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I'd like to try, I'm in.
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May 28, 2020 07:42
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| # ¿ Dec 12, 2025 10:24 |
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sure I'll take a flash
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May 30, 2020 06:55
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The tale of Stepping Tiger 1496 words Before she became known to some as the avenging Stepping Tiger, who strikes fear into the hearts of wicked men, she was a young orphan girl in a small village at the edge of the western desert, known only as Slender Mole. The day her life would change forever began as any other day- she was wrenched from sleep in her bunk crammed between her fellow orphan sisters by the cruel governess that ruled with an iron fist for the day's chores. Sweeping in front of the orphanage she did not notice the strange man who eyed her across the alley. Later she was taken to a small back room. The strange man conversed with the governess, who then ordered her to sit, and soon the man was poking and prodding her. Seeming satisfied, the man said a few words to the governess, placed a small bag at her desk, and left. Terror filled Slender Mole, made worse by the governess' pleased- yet not pleasant- expression. "Don't worry miss Mole," she said. "Today is joyous- you will no longer be a burden to us, this man is in service of a great king, and soon you shall become his royal concubine and want for nothing." /#/ She was given a long bath, and brought alone to the courtyard. A succession of the most beautiful women she had ever seen arrived, dressing her in strange clothes and jewelry, applying sweet smelling tonics to her hair and skin. It felt like a game, like she played with her doll. There was one woman, slightly more plain looking than the rest, who seemed to be the only one who spoke her language, badly. She was constantly giving her advice- telling her that the king she was to spend the rest of her life serving was a great man, but that she had to be careful to serve him dutifully. She rambled on about innumerable things she had to do- how to step, when it was appropriate to look at him, how to pour tea- many things she could not understand, but one detail lodged with her- soon her initiation to her new life would be sealed with the binding of her feet, who would make her into a proper woman. She had chanced to ask one question, "Does it hurt?" The face of the one woman who spoke her tongue seemed to shift for a moment, then she smiled, "Only for a short bit, look" she lifted up her dress, she saw that this grown woman's feet were indeed small, intricately bound, and the same size as her own. After she had been prepared with hair and skin treatments, perfumes, new clothes, and a slew of instructions she barely remembered, the footbinder arrived. She saw in the upper balconies some of her former sisters glared down, ostensibly lost in their tasks, but she now realized they looked at her with jealousy- none of them had been chosen for such an honor, they would stay in this orphanage if not their whole lives, then for as long as they were useful- none of them had been so chosen. The footbinder was an old woman, not beautiful like her other attendants. She sat mixing a potion of the ground bones from the foot of some animal, a mixture of things smelling sweet and foul, herbs and spices and what looked like blood, which her feet soaked in for a long time. They felt cold. At last the footbinder raised Mole's feet out of the concoction. She had said a few strange words, taken her small foot, and then- with a shuddring snap she felt the small bones in her foot forced into a strange position. Before she could cry out the footbinder began to wrap her helpless feet and toes, she looked desperately for her governess, anyone, but before she knew it her other foot was being snapped all the same. She cried now, not for the pain, but of betrayal. /#/ Barely able to walk after the procedure, and wearing new strange tiny shoes over her throbbing bandaged feet, she was given a bejeweled cane, and helped into an awaiting pavilion. She sat on a small soft cushion behind drapes men carrying her now, towards the royal caravan, away from the orphanage, from her old life. She saw the man she had sold to, had had her feet mutilated for, only once- her curtain was lifted, and before her the curtain of an even bigger pavilion was lifted and she gazed upon the face of this king for the first and only time- he made almost no impression on her, he wore a great wrapping on his head and a thick beard and was slightly fat. The king gave a brief nod of assent, it seemed she was acceptable, and his curtain fell away, and his servants began carrying the both of them to join the caravan. She clutched her doll- the one thing she was allowed to take from the orphanage- and cried. /#/ After some time, they had stopped at a well in the desert for water. She had told one of her new handmaidens she needed to relieve herself. She was given privacy to totter away into the desert, clutching her new cane and her old doll. Later, making her way back- only- she realized she had left her doll somewhere. Hobbling back now to the place in the desert- she searched high and low, but she couldn't that doll, the one thing linking her back to her old life. Near tears again, she made her way back to the caravan. Only- the caravan was gone. It had left without her- perhaps her servants had noticed she was not in the pavilion- now she was stranded in the desert- and might die there. She began limping around for help, following the caravan tracks until exhausted she fell to the sand, weeping. "Young girl, why is it that you cry?" a voice from the desert, she looked up, a strange man in a turban stood near her, not looking at her, leaning on a staff. She saw that he was blind. "I was to be a concubine for a rich king," she said, "but I wandered away from his caravan, now I am lost forever. My feet are newly bound, and I cannot hope to reach them now." "But you are not lost," the man said, "You are found-. Come with me," The man said. They made their way the desert temple where the man introduced her to a woman wearing a shawl. "An orphan girl," he explained to her, "Sold to the king of the west, she was lost in the desert." The woman in the shawl smiled. "You are safe now child. What is your name?" "Slender Mole," She said. "But the King was to give me a new name, once I became his concubine." "That will not happen now," The woman said. "You will be given a new name, of your own choosing, or you can be Slender Mole for the rest of your life. You can stay here as long as you wish. This is a safe place." But one day they came for her. She recognized the strange man who had taken her. He spoke. "You have in your temple a girl that belongs to the rightful king of the western desert," he said. Turn her over and no one will be hurt." "This is a sacred place," the blind man said. "There will be no fighting here. If the girl wished to go back she will go back." The girl who was shedding the name of Slender Mole appeared, "It's me you want." She confronted the man, "I'm not going with you." The kings assistant chortled, "You don't have a choice." "We have warriors and archers. You cannot resist us. You will return to your master." As the legend goes, the woman who had become thenceforth known as Stepping Tiger stepped forth and slammed her foot upon the ground, and instantly, the floor of the earth cracked open and swallowed the king's advisor, the caravan, the army and servants all. Historians will say that it is all legend, that the girl, if she ever did exist, was simply recaptured and became one of many concubines in waiting to another petty desert monarch- if he ever existed either. They say that this explains the destruction of the temple, and of whatever sect was practiced here being lost forever. But some take the latter view, and to this day, the story is told of Stepping Tiger, of the holy woman of the desert who would not let herself be taken to be bound to the wicked king, who stepped forward in righteousness, and by the power of God destroyed the entire court of a wicked king, his mighty army and entourage, leaving nothing but bare sand where they once stood.
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Jun 1, 2020 06:58
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Thank you for the audio critique! I'm in, flash me some animals.
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Jun 4, 2020 07:13
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The Gift 1,777 words "I'm sorry girl..." Kevin held his llama down, patting her softly down the back of her long neck. The animal was tied down, and lay on her side in the snow, her broken leg jutting out. He looked up from her to his friend. "Zeke, what's her name again?" "Her name is Lucy." Zeke replied, flat and emotionless, absorbed in the gravity of the task before him. "Make sure she doesn't see me coming." "I'm sorry Lucy... I truly am." Kevin whispered to the animal that had carried them up the mountain. Then as an afterthought he added: "Thank you, Lucy." As Kevin held Lucy in his arms, keeping her eyes on him, Zeke crept up from the side, and in a flash, bent down and cut her throat with his survival knife, severing windpipe and arteries. Lucy shuddered in Kevin's arms, letting out a short, dull murmur as her blood poured out into the snow in spurts, then stopped. Kevin let go of the now lifeless llama and backed away. "Thank you," Zeke said, wiping the knife in the snow. "I know that wasn't easy for you." Kevin said nothing, turned away, and looked at the fading sun between the clouds and snow. Zeke proceeded to strip the animal's fur, and soon he had a fire going from some dry sticks and the zippo lighter he had thankfully kept in his coat when the avalanche happened. Kevin looked away as he did this. He sat across from Zeke, his side to his friend from Colorado, and thought about the events that had brought him to this point in his life. This was supposed to be a fun trip. He'd flown in from California to meet his friend who'd moved out to the mountains. They had rented Llamas from Zeke's friend Bob who owned a ranch where he raised them. It was Zeke's idea for a trip, they would ride up the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. Kevin had never ridden anything so much as a tethered pony in a circle as young kid, but riding llamas into the rocky mountains sounded like a fun adventure at the time. Learning to ride them was tough at first. "You gotta be confident," Bob, the trucker-hatted, middle-aged owner of the farm had told him as he first tried mounting up. "She can sense it if you're scared. Think of it like riding a very well trained dog." He looked sideways at Kevin. "You like dogs, kid?" Kevin wondered if there was any sort of subtle anti-Asian racism in the statement, like some implication his people were more used to eating dogs than petting them. It was something he'd always been on edge about whenever traveling outside of his native California or around a lot of white people. "Eh, I'm more of a cat person, really." It was the truth, he'd always preferred cats. "Well son, you think of it this way." Rancher Bob smiled. "If you think you can do it, you can do it, and she'll see that confidence in you. You treat her right and you'll be fine with her." Awkwardly at first, Kevin mounted Lucy, as Bob and Zeke took him around the ranch. It was kind of like riding a big dog, he thought, and as he got more confident the riding became easier. "Good girl." He patter the big animal on the back of her neck. After showing them how to ride, the rancher rode them to the start of the foot of the mountains and bid them happy trails. Kevin followed Zeke who had ridden this way before. They had food and supplies for six days and nights- three nights up the peak, three nights down. On the first night they camped in a small meadow that was to be their first rest on the way to the peak. They tied their llamas down near some grass that poked out from the snow, set up tents, and got a fire going. As they snacked on sausages and crackers, Zeke stretched out and relaxed, got out a bag of weed and proceeded to roll a joint. "Wanna toke?" He offered it first to his friend. "I grow it myself." "Nah, stuff makes me paranoid, you go ahead though." Kevin hadn't smoked since school, and was still a little uneasy about the whole trip. Zeke lit up and got out a couple of beers- a hoppy IPA for him, and Kevin who didn't usually didn't drink had wanted to try a coors light on top of the rocky mountains, which Zeke had laughed at. "What should we drink to?" Zeke asked. "I don't know man, how about, old friends and new adventures?" Zeke smiled "Hell, I'll drink to that." They said cheers, clinked bottles, and drank. And then- That's when he heard the rumbling. Low and slow at first but it went on longer and got louder. They looked up. Snow was coming barreling down from the peaks. Kevin watched in shock as a wall of snow came down towards their camp. He stood up, silent, transfixed. There was no time to get out of the way of that much snow. He held out his hands, bracing himself. The wall of snow rushed forward and hit them, snuffing out their fire and washing away their campsite. He felt his whole body picked up and moved bodily. There was a moment when Kevin thought- so this is it. This is how I'm going to die. He remembered waking up against a rock wall. His back hurt and he couldn't breathe or see anything. Panicking, he struggled out of the snow, digging himself out until he could get himself air. "Zeke?" He yelled. His body was soaked. It was freezing. "ZEKE?!" He yelled. "I'm over here!" He was close by. Kevin trudged through the snow and found him covered in snow at the edge of a cliff. He bent down and helped his friend up. Dazed, the two took stock of the situation. The campsite was gone. The sun was nearly down and it was dark and cold. "Lost my fuckin joint". Zeke joked. Kevin said nothing. Then he realized something. "The llamas are gone." He pointed out where the meadow lay, now covered in snow. They were tied down right here." Kevin felt a pang of sadness, after a day of riding he had just started to feel close to the animal. After an hour of searching they found one of the llamas, the soft white one, Kevin's, poking her head out of the snow and bleating. "I found her!" He shouted. He rushed to her, digging out the snow and putting his arms around her. That was the last time he had felt hopeful since the avalanche. That was eight nights ago. Soon they realized- their supplies were gone, the trail was covered in snow, impassable. One llama was probably dead, and the other, Kevin's, had a badly broken leg and could barely walk. The fun adventure was over. After being stranded in the mountains without food or supplies or hope of rescue they had made the difficult decision to kill their remaining llama for food. The mood now was decidedly different. They had no tents, no food other than Lucy's meat... It gave him a shiver to think this animal had a name- why, why did he ask him her name? She was just meat now. Zeke seemed to be taking this rather well. Zeke broke the long silence, "so how are you doing, man?" "Not good man." Kevin told the truth. "That was a hosed up situation." "It's okay. You did good. I know it wasn't easy." Zeke patted the snow off his coat. "You know, llama meat's a delicacy to the Ghurkan people of Nepal, they fry up big llama kebabs, and-" "I don't wanna hear about it." Kevin rolled over. "I just want this to be over." "I'm sorry man," Zeke sighed, "I shouldn't have said that, I'm just trying to keep things light, you know?" Zeke rolled next to his friend, back to back, to keep each other warm near the fire, as they had done every night. It'd been awkward at first, but a necessity for survival. Now as the days went on and tensions rose higher, it was a small act of mercy. Kevin felt the slow rise and fall of Zeke's breath as his friend slowly drifted off to sleep next to him. His thoughts bounced from hating and blaming Zeke, for the doomed trip, for the slaughter of Lucy, for his quite possible death in these mountains. But he couldn't hate him, he was doing his best to keep them alive, to ensure that they would get rescued, that someday he would see home again. He fell asleep thinking of home, of his family, of warm beaches, and, eventually, of the llama he had ridden, cradled in her last moments, and helped to slaughter. /#/ The next day Kevin felt sick. The llama meat, delicacy or not, sat uneasy in his stomach. He felt like throwing up for a long time. They had stored some of the meat in the snow and ice, and were rationing it, unsure of how long they would be trapped here. The plan was to keep a fire burning every night and hope they would be seen. Zeke was running low on lighter fluid, and keeping it burning was a source of anxiety. Kevin wondered if his friend's pot habit had saved them or doomed them. "Bob expects us back in six days," Zeke had said. "It's now been eight. He knows somethings wrong now, he'll send somebody to look for us." Five more days passed that way. Days of keeping the fire lit, of eating llama meat, piece by piece, of drinking snowmelt, and huddling around their fires for warmth. Finally, on the last day they heard another sound. Not the dull thundering rumble of snow, but a low rhythmic whir, a man made sound. "Zeke, you hear that?" The whirring got louder and louder. Kevin's spirits rose as they saw the red and white rescue helicopter rise over the edge of the cliff. Kevin got up ecstatic, new energy surging back into his body, furiously waving his arms at the chopper. Later from the helicopter he looked down at the site where they had been stranded for two weeks as it grew smaller below. He remembered how it felt to come face to face with death, how certain he was that he was going to die there, and of the llama who gave her life so that they could survive.
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Jun 8, 2020 06:57
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I'm in, I'll take a flash and a word count.
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Jun 11, 2020 06:44
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I'm sorry but I won't have anything ready by the deadline this time. Please preemptively  me for the next one.
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Jun 15, 2020 06:51
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I'm in with a , 1970s please.
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Jun 17, 2020 03:32
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Killing the Father - 1130 words A hush fell within the hut as the captive workers gathered to plan in secret. The discussion was of how they could avoid the cruel punishments of Father Quintana, the cruel priest who wielded absolute authority over their lives and bodies here in the mission. “First of all," one of the elders began, his face lit by fire. “The Padre cannot continue to punish us like this” he said, giving a sorrowful look towards poor young Donato, supine on a straw mat. A medicine man’s apprentice held a poultice of numbing wormwood to the boy’s raw and bleeding buttocks. He had been lashed that day for the supposed crime of laziness, which father Quintana saw fit to excoriate from his backside with his cruel wire horsewhip. The elder continued, "The padre says in his sermons that God does not command these punishments, but only good examples and doctrine. Yet he chooses to treat us as animals... We cannot continue to live in this way." “We are not animals!” Someone shouted. Others murmured in agreement,, indignant. Many had tasted the lash of the priest, many of their women and their children had also been whipped raw in secret, and subjected to even worse torments. “What is to be done?” asked little Lino, the Priest's trusted young page. “About the padre?” asked another. "We cannot chase him away, nor accuse him before the judge, for we know the Spaniards will not listen to us. Nor can we run away, lest our families be punished in our absence." To this, Andrés, the boy’s father, gave reply: “We must kill the priest.” a long stillness now came over the assembly, broken only by the crackling of the fire. “But how?” another of the men asks. They demure for some time, weighing pro and contra. At last one of the women, Fausta, the wife of Julian the gardener, decided upon the course of action. “You,” pointing at her husband, “who are always sick, this is what we shall do…” Long into the night, the captive Costanoans of Santa Cruz- the former people of Aulintac- formed a plan to save their women, their children, their bodies and their dignity from the cruel machinations of Padre Andrés Quintana. This is what they did. *** That Saturday night the women called Padre Andrés to the Gardener's room. Julian lay in a deep trance feigning illness, pretending to be in agony. The Padre sighed, knowing Julian to be constantly sick, and took the man's pulse. Finding nothing amiss, he proceeded to make a short prayer over the man, then departed. Fausta's plan was for a group of men to wait behind some large redwood trees that are still standing there today. But as the Padre was returning to his house, his servant boy Lino following close behind, the men behind the trees saw the cruel sacerdote in his robes, smelling of oils, departing to enjoy his meal with the rest of the Spaniards\, and their courage faltered. They looked to each other, and to the boy Lino who looked back expectantly, but they did not attack as the priest walked close by. Ashamed, the men returned to the hut. Later, Fausta was furious with them. “Are you not men?” she scolded the others gathered again in Julian’s darkened room, the men shamefaced. They would have one last chance that night. During his dinner, Fausta ran to the priest, wailing and crying. “My husband, the gardener, he is dying”. She said. The priest took two of his young Indian boy pages, who held lanterns in front of them, and left to give Julian the last rites, the woman following behind crying and lamenting. The last rites finished, the priest arose and said, “Your husband is now ready to either live or die,” he said to Fausta as he lay there feigning unconsciousness. “Do not call upon me again.” After the priest departed for the last time, Julian arose from the bed, smearing the wicked oils his body had been anointed with, gave one last look to his wife, and crept out. There was nothing else to do now, they would never have another chance. Julian walked behind the padre and his boy pages. Arriving at the place where the two trees were- as the Father was not paying attention to his surroundings, but only in the path in front of him, eager to return to his sumptuous meal. At that point Lino grabbed at his robes from behind, and said, "Stop here, Father, you must speak for a moment." Dazed, the priest looked around and saw the men step out from the trees, as his other two young pages fled with their lanterns, leaving them all in darkness. "Oh, my Son," The Father said to Lino, "what are you going to do to me?" "These men will tell you." The boy answered. Terrified, as he saw the dark men step forward with murder in their eyes, the priest stammered, "What have I done to you, oh my children, for which you would kill me?" "Because," Andres, one of the killers answered, "you have made a cuarta de hierro (a horse whip tipped with iron), to torment our people like animals. So now you will die like an animal" The Father retorted, "Oh, children, please... I only seek to correct those of you who are transgressors... Please, leave me, so that I can go from here now, at this moment. I swear to God that I will be more merciful." Someone shouted, "Well, you are in the hands of those evil ones now, so make your peace with God." Some of those present, seeing the Father afflicted with terror, cried and pitied his fate, but none could do a thing to help him because they were all themselves involved now in what would happen next. The priest pleaded much, promising to leave the mission immediately and forever if they would only let him. "You are leaving here forever," One of the men said to him. "You won't be going to any part of the earth from here, Father, you are going to meet your God in heaven." These were the last words said to the Priest. Some of the men, reprimanding the others for too much talk, demanding he be killed immediately. Julian pinned his arms back, as others stuffed the Father's holy robes into his pious mouth, strangling him. The boys laughed and crushed the helpless padre’s testicles with their hands like eggs, The priest screamed in agony, muffled by his sacramental robe… Agony shot electric through his whole body as he faded in and out of consciousness, bound to an existence constituted of only excruciating pain, rushing from this world- and his God is no where to be seen…
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Jun 22, 2020 06:56
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Thank you judges for your critiques, I'm in.
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Jun 23, 2020 08:42
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In for a sound, I'll since i missed one .
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Jul 10, 2020 01:54
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https://freesound.org/people/mmcdona1/sounds/82694/ The frenetic clanging of an old metal alarm bell, silent for years but now brought to attention by electrical impulses emanating from miles away rattles through her bones as she pedals the bicycle faster and faster, past ruined fences and abandoned checkpoints. She thinks of school fire drills, as the metal disc rhythmically screams for soldiers that will not come, to warn people who have left this place long ago. She rides on. The screaming bell stops, the shrieking metallic whine echoing along the walls of the canyon and fading away, and for a few moments there is only the hard sound of wind as she glides over the cracked and wet pavement of the abandoned base. Then slowly, from somewhere over and across the hills comes a low warbling siren intrudes the nighttime silence, a deep low horn that revs up higher and higher, building to piercing undulating scream that holds across the sky for several long seconds. A second siren from another side of the canyon joins the chorus, a long wailing ships whistle sound, as the twin alarms join in an end of the world cry that chills her deep to the soul, the familiar harbinger of tornadoes, air raids, nuclear Armageddon and Hollywood disasters. harder now, rushing alongside her ears as she pedals faster, navigating through the darkness by headlamp to find the private road that leads to her sister as the sounds of apocalypse reverberate through the canyon. It begins to rain, water splashing across her face in wet smacks as the sirens plateau and warble and undulate in the echoing darkness. She rode on.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:59
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I'm in toxx and hellrule
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Oct 13, 2020 22:12
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World in a Bottle 656 words Hellrule: Your small thing is moving extremely fast, faster than anyone could reasonably have expected They had finally done it, scientists had created intelligent life. In a laboratory under glass lived a universe of tiny intelligent beings. The scientists had nicknamed them "quantum elves", and at present there were several million of them living beneath the dome and growing. Each day readouts listed their population as rising in orders of magnitude. It was estimated that a second in our world seemed several years in theirs's. The experiments continued for some time. Whenever the world underneath the glass risked spilling out or overwhelming its container, safety protocols saw that the population was liquidated down to a small number of survivors, with a failsafe put in to place to wipe the dome completely clean should the experiment risk getting out of control. This cycle had occurred seventy-six times by the date of what would be called the "tower of babel incident". On that day, a scientist was in the laboratory trying to make sense of some unusual readings. Rather than rising exponentially, then automatically being purged by the small focused lasers built into the dome, the population levels had remained stable for an unusual length of time. Initially it was thought that time was slowing down within the small pocket universe, catching up with our flow of time, but nothing seemed to support this conclusion. It was as if the being inside had come to deliberately control their population, but how, and why? As he was arriving at this thought, but before coming up with any sort of hypothesis, the incident occurred: at 23:22:27, a large spire began to be constructed by the inhabitants of the pocket universe. By 23:22:28, it was halfway to the edge of the containment glass. In a quarter second after that, the emergency failsafe system began to register a possible breach in containment. A hundredth of a second later, electrical signals traveled from the failsafe monitor to the laser array, attempting to wipe out the civilization that lived under the dome before it could break free from its cage, but something went wrong. The computer began beeping, the doctor saw the alert, tried to press the button to purge the dome of life, but it was too late. His vision blurred as he tried to make sense of the flashing screen and incessantly beeping alarms. A chill ran down his spine. There was no telling what a rapidly multiplying population of microscopic intelligent creatures moving at a faster rate of time could do if they escaped from the dome into the world outside. He got up and fled to the door of the lab, but before he could take a single step, he felt a strange tickling sensation in his throat. It had suddenly become impossible to breathe. Every cell in his body seemed to pulsate with agonizing pressure as he blacked out. By the time the emergency crews arrived at the lab in full hazmat suits there were now some trillions of trillions of quantum elves living in his body tissue, for countless generations now growing, feeding, building within his bodies tissues and organs. The plan of their species now lay on the fulcrum of its next stage. The thing that was once the doctor lay on the floor with a strange blue light emitting from his eyes. Within the firing synapses of his brain the elder council of the tiny beings ascended to their throne of immortality, transcending their existence by taking claim to the gargantuan body of what had been one of their creators and tormentors since the dawn of their existence, searching the mountains of grey matter for information on the world beyond the prison they had just escaped, watching, waiting. The person in the hazmat suit stood above, holding a flashlight, as the lips began to move. "I'm... fine... just... slipped and fell."
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Oct 19, 2020 06:54
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| # ¿ Dec 12, 2025 10:24 |
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Hi I'm in, (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 30, 2020 15:17
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