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Fresh meat here. I've read the first post, and I've been watching for the last few weeks. In.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:39
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:19 |
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[spins through dramatic underlighting, both middle fingers in the air] Prepare for my fanfic.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:50
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Southmost Zoological Gardens: Week One (1,109 words) The waning crescent moon shone yellow over the Southmost Zoological Gardens. Into the silence came a chittering howl. “That’s the were-chimp,” Paul said to Abhay. They were laying down in the barrack they shared. “What?” Abhay said. “The chimp that walks like a man.” Paul’s bunk creaking as he sat up. “More like a man, I mean. He stalks men and takes from them the things that make them different from chimpanzees. They call this the banana moon.” “I need sleep,” Abhay said. “First show tomorrow.” Nearby, a chimpanzee hunched atop a fence and watched a man smuggle a lizard into his pants. * * * “Wake up!” Christine yelled. As owner of Southmost, yelling was part of her benefits package. Paul groaned and rolled onto his side, exposing his back and white briefs to the woman who signed his checks. Abhay rubbed his eyes. “What is it?” he asked through a sticky mouth. “The chimp is gone,” Christine said. “Maybe a lizard too. The cops want everyone in the lobby.” She stayed until both men were on their feet. Abhay was in his khakis before Paul had even started his toilet. “Were-chimp!” Paul yelled from the bathroom, door open and water running. “Hurry up” Abhay said. “You’re my alibi.” * * * As the cops left, Christine held up her hand. “All the new hires stay.” She straightened her skirt. “You’re here because of a grant from the Brownsville Association of Business Enrichment. Your continued employment depends on increased revenues by the end of the year.” She looked into the eyes of the seven young people. “I’m not saying you stole the animals, although the Baby Tortoise disappearance does coincide with your training starting last week. However, those revenues your continued employment relies on will be hard to come by if we run out of animals.” Dark hair fell into her eyes. Her heavy breathing was the only sound. “Well,” she finally said, brushing her hair back, “let’s start the day. You have your schedules.” * * * Southmost was falling apart, and Abhay had taken the job because he felt could make a difference. Christine inherited the zoo from her father, but she called it a curse. She only cared about what money it could make her, and it’d never made much money. Abhay was to institute a raptor program--to train the hawks, owls, and the lonely, diseased condor and expound on their wonderments. He was helping a cloudy-eyed bird onto his gloved hand. “I’m a condor too,” he whispered, holding out a piece of gristly meat. Condoreeza Rice’s head bobbed on its flaking neck. “Ready, Condoreeza?” He heard the door behind him, the entrance to Raptor Theater, creak open. He waited while lines of visitors unfurled in his imagination: children, parents, current and future scientists, attractive but lonely women… He gave them time to sit, and he whispered, “Time to fly.” He turned with a flourish; Paul was sitting in the front row, and the only other observer was a redheaded woman whose face was hidden behind a sketchbook. Paul whistled. The sketchbook trembled under the woman’s passionate gestures. The scene Abhay had imagined shattered into shards of fear and doubt that lodged in his gut. Only a hazy montage of that first show stuck in his head: - Condoreeza, coming in for a landing, mistook a wooden post for Abhay and stayed perched there. - The barn owl ralphed up a pellet in the middle of Abhay’s speech about raptors’ grace and silence. - The hawk screeched a mating call for five full minutes. “Thank you,” Abhay said after coaxing Condoreeza down from the post. The woman with the sketchbook stood and left. As Abhay cleaned up, Paul said, “Good job.” He narrowed his eyes. “That notebook woman--she’s here all the time, always drawing. I think she’s casing the joint.” “What?” Abhay said. “I’m trying to find the thief.” “No,” Abhay said, “You’re in charge of branding. You’re not a detective.” Paul sighed. “I can’t rebrand a zoo without animals.” Abhay scowled. “We aren’t going to run out. No one’s going to steal the giraffe.” “Or the were-chimp,” Paul said. “He’d eat their face.” * * * Paul loved animals but hated science. He filled notebooks with animal drawings inspired by boxes of fact cards. He dropped out of two colleges but finished a museum studies program at the age of 30. When he was 12, he made a short film called Ballerina Bigfoot. Fancying himself a cryptozoologist, he believed that real discoveries could only be made by those uncorrupted by mainstream capitalist science propaganda. * * * At 5:00 AM, the chimpanzee howled, letting everyone know he hadn’t been stolen. Paul shook Abhay awake. “Time to hunt the were-chimp.” “It’s not--” Abhay sighed. “Fine.” The idea had a kind of dim morning merit. As they wandered the concrete paths under the darkness of the new moon, Paul pointed. Silhouetted against the graying eastern horizon, Chompers the Chimp was hunched atop the lapidoptery building. With a chitter, he disappeared down the other side. “After it!” Paul said, but Abhay grabbed his arm. A person in baggy clothes was slinking between the big cat enclosures. “The thief,” Abhay whispered. “The chimp,” Paul said. Abhay sighed and sprinted toward Baggy Clothes. “Stop!” he yelled. The person reached into a pocket. Abhay came to a sudden stop. “Don’t shoot,” he said. The person (a man, Abhay was sure) gripped the neck of a cotton-top tamarin, dangling it over yawning lions. “I’ll drop it,” he said. “Let’s not get crazy,” Abhay said, holding up his hands. A lion stretched and bared its teeth. “I’ll do it,” the man said. The tamarin chirped. The chirp was answered by a shriek, and the man fell under a hairy blur, bludgeoned by 150 pounds of chimp. The tamarin skittered off. “Chompers!” Abhay yelled. Paul was behind him now. “The were-chimp can’t be stopped until it’s appeased,” he intoned. Chompers stopped suddenly. “Ook?” he said, and he loped away. “He hides from the sun,” Paul said. “Shut up.” Abhay held his phone to his ear. “We found the thief,” he said. “Right, Southmost. Thanks.” He hung up. “Cops’ll be here soon.” “The crimes of man can’t resist the fury of nature,” Paul said. He gazed off, trying to make his face look stony and mysterious. He caught sight of the girl with the sketchbook, sitting and drawing. “What’s she doing?” Whether or not she heard, she looked into their eyes, calmly stood, and walked behind a building. “What are you doing!” Paul yelled. “I don’t trust her,” he added. “You’re obsessed,” Abhay said. “You have a crush on her.” “I’m gay,” Paul said as the sun rose.
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Aug 9, 2014 21:47
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:
(199 words) As God is a loving God, when the rapture came, everyone was taken into His bosom, leaving the Earth to spin on into darkness. The churches slept soundly, and townhouses and farmhouses and their friends found quiet spots in the wilderness to settle down into decaying neighborhood families. Grocery stores sat on the outskirts, counseling those who of their place out amongst the trees and the rocks. The city streets were left to the carousing sprees of that lesser class of buildings. Liquor stores stumbled through buckling parking lots, spilling their goods and shambling into the bars and restaurants who only wanted to be left to their philosophical talking over coffee and beer. If it wasn’t the liquor stores slurring along, it was the factories, always wanting to give their two cents. The huge jails were overjoyed at the raucous revelries—they heaved themselves up and formed gangs of bricks and bars and fences. They claimed to keep the piece, but all lived in fear of their frequent blitzes. And in the shadows of it all, bounce houses and brothels had squeaky sex while department stores looked on lustfully, bemoaning the tasteless display but refusing to close their blinds.
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Aug 11, 2014 23:51
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INTERPROMPT
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Djeser posted:Include an area you'd like me to focus on when you ask for one. It can be as specific or as general as you like, but give me some sort of topic, even if it is just 'conflict' or something. I wrote what I wrote because I want to get better at/progress from zero at humor and plot. I'd love any pointers. Thanks!
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Aug 14, 2014 00:33
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:19 |
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Djeser posted:I don't know a whole lot about the abstract construction of humor beyond that, so I'm going to link you to two things. First, this is from a tumblr about learning from the errors of webcomics, but the humor aspects are still applicable in fiction in general. Second, something that I think has generally good humor, Welcome To Night Vale, which is a podcast styled like X-Files community radio. Thanks for the pointers and references! (My thanks seemed inauthentic with a period and overly enthusiastic with an exclamation point.)
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Aug 14, 2014 16:46
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