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Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
In for the t-dome. Shred me gently.

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Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Kisscapades
1299 words

I had just learned to drive. My instructor, three times my age and then some, became intent on teaching me to drive near practice fields and schools. There he would consult me on the ratings of females of dubious ages. He would say things like “Nah, look at that rear end. She’s an 8 for sure” of someone wearing a backpack featuring the Powerpuff Girls. I often just grunted at his assessments. If he seemed uncertain as to my agreement, the double grunt and nod would mollify him. He almost certainly teaches people to drive in Thailand now. There or Rikers.

I was 16 years old, in my car, and on my way to my first date with a girl named Casey. It’s a name that conjures up images of a father who envisioned a linebacker, but had a backup plan in case it was a cheerleader. One of those neutral, androgynous sounding names that my adult self couldn’t possibly imagine climaxing around without wondering who was in earshot. I went over the scripts of potential date topics in my head, and I decided that “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” would be my go-to area if there was ever a lull. We had met during Quiz Bowl: the two of us locking eyes as we both blurted out that answer simultaneously. It became our inside joke.

I arrived at Casey’s house, and walked along the weed-infested path to her front door. Casey lived in a working class neighborhood a few miles from the north shore of Long Island. I knocked on her screen door, and waited nervously. Through the haziness of the screen, I could see a man lumbering towards the knocking. He was about my father’s age, but the similarities abruptly ended there. His gait had all of the gracefulness of a ballet of steak knives. He was completely bald, with a scruffy beard, and a tanktop written in a foreign language. The man looked like the bouncer to an elicit cockfight. Terror washed over me.

“Hi...Mr. Winslow? I am here to pick up Casey.” My utterances were more mouse than human. Fievel hitting puberty.

“Yes, yes.” I jumped at the loudness of his voice. “Are you Matt? I’ll call her.” With each passing word, the noise became more cavernous. “Casey!” “Casey!” Pounding a gong would have been subtler.

He opened the screen door, and I shook his hand while he studied me. I could feel myself de-evolving under his gaze. Daughter, Casey. Man, kill me. Find, mommy. The sound of Casey’s footsteps echoed in the distance for an interminable amount of time. How many flights of stairs were in this house? The silence between us closed in on me. I HAD to say something. Think, drat it! “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was my safe spot.

“Do you like...crossbows?” came out of me. I immediately shifted my eyes off of his face to his chest, studying the hodge podge of undecipherable letters desperate for a rescue code. My eyes then moved down to his legs to determine if I could outrun him. I gulped down a golf ball of air.

“Crossbows?” “You a hunter?” He looked at me with a slight smile, as if I had asked a perfectly normal question. Not only was he clearly a hunter, but that smile implied that he knew - down to the second - the waiting period for assault rifles in every place he’s ever lived. I saw an opening and unslouched my shoulders. “Yes sir, I go out every now and again.” If picking up Easter eggs in my yard counts. “I was in the Boy Scouts for a few years.” I had considered claiming to be a recent discharge of the Marine Corps.

“Casey must’ve been talking about me, huh?” The wry smile turned proud. Casey stood behind him at this point, out of my view. “Dad, don’t be nosey. I’ll be back before dark. Promise.” She came into the doorway and placed her hand on my shoulder as if it were the undocking procedure from her father’s orbit. “Hi, Matt!” “Heya!” We walked out together as I managed to mutter out a goodbye. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Winslow.” I waved to him and made a mental note to buy magazines with names like Ammo Up and Animal Slayer if I ever planned on returning here.

I looked at her and smiled: part relief, part nervousness, all excitement. She was about 5 feet tall with deep black hair that extended past her spaghetti-strapped shoulders. Her skin had a slightly darker tone, a chance DNA mixture that gave her a permanent spray tan. She had a full figure with an athletic build. There was an aura of complete confidence surrounding her that intimidated most people, as if each step taken was on land recently conquered for her.

When we reached my car, I did a slight jog to open the passenger side door, a ritual that seemed to satisfy some expectation rather than accomplish something that was needed. I began to mentally opine on the usefulness of chivalry while I stood there waiting. I studied her hands: ungnarled and functional, as far as I could tell. I would need to evaluate the opening of doors on a case-by-case basis so as not to send the wrong message.

“Oh you are sooooooo nice! Thank you!” She brushed my arm and smiled. It was decided: I need to encounter lots of doors. Door reconnaissance! Is a door store a plausible second date?

We had planned out a visit to the beach, and drove to one a few miles away. Upon arriving with our blanket in tow, we came to the realization that late-October beach-going was a plan doomed to failure from the start. There was not a sign of life in sight on this cloudy, breezy day. I half expected to hear air raid sirens and see German war planes on the horizon at any moment.

“This is a good spot.” Casey pointed at a nondescript area of sand a good distance from my car. I looked out at the water as if to double check her choice. The waves hit the shore with an exasperated “clop, clop”, begging us to be any other place in the ocean except here. A Radiohead cover of “Surfin’ USA” began to play in my head, the soundtrack to the bleakness. “Yup, this is a great spot.”

We sat down on our blue blanket. “It’s beautiful out there,” she said, pointing at her approximation of where the sun was last seen. I made sure she saw me nodding wistfully. “Indeed.” The believability of two toddlers studying a crayon-filled wall and deciding that they had nothing to do with it.

“So…” She looked at me with eyes that screamed “now is the time to take out your gum!” even though neither of us was chewing any. The chilly beach faded away as I closed my eyes and leaned in. This was my first kiss outside of a Kindergarten recess area. I began my task, furiously.

“Slow down, champ!” Casey was laughing. I suddenly became cognizant of my kissing method. It was like a woodpecker who hadn’t seen a tree for a month. A rocking chair granny on speed. “This is not the Kisscapades. Slow and steady, Matt.” I blushed, and we started over. We made out there for about 15 minutes, both of us too nervous and naive to do anything but mix in a little tongue. The cold finally got to us, and we returned to the car and drove back.

“That was fun. I would rate today a 9 out of 10!” she assessed as I pulled into her driveway. Reflexively, I checked my three mirrors and made sure my seat belt was fastened.

Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich

Fanky Malloons posted:

I will post your crit tomorrow Arkane.

Sweet, thank you.

I'll stand by what I wrote, but I was pretty rude about it and sorry for that. I just think more than a few of the entrants got short shrifted there, even taking into account that judging is a huge time commitment (that everyone is thankful for).

Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
in to get better and politer

Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Image: http://bricker.info/images/sets/LEGO/6082_main.jpg
Flash: The seizure of breakfast food plays a significant role in your story.
Word count: 705

Morning Fire in the East

Day forty three thousand and five hundred and twenty two.

The world turned itself toward the sun, the dull glow of the dawn welcoming the world to a new day. In the rising light, Malachy’s green skin shone bright metallic as he flew: an emerald reflection and dark shadow danced a duet on the taiga treetops below. He was one of the last sky-dwelling verilin left, most of his kin had long-since migrated into the rocky domain below. After the drahga expanded in uncontrollable numbers across the surface of the world, his eldest brother led a retreat downward to seek gold and gems.

A hunger rumbled inside of him for the first time in twenty sun rises. He was eager to return to his home, eager to gorge himself on his gold. Long were the days he spent in his brother’s cavern city that stretched for miles below the surface, so deep into the Earth that the warmth came not from above but from below. The lights of golden-fires in the caverns would wane and wax to mimic the movement of the otherwise abandoned sun as if the younglings would know the rhythm of such a thing. Malachy preferred the briskness and exhilaration of the surface. The clear delineation of day and night, between those in the sky and those on the land. He flew onward.

He neared the stone drahga formation that he took as his home many seasons earlier. Malachy first smelled and then spotted a faint smoke rising from his residence. It was not left untouched in his absence. The first drahga he spotted stood atop the highest battlement, easily sighted with a pointed, azure-colored crown atop his head. Its arms flailed wildly as he caught sight of Malachy approaching. In one hand the drahga held a white stick and in the other a collection of parchment. Swinging the stick back and forth, it disrobed and showed itself to be a male, old to the point of whitened hair, a deteriorating body that was matched by the frailty of its mind.

Malachy surveyed the scene ahead and below: including the eldest, there were five of them barking at him and at each other with wild yelps and hollers. The leader rode a horse, steed and rider alike adorned in exotic multicolored metal. The horse bayed and its hooves skittishly pounded the dirt, revealing in itself a keener sense of danger than the mongrels accompanying it. One slid a chest of gold down an embankment, rod in hand made not of tree but iron. The purpose of their visit was clearly the theft of that gold.

Each of their group held a different armament, tools that did more to guard against natural inhibitions to flee than provided any usefulness in the way of self-preservation. Their body coverings all had crude drawings of verilin. He knew they worshipped him and his kind as of Gods, banners and chants and statues and now clothing. Their interests were in little else other than gold and verilin. Simple creatures motivated by desire, propelled onward to danger as if death itself cooed into their ears.

With golden-fire he made quick work of the five. His desire to quench his morning hunger overrode any proclivities toward amnesty. He noticed another separate from their bunch left alive, a dirty and dusty one who had bivouacked near the others by happenstance and watched the proceedings from afar, muted.

As he ate his pieces of gold and as the gold smelted into the golden-fire inside of him, he thought of the future. The movements of the sun were too long for the verilin. Next time it would be a dozen drahgas, then a hundred, then a thousand. Mindless creature driven by greed who multiplied too fast. He thought of his father and of his mother and of his brothers and of his sisters. He thought of his brother’s descent into the caverns below, deeper and deeper until time was no more. He looked across the lifeless drahgas. His eyes settled on sunlight peeking through the timberland. He knew that he preferred to battle for the surface like his father before him. Malachy eyed the orphan dragha then took flight towards the nearest citadel.

Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
maybe kidnapped by Lord Business

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Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Memorial
25 words

The boy turned off the TV, went outside to the yard. He laid next to the tree they planted together. He whispered, "I miss you."

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