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I'm in as well. I can't say I've done anything like this before, but Aesop shouldn't have all the fun.
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May 22, 2013 01:32
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| # ¿ May 16, 2025 09:20 |
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Black Griffon posted:Yeah, gently caress me and signing up for poo poo when I shouldn't. I have 400 pages of medical anthropology I need to get through, and I'm barely able too keep myself awake as it is. Might be I finish the story when I'm done with my final, which should be in about 36 hours. Might be I'm drunk for five days after that. Might be I do both. gently caress everything anyway. Personally, I'd avoid the first person in a fable, but the moral is reasonably clear.
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May 27, 2013 02:46
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The Penguins and the Blizzard - [639 Words] Seven penguins lost their way in a blizzard. They searched and searched, hoping to find their family, but they could scarcely see past their own beaks. Sometimes they would waddle, and sometimes they slid on their bellies, but no matter how far they went, they didn’t seem to get anywhere. Their pace slowed, and eventually they could hear the rumbling of their bellies over the howling of the wind. They prayed that they might survive the storm and see their family again. No sooner had they finished their prayer than the youngest one nearly fell into a pool of water. “If we have found the water," he said, "then we are nowhere near our family! We will never make it back to them in this blizzard!” The oldest and wisest and strongest brother thought a moment, and said, “If we are near the water, are near fish. Let’s catch as much as we can, and meet back here to huddle together for warmth. Still we must hurry back before the light fades, or we might never find each other again.” The other penguins all agreed this was a good plan, and they each dove into the sea.The icy water chilled the air in their lungs, and even the oldest feared the cold might kill him. Still, he knew his duty to his family, and he managed to snatch up seven fish within an hour. Satisfied with his results, and worried that the sun would soon set, he returned to their spot on the ice. He hoped his brothers would not lose their way. Fortunately, everyone made it back to the edge of the water, each brining an excuse in place of fish. The youngest claimed that he was much too tired to look for food. The second decided to eat his fish rather than bringing them back. The third had brought back a collection of colorful stones he though looked pretty. The fourth had chased after a lady he thought he had seen in the murky depths. The fifth tried to snatch away fish that the sixth had caught. The sixth, furious with the fifth, let his haul get away, so that he could not have it. The oldest looked on each of his brothers with contempt and said, “I have tried to show you how to act well and do your part. Yet not one of you has come back with anything useful. You let your failings get the best of you. I will not share what I have caught with any of you.” He sent them away, wishing that his brothers could be more like him. He watched them fade into the wall of white before eating three of the fish he caught. Almost instantly, the rumbling in his stomach quieted. “If only my brothers could be good like me, they might have been spared.” As the light continued to fade, it grew colder and colder. The oldest brother wrapped his flippers around his belly, but the wind blew straight through him. In the darkening gray, he felt the beginnings of icicles form along his beak. He tried to eat another fish, but they had frozen. He knew night would fall soon. He admitted to himself that he no longer felt terribly proud about his virtuous behavior. He really didn’t feel much of anything, except the cold biting at his face and his feet. He tried calling out to his brothers, begging them to return so that he could be warm, but the wind snatched his words away. When the blizzard ended, a family of seals happily gobbled up the body of the oldest penguin. They spotted six live ones off in the distance, but they didn’t bother giving chase. The penguins had a good head start, and they looked scrawny anyway.
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May 27, 2013 03:49
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I'm in also. The Old Testament is all sorts of fun.
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Jun 6, 2013 03:54
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Work and family came down on me this week, so there's no way I'm going to get this finished in time. Here's to the next competition then.
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Jun 9, 2013 07:49
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In with "Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
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Jun 12, 2013 07:18
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Quote: "Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." Incompetent - 1138 Words Competent. Competent. Competent. Eric swore that he was making a real assessment of every swimmer in his scanning range, but he admitted that it did start to seem more like a mantra and less like an honest attempt to spot drowning victims with each passing iteration. This held especially true with the cacophony of pool pumps and loud children melting into and endless white noise. Still, he reflected that a mantra might not be such a terrible thing, as it might alleviate the pain of chlorine burning one’s eyes while the sun burned everything else. Competent. Competent. Lifejacket. Competent. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that a lifejacket wearing patron could only be distinguished from competent swimmers by a few bits of foam. They were in no more danger than the competent ones, but setting them apart helped break the monotony. In lifeguarding, anything that wasn’t a perfectly capable swimmer or children screeching about a game of Marco Polo made the day infinitely better. Lifejackets and competents comprised the vast majority of the pool population, leaving incompetents sadly under-represented. A good drowning spiced up any day at the pool. Competent. Competent. Competent. He shifted in his seat so he could sneak a look at the clock. To his dismay, clock number two for the year ceased functioning. Fried in the weather, presumably. He knew by his spot in the guard rotation that he couldn’t have more than a half hour left, but nothing else. The end of the shift would arrive in its own sweet time. Competent. Competent. Competent. The day hadn’t been a total loss though, by Eric’s estimate. It had been slow enough that he could use his breaks to show off what four years experience could do for one’s water slide riding skills. He insisted to other lifeguards on duty that this helped him cool off, and that he only raced kids to make sliding extra fun for them. When the races started, however, he threw himself down the slide, careful to only keep his shoulder blades and only one heel touched the surface (Reduce friction. Stay in the water stream. The twofold path to waterslide victory is easy to learn but hard to master). In each of three races, Eric had nearly finished his victory dance before his opponent made it across the finish line. He also helped stage a fake emergency in order to test a new lifeguard. The head lifeguard on duty, Brian, wanted to make it a simple drowning. Eric made a case for making it an unconscious pregnant lady with a broken spine in addition to a venomous snakebite. Eventually they settled on a disgruntled mother and her choking baby. The new guy handled it like a pro, and their baby mannequin lived on another day. Still, it was a nice diversion. Competent. Competent. Lifejacket. Competent. The pool thinned out. Not unusual for the time of the evening, but it happened a lot more suddenly. Moms and Dads gathered their children up and marched briskly to the edge of the facility, with near flash-mob precision. He glanced over his shoulder to find the crowd gathering at the wrought iron fence around the edge of the pool area. In his time, Eric never saw anyone so interested in that fence. Brian was also there. Every muscle in his body was tense. His eyes caught Eric’s sunglasses and he mouthed something, but the words didn’t break through the sound of running water. Brian did not stick around to clarify. Eric knew there was some kind of issue in progress, but not sure what. He desperately wanted to chase down his head lifeguard and question him. He could also simply run over and check on the matter and trust that nobody would drown in his few seconds of absence. Either option was infinitely more exciting and fulfilling that sitting around and doing nothing. Still, he knew that anyone could run into trouble in a pool for a myriad of reasons. He had been charged with the safety of the pool, not some mystery problem he knew nothing about. He continued to count competents, this time calling out swimsuit colors to distract him from the unfolding excitement. Competent: Blue. Competent: Red. Competent: Dora the Explorer Pattern. He managed to avoid looking away from the pool again. No one even came close to drowning. The shift ended without incident. Finally relieved of his responsibility, he went to find Brian, who was sitting in a lawn chair in the shade. “What happened exactly?” he said. Brian didn’t look up. “Kid got hit by a car. I saw his head smack the ground. He wasn’t moving.” Eric’s jaw dropped. He wanted to ask why the hell no one saw it fit to close the pool, activate emergency protocol, and get everyone on duty out to help. Instead, he said, “Is he going to be okay?” “Maybe? His mom picked him up and drove away.” Eric’s head was spinning. He heard another lifeguard talk, but he wasn’t registering whom. The voice said, “The kid’s head was bobbling around a lot. If there was any damage at all…” The thought didn’t need to be completed. Each and every one of them knew that moving the spine after such an injury could very well mean the difference between life and death. Eric could almost see the kid being peeled off the pavement, his head rolling to the side, threads of his spinal cord coming undone with even the slightest movement. “Why didn’t we stop her?” he asked. “I tried to get somebody on it,” Brian replied, “but nobody left the pool.” “We couldn’t hear. There are procedures for this.” “I know!” Brian’s gaze finally lifted. His eyes were red, but that was not uncommon thanks to the chlorine. “I saw them. I called out to you. I didn’t wait around to see if it worked because there was a life on the line. I went and got our trauma bag. By the time I came back, she was gone and you hadn’t moved.” Eric couldn’t help but think about it. Brian would not have called him for idle chat. It wasn’t protocol, but it was clear something was wrong. Leaving would have risked pool safety, to be sure, but there was already a real problem. He felt sick to his stomach. “Look, everyone did the right thing in their own way. You stuck with the protocol created to save lives, and I ignored it to save lives.” It was true, of course, and the manager of the facility told everyone that she was proud of their actions. The fate of the child was never disclosed.
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Jun 17, 2013 03:12
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First I wrote too few words, and then too many! I'll get it right one of these times. Not this coming week, mind you, but soon. Thanks for the crits, judges.
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Jun 19, 2013 06:58
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I'll take a crack at this. I'm in.
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Oct 22, 2013 04:21
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| # ¿ May 16, 2025 09:20 |
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The Hanged-Man 969 Words
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Oct 28, 2013 06:15
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