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God of Paradise: note the above two posts. They are being genuine. I've been on the wrong side of the Thunderdome myself, but as soon as you fix yourself, they are encouraging. So don't feel bad. Play by the rules and you'll have no problem joining in.
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Nov 28, 2014 23:32
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Gau posted:Bluesquares has appealed to me for a reprieve from our brawl for such weak and worthless reasons as "family" and "obligation." I, being a merciful Gau, will oblige him and withdraw my challenge to preserve the honor of the 'dome. You didn't respond for days so I kept working..I'm still in if you are.
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Nov 29, 2014 22:14
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Entenzahn posted:nah Lol ok sorry Ent
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Nov 29, 2014 22:57
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systran posted:June 18, 2012. – Journal of Cooper Brag Esquire (Manchester United Kingdom) what
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Dec 1, 2014 04:14
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Entenzahn posted:
Two Heads Are Better Than One Word count:2,123 The tall grass of the Savannah wavered only a little, but I knew the lion was closing in. I raised my rifle and let my breath slow to almost nothing. A bird flew over the silent terrain, ignorant of the mortal combat only moments away. She made her move and leapt from the grass as if in flight. Claws outstretched. Her eyes locking onto mine. My rifle pointed right at her heart. I didn’t pull the trigger. The lion passed through me and disappeared back into my imagination. The Savannah resolved into the wheat field in front of our house. Ever since Adam disappeared two months ago, my make-believe games haven’t held the same power. Without my brother to cheer me on, I couldn’t sustain the illusion. I heard arguing from inside the house and walked through the screen door to listen, along the way catching the door with my back foot to prevent the clack of wood against wood. “Just buy a new one!” Mom said. I leaned my head into the kitchen. She was still wearing the same floral print dress with a stain on the hem that she’d had on yesterday. Dad was just a pair of jeans and boots sticking out from under the sink. “We already done that, and we ain’t gonna waste no more goddamn money.” “Don’t you curse at me.” He wriggled his way out, clanking his head on a pipe on the way, cursing again. “Don’t know what to tell you, Janet. We replaced the old one and the smell ain’t gone away. What do you want us to do, move?” The smell. It started a few days after Adam disappeared. When I first smelled it, all I could think was that it smelled orange. Not like the fruit, just... orange. I don’t even know what that means, really, but I couldn’t shake it. When it first wafted into the house, we all stumbled outside choking. There were loads of cops around, too, searching for Adam. I could see the looks on their faces and even though I was only ten and a half, I knew what they were thinking: they’d found Adam. Or what was left of him. But they followed the lines and couldn’t find a trace. I didn’t think for a minute they would. Adam was out there somewhere, not in the ground. I was sure of it. He’d come home. “Maybe we should move, then!” Mom said and threw her hands up in the air. “I can’t stay inside this place any more!” I ran out to Mom, and put my arms around her waist. “No! We can’t move. We have to stay here so Adam can find us.” They both sighed loudly, as if trying to out-compete each other in parental patience. “Stan,” Dad finally said, “we’re not moving. We’ll be here when your brother comes home. I promise.” I looked up at him. “You don’t believe that!” I shouted. “I’ve heard you talking! You think he’s dead! Well he’s not!” “Stan,” he started to say, but I pushed away from his grip and ran out the back. I heard his boots thudding after me and ducked down under the porch, crawling on my hands and knees into the darkness. Adam and I used to hang under here like it was our bunker and we were fighting the Nazis. The crawlspace went under the whole house. I tried to pretend that Dad’s boots belonged to an evil soldier of some occupying empire. We rebels would never stop fighting to get our country back. Soon, it’ll be time for the counter-attack, and we’ll win! I looked to my right, but Adam wasn’t there. For a moment, I’d forgotten. The make-believe popped away again. Without Adam, it never worked. Instead it was just me, lying in the dirt, surrounded by all the forgotten toys that Adam and I had left down here over the years. One of his old hats lay next to me. I put it on. It was too big and fell forward over my eyes, but it felt good to wear. “Come out of there, Stan,” Dad said. “Leave him be,” Mom said. He waited a few moments, then stomped back inside. Before long I knew I’d hear them fighting about something else, muffled voices through the floorboards like Charlie Brown teachers. They refused to talk about Adam anymore, so they just yelled at each other instead. Down here under the house, the stink was pretty bad. I started thinking maybe if I could just figure out what it was, get rid of it, they’d quit fighting so much and they’d help find my brother. Adam’s hat itched on top of my head but I kept it there. Some days the stink flared up real bad, like it was mad or something. Today was one of those days. I pulled my t-shirt up over my nose and crawled to the piping. Lying around the pipe were a bunch of other old toys. Some plastic green army men. A broken capgun. Stuff like that. Something else, though, didn’t belong: Adam’s swiss army knife, a hint of red sticking out of the dirt. He never went anywhere without that. If there wasn’t something that needed cutting, screwing, filing, or what-else, he’d just do it anyway. Dad was always getting mad about it. I picked it up. The knife blade still stuck out. The stink got worse again, like a wind blew under the house and blasted it into my face. But there was no wind. I coughed and gasped and that only made it worse. I remembered my science teacher telling us that smell is caused by little molecules in the air that go inside your nose and your mouth. I could feel the smell inside me now, coating the inside of my throat. I reared back and accidentally hit my head on the bottom of the house, hard. It knocked me down into the dirt. Lying there, I saw the reason the knife blade had been out: a bunch of gouges in the pipes, right at ground level, hard to see. Adam had been scraping away at the pipe. Writing his name. The kind of thing he always did. With the knife in one hand, eyes watering from the still-fierce smell, I put the knife blade to the pipe and scraped a curving line next to Adam’s: S. Then a T. Halfway through the A, the pipe shook. Hard. I dropped the knife in surprise. It landed in the dirt right where I’d found it. The pipe shook again. At one of the joints, a thick orange goo bubbled out. I leaned in closer, horrified, and smelled the stink coming off it, stronger than ever. I reached out and probed it with a finger. It quivered and then sucked back inside the joint like someone drinking the last of a milkshake through a straw. A few seconds passed. The orange goo came back, lots of it, and it poured out of the joint faster than I could have expected. It wasn’t just flowing, it was being pushed out. Droplets of it sprayed around, hit me in the face. I tried to back away, but it was too fast. The goo ran over me, covering my legs, waist, chest, and up my nose, into my mouth, over my head. I couldn’t see, couldn’t scream, but I could feel my stomach filling to capacity with whatever it was. # I felt a sensation of floating in a void. I wondered if I was underwater, and suddenly I was. I could see water and air bubbles all around me. Just as I began fighting for a surface I couldn’t see, the water was gone and I was back to the black void. I grew scared and thought of my mother. I saw her face flash before me for an instant, felt her hand on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut and curled into a ball, tried to clear my mind. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t like it. Eventually I realized I was lying on something hard and damp. I looked around. I was inside a cavernous sewer. Most of the cement walls had crumbled away, exposing rock and fungus that looked far underground. I could see despite the absence of any identifiable light sources. A shadowed tunnel led away into darkness. “Stan?” I turned. Adam. He ran toward me, splashing through puddles, leaping over fallen chunks of cement and rebar. Was it just my imagination again? But he didn’t disappear. He slid to his knees next to me and hugged me tight. Both of us were crying. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where are we?” “You gotta go. Oh man. I have to get you out of here. It’s going to be back soon.” “What? Adam, what’s happening? Where are we? Can we go home?” Adam looked around wildly. “Do you hear it? Is it coming?” “Adam, please. I’m scared. What is it?” A rumble through the ground shook us and little rocks tinked as they bounced down from the walls. “It’s coming.” Adam said. He grabbed my hand and hauled me up to my feet. “Come on.” He pulled me with him to a moss-covered boulder leaning against one wall. “Shh.” I’d never seen my brother so scared. We pressed against the rock and listened as the rumbles grew louder. A screeching like jagged metal on metal blared through the cave. Adam shut his eyes and whispered, “No, no no.” Around the side of the rock I saw movement. A snake slithered into my view. Instead of a snake’s head, it had Mom’s. “Hi kids!” it cackled. I stumbled backward away from it just as it vanished into thin air. “What was that?” I said, my voice shrill, but Adam didn’t answer. We were besieged by more strange sights. A floating pair of scissors violently ripped apart a sobbing rabbit. A stumbling skeleton waved a broken beer bottle in the air, coming closer and closer to me. The rock disappeared and we sprawled onto the ground, landing in a puddle. The cold water made me more alert. Adam didn’t react. He just kept trembling. Other visions appeared and disappeared, some too indescribable to even comprehend. Through it all, I could see great big orange eyes, eyes the size of cars, watching from the tunnel, getting closer, closer. I saw dead men in army uniforms eating the flesh of dogs and of people. A crab bigger than me with a little girl in its pincers, screaming. I kept telling myself these things weren’t real, they couldn’t hurt me. Until then, none of them had touched me. But then the moldy fingers of a rotting, crawling corpse closed around my shoe. I jerked back and the hand fell apart, but the corpse kept crawling toward me. It opened its mouth and moaned as its jaw half-dissolved. Yellow teeth skittered across the ground “Please, no,” I moaned. I wished someone was there to help me. I needed Sergeant Buzz, my hero from the cartoons, to save me. And he did. Sergeant Buzz, all six feet of him, stepped over me and stomped onto the body, stopping it. He turned to me, offered me his hand, then disappeared. But more of my imaginary heroes made brief appearances. They slowed the awful creatures. Only, they weren’t sticking around. I couldn’t conjure them for long enough. “Adam!” I called. “It’s no use,” he whimpered. “It doesn’t work. I’ve tried.” “Help me, Adam! Think of something!” “I can’t.” “Yes you can! Right now!” Adam’s favorite toy, a Martian-battling astronaut, appeared. I put everything I could into thinking about him, too. The astronaut fought off the nearest monsters. Adam sat up a little, his face full of amazement. “We can do this together,” I said. Just like we used to, we slipped into imagination together. We were the ultimate commandos, here to save the world. Our platoon fought around us. The orange eyes widened in fear and began to recede back down the tunnel. We sent the commandos after it, more and more of them. # I lay next to Adam in the dirt beneath the house. Both of us jerked up and banged our heads. “We did it!” he cried. I hugged my brother, so happy to have him back. “Come on!” I said and we crawled out of the crawlspace. “Mom! Dad!” I shouted as we ran inside. The house smelled fresh. Our parents received us with open arms, weeping over their lost son, come home. My second half, my partner, my brother.
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Dec 1, 2014 23:08
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Entenzahn posted:Goddamnit Gau. Post your story soon and I'll still crit it but you've flunked this one. I'm actually really disappointed about this
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Dec 2, 2014 00:22
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Gau posted:I completely punked out on my brawl, which is fuckin' lame. However, I offer this dramatic reading as my plea to avoid the blood price of the Dome. This was hilarious. Well done. Do the rest please. Without reading ahead.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:38
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Bottoms up (in) blue squares fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 02:52
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Gau posted:Sweet, I was close. I'm going to end up doing this entire lovely loving thing because I hate myself that much. Keep them coming, I'm cracking up.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:40
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My drink is only found in Ronaeu island. The main ingredient is phosphate. Also its the smallest drink in the world.
blue squares fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 01:59
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Liam Emsa posted:This is my first Thunderdome. So, I just post it in here when I"m done? plus, proofread.  BlueSquares Judgecrits J.A.B.C First off, there are far too many grammar issues in this story, especially for one submitted over 24 hours early. Proofread. Aloud. There’s just not much to grab the reader here, and a lot of missing information. What did making the dead character an ex-wife instead of current wife do for the story? I can’t figure out why you made that choice and then didn’t tell us why they split up or what they still meant to each other. N Senada Biggest thing lacking in this story was emotion. Second was motivation. It’s written in a “this happened, then this happened, then this, etc.” kind of way. The story needed more detail and more information on what the dog(s) meant to the protagonist. Also, cut the 9-1-1 call. It adds nothing to the story. Systran I loved this story on the first read-through. The opening was confusing, though you were going for that, I think. Still, being dropped into a situation with bombs going off, a line or two more about what the background is would have helped me orient myself to who the main character is and why there are bombs going off. I couldn’t tell if they were in the middle of a warzone or if they were living under some oppressive dystopian government. The pacing was excellent, and I was completely drawn into your little world of the training school. I also liked the ending, though again it was hard to picture what was really going on. You had a good mix of childlike diction and horrifying context, but a stronger difference in the language between the “hatted” and “non-hatted” parts would have been a bonus for me. Why you didn’t win: this story is great on a first read, but there’s not much beneath the surface. It isn’t as rewarding the second time through. Entenzahn The opening to this is fantastic. I love the imagery of the floating thread and Ertie is a great character. Unfortunately, the story gets weaker when the horror elements begin. There are some… not plot holes, but “why didn’t the character just…?” moments, e.g., when the shuttle first arrived, why didn’t the two people just explain the situation and leave? Ertie was the only character with any characterization, so her offscreen death was disappointing. The ending I just didn’t quite understand. Boozahol You tried to take on a complex and heavy subject like PTSD—-something difficult to explore in 50,000 words, much less 500. So the portrayal here is pretty much all surface level, like what someone would know about PTSD just from watching TV. My main problem with this piece is the lack of a story; there’s no real beginning, middle, end. The characters don’t have any goals. To me these are vital components that make something a story and not just a scene. ZeBourgeoisie I’ll try to point out a few things why it didn’t work for me: “I don’t even give a poo poo.” Never a good way to start a story. If the main character doesn’t, why should I? The meeting and relationship with the girl is very important to your story having an emotional effect on the reader. To make a reader care about the death of a character, the character should be presented well (obviously). But everything with the girl is told in after-the-fact summary. She has no characterization. So when she is dead, I don’t care. And that’s ultimately why your story failed. Before you can kill a character, you gotta make us like her. The story tried too hard to be sad. SurreptitiousMuffin This was a tough one for me. The writing itself is hands-down awesome to read. I like the words you pick and the order you put them in. However, I had to read the thing three times to make any sense of it, and even then, I still really had no idea what I was reading. I think you focused on making your sentences sound good and the piece as a whole suffered for it. Kaishai I was really high on this story and it was almost my winner. Great job. Very well written and an intriguing premise. I have to agree with my fellow judges that the switch at the end, from the stars speaking only of history to suddenly talking about the protag’s father, the switch was confusing. Why did that happen? I wanted to know. Great job, though. I was fully engaged reading it. Nethilia I wasn’t as high as my fellow judges on this one, though I still liked it, for one simple reason: neither of the girls, at the start, are on Mom’s team. So neither of them make the complete emotional journey from loving Mom to not. If the younger sister had been totally on Mom’s side, then the reader saw her disappointed so much that she went all the way to the other side of the spectrum, the story would have had a much stronger emotional impact. You have excellent dialogue, though. I wish I was as good. Broenheim This story made no sense and the overuse of the word snow was incredibly annoying. When I finished I had no clue what happened with the dealer. Nothing else to say here. Docbeard This reads like the opening scene to something longer. It was good, and I liked reading it, but it just ended. Very well written. I liked Gavin. But for me, there wasn’t enough information, and the ending was disappointing. I wanted something else to happen. I wanted to know what finding the girl mean for Gavin as a character. I wanted these things because it was a good piece. Crabrock The beginning was interesting, but the end let me down (like a LOT of entries this week). I was curious about what was happening here, but I couldn’t figure out the purpose of the bird blinding, and the ending felt like you wrote a much longer story and had to cut it down. Everything happens too quickly, and it was melodramatic. GrizzledPatriarch I loved this piece and found it very touching. The little details about the partner, the details about the old man’s house, all were very well done. Even though I knew what was coming, I was invested in it. For such a short piece, to get an emotional reaction is tough. Well done. This was an HM candidate for me. Also, great choice for second person. Obliterati The main character here felt like something a teenage boy would write and think he just wrote the coolest character ever. Instead, he comes off as flat and confusing. And boring. I didn’t know why he was in the asylum, why he refused to speak. This information is really important, and you didn’t give it. Benny the Snake My biggest complaint here is the jarring disconnect between tone and content. We experience the main character go through an incredibly difficult night essentially in real-time, but the writing is all calm and clear. As the night went on, the grammar, spelling, and clarity should have begun to slip. And the resolution is a little empty because, as Sledge pointed out, making it through just one night without drinking isn’t exactly overcoming addiction. However, it is a first step, and probably more symbolic, so I get that and didn’t count it too heavily against you. The depiction of addiction itself, though, seemed to be written by someone without any first-hand knowledge of it (which is probably a good thing, for you). Decent. Not the worst, by far. Tyrannosaurus Thanks for the Lifetime Movie in short story form. This felt very, very low-effort, especially coming from you, so my crit is, too. Jonked Awesome! Well deserved winner. I was very drawn in to your story, and especially your fantastic, symbolism-rich descriptions of the terrain. Newtestleper Solidly average for me. There is a lot of meandering here, useless filler information. Focus on tightening up your pacing and giving descriptions that tell the reader things about the characters. Nothing about this one is jumping out at me as GREAT or BAD. There are some comma splices throughout. Dr. Kloctopussy I liked this one a lot, until the end. I keep repeating myself with this comment. Everything about the beginning was delightful. Fun dialogue, cool little space details. I liked it a lot. But then the main character’s girlfriend cheats on her, and she doesn’t seem to care. I was disappointed in the story just fizzling out instead of having a big climactic moment. Fuschia-Tude The loser. Oh man. I hated this story. It actually made me angry. Here’s why: 1. show don’t tell. There are a lot of moments (e.g., “he pleaded, tried to explain his life and his recent actions”) that should have been shown (i.e., written out with dialogue) instead of just relayed as in the example above. 2. There’s no story. there’s a set up, an action taken, but no resolution. Boring. These are hugely basic elements of writing. It wasn’t the weirdest, or the worst written, but it failed in ways that should have been very easy to pick out. JcDent A story about a bored person being bored. You didn’t HAVE to write that just because of the song. I didn’t like this piece because the story was told through the main character’s POV, and he was bored. That makes me bored. However, it wasn’t terrible. There were a lot of interesting ideas. It’s clear you put a lot of thought into it, I just don’t think you chose the best character to tell a story of the world you envisioned. Sebmojo Pretty good, but predictable ending. All we know about the protagonist is that he’s an ex-con. Needed more characterization. I blue squares fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 03:42
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The Orange Tundra 999 words Those cheap plastic schoolbus windows never worked. Half the students were going to catch cold or get frostbitten or something if Danny couldn’t yank it shut. He’d already embarrassed his son, Matthew, by piling extra coats and hats onto him to keep the boy warm; Matthew’s face burned bright red and he looked like a hermit crab sticking out from a lumpy shell. With a final heave, Danny slid the squeaky window up and closed, but the effort unbalanced him and he slammed face first into the plastic hard enough to leave a quickly-freezing spot of blood from his nose. The kids laughed. Another typical Mr. Hill goof up. Matthew burrowed deeper under the coats in shame. Danny accepted the driver’s offered napkin and wedged it up his nose. Not too bad. He looked to the back of the bus to see if Mary, the parent volunteer, had noticed and laughed along with the kids. But she was caught up in separating a rambunctious pair of boys driven to violence by the long and cold drive into the Canadian tundra. A year after their first meeting at the parent-teacher association, Mary could still knock Danny off course and leave him floating in her eyes like a hopeless castaway. Staring at those hazelnut eyes and her warm, dark skin made him feel as if gravity were fading. “Mr. Hill?” a female student asked. Danny didn’t hear her. He felt light on his feet as he watched Mary laugh and pull the combative boys apart once again. At that moment the bus driver came around a corner and found traffic at a standstill and mashed on the brakes hard enough to lift Danny into the air. The bus stopped all around him and he tumbled forward until he wound up in the stairwell by the door, confused about which way was up and why one of his legs was behind his head. By the time he sprung up again, the kids were roaring with glee and even Mary couldn’t suppress a smile. The driver parked them along the side of the road. Hikers from other vehicles were heading up the ridge to get a view of the spectacle that the class had come to witness. Heavy cloud cover and the thin mist lingering at the top of the ridge hid the sun and made telling the time of day impossible. “Okay, kids,” Danny said, “now that the, uh, show’s over, let’s go for the hike.” Danny made brief eye contact with his poor son, the only student not laughing at the hijinks. “Count off as you come out,” he said and stepped out. The children debussed in relative order. They chirped and chattered with one another and pulled their colorful down jackets tight as they left the heated interior and felt the cold wind blast them. Mary stepped out behind the last straggler. “None of the the munchkins jumped out the windows, huh? Boy would I be in trouble!” Danny said to her and did his best to smile normally. “What?” Mary replied. “Oh, um, no. Everyone’s here. We’re very excited. Thank you for setting this up. Hey, Tyrone, stop that!” She returned his smile and hurried to her son, who had already joined Matthew in some puddle-splashing mischief. Danny shook his head in self-disgust. He always said something stupid around her. He corralled the children and once they’d been arranged in a single file line, indicated the misty ridge, peppered by brightly-dressed hikers. “Let’s go.” He took the lead and marched them to the head of the trail. They were all eager to get to the top and see the strange phenomena beyond, but Danny kept them at an easy pace for the long climb. When they weren’t far from the summit, Matthew and Tyrone began a race to the top. “Hold on!” Danny cried and tried to hurry after them, but he lost his footing and slipped into a patch of mud. Of course, he thought. Mary noticed. But once Matthew and Tyrone arrived, they stood transfixed along with the rest of the hikers. Danny and the class, and Mary of course, caught up with them at the peak. Stretching off to the horizon before them lay the orange tundra, the sight that drew crowds to the remote north since its discovery a few months ago. A luminescent orange fog hung over the ground in the valley, swirling here and there, little eddies spinning and disappearing. “What is it, Mr. Hill?” Without taking his eyes off the golden glow, he said: “Nobody knows yet. See those tents down there? They’re full of scientists. Trying to learn about it. Where it came from... what it means.” They paused for a while, even the rowdiest in the class enchanted by the otherworldly sight. No one spoke. A miniature tornado in the mist swirled up in the distance for a moment and subsided. “What I think, though,” Danny said, “is that as winter comes, and as our part of the Earth begins to tilt away from the sun, the land is storing up extra sunset for itself, so that it can pass the winter in an eternal twilight. There’s a line in Ulysses, about the ‘meeting of the rays’ of sunlight. That’s where we are now, I think. Where all the rays end up. It’s like time has frozen, if only up here. Everything these days is in such a rush. Out here, there’s a calm. It soothes your spirit. And here, the world has locked itself into the most magical time of day: sunset, when there’s still time for anything to happen, when wishes come true, when lovers kiss, when the nights you remember for the rest of your life begin.” Some of the children gave him funny looks, some ignored him, but Mary met his eyes and her glittering teeth shone bright in the gray day. She didn’t say anything, not then. But she held his gaze. And he knew.
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Dec 7, 2014 23:48
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Sebmojo I'd like one please. I thought my entry this week was my best.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:35
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Intruiging
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Dec 9, 2014 02:08
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Broenheim posted:Previously on Thunderdome no
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Dec 11, 2014 22:41
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ok fine
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Dec 11, 2014 23:02
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Ticket to the Fair 1164 words -- Prompt: Someone at a county fair eats too much I am seated in a massive tent, surrounded by heads and bellies. The tent is the Main Dining Hall (sic) of the 2014 Illinois State Fair. I have been forced into this scrofulous Journalistic Assignment with threats of unemployment. The olfactoral cacophony here could be replicated only in the extremely unlikely event of a meat truck, a beer truck, and a horse trailer colliding and catching fire. At the start of the festivities, a bluegrass band began a rendition of “God Bless America,” but it has since been drowned out by the mastication of thousands of teeth, which is perhaps a more fitting tribute to our nation. Nearly every food known to man——and some invented on the spot——have been fried and arranged onto my plate into a kind of smiling face, of which I have consumed the left eye and nose, leaving a pirate awaiting his final walk off the plank into my mouth. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable in my life. This is the place I grew up. The effort I expended to try and forget it, to convince myself that I am better than these Midwesterners, that I am now a New Yorker with all the superiority that label confers, seems to have been wasted. All my memories of Illinois come two-stepping back. The one thought that gives me comfort is that someone in an office on the East Coast is paying me to do this to myself. The magazine I work for sprang this assignment on me after I let it slip that I was unfortunately born in rural Illinois, and despite my desire to never again cross the Appalachians, they dispatched me here. As I eat the food, which simultaneously disgusts and delights me, I glance around the tent at these people who look the same as they did when I was a child. Things don’t change in the Midwest. Obstreperous young boys with blond bowl cuts chase each other shouting “smear the queer,” and no one seems offended but me. In a corner, men and women prepare for the upcoming pig-calling contest. Their squeals, as I chow down on pork, raise uncomfortable and PETA-like questions. After I clear my first plate, I realize the self-conscious blazer I wore today, in order to make it clear I am not an Illinoisan, is gone. It’s been replaced with a plaid shirt that is snug over a parabolic pot-belly that I’ve never seen before. The stomach rumbles unpleasantly. I’m not sure whether it’s my shock at this abdominal appearance or the amount of food I’ve eaten. In my bewilderment, I reach for a glass of water to gulp down, discovering only mid-chug that it is sweet-tea, i.e., tea with several week’s worth of recommended sugar stirred gleefully in. I don’t stop. Something about the sweet tea compels me to drink it as quickly as possible. I dread the fructosal aftereffects, but there’s no time for that now. The belch that follows is sonorous and soothing and satisfying. A man seated beside me looks surprised by the burp but not angry; he claps for me and returns to his meal. One of this year’s additions to the Fair, in order to combat the delays in food distribution that (locals have told me) cropped up last year, is a complex food conveyor belt that traverses the tent and every table in it like a very fat child’s dream train set. Another steaming plate of indiscernible meat and a bread roll convey past. I snatch it. Down it goes. I shift in my seat and feel my cowboy boots clack on the wood floor. I haven’t owned cowboy boots since I was six years old. But there they are, at the end of faded-blue-jeaned and fat legs. The whole bench would tip over as I scamper clumsily away from the table if not for the other fairgoers weighing it down. Bright green letters shine RESTROOM at me from across the tent and I stagger toward them, arms Frankensteining and boots shuffling. I notice something new: whereas this morning I’d been ignored by the locals, they now tip their cowboy hats to me as I zombie-walk past the rows of tables. Saying hello to me the way New Yorkers never do. I sort of jerk my head Tourettes-like at them and feel a communal harmony that I can’t explain. The bathroom is a hut with horse-troughs converted into mass urinals. I go straight for the mirror. My reflection is changed; I’m wearing plaid, a cowboy hat of my own, sporting a few days stubble over my bulging gullet. I am the me that would happen if I’d never left Illinois. Splashing my face with water doesn’t wash away the sight. In the reflection behind me is a man waiting patiently to use the sink. “Sorry, partner,” I mumble, the words spilling out naturally, and step aside. He gives me a nod and washes his hands. I leave the bathroom. I don’t know what’s going on, and part of me feels like I should be distraught by my transformation, but as I look around the tent at the pleasant families, I feel like one of them. It’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a very long time. And there’s another: I’m happy. Actually happy. A woman carrying so many large cups of soda in her arms that she can’t see almost runs into me. We share a laugh and I take a few of the cups and help her deliver them to her thirsty family. They wave at me and I wave back. It’s already the most interaction I’ve had with strangers in the last year put together. And they don’t really feel like strangers, either. They’re neighbors. I’m overwhelmed, and I leave the tent through a small side exit. It’s hot outside without the fans blowing cool mist everywhere, and the sky is the color of washing machine lint. The potbelly, the plaid shirt, the jeans boots and cowboy hat are all gone. I’m my New York self again, I think at first. Only no, that’s not quite right either. I’ve changed. # In New York, I write my article, mentioning nothing of the strange experience. The article gets praised and published and I go about my life. I try to convince myself that I ate too much and had a hallucination or a really strong case of the meat sweats or something. But I still feel different. On my way home one day, the U. of I. Fightin’ Illini are on TV at a bar filled with the school’s colors. I wander inside, confirm my heritage, and I’m welcomed as one of them. When we win, I join the pub-crawl celebration, arm in arm with my new friends. I buy a ticket to see my family for Christmas. I can’t wait to go back.
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Dec 14, 2014 21:39
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In. Infinite Jest
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Dec 16, 2014 00:35
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Logging my first ever failure this week edit: writing blue squares fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 08:31
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Dawn of the Beginning of the Night of the Living Dummy: the novelization: the story word count: 1054 prompt: RL Stine's The Night of the Living Dummy The focus group staggered back into conference room, bloody, bruised, battered, bashed, busted, and broken. They all looked extremely pleased. Mr. Eckletad stood as the six of them took their seats around the shining obsidian conference table and straightened his suit. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, feeling the little nubs of horn that had just begun to sprout after his most recent promotion. So much was on the line here. “Um, Mr. Eckletad, sir? Could you close the blinds, please?” asked one of the focus groupers, #3125, formerly Janice Griffin, who was serving 812 years for sloth. She squinted in the bright light coming through the windows, her face bruised and red and full of wood splinters. “Certainly,” Eckletad said and crossed the room. He glanced fondly outside at the eternal fires and the ritual torture taking place and dropped the blinds. “#3125, what did you think about the prototype?” Janice refused to look at the smiling and top-hatted ventriloquist’s dummy that lay at the end of the table. This one, at least, was not enchanted, but the memory of wooden fists pummeling her was still fresh. “Oh, well, it was lovely. The way it broke my fingers was masterful. I doubt I’ll ever have use of them again.” Thank you for your participation,” Eckletad said, unable to stop from beaming. “#8999, any thoughts?” #8999, Emery Lee Hogarth, only 121 years left on his greed sentence, coughed and sent a tooth bouncing across the table. “I’ve never been more helpless and emasculated in my life than when that wooden doll was wrenching my jaw open. I felt as if I were standing before a bottomless cavern and being slowly nudged over the edge with the certainty that I would fall and fall forever. Seeing that doll on the table, my testicles have shriveled and I am even now urinating in my pants. Well done, Mr. Eckletad.” The rest of the focus group shared their views. Each had their sentences reduced by 20 years for their participation. They were sent back outside. When the doors, made of human bone, swung closed, Mr. Eckletad allowed himself a celebratory dance. He picked up the dummy by the hands and spun around the room. “We’ve done it! You little bastard, we’ve done it!” His spins stopped abruptly when he thought he felt a jerk from the doll in his hands, though it had yet to be infused with life and shouldn’t be able to move at all. He flinched and tossed it into the table with a cry. Just imagining things, he told himself. He wasn’t going to let anything ruin his moment. “You’re my ticket to the top,” he told the doll. “Someday, when I’m the boss around here, I’ll remember this moment.” He flung open the blinds and stared out at the beautiful lake of fire where fresh souls splashed as they arrived. # “You can go in now, Mr. Eckletad,” the secretary outside the boss’s office told him. Eckletad, who’d been sitting with his head between his legs as if he were on a crashing airliner, snapped to his feet so quick he almost fell onto the shag carpet (the current boss took over in the 1970s). Eckletad took a deep breath and strode toward the door. “Sir? Your case?” the secretary said from her desk. Eckletad hurried to retrieve his forgotten black case in which the demo dummy waited for their big moment. The secretary smiled politely as if she was used to terribly nervous minions in the waiting room. Eckletad went into the office. The boss sat in a high-backed black chair. His curling horns caught Eckletad’s eyes first. His own felt like they were shrinking in the presence of such power. The boss’s red-soled boots were crossed on the petrified-wood desk. “Come in,” he said. His deep voice sent tremors up through the earth, resulting in spine-tingling shivers in children when soft and earthquakes when filled with anger. “Thank you, sir. Shall I just, ah, set up here?” The boss waved a hand holding a cigar. The smoke trailed a circle. An inverted pentagram appeared just before the smoke dissipated. Eckletad opened the case, flinching when he heard the boss’s boots clack on the floor as the boss sat up straight. Eckletad set up a stand and put the dummy on it. It stood up sluggishly as if drunk. “What we have here, sir, is something that is guaranteed to produce a great deal of general misery and hate. I theorize that once on Earth, the doll will be responsible for a 35% increase in likelihood of murder and/or suicide among those who come in contact with it.” “Interesting.” The boss’s wide chair creaked as the boss shifted forward to lean his elbows on his desk. Eckletad hesitated, thrown off by the brief interruption. The lines he rehearsed in his head were ghosts of random letters. “So,” the boss continued, “ventriloquism, hmm? Do you mind if I try it?” Eckletad stammered out a few choked sounds. The boss stood up. The dummy turned to Eckletad. Its mouth dropped open and Eckletad heard his own voice come out: “you’re my ticket to the top. Someday, when I’m the boss around here, I’ll remember this moment.” The wood face warped into a smile. “Huh,” the boss said. “What do you know? I’m pretty good at ventriloquism.” Eckletad paled. “Sir, I was just… just daydreaming. I didn’t mean now. I don’t want to be the—” The boss silenced him with a raised hand. The hand then bent at the wrist and his other joined it, poised in the air as if holding invisible marionette strings. The dummy’s hands raised as well. The boss twirled his fingers in the air, and the dummy leapt onto Eckletad. Its wooden hands plunged into his mouth, sending teeth flying both out and in, down his throat. The dummy followed the errant teeth down his esophagus, cackling in the boss’s deep voice all the way. Eckletad died sometime after the doll’s arms reached his stomach and began to swirl his stomach acid around. When the dummy emerged, dripping blood and saliva, the boss patted the spot beside his desk. The dummy hopped cheerfully up. “Have fun up there,” the boss said, and sent it to the surface.
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Dec 22, 2014 02:01
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newtestleper posted:Thunderbrawl CXXI - Go the gently caress to sleep I'll take advantage of the lull between submissions and the judgment/prompt to post my brawl story. Savvy Sara and The Markers (Book 23 of the Savvy Sara Series) First, watch this: http://youtu.be/u8sIooKNIP4 (my irl niece) Second, go here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QqbXE5gGcHxCVqCq2vh4xpkqu7behSBI1k1nEF949Us/edit?usp=sharing blue squares fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 20:48
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Breaking kayfabe, you can't do that. I didn't agree to a toxx and you can't suddenly give me one just before the deadline. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:HEY CHUCKLEFUCKS, I AM INTRODUCING A NEW THREAD RULE lol
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Dec 27, 2014 04:10
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IN  
blue squares fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 04:23
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Jitzu_the_Monk posted:In that case, I'm going to carepost, for whatever it's worth. By carepost, you mean jokepost, right? RIGHT?!
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Dec 27, 2014 20:20
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docbeard posted:Alas poor merman Santa, I have failed you. Story ain't happening this week. Same
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Dec 29, 2014 02:02
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 05:16 |
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I would like it if Benny stopped posting forever and ever, or at least hosed off with the brawls. Benny no one likes you.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:16
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