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flash me pls
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Nov 21, 2018 08:49
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Antivehicular posted:I'm sorry Yoru I still love you 
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Nov 21, 2018 09:01
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in, flash
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Nov 21, 2018 09:25
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Sitting Here posted:flash me pls It's the year of the silkworm dreadmojo posted:in, flash My favorite flavor, cherry red
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Nov 22, 2018 02:14
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https://thunderdome.cc/?story=6974
Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Nov 22, 2018 09:26
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The Red Tide 388 Words We were always warned that the Great Lakes were vulnerable to invading species of marine life. We should have listened. It all started in 2001 with the first reports of barnacles crossing into Lake Erie from the ocean. My family has been trawler fishing on these waters for as long as there has been commercial fishing on these waters. My father, his father, his father back for generations have all fished these waters. There were warnings of over fishing and there were warnings of invading species in the Great Lakes. No one took those seriously as they were dismissed as the rantings of ecological nerds. This industry would always be there to provide a steady and moderate income to those who made a living off them. Scientists warned us that our fishing boats were making things worse and we should make sure the hulls of our boats are cleaned off when we make the trip from the ocean into the fresh water lakes. Who had time for that? Time is money, and I wasn’t about to spend time prying mollusks off my boat. Besides, these waters had been good to my family, why would they stop now? Some of my fellow fisherman began to follow the directive to clean the hulls off their boats. I did not, in my arrogance. By 2006, the reports from the scientists had grown more urgent. Phrases such as “ecological catastrophe” and “permanent change” began being tossed around. The barnacles were causing permanent changes. They produced so much red algae that the lakes began to be tinted with red. In 2015, I started to change my tune. The barnacles had spread to all five of the Great Lakes. Now cleaning off my boat became a priority, but it was too late. Then 2018 happened. The mollusks began spreading at such high rates that the fish began dying. Suddenly, all those scientists warning us in the background turned to reports of horror. Now everyone worked together to remove the barnacles, but it would prove to be too little, too late. On, October 31, 2018 the Great Lakes were declared federal disaster zones. Commercial fishing was banned due to the red toxin getting into the food supply. To my horror, my livelihood was completely gone. The red tide is over; the mollusks, they have won.
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Nov 22, 2018 14:30
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Judge post on the brawl will be up when I get home from Thanksgiving stuff.
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Nov 22, 2018 19:45
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Summerlands 400 words In the late days of January Charles Porter, blind from a three-day cry and altered from failed chemical balms, stumbled down a Chicago alley and emerged in the Summerlands, on the other side of the morning sky. In the place where the mundane world touches the Summerlands there was, of course, a goblin market, where those who wandered in could be fleeced according to King Summer's laws. Charles was beset immediately, finding a buyer offering gold for tears. He took the deal, and spent his gold,, giving it to the singers and dancers busking between the aisles, exchanging some for dollars which he spent on his return, buying an extravagant dinner before the bills turned into elm-leaves at dawn. Such things happen, perhaps not every day but every week or month. But Charles was not the usual goblin mark. He came back, two days later, as sorrowful as he had been. He made the same deals, spent in the same ways, making sure to use other money to generously tip his servers. Three days after, again. Then two days on. Word began to spread. One visit, he was intercepted by Yarrow Slenderfingers and delivered to Queen Rain. Charles wisely showed proper courtesy and asked how he might be of service. “I wish to make a purchase, of course,” she said. “You are Queen,” said Charles. “What need have you of tears?” “You misunderstand. I would buy it all, your capacity for sorrow itself.” “But why?” Queen Rain stood silent for a short minute before answering. “I cannot leave King Summer's, not without ending a thousand-year peace. Not could I ever fight him.” Her eyes turned from ocean blue to that of burning copper. “But I would at least again have the ability to weep when he strikes me.” They concluded their business, and as part of their terms spent a day and a night and a day together, and what they did is nobody's business but their own. There are two stories of what became of Charles, after. Some say he lived a happy mundane life. Others that he filled his pockets with bricks and walked into Lake Michigan. Both are wrong. You can find Charles in the market. He is no Goblin but he wears a Goblin's hat and has learned the way of their trading, and he will offer you a generous price for your tears.
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Nov 22, 2018 21:30
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Three Unrelated Stories of Under 500 Words Eat Personal feeders were first engineered in 2045 due to worldwide food shortages. Every family was allotted one. The feeders were about the size of a person's head, and composed of fatty flesh. They had a toothy mouth at the top, and would eat anything-- plastic, rocks, poo poo, metals--anything we gave them, and produced a thick, milky liquid that we drank from a long nipple at its base. A few mouthfuls of the Milk was enough to sustain a person for a day. With the basics of survival provided virtually free, we finally felt independent, and the world cheered. It was a few years before anyone noticed the things were growing. In the early days, if we kept putting more into the feeder, it would produce more Milk. At some point that changed and no matter how much we fed it, each person only got the bare minimum needed for survival. The feeders doubled in size, then tripled, and then started requiring three, four, five times as much intake to produce the same amount of Milk. Eventually they got too heavy for us to move, and we had to crawl on the ground to suck at the hanging nipple. We tried creating more feeders, but the things could sense each other, and instantly started producing half as much Milk if another feeder was nearby. They grew to the size of houses, and ate the houses that contained them. They grew to the size of skyscrapers, and ate and ate. Our entire existence was reduced to climbing up the feeder’s fleshy sides to dump anything we could find into its mouth, then waiting in long lines to suck at its nipple. There was no time in our days for anything else. Last month someone fell into the mouth while feeding it. Now, the feeders won’t produce enough Milk unless we throw someone in every day. Most people say our lives aren’t so bad. They say the work isn’t terrible, no worse than it was before. We don’t really need houses, or clothing, or possessions, they say. We have food, that’s what matters. There are some who say we should stop drinking the Milk, and force the feeders to depend on us. Others say that’s impossible because we’d all have to stop at once. But I say we do more than just quit the Milk. Today, I will do more. There are thousands of these things the size of mountains, and millions more that are smaller. All of them are growing exponentially, and all of them are made of meat. I say we eat them. I say we plunge knives into those overfed beasts and carve out the food that’s ours. I say we take more than just the drips of Milk they give us, because we’re the ones keeping them alive, and not the reverse. I say we cut and eat until we’re all full, stuffed, satisfied and strong. Until we’re all human again. I have my knife, and my appetite. Do you have yours? The Rich Jeff Gordon wasn’t like those other CEOs up in their high rise offices losing touch with the real world. Jeff liked to interact with his customers every day. Today the lucky customer was Angela Tweed. Jeff told his driver to keep the engine running, and went up the creaky porch steps to knock on Angela’s door. He rubbed his hands together in the cold and grinned. The door opened and a dumpy little woman with frazzled hair and a stained t-shirt looked up at him. “Hello?” A baby shrieked behind her. “Good day Ms Tweed, I’m Jeff Gordon, and I own Megabank Central. Might I come in?” He gave a small bow. “Megabank? Uh, yeah, sure.” She waved him into her sad little kitchen. They sat at a plastic folding table. The baby continued to cry. Jeff sniffed at the frigid air, and his eyes twinkled at a certain jar on the counter-top next to the toaster. “Ms Tweed,” he said with a beaming smile. “Are you aware that your account is overdrawn by ninety-two dollars and eighteen cents?” Her face dropped. “Hey, it was fifty-eight last week.” “Fees, ma’am, fees! They accrue on the first of each month.” Jeff’s heart pounded as he thought of all the various, unique fees. “Look mister, I can’t pay right now,” she said. “Definitely not now that you added more. I only went three dollars over anyway! Three dollars, and now you want ninety?” Jeff took in huge, hissing gulps of air through his nose and panted out his mouth. Blood rushed to his pelvis. “Yes, three dollars, and now it’s ninety-two and eighteen cents! Isn’t that something!” “It’s bullshit is what it is,” said Angela. “I can’t pay that, I gotta get Jenny her food and diapers.” “But you can pay! That’s why I’m here, to help you pay!” “Help?” she asked, hesitantly. “Yes! First off, let’s see what’s in this jar.” Before she could protest, he opened the little ceramic jar and dipped in his shaking fingers. “Ahh, yes.” He counted through a crumpled wad of ones while licking his lips and breathing ever faster. “There’s fifty three dollars here! We’re halfway there!” She stood angrily and started to speak, but Jeff took her hand as a dancer might, and slipped a ring from her finger in one smooth motion. “This, I could pawn for forty. That makes ninety three! So we just need twenty more for the convenience fee!” He pranced into her living room, lifted the little TV from its stand, and yanked the cord from the wall. The baby howled in terror. “This should cover it!” “Hey mister, what the hell!” Jeff’s heart rammed at his ribs and saliva flowed freely as he walked, stiff-legged, back to his sedan and heaved the TV in. “Drive on!” He panted and shook. He couldn’t wait anymore. He ripped down his pants and grabbed himself, and leaned back with a deep groan and spurted across the back of the passenger seat. For Thanksgiving The Richards family sits at their table, mother, father, son and daughter. Their faces beam with anticipation for the meal. The table is decorated with candelabras and crystal glasses, and their cutlery is of shining silver. “Let’s go around and say what we’re thankful for,” says the father, taking a sip of wine. The mother says, “I’m thankful that the world is full of so many good, hardworking people!” The son says, “I’m thankful that we won the basketball game yesterday!” The daughter says, “I’m thankful I don’t have hair like Jenny’s!” The father nods and smiles approvingly, then contemplated a moment before saying, “I’m thankful we live in a world where work hard brings success.” The family murmurs and nods at their father’s deep, philosophical thankfulness. “Good one, dad,” says the son. Just then a bell tinkles, and servants stream in to lay plate after plate silently and austerely on the table. Corn, beans, hams, cakes, pies, salads, casseroles, cranberry sauce, buns, breads, biscuits, teas, coffees, juices, egg dishes, fish dishes, venison, cheeses, crackers, muffins, butter, jam, more teas, more coffees, more rolls, more hams. The plates line up until they cover the entire table, of which the family takes up one small part at the end. Finally, the last four servants come in. Each carries a whole, twenty-five pound turkey, browned and glazed and smelling like heaven. They place one before each of the family members. “Let’s eat!” says the father. And they all take a few small bites. The daughter lets out a long sigh. “Why is his turkey bigger than mine?” She points at her brother’s plate. “It was last year, too!” “Well, he must have worked harder,” says the father wisely. The daughter folds her arms and purses her lips and doesn’t eat any more. The son taps on his phone and isn’t paying much attention. The mother eats a few dainty bites, then comments about watching her figure. The father mentions that he wants to drink a scotch and watch the game. They all stand up and drop their napkins on their chairs. “Now it’s time for our favorite part,” says the father. Everyone smiles and even the daughter perks up a bit. The father continues, “remember, this isn’t just for fun. We must encourage our servants to work hard and not to expect handouts!” “Yeah!” says the son, “They’re so entitled sometimes.” The father laughs and smiles at his clever son. They all grin, then the father says, “I’ll start,” and unzips his pants and pisses a long, yellow stream across his turkey. The son, too, drenches his turkey and sends a spray across the table over all the untouched plates. The mother stands on her chair and drops her drawers and pushes out a long turd that plops on top of her turkey. The daughter does the same. The family smears and throws and splashes and laughs as all the food is prevented from being wasted.
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Nov 22, 2018 22:14
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Kimberly 385 words She tiptoes Kimberly across the carpet, smiling Kimberly. Then she Kimberly falls, as if expecting to land Kimberly into someone's arms. She appeared in the apartment sometimes in the middle of calm cloudy nights, always when I was alone, repeating the same slight steps and vanishing mid-fall. I never told Katie our apartment was haunted, and if she knew, she never brought it up. It felt like cheating to watch the ghost scamper across the living room carpet. I loved Katie, and I'm happy I married her, but I never saw her as drunk with happiness as the ghost girl did whenever she tumbled into those invisible arms. Slowly, I came to secretly love the ghost. I tracked down the previous tenants, an old couple who'd lived at the apartment for decades before moving to someplace warmer. When I described the ghost to Harry, the old man, over the phone, he confirmed it was his first wife, Kimberly. She killed herself in 1970 at the age of twenty-three. No one knew why she did it, but Harry admitted he wasn't entirely surprised. Katie and I moved out of the apartment a few years later to be closer to her family. Since then we've lived in many different apartments and houses, none of which were haunted. We had a marriage near as happy as any really can be. Katie died a couple years back, younger than most but not by that much. A few days ago I got a phone call from a young woman, Tanya, the current tenant of Kimberly's apartment. She asked me if I knew anything about the ghost she sometimes sees on calm lonely nights. I was about to tell her about Kimberly but the ghost Tanya sees is Katie. Tanya will see Katie shouting at an invisible someone about not listening to her. I must have forgotten about that fight. There are no true ghosts in that apartment, I've realized. There are no souls trapped there, no one doomed to walk its carpeted hall. The apartment is a photographer, taking snapshots of moments; the fleeting happiness of a tormented woman or the momentary rage of a happy one. All those years ago, I had fallen in love with a photograph. Tanya thanked me and hung up, leaving me to my memories.
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Nov 23, 2018 00:26
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Uh, so I'm a moron and misposted. Submissions close 11:59 PM Sunday, per normal TD standard, not Friday. Mea maxima culpa.
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Nov 23, 2018 01:41
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This story is dedicated to avid bitcoin enthusiast and master HODLer, Kaishai Detour 500 words Flash rule: Oh, with love comes strange currencies, and here is my appeal Jeremy pedalled furiously. Three more blocks. His guts were churning. He hoped whoever ordered the veggie wrap wasn’t in a hurry. It'd been simpler for a courier before the Internet of Things. “The internet of poo poo!” he swore. It wasn’t wrong, though, not since Poopr came in and let anyone with a smart lock and a bitcoin wallet charge for using their bathroom. Couldn’t go for free anymore. One block left. At this rate he’d never scrounge the money for Jen’s ring. He’d been promising an engagement for years, she’d finally given him an ultimatum. He closed in on the address. The house looked like a dump, no pun intended. He was lucky anyone at all had accepted his request. He waved his phone at the reader by the door. The light blinked but the door was jammed. He scanned again and put his shoulder into it. He could see the review already. “Jdog420 F--. Client swiped in excessively, damaged door. Did not tip.” Someone framed him for a water leak yesterday. Any more complaints and he’d be banned from Poopr. For a bicycle courier with finicky bowels it would be a career ender. He bolted up the stairs and into bathroom, having memorized the instructions. He was letting loose before checking to make sure his bitcoins went through. Poor form, sure, but these were desperate times. The crisis averted, he pulled some single-ply T.P. off the roll and noticed a sensor on the holder. They were counting the squares. He fed the T.P. off without turning the roll and flushed. The handle came off in his hand. He yanked the cover off the tank and tried to reattach the flapper chain, but everything disintegrated into bits of rust and rubber. “God, I’ve never asked you for much,” he pleaded half-heartedly over the torrent of water pouring into the bowl. If he fessed up they’d ban him for sure. If he left there was no guarantee someone else would come in after him to take the fall. Even if he tried to fix it, he’d trip the door sensor. A bird hit the bathroom window. The bathroom window! He opened the frosted glass and was met with the shingled roof of the mudroom. He climbed out and hopped down. He tore through his toolkit, hoping to find anything to plug the hole. No dice. In a moment of perfect clarity, weighing all actions and their consequences, he grabbed the wrap from his insulated bag. He stood on his bike and clambered back on the roof. Rolling the warm tortilla tightly, he jammed it into hole where the flapper would have sat. The water stopped. He posted a rave review on Poopr and spent a few coins to drop a glowing green tag on the map. Everyone for miles would know this was a primo spot, someone was bound to drop a deuce before the tortilla gave out. He swiped the reader and heard the door click shut.
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Nov 23, 2018 02:01
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 Results for the Meal Brawl! Yoruichi wrote a story with tons of crazy stuff in it, with big ideas! Beefsupreme went for a much lighter touch! So who wins? It came down to execution, and on a couple of levels, Beef wins pretty handily Yoruichi: Though there were some cool elements to your story, it lacked clarity in its worldbuilding and blocking. And though you did characterize your protag pretty well (I'd say that was the high point of your piece) that wasn't enough there to redeem it and make it memorable. Beef: You handle brawls well, it seems. You addressed the prompt very well, and your interspersing of it throughout was a good touch. The drama felt real, and though very little happened, this story was a total breeze to get through. That happened because you laced in good dramatic tension throughout and it all felt very real. Happy to go more in-depth with either of these stories and provide longer crits or chat with either of you about them. Lemme know!
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Nov 23, 2018 03:50
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Just wanted to remind you lovely bast- people, that KIDDOME is in full swing and all submissions are in. It would be awesomely helpful if you can throw in a crit or two and help me out, because these are a lot of words and many of those words are bad words and I need help keeping my sanity and oh god please help- here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/112B8YFigO4g-vH-PcOkt0abhv1LIEBC6-WJxH7Dkvvs/edit
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Nov 23, 2018 04:21
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Chili posted:
This is correct, thank you judge.
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Nov 23, 2018 06:20
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My Ex-racehorse 320 words His gleaming chestnut coat is a bright splash of colour against endless sun-bleached sand. People who have never sat on a horse sometimes ask me whether horses enjoy their work; whether they like being saddled, bitted, ridden. My breathing settles into the rhythm of his easy canter stride. I squeeze his sides with my calves and he moves up into a gallop. First gear. I adjust my feet in the stirrups, settle into my position. I relax my hold on the reins and lean forward, low over his neck. It is not a command but an invitation. He levitates. Neck stretched forward and nostrils flared, his legs reach out, grab the sand and hurl us forward. The wind roars in my ears and my eyes start to stream. I crouch low, hands up his neck, encouraging him on, on and faster. For a beautiful, pure moment, the world and everything that keeps me awake at night cease to exist. There is nothing but the thundering of his hooves the white sun and the smell of salt. I whoop at the seagulls as we flash past them. Up ahead is the busy end of the beach, children and dogs, surf boards and fishing lines. I sit back, disrupting his balance so he reluctantly slows down. Gradually we come into land and pull up, grinning. His ears are pricked, and he snorts to clear his nose as he catches his breath. I walk him quietly into the shallows to cool his legs, dangling my own down to let the blood back into my old-lady knees and ankles. I lean forward, hug his sweaty neck and tell him that he is the best horse that anyone anywhere has ever had. He snorts. I snort back. We circle around and come to face back up the wide open expanse of sand. He starts to jig-jog, his whole body asking, “can we go again?”
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Nov 23, 2018 07:15
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Mercedes posted:Just wanted to remind you lovely bast- people, that KIDDOME is in full swing and all submissions are in. It would be awesomely helpful if you can throw in a crit or two and help me out, because these are a lot of words and many of those words are bad words and I need help keeping my sanity and oh god please help- a. What's our deadline? b. I don't seem to be able to add comments of any kind in that doc. If I read you right, you want us to do the crits in a separate Google doc for each story, then link them via a comment. In the meantime we can do them in the docs and PM them to you or something?
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Nov 23, 2018 07:38
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Chili posted:
thank you judge king chili and fellow combatant yoruichi
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Nov 23, 2018 09:08
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Lead out in cuffs posted:a. What's our deadline? A. No deadline. I'll be letting the kids know when every story has a crit. B. Goddamnit. Let me go and open it up to everyone. I could have sworn I did this already.
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Nov 23, 2018 13:30
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Alright, it should be fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
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Nov 23, 2018 15:52
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Mercedes posted:Alright, it should be fixed. Thanks for letting me know. Yep, works now. Thanks!
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Nov 23, 2018 18:23
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In
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Nov 24, 2018 02:00
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In.
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Nov 24, 2018 07:08
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In.
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Nov 24, 2018 08:43
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Signups are closed.
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Nov 24, 2018 10:20
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Pink Glow 389 words. Second entry, after "Kimberly." After my last breakdown, my friend Maddie took me in for the operation. It was quick and relatively painless, and by the end, there was a Lens right behind my eye. Although it couldn't get rid of my hallucinations, the Lens could differentiate between what was and wasn't real, giving every imaginary object a pink glow. I had never been more at peace. I could now identify the eyes popping out of cereal boxes at the supermarket and the shadowy figures that circle my bed at night as figments of my disease. They weren't so scary, either, basked in silly hot pink. I was able to go back to work and move out of Maddie's guest room into my own apartment. A few months ago, I started having hallucinations I didn't have before I got the Lens. I saw pink cop cars and ambulances on the street, and pink security cameras in the stores. Since I hadn't imagined anything like that before, I figured I would take some time off of work to relax and see if stress wasn't the underlying issue. Just the other day, as I was relaxing and watching some morning show, I got a knock on my door. "Who's there?" I called. "It's me." It was Maddie's voice. "Sara, nobody's seen you in weeks. You're not answering your calls. Are you okay?" I got up to walk to the door. "Of course, I'm just taking some R and R from work." I opened the door. There was a figure like Maddie, glowing hot pink. "You don't look good, Sara," said the fake Maddie. "Have you been washing yourself? How about you move back in with me, just for a few days?" But it couldn't fool me, so I grabbed it by the neck and threw it to the floor. As I strangled the figment, it tried to push me away, and the hallucination was so vivid I could feel it pressing against my chest, but it slowly lost the strength to do so. Just to make sure it wouldn't try to trick me again, I grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed a few holes in its neck. It's funny. That happened a few days ago, but the hallucination hasn't gone away. It's still lying there on the floor in a pool of bright pink blood.
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Nov 24, 2018 20:25
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It's the year of the silkworm Strange Silk 371 words There is a spider inside of me. I did not ask for this spider to come into me; you put her there. You reached into the very stuff of me, cut apart my chromosomes, and then sutured the wound with genes from a creature I’ve never seen, who I will never see. She crouches in the deepest recesses of my instincts, the mother of strange protein fibers, waiting for that day when she might begin to weave her silk. You are another creature I’ve never seen, and will never see. Thousands of years in your care have left my kind soft and blind; the only predator in your laboratory is you. I live in a container lined with sweet-smelling leaves along with a hundred others of my kind. You paper our world with food but you don’t really care about us; my body is merely a conduit for the spider and her altered silk. Thousands of years in your care have left my kind soft and blind, but the spider is wild and willful and all but impossible to farm—unless you take her apart, discard her undesirable traits, and wedge her genes into the productive glands of a docile silkworm. Have you ever created a contiguous mile of anything? That’s what we do, the spider and I. After four moltings, she wraps me in a mile of strong, fine filaments. My cocoon is a dim, gentle place, and for the first and only time in my life, there’s nothing to do but rest and change. You know something the spider and I don’t: My strange cocoon is the stuff of bulletproof vests. It’s the stuff of bandages and robes and parachutes and artificial ligaments. How unfortunate for my spider and I, to whom words like ‘tensile strength’ and ‘flexibility’ mean nothing. You come for us after the mile-long sanctuary is complete. You pluck us from our small, leaf-lined world and raise us up into vertical places beyond our comprehension, then plunge us into boiling water, cooking my body in her secretions until I’m dead and the cocoon is ripe for harvesting. There was a spider inside me. You tamed her by taking her apart. May you choke on her silk.
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Nov 24, 2018 22:02
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Flash rule: I'm gonna load my rifle, gonna aim it at the dying star I Have No Need of God 360 words Cancer, they told me. Alone in a sterile hospital bathroom I grip the sides of the hand basin like the cold porcelain is a lifeline to a reality where I’m not, suddenly, dying. A movie reel of all the things I’m not going to get to do runs over and over in my head and I think, it’s not real. Please god let it not be real. YOU MUST REPENT, BEFORE THE END. God stands in the bathroom doorway. Long dark hair coils around her naked form and her toes hang above the cracked linoleum. She has big eyes like a child. Expectant. Demanding. I turn to face her, hands still gripping the basin to stop my body shaking. “I don’t want to die,” I tell her. God is suddenly close to me. Heat radiates off her body like I’m standing too close to a fire. TELL ME YOUR SINS. The movie reel changes; becomes a montage of the things I have done, the decisions I have made. My affair. The car accident. The spot in the harbour where I hurled my phone so they would never find out what I’d been doing when I drifted across the centre line. The lies I’ve told. CONFESS. My mouth is dry and I struggle to swallow. My sins. They are woven through the fabric of my being a climbing rose through a garden. They have painful thorns and a pungent, intoxicating smell, like an overripe mango. I don’t have time for guilt, I think. I push past her, put my back to the bathroom door. ACCEPT YOUR FATE AND BEG FORGIVENESS. Her hair rises from her and snakes towards me. I make a gun from my right hand, two fingers pointing straight at God. With my left I hold my wrist to stop it trembling. “I don’t want to be forgiven. I want to live!” Smoke puffs from my fingers and the recoil jolts my shoulder. There is a white flash of heat and God is gone. In the bathroom mirror I stare at my pale face and red-rimmed eyes. “You’re going to die,” I say. But I’m not dead yet.
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Nov 24, 2018 23:47
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Antivehicular can I have another flash rule for entry #3 please.
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Nov 24, 2018 23:48
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Yoruichi posted:Antivehicular can I have another flash rule for entry #3 please. Damned if we do, dumb if we don't
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Nov 25, 2018 00:05
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Prompt: I've got a hand, so I've got a fist, so I've got a plan Inspiration 399 words "An unusual way to awaken, I thought as a torrent of warm breath lashed at my face. My eyes focused, and I found myself staring into the hungry eyes of a ravenous wolf." "Did you yell for help? Or perhaps to try and startle the beast?" "The fangs of the dreaded beast glimmered of crimson. I felt in my gut that they had already feasted upon the flesh of my mother and father. I could not muster a peep." "Then you outran it?" "Before I could shake off the initial shock and exorcize my stiff limbs of the fear, I heard a blood-curdling cry that drew my attention a short distance away. It was my elder brother Peat, revered amongst his peers as fleet of foot. He was out of his element in the freshly fallen snow. Three of the bastards had overtaken him." "Then you must mean- at the unseasoned age of twelve, you single-handedly managed to fend off the beast by show of strength?" "I back-peddled away from the beast, but I was in a panic as you might imagine. I stumbled backwards, and tripped over my own legs. As the wolf closed in with his.. scissor-like jaws, I was too overcome with terror to think of anything else. I began to pray." "And was anyone listening that morning?" "Gaea. Titania. The Great Mother, by many names. She heard my cries. Under the snow, I felt something jagged in my grasp. It was a stone." "Just a stone?" "It was no ordinary stone. It had been kissed by the Earth itself. I was too shaken to throw straight, but The Great Mother guided my arms." "And you managed to strike the beast dead with one stone?" "A fully-grown alpha male? Ridiculous. The stone struck a nearby tree, causing the snow-coated branches to rain down upon the beast a holy deluge. A chain reaction followed, and the whole pack was sent tumbling down the mountain. Since then, the only thing I ever needed to throw was rock." "Marvelous. Well, there you have it. That was Avalanche in his first appearance at a major, ladies and gentlemen, taking a landslide victory over tournament favorite, The Barber. Stay tuned; next is the long-awaited match-up between traditionalist The Bureaucrat, and infamous sleight of hand artist Sammy the Switcher."
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Nov 25, 2018 02:46
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Flash rule: Damned if we do, dumb if we don't Everything is Going to be Okay 396 words Mary squeezed James’ hand as she peeled out of the commuter traffic, did a u-turn onto SH1, and revved their little Nissan towards the coast. “What are you doing? We’ve got to go to work!” James said. He hadn’t slept in months, and the anxiety meds only made things worse. He had cried tears of exhaustion as he pulled on his suit that morning. “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t watch you kill yourself for some stupid job.” Mary rammed the car into third and careened past a cattle truck. The petrol gauge hovered just above E. “I can’t just not go to work. I’ll get fired!” James ran a hand through his thinning hair. Mary smiled. “You’ll have to tell them I kidnapped you.” “Great, my girlfriend’s gone insane,” James said, not looking at her. They flashed past the empty suburbs, identical roofs hot under the morning sun. “What’s more insane, working yourself to death in a job you hate, or taking one day off because the sun is shining? gently caress!” she said as she crested a hill at 120km/h and saw the flash of a speed camera. “Well that’s another loving bill we can’t pay,” said James. “Will you stop worrying about the bills and start worrying about yourself!” “Will you stop deciding whether or not I need to be worried about? I’m fine!” “Bullshit you’re fine! You were crying as you got dressed, for gently caress’s sake!” The car shuddered as Mary gunned over the potholes down Peka Peka Beach Road. The petrol light flashed. “Well if you can’t do this anymore then I guess that’s that,” said James. The engine cut out, sputtered once, then died. The car rolled quietly to a stop at the bottom of the dunes. Mary slammed her door. She pulled her dress off over her head and dumped it on the sand. “Mary, I’m sorry…” James called after her. “You might be fine, but I’m not. But you’re too exhausted to notice,” she said. “Mary, wait!” James called, as she ran down the beach and into the cold surf. He waded after her, fully dressed. “I love you,” he said, pulling her to him. “It’s going to be okay.” Mary leant into James’ arms. “Promise?” she said. The sun felt warm on her skin. Seagulls wheeled above their heads as James leant forward and kissed her.
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Nov 25, 2018 04:34
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Crits for Week 320, Dumpster Diving for Fun and Profit Overall thoughts: I may have come off a little harsh on this week in my results post, and I apologize. It's a decent week overall! There was just an overarching problem this week of people not taking enough risks and rewriting stuff without making it more interesting. It felt really, really safe, which I guess is understandable for a weird challenge week but was still a bit disappointing. Sitting Here, "Narcissus" This won the week based on its sheer ingenuity and creative combination of prompt and flash rule, and the core premise is really clever, but it's a pretty good story even beyond that. I think there's some really good use of implied characterization in this story; we obviously never meet Marcus in the flesh (just in the ooze), but the mere fact that he's a dude who hoards his memories in tiny anthropomorphic form, as well as the society these memories create and what they value, says a lot about the guy. I like this a lot. NotGordian, "The Wind in the Pines" This story lost a lot of points for being fairly generic in its plot arc, but I still liked it reasonably well. There are a lot of individual good moments and ideas here! The concept of a weird fairy ritual focusing on giving advice to humans is pretty interesting, and the fight that kicks things off is pretty well-realized. (I may be biased since I've had that fight near-literally with an ex, but, y'know, it worked for me.) I just wish it had been a little more creative and freewheeling, instead of jumping right to vengeance and violence. Stephen is a dick, but I don't feel like he's a murder-worthy dick, so the end is jarring. Mr. Sunshine, "The Sisters of Sarah Jane" I was close to giving this a judge-fiat HM, because I think you made a lot of really good decisions in the rewrite as compared to your source material. Having the various losses in Sarah Jane's family being focused around a single ongoing tragedy, and having her father be a man gutted by that tragedy instead of just a generic Monster Dad, help this a lot, and there's a good melancholy impact here that the source story never achieves. That said, it fails by copying the source story's lack of action too religiously. Nothing really develops here, and the core emotional conflict -- that Sarah Jane's last remaining sister is, presumably, dying of the same flu that killed the rest of them -- is buried so deep that it doesn't make an impact, and my co-judge assumed that the father had killed her instead. (Which, uh, isn't a terrible reading? Mine may be totally wrong! This is how obscure this plot thread is.) This story needed an arc and didn't provide one. Entenzahn, "Hunger" This is a decent little piece that does what it says on the tin -- decent merging of your source material and flash rule, although I did sort of wonder where the doctor got all his cardboard standees during the apocalypse. My major complaint is that I would have liked to see Tysen either a little more or a little less lucid; as stands, he's not a hugely plausible zombie protagonist, but he still doesn't have a lot of agency, and it'd be more interesting to see someone really wrestling with their thoughts and urges. Ottermotive Insanity, "Recovery" This is the first piece of the week that exhibited another major problem of the week, and I suspect with rewrite weeks in general: stories that don't quite stand on their own without knowledge of the source material. On its own, this is an interesting story but pretty incoherent without the context of the original inspiration. Even knowing that, I'm still not 100% sure what's going on here -- if this is a psychological treatment technique, why the spycraft remnants from the original? Good imagery, needs clarity and cleanup. Thranguy, "Three Dreams, Taken" Whoof. This is a relatively skillful story, but it's just so unpleasant, and frankly in a way that feels gratuitous, as if powered by frustration or resentment. It doesn't really help that it doesn't particularly improve over the original in terms of having meaningful characters or plot, even if there's more raw incident here than in the original kind of nothing-happens lump of source material. The protagonist is a non-entity, the antagonist is basically just an EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT stereotype, and the victims are... victims. It's all grubby and nasty and really doesn't justify containing sex crimes. (Note to self: in future TD judging, add a "no sex crimes" rule.) Pham Nuwen, "Haunts" This has some good ideas, and I feel like I would like it more if the ending didn't feel so shaggy-dog-story-ish. It takes a story that presents an interesting if pretty bleak metaphysical scenario and into... well, I suppose on some level more bleak, but also a bit of a waste of time, to be honest, especially since so much of this story is focused on the scenario. I'd like to see a version of this with more of a character/psychological focus. Tyrannosaurus, "When You're Here, You're Family: A Waffle House Story" On paper, I'm not really sure this story should work. It's just a goofy little magical-realism slice-of-life thing and doesn't really have much deep character work... but I feel like there's just a good heart here, a certain ring of authenticity, complete with the ideal "2 AM Tuesday drunk Waffle House patron" narrative voice. Roy isn't a very rigorously characterized character, but the concept of a fish-man who can't keep his human form together because he's preoccupied with human things is sympathetic and relatable in the way good magical realism often can be. This is just a satisfying story, more than the sum of its parts. Chili, "Conspicuous Consumption" I like the core metaphor here, but I agree with Yoruichi that I would have liked to see this pushed further and crazier. I assume the protagonist's initial resignation is a metaphor for his general resignation to the generally shabby state of his life, and I like the voice you have here, but I think I would have liked more psychological weight to the turning point between "welp, stairs bit my toe off, guess that's my life now" and "no, gently caress it, I will not be eaten by a toilet." Still, I more or less liked this and think there's a good core for potentially going really crazy, and I think it's an interesting take on the source material. apophenium, "The Merman Gourmand" Another fun bit of goofiness. I think this may have been just a little too light and goofy to get a lot of consideration during judging, but for what it is, I think it's fun. I like the suggestion that merpeople are basically perma-adolescents, or at least that these merpeople are, along with the sheer daftness of the "eat a horse" goal. (Honestly, I was expecting some confusion about which part is the human vs. the horse to trigger a veer into cannibalism, but I think playing it straight is funnier.) Not amazing, but reasonable for what it is. AllNewJonasSalk, "A Wizard and a Pipsqueak" This piece feels ambitious, but pretty fundamentally misdirected. We get a lot of time spent on this barbarian siege business with Gavin even though it doesn't really matter; that entire part of the story could be cut out with a few lines of exposition about the narrator and kid landing on a barbarian planet whose nearest city had clearly just fallen to invaders, and nothing would change about the end of the story. And speaking of the end... I'm not entirely sure I get what's going on here. The siege ends, women are being sacrified in fires (kind of gratuitous), the narrator and kid show up looking for the kid's mother, the kid eats some of one of the sacrifices (really gratuitous and pretty gross), there are no clues, so they leave? I'm wondering if the "punchline" was supposed to be that the mother was one of the sacrifices, maybe the one the kid snacked on, which would be tasteless and nonsensical but would at least be an ending. Instead, this is a story that goes nowhere, whose component parts don't gel into something that makes any sense or provides any satisfaction. Solitair, "Exit Light, Enter Night" This is one of the week's other big victims of "doesn't make sense without the source material." In a way, there's something clever about the way this complements its source -- the source material is pretty dry and procedural, while this is much more about the subjective experience of the dream-donor -- but read in isolation, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the basic premise, and it ends up reading as a fairly typical "Johnny Flashfic Descends Into Madness" story. I'm also really not fond of the inclusion of relationship violence into this story, although I assume it's there as a way to get the protagonist executed eventually. It's just sort of thrown in and I don't think it's in great taste. Fleta McGurn, "A Part of Everything" The concept of this rewrite (taking the original symbiote story and telling it from the perspective of the other organism involved) is really solid, but there's just not much being done in the execution. A story from the perspective of a symbiotic coral intelligence should be weird, fundamentally inhuman, but Coraline's voice is mostly bland, and we don't even get the interesting SF frisson of the original story's implication that everyone has weird cranial symbiotes and that's just a normal part of life. I think there's a good effort to retell this story in a new way, but there just isn't enough going on in the voice and storytelling to make it interesting. Invisible Clergy, "Kayfabe" When I think of this piece, the phrase "valiant effort" comes to mind. You had maybe the least inspiring source material of the week, and I think the wrestling story you made it into is a plausible way to work with what you were given. The problem, in my opinion, is that there's not enough going on with the minds of the characters. In a story called "Kayfabe," I want to have the psychological elements on stage: a clearly defined relationship between the wrestlers, with interesting dynamics with their in-ring and out-of-ring personae, and how that affects the match. One of the wrestlers wanting to improvise to play to the crowd is a great opportunity for this! Instead, we mostly get blocking about wrestling choreography. It isn't badly done, and it was swimming upstream given the weak source, but it's kind of a disappointment nonetheless. Lead out in cuffs, "Loose Ends" This is an okay basic action romp that never quite takes off. To agree with Yoru again, I feel like the lack of character depth is really what's holding this back. Tommy and Anne aren't interesting individually, and they don't really develop a dynamic that makes Anne's choice at the end matter. I'm wondering if the ending is supposed to imply that Anne has been here before, had experiences and adventures with Tommy that we don't see, enough to know that he can't be left alive this time... but the fact that we don't know for sure and are in the first-person viewpoint of someone confused and contextless means that this element doesn't get anywhere. A rewrite from Anne's perspective would let some of that get on the page, and it would also prevent this from falling into the "first-person protagonist who dies at the end" trap. sebmojo, "The Marble" I like this better than the original, which is basically an extended shaggy dog story, and I appreciate the character work a lot. The dynamic between Obrynn and Kernig is legitimately twisty and complicated in a satisfying way, especially for a week where the character work wasn't great, and I would read more about them. The ending is a problem, though; like Yoru mentioned in her crit, it feels like a weird jump to get to this murder/suicide ending, even with the basis of Kernig dissatisfied and plotting something. Just having them sealed inside the city to satisfy Kernig's desire to explore would have worked better, even (or perhaps especially) with the implication that there was no escape and they were likely to starve. Going straight to death feels abrupt and sort of unsatisfying. M. Propagandalf, "Groomer" As mentioned in the original results post, what gave this the loss was the combination of "obviously unfinished" and "apologized for." Just don't do this. I don't think it's terrible to submit an unfinished piece to TD, but it's important to at least create the illusion that it's finished and not prejudice the judges against you / imply that you know you're wasting people's time. Anyway, onto the actual content: there's a germ of something decent here, and honestly, "alien agent marries hapless dude to groom him into a suitable biological specimen" is a perfectly reasonable take on the extremely doofy sitcom antics of the source material you were given. I think the biggest problem here is the pacing, given that the story was barely getting to the rea plot at 75% of the word count for the week. Try to focus on the important core of your story -- in this case, the biological weirdness going down -- and don't be afraid to cut down the background when writing a TD-length piece.
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Nov 25, 2018 05:38
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The Deck Behind the Old House 400 words Haru pointed at the edge of the lawn. “You see that? That kid Gabriel is a crook. Asks for twenty dollars to mow the lawn and doesn't even get the edge right.” “It looks fine to me,” said Corrine. “You don't know lawns,” said Haru. “Twenty dollars. I should move to Florida, get a nice apartment on the second floor. No lawn. We thought about it, looked at brochures, before...” Corinne looked across the yard. “I'm surprised you don't have the barbeque going,” she said. “Well,” said Haru, “Bob and Jessica did go down to Florida, and Terry had his fall and got stuck in assisted living. The new people aren't barbeque people. For the best. I don't have to keep pretending to like hot dogs.” “You love hot dogs,” said Corinne. “All an act,” said Haru. “You know, they put your grandfather in a camp. During the war.”. Corinne knew. No one had ever told her, but she knew. “When they let him out he decided we would have to be more American than the Americans. Eat the hot dogs and smile. Watch the fireworks, don't think about bombs.” “I remember fireworks,” said Corinne. “Running around the yard back with sparklers in both hands. I'm surprised we didn't set anything on fire.” “Marcus did,” said Haru. “Remember the roof?” Corinne did. A stray Roman Candle. It didn't do much more than smoulder before Haru hosed it down and got the ladder. And after, Marcus, unchastened, pulling his eyes with his fingers and mocking them both. “I don't know if you knew, but Derek went and kicked the crap out of Marcus when he found out,” said Corinne. “How gallant. What's he up to now?” asked Haru. Corinne looked down. “He died,” she said. “In Iraq. He the first boy I ever-” “Please don't,” said Haru. “I'm almost fifty years old, dad,” said Corinne. “Sooner or later you'll have to accept the fact that I've had sex.” “Maybe when you're sixty,” said Haru. Every other time they'd had this conversation it had been 'when you're married’ instead. Silent winds carried cut-grass smells across the yard to them. It was getting darker, the fireflies starting to flash at each other and the distant sounds of a professional fireworks display banged and boomed behind the hill. “Mother loved this time of year,” said Corinne. Haru nodded and began to cry.
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Nov 25, 2018 12:18
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Half Samaritan Word count: 495 Peter woke up in the computer lab, where he’d been since Friday. Aside from the duty commissionaire, he was probably the only person in the school. Holiday long weekends usually afforded him the lab in solitude. He winced at the glare of the monitor as he straightened himself. He hadn’t meant to doze off, but the caffeine crash after the can of soda over a day ago finally caught up. He hadn’t eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours. He hadn’t slept horizontally for over the last forty-eight. His hands were clammy. Grey residue coated the keyboard, and he felt obligated to chisel bits off with his nails. He swiped the dribble from the edge of his mouth, smearing off grimy lip skin in doing so. More than food, he wanted to shower. He needed to bus home. His eyes adjusted to the screen and caught the time. 1:15 AM. Monday. poo poo. The next and last bus of the night came at 1:29. It took ten minutes to walk to the bus stop, and with the streets mostly empty, drivers occasionally took off early. Saving what work he accomplished to USB, Peter headed out. *** The school was in the heart of the city’s downtown. At this hour, the eccentric and homeless were out and about. The bus stop he walked to was further than the one closest to school, but that one had a 24/7 café nearby, where the desperate loitered, and he didn’t care, even on better days, to say no to faces pleading for change. Regardless, one of those desperate had ambled to his stop, and approached him. “Excuse me, sir…” “Sorry, I don’t have anything,” Peter replied instinctively. “No, I just want you to hear me out…” The dread of empathy crept in. Peter forced himself to look at the man. He was layered in clothes, even though the night wasn’t cold. His beard lacked a consensus of direction, as if each follicle of hair grew to the tune of its own. The sallow skin around his sunken eyes was pulled back, making him look like he lived in constant fear. “I can listen.” “Thanks. I came here four years ago. Had a decent business running too. But this accident—" The man attempted to balance on one leg –hosed me over. Then some fucker broke stole my tools. Before I know it, I’m here. I want you to know that I don’t shoot up. I’m not like that. But it hurts having people look at you, thinking that about you.” “I wasn't thinking that.” “I appreciate you didn’t.” From the corner of the street, the bus rolled into view. Arriving at the stop Peter boarded, almost with hesitation. He turned back to the man. “I appreciate what you shared. I’m sorry I can’t help.” “Didn’t expect much. Just wanted to vent.” “Take care though.” “Right, thanks anyway.” The bus drove off. Along the way home, Peter felt disgusted with himself.
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Nov 25, 2018 16:08
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Snowman 100 words I miss the wintertime. Listen to the geezer rant about snow. Am I the last man alive to have built a snowman? Perhaps. Up in the mountains, the ski lodge squatters live lives too busy for such nonsense. And life near the poles is a young person's game. The art may die with me. I wish I’d gone North, or up a mountain, twenty years back when I still had legs enough for the trip. The Committee says we may see winter again in five years. They've said that my grandson's whole life. His boy’s still young enough to believe.
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Nov 25, 2018 23:39
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Note for the Archivist: my flash rule was It's summertime, and I can understand if you still feel sad (Used in all three)
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Nov 25, 2018 23:42
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~*Three separate stories gimmickly titled 'Let Go'*~ Let Go 398 words Sun rays like signal noise. Bed sheets shifting under our weight. Bird chirps, muffled by glass. A prickle on my tongue. I was gonna say something. Last night. I was gonna-- She has her fingers in mine, still. Hiding away like pretty little liars. Mouth nuzzled against my neck. Her breath smells of brandy. I remember why I forgot. Booze. The devil is in the liquids. My grandma used to say that. Smart woman. Lost her man to the sauce. “Good morning,” the lady speaks into my neck. I swallow. I swallow nothing. Mouth’s dry, empty. I want water so bad. But first, this: “We shouldn’t have,” I say. Smile falls from her face. Lips gliding along my skin. Never felt somebody frown before. Baby-laugh-no-more. What was her name again? “My mistake,” I add. “What do you mean?” I keep hold of her hand. Don’t want her to feel left alone. Don’t want her to strangle me. This hosed up scenario. “I think I had us erased before.” “Why?” Don’t mean to laugh, but I do. Stupid question. “Don’t remember. Bit of the point.” She says nothing. Shock on her face, sullen and dull, deer-meets-headlights kinda thing. Feel bad. Should approach the topic with a bit more decorum. Lighten the mood. “What are the chances?” I say. “Like screwing your long-lost sister. Heh.” “Why?” she says, again. “Think it’s the booze babe.” It feels right to say. Scary thing about wiping relationship at the ministry. They take the memories, but only so far. Some of it stays. Maybe the part that’s in your gut, feels familiar. Like a déjà vu, but worse here: a déjà vécu. We had this conversation already? “I don’t like drinkers. And you drink.” “That was one time.” She pleads. Eyes plead, mouth pleads, quivers. If I looked at hears ears they’d be shaking. “Was it though?” Memory hits me like a hot shot of rum. She’s gonna say: that we had a connection. That this was fate, bringing us together. Maybe add a touch of #2tm2b - second time, meant to be. Think she used the meme before. If I remember it right. She says nothing. Packs her things and leaves. No drama. Did I remember… ? Maybe it was my booze after all. I turn on the side and close my eyes. I see nothing. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. What was I gonna say? Let Go 398 words Every night he falls, not asleep, but into the mirror, where the woman waits for him. She seems to be floating just above the water, just barely, until he reaches out for her and gravity claims them both. And he barely holds on to the frame, as to keep them both from drowning. Somehow he never runs out of stamina. But it hurts to carry all that weight. Not a sharp, honest pain. More like a dull headache, somewhere back there, waiting to erupt. It hurts how good she looks: lips red like a beacon in the ocean, eyes like bottom of the sea. She belongs in fairy tales. Every day he wakes, but not fully. His mind is still back with the woman. It’s there when he fries his eggs in the morning, when he drives his Honda Civic to work and when he puts papers on his boss’s desk. Jenny from Legal notices that he looks so tired and haggard recently. He forgot to take lunch again. He forgets about dinner too. He forgets until, one day, he collapses at work. The mirror seems just as near from here. “Don’t let go now,” the woman whispers. Her words promise so much more. Soft hands touch his... Skin and bones. With his last ounce of strength, he does what he never could before: he lets go of her. It’s not the splash that breaks his heart, and it’s not the ripple on the surface or the tiny little bubbles it leaves behind. It’s the fact that nothing else happens. “I’m sorry,” he wants to say. “Please come back.” He bites his tongue. What if she hears him? He feels tired. Every one of his muscles aches. Without the woman, all he has left is the pain and the water. Both seem so much clearer now. He climbs out of the mirror and rests, truly sleeps, for the first time in months. Now every once in a while he still climbs back into the mirror. Sometimes he hears her - as if she was calling out to him from deep down. As if her fingertips were just barely scratching the surface from below. He still toys with the idea to jump in and rescue her. But less often these days. He is still haggard, but he remembers lunch now. And Jenny from Legal is looking really attractive these days. Let Go 384 words Oh my God, it’s everywhere. What did you do this time? Did Kevin finally break up with you? Is that-- what are all these shards? So see-through. Looks like you scattered shreds of your dignity all over the place again. This one feels sticky. What-- what’s that yellow goo sticking on there. It tastes like… yeah, that’s self-pity. Disgusting. Of course you cried. Of course. I’m really getting tired of this. You can’t just have one good year? Last time it was that cushy office job you bungled because you kept showing up late and, let’s be honest, nobody liked you there, always moping around like they owed you something and forgot to pay. Before that your dad called you a fruity dicklover. Before that you felt fat. It’s never good news with-- oh gently caress, I just stepped into something else. Are you seriously leaving shattered pieces of heart around here? That’s cliché, even for you. Have you tried writing poetry again? Did you know it takes less face muscles to smile than it takes to frown? Maybe if you did that more often you weren’t so lonely. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. Everyone’s got problems to deal with, but with you, it’s always about you, isn’t it? I’m sad. Nobody understands me. I wanna throw myself off a cliff some days. Would you like to spend time with someone like that? Didn’t think so. I like you dude, I really do. But every other day it feels like I show up right after your inflated ego has popped again and the walls are plastered with bits of self-loathing and envy looking like a Scottish kilt from the inside. I don’t know about you but I can think of better places to spend my evening. So I’ll take all these pieces, one last time. I’ll pick them up for you, and put them in this nice little bowl over here, you know, the really thick, foggy one that says ‘DENIAL’ in bright bold letters. And then I’ll leave you for a while. Go on a nice little vacation. And next time I come back, I hope you got this poo poo figured out, or at least the pieces are still where I left them. I love you man, I really do, but you’re work.
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Nov 26, 2018 02:06
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A Trophy 476 words Morgan sees a disquieting serenity in the man when he opens the basement door and reveals the huge aquarium, filled close to bursting with a bloated, gelatinous whale. He’d looked attractive enough on Tinder, in a just-came-out-of-the-cellophane sense: young, defined, nice hair. He’d even been bland enough at the bar, adept enough to meet her rhythm, keep her engaged. It’s that good-enough momentum that stops her from bolting, leads her instead down the steps after him, closer to the glass of the tank. The aquarium doesn’t give the whale any room to move, and at first, Morgan isn’t sure if it’s even alive, but sure enough she sees its flesh pulsing on the tank wall, the imprint of its suffering expanding, then contracting. Next to the aquarium is a twin bed, and although there’s a blossoming feeling of revulsion inside her stomach, she has to stifle a laugh. The guy hasn’t even bothered to make the bed, but clearly it’s the destination. The man has stopped talking. He leans against the tank, one hand against the glass, easily slouching, attempting to make eye contact. Morgan clears her throat. “What’s her name?” The man cracks his neck. “Never thought about it,” he says, then approaches Morgan, bending down for a kiss. She’s smacked with a wave of odor as he moves into her face, something like boiled seawater and garbage juice, and she jumps back, startled. “What do most people say,” Morgan asks, “when they see this?” She gestures behind her, and she feels small, aware of the weight of the animal, what must be thousands of gallons of water, the tension of the suffocating mammal against the tank’s glass. She’s stepping back, back toward the stairs, but her steps don’t seem to take her as far, and the stairs seem like they’re in retreat. “A lot of them are speechless,” he says, following her, taking long strides. “But I look in their eyes, and I know they’ve never seen anything like it.” He’s unbuttoning his shirt as he walks, as Morgan grips the railing of the stairwell. “They’re mesmerized.” And then, like a whip, his hand reaches out to the edge of the aquarium, and the glass starts to crack. Morgan runs up the stairs, not looking behind her, hearing the tap-tap-tap of the man’s pursuit, but when she gets to the top and closes the door, the noises stop. She sits on the floor, her back barricading the basement door, but the house is silent. She notices, for the first time, that the man’s walls are blank, no photographs or paintings or even an antique lamp. When she works up the courage, she opens the basement door again, and there’s no tank and no man. Not even the unmade twin bed: just a bare concrete floor, and, somewhere, a whiff of that sickened seasick smell.
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Nov 26, 2018 03:40
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https://thunderdome.cc/?story=6995
Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Nov 26, 2018 04:15
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