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gently caress it i'm in with crocodile on a plane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Bandundu_Filair_Let_L-410_crash I'm going to go with one of the passengers who knew nothing prior to the incident.
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May 28, 2013 17:49
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| # ¿ Jul 16, 2025 22:20 |
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Alright I'm posting this. I worked on it during a (long) break at a training course so I need to have it somewhere. 1,013 words. There are three ways to get to Bandundu. There is the road, there is the river and there is the air. I am Tendaji and I have chosen to fly to the dying port capital of the Bandundu (conveniently named Bandundu) because I have no car and I mislike the river, with teeming wildlife hidden beneath its murky film. I am going to watch a football match with my brother, who lives in there. I care little for the game but more for my brother. The plane is small and full. All told there are about eighteen people including myself. Most like there is a pilot and co-pilot as well. I am sat next to a large man who is snoring ever so slightly and behind a loud American couple who are arguing loudly in their way. I can understand parts of their conversation but I make like I do not. Outside the clouds drift by and I am content to let the nattering follow. The flight is short and, forgetting the check in and inevitable check out at the capital, shorter still. I close my eyes and listen to the soft snorts of the man next to me and I smile softly. And then the peace is broken. A cry goes out. The American in front of me has stood up and is helping his wife out of her seat. In front of them I see other passengers heading towards the pilot’s cabin. The crowding at the front of the plane reminds me oddly of a flock of birds, two gulls standing foil. I make apologies to my neighbour and cross the small gap to stand in the aisle. I look first towards the birds and then privy-wards. My heart almost stops. I take a gasp of air, and finding little comfort I take another. My hands are shaking. Gripping the chair makes little difference, I almost fall over. There is a crocodile in the aisle of this small plane, grinning happily at the fear of all men and women as is its right. There is shredded material under it, as if it had constructed a nest of some sort for itself. There is no one in the seats around the creature and no body near it. My brain tries to compensate for this. As my body urges me to move my rear end as far away as it can get from the leathery beast, possibly further, my mind works on the small detail of why there is a leathery beast there in the first place. They are quite valuable dead, I have heard of the many goods you can make with crocodile skin. But this seems to require them to be dead. This crocodile is very much alive, although it is very still. I think it is sizing up its opponents. Perhaps someone intends to gift the crocodile as pet, stranger things have happened. I turn to my compatriot and give his shoulder a hard nudge. He looks bewildered and then angry. He starts to make the sound men make when they are disturbed and I Speak. “There is a crocodile on the plane,” He looks at me and I see on him the face of a man who feels very much like I felt a short moment ago. I make a small shrug and point to the crocodile. He looks to where I am pointing and then confirms that it is a crocodile, almost offended that I had waked him for good reason. I back towards the front of the plane and the safety of the herd, keeping my eyes on the crocodile that seemed happy to laze there in the centre of attention. I had a great and terrible thought, giving me pause that allowed my former seatmate to push his way past me. This plane that carried me was small, and it was full. There was no one around the crocodile, indeed there was no one at the back end of the plane at all. All of us were, to a man, at the front of the plane. I am a simple man, but it occurs to me that if we are all at the front of the plane then we will start heading towards the ground sooner than the pilot might intend. “We are all at one end. If we do not move the plane will fall,” I say in my Swahili. I see a flock of blank stares. I repeat it, best that I can manage, in my American. “You want us to get closer to that thing? You first, buddy,” The man says to me. I do not understand the specifics of this, but the general thrust of his point is clear enough. “Does anyone have a knife, or something I can keep it at bay with?” I ask twice although I do not expect an answer wither way. I sigh at my foolishness. It is probably much easier to smuggle a crocodile onto a plane than a machete, although I can’t quite see how it is so. I keep my eyes on the crocodile and I climb towards it, keeping my hands on the chairs of both sides. I move to the left side of the plane and climb over the seats. The crocodile inclines its head towards me slightly but does not make its attack. It looks playful. I now move, slightly quicker, towards the very end of the plane. “I need some more people over here!” By the time I call I have felt the plane dip. It seems that more time has been taken moving to the rear of the plane than is reasonable. I call again and then again and I use every language I have four words in, but I might as well be talking to the crocodile. I cannot see the beasts face anymore. The plane is falling to the ground now I know that it has not snapped at anyone on this plane. It has not bitten anyone. But sure as the sky it has killed us all.
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May 30, 2013 13:43
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Chairchucker posted:No, you post it before you're done, judging from the most recent entry. :/ No i'm done. If it sucks it sucks, I spent an hour and a half writing it and if it gets me the loser avatar well, life is as it is.
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May 30, 2013 15:29
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CancerCakes posted:OK so the voice wanders all over the place, your characters are unbelievable and your protagonist is an idiot. The sentence structure is generally pretty terrible, and you don't have the panache to claim that it is "style" so don't try. Your story had the opportunity for your protagonist to live at the end, the killing of the crocodile with a machete would have provided some catharsis to an otherwise predictable story. The writing is ambiguous all the way through, and not in a "deep, is this what art really is" way, but in a "this doesn't make any sense" way. In every case I understood what you were trying to say, and your writing actively got in the way of that. There is no excuse for lazy ambiguities. Thank you. I have made a right hash of this and will consider my writing. I'll leave everything up as is so others may bask in my considerable idiocy while I work on my piece.
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May 30, 2013 18:20
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Thank you for the crit sebmojo. I have revised my entry - 1330 words My brother called me a week ago, you could hear the smile on his lips. The young boys soccer team he coached were playing in the semi-final match of the Kwilu cup, and would I like to come watch it? I had laughed and told him to call me when it was the finals. But Otieno had been insistent. Come visit me, he had said, you will enjoy the break. My brother knows nothing of me, of course, because I would worry over my club every day I was gone from it. But family has a way of ignoring the inconvenient truths and I found myself on a plane to Bandundu. It was a small craft and made smaller by it's fullness. The passengers were all speaking in various African languages, Swahili being chief among them. It gave the plane an almost homely feel, like a marketplace. It had an energy to it. In Kinshasa French was spoken almost as a rule and French makes everything sound so formal. My neighbour was a young, sullen looking fellow who had merely grunted when I had offered the general pleasantries so I had to make do listening only to rumblings of the happy chatter. It would be a short flight so I let my mind wander. Had Otieno invited me merely to rub my nose in his altruism? Not directly but just by my being near him. Here I am, I work as hard as you and I keep the young boys fit and out of the gangs. What do you do? Or perhaps not. Otieno was a good man and I was being unfair. We hardly saw each other. I suppose a soccer match is just as good a reason as any other to visit. I was thinking of the long cab drive to my brother's home town when the plane jerked violently. There was a thud and the plane shuddered. The passengers made a quick collective noise of surprise and then relief as the craft righted itself and I placed a hand on my heart. I felt my heart race for a moment and grinned to myself. I turned to my neighbour to give a good natured laugh but it died prematurely in the back of my throat. He had half stood up. Through the gap between man and chair I could see the gym bag that had fell to the floor. More to the point I could see what was slowly emerging from it. An adult crocodiles' jaw pushed its way through the fabric like some unholy hell beast from Satan's womb. Its snout wrestled with the bag and I heard a tearing. That sound was worse to my ears than the most violent of gun battles. Heads turned down the aisle and froze, momentarily transfixed on the creature untangling itself on the ground. Then their heads turned, they screamed and rushed to the cockpit. Despite clearly inadequate security it would be locked. I looked to the crocodile smuggler, for there could be no doubt that the bag was his. From the hopeless look he gave me I would guess that he was not the man who had wrangled it into the bag. “Do you have a knife?” I said. There was little point in asking why he had brought this monster on board and littler still in blame. “A machete, yes,” His face was practically drooping. A pause, then “in the bag.” he pointed to the lower end of the bag, where the crocodiles tail was still straining against the fabric. He made no move to grab it. I stood and shook my head in disbelief and made to push past this fool but he grabbed my wrist. “Please.” My first instinct was to push him down. There was enough room that I would be able to move behind the crocodile without notice and get to the back end of the plane and let someone else deal with this craziness. Something stopped me. This man had brought a large crocodile onto a small plane, yes. This was his fault. But if I let it go, if I did nothing? I swallowed dryly and then let out a breath. “I'll hold it down. Grab the knife.” The crocodile was still mostly in the bag. My heart was beating its fists against my ribs. This was something for experienced hunters, not me. But perhaps, if I knew that I would be relieved quickly, I could stomach pinning the beast down. The man briefly squeezed my shoulder before he nodded. I felt my heart skip. "I'm Tendaji," If I was going to wrestle a crocodile for a man he would at least have to know my name. "Kato." He stepped behind the crocodile gladly and gave me room to move. I hesitated. It was one thing to talk of pinning it down, but to actually do it? I looked to the passengers huddled up at the front end of the plane. They had bunched up at the front of the plane but they were not screaming any more. Their faces said better you than me. I lunged then, knowing that delaying would leave the beast time to escape and might rob me of my will altogether. I pushed down hard onto its shoulders. The crocodile made to move and through what was left of the bag tangling his body, and my weight I managed to keep it from fully turning towards me. I could tell I would not be able to hold it long. The planes floor lurched and I had to push harder down onto the creatures back. A creaking noise and then another toss. My stomach went heavy and I tasted bile. I pushed down against the crocodile. Then the plane tilted and I was thrown in the air. I pushed against the crocodile to propel away from it. It turned and snapped at me uselessly before floating off towards the roof. I briefly saw the other passengers as they were tossed about in the cabin, their screams calling down towards me, before I collided violently with the ground. I rolled about with chairs and other, harder, things. I could not see much, nor control my body as the plane thundered. When the world finally stopped shaking I found myself stretched over a broken chair on what had once been the ceiling of the plane. My legs were heavy and useless and my neck even more so. Anything on my body that I could feel, ached. But I could move my arms and that was enough for the moment. Using them I positioned my body to look down around the fallen craft. Wreckage and bodies and a strange silence. Kato was clearly dead, head twisted towards me with the knife plunged uselessly into a seat cushion. The crocodiles tail swatted lazily at his chest. The crash had all but broken me and there the crocodile was, as if fresh from the river. I hated it then, but I'm not sure if I could have attacked it. Besides being in better shape than me, it was a crocodile and it was not interested in me. I was safe. But I heard a cough and a weak call for help. The crocodile did too. That's what gave me strength. I clawed my way towards it. I pulled the machete from the dead man's grasp and headed for the crocodile. It seemed to ignore me, but I knew how quickly it could move. I began to position my body for the best attack, as slowly as I could. Before I could move any closer it swivelled its head towards me and rumbled lowly in warning. In defiance of all reason, I plunged the knife into it's back. It gave a hissed roar but before I could think on what I had just done I pulled it out and plunged it into the beast again and again. Each time my arms felt heavier and more sore but I pushed on the beast's rough scales with one hand and plunged the machete with the other. A good time after it had stopped thrashing I pulled myself to it's face. I stared into the dead eyes of the crocodile. Then I let myself close my eyes MrFlibble fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jun 2, 2013 |
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Jun 2, 2013 02:18
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sebmojo posted:This should go in fiction farm, but well done. There are lots of little errors I could ping you for ('it's' is only ever short for 'it is'!) but this is an actual story with actual people in it. I give a poo poo about what happens. Good work. Should I edit the story out? To be honest I posted it here so I wouldn't look like a sulky baby who had thrown his toys out of the pram after rightly being called on his poo poo.
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Jun 2, 2013 02:41
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| # ¿ Jul 16, 2025 22:20 |
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Martello posted:First crit. Thank you for your critique. (I'm kicking myself about the it's thing, I went over the document three or four times during editing and I still managed to miss it multiple times)
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Jun 2, 2013 23:43
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