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I'm terrified. I'm probably going to suck. I'm trapped forever in the first person. I'm in. And I'm doing Tennessee Williams.
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May 29, 2013 22:24
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| # ¿ Jul 18, 2025 09:03 |
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Given as I just got home now from having to work this weekend, I've gotta pull out. Sorry, y'all, this does suck. I'm going to get some sleep, then maybe do the next.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:03
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I'm actually in this time, I swear it you guys. I've got Wild Blue Yonder.
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Jul 16, 2013 07:17
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Chairchucker posted:Wow, that is some outrageously bad taste in apples my fellow judge has. If they name a crayon Red Delicious, the kiddies will get all the wrong ideas.
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Jul 17, 2013 08:25
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Hell with it, it's as done as it's going to get. THUNDERDOME CHERRY BREACHED! Crayola color: Wild Blue Yonder Word count: 1,074 Genre: I don't even know. Make Believe I swear I was gonna pitch the phone against the wall. I had gotten the thing only two months ago and already the battery was eating itself. I had only charged it, like, three hours ago at home, and already the battery was in the red. And worse, it was only 7:47 - a good three hours before Declan's parents got home. Of course I couldn't get on their wifi, and of course I didn't bring my charger with me. That's why I'm babysitting instead of splitting atoms or something. Three hours with nothing but basic cable and homework - I could die. I could have actually died. Come to think of it, though, the kid had been outside for a long time now. He had rattled off his usual list of crazy demands once his parents had gone (after hugging me - he was a cute little booger, had to give him that) and then run right into the backyard. The cruel reality of my neverending responsibilities descended on me like the shroud of death, and I could do nothing but accept, shut my goddamn Made in Fuckyoustan piece of poo poo phone off, put the chicken nuggets on, and check on Declan's backyard modern art. Today's resources were: the refridgerator box, a laundry hamper, washable markers, his blue spaceman footy pajamas, kid scissors, and duct tape. I'd caught him scrounging out of the recycling, which I figure is okay so long as he washes off after. Keeps him busy, right? Better than having to watch kid TV all afternoon. By the time the oven dinged and I had the nuggets plated, he was taping an empty apple juice can to the side of a completely junk-encrusted once-box. I called out to him and he just stood beside the thing, smiling his fly-eating gap-toothed squee-worthy smile. "Shelly, no!" he yelled, "I gotta get ready for the rocket launch!" And I guess it did sort of look like a spaceship, with the cardboard fins and laundry hamper dome. A dead spaceship. A dead, deformed, cardboard spaceship. I tried my Serious Grown-Up Voice, but that doesn't even work when his parents do it. I had to agree to help him with the 'rocket launch' first. Kid's got a bright future in politics, I swear to God. He grabbed my hand and led me over to his creation. "We gotta get the missile cannons on, or we won't be able to fight!" I supposed that's what the juice can was for, but, "No! That's the biorganic reactor!" He tore up a handful of lawn and deposited it inside by means of explanation. The missile cannons, it turned out, were paper towel rolls that he had helpfully written 'missel' on. The laser cannons were mustard bottles, and the shield generator was, of course, his plastic knight shield from last Halloween. Of course, what he REALLY needed my help with was to push the thing upright, and surprisingly nothing fell off when I did. And then he wanted to eat his 'dinner rations' inside the 'spaceship'. With the cat. You'd be surprised what kids can get away with when they hug you and say they love you. I wonder if I knew that, at his age? He actually ran inside for seconds, which he then put in his lunchbox and ran back outside with. "Biomass," was his explanation. Except by then it was past eight, and the light was beginning to leak out of the sky. I told him he shouldn't be playing outside alone, so he grabbed the end of my shirt and dragged me out with him. Mom, apparently, let him play until the streetlights were on. I checked. 4% battery life. Only God alone could have saved me. He opened up a Declan-sized door in the side and tried to push me inside, and y'now? I was curious. He had a flashlight taped to the wall and all sorts of controls and displays drawn onto the interior, or represented via tape bundles and bottlecaps. He taped the door shut, stuck his head into the cat-inhabited laundrydome and began counting loudly down from twelve. "Where are we going, Declan?" "Seven! It's CAPTAIN Declan! Six! And because I'm the captain, you can be the scientist. Five! We're going to fight the Neptune spiders before they blow up the Earth!" "Well, that makes a lot of sense. Dangerous things, Neptune spiders. I can't wait to, uh, dissect their little spidery bodies." "Eww. Four. Threetwoone LIFTOFF!" And that's when it all went horribly right. There was a sudden electricity in the air, like a thousand old TVs turning on at once, and a smell of ozone and boiling lettuce. There was the crack of air igniting and a blast of heat and pressure that pinned me to the floor of the box with a terrified cat in my lap. There was Declan in the laundrydome smiling wide to greet the evening, and the clouds were growing very close, very fast. It was working. It was working. I'm pretty sure I screamed. The clouds blew past us in a moment, followed swiftly by the last high tatters of the fading day. I began to drift away from the cardboard hull. We had broken into the night, and just as crazy, neither of us were dead. The cat, rapidly attempting to burrow into my stomach, seemed as surprised as I was - the only one who seemed to know exactly what he was doing was the seven-year-old kid in blue footy pajamas. "There they are! Just past the moon!" he yelled. I drifted. There, indeed, was the moon, vast and white and close. And Earth, home and whole, below us. Growing smaller. I could fit my palm overtop. I very definitely screamed. So did Declan, at that - in a very different way, as he viciously prodded a duct-taped Snapple cap and sent a streamer of lemon-yellow laser across the impossible field of space. Numbly, I turned on my phone. Who would I call? His parents? My parents? NASA? And as I floated, staring, the battery slid from 4% to 2% to dead. The kid must have seen me crying. "Don't worry, Shelly. You're the scientist. You can just invent a new wire, right? You can invent an entire new phone!" His tiny, happy face as he fired self-guided fusion torpedoes out of paper towel tubes. The flutter of arachnoid movement against the lunar surface. I found the tape and scissors, and began to braid my hair. Ed: Also, I'm an idiot. Umbilical Lotus fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 22:50
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I have learned I need to stop talking and edit more. Regardless, I'm glad that people got some enjoyment out of the story - that, after all, is the point of the exercise. Back for round two. And I choose the inimitable Weed Megathread.
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Jul 25, 2013 00:43
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I wish I had more time to edit this. But, no. Know Better 758 words, based on WMv7 Mrs. Mulgrough must have noticed the change in the light. "Are we going outside?" she asked, just as I wheeled her onto the stony path and answered her question for her. Mrs. Mulgrough was almost blind, but sharp as a sharkbite at 96 and very aware of changes in her surroundings. I would have only expected the best from her. "Yes ma'am," I answered, "Your friends are sitting by the gazebo, and they've been asking about you." She brightened visibly as I spoke, inclining her ear down the remembered walkway to pick at the scraps of words on the wind. It was a good thing, when the residents made friends easily. My job so often put the injustice of life on display: the decay, the decline, the neglect. The simple affirmations of human decency can feel like lifebuoys on a churning ocean. They waved as she approached, three smiling faces and upraised hands - and that alone gave me one more reason to celebrate. Carl Donner was out. Mr. Donner was a sweet old thing in the early stages of Alzheimer's - courteous, self-effacing, and a relentless hoarder. He almost never left his suite. I sent a quick text to Tim in Janitorial as I wheeled Mrs. Mulgrough into place beside the new-sprouted spring roses. After making sure the wheel-locks were in place and she knew where to find her internal pager, I left her to her friends. Peaceful Glen is all about privacy, respect and decency, unlike other nursing homes. I've always taken that very personally. I suppose that's how good people like me get taken advantage of. I left them to their chatter, to the twitter of birds and the loam, skunk and new grass smells that mark the onset of spring. They were, after all, supposed to be responsible adults. Believe it or not, it took us months to find out - that and one rough awakening. It's not like there weren't any clues. Mr. Donner was shriveled and thin when he came into our care, but soon plumped under what we assumed were our ministrations and the company of newfound friends. One does tend towards positive assumptions. Mr. Andrade was a big man with a big personality. He moved, flirted, and exercised as if he didn't know how heart disease worked. Perhaps he didn't. I don't know what that stuff does to your brain. When you see good people die (ignobly, painfully, weekly), you don't question when the opposite occurs. You must assume you're good at your job, that you're doing the right thing. There was the odd vase in Mrs. Mulgrough's hope chest. There was Allison Berry's Zig-Zag tatters. There was the constant presence of skunks around the rose-rimmed gazebo. Mr. Andrade was on two different medications with appetite suppressing side-effects. Did you know that marijuana is better than commercially-available medications for halting the progression of Alzheimer's disease? I didn't. I found out on the Facebook page. There was a Facebook page. The other nurses found it to be the funniest thing in the universe, that website. Maybe to a certain sort of person it is, but I spent nursing school studying and working hard for my future. There they were, brazen in pixels, four spry old souls laughing under the shade of the gazebo, the biggest gosh-darned joint you ever saw dangling from their no-longer-shaking fingertips. Dear, sweet Ms. Berry, mother of four and romance writer, laughing under the halo of our own sun, the almost-phrase pasted indelibly beneath her denture smile: "somke a weed everybody". She would have reached her centennial that October. Her daughter gave her that smartphone. Probably the marijuana, at that. I suppose that's for the police to find out. It was at the amber end of summer when the nursing home drug ring came to a close. They were where they always were, under the fading green, flaunting the law. I locked Mrs. Mulgrough into place and tread down the stony path - and stopped when I saw the blue in the distance. I waited, not long, but long enough. When I returned, they weren't afraid even for a second. Mr. Donner patted the bench next to them and brandished Mrs. Mulgrough's intricate, upraised bong. "Sandra!" he called to me, "I was wondering when you'd come and join us." He remembered my name. Very good. Uncommon progress. I stood there until the police arrived and took my place. One year for possession in the state of Florida, one year for paraphernalia. You must assume you're good at your job. That you're doing the right thing.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:12
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 !What? Oh yeah! It's Week (random-rear end roman numerals) 53: The Horrors of History! Had fun this past week? Exercised your imagination cortexes and jacked in to the groove matrix? Well, to hell with you. Actual Hell! Consensus has been reached, dark pacts have been sealed in blood and ink, and by the cruel voices forcing their way through the meat of my throat I declare Thunderdome to commence! Your prompt: A moment of historical horror. The knowing alchymist shall take one part Horror and mix thusly with one part Historical Fiction, until the sepia remuneration of the brutally real mates grotesquely with what man was not meant to know. Taketh thou a moment in history, a fixed time or event, and write it septic with shadow - the horror mayest spring from the moment, from its context in history, or from any other source, so long as it maintains its fixed point in the unremembered past and terrifies with each shivering syllable. But all the Devil's contracts bear a catch: The wary wizard knows that to neglect his research is to flirt with things worse than those damnations with which he is familiar. Research your work. Get a solid grounding of what actually occurred, so that a casual Googling won't display anything out of thematic scope. Offer praise and sacrifice to these, your Judges! Fumblemouse Umbilical Lotus sebmojo Beware these cruel folk, for flash rules are once again in effect, and any among them may yet spell your demise. Count thy words, and know that they are limited to 1,200. Sign-ups shall cease at: Friday, August 9th, 12:00 AM EST. Submit your words by: Sunday, August 12, 12:00 AM EST. Pray now to the gods of your ancestors - as you unearth their ancient graves, and beware! For if your bowels have quivered rightly at the Thunderdome's olden call, then know that you must toxx yourself if you failed to submit previously, and want in on this gravy. Know thus the names of the doomed: Capntastic (smilin' in the sun) Erogenous Beef Mercedes Accretionist docbeard (come sail away with SATAN) magnificent7 (whiny protagonist who dies horribly) Nikaer Drekin JonasSalk Auraboks Cervid Noah CancerCakes (minute-long moment) crabrock (hit that word limit hard like your fingers'll fall off tomorrow) Helsing Kaishai M. Propagandalf (hated erudite protagonist, except not really because a non-judge gave the flash rule and WE ARE THE POWER HERE) Anathema Device is TOXXED Umbilical Lotus fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Aug 10, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 10:29
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crabrock posted:oh fine, I'll do it. In. I get to do one of these too! Since you seem so very reluctant, a flash rule for you! 1,200 words is no longer the upper limit - it is the finish line. You must write exactly 1,200 words, no more, no less. I believe it's also fair to warn everyone that I WILL have a google window open as I read, and I WILL be checking basic facts.
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Aug 9, 2013 09:52
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It's very safe to say that the sign-ups are OVER. Pardon the lateness; Italian wedding. Crabrock, you rocked that flash rule, which only means I have to do wordcount flashes more often.
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Aug 10, 2013 06:30
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That's it, fellers! Time's up! Sorry to hear about your work situation, Mercedes, but I'm glad you put up a story regardless. Now is the time for reading and review, and next wee I finally get to loving write something again!
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Aug 12, 2013 05:02
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Us judge-people are deliberating in our shadowed councils even now, but before the verdict comes out I want to state how impressed I am with everyone's works this week. You all presented an amount of thoughtfulness and subtlety that is, honestly, pretty surprising after the previous week's chromed booty. I'm not the most active poster, but I'll be sure to give everyone a big, constructive review, once we determine which of you sucks the most and mock you publicly. As was previously stressed, the worst you could have done isn't post absolute gibberish, but not post at all.
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Aug 13, 2013 12:17
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| # ¿ Jul 18, 2025 09:03 |
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My life turned completely bullshit all of a sudden, so I think I'm out this week. Have fun, weirdo freaks.
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Aug 15, 2013 10:17
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