Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


sebmojo posted:

In flash

The metaphors are gone.

Noah posted:

In. Flash.

The sky seem very empty, now that the birds have disappeared.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

ZearothK
Aug 25, 2008

I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021


In flash,

fishception
Feb 20, 2011

~carrier has arrived~
Oven Wrangler
in

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


ZearothK posted:

In flash,

All the waves are gone, even the little ones.

Nae
Sep 3, 2020

what.

Rivals in Random Places: Results

Two rival writers enter the Thunderdome; one must inevitably fall. But which of these strapping young posters will triumph? Will it be Weltlich, who had a strange rivalry play out in a conventional place, or Sebmojo, who had a conventional rivalry from play out in a strange place? Both stories had their strengths, and if I had my way I'd let you both live, but unfortunately, only one of you can survive this bout, and the other (I assume) must die in real life.

The Winner: sebmojo

Crits:

The Belle of the Butcher's Ball by Weltlich

You’ve got strong prose, which I’m sure you know, and the backstory behind the premise is vivid and creative. The problem you have is a passive protagonist, and a rivalry that can’t heat up because the object of the rivals’ affections made her choice before the story started. The story would be a lot stronger if Ernie’s actions had some impact on the outcome. As it stands, you don’t really have a rivalry playing out; you have one guy trying his hardest and failing, and another guy doing nothing and succeeding. Does life work like that sometimes? Sure, but it doesn’t make for a compelling story.

Sending the Clowns by sebmojo

This was a solid story all around. You delivered on the prompt, you maintained tension the whole way through, you made me care about the characters, and you stuck the landing beautifully. My only real critique is that the opening was pretty conventional, since Russian Spy vs. American Spy is not exactly uncharted territory, but it was so well-executed that I don’t really care. Nice work.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
in and flash me.

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


Azza Bamboo posted:

in and flash me.

The churches vanished overnight but the congregations remains.

Gorka
Aug 18, 2014

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
In

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
I've now read one (1) short story. Get ready for my masterpiece.

CaligulaKangaroo
Jul 26, 2012

MAY YOUR HALLOWEEN BE AS STUPID AS MY LIFE IS
In

Flash me!

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes



All of the cameras are gone.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Dear Sebathan Mojangles, Small Mischief Bastard,

I am writing to challenge your idiot face to a brawl regarding the ownership of one Jimothy Spacemann, who I posit cannot be a creation of YOUR pitiful leaking talent glands and is in face a true muffin creation. I will spray my victory everywhere, I will make the world slick with it, you big wet loving rascal, there is nothing you can do to stop my victory.

As always, you are a bitch,
Sincerely,
Muffin

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Sebmojo status: owned

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









you suck, your words suck, your face sucks, everything you've ever done sucks, and your filthy mouth is not even fit to pronounche the name of mr James Man (Space)

i accept :toxx: up you drivelling grundlebug

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


I am judging this poo poo. Toxx up bitches.

Your prompt is: You must both write a Spaceman Jim story that is better than the other one's Spaceman Jim story.

Deadline: Exactly 7 days from RIGHT NOW.

Wordcount: a nice round thousand.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
the only thing toxx about the mojj is his watery purple cum so I must show you all what it looks like to be toxic; I will do an autopelican, I will spray it at God and welter beneath it, I will show the world what a true :toxx: looks like

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


In

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
is it really a brawl if all involved parties are relentlessly blowing each other

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


oh dear is someone jealous that they're missing out on the action? Hang on, let me go get my teeny tiny violin...

Fuschia tude
Dec 26, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Yoruichi posted:

:sparkles: WEEK 442 JUDGING SECRETS REVEALED :sparkles:

Well, they're not really secrets, but if you want to listen live to what happened in judge chambers, you can do so here.

We discuss all the stories! There are hot takes! Blistering insights! Judgement!

(This will be available in the archive as soon as I figure out why the upload's not working).

Ooh, the podcast is back? That was one of my favorite parts of the old threads. I should participate again, some time...

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


Oh yeah, signups are well and truly closed.

Let me know if you're interested in judging.

brotherly
Aug 20, 2014

DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND FACE TO BLOODSHED
The Pipe in the Lake
1487 words


When the fountains dried up, the Verashni lost their minds. Ellana was barely a small girl back then. She listened to their wails from her bedroom: old men and women with cracked lips screaming about the barren earth while whipping each other in repentance. It felt as though the world were ending.

Ellana missed playing in the water with the other children. The city became so quiet: the once-green streets turned brown as the plants shriveled up and died. New wells were dug as great teams of workers pillaged the earth, tearing down deep, heaping dirt in great piles. Those wells saved Verash, but the fountains remained silent, and the great masses of flowers never bloomed again.

Years passed. Ellana grew up. Folks never stopped talking about the fountains and what they’d lost, like a ghost of something better overlaid across the city.


#


There were, of course, rumors.

“I hear the mountains collapsed,” Ellana’s aunt Teeshi said one evening over dinner. “They dropped right down and—boom!—all gone. No more water.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Ellana’s mother said. “I think we’d have heard about that.”

“I’m telling you, I did hear it,” Teeshi said, insistent.

“Could be those Muyer raiders,” Ellana’s uncle Bunah said. “Could be they stole the water.”

“You fool, stole the water? How the hells would raiders steal water?” Teeshi said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Bunah said, throwing up his hands. “Just an idea.”

Ellana listened to her family chatter in their little room. Her baby sister nestled close up against her mother’s breast, her father smiled and laughed, and her mother groaned as Bunah and Teeshi argued conspiracy. Ellana wondered if the baby would ever see green in her life. Without running water, the city stank—there was nothing to wash away the filth. No more beautifully tiled bath houses, no more ease and luxury.

There were other rumors: curses, magicians, evil dragons, lich kings, zombie hordes, other sundry creatures both good and evil, but Ellana didn’t believe any of it.

Each afternoon, after fetching water, she’d climb to the top of the outer walls, ignoring annoyed militiamen and their funny metal hats, and find the place where the aqueduct reached the horizon. She could see it, in the distance, the great stone arches, angled toward the city’s wells, fountains, and sewers.

She kept thinking: there had to be a reason.

#

“How come nobody fixes the aqueduct?” Ellana asked her mother one afternoon as they walked to the market.

“Nobody knows how,” she said.

“That’s strange. Didn’t we build it? Someone has to know how.”

Her mother made a vague gesture. “The city’s old, misha. There used to be men who created those big stone slopes, and more men who maintained them, but there haven’t been any in—“ She shook her head. “Who knows how long. I think they’re all dead.”

“But why?” Ellana couldn’t understand. There were so many people in Verash, and so many of them were smart, hardworking, resourceful, talented. She was supposed to believe not a single one could fix the aqueduct and make the water flow again?

“I don’t know, my little misha,” her mother said, again using the childish nickname Ellana hated.

But she wouldn’t be embarrassed. “What if we sent people out to where the aqueduct ends? Couldn’t we fix it?”

“You won’t get that far. It’s so hot, and who knows what’s out there. No, we’ll keep going, dig more wells. Life will be fine.” Her mother nudged her with the heel of her hand. “Now come, we need bread, and you’ve got water to haul.”

Always more water to haul. Ellana watched the people walk past in brightly colored wrap-shirts and long flowing pants, the sun overhead baking the light-colored flagon stones, and she couldn’t understand how all these people let the city slide into decay. And nobody did a thing about it.

#

She packed a bag with what she could: dry bread, horse jerky, a few potatoes, a knob of butter. She took extra clothes, extra shoes, flint and tinder for a fire. The sun had barely risen when she stood in the entrance of her small family home.

Uncle Bunah sat out front smoking a long cigarillo that smelled like ash and vanilla. He looked at her from beneath lidded eyes, his faced glowing from the cherry. “Where are you going, girl?”

“I’m making a trip.” She watched him carefully. Ever since the fountains went dry, Uncle Bunah hadn’t done much—he’d lost the will, according to her mother.

He took a long drag. “A trip to where?”

“I want to see where the aqueduct ends. I want to fix it.”

Another plume of smoke. “Good luck,” he said. “You’ve got more courage than me.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

Ellana left her family behind. It would break their hearts, she knew—but the city was dying, drying out in the blasting summer sun, and Ellana couldn’t imagine a life without the riot of green and flower color she grew up with and loved so much.

She walked to the main gates and left through the pilgrim’s door. She traveled the road all day, passing merchants, refugees, beggars, priests, bards, always keeping the aqueduct to her left, always following its slope.

#

She walked for a long time.

She shared fires with other travelers. They told stories about ghosts and djinn and monsters stealing goats. She told stories about fountains and creeping vines and fat yellow flower blooms.

When it rained, she got soaked. When the wind blew, she staggered against its strength. She ran out of food: she begged for more.

Days and days and miles. She traded for a wax-hide tent. She learned how to forage, how to fish, and how to hide from the people that might hurt her.

She survived.

The road turned west one afternoon, but the aqueduct continued east. She stepped into the wilderness.

The land grew rough. Her hair grew long. She patched the tent with what she could. Each night, a fire. Each day, walking, trapping, living.

Sometimes, the aqueduct was little more than pipe buried in the ground. Other times, it soared above canyons.

Always, in the distance, the mountains grew, not flattened after all.

Her clothes were ragged and baggy. Her feet were callused, her arms and legs were bruised.

She kept going.

#

One morning, she reached a large hill. The aqueduct disappeared into the earth at its base. At the top, she stared down at a crystal blue lake.

It was the most water she’d ever seen.

She sat on the beach for a long time. She thought of her mother, her baby sister, her uncle smoking in the darkness, and the wailing mourners.

She stood and took off her clothes.

The water was icy cold and clear. She let out a gasp, but pushed forward. She could see the rocky, silty bottom, slick beneath her toes.

Goosebumps dotted her skin. She paddled awkwardly, sputtering. She didn’t know how to swim, but inch by inch, she reached the center. She floated there, staring up at the sky, then turned and looked downward, into the depths.

Below, a wide, black maw yawned up.

She stared at it, afraid of some ancient monster. But the maw didn’t move.

She took a deep breath and dove.

Down she swam. The maw resolved into the mouth of a pipe. It wasn’t too deep, and she reached it with ease. She felt around, looking for some problem—and had to swim back up for another deep breath.

Down again, over and over, until she reached both arms into the entrance, tipping herself forward as if to swim inside—

And felt something.

Up again and down. She grabbed whatever was inside the pipe, wrapped wet, silky, rope-like gunk around her hands, and yanked hard. She pulled, and pulled, until some came out.

Up again and down, pulling, tugging, clearing. Up and down, breath and no breath, until on her last dive, a chunk as big as a man slid free from the pipe—

And it gave a huge gulp.

She struggled against the current. Air bubbles rose wildly all around her and wanted to suck her deep inside.

The pipe was drinking again.

She barely reached the surface, gasping for breath, light-headed from lack of air. The weed-like stuff floated all around her, probably from years and years of neglect.

She dove one more time just to be sure, but she felt it, the tug of moving water.

On the beach again, she lay with her back on sun-warmed ground and let the wind dry her off. She shivered, freezing, but it was no worse than anything else.

The lake bubbled and groaned, and she knew—

When the water reached the city, the fountains would flow again.

She closed her eyes and laughed, and hoped she’d make it back one day to see.

fishception
Feb 20, 2011

~carrier has arrived~
Oven Wrangler
here we go i guess

~

Onwards, Babel (906 Words)

Broken glass and broken dreams, thus, a vision! ... In the lanes and avenues where great men did great works, lost eternal, Babel. Words cast unto dirt, slipping from the mind as sand through a sieve, thus was its legacy, thus was its curse. All fallen, rendered to dust, where only wordless lamentations are sung.

A barking call, a tongue garbled, sung from gaps of strewn rubble! heralding as in times past, two men greeting each other as equals in the wreckage of a world where words were lost.

A mirror, stark and revealing, for difference between them was obliterated for a moment, gone by the force which stripped word from their minds and replaced it with chaos. Vision sharpens, and things become known, not by the word, but by their movement.

How does one convey these things without a form to build from? A mighty tower, carved of grammatical law absolute, hewn from mind, thought, and idea. A scaffold on which to build an ascent into the heavens, dashed to the ground in thunderous violence.

All is lost! Ah, all is lost.

To lament what one cannot comprehend is to be human, and as they could not comprehend, so too did they curse their fate.

First, a howl, a chaotic jumble of words mumbled and broken between them. Both glared wildly, gnashing their teeth and curling their arms, clutching close anything they could that would give grounding to their world. Shattered meaning clawed at their minds, fragments of something, but ever more, the lamentation, the howling of loss, the grief of dissonance. Both were rendered quivering, gripped with the curse’s might, but one swallowed chaos and fire, sealing it within their gut, and moved.

To build a tower anew requires a foundation.

A gesture, at first, pointing to something nearby, conveyed without sound, conveyed without needing to know the words. The eye drawn, understanding gleaming like a coal in a fire, rising into a blaze. They spent time, as all do, learning, gesturing, pointing, deriving meaning all their own.

With their hands and their feet, their grimaces and their grins, they construct the scaffold, putting together pieces. Striding across wreckage and grief alike, holding each other close, standing against what was, is, and could be, they began to understand. Where one could not rely upon the word, one could rely upon emotion and deed.

~

Where did the hours go?

When time soared without consequence, when food filled the stomach and company grew closer, meaning drew always from the visceral, the felt, the act. They knew well of each other, from the time they had spent together. One was to be known as Points-Forward, for they were quick to point, and the other was known as Arms-Outstretched, for their strength was great. Arms knew much of the ways, of trekking across ruin and bog, while Points knew of other ways, when others failed, to push through and break…

Fear? Perhaps that is a word that could be used, but words held nothing anymore, only hesitance and a wall in the mind that could be felt. Where one had words to describe the act of overcoming adversity, they now had the rush of breaking through what was impossible. The roar, the din, chaos rippling through their minds fell away as in their acts and motions they became as one. Casting away the remnants, the tower began rebuilding anew.

A life spent in contemplation of nothing but acts and deeds blurs together, a collage of emotion and movement. The scaffolding crept up more and more, as a sound was added, perhaps to punctuate, perhaps to denote, as the actions they could do made them realize what else could
be conveyed. As they lived, so too they thrived, and as they understood the world, they understood themselves.

Between them then, an understanding of the whole! … Their place together under the firmament, sealed with an embrace, a gap closed, and hearts made into one. So was love found anew, now without words to carry it .

The world sang as all things became known, by what they did, how they made one felt, and more and more, the ruins of the old were broken down to make room for the new. Time rode upon the wind, and life sang with its vibrancy, as they moved on from lamentation. But never, ever, could they escape from the inevitable.

~

One day, Arms stopped moving.

Nothing more remained. Nothing more could be said, whether by movement or word. But like fear had to be overcome, this, too, had to be broken.

A hole was dug, a thing, no longer a man, thrown within. The clay and dirt from which they came, piled atop as if to erase them whole from existence. Finally, a stone, placed atop with reverence, a reminder of movement once made.

There was no word for anguish, there was no word for sorrow, there was no word for anger, and there was no word for the one Points loved. Once again, that wall, that irresistible wall, loomed over Points, and once again, they pushed through.

Upon that stone, scrawled into the rock with a scrap of metal, was the unmistakable sign of what once was, meaning defined in that moment in a mind that could not know words, but knew of action and pose. One brick layed down, the first of many, to a new tower, to a new beginning.

'T'.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Flash: The churches vanished overnight but the congregations remains.

In Awe

1498 words

“Oh Lord,” said Father Seamus. He crossed himself. The elderly Mother Marie and the young Sister Bridget stood close behind. Lycra clad strangers walked past them.

This gym was occupying the lot where Father Seamus’ church had always been. This was no ancient building with handmade stained glass windows and ornately carved stone walls. The gym was a modern thing made out of the same rectangular pane of glass repeated over and over again.

Father Seamus breathed frantically. Where would they host the soup kitchen nights? Where would the weddings take place? How would they take confession? What if someone were to die or be born? His mind wanted to walk every avenue at once. He therefore made no progress on any of these avenues.

The elderly Mother Marie drew back the sleeve of her habits, revealing her watch.

“It’s Sunday, Seamus,” she said. “Mass is in an hour and a half.”

Seamus began to pace. He looked over at the gym often, hoping it might vanish and show the old church underneath.

Dread washed over the old priest. He’d surely have to call his Bishop and explain that a great asset to the diocese had disappeared. What if they accused him of selling the land to the new owners? What if...

“Seamus?” said Mother Marie “I could always call the Bishop and ask him what we’re doing today?”

Father Seamus’s pupils narrowed. He swallowed.

“I’ll call him, Marie.”

Thus began a lengthy conversation. The father grew more pale with every second. Each minute added another five years of age onto the elderly man.

The Bishop’s own minster had become a cinema. The archbishop’s cathedral had become a nightclub. While the archbishop had waited for guidance from the Vatican, word had circulated that the Vatican itself was now a shopping mall.

During this call, the young Sister Bridget had become so curious about the new gym that she had walked inside. She smiled, tranquil in her belief the Lord had put this place here for a reason. Bridget walked merrily in a floating way; holding her head high to take in the sight of the place, plain though it was.

Behind a reception desk was another young woman, muscular beneath her Polo shirt, smiling also.

"Can I help?" she said.

Sister Bridget leant at the desk, resting her forearms on it, so as to look into the eyes of the young woman on an equal vertical level.

Those greyish blue eyes were blank; open, but not awake. They pointed in the direction of Bridget's eyes but didn't quite look at them.

"Would you like to know a secret about this place?" Bridget said, causing the receptionist's irises to stir, awakening just slightly.

“Okay.”

"Any time now, three cats are going to pass through the alley at the rear," Bridget said. "They're such wonderfully tender creatures, I thought you might like to see."

She produced her phone, showing footage of the three calico cats rubbing their heads at her ankles.

The gym worker furrowed her brow. Sister Bridget continued.

"I was wondering if I would be allowed out of the back to see them? They'll be here any moment."

Jennifer’s habits were to refuse any invitations from her customers and to steer all conversations toward the various perks of gym membership. These were conversations she could hold with no conscious thought; as easily and forgetfully as her drive to work this morning.

Bridget, however, was a situation alien enough to wake Jennifer into conscious thought.

Where she would ordinarily give her natural excuses, she instead pondered for a moment about the fact she was being invited to walk alone into an alleyway with a stranger. She looked at Bridget's weedy arms: Bridget was no threat.

Jennifer scanned the room for any sight of another customer, or management that might disapprove, but only saw Bridget in front of her.

"I can take you there today," said Jennifer. "You’ll need a membership in future, though."

Bridget nodded, and they went away.

Outside the gym, Mother Marie closed her eyes for a moment. She breathed a sharp breath through her nose.

"Okay," she said. "There's no church buildings any more."

"The congregation will be here in an hour and five minutes, Seamus. What are we to do with no church?"

The Father’s phone rang, singing Be Still for the Presence of the Lord. He leapt at this opportunity to avoid confronting Marie’s problem. It was a young man asking if he should show up to mass. The young man’s workplace had called him asking why he had not turned up an hour ago.

“They’ve never been open on a Sunday before,” said the young man, “but they’re telling me they always were and always will be.”

“Not to worry, Brian” said Seamus. “We have a late mass at Seven O’Clock for those who can’t be there in the morning.”

“Where?” asked the young man. Seamus sweated.

“I’ll be outside the gym,” said Seamus, “and then we’ll take everyone down to the place.”

Having successfully deferred that issue, the father held his hands in prayer.

“Lord give me strength,” Seamus spoke. Marie closed her eyes to join him, taking his hand.

“Lord we pray,” she said, “in this final hour which we have left,” she stressed, “that we find the place and the materials needed to hold mass.”

Father Seamus’ phone sang again. Marie would not let up her grip. She raised her voice above the ringtone.

“Give us strength, O Lord, not to be tempted to diversion or delay, but make fast our preparations in your service. Amen.”

“Amen,” said Seamus, immediately answering the call. Marie could have slapped the man; Instead she made haste to a corner store to fix a box of wine and two loaves of bread.

This caller had heard of the strange miracle.

“Is mass taking place in an hour, father?” she asked. “It might seem soon of me to ask, but the traffic out there seems terrible.”

Seamus sat on a steel crash barrier. His breathing had not slowed since he first caught sight of the gym. The world around the father was eclipsed by his swarming thoughts until he couldn’t take in a single sight around him.

What if he said yes and couldn’t deliver? What if he said no and lost a soul? What would even become of mass today?

His hand was trembling. His faltering tongue was buying him seconds.

“You want to know if Mass is taking place today?”

“Indeed these are troubling times.”

“Well, we’d normally have it in an hour, true. We are all in this situation together.”

Sister Bridget approached; cat hair clinging to her robes. She came from Father Seamus' side and couldn’t see the phone at his ear.

“Such a wonderful day the Lord has given us,” she said, “perhaps we could have mass in the park, Father?”

In the darkness of the father’s mindstorm shone a ray of hope. The Lord had brought him an answer that would solve all problems until 7PM that night. He sighed.

“We’re having mass at the park. We’re going to be waiting at the gym beforehand to catch anyone who comes here by mistake,” he said to the woman on the phone, before silently mouthing, “thank you, Lord.”

With a brief pause in his panic, Father Seamus could finally see the information in front of him. What if the weekend had disappeared with the churches? There’d be traffic. The people would be called into work. Disappointed though he was to think of people working on the sabbath, there’d be no difficulty finding a venue for the late night mass, or a kitchen to fill in for tonight’s alms work.

Doable, but his mind wondered the avenue where a future incarnation of himself was explaining the expense to the Bishop.

~~~

Months later there was a meeting at the gym. Bridget looked at a photograph of three calico cats on the noticeboard before taking her seat among this new congregation. They sat on rows of static cycles before a raised platform where their leader sat facing them.

When Jennifer said “pick up the pace” they picked up the pace. When she said “don’t stop” it was gospel. When she looked into a person’s eyes and said “I believe in you,” they believed in themselves. There was no ancient building here to strike awe into the hearts of its congregation. Where there was once a statue of the Mother Mary, there was now a mirrored wall. Each day Bridget stood in awe at God’s creation; the people, and what they could achieve in that class.

100 miles a day for seven days would be a long journey, but the money would be for anyone who, like her, was in awe of the works of the Lord and in need of the help of others. Their church was gone, but if enough was raised in money and found souls, it could be built anew.

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


Most people were quick to embrace new cultural practices around the retention of the deceased after the en masse cessation of posthumous decomposition, but Luke was not emotionally well-equipped to be saddled with his father’s everlasting corpse.

1190 words


Archive

Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 6, 2022

a friendly penguin
Feb 1, 2007

trolling for fish

Nothing of Note
Word Count: 953
Prompt: C♯
https://thunderdome.cc//?story=9537&title=Nothing+of+Note

a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 16, 2021

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
BLUE AMERICA 2050, by Father Benjamin Brady
1198 words


Good had ceased to exist.

Hussein woke up to arabic call to dawn prayers. He was still frazzled after the drinking party last night. He looked around His bed. Ah, of course, He was doing crack, and then an orgy with His blood-related sisters. He slept naked, surrounded on all sides by equally naked harlots. He lifted the right hand of the woman next to Him and smiled at the mark on her palm. He leapt several feet to get off from the bed, exactly like a black basketball player.

As wake-up routine, He did six crunches, six push-ups, and six squats. For the closer He opened his bedside table for the Bible and threw it at the trash in a perfect three-pointer arc. He smiled His brightest Hollywood smile as the Holy Book (which all intelligent creation should respect) landed on top of the pile of condoms and boxes of birth control pills.

He took a quick shower, and wore His best suit. He made sure His makeup is perfect, His glistening black skin highlighting the red upside-down cross on His forehead.

He went downstairs. “Good morning, dad.”

His dad was wearing nothing but an apron and a hard black shackle on his neck. He had just put down a pile of plates on the sink.

“Come on, give me that.” He pushed his dad aside and started washing dishes. He pointed to the couch in the living room. “It’s Sunday.” His dad nodded and went to the TV. There he went down on his hands and knees and looked at the bedroom door, tongue out like a dog. Hussein’s mom walked out of the bedroom, dressed entirely in tight leather. She sat down on the dad’s back as she turned on the television.

“Right, that’s all the plates done. I’ll be back with dinner at about 7,” He said as He left the house. He entered his zero-emission eco car, the rear back plate replaced with a COEXIST sign. In the middle of his commute, he was stopped by a cop. His rainbow badge shone brightly on top of his rainbow cop uniform.

“Do you know how fast you’re going, handsome?” the cop asked, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his uniform.

“Exactly above the limit,” He said. “Only because I want to see you, Officer Juan.”

“Oh? Do you have a business with me, civilian?” Juan said, his bushy chest hair bursting out of his uniform.

“I wanted to start a new habit.”

“A habit...of breaking the law?”

“Start the day off with looking at a beautiful face. I want to make it a daily habit, Juance a day.”

“Oh, you flatterer!” Juan smiled and lifted his arm, his wrists as flexible as rubber. He blew a kiss. “Off you go then. Have a good day!”

A few minutes later, He arrived on His workplace, an old church building repurposed into a mega-abortionplex. Sundays are always busy. The abortionplex was already full of women, some waiting outside. As He walked towards the entrance, a Chinese woman approached Him.

“Ah, Mrs. Ching. Weren’t you just here Thursday?”

Mrs. Ching came up to him. She was short, coming up only to His waist. “I’m pregnant again. Checked yesterday, the baby...”

He could see Mrs. Ching’s shoulders shivering, and He drew her to His hug. “Don’t hide anything from me, my beloved Ching. Say it.”

“The baby...is white,” Mrs. Ching said. “Oh, doctor, I feel so ashamed. Is it right to destroy this,” she pointed to her stomach, “Just because I don’t want to secure the future for white children?”

He smiled. “Your body, your choice, Mrs. Ching! Of course you can! You can do it for any reason! Why, just yesterday, Mrs. Aayla destroyed her nine-month-old baby because she wanted to enter the Weekly Pride!”

Mrs. Ching was still unsure.

A fat man, legs as bushy as his armpits, walked out of the abortionplex. His shorts and tanktop are red with baby blood. “Mrs. Ching! Still worry? I said several times, Obama made free unlimited abortions legal! Why you worry?” He looked at Him. “Let me handle Mrs. Ching. Got a hard case.”

“On it. Thanks...what are your pronouns today, Miss Daisy?”

“It/xer.”

He let Mrs. Ching go and led her to Miss Daisy. “Mrs. Ching, I’ll leave you with Miss Daisy. It’s my boss, and believe me, xer skills are magical. You’ll be in good hands.”

He ran as fast He can to the operating room. There, He saw the abortionplex’ top two male nurses sprawled on the floor unconscious, while the lesbian Mexican anaesthetist laid her back on the wall, between the anaesthesia machine and the wall-mounted phone. The patient in the middle of the room, a Middle Eastern woman (Maryam, as He remembered) was screaming in pain.

“She’s not anaesthetised?”

The anaesthecist shook her head. “I-it’s her...fetish, doctor.”

“Ohh, it hurts so good, doctor!” Maryam screamed. He ran by her side, using a spare page ripped from a Bible to wipe her sweaty forehead. “This is why I love abortions!” Maryam continued screaming.

Holy light shone out from the inside of Maryam’s belly.

“Scalpel,” He asked, and He easily gripped the black scalpel the anaestheticist threw. With one movement, He carved the shape of a pentagram on Maryam’s naked belly, opening it up. Maryam’s screams reached its zenith and she fainted, her face flushed.

Out of her stomach floated a baby, white as angels’ wings, wielding an AK-47 on its small arms. The baby’s eyes were shining white, his small body connected by a pulsing umbilical cord to Maryam. There were red scars on his hands, wrists and legs. The stigmata.

“Jesus Christ,” the anaestheticist said.

“Child, you have desecrated this world. You shall go to hell,” Jesus Christ the baby said, firing all his bullets at Him. And yet, He stood still, unbothered by the bullets.

He walked closer to Christ the baby. “Weren’t there supposed to be three of you?” The baby roared at Him, and light as bright as the Star of Bethlehem blasted Him. The anaestheticist was blinded, but He simply accepted the punishment. His suit burned to cinders, but His black flesh remained unharmed, dark as the Curse of Ham. He simply walked closer.

“Ya need to kno’ sumthin’, Jeezy,” He said, “the Clinton Act of 2044 forbid all firearms.” As He said that, His scalpel, black as the core of Hell, cut the umbilical cord. Holy blood splurted everywhere. Christ-baby screamed in pain as holiness left its body. It fell down to the floor, a lifeless bag of flesh.

“Why do I smell burning?” the anaestheticist asked.

“Some of Jesus’ blood got on me,” He said. Any place on His body splattered by the holy blood singed.

A ringtone rang out of the wall-mounted telephone. Only one person ever used this phone to call Him, and there’s only one reason why that person would call Him this way. A big mission is coming. Maybe He’ll finally be allowed to bomb Texas. Licking His lips, He answered the call.

“Madam President,” He said. “Antichrist Hussein at your service. What’ll it be today?”

Idle Amalgam
Mar 7, 2008

said I'm never lackin'
always pistol packin'
with them automatics
we gon' send 'em to Heaven
Lab Rats
The sharks are gone. We miss them.
1,027 Words

Rebecca rubbed her temples as she pored over her notes for the thousandth time. The facts were unchanging. Globally, and without any indication as to why, the sharks vanished. Every breed of shark, in captivity or in the wild, simply disappeared.

While the internet became an embroiled battleground of conspiracy and layman speculation, it also collectively mourned the cultural loss. Gone were the days of shark week, jaws and the irrational fear of being eaten at the beach, but when the initial confused lamentations subsided, there were more serious repercussions to consider.

Reports of harmful algal blooms first surfaced in the Spring following the sharks’ disappearance. In the Fall, when the blooms had begun to saturate entire coasts and contaminate drinking water, we began to see the larger scope of what had happened and where we were headed.

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Those toxic blooms had disrupted the economy and were actively endangering the health of citizens the world over. The prevailing theory suggested that the blooms were indicative of an oceanic revolution, one where a natural timeline could be approximated, but best estimates still left us with about three decades of turbulent acclimation, followed by an unspecified number of years dealing with residual environmental fallout.

When the division of ocean sciences put out a request for proposals, the academic community went into an uproar. Thousands of submissions were received daily. As a result, Rebecca was awestruck when her proposal got selected.

“Doctor Barton, while unorthodox, your artificial apex predator program has drawn the interest of many investors with the resources to make it happen. It’s the course we’ve decided to take, and we would like to have you heading the project,” the disembodied voice said through the phone.

Rebecca eventually found the words hanging at the back of her throat and said, “when do we start?” A suit picked her up the next morning for a flight out to Seattle, Washington. She was then picked up by another inconspicuous suit and delivered to a nondescript warehouse in an industrial district in an outlying suburb.

What she found inside exceeded her expectations, even for an ocean saving effort. Scientists from around the world, many paired off with their own aids and interpreters, were working in labs that covered any number of specializations.

A woman in a badged lab-coat approached in a prim, no-nonsense, manner and extended a hand.

“Doctor Rebecca Barton, it is a pleasure to meet you in person. I’m Director Stevens and I’ll show you around the facilities and take you to your lab. I’ve also taken the liberty of assembling you a team of aids to assist you in your research.”

“Truly it’s an honor, I would have never imagined in a million years that my proposal would bear some weight.”

“Bear some weight is putting it lightly, Doctor Barton. We’ve already tailored an embryo based on the genetic blueprint you outlined in your proposal. It is masterful work that you’ve done.”

Rebecca was speechless. She looked at the director with giddy bewilderment and all professional decorum was dropped, “Can I see it?” she asked with a smile.

The director’s stiff expression turned to one of bemusement. “I figured that would excite you, and yes, absolutely you can.”

A short elevator ride led them to an equally busy floor in the warehouse facility, but the layout involved a lot more machinery. Bulky cables and cooling ducts cramped the overhead space, but they ultimately fed into a central array of thick glass tanks. Each was filled with different seawater that had been contaminated by harmful algal blooms. In the centermost tank, a semitranslucent clutch of eggs revealed tiny swirling lifeforms in the oblong, oddly angled, pouches.

“Incredible,” Rebecca said beaming.

“Truly,” the Director said stepping up beside her. “Finding that bones, fossils, and other DNA samples from sharks had also begun to disappear or, impossibly, became incomprehensible, we were forced to think outside the box.”

“How so?” Rebecca asked.

“DNA borrowed from close relatives like rays and other cartilaginous fish were used to fill in the gaps.”

“Incredible,” Rebecca said for a second time, but then she grew curious.

“If you were able to make this much headway from my proposal alone, why do you need me? Not to sound unappreciative, or like I don’t want to be here, this is unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of.”

“Well, we’ve run into a problem that I’m hoping you might have some fresh insight on.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Your idea wasn’t the only idea like this, you just had the best approach. However, one thing that has been consistent in our trial and error is atrophied development of the spinal and musculature systems of the embryos.”

“I see,” Rebecca said contemplatively.

“Well, there will be much more to see in the coming days and weeks. Welcome to your lab, I’m looking forward to working with you,” the director said extending her hand to shake a second time. Then the director waved over a younger man who had just been delivering some equipment to a nearby station.

“This is Li Xiangshou, he’s a molecular biologist from Michigan who has some interesting ideas about this problem. You two should get to know each other. I’ll be expecting a report by the end of the week.”

The director turned and marched away, clearly at her limit for congeniality, and left the overworked man to take over from there.

“You’ll have to forgive the director,” Li said with a smile, “she’s like that… but a lot is riding on this, and she’s genuinely invested in the outcome which is refreshing. My name is… ha, well I guess you already know that. I didn’t get yours?”

“Rebecca Barton, pleased to meet you, Li.” She said relieved to be around someone less formal than the director.

“The pleasure is all mine.” Li said proffering Rebecca a laminated ID card and lab coat.”

“I guess this makes me official,” Rebecca said turning over the ID in her hand.

“That it does. Ready to save the world?” Li said enthusiastically.

“It won’t save itself.” Rebecca quipped with equal enthusiasm.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
There was only one car left - now that's gone too

Get It

flerp fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jul 5, 2021

Noah
May 31, 2011

Come at me baby bitch
A Hunger
Words: 1500
Prompt: No more birds

Vulture Robinson was a poo poo-sifter who had dreams of flying. He was one of 9 orphans living in Aviary, one of the few autonomous green zones somewhere near what used to be known as Topeka, Kansas. The orphans of Aviary were accustomed to removing seeds from pig poo poo, but Vulture had Bertie duty more often than anyone else. Bertie duty was reserved for those who misbehaved.

Vulture rinsed his heavy-duty rubber gloves off near the waste lagoon they cultivated, so not to contaminate the well water.

“Don’t fall in!” Vulture shouted at his stepbrother, Falcon.

Standing on the edge of the waste lagoon, Falcon wielded a giant wooden spatula that he used to scrape the bottom of the fetid pool. Behind Falcon, a third orphan Hawk, skimmed the wake for detritus they would mix into fertilizer. They both turned and flipped Vulture off and went back to work. A few years older than Vulture, Hawk and Falcon were almost old enough to start being part of the seed caravans headed up by their adoptive father, Papa Robin.

In the barn, the group of orphans sat down for supper. Papa Robin read instruction manuals, and Vulture found himself as he usually did, lost in thought staring at an old crop-dusting plane parked in the back. They had kept it in pristine condition, but he had never seen it fly. Instead, they used camels for their caravans to disperse their processed seeds.

Sneaking up from behind, Falcon shoved Vulture’s face into his creamed corn bowl.

“Don’t fall in,” he taunted.

Vulture scraped the corn off his face and flung it at Falcon. The volley sent some of the orphans scrambling to defend themselves from an imminent brawl.

“That’s Bertie duty,” Papa Robin said without taking his eyes off his manuals.

Vulture stuck his tongue out.

“I was referring to you,” Papa Robin said. “I saw you taunting them earlier.”

Vulture slumped in defeat and kicked his empty metal bowl across the room.

“And that’s night shift on the radio.”

That night, Vulture sat in the cockpit, a thin leather skullcap sat on top of his head, accompanied by weathered goggles and a white scarf, a memento from his late parents. He felt at ease in the cockpit. Bertie, the pig, released an odorous fart as she slept in the corner of the barn. Nearly vomiting from the smell alone, Vulture dreaded tomorrow’s punishment.

“I don’t get it, why do I always have Bertie duty, it’s not even my fault! They just hate me for no reason.”

“I know it’s tough. But they’re hurting, too. You think they like living here? Boys like Falcon and Hawk, they remember what it used to be like,” Papa Robin said. He had the single-prop plane opened to the engine bank as he tinkered with the machinery. Vulture had seen this a hundred times, and to him it looked like Papa Robin was repeating the same maintenance over and over again.

“Did you have to name me Vulture? Why couldn’t I get a cool bird name.”

“They picked their own names first, and then we decided to keep the memory going with the rest of you kids.”

“A trash eating buzzard. Cool memory.”

Papa Robin laughed. “If that’s all you think about yourself, then maybe I was right to name you that.”

“You just work on this stupid plane all day, I’ve never seen this thing fly! What good is all this? We’re going to die in this desert picking seeds out of poo poo for our entire lives! I hate this place and I hate my life!” He hopped out of the plane.

Papa Robin took the boy in his arms.

Vulture pushed off Papa Robin and his face flushed. He wanted to say something, to shout, but his frustration could not erupt.

“The reason I teach you about this plane, and the reason I named you Vulture was so you could fly. Rise above picking seeds out of poo poo for your entire life. Believe in something. Believe in yourself. Believe there’s still something left of this wasted world.”

The next morning, the boys gathered around the breakfast table before their chores started. The ham radio crackled in the barn. Everyone froze, they had already heard yesterday that a caravan was on their way, there shouldn’t be any news.

“Scout Osprey, code black. Swarm westerly, 10 knots, Kansas City unresponsive.” The radio repeated the warning, over and over. Papa Robin turned white as a sheet. Falcon gathered the boys and began barking orders.

“Magpie, get the pigs inside! Godwit, tarp the green houses! Oh gently caress, oh gently caress. Robin, what do we do?”

Papa Robin was still stunned. The light fell from his eyes, and he sighed.

“Boys, don’t bother. It won’t matter. She finally came for us.”

The entire lot of orphans stopped what they were doing and looked at their adoptive father. Vulture, for a moment, was rudderless but he refused to hide.

“Falcon, help me!”

Shoving Papa Robin aside, Vulture ran and clambered up the plane. He swung his legs over the shallow cockpit walls.

“I’m hot, throw the prop!” Vulture shouted.

Falcon grabbed the propeller with both of his hands and gave it a mighty swing while Vulture ignited the engines. The propellers spun up and the engine coughed filthy exhaust into the air. The old crop duster lurched forward, nearly slicing Falcon to ribbons as he dove into the dirt. Vulture gulped and eased the plane out of the barn and onto the dirt road. As the duster trundled along, Vulture fitted his goggles and grit his teeth.

In front of him dark storm clouds of the locust swarm blotted the horizon. It vibrated and shook like his eyes were playing tricks on him, but it moved with an incalculable precision and determination. Anxiety clawed and twisted his gut until he could barely feel any discernible part of his body. The knot felt like an immense pressure threatening to crush him. After what felt like a thousand years, the plane reached speed for liftoff and he pulled the control wheel back and he felt the sudden lack of ground friction. The black locust swarm washed away as blue, blue sky filled his view and Vulture panicked, nearly sending the plane into an over-corrected nose-dive. Righting himself he faced the undulating blackness. For a moment he looked around, gleefully, everything was so small and tiny. The Aviary, the road, the entire green zone were all dollhouse dioramas. He desperately wanted a better look and ripped his goggles off, and his tears were zephyred away. He was flying.

And then the locust vanguard pelted the windscreen.

Locust bodies exploded from contact with the propeller and fuselage. It reminded him of heavy rain on the corrugated roof of the barn, where they would run and wait out the day, thankful their chores had been given a rest. The swarm grew thicker, and he was only at the outskirts of the mass. Barrage after barrage, the insects finally found purchase as the windscreen cracked and shattered.

Before he could even react, a locust smashed into his open eye, sending an exploding shock through his skull. Wet, hot pain flooded his thoughts, and all he could do was cover his gouged right eye with one hand and maintain the flight path with his other. As the cloud grew thicker and thicker, the propeller became clogged with viscera and carcasses. Vulture could hear the engine struggle over the now incessant buzz of the swarm. Black smoke poured from the engine, but he kept the plane barreling forward.

In the thickest clot of bugs, something caught his good eye. A brilliant, ruby red spot danced in the black cloud. Without thinking his hand shot out and snatched it. But losing his guiding hand, the plane sputtered and failed, careening down towards the earth. He let go of his useless eye and pulled up, but it was too late. There was an immense roar and he smashed into the ground at alarming speed, sundering the plane into rent metal and scrap. And then there was silence. In truth, Vulture had no idea how long it had been from crash to realizing he was still alive, but part of him wished he had died. At this moment, he was one big bruise, bleeding, sore and broken. He dumped himself onto the dirt, and he could barely believe what he saw. In his clenched hand was the crushed red locust queen and the creeping doom had dissipated, dispersing into the wind like smoke with no more fire.

Vulture spit bug parts from his mouth and leaned back against the remains of the plane. With his one eye left, he could see Papa Robin and the rest of the boys running towards him in the distance. He sighed, and with a smile on his face, resigned himself to Bertie duty.

CaligulaKangaroo
Jul 26, 2012

MAY YOUR HALLOWEEN BE AS STUPID AS MY LIFE IS
Obscura
Word Count: 1395
Flash Rule: All of the cameras are gone.

“But what about my family portrait?” the middle aged woman’s voice shrieks over the landline phone.

Anna nervously paces in her basement photo studio, holding the corded antique to her ear. She glances at the empty tripod still facing towards the green screen. A single memory card lays on the floor beside it, unmoved from where it landed three days ago. “We are exploring all options,” she mutters weakly into the receiver. “We still hope to honor your appointment. Even after The Event.”

Even with the incomprehensible nature of what happened, calling it “The Event” still felt ridiculous; enough to shake what little confidence she could project. But it was the term the experts were using on radio and the weird audio/stock footage broadcasts the TV news stations have been running. The woman on the other end lets out a deep sigh. “Alright, whatever. I won’t cancel.”

“Thank you!” Anna exclaims, acutely aware of the desperation in her voice. She hangs up the phone and rushes to her desktop, noting this client’s confirmation on the Excel schedule. It’s hard to read on the old CRT monitor. But it was the best she could find when her Dell UltraSharp vanished; likely due to the integrated webcam.

It’s been three days since The Event. In that time, physics professors and theologians filled whatever airtime still available to them, attempting to explain the mass disappearances reported worldwide. But no matter what explanation they came up with, scientific or metaphysical, it was always undercut by the strange specificity of these disappearances. Because on May 18th, at 12:22pm CST, every camera on Earth suddenly vanished. Smart phones disappeared from pockets. GoPros vanished from the headbands of parkour runners. Film and television crews found their hands suddenly empty.

When the news hit, Anna rushed down to the basement studio she had run for six years. Her Nikon D6 had vanished off the tripod. As had the assortment of backups and display antiques she kept on the shelves she built herself. Even the twenty-year old disposable cameras were gone from their junk drawer. She remembers trying not to panic, reminding herself that she was just a hobbyist for three of those six years. She could theoretically go back to her old day job. But certain life events made working from home important to her.

A loud thud shakes the upstairs floor, echoed by the shattering of glass. Anna freezes for half-a-second before instinct rushes her up the basement staircase. Shards of flower vase surround the end table and walker on their side in the living room freeze her in place. Her eyes dart across the hardwood, looking for her mother’s body. Anna hopes this wasn’t another seizure, or god forbid another stroke. But stepping further in, she sees movement from the lounge chair. “Anna?” her mother asks. “What are you doing here this early?”

There’s only a moment of relief between panics. But this one’s easier for Anna to talk herself down from. She just gets confused easily. Especially if she’s groggy. That’s all. “Mom, I live here,” she says. “And it’s not 6am. It’s 6pm.”

“I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I live here mom!” Anna shouts, before furiously pointing towards the clock. “And it’s 6pm!”

It’s hard for Anna to gauge exactly what her mother is feeling, but the long expression hits her in the gut. She feels cruel for snapping at the old woman who just knocked over her walker. Especially as that old woman’s face turns guilty when she sees the mess on the floor. “Is that your birdhouse?”

Anna watches as her mother points a shaky finger towards the small pile of red painted wood; the pile that used to be the birdhouse she made back in grade school. It earned her the Cadette Woodworker Badge in the Girl Scouts. They never actually put it outside. Mom thought it was too pretty. Instead, her parents just set it on the living room end table, leaving it on display for guests. Anna feels only a hint of sadness, drowned by relief. Her mother recognized it. “It is. You remember when I made this?”

Her mother pauses, looking away as if trying to find her memories. “It was back in Glen Falls, wasn’t it? I remember Mrs. Brady down the street said she was jealous. LuAnne Brady maybe? She said your birdhouse was better than her husband’s sundeck.”

Anna laughs, finally calming down enough for genuine happiness to surface. It took Mom longer to recall facts, but she still did. Anna walks to the kitchen, returning to the living room with a trash can for anything broken.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” her mother says. “You might have to put me in a nursing home.”

“It won’t come to that,” Anna snaps back. “Besides, you’ve seen the news. The doctors beat up the patients and stuff there.”

A second of relief hits Anna as her mother smiles at her attempt at levity. “They always get caught on TV. Hidden cameras. Maybe we can hide one of your extras in my room.”

Anna ignores it for now. Mom gets confused. She’ll remember later. As Anna picks the broken glass off the floor, she wonders what to do with what remains of the birdhouse. It’d be a shame to toss it. Woodworking wasn’t a passion like photography, but it was something she enjoyed. She wonders if carpentry would be something she could look into if the cameras are never a thing again.

Then another idea crosses her mind; an awful idea she can’t stop thinking about.

***

”Who were you yelling at just now?” her mother asks.

“Porch pirate,” Anna replies, carrying her box from Amazon. “Remember when we had to get that special doorbell? The Ring? That’s why. But don’t worry about him. We got what we needed.”

Anna opens the package, removing the replacement accordion bellows inside. She runs them to the kitchen, hurriedly attaching the wood and brass slats already on the table. The back slat framed a piece of glass, grounded and treated with water and aluminium oxide. The front slat framed a Rodenstock Sironar-N 150mm f/5.6 lens. When the bellows are attached, she screws on the 30mm rail. Anna had only done wet plate once in college, but YouTube still had plenty of tutorials left. She runs the makeshift monorail camera to the modern tripod, screwing it in tight as her mother watches from her easy chair.

“Are you ready to help test?” Anna asks, straightening the shutter release cord.

“Do you need me to do anything?” her mother responds..

“Nope! Just sit back and pose for your portrait!”

Anna squeezes the air bulb and two empty wooden slats fall off her tripod. The shutter cord dangles in her hand as she stares at the empty tripod. “What happened?” her mother asks.

“It’s gone,” Anna mutters, still in shock. “Like the rest of them.”

“The rest of what?”

“The cameras! Every camera in the world and now this one! Gone! Don’t you remember” Anna hears her voice rise with her heart rate. She stops, sitting on the couch in a desperate attempt to calm. “I put so much into that studio. It was perfect.”

Anna’s mother leans forward in her chair best. She wanted to move to the couch, next to her daughter. Anna could tell. But her limbs were too weak. “You’ll think of something. You’re smart.”

“Like what? This was perfect! I was just right downstairs. In case--” Anna cuts herself off momentarily, summoning the emotional courage needed to finish. “In case something happens to you again.”

Anna sees her mother’s eyes widen, before what looks like confusion crosses her face. A knot ties in Anna’s stomach. Does she even remember the stroke? But that confusion soon fades into a gentle smile. “I’ll be okay.”

“You someone who can take care of you, Mom! You’ve had all these health scares in the last year. And--”

“I’ll be okay. Whatever has to happen, we’ll make it work.”

Anna smiles before pulling herself off the couch. “Let me pick this up.” As she bends down to grab the empty slats, she regrets the loss of another overpriced lens. But only mildly. So much right now remains uncertain. But whatever happens next, she won’t need it. There’s an odd comfort knowing that.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Thursday Night at the All Saints Zineworks
1479 words
Flash rule: There is no more bad writing.

When bad writing rots, it leaves ash behind: gray and sticky, more like human remains than burnt paper. It foils all efforts to contain it; the walls of the All Saints Zineworks are smeared with ashy streaks, like the sad efforts of a dying Sharpie, and all the volunteer monks wear grey. The Zineworks smells like decaying masking tape.

Four years after the great disintegration, the Zineworks still gets donations of boxes dug out of attics or dead relatives' studies. Laura and Jamie are on intake duty tonight, sifting through a dozen file boxes labeled "DAD OFFICE," searching for intact scraps of writing deemed good enough to survive. Laura's wearing goggles, a shower cap, elbow-length gloves, and a garbage-bag poncho over her coveralls; she's got a meeting in the morning with her boss, and she can't afford to have oily specks of word-ash clinging somewhere she won't notice. Jamie wears an apron over a sweatsuit, nitrile gloves, and a grin. He's a career ziner, and the mess is his uniform.

"So," says Jamie, "how's the novel going?" He dusts off the cover of a paperback: King Lear, not very interesting, but an unfamiliar edition and fully intact. If there's commentary inside, the libraries will want it. If not, he'll find uses for it, if only the cover art. Waste not, want not.

Laura doesn't answer. She's squinting into the grey dust of her current box, and then she fishes out a few small sheets of fine-print text -- a technical manual for a desk phone. "Jamie, check this out. Look at the diagrams! How in the world did this survive?"

"You're the tech writer; you tell me." Jamie ambles around the work table to Laura's side, and he looks over the pages she's spread out. They're mostly diagrams, but the multilingual text is dense enough that this is definitely writing, enough to be judged. He's skeptical. Manuals like this hardly ever make the cut, and sometimes storage shields things from judgment until they get dragged into the light. "Could just be a fluke."

"But if it's not? Could be a two-page spread. Could be a whole zine, if we have enough to build on. If we find any of this guy's handwriting..."

Laura's not wrong, but she's asking for a miracle. When some great cosmic editor came down and cast judgment, most of what evaporated overnight was handwriting: memos and notes, photo captions and greeting cards, letters and diaries. Anything with a full sentence was fair game, then and now, and it's left the past a ruin. If they find a scrap of OFFICE DAD's handwriting and the family grants him reproduction rights, Jamie'll make a zine about it -- but that's a very big "if."

Jamie takes the manual pages and moves them over to the proving shelves. If they've just escaped the cosmic editor's notice for now, they'll rot away soon enough, and anything still intact after a week or two is good enough for a zine. The current crop is promising, if not particularly cohesive, but that's where Jamie comes in -- or should be where he comes in, anyway, if inspiration allows. Time to distract himself again. "Okay," he says. "So. The novel."

"It's going," says Laura. "Slowly, but... you know how it is. I've got seven versions of Chapter 5 in my drawer right now, and it looks like at least one of them'll last. I started a draft of Chapter 6 and Word hasn't puked on the file yet. So... it's all good enough, at least? So far. We're about to get into the plot, though, and I'm going to fall flat on my face."

"Don't sweat it. Your outline's hanging in there, right?"

"Right. I know, the outline's solid, but there's so much work to do adding meat to the bones. I'm terrified I'll have to burn it down and start again, if God doesn't do it for me. Hey, is that a notebook?"

Jamie looks down into the box, where he's been aimlessly pushing dust aside, and sees the wire spine of a memo pad. He pulls it out and flips through -- lots of pages gone, to decay or use, but what's left is mostly covered with lines of numbers and odd shorthand in teal ink. OFFICE DAD had loopy, flowing handwriting, and he used a fountain pen. It's gorgeous nonsense. It'll look amazing cut up and arranged on the page, framing the tech manual or whatever else they can find.

"poo poo," says Jamie, for determined emphasis. "I think we have a zine on our hands. Maybe a series. Let's keep digging."

***

Laura leaves early -- that meeting in the morning -- but Jamie stays until the last of the DAD OFFICE boxes are clean and empty. There's a decent pile of material on the proving shelves, at least a full issue's worth, but he stops thinking about it the moment he leaves the Zineworks and heads for the subway. He can't think about work forever, no matter how much his brain wants to.

Jamie's apartment is full of non-written ephemera, which is the only kind left. The few books left on the bookshelves are surrounded by tchotchkes: souvenir coffee cups, framed photos, anything to create the feeling of a complex life. Half the shelves now are filled with albums and shoeboxes full of photos, the products of long weekends of estate-sale scrounging.

Jamie takes off his shirt, scrubs down his face and hands, and looks at the photo he keeps taped to the bathroom mirror: a dark, unfocused shot of a family standing in front of an illegible historical marker, with the left side of the image taken up with the blurry pinkish shape of the photographer's thumb. It's the most incompetent photograph Jamie has ever seen , and yet it was spared when most of the written word was wiped off the face of the Earth. Jamie figures that was the creator trying to send a message -- that words were over, that it was time to move on. He can feel word-burnout in his bones, taste it on his tongue, and it's all inky ash and masking tape.

Words sell, though. The appetite for any fragment a zine-monk can find, thrown together into pamphlets and collections and volumes to fill empty library shelves, is what makes him the only paid employee of the Zineworks, and Hell if he's going to throw that away just because he can smell rotting office supplies in his dreams. The photo work can come in his free time. Maybe then he'll feel like a real artist, like Laura must feel right now.

Jamie dreams of road trips: infinite scenery, light and shadow, wordless.

***

Laura takes a 20-minute shower when she gets home, until the last trace of ash washes down her drain and she feels human again. She needs to be at work in nine hours; there's no chance of working on the novel tonight. And yet...

She wraps herself in a bathrobe and sneaks over (sneaks, she thinks, alone in her own apartment, like she's hiding from God) to her filing cabinet. She opens the bottom drawer and peeks into the hanging folder there marked "Chapter 5." The seven drafts are all still there, although some of them are failing, ink blurring and pages starting to tatter and flake. Draft 6, she's pretty sure, is dead; Laura pulls it out and drops it in her trash can. The rest still look salvageable, and Draft 4 is still pristine, three weeks after writing it. That's the winner, she suspects, or hopes. Maybe it'll actually be good. Maybe it'll just be good enough.

This novel, if she finishes it (when, she corrects herself -- when she finishes it!) will be adequate. Her day job in technical writing has given her the skills to create adequate writing, serviceable words that last as long as they need to. If she turns this outline into a novel that does its job, that'll be something, won't it? It'll be better than having the story trapped in her head forever. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Laura's not worried about selling the thing. The world needs stories, and publishers are hungry to fill up their backlist with work that'll last at least a few years. When the book's done, it'll sell. It it rots a few years later... then that happens, she tells herself. There's no endurance contract on this one. She'll survive. She'll write again. Nothing's forever anymore, so all it has to be is what it is.

Laura falls asleep and dreams of high school. On her desk, her novel outline waits for her: ten years old, paper still pristine, judged worthy. In her filing cabinet, five drafts of Chapter 5 slowly molder, dropping grey ash into the bottom of the drawer. One draft endures. It's good, or good enough.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Birds without a tree
440 words

We’d gone out west a long way, plane, train, car, feet, like we did every year. The sky was very big out there, it stretched from horizon to horizon and the colours come in at dusk and we’d just sit and watch them. We’d been there a couple of days, camped up next to a little stream, when it happened.

Afterwards we had real trouble describing what ‘it’ was. Tony Macaroni (not his real name, just what we called him) said he’d really wanted to sneeze but was afraid to. Alicia said she saw a bright light, but it wasn’t coming from anywhere or illuminating anything. I just felt like something was going to happen and I didn’t know what it was, then the feeling went away.

What changed, before and after, was that things were just themselves. They’d been that before too, of course (yes?) but now they were just that. The trees we’d pitched our orange and green tents in were just trees, sticking up out of the ground. The sky was a plate of blue colour with some orange red near the hills on the horizon.

“Whoa,” said Alicia. She had glasses on and she took them off to look around, blinking. “Are the trees… shorter… now?”

Tony Macaroni was looking up at them. “Yeah,” he said. “Or maybe we’re bigger?”

It didn’t make a lot of sense so i shook my head. “It’s different air now. It’s not colder or warmer, it’s just not the same.”

That night we sat around the fire and talked about how it was hot and red and smokey. There was something in our eyes that didn’t understand what it was looking at, we decided. After a while my head started hurting because of the smoke so I went to climb into my tent and zip up my sleeping bag. After a while someone scratched on the nylon of my tent so I opened it. It was Alicia.

“Hi,” she said. “I don’t want to be by myself.”

After a while I kissed her but it didn’t feel right so I stopped. We zipped our sleeping bags together and lay there, side by side, looking at the green and orange tent above us.

“Maybe it will be better when we get back home?” I said the words but as I said them I realised I didn’t believe them, and knew that Alicia didn’t believe them either. We were people, together or apart, and nothing meant anything other than exactly what it was.

I started crying and Alicia put her arms around me but it was too hot so I asked her to stop.

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.
Breaking the Wheel

847 words

On November fifteenth last year, Marsha Hayford's husband faded out of existence at a quarter past five in the morning. By noon she had become convinced that he had always been a figment of her imagination, that their dates had been vivid dreams, that their wedding, with all of the pictures featuring her standing alone, was an elaborate joke that all of her friends and family had been in on her with. She tried to hold on to part of the dream, but by ten in the evening she could no longer recall his first name. It was a strange name, she knew. Strange to her. Common where he came from.

She kept her name. They had no children. She would be fine, in the long run. Not all of the spouses of time travellers were so lucky. Like all groups with a common oddity, they connected on social media, usually misunderstanding everything. Ghostbrides and Ghostgrooms were the most popular groups, followed by ones talking Incubi or Succubi or Nephalim. The time travel theory was less common: a few whose remembered partners had told them directly. A few who came up with the idea themselves, like Marsha. And then there was me.

I'm Tucker Francis. I used to be psychic.

It started with me getting these weird déjà vu feelings growing up. More and more intense each time, to where I was thinking the words other people were about to say. Knowing what was coming when Patsy started her long breakup speech. Listening with dread to the television, knowing that in seconds the show will be interrupted with heartbreaking breaking news. I honed my gift, practiced it, trained with other psychics, learned to commune with the Librarian himself.

People don't get déjà vu anymore, not since November fifteenth. A couple of psych students have noticed so far, wrote up senior theses about how generational trauma is to blame. It's not.

The first time I went to the Library I was nineteen, just starting to put vision to use. I'd learned the first lesson the hard way. You can't change what you see. You see someone win the jackpot in the lottery, if you're not the one, you'll never be the one. The system will glitch out a dozen ways to stop you buying the right ticket. So you just match four of six instead, win a few thousand, or work the sports bookies. Try to warm people and they don't believe you. Best you can do is be there to help afterwards.

I don't much miss it, even if the life left me without many useful skills. It was mostly sadness and frustration.

The Librarian is older than time. He's got that sort of ageless look to him. No wrinkles, white hair and sharp white beard. He doesn't get many visitors. He gets lonely, up there or down there or whatever direction you go to get to the Library.

There are millions of books in the Library. There's only one book. Each one tells the story of the universe from end to end. They're all the same.

Almost the same. That's the great irony of free will. The only things that you can change are the ones that don't matter. Read Dickens rather than Proust this month. Watch the game at home or at the bar. Be a hasty or patient lover tonight.

He showed me the book. I could not read the language, but I could see the text, the faded text inking over as the finger of the now progressed word to word, line to line.

I learned much from him. My gift was in seeing the past, the previous version of the universe, as it came close enough to echo, like two copies of his Book on different shelves.

I'm dating Martha now. It's different. Going in blind, just like anyone else. Not knowing that the relationship has to happen, has always happened, is a part of every life you've ever lived. She likes salmon with sage and parsley and Arabic poetry and backrubs but only after ten at night, and I have had to learn each one the hard way.

I went back to the Library, in late November. I needed to understand. He told me about time travel, how it only works because nothing can be changed in the past. I asked him if that was it, if someone had managed to break the rules and end themselves doing it. He shook his head.

He taught me how to close my future sight, how to keep from being haunted by false visions of a dead and broken cycle of time. And he showed me his book. No more faded text, just blank space ahead of the invisible pen writing the now.

"See?" he said. "The future, unwritten. Unknowable. It may be that I will not understand what changed and how for hundreds of eternities more. The next Aeon may return to the take that fills my shelves, repeat this one or be entirely new. And. I. Do. Not. Know.

"Isn't it wonderful?"

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


Submissions are closed.

Now the judges retires to confer ponder.

Gorka
Aug 18, 2014

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
(Late submission)

Indentured
873 words

"So, how much time did they tell you to wait?"

It was only their second heist, and people were nervous. The cramped and dark alleyway they were waiting into was not helping the mood. Jack wanted to calm them and remind them that they were in this together.

"Eight months. How could they say that with a straight face?" Cole answered while adjusting his homemade balaclava so that only his eyes could be seen. He spoke slowly and with rough diction, as Jack did just before. The other guy stayed quiet, as he often did.

Then Jack's phone lit up. The target is on his way.

"Okay folks, remember directions. You let me talk, and if there is trouble, never hit the face."

A man enters the alley. He is in his fifties, short, wearing clean clothes and a scarf covering the lower part of his face. As Jacks goes to meet him, another crew mate appears behind the newcomer.

"Excuse me, sir. I believe you can help us."

The man raises his eyes, then moves his right hand in front of his scarf.

"Well I guess you know why we're here. " Jack says. "If you give us what we want, nobody has to get hurt."

The man steps back and tries to reach inside his coat. Before he can finish, the four accomplices surge forward and lock his arms.

Jack pulls on the man's scarf, revealing a solid jawline.

"We had good intel. I offer you a choice. Either you cooperate and we let you go, or you resist and you might lose a limb or two."

As Jack tries to keep a calm facade, the man in his fifties stares daggers into him. Then he lowers his eyes and open his mouth. As expected, he has a mouth full of teeth. With the utmost finesse, Jack extracts the denture and puts it in a plastic bag. He has to resist the urge to put it in his mouth.

"Thanks for your help. Folks, disarm him and let him go. We meet up at HQ."

Jack leaves the scene. He hopes the others obey him, as the victim has lost enough for today.

---

Spirits are high in the closed butcher shop the band uses as HQ. Jack smiles, thinking of what they've accomplished since they found themselves together, totally lost when it happened. He managed to give them a goal on this world where real teeth are no more and where false teeth are status symbol.

"So, people. This time, do not steal the loot to try and bite into an apple, yeah? Those who need it will get priority."

Everybody nods. They know their time will come sooner rather than later.

"Right. For now I feel Cole needs it more than anyone. We'll have another mark soon. Remember our goal, one for each of us. Keep up the good work, everyone!"

---

"Cole has been ambushed! He lost the loot, come quickly!"

Jack was running towards the butcher shop, listening to the voicemail again. He felt sick to his stomach. When he entered, he saw Cole, battered and bruised, with the two others tending to his wounds.

"Who did this? Who attacks one of us?" Jack said, his voice shaky.

"We did." A voice behind him echoed in the shop. "We do not like you assaulting our valued customers."

Jack turned around. People clad in white were entering the shop, some of them had weapons ready. Behind them was a tall man, smiling with pearl white teeth. His face had been on TV regularly those past days.

"We do not care for petty thieves. But I want to say that I hate being wasteful. You are the leader of this ragtag band, yes?"

Jack nods. No need to play fool when at gunpoint.

"Fortunately for you, we do not uphold the old retaliation law. You know, the one that says Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. I have a job offer for you. You seem to be good at speeches and we need more people to become the faces of our corporation."

"Do I have a choice?" Jack asks

"Oh, you can say no. But think again. You'll get to wear our best product most of the time."

"Where do I sign, Mr President?"

"Well, I have the contracts here. Just know that you will be worked to the bone. Maybe you want to mull over it?"

drat him, he was even laughing at his own jokes. Still, Jack walked forward and grabbed pen and contracts. As much as he wanted to stab his future boss with the fountain pen, he knew he would be better off in his service than rotting in here. he might even be able to eat shortbread again soon without risking to wound his gums.

"You have made the right choice. Remember our new motto; in the world of the toothless, the ones that build dental implants are kings."

As Jack is escorted out of the shop, he hears muffled screams behind him. Silently, he bids his old friends goodbye as he exits the world of the toothless. He might not be free, but at least, he will be able to smile openly again.

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


THUNDERDOME WEEK 443 - RESULTS

Now, as you may or may not know, Thunderdome is traditionally judged by three judges each week. This week, though, none dared step up to the the plate with me and offer their fealty. A lesser judge would have begged assistance.

Not I.

This week you get the mad, untempered tyranny of one man.



Let's start at the bottom.

The loser this week is toanoradian.

The dishonourable mentions go to Sperglord Firecock, Azza Bamboo and Idle Amalgam.

The honourable mentions go to flerp and brotherly.

This week's winner, ascending to the Blood Throne after only a short time away, is Yoruichi! All hail!

Staggy
Mar 20, 2008

Said little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to
These expensive
These is red bottoms
These is bloody shoes


Thunderdome - Week 443 - Crits

Brotherly - The Pipe in the Lake
Flash Rule: When was the last time you saw a plumber?

I think this is an effective use of your opening paragraphs. The rapid pace works in your favour; it’s clearly the precursor to the actual story and I found it evocative of the speed with which something formerly important can quickly become a memory.

That said, I’d like a little more subjectivity in the following paragraphs. It’s one thing to tell me that “the city stank - there was nothing to wash away the filth” but it doesn’t have much impact. Show me the filth; maybe some of the characters would dismiss it as just how things are now but Ellana is being portrayed as inquisitive and thoughtful and details like this being dropped in omnisciently come off as flat.

“Brightly colored wrap-shirts” - water for washing clothes but not the city? There’s room for a good metaphor there but as-is this feels more like an oversight.

“And nobody did a thing about it.” - I’m not going to tell you that you can’t start a sentence with ‘and’ but you risk feeling choppy and disconnected, as here. This sentence feels like an afterthought and it breaks the flow a bit.

I like the characterisation of the family members - it’s quick and efficient and feels very real. The interaction with Uncle Bunah is a sweet little scene, though I’m not sure how much it really adds to the story.

I was going to say something at the end of my notes about how I like your worldbuilding; you draw a melancholy sense of faded grandeur about the city. I’m going to mention it here because I just read the travel scenes and thought you did a good job of establishing scale. The sheer length of the aqueduct and what that implies about the former glory of the city is very effective.

And a strong ending!

Overall, I very much enjoyed your story. There was good worldbuilding and tone-setting and you crammed a lot of stuff into 1,500 words. You had a few too many “empty calorie” sentences, though, bits that felt crammed in or added as an afterthought. One of the closing lines, “probably from years and years of neglect”, is an example of this - I mean, you’re not wrong, but it’s a conclusion I think you could have let your readers draw themselves. You could have trimmed quite a few words, making the story leaner and more confident.


Sperglord Firecock - Onwards, Babel

Wow that’s some purple prose.

So I’m two paragraphs in and I sort of want to like the style you’re going for. It’s pretty dense and borders on impenetrable but if this is a story about the fall of the tower of Babel - and it might be, though I don’t know if my uncertainty is due to being early in the story or due to the language used - then that’s arguable appropriate.

So you didn’t take a flash but it’s clear as day what the “lost thing” is: words/common understanding/etc. That’s good! It’s a bold choice and you’ve made it clear what that choice was.

The problem is - as I think you’ve probably already guessed - that this is a fraction of an inch from crossing the line into impenetrable. That appropriateness I mentioned earlier? The goodwill that supported that sentiment vanished after paragraph … five? Maybe this was a bold artistic choice but it’s just not fun to read. It’s work.

The thing is, you’ve got the bones of a story there - the rediscovery of language, the coming together of two people who have to learn to communicate. That’s a solid core for a story and you’ve got the basis of a strong, emotive ending there too. But who cares about a skeleton buried at the bottom of a bog?

Prose should, if nothing else, be readable.

I’d be very interested in seeing you tackle this story again in plain language. As it is, I’m just puzzled why you would write anything like this. Proofreading issues aside (and there are a few), did you read this back to yourself as you were going along? Next time - and I genuinely hope there is a next time because I’ve seen far, far worse first attempts - please try that.


Azza Bamboo - In Awe
Flash: The churches vanished overnight but the congregations remain.

I very much like your choice of opening paragraphs/scene. It’s a strong place to start a story like this but it suffers a little for the prose. The first paragraph, for example, is very jerky - it has no flow. This is a bit of an issue throughout and could probably benefit from another proofreading pass - out loud, if need be.

Not a ton of action happens - which is completely fine - so let’s look at your characters. Stereotypical names aside (it doesn’t bother me too much; your luck might run out with other judges) we have Father, Mother, Sister and Jennifer. For 1,500 words that’s plenty but unfortunately there’s no clear viewpoint among them; the narrative camera drifts from Father to Sister to Jennifer then back to Father again to no clear effect. That’s a problem - it’s hard to tell who to care about. Pulling the viewpoint in tighter over one or two of them - say, just Father - would have made the throughline of the story feel a lot clearer.

To be honest, it’s a bit rich to even call Mother, Sister or Jennifer characters. There’s no depth to any of them - which, again, you can get away with in flash fiction but they can’t really support a viewpoint. They’d work fine as surfaces to bounce a fleshed-out character off of, much as you do with the man on the phone.

To be honest, everything involving the interaction between Sister and Jennifer is a waste of space. Nothing between “During this call …” and “... they went away” adds to the story. By my count that’s 367 words, over 20% of your limit, and all it does is make me dislike Sister (whimsical characters like this are a pet peeve).

If you’d stopped before the tildes I’d say you had a good ending. I think I get what you were going for with that final scene - a clear comparison between a traditional church and spin class, a church of personal fitness, etc. - but it came too late in the day. It’s a comparison that doesn’t really serve a purpose other than being clever. The final paragraph - a fund-raising bike ride that Sister is training for, I think? - comes out of nowhere. Seriously, the final line before the tildes was a serviceable final line.

You’ve got the roots of a good story there. You didn’t try to do too much with the wordcount (but then used a fair bit of it to no effect). You had an interesting take on the prompt and thought through the ramifications. You neatly avoided the trap of trying to explain why churches disappeared and you had honest-to-god themes running through the story. Plot holes (why did Sister know the cats were still there? Why did it matter?), stop-and-start sentence flow and waffle aside, you clearly have a good sense for story. Keep at it.


Yoruichi - gently caress you I’m not writing that whole title out

Well given you didn’t have a flash rule I went in wondering how clearly you’d lay out the “lost thing”. Didn’t expect you to just up and tell me it in the title.

So you’re giving us an unlikeable protagonist right off the bat. That’s a bold move but I must admit it’s effective; I want to keep reading to find out why Luke doesn’t just, you know, cremate his dad like you’re apparently supposed to? You’d better stick that landing later.

Oh gently caress you. “Except it wasn’t” shouldn’t hit so goddamn hard.

I am mildly conflicted. On the one hand, you made me feel An Emotion. You had clear prose, dark comedy and believable human behaviour. Your dialogue - though brief - was natural. You started with an unlikeable character and then made them a complicated character and ended with them as a sympathetic character.

On the other hand, I still don’t know why Luke was so reluctant to cremate him at the start. Were you trying to hint at his reluctance to let go? Could this story have been told without the lack of decomposition?

In the end, though, this story works and I'm going to be remembering it for a long, long time.


A friendly penguin - Nothing of Note
Flash: C Sharp? Now there's a note I haven't heard in a very long time.

You’ve got a strong opening that leaves me with questions and makes me want to keep reading to answer those questions. Good! You set a good tone - only, when you tell me that this is someone speaking on a livestream then the tone suddenly doesn’t fit as well. I can’t tell whether this is someone literally speaking into the camera or not.

A third of the way in and you’ve got a strong sense of character, clear motivation and a growing sense of foreboding. I both do and don’t want to see the end of this livestream. It’s very effective.

… until it isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind cosmic horror being replaced with cosmic … joy? It’s a good twist, a good contrast, a good release of tension however you describe it. I just didn’t find it very satisfying, in the end. Simone becomes C♯ and spreads throughout the universe. Fine. So?

The intercut scene with Jessica and Jim falls a little flat (haha) in the same way. I think maybe I’m missing something with the final line from Jim?

You do a great job at setting tone, it just never seems to quite match the story. Turns out, that was a livestream, that was Simone literally talking into the camera - only, it doesn’t really read as convincing human speech. Human-approaching-omniscience, maybe, which is fair enough I guess.

This was a memorable story. I just wish I enjoyed it more.


Toanoradian - BLUE AMERICA 2050, by Father Benjamin Brady

Just straight-up telling me “Good had ceased to exist” is a bold move.

One paragraph in and I think maybe you meant “good writing”. Jesus - sorry, “Jeezy” - Christ.

Look, I like those Obama parody posts that went around a few years back. “You are now immune to rubella!”, climbing Obama to take back the air from all the Muslims who had gone to the Moon, they were funny! They were interesting! They were written well!

This is none of those three things. This is just lazy and edgy and tiresome. And going by the title, I guess you’re really trying to stress that this what the Conservative Christian right would have you believe and yeah, maybe. But I think even they’d be able to make this interesting.


Idle Amalgam - Lab Rats
Flash: The sharks are gone. We miss them.

I don’t dislike your opening (although “Jaws” should be capitalised) but it feels a little unconfident. Given the prompt, I don’t think you need to drive home that the sharks have disappeared. I similarly like the nod to the cultural mourning, though I don’t think it adds much to the story.

Your fourth paragraph is three-quarters just one sentence and that sentence is way too long.You’re also largely just repeating the paragraph before - which, again, comes off as unconfident. “Prevailing theory”, “natural timeline could be approximated” - you’re burying your point (the timeline) in unnecessary jargon.

Kudos to you for including something that’s disrupting the economy and actively endangering health in TYOOL 2021, though. I got a bitter laugh out of that.

The “division of ocean sciences” feels like an organisation that should be capitalised. It also feels a little phony. What is it a division of? A university? A government branch? NATO?

The proposal being accepted and Rebecca being picked up feels incredibly rushed. You could have avoided that entirely by cutting everything before she arrived at the lab and starting your story there. That’d give you ~350 extra words to use.

I’ll be blunt. I do not like the dialogue, particularly between Director Stevens and Doctor Barton. It reads as insincere rear end-kissing on the part of both parties and honestly just doesn’t sound that natural.

Look, I skimmed through the rest and found that absolutely nothing happened. You’re making artificial sharks, I think? That’s cool! That’s a really cool idea! You could have written a good story with it - instead, this ended up being a rushed, breathless preamble to a story that didn’t get written. The events of it boil down to: “The sharks are gone. The protagonist is taken to a secret lab and told how brilliant they are. The end.”

This was a tough one. Your enthusiasm for the story shines through and you clearly tried something ambitious - you just didn’t stick the landing. You do, however, get points for NOT revealing that the artificial shark needs human DNA to be complete and MAN is the real apex predator! I was dreading that from about halfway in.


Flerp - Get It
Flash: There was only one car left - now that’s gone too.

I appreciate opening with a strong, objective statement to set the scene.

Is this the week for complicated relationships with dads? Is this going to be the thing that people write whenever I judge?

I couldn’t really write notes paragraph-by-paragraph because there’s not a whole lot to comment on. You wrote good prose, natural dialogue and a bittersweet relationship (heavy on the bitter, light on the sweet) between the dead father and son. It feels contemplative and sad and slow.

You’ve written what I think is clearly an objectively good story. It just feels a little bit too safe, I guess. It doesn’t really have any bite and while I can appreciate the melancholic tone, I just don’t think this one is going to be one that sticks in my head. I wish I could be more constructive.


Noah - A Hunger
Flash: The sky seems very empty, now that the birds have disappeared.

This is very much a story of two halves. I spent the first half thinking it was all a bit hokey and corny and plodding. I spent the second half thinking very differently about the world you had built and the pace really took off (haha!).

The first half could have been condensed down a lot without really losing anything.

Locust swarms are goddamn horrifying and also a completely appropriate consequence for your prompt - nice thinking it through. It also fills in a fair bit of the backstory and worldbuilding retroactively - I would have liked to have seen it hinted at earlier, though. As it is, the threat just appears out of nowhere at the halfway mark. Only the fact that it is such an evocative and logical threat stops it from feeling contrived.

Do locust swarms have a queen? I have no clue. Would killing it disrupt the swarm? Again, no idea - although it seems a bit too Hollywood to be true. I can live with that, though, because it’s overshadowed by the disconnect between the first and second halves of the story. Logical or not, they just aren’t connected very securely. There’s no strong narrative through-line.

And I would very much like to know how he knows how to fly the plane, given he’s never even seen it fly. There could be a very good explanation - but unless I’m missing something, we don’t get that explanation.

I think this story was saved by the rich, weighty description of the locust swarm. I found it very evocative and very fun to read but - much like an old plane - there’s not much holding it together.


CaligulaKangaroo - Obscura
Flash: All of the cameras are gone.

Having worked in both retail and a call centre, I can absolutely believe the customer’s reaction in the face of an impossible world-wide event.

Look, “The Event” is definitely a bit of a wacky term. Drawing attention to that fact by having the character comment on how wacky it sounds just comes off as a bit insecure. The entire paragraph describing “The Event” comes off the same way; even without the prompt right there at the top, I think you would have benefited from being brief in your setup and rolling with it. The way you extrapolate the consequences of no cameras - the stock footage on TV, the issue with integrated webcams - would be a perfect way to reinforce and reiterate the message, while coming across as more confident.

“But certain life events made working from home important to her.” followed immediately by an illustration of what that life event is and why working from home is important to her. Again, this doesn’t need to be something that you hit the reader over the head with.

Seriously, what is it this week with people and difficult parental relationships?

I like the idea that Anna comes up with and I like that it doesn’t work - I can imagine the temptation to have had her find a loophole. I don’t hate the ending but it comes off as a little flat - the message/lesson/realisation in the final paragraph doesn’t really connect back to anything. There are a few things like throughout the story - hell, the mother is arguably one - that are just sort of … there for the sake of being there.

You could do with a proofread. “You someone who can take care of you”, etc.

Still, a sweet story.


Antivehicular - Thursday Night at the All Saints Zineworks
Flash rule: There is no more bad writing

Okay, this is a fun interpretation of the prompt. You set a direction and run with it and really dig into the implications of bad words rotting. I’m not going to try and put an expiry day on your story but there are a few points that stuck out.

Your characters feel flat. It’s a short wordcount, sure, but you could have done more. Laura is writing a novel and is hesitant about it. Jamie is tired and wants to feel like a “real” artist. There’s more there, there’s potential - but you stop just short of exploring it. Similarly, you set up the Zineworks but beyond a quick monk/monastery metaphor I don’t really get any sense for how it fits into the world.

This is another case of good, reliable words that don’t quite deliver on the promise of the premise. I want to know more about the characters, I want to know why they’re at the Zineworks, I want to know what drives their different views to the written word - and I can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad thing for the story.

Well done for at least writing a story about someone writing a story and having it not come off as self-congratulatory.


Sebmojo - Birds without a tree
Flash: The metaphors are gone.

For 440 words you do a good job of capturing an air of quiet confusion. I suppose trying to describe that sense that something has changed, even if you can’t tell what, is a difficult thing to do even with metaphor available to you.

This is a difficult story to describe and not because of its length. It is small and complete and exactly itself - which, I suppose, is the point. ‘


Thranguy - Breaking the Wheel
Flash: Deja vu no more

Appropriately enough for a story involving time travel, I had some difficulty telling how your first few paragraphs tied together. The social media groups seemed to be a thing that had been going on for a long time, the disappearance of time travellers an occupational hazard that just gets people every now and then. But then you mention that deja vu doesn’t work since the fifteenth and the implication seems to be that that’s when everything changed, that the connections and so on sprang up in the aftermath.

I can’t really get much of a read on the protagonist, which is a shame. “I used to be psychic” is a great intro. It feels like you wanted to cram so much in - time travel and psychics and The Library and so on - that you didn’t have room left for character or plot. There’s so much setup - the rules of time travel, the mysterious Librari, etc. - that the payoff doesn’t have room to breathe.

I would have just liked to see somebody do something.


Gorka - Indentured

Took me a while to figure out that teeth had disappeared. Not a bad concept.

I have two concerns: clunky prose and a weak plot.

Let’s start with the prose. It’s clear, which is good, but it’s clunky and jumps around in time and viewpoint (“as Jack did just before”, for example) and is often in need of a proofread - “alleyway they were waiting into”, for example. It is also unnecessarily blunt - sentences like “Jack leaves the scene” read more like stage directions than anything else.

The dialogue just doesn’t sound natural. "We do not care for petty thieves. But I want to say that I hate being wasteful. You are the leader of this ragtag band, yes?" doesn’t read like a human speaks. Reading it out loud makes it pretty apparent.

The plot, meanwhile, is … well, it’s weak. It’s there, though - things happen. The gang ambushes and is then ambushed in turn. But if they robbed a guy’s dentures (which I read as false teeth; the sort that are removable) then is he really a “valued customer” of dental implant salesmen? Or were the gang ripping out (permanent) implants? Because that’s a significantly darker tone.

I thought this was an okay story that needed a few more revisions.

Idle Amalgam
Mar 7, 2008

said I'm never lackin'
always pistol packin'
with them automatics
we gon' send 'em to Heaven
Thanks for the crit!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

toanoradian
May 31, 2011


The happiest waffligator
gently caress

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply