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NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Smoke pours into the arena. It has a acrid stench, and a silhouette steps into the center.

"What's going on?"

"I think someone's in all that smoke."

"Is this a new challenger?"

The murmuring of the crowd dies as the silhouette raises a hand, and the smoke settles to the ground. The newcomer is wearing patchwork armor, made from boiled pleather and trashcan lids; they are wracked and rent by countless battles. A thick helmet covers their face, but the challenge is barely muffled.

"I'm the beast residing in the East! The teacher of ESL who'll knock you down to hell! I'll prove that the VPN is mightier than the sword!" The figure pulls off the helmet, dropping it into the bloodstained sand, revealing a mane of dark hair, a feral snarl set in a bearded face and a glare to rival Medusa's.

"I am NotGordian and I am in!"

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Random story and random found object please.

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NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Thunderdome 320: Rewrites

Prompts: Where the Pine Trees Grow by GlassLotus https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598931&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=66
"Dear Sarah" http://foundmagazine.com/find/dear-sarah/

The Wind in the Pines
1250 words

Stephen pulled the car close to the edge of the bluff; dark trees surrounded us and city lights glimmered below us. A mountain breeze blew whispered in the treetops. It carried a thick scent: pine and earth and something wild. I loved it.

“I got you something,” he said. He reached into the backseat of the Charger and grabbed something wrapped in tissue paper. He leaned over and gave it to me, using the motion as an excuse to put his arm around me. I let him, and tore it open, revealing a Megadeth album. He must have mistaken my silence for speechless gratitude.

“I wanted to let you know that I don't have any hard feelings about you not being able to take that joke earlier. I know you get stressed sometimes, so I got you this. Maybe we could listen together?” He gave me a grin that told me everything he had on his mind.

I took his arm off my shoulder and tossed him the CD.

“Stephen, I hate Megadeth. They're awful.”

“Well drat, Zoe, how am I supposed to know that?”

“Because I told you! Twice! All you heard was the name and the opportunity to buy yourself an album.”

“Seriously? More of this? Why can't you appreciate anything?”

I wanted to smell more of the wild air. The car felt too tight around me. I climbed out and shut the door.

I only had a moment's peace before his incredulity gave way to indignation.

“What? What the gently caress Zoe? I took my dad's car tonight! When he finds out he's going to beat my rear end.” I turned around and leaned on the passenger door, looking at him through the open window. The metal was cool beneath my palms.

“Stephen, can't you understand that joke really hurt me? It made me feel horrible and now you're acting like it's all my fault.” I stood and looked away, not letting him see my red face.

“It is your fault.” His tone had a cruel edge that told me what he was going to do a moment before he did it. “If you can't appreciate what I do for you, then I guess you don't need me around.” The roar of the engine came; seconds later I was watching the taillights disappear down the dirt road. I screamed in frustration and saw an owl's luminous yellow eyes emerge in response. It paused for the space of three breaths before gliding into the night, silent as death.

I was alone underneath the full moon. I kicked at rocks and abandoned beer cans, burning off frustrated energy until my head cleared. I was determined to find a ride out.

Barely half a mile down the hard-packed road my feet began hurting. It was almost a mile more before the obvious occurred to me: the loam next to the road looked so soft that I wouldn't have to wear shoes. I took the Converse off and spread my toes in the thick soil. The soil was cold, aching in a way that I didn't mind. The mountain wind returned to ruffle the hem of my dress; it was chillier and still heavy with the wild scent.

I continued for another twenty minutes or so until I came across a small path. It looked easy to walk along in the moonlight, and I took it happily. It snarled along the roadside for a while, but soon it diverged. The path went uphill, and if I wanted to continue home, I would have had to get back onto the hard dirt, but I was loath to step off the path. The mountain wind shook the treetops far overhead, dusting my shoulders with pine needles, and the correct choice was apparent. Into the woods.

I walked until I heard faint music that grew louder and firelight that grew greater. I headed toward it, hoping to find midnight party-goers that might drive me home.

I didn't hesitate before stepping into the clearing. The music stopped and I looked around at the dancers and the musicians. They were frightful creatures, cast half in shadow and firelight, with bulging limbs and distorted faces. A boy with the head of a pike played the guitar; his bulging eyes and glistening, sharp teeth held my gaze. Even so, others were of an unearthly, iridescent beauty that would have shamed any museum.

Perched on a high boulder above the others sat a tall, red-haired woman in a dress of red and orange patches. The patterns in her dress shifted constantly. She seemed a wildfire. Powerful. Dangerous. Ever-changing.

“The mortal has arrived. The coronation will end,” she said, with a voice that echoed on each word. “Tell us of your problems. I am Queen Zirin.” I shuffled my feet and stepped before her.

“Queen Zirin, It's my boyfriend. He abandoned me tonight. More than that he doesn't understand me. I think I still care about him, but I don't know what to do anymore.”

“Ah, a matter of the heart. One can never go wrong with a classic.” She patted the boulder next to her, indicating to sit next to her. It seemed so eerily natural, I could do nothing but scramble up and take a seat. I sat facing the party, my legs hanging over the edge.

Queen Zirin spoke to the crowd beneath us, saying, “As is tradition, the coronation of a new queen will end with the fey advising a mortal. You all have heard her lament. Who will counsel?” Her eyes flashed on the last echoing word, filled with meaning unknown to me.

The crowd murmured and finally one of the faeries stepped forward. He seemed like an old man, even though he stooped underneath a heavy turtleshell. I could not tell if his whiskered features were kindly or grotesque. He spoke at length about forgiveness and redemption, about working together to find common ground between distraught lovers. Queen Zirin listened to the beginning of his speech, but by the end she stared at the dim stars above.

Once she remembered she was holding court, she said “Who else?” A faerie in the form of a handsome man stepped forward. He wore only deerhide trousers and the waning firelight shone on brown owl's feathers twined into his dark hair.

“Listen mortal, hearts pump blood. If he breaks your heart, you should spill his blood.” Queen Zirin grinned at the immediacy of the argument and turned to me.

“Choose, choose which plan to take.” I hesitated. Neither seemed appropriate and I explained this with a stammer. Queen Zirin laid a finger against my lips, before grasping my hand. In a flash, it became apparent who I had to pick.

Truth is obvious and beauty is truth. I pointed to the man wearing deerhide and the crowd cheered. The old man was knocked to the ground, and several faeries seized his turtleshell, hauling him into the darkness against his screams of protest.

Queen Zirin leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. It burned where her lips touched me.

“Now you have the wisdom of the fey. Go and do with it what you will.”

*

I found myself at Stephen's door. The predawn light and my bare, muddy feet told a story, but I could not remember it. I felt my knife's edge against my leg and it reminded me of a sliver of that story. It is rude to receive a gift and not give one in return.

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
The Eternal Conga-Train
121 words


I see the long, slow arc of my future bend before me. It is a procession of figures, each faceless, each nude, each stripped of anything to signify that that creature was once human. I stare at the mangy scalp before me and try to see a face in it.

I once had.

I once was able to turn the pattern of scabs and scars before me into a face, but even that visage is gone. I weep to remember the days of shredded rags! My knees buckle and I see the ground rise. But no, of course not. The faceless hands behind me grab my emaciated shoulders and haul me upright. I will not be allowed to break the chain.

****
Dancing is fun!

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In, random object please.

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
The Pipe and the Crab
628 words

When eyes are carved, the stone begins to see. When a mouth is carved, the stone longs to babble. When the face is finally carved, the stone begins to think, to love, to feel pain.

The Meerschaum pipe felt the cold waters of the North Atlantic lap against its stem. It lay in the wreckage of the ornate box, hoping against unspoken hope it would be snatched up. The sagacious face carved into the front of the bowl saw the horrific angle that the captain's cabin of the HMS Nemesis tilted at. But when the salt and spray rose, the eyes did not blink and the mouth did not gasp for breath.

When the icy water overtook the pipe, it did not flinch. It did not react to the deep, shuddering sound that the ship made when the wreckage finally dropped below the waterline. It had no muscles to move with and no lungs to shout with. It simply accepted the pain, wide-eyed. After all, the pipe expected this. Meerschaum is a stone born from the sea, and to the sea it will return.

***

The pipe knew that it had lain below the tide for years, but the only way to mark time was the growing discoloration of its bowl and the brief lives of hermit crabs that lived in the ruin of the ship. The pipe guessed that it had been more than two hundred years.

The pipe thought a particular hermit crab was considering taking up residence in the bowl. The pipe fervently hoped it would, as no crab had done so yet. The last time the pipe had regularly been touched was when it had been smoked, and that was a rush which had no equal. The interminable dark and cold on the seafloor had long ago blended into a non-sensation; the irregular scrabbling of dark creatures only emphasized the dead lack of what it had once known.

The pipe felt some light probing around the lip of the bowl. Hopefully the crab had come back, ready to accept the pipe as a new home. The pipe felt the pinch of claws inside the bowl, and was elated to feel the crab starting to fit itself into the new space.

With a flash of light, the crab was gone, scuttling into deeper shadows underneath another piece of sunken debris. The pipe could barely make out the source of the light; it was not some unfathomable deep-sea fish, but rather a human figure wearing fins and a tank, exploring the ruin of the ship.

If the pipe had a voice, it would have cried out this:

“Please, take me with you! I want nothing more than to see the surface again.” But of course it had no voice and the diver heard nothing. The light moved on, leaving the pipe in darkness.

The pipe lamented its new situation, the Stygian darkness all the worse for the loss of what could have been. Small currents created in the diver's wake stirred up a film of dirt that settled on the pipe, burying it even further.

Minutes or hours later, the diver returned. If the pipe had a voice, it would have cried out this:

“Please, take me with you! Let me see the sun and other faces again. I must be freed from the darkness.” But the diver passed by.

Some time later, the crab did make the pipe its home. The two spent years traveling together, providing each other with usefulness and happiness. At the beginning, the pipe had felt guilty, as if it had betrayed the crab. It took the pipe a long while to realize that the crab knew nothing of the moment of weakness, of the internal renunciation of seafloor life.

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In for objects round 2!

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Discarded
667 words

Smash. Smash smash smash. Vera looked at the black cockroach paste in the bowl, then sighed and tasted it. A little mealy, but nourishing. Good enough. It went down to her food-stomach, gurgling all the way. None of the filth went down to her real stomach, the one where she kept the last few drops of her identity.

Vera stood, wincing at the creaking in her back and the ache in her neck. She told herself it meant she was still alive, but mostly it just hurt. She lifted the lantern from the hook by the door and paused by the entrance to the doorway. Thirty-five marks. A month longer than she had expected to live. She made another scratch, and stepped down into the main sluiceway.

Three intersections ahead, two to the left, and two more dead ahead. That was where she had built the memorial. It was dedicated to Allie, to LoLo, to Honey, to all the other cosmetic products that Vera knew who been used and discarded.

Vera came here every day to do what was necessary. Right the vase of plastic flowers a rat had knocked over. Wipe the grime away from a salvaged ingredients list. Repress a racking cough-sob at the senselessness of it all.

Vera picked at a red sore on her arm, next to a tattoo of a green succulent. Collecting cockroaches to turn to paste, filtering water and finding oil for the lamp didn't make her that busy. It left her plenty of time to remember.

The couture sunglasses had come home, vaguely red after a day in the sun. She had grabbed someone named Sunburn Quick-Fix. But when the sunglasses tried Sonny, he had come up with nothing.

Sonny's empty, rattling eyes when he had been tossed aside still jangled inside Vera. The sunglasses had pointed at Vera, and she had nervously edged forward. The sunglasses had held out her hand expectantly, waiting for Vera to produce some gel. A dry cough. The sunglasses had rolled her eyes, and struck Vera on the back, hard.

Vera had been shaken and shaken until finally there was enough for the sunglasses to leave her alone.

Vera had sat with her back against the tiled wall, shaking and waiting for the fear to leave her body. It never had.

So in the dead of that night she had fled here, rolled away to the only place where she knew she wouldn't be asked to die in order to heal someone else's burn. The dark and the stink and the loneliness crowded her, but she would live.

She heard a clatter and thump from further up the drains. She picked up the spear of rebar she used as a weapon and stalked carefully toward the source. She had defended herself once before, and it had been an experience she had barely survived.

A bottle of cola lay half-in and half-out of a circle of light cast by a lamp on the street above. Her dark skin was pale from being consumed, and her breath was uneven. Vera tried to lift her, to carry her home, but she was surprised at the other's weight.

“drat! You're almost finished, I should be able to pick you up.” The cola said nothing.

Vera found the strength to drag her back. She laid the cola bottle on the thin mattress made from strips of cardboard and covered her in scavenged, threadbare sheets.

And when the cola seemed to be improving, Vera sang a quiet song to soothe a troubled spirit. She didn't know where she had heard it, the only song she thought she knew was an advertising jingle for Aloe Vera, but her song eased the restless stirrings of the cola bottle.

Vera didn't have to sit and wait to die in the darkness. She didn't have to tremble at the memory of Sonny being tossed away.

She could fight. She could fight for the discarded, the disposable. Vera was ready to change things.

-----

A soothing bottle of Aloe Vera

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I need some redemption! I am in. No flash rule please.

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Leaving a Friend in Paradise
864 words

“Raza, you've really proved yourself on the Titan's Teeth. There'll always be a place for you if you get tired of boundless knowledge.”

The other man smiled, and shifted in his nu-plastic spacesuit, crinkling faintly.

“Sure thing, Captain. I'll send a message if I get tired of all this.” Raza gestured to the land around them. Grey filaments in an arcing blue sky floated above a plain of ochre sandstone mesas, slick after the rain. A raptor bid farewell to the retreating clouds with a piercing cry. Captain Houzi was a spacer, born, bred and grown, but he could see why someone would come here, to a place like this. He didn't mind that the landscape was a memory construction in the heart of an abandoned, mythical library.

Houzi leaned back against a lichen covered boulder, and watched the childlike guardian chase butterflies. Raza leaned with him.

“For a two hundred thousand year old hyper-AI, that thing sure acts like a six year old,” Raza said. Houzi nodded in agreement. The tousle-haired figure seemed intent on catching a yellow, pastel specimen.

The chase went on for longer than Houzi expected, and only came to an end when the boy, extending his hand, tripped headlong over a low shrub, vibrant green against the pale desert floor.

The two men watched the AI come up to them, grinning from ear to ear. Daubs of red mud were in his hair and on his clothes, but the boy didn't notice; he concentrated on the tight seal made by his cupped hands.

The boy held up his joined hands to the men for inspection, and said, “Quick make a wish!” He opened his hands and a bright insect winged its way out, flittering around each of them before disappearing into the scrub.

Raza closed his eyes and seemed to murmur something under his breath, but Houzi was surprised, and did not know what to say.

“That was a really good one, Raza, I could feel it,” the boy said. “I'm also glad that I let you in. I waited nine and a half C14 half-lives, you know. Even for me that's a long time.” The boy looked down for a moment, then up, grinning. “This memory of yours is my new favorite! What's this smell? I really like it.”

“It's creosote; it comes from the bushes,” Raza said.

“Yeah, I can see that now. Complex carbon-based aromatics, I guess.” The boy smiled and did a cartwheel, leaving perfect prints where his hands and feet touched the desert floor. “Wow, are all of your memories going to be this great? Hey, have you been to Huahau Prime?”

“No, I haven't.”

“Oh, don't worry, I have. The algae makes the thousand-year pools glow green and silver under all the moons. They look just like emerald rings. I'll show it to you soon.”

Raza and the boy continued to talk, while Houzi watched. A gust of wind rolled by, carrying more of the pungent scent. It smelled the way he imagined the earth: heavy and deep and timeless.

Not for the first time, Houzi wished he could stay with the other man in the Library. But it wasn't his dream. He could stay here for a while, maybe a year or two, but sooner or later, he would itch to have the controls of the Titan's Teeth under his fingers again, or to feel hard g's while doing a tight braking turn. The Library was a wonder, but it wasn't meant for him.

The child had run off again. It was digging in the mud, eternally curious about a novel plant or mineral.

Houzi could tell it was time for him to go. He thumbed the device to open the door, and watched as a doorway shimmered into being. A hallway tiled in dark stone lay on the other side and cool air billowed in, mingling with the petrichor and creosote to form an almost alchemical mixture.

“It's time for me to go, Raza.” Houzi extended his hand, and Raza clasped it in his own.

“Apologize to the crew for me, tell them I would've liked to have made the rendezvous.”

“Don't worry. I think they'll understand.” Houzi broke eye contact, letting his head fall forward. He felt a heavy touch on his forehead and knew that Raza had done the same.

“Whatever you do, don't let all the endless knowledge fill up your head. Don't forget us.”

“Don't worry Captain. Even after ten lifetimes in here I couldn't forget the journey.”

Houzi saw drops fall to the sand, making a wet pattern on the already dark desert floor. He couldn't tell if they came from him or his friend. They spent a moment longer in the wordless goodbye before one of them broke it.

Silently, Houzi turned and walked to the open doorway. As he stood in the hallway, he glanced back to look at the boy and the man, the ancient font of knowledge and the seeker of the same. They sat on the ground, laughing.

It was hard to leave, but there was no other choice.

-----------------------------
For reference: 9.5 carbon-14 half-lives is around 54000 yrs.

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I am dem-in!

NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
The Truth
962 words

The music of the club around me forms a wall of sound. The lights flash in unison with the rhythm, creating a synchronous blur of purples, blues and reds. All around me are people smiling, holding drinks and dancing easily.

I take a sip of my drink, and lean back in the couch, enjoying the kaleidoscopic lights. My friend seems to be enjoying himself as well; he has a pleasant smile and his head is bouncing along with the beat.

I notice something is wrong when the lights won't switch from red. Everyone in the club appears to be lit from below in a crimson shade that is not sanguine, but sickly. My breath catches when I see the dancers on the floor. They are no longer light on their feet, instead they are thrashing, their jerky movements describing irregular circles and spirals. Their pallid, wasted limbs knock against each other as if a crude puppeteer is imitating the motion of a human body.

I can feel nausea roil in my belly, and it begins to rise. Just when I am about to retch, I hear it. A scream that wails above the bass pouring from the speakers. It does not sound as if it could be made by a human, it is shrill enough to rattle my bones and deep enough to twist my gut. The contours of the scream, the peaks and valleys of the waveform, drill into my skull and writhe inside my head like a worm in rot. My friend does not react, he only sits in place and maintains his rhythm.

I twist around in my seat, trying to find the source of the shriek, but I can find no source. The only figures I can see are the wretched dancers or else the people sitting in the couches, limp like sacks of salt and tallow. If the screamer is still here, they must be hidden, cowering in a dark corner.

For a moment, I want to answer that scream with a shout of my own, if only to let the other person know they are not alone. But I think the better of it, and stay silent.

The music begins to twist, the DJ choosing a track that sounds like a drowning, painful death. It is a complement to the scream that has only just begun to fade; the club is rippling now with a song that must have bloodied the throats of those who produced it. The DJ screams as well, and I can see tears running down his face. I can scarcely imagine the pain he must be in, to be elevated above the red club and see the horrors below.

He lifts his hands in a questioning gesture, and the dancers pause their frenetic thumping to respond with screams of their own. Each person in the packed room joins in, until the multitude of voices form a unearthly chorus, wrung from hundreds of ragged throats. Every person is howling in pain. Every person save one.

I look at my friend, who is just the same as he was moments ago: grinning and bobbing his head. Only now can I see what is really happening. The grin is frozen in place, a dead rictus of a smile, and the bobbing is a tic caused by suppressed pain. I look into his too-wide eyes and see the truth: he would scream if he could.

Again, I stifle a shout of my own, but this time it is because I cannot let myself make the din any louder.

The truth comes to me in a flash. All of these people must have been screaming when I first walked into the club. My friend must have been yearning to scream the ten years that I have known him. Every person that I have ever met has always been screaming, and I was too stupid to realize it.

I startle backward at this realization, scrambling over the back of the couch and knocking over a low table at the booth behind me. Half-full drinks are knocked to the ground and the shattering sound that they produce adds another discordant scream to the mix. It is one that a human could never make, but it sounds just like any broken glass I've ever heard.

I trip over the table and sprawl on the floor, amidst discarded cocktail napkins and other refuse. Every napkin has a face delicately painted on it, but each one is heaving in undiluted fear. I see more twisted visages in scuff marks left on the ground and in the shadows cast by the gawking dancers.

I know that if I were to look at the particles in the air, I would find oxygen, nitrogen and argon each keening their own pain. If I were to continue further, to the electrons and the quarks, I would only find deeper terror. Screaming is fundamental to my world, my universe, and a surety arises in me that it always has been so. It was this way before I was born, and it will be this way after I die.

I relent, and add my own voice to the mix, and this is when the wave of sound coalesces into a thought beating inside my brain. It is the truth of the universe speaking to me, whispering a quiet shout.

You were deluded before, but now are woefully sane. I have pulled the filters from your brain so that you can see reality, the only reality.

I think that I will run out of breath, but my screaming doesn't stop. It doesn't stop when they form a circle around me, and it doesn't stop when the red-eyed paramedics arrive, coated in the death and stink of their other patients.

----

You never heard the screams, but how?

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NotGordian
Sep 19, 2018

THUNDERDOME LOSER
in

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