you’d forgive him for whatever he might be up to. On Friday, Kristen told Rosanna that she’d been able to find a sitter after all and their plans were back on. Later that afternoon, Kristen walked back to the kitchen and was killed instantly by a gas explosion. - - - - - - - Are you there? I know you can talk to me. You can speak in my head. So why don’t you do it again? I gave up on finding God a long time ago. I’d accepted that things just happened, and there wasn’t any reason for them to happen, and that was just how the world worked. But I guess that’s not how the world works after all. I don’t think you’re God. You don’t sound like he should sound. But you’re something. And you’ve got a voice. So use it. Talk to me. I said talk to me. Talk to me or I swallow this whole bottle of sleeping pills. You saved me. For some reason, you thought my life was worth sparing and theirs weren’t. If you don’t tell me why I’ll make sure it wasn’t worth the effort. Why did you want to keep me here? What’s so special about me? - - - - - - - She was lying face-up in the desert. An odd feeling pervaded her, the feeling that she was a rock and would not be able to move from that spot for a thousand years. She stood up and began to walk, but strangely enough the feeling persisted. Her feet felt something buried deep down. She knelt and began shoveling fistfuls of sand in her mouth, swallowing them, feeling the grains trickle down and settle in her gut. Mound after mound of sand piled up in her stomach and she only stopped when it felt like she was about to burst. She looked down. A wooden box sat before her in the sand. With a quivering hand, she reached toward the box. At the instant her fingertips brushed the latch, she woke up. - - - - - - - Rosanna put the third empty J&B bottle in a tight cluster with the other two, forming a perfect little triangle. She was looking down at them with a bleary smile when there was a knock at the door. She lunged back across the bed, rolling past the coverlet and smacking into the wall behind her as she tumbled into the crevice behind the mattress. Silence hung like a thick fog. Her hand shot out, clicked off the flickering lamp on the nightstand. A band of light shone under the door, interrupted by two blocks of shadow. “Go away.” The words oozed out of her throat with a sickly croak. “Housekeeping, Miss. I’m here to clean the room?” The fear that clutched tight at her throat slackened its grip. “Come back later. I’m not dressed.” After a time, the housekeeper walked away. Rosanna realized that this was the first time she’d spoken in four days. - - - - - - - I’ll live the rest of my life in this motel if you don’t speak up. You think I’m not serious. You think I’m bluffing, that I’ll run out of money sometime. Of course I will. Of course I thought of that. When I’m broke, that’s when I chug all these pretty little sleeping pills. That’s your choice. You saved me once, why not save me again? Why the hell was I worth saving? Why wasn’t she? Why do you have to play these games? Why can’t we know who you are and what you are and why we have to live in the dark? Is she up there with you? I just want to know. Just say one word. Tell me I’m not losing my mind. I want you to be there. I don’t know who you are or what you want but I need to know if there’s a point to any of this. I can’t think of one on my own. - - - - - - - She was sitting up on the bed, cross-legged, and sensed something taking shape in the dark. A silhouette, something beyond a veil. A round, dark form with endless shapes scuttling within. She couldn’t fully see it, but she knew it was there. Am I dreaming? Whatever was swallowed up in the dark, she could feel it stop moving, contract together, focus in on her. Am I imagining you? Silence. Stillness. She stared into the black void, hoping whatever it was could stare back. You let her die. You let me live. We both understand that. But you ought to know something. If I ever find out why you did it, and the answer doesn’t satisfy me? We’re going to have something to talk about. We’re going to have words. You and me. The seconds crept by like hours. Then something shifted, a breeze kicked up in a far-away place, and the shape in the darkness dissolved into nothing. A smile crossed Rosanna’s face. Her body slid down into the sheets and she slept. - - - - - - - In the morning, Rosanna dumped the sleeping pills into the toilet and flushed them away. She’d known when she bought them that she wouldn’t be able to use them; she figured it had known, too. She yanked the curtains aside, saw the glint of the dust particles dancing through the air. Saw the world it was time to get back to. After packing up, leaving Housekeeping a sizable tip, and paying her bill at the front desk, Rosanna drove out of the gravel lot and turned onto the dusty little town’s main drag. She rolled down the window to let in a breeze and felt the warm, dry air rush past her cheek.
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Jun 28, 2020 23:43
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Curative 621 words after Joan Miró's Still Life with Old Shoe (1937) https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80555 The glass bottle wasn't much larger than a saltshaker, easily held in one palm, but to Cara, it seemed to grow heavier and heavier each month, even as she slowly drained its contents. It had been three years since she'd been the first in the middle counties in the century to come down with the harvest-blindness. It started with a vague fog lurking just out of the corner of her eye, but that fog eventually wrapped all her sight in vague cotton, leaving only impressions of light and shadow. Sighing, Cara sat down at the table, her practiced, callused seamstress's fingers automatically unstoppering the bottle, its thin, inky contents washing up the sides of the glass, its owner's hands unable to keep from trembling. The bottle had come from the traveling Alchemist, who had taken pity on the woman with the clouded eyes and passed her the bottle and a few whispered instructions. The town elders did not consider him a trustworthy figure, between his western accent and rumors of his cavorting with spirits, devils, and underdressed young men and women of the villages...but nor did they curtail his comings and goings or his custom. Cara tilted her head back, raising the glass rod concealed under the stopper to her right eye, then her left, letting a drop of the liquid splash against her pupils, eyelids reflexively squeezing shut over the intrusion. There were no looking-glasses in Cara's house. They would not have been of much use to her, anyway, as the icy solution drew tears from her once more, as it did every quarter-season, and the medicine gave her back something like her sight, at least for the time. The clouds encroaching upon her vision had again been swept aside by the black liquid, and in their place, objects and their edges shone with the witch-light in the darkness. The colors were most often false, but they were enough to continue to work. To continue to work, and to put food in her belly and keep the tax collectors at bay. To survive. Wiping the last tears from her cheeks, Cara took up her baskets and her purse and left the cottage, for it was market-day and eggs and carrots could not purchase themselves. Walking down the lane, she steeled herself, armoring her demeanor with a smile she did not truly feel, knowing full well what would come next. First, it was the town constable, regarding her with a sneer that went from his moustache to nearly his brow. Then, the smith's boy, Edmund, making the sign to ward off evil at her, threatening to let his dog's leash slip through his hand, to let the snarling and snapping hound to fly at her. By the time the loriner's wife turned her back to her passing, Cara again found herself resigned to the fact that this was her fate, to be cut off from the town and its people, like a diseased branch of an oak. As much as she wished it wasn't so, she at least understood why. The Alchemist had saved her vision, it was true. What he hadn't told her was that the physic he gave her turned her normal pearly eyes to orbs black as velvet. Even as the Harrisons took her coin and gave her the week's worth of vegetable, she could see them doing their best to avoid meeting her dread gaze. Cara had given up on asking God why this was her fate. Now, she merely waited for the return of the Alchemist to ask him instead: Is a life utterly alone a life at all?
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Jun 28, 2020 23:49
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Magnolia Gothic 1042 words I lie back into the loam, fronds and tendrils parting in vegetable welcome and wrapping around my body. The stench of honeysuckle and rot fills my nostrils. Something has died here, not long ago. A raccoon, perhaps. The plants are feasting on what the insects and scavengers left behind. There was a garden here, once. When I was younger. A garden, out behind the house at the end of a barely gravelled driveway, deep off an old country road. The house is gone, burned to the foundation, only an ivy-covered chimney left standing like an obelisk. That and the mailbox where the driveway met the road. Father Father built it to last, on deep concrete that would jolt the bat out of drive-by hooligans, maybe even break a finger. There was mail in it, junk addressed to 'occupant', yellowed, faded, marking days when new postmen unaware of what had happened here mistook the address for one where people lived. It's starting to happen. I can feel it, feel my fingers taking root, green chlorophyll leeching into my blood. I came here to become a tree. There's a trick to it, of course. There was a man, living in an alleyway in Scranton, who knew the secret and would trade it to anyone who knew enough to ask, for a twenty or a bottle of vodka. I cut out the middleman, brought two bottles, left what was left of mine when he was done, as a tip. More than half. Nasty stuff. Went down like fire Fire through a house full of old newspaper, like formaldehyde through a corpse. Drove out the old blood. "So what," I asked him, "Are you doing still back here?" "You mean instead of being a tree out in some bloody bloody forest?" he said. "Thought about it, time to time. Feels too much like getting sober. 'Snot like I got anyone I can count on to come around and pour vodka on my roots." It's starting, for real now, something rumbling in my guts, expanding, pressing against the walls of my stomach, waiting to burst, upwards as a trunk, downwards as deep roots seeking the groundwater. I turn my head, glance at my hands hands ,now deep green, nails gone bark-brown, and- I hear it. The voice, not my own. Echoing Echoing my thoughts. What is it? Something trying to tell me someone. Wait, the other way around. My thoughts are getting a bit distant, as green sap pumps through through vessels meant for blood - again - and start to carry my brain, or its contents anyway, to their new, wooden home. I listen. I quiet my thoughts. Only silence. The voice does not speak unbidden. As my sprouts pierce skin above and below my center of mass there is far less pain than I had imagined. Discomfort, yes. But it's almost relieving. I realize that I am barely breathing any more, that sunlight and chemistry are delivering oxygen now, that I do not often need to expand those scarred and tumor-ridden sacs, to feel them scrape and putrify into brown phlegm. These new sensations are a welcome replacement for those familiar familiar pains. An odd word, that. The two meanings are so far apart. I have no family, not since, not since the fire. Yet I felt compelled to return here, to pick this place to plant my roots. It is a practical choice. I own the land, land with a trust set up to keep up with the property taxes and refuse offers of sale. Incorporated. Immortal. It will take some time to learn every tree-secret, to learn how to whisper through the mushroom threads and ivy lines into the fast electric world, to establish identities and keep this land safe from the bulldozer and developer. I have the time now, without lungs keen to strangle each organ. Eventually I will have nothing to fear but fire. fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. It insists, the voice. And I remember the day. It isn't something I've blocked away, exactly. I don't think about it but I never pretend it didn't happen. Me, fourteen, rarely home, always away with friends. The house was toxic. Black mold and dysfunction, allergens and abuse. But it still was a shock coming home, past dark. My blood, red and green swirled together in spiral fractal webs, pools beneath me. I start to feel my new roots consuming it again, which feels somehow perverse. Mother, on the kitchen floor, unmoving, eyes wide. Unbreathing. Unbring. A horrid rasping sound from the den. I wheel through the room, staying away from the pooled blood, from the hammer caked with hair and blood and brain. I can't look away, but have to move. I back into the den. The noise almost sounds like a word, almost sounds like my name. This is more than a memory. I am there, again, now. I turn. I see him, father, suspended by a noose from the ceiling fan, chair kicked out beneath him. He botched the job. He's struggling for breath, arms limp. I watch him for more than an hour, but he just doesn't die. There was plenty of alcohol in the kitchen, always. I keep one bottle aside, splash the rest on the furniture, on the stacks of newspaper, every byline a souvenir of his career. I have a box of long kitchen matches. It only takes one. I grow, fast. Past my old height before slowing down. I am a proper tree now, no mere sapling. I think I intended to die, back then. But fear is primal, fear of fire even moreso. I turned and ran, bottle in hand, all the way to the end of that driveway, then tore off the top and poured hot bourbon down my throat. The first day of the rest of my life. The echo had been silent for a long while. Eventually, a pair of crows come for my eyeballs, so dry that I only see blurs anyway. I am beginning to learn how to see with my leaves, and the view from here is beautiful.
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Jun 28, 2020 23:52
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sebmojo fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Jun 29, 2020 00:01
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If you've entered and haven't yet submitted, I'm giving another 10 minutes grace for you to post whatever you've got to be judged. After that there will be no mercy!
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Jun 29, 2020 00:05
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Tipping the Scales 1500 words Alain sipped hot coffee from his thermos in a vain attempt to fortify himself against the cold. He trudged along the beach, fighting the stiff nor’wester every step of the way. In the crook of his arm he carried a precious cargo: a basket swaddled in flannel sheeting, tucked beneath the flap of his slicker to keep its contents safe and dry. One by one, he sought out the nests that cropped up along the sandy spit. They were small, semicircular humps in the sand, barely noticeable when all was dry and calm and sunny, let alone when the sea and air alike were full of froth. Still, he found three. And every time he found one, he stooped down and gently probed his fingers through the clumpy, wet sand, seeking out the eggs buried within. He brushed them clean, then tucked them into his basket, secreting them away from both their natural habitat and the certain death that awaited them. He was ready to turn back for the carpark when he spotted it, just a ways down the spit: a fourth nest, this one perilously close to the thrashing froth of the tideline. God-damned idiot snakes. He considered leaving that fourth nest be. His hands were freezing. And they’d laid the damned eggs in a completely infeasible spot. The tide and the storm would swallow it and that would absolutely not be Alain’s fault. He could, in good conscience, let them drown. … Except he couldn’t. He owed a debt to the little guys. He’d destroyed far more than he saved, and until he’d righted that wrong, any eggs he let die would only lend their weight to the bad side of the scale, the side of casual, indifferent destruction. Alain stumbled through the spray and crouched, bracing himself against the wind. He dug his hand down, and just as his fingertips brushed the first eggshell, the storm howled as if in response. A great gust of wind bull-rushed the shore. It slammed Alain sideways and he rolled to avoid landing on his basket. The egg in his fingers slipped away, and as the sea churned in, he had to grope with blind fingers beneath the water’s surface, grabbing and grabbing and grabbing and only managing to save four before his fingers no longer responded to his brain’s commands. Defeated, saturated, he crawled up onto drier sand on his hands and knees, the surf pounding the shoreline behind him. He cradled those last four eggs beneath his coat, warm against his chest. Safe, for now. ### At home, he set them up in the incubator like he always did, twenty-one little speckled eggs. Their colour always reminded him of toothpaste: white with the faintest tinge of blue, darker blue flecks like the little minty breath-freshening bits. “Good haul this morning, dear?” Viv called from the kitchen, putting on another pot of coffee. Alain looked back down the cluttered hallway, past the mounted fish and maps and charts. The storm had left him feeling sad in a way he couldn’t yet process. “Water got to a lot of ‘em,” he said. “Pretty cold out.” “If it’s so cold, why don’t you come in here and sit by the stove?” Alain stared at the warm glow of the incubator light, then adjusted it so that it rested just a little bit closer to the eggs within the tank. It bathed his hand in warmth and light. The wait always killed him, and it killed him even harder when some would hatch and the little snakes would slither out but others would just sit there, sad and inert, leaving him waiting and waiting and waiting for a sign, for some clue that they weren’t duds. Viv emerged from the kitchen and pressed a warm mug into his hands. He let him lead her to the kitchen. They warmed themselves by the stove while the storm threw itself against the shutters and the doors. ### When the storm was no longer knocking on his front door, Alain laced up a dry pair of boots and kissed Viv on the cheek and left his precious eggs beneath their heat lamp and went to work. He dragged the surf rake out of the shed and hitched it to his trailer with a satisfying series of clunks. Vivid neon yellow, the surf rake stretched its open arms out, a beach-bum combine harvester, grinders ready to churn through the inevitable flood of debris that washed up on the shore. The tractor rumbled to life as he eased the pedal down, and once he hit sand, he flipped the surf rake on. It shuddered as its gears began to turn, sifting through inch after inch of sandy detritus, crushing and twisting the wreckage of bottle caps and cigarette butts and forgotten Big Gulps, all hoovered up into its gullet. He left behind him a wake of pristine, finely-groomed sand. He tried not to think about the snakes. Those dumb little snakes, laying clutch after futile clutch in the beaches he had to comb clean. There was no way he’d gotten them all. Not in weather like that. The tractor gave another shiver, as if aware of his misdeeds, and something in the surf rake’s teeth crunched. Alain’s fingers twitched on the wheel, still somehow numb and cold and uncoordinated from his scramble in the surf. ### “Supper’s getting cold! And besides that, if you don’t get your rear end in here soon, I’ll just eat yours myself!” Alain quirked a smile, peering over his shoulder. Viv stood in the hallway, framed by the yellow spill of light from the range hood. She had a quartered potato impaled on her fork, and she chomped it threateningly. “A watched pot never boils,” she said, more seriously. “Those eggs are what, a day old? Honey, you can leave them.” Alain knew that. The eggs of the black racer snake took an average of two months, give or take, to hatch. But still, it was hard to pull away. Felt like he was failing them, somehow, if he didn’t watch over them at least a little. “You should quit that job,” Viv would say sometimes. “It gets you so morose.” But if he quit, the guy they hired to replace him wouldn’t search the nests first. He’d just drive right over ‘em. ### In the dark, Viv’s breath was a warm, soft gust against his shoulder. Alain anchored a hand in her hair, smoothed a thumb along her brow, and tried not to think about churning sand and garbage. “What’s on your mind?” she murmured. His hand stilled. He assumed she’d been asleep. “You can talk to me, you know.” She nuzzled her nose into his palm. He could talk to her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. It was that he wasn’t sure what he’d say would make sense. He didn’t know how to explain that the older he got, the more he fretted over things like snake eggs and garbage on the beach. How he worried the longer he walked this planet, the greater a debt he owed to clean it. “How many do you think I need to save for it all to balance out?” “What?” Her voice was warm with gentle teasing. “You a buddhist now?” “I’m getting old,” he said. “The older I get, the less I like that other things have to die for us to live.” For him to pay his mortgage on his little seaside bungalow, for him to eat his casseroles. “Sometimes I worry I’m gonna lose you to those snakes.” In the dark, she pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw, then drifted off to sleep, which didn’t come so easy for Alain. ### Another long summer evening came and went. Alain tinkered at his shop bench, one eye mindfully on the incubator. The eggs were still a month away from hatching. Viv shouldered the door open, arms full of fragrant fresh-cut rhubarb, right out of the garden. “Have I lost you to those snakes yet?” she teased. And something occurred to Alain then. He reached out, snagged her by the wirst. He wove their fingers together, felt the heat and the strength and the calluses of her gardeners’ hands. “No,” he said. “That’s not how you’ll lose me.” He guided her hand beneath the warmth of the incubator’s heating lamp, the speckled toothpaste-blue eggs laying warm beneath their knuckles. “When I don’t go out for them, that’s how you’ll know I’m lost.” She finally seemed to get it then. One of her arms looped around him, gave him a loose squeeze from behind. “I won’t go fetch ‘em myself, you know.” He could hear her smirk. “Cruel.” He snorted. “What’d they ever do to you?” “Oh, nothing.” She squeezed his hand again. “I don’t mind snakes in the slightest. But I won’t get out of bed at five in the morning for ‘em. So I suppose you’d better stick around for a few more years.”
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Jun 29, 2020 00:06
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Dorothea Tanning - Some Roses and Their Phantoms https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artwork...phantoms-t07987 Flash: Your story takes place IN SPACE Universe is Here 1200 words There’s a dark intimacy to this: you and I poised on the cusp of the superluminal currents of emspace, eyeing the quantum waters like nervous divers at the swimming hole. In just a few moments, we’ll give ourselves over to that flow and become the first humans to bypass the speed of light, or die trying. It’s the little interval before a first kiss, the long look in the eyes, a knowing felt in the body. I speak these thoughts into the cramped cockpit but they come out like I’m reading from a book. Stilted. Affected. I’m still not good at being candid. You reach out, your gloved hand resting over mine on the console, and tell me that the only way to know if the universe can love us back is to offer our love to it first, without reservation. When was the last time I touched your bare skin? Back on Earth, maybe. Five years ago, I and the rest of academia laughed at your proposal that the universe itself contained a property of emotional intelligence, that it responded to love and hate, tenderness and cruelty, indifference and empathy. But then you persuaded the universe to confide in you one of her secrets: emotional space, the neurotransmitter-analog of the stars. I hated working with you on the ‘RelationShip’ project at first. Not just because of the twee crowdsourced name, but because I knew you were right, knew that I had spent my entire career under the assumption that the universe was an expansive laboratory, an interesting environment to interrogate and model but never love; that would be absurd. My resentment was born of guilt. What must it feel like, to be lovelessly explored, charted, labeled, and dissected, but never truly understood? I got into an argument with the RelationShip marketing team, who thought we should take a break from our sixteen hour days to do more crowd engagement. You backed me up; we fended them off. Over post-meeting beers, I said to hell with it and kissed you very hard, as though I could press all the love I never allotted the universe into your lips. You kissed me back and, well. Here we are, about to have a kind of menage et trois with the neural pathways of time and space. The entry point to emspace doesn’t look like anything special to human eyes—just another parsec of inscrutable vacuum—but our instruments tell a different story. For six months we traveled through the idle small talk of background radiation and errant particles; here at the mouth of emotional space is a festival of data, a celebratory cheer of readings, as though the fabric of the universe has unfurled into a giant welcome home banner. I can’t wipe the wetness from my eyes through my helmet. You squeeze my hand once more, and then it’s time to go. As we work in tandem to initiate the RelationShip’s entry sequence, I consider that these might be some of the last actions I ever take; unmanned craft sent into emspace jumped light years in the space of a picosecond, and reported nothing in between. There is simply no way to know what’s inside without going in, no reason to believe the cosmos would peacefully abide intruders in her thoughts—and no reason, you often point out, to think she wouldn’t welcome us. There’s no blurring stars into warp-speed lines, no gauzy, luminous portal of light. Our visual feed is black and featureless as ever, except— The viewscreen is looking back at me, though there hasn’t been any change in the content of the feed. No. Everything is looking back at me, like the entire ship has been imbued with a conscious watchfulness. The bulkheads, the conduits, the panels, you. You. You are still yourself, not a part of this sudden and ubiquitous observer. We lock eyes and stay that way, clinging to the reality of each other. I ask if we’re inside emspace, but my voice becomes part of the watcher as soon as it leaves my throat, growing like a hair into the living space of the cockpit. You think we’re in emspace. Your voice amalgamates with the watcher, another hair on its hide. How do we—? I can barely speak around the impossible sensation of my own voice watching me. It’s the universe. I can’t tell whether this is a thing you’re saying, a thing I know, or a thing that is being imparted onto me by the universe itself. It’s simply the truth. The universe is here. It is here. Here is the universe. We’re on a rocky plane over which two moons hang, red and dignified. We’re in the creche of a nebula, watching the birth of stars. We are out on the frontier of time-space, where raw creation churns tirelessly, painting itself over the blank canvas of the void. We’re atop a desolate mountain on a superheated planet, watching bismuthinite fall like snow onto the high peak. We are inside a dew drop. I keep my eyes locked on yours as we blink from place to place, terrified that if I look away, if I let myself get lost in the grandeur of it all, I’ll get whisked away on some cosmic thought tangent and spat out light years away from you, left to suffocate in my suit in the dead of space. We are in the bar where I first kissed you, our past selves sitting together on one side of a booth, talking conspiratorially over their beers, you and I standing beside ourselves like ghosts. I can’t stop myself; I look away from you, into your eyes, just as I kiss you, just as you disappear, just as I realize that the people at the table in the bar are not us at all. The table is a grassy hill in a busy park, the place where you first took my hand. The hill is the bow of a ship, where you told me your name. The ship is a colony transport, the two of us exchanging an embrace before a long cryosleep. The colony transport is my royal audience chamber, where your clever tongue won my heart and stayed my royal wrath. A hundred trillion trillion acts of love arrayed across all of time, and we’ve been them. Are them. Will be them. As I pass through these many selves I realize: I never could have lost you. We have been, and will always be, an expression of love, the universe knowing and caring for itself. I am the ground, and you fall toward me as rain. We burst back into regular space, millions of light years from home, a joyful re-entry into familiar, unknown territory. As the material world resolves around us, I hear you say it: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And I know you mean all of me, and all of you, all across time, forever.
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Jun 29, 2020 00:13
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SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED well done to everyone who got something in, judging shall now commence.
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Jun 29, 2020 00:17
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interprompt: waking up with a jolt
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Jun 29, 2020 04:00
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:48 |
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With a Jolt Jeremy woke with a start. The room was pitch black and quiet like a held breath. Something was there with him, in the room. Reaching out with one tentative hand, he inched his fingers further, further onto the night stand, reaching for the lamp to drive away the darkness. Finally his hand grasped something cold and hard... It was a cool, refreshing Jolt Soda, packed with that energy blast you need to get up and go in the dead of night! Jeremy cracked open the bottle with a satisfying hssss and took a deep, glorious chug of the invigorating drink. He felt the fog of sleep whisked away in mere moments! Jeremy belched, then gurgled, then dropped the bottle of Jolt to the floor with a splash and a clatter. He gripped the handle of the knife protruding from his chest, stared into the grinning face of the serial killer, and thanked his lucky stars he had one last drink of delicious Jolt Soda before he died. Drink Jolt Soda!
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Jun 29, 2020 04:21
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