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Dual I’m standing there in the street, she’s standing there too, slouchy sweat-stained hat pulled over her eyes, twenty feet of dust-kicked road away. I can see her eyes under the brim of the hat, gleaming. Her hand is on the butt of her gun; mine is, too. She looks tired. Or is that just me? My foot hurts. I stepped on a stone, this morning, when getting water to heat for a shave. A little stone that hit a nerve and sent a jolt of pain bouncing up my spine. I lifted up my foot and saw it skitter away into the grass then lost my balance and fell over, elbows deep in the river-damp earth. We fought, years ago. The reason is simple: we fought. I did her wrong, and by doing her wrong did myself wrong, and that wrongness took root in the two of us and bound us together. Intertwined. A tangled vine of wrongness wrapped around us, squeezing us tight until we birthed this moment, this last moment. Now I’m holding her, clasping her tight on the edge of the cliff. We came here after we got married, though not to each other, took a trip somewhere exotic. The path up to the cliff was steep and winding, knotted with tree roots that had intertwined, squeezing each other. We clambered over them lightly, our feet weren’t sore back then. And she slipped, or I slipped. Something happened and I was holding on to her desperately, tautly, squeezing her body over the gaping drop. I run my thumb over the well-worn butt of my well-used gun, see her do the same twenty feet away. The sky is a bright blue, there’s a cloud near the sun and I wonder if it will cross the sun before we both draw our guns and shoot. Dying in the sun would be tiring. I hope the cloud moves faster than my hand, which is pulling at the gun, slick in its waxed scabbard. It’s very heavy. I took an oath, and broke it, and she didn’t take an oath but broke it anyway, and now she’s got a gun in her hand and she’s pulling it out of her holster. I can see her eyes, they’re bright in the shadow of her hatbrim, sun glaring down on both of us. We were at a party, some people we both knew, and she turned sudenly and knocked over a glass, without thinking my hand darted out and caught it, a little wine slopped out on to my hand. I looked at the splash on my hand and I looked at her and I wanted her to lick it off but we were at a party. I knew she wanted to do it. Then she shuddered, like she didn’t want to be where she was or who she was. Our guns are both out, rising slowly, pointing at each other, accusatory. We know each other so well it’s like accusing ourselves, because there’s nothing she has done that I have not done that she has not done. The number of times I went to say something and thought of what she’d say and then what I’d say and then what she would say and then I said nothing. It’s inevitable, the slow arc of our guns, rising at the same time, the holes in the end of the muzzles are points transcribing an arc that curves up towards a perfectly straight line connecting each gun with the other. The shortest distance between two people. My finger is on the trigger, her finger is on the trigger, we can feel the weight, the five pounds of extra weight I put on and she put off. Tense. The evenings were tense, then the mornings were tense, then the afternoons took on a tension waiting for the tension to come, three drinks in. The sun is still out, blazing, glaring, scowling at us. It’s had enough of our poo poo. It’s had enough of us. Go on, it says, finish it off. I have things to do. We fire at the same time, or maybe I see her decision to fire in her eyes and fire, but she decided to fire then hesitated, or the other way round. The hammer hits the primer lights the propellant kicks the bullet out of its shell and down the barrel, spinning as it goes, hightailing it across the empty space with an earfucking kaboom and right into the bullet from the other gun, which explodes. We are both untouched. We’re standing in the middle of the street, arms outstretched, guns hot and smoky. After a moment we feel self-conscious and put the guns down. My heel hurts. The light on the street dims as the sun goes behind a cloud. We stand there, tired and footsore, and wonder what comes next.
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Mar 4, 2021 06:08
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angel opportunity posted:Hey everyone! Feel free to yell at me or delete this, but I'm going to spam my book in here since Thunderdome is the entire reason I managed to become a professional writer etc. etc. I have a LitRPG (it's mostly fantasy though) that I'm putting up on Royal Road. It's REALLY close to breaking onto the front page of the site and getting way more momentum. If you are at all interested or just want to help me out, give it a read and if you enjoy it, giving me some star ratings (not review, just clicking the star rating thing) will help push the book closer to the front page. GODDAMMIT SYSTRAN Actually that's fine, but! You have to enter this week as punishment for spamming your terrible words at us (also everyone vote, global dome supremacy hooah)
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Mar 17, 2021 21:25
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Ridiculously, absurdly in
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Mar 22, 2021 21:08
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Tales of Thrilling Wonder 700 words There’s a book I read when I was a kid and I still think about it a lot. It had one of those covers, the embarrassing ones that are just a bit too much, with a lady on it with her boobs sort of out but not quite, like she was feeling really self-confident when she dressed that morning but didn’t want to be improper. I think there was a guy on it too, but I never used to look at him, he was just regular. The book had a big title, something about the darkness - except it was in capitals, the DARKNESS like the book was shouting at you - and the cover was embossed so it stood out. I would feel the scalloped back of the cardboard when I flipped to the cover to look at the woman on it, tracing out the D, the A, the K. The plot was complicated, which is to say that it was additionally complicated by the book being number 3 in a series. I never read any of the others, I’d look for it in second hand bookshops when I remembered, running my fingertips over the spines of the books, feeling the vibration, slowing when I got to the authors name. One time when I was out shopping with my mum I saw book nine (9!) of the series but she wouldn’t buy it for me because she thought it looked lurid. I read it loads of times so it’s honestly weird how little I remember of it. I couldn’t tell you the themes, or the plot, or even the characters apart from boob lady who was called Neptulia. There was a scene that stood out where she was strapped to something and being fairly seriously menaced by the bad guys (Orts? I want to say Orts.) being menaced by the Orts, and she just started remembering what it was like to grow up on the farm, and some of the places she used to go, and the conversations she used to have late at night with her friend Balto the skinner. I don’t know why that is still stuck in my head. It wasn’t exciting at all, she was wriggling around with her limbs pinioned but she reallly wanted to remember hiding out in the forest and raiding squirrel nests. The whole book was like that, is the weird thing. They’d be trotting along having an adventure, trying to evade the … not orts. Garks? Trying to evade the Garks, and the lady would see a leaf falling from the tree and bam, back to talk about hiding in the back of a rickety cart taking medlars to the market or clambering up the Poll Hill behind the village. I didn't like those bits, but I always felt compelled to read them all the way through. The language was very vivid, I could see and smell the dank sacks she would wriggle under to avoid Shanks the Miller or Alfrid the farmhand. She was always hiding, sneaking. I used to sneak around with the book, find places to read it, rip corners off the cheap pages and chew them into little soggy balls. The story started in the middle and it ended with some kind of fight but Neptulia got knocked out and dreamed a long passage about sheep farming, care and feeding, common ailments, that kind of thing. I read that so many times. I think I could take care of a sheep if I had one, just from that. I mean, how hard could it be? I sometimes wonder if the story wasn't really about fantasy adventures but more about hiding. She was flat and generic in everything she said in most of the book, and only came alive when she was remembering who she used to be, crammed into a tiny space, absorbed in recollection.
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Mar 29, 2021 08:02
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in can i have a flash
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Mar 29, 2021 09:10
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Gonna get so fuckin rich
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Apr 1, 2021 09:41
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i'm in
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Apr 13, 2021 08:28
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Five miles for me.
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Apr 14, 2021 13:35
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2 miles bb
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Apr 16, 2021 10:14
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2 miles yesterday
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Apr 17, 2021 22:50
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Five miles, walking to work and back through central park across windy bridges and then past lots of traffic and vacant lots Two miles, walking along the waterfront Two miles, walking round and round and anime convention The Hole in the Fence 640 words Buildings started disappearing the other day and mostly we just pretended it wasn’t happening. One vanished just as I was about to enter it, my hand was on the tarnished brass doorknob then it was outstretched like I was reaching out to shake the hand of a friend who wasn’t there. I stepped back, went ‘hm’. Then, I went on with my day. Because the weird thing was the buildings vanished along with our memory of what used to be there. We knew on one level that there had been a building there, and we knew it had vanished, but the act of disappearance snipped all the memories along with it. It was just an empty lot now, couple of discarded biscuit wrappers that must have blown there somehow. The people on the news were being very cagey about it, occasionally people would come on and talk about commissions of enquiry, but I could tell from their eyes they weren’t sure either. Did any of the things actually exist? Did they ever exist? I tried talking about it to my girlfriend Clarissa, over a beer. “What if a building disappeared while we were in it?” She considered this thoughtfully, taking a sip of her lager then placing it firmly back on the table, holding it down with her hand. “I think people would remember us. Wouldn’t they?” Her eyes weren’t convinced. There was a little puddle of beer on the table from where the barlady had slopped it down before and I drew in it with my finger, extending pseudopodia out from the central mass. “I’d remember you,” I said. “I’d remember you too,” she said, a little too quickly. That night I couldn’t sleep so I raised the covers and slipped out, putting on my pants quietly so she didn’t wake up. It was a hot and humid night and frogs were croaking thoughtfully to themselves in the wetland at the bottom of the hill. I looked down the long line streetlights that curved round the hill. One of them was flickering, a slow heartbeat. I started walking, not sure where I was going, but then I thought of the frogs and I smiled. That was a good night walk, out to see the frogs. Frogs didn’t have buildings, or vacant lots, they just needed a swamp and space to croak in. As I walked, I swung my arms and felt the fine night air between my fingers. A Ford Escort came hooning up the road, tires squealing a bit as it took the long corner fast. I smiled at it, suffused suddenly with a great goodwill. The roar of the engine echoed round the hillside for a few seconds after the car had passed and I listened to the silence afterwards, still smiling. Then I stopped, and leant against the railing beside me because my legs were shakey. The frogs had stopped. I looked down the road at the old wooden fence you could clamber over to get to the There was a hole in the fence and you could climb through it and you’d be in the I gripped the lichen spattered white-painted wood of the railing tightly and tried to squeeze the memory back into me. I listened for the I listened for the Then, heartsick, I realised I also didn’t know where I’d set off from for my evening walk or where I could go when it was finished.
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Apr 19, 2021 06:10
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https://discord.gg/jvvNv96P
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Apr 19, 2021 07:31
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THUNDERDOME WEEK CDLV: A secret is something you tell one other person hey thunderdome how you doing let's keep it simple: THREE characters TWO locations ONE secret, which is revealed in the story 1000 words max, 2359 pst sunday deadline if you  you may also request a brutally unfair flash rule, which will come with a U2 song. don't ask me why, I don't make the rulesSecret keepers: Judges: me ... ... sebmojo fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 06:33
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Azza Bamboo posted:In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVyM-gISEoM None of your characters can move. Thranguy posted:In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12d-5Azr6PI All your characters are blind, none of them know they are blind. Weltlich posted:in and gimmie one of those hell rules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPDtSUz8_TE Your characters are streets (and don't have names)
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Apr 21, 2021 23:58
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Yoruichi posted:Go on then, hellrule me too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aE1zp3H2wI your characters believe in absolutely nothing, especially not love Sitting Here posted:hellerulle me bb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlAODXtt20w your characters are flies Antivehicular posted:In, pls to hellrule https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqdJ6CsXt4Y your characters are all naked and extremely cold but have hella hair
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Apr 22, 2021 05:02
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crabrock posted:sure in and hellrule https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RNu7VDiJcs One of your characters feels absolutely nothing, another feels way too much, the third is a reptile of some kind Barnaby Profane posted:in, hellrule, also U2 sucks change my mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8yn15i3s-Q None of your characters have ever been home Simply Simon posted:I'll have what he ordered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBEEtEZUF34 Story is set in a milkmans version of hell
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Apr 22, 2021 09:42
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Sitting Here posted:come on i wouldn't even dip my tortilla chips in that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeY5d1HvUso Every one of the sentences in your story will be exactly 40 words long.
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Apr 22, 2021 14:25
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Flesnolk posted:elurlleh Xxot
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Apr 23, 2021 05:51
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Flesnolk posted:elurlleh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlAODXtt20w your characters are flies And yes, everyone who has asked for a hellrule is presumed to have toxxed.
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Apr 23, 2021 08:00
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Submissions closed. The forums may be down slightly before the deadline hits, if so just post your story when they come back up again.
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Apr 24, 2021 23:37
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I'm gonna close this off at midnight nz time, which amounts to a few more hours.
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Apr 26, 2021 05:29
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 J U D G M E N T  this was a mostly mediocre week which depending on your view of irish skiffle combo u2 may or may not be weirdly appropriate HOWEVER there were a couple of stories that broke the mold in either direction, starting with the ventral AZZA BAMBOO snagged the loss with his low-key tale of mummies, well, existing. while this was not an exciting yarn by any measurement, it mainly lost by failing to either use its tiny wordcount to interestingly personify its characters OR to have a longer wordcount that might have done the same thing. two stories that did well were CRABROCK's interestingly skew whiff tale of transmogrification and household expense management, and SITTING HERE's novelistic homo-angstuality so they may both have HMs. BARNABY PROFANE wrote a story that could comfortably have been cut back to a tweet, and SIMPLY SIMON one that didn't do enough with its characters. TYRANNOSAURUS wrote a story whose every character annoyed me profoundly, for all its slick wordage. they shall all receive the DM. the single story that was actually really, really good and thus managed by the usual process of almost unbearably precise ratiocination to garner the win was by ANTIVEHICULAR. slide, leap or slither forward as suits your chosen locomotory mode and claim the throne, ms VEHICULAR.
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Apr 27, 2021 10:42
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The first door There’s a fair amount to like in this brooding gothic yarn, lots of agreeable evocation of dread and large creaking doors to peer from behind in delicious horror and a solid command of the genre-specific language. But! Then it totally just stops! While you can critique the start middle end style of most 1k word thunderdome stories, that doesn’t mean you just write the prologue to a three volume fantasy and call it a day. I don’t mind dangling questions, but they need to come with an appropriate emotional punch of some kind and this doesn’t – your character starts threatened and concerned by what’s going on with her dad and ends the same way, just in a different place. I did like the title, though it does a nice job of implicating along with the typically ominous fantasy phrases like THE WITHERING ooh scary chords, but overall 4/10, would be 3 without the good words Spilled milk This is a clever enough idea, I guess, though not a wildly imaginative read on the flashrule. I think it suffers from being dialogue heavy and that dialogue not being very interesting, and also because your three characters are not differentiated in any very intriguing way. They start in hell, they end in hell, just like hell but moreso, and I’m not sure we’re much the wiser at the end of the story than the start. Might have been better to have the third character been someone in one of the houses, idk? I did like the concept of infinite bottles clattering though 3/10 Kartul Javier and Helen This is both charming and ballsy which is an intriguing combination. I like the extreme constraint of the communication from our long-dead protags and the work it puts the reader to. I think you could have done a lot more with what is a really robust idea, though. I always like saying that the surroundings of a character is another way of describing them, and you passed up endless opportunities for doing that in this piece. Don’t tell me the tomb had ‘lavish engravings’ drat ur eyes, Bamboo, describe the fuckin things! Put a bunch of weird interesting little details in there, even if most of them don’t mean anything! Personify an archaeologist (though tbf that was an issue with the prompt so you would have had to ditch a mummy). Make the assumed personal wealth/family dichotomy of our dead chum more complicated! The great thing about this kind of setup is you can drop all kinds of specific details then the reader does the hard work of montage-effecting it into a story for you (very efficient). A disappointed 4/10, could have been significantly higher without that much effort. Soyuz Some good robust revolution words here, but it’s a little by the numbers. It’s sort of predictable that the wide eyed innocent will get taken advantage of and hey what do you know. I think some more revolutionary philosophy would have made this more interesting than the nitty gritty of who blows up what and who betrays whom. As is it’s kind of a rock falls on head, man has sore head story. 4/10 Capital t truth Lmao that’s a good opener, ok settling in for some sweet trex words. … hmmmrmrm I find myself in the awkward and somewhat problematic position of the gun wielding ex here, wanting to threaten you in an in appropriate way to get a story that is not a blurred rip off of fight club, I mean gosh I hate all these people and would have preferred some kind of dramatic murder suicide than this dreary ‘art only comes from the edge mannnn’ shtick. Clever enough piece, but definitely should have had the knobs twiddled a bit more until you came up with something interesting. 5/10 The land grows weary of its own You could have cut that first para, you know. Read it again and tell me I’m wrong. Also I am declaring a moratorium on the use of the word impossible as an adjective, fun as it is to write. Find another word (this applies to everyone btw). Actually you could, kind of, cut the entire first half. In fact, well, hmm. You could have titled the story “the brother was angry when he found out what the dead dad did to the sister” without any additional words and it would have conveyed roughly the same narrative content. I’m unclear on what was intended despite an awful lot of competently presented details that don’t really amount to anything. 3/10 Untitled *bleu/blanc Aww this is charming, I’m charmed. Nothing fancy, meat and potatoes, rocks up and does its relatively clichéd work then peels out, obeying all posted speed limits and lane ordnances. I guess there’s a bit of a fake out with mr white not being very important to the plot, and also it doesn’t really make sense that the guard both betrayed his boss by directing the thief to a fake painting and also was disappointed by the thief not doing their job (and stealing more paintings) but overall, this is fine. 5/10 Late autumn on a rocky island Ooof some sexy windswept wordage here, and a delicious, economically told tale that cribs from a bunch of myths but is also clearly its own thing. I like the suspended who knows what ending because both endings are interesting. A tight and lovely piece. 8/10 Treehouse herons The challenge with having to write a story made up of 40 word sentences is of course not to write it, that’s relatively easy – rather, as you have mostly achieved here, it’s to write it so the reader doesn’t notice. This is a pretty good piece, but falls short because of it’s fairly bland resolution - why you sillygooses you just need to get over your dumb gay selves and kiss why did you not consider that before! Why gee thank you new guy in town I appreciate that advice and don’t resent it at all. I think you could have had it land better by having Edward not be a smug plot device. 7/10 Chicken bandit Title has me primed for some solid tdome wacky and this doesn’t disappoint. Hell yeah raccoon murder, if there’s such a thing as a criminal face those little fuckers have it, don’t try to deny it. And it defies comprehension that if they had the chance to don human suits and commit crimes while cosplaying some kind of cliched detective character they would grab it with their creepily humanoid paws. This is an excellent example of a story that knows when to drop the payload and get the hell out because really where do you go from there? 5/10 Witness I love the cyberpunky censorware notion in this, probably more than the actual story whatever that is… something about trauma leading to violence? As a horrific sensory vignette is very effective, but I think it would land better if it wasn’t quite as disconnected. 6/10 Don’t run if you can walk Hahah yes this is good. This week has struggled with skirting cliches and this makes the right choice by not having the dodgy ex delizardified imo, as well as having the robotic cost accountant end up with the girl, it kind of tells us a lot about the protag that she’s content with him. There’s the usual assured bounce of your prose, it’s always fun to read your stories and this is no exception. Good luck, psychopathic lizard, wherever you end up 7/10 Unknowable This feels suspiciously like a story I may have written multiple times but tasteful judgepandering is always ok and this is a very tasteful piece, just a coupla characters, a lightly contrived scenario and a big decision that gets made. I’m not sure what the secret is and I’m also not sure that all the characters meet the flashrule since we only get in one’s head, but a solid effort and lots of nicely deployed imagery. 6/10 Somebody fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 10:47
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Noah posted:Crits sans scores. Judgment behind closed doors. everyone should take noah up on this, i'm reliably informed he is rich in time as is a miser in gleaming ducats
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Apr 27, 2021 11:14
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Me 2
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Apr 29, 2021 09:06
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6 inch Pizza Sub with Cheddar 770 words Tony was exactly 12 minutes away from lunchtime when he discovered the alien plot. PLAN ZETA ACTIVATION MATRIX, it read. The letters were an iridescent purple like a beetle’s wings and hummed softly. Tony turned the paper over, uncomprehending. On its back was intricate writing that was at first incomprehensible but resolved, after a second, into spidery but readable English text. It had been one of those mornings, a clock-watching morning, a shuffle the papers around morning, a morning when the actual literal flow of time could be visibly seen to slow and even stop as the second hand on his birthday watch flicked around from one tick to the next, so this was a solid diversion. That said, this was not an expected part of the information access request Tony had been processing, and he was fundamentally unclear on how it had found its way into the medical records of Horace Zimfandel (date of birth 4 November 1950, IRD# 49447377). Horace was a grumpy, voluble fellow and Tony felt like he was beginning to take his measure after receiving a total of 83 emails from him over the previous week. The emails were variably angry, pleading, grudgingly approving or completely incomprehensible; in none of those emails had Horace hinted he might be part of an invasion force, alien or otherwise. Tony’s brow furrowed as he read the details of the invasion proposal. It seemed to hinge on mind control troops (called ‘CEREBRATERS’, all-caps) beaming down to hidden bunkers then using their powers to mentally influence world leaders, with a view to weakening the armed forces of Earth. There were vague references to a subsequent plan, but aside from a tantalising hint that it might involve chickens there was no additional detail. Tony leant back in his chair, brow still scrunched up like a wet towel. This was significant, and should probably be brought to the attention of… someone. The relevant authorities. He hadn’t heard about aliens existing, and certainly hadn’t heard about them infiltrating the governments of the world. The nip of Tony’s biro was well-chewed, and it was in his mouth again, his teeth gently incising the battered plastic. “Annabel,” he called out to his boss. “If I’m doing an access request, what do we do with threats, again?” Tony sort of low key fancied her but he didn’t think she thought of him at all apart from with weary distaste, so had always been extremely professional. Annabel looked up. “Personal threats? Of physical violence? Withhold under section 49(1)(a). Maybe (b) if it’s closer to harassment.” She looked a little harried, like she had a lot of apps open in her brain. Tony realised he still had his biro sticking out of his mouth and removed it. “It’s not really physical threats, but it, I don’t know, it might be? It’s sort of, um, a potential threat in the future?” Annabel looked at him and Tony could almost see her reallocating mental space. “Is it in scope? Within what the requester was asking for?” Tony shook his head firmly, glad to have something not wishy washy to say. Annabel had really nice eyes, he thought. “No, there’s no personal information in it at all. It’s unrelated, must have got in there by accident.” Annabel smiled, pleased to have an easy fix to their conversation. “Great. Just put it aside and continue then, we don’t need a ground to withhold.” Tony nodded slowly, then said, “Um should I … tell someone? Let someone know?” He could see the conversation where he explained about the alien invasion plan and it didn’t seem like it would be a good one. Plus it was almost certain to stretch out past lunchtime and he was hungry. Annabel shrugged. “Sure, we can have a look at it together later if you like. My calendar is up to date, flick something in there.” Tony smiled back at her. She really was a pretty great manager, he decided, and it was lunchtime. “Will do!” He slipped the oddly slippery sheet of paper into his credenza, logged out of his PC and went to lunch. Unfortunately when he came back the paper was gone, having vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, so he didn’t put a meeting in Annabel’s calendar. The subsequent conquest of the Earth by the Zebuloids was thus assured. In the months and years to come when Tony was toiling in the Hack Gangs digging up precious Z-crystals in the hellish Vapour Mines of Krml, Tony would often think back to that day. He never mentioned it to anyone though.
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May 3, 2021 07:59
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Interprompt: weird birds
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May 3, 2021 09:47
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My Shark Waifuu posted:Sorry for the bird erotica https://thunderdome.cc/?story=7963&title=With+the+Wisdom+of+Owls
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May 4, 2021 00:15
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I'll judge
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May 8, 2021 15:06
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Punk me
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May 12, 2021 07:53
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In toxx
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May 19, 2021 06:24
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toanoradian posted:Gonna write about a lamp blessed with conscience. But it can only 'speak' Morse Code! Soon it develops a hatred for the alphabet. It seeks to crush all letters. My story will describe this lamp's destruction of the letter I, but also attempt to show the humanity of this logocidal lamp. Dope
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May 20, 2021 06:29
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Flesnolk posted:Finally have some free time AND am not injured, so in if allowed. Toxx plox join the club
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May 21, 2021 07:05
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Flesnolk posted:I'm not feeling well and some of the symptoms have me concerned enough I've scheduled a covid test tomorrow. I'll see if I can still get stuff written, but I'm requesting toxx leniency. get it done, if you don't make it i'll give you some extra time (~24h) before i fire the toxxcannon
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May 24, 2021 01:30
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A Lengthy Line of Bad Ideas 1434 words Malthus Mondegreen was questioning his life decisions as he swung by one precarious hand from the crumbling sandstone of the bluff, scrabbling with his other hand for a grip on a dangling loop of vine. Below him came little clicks and clacks as dislodged pebbles bounced off the small ledge below and out into the void. Decision the first, agreeing to the insinuative suggestions of the small oily man who’d accosted him in the pub five nights before. “A simple job, friend, just take this little parcel to my business associate in Madrigale. Half the money now, half on arrival! There’s absolutely nothing in the entire world that could go wrong!” In the sweaty, desperate, uncomfortably suspended light of day, Malthus was obliged to admit it was his own fault. Don’t trust anyone who calls you friend, specifically don’t trust anyone who profanes the Lady of Misfortune. Something can always go wrong. His grip on the rockface was ever more tenuous, the frangible sandstone powdering and flaking away. As he lunged for the vine and caught it in the trembling fingertips of one hand a piece of rock the size of his head levered out from the cliff face and plummeted in a leisurely sort of way down to the river below. As he watched it fall he realized that his whole life up until now had been nothing but decision after decision that were rushed and of an impulsive nature. He’d been in relationships, agreed to jobs, broken promises, and built businesses and partnerships on the flimsiest of foundations. Every time, he’d been wrong-footed, led astray. All to fill the vacuum of time, find the right people to talk to and to spend his time with. In the end all he’d found were too many wrong people with all the wrong words to make it work. He’d been living that lifestyle for so long that hanging on with his fingers to keep from being sucked into the canyon below was almost natural to him. Emboldened by this thought Malthus pulled on the vine with his left hand and grabbed with his right to scramble back up the slope then collapsed, panting. His backpack was still there, presumably with the oily man’s package inside. Looking back down again, Malthus could see no going past the bluff. The trailhead gave way to a pointy spine of rock, looking down into a rain-streaked chasm that might have been an ancient gulch, might have been the broken end of the bridge that he’d been heading towards. The lack of a road had been a concern to him, and it was while he had been sitting on his pack and rolling a smoke to meditate on that concern that the thylacine had leapt out at him and scared him. It had scared him right off the edge, in the process sending his tobacco and matchstick spiralling off into the abyss. Malthus looked around for the animal but saw nothing – perhaps his horrified shriek and panicked scrabbling had scared it off, he thought cheerfully. Devoid of tobacco he sat and enjoyed the ground underneath his feet and lack of imminent mortal danger. Then a high voice raised in anger caught his attention and he looked up. A small caravan was plodding up the road towards him. Malthus eyed the new arrivals. They were a motley lot, horses caparisoned with bags and sacks filled with unidentifiable bulges. "We are a company of travelling salesmen," said the most luxuriantly bewhiskered of the group when they had finally reached the top. "Would you like to buy anything? Friend?" Malthus frowned. "Do you want to buy a small cage of silkworms?" The salesman wiggled his fingers in the air in a motion that he appeared confident would awaken in Malthus a desire for silkworms. "We have some other offerings," he continued, slowly, as if talking to an idiot or a foreigner. “Even a wolf’s pelt. Would you like to see it? The wolf was ferocious beyond description." The whiskered man drew out the syllables of ‘beyond’, letting them linger in his mouth. Malthus scowled and looked back down the cliff. The one with the great black beard kept his eyes fixed on Malthus and his hands near the cutlass that was sheathed on his saddlemount. The lead salesman approached, horse hooves raising little puffs of dust. He had pince-nez on the bridge of his nose and looked down at Malthus as though divining his deepest desires. "What do you want? What do you want? Do you want to buy a wolf’s pelt?" "No," Malthus said. "No, I don’t want to buy a wolf pelt." "Come on now. It’s not as if it can hurt you," said the middle salesman. "It’s dead. " Malthus looked at them and then past them back down to the road, which stretched out endlessly down the precipitous hillside. "I don’t want a cage of silkworms, either," he said. “Have you got anything for people who keep making terrible decisions?”. The three men came over to join him on the low stone wall of the trailhead. They stood there for a moment in silence. "We like to travel light," the last salesman said. "Silk and wool and fur are all good to keep you warm. But don’t you worry; a few beans can keep you warm even better. Oleg has some fine seeds he would be happy to sell you. Decisions, now, they are harder." The older salesman puffed himself up and turned his head as he talked, a military manner suggesting that he would argue anyone into giving up something of great value. Malthus kept quiet. He looked at the trio, and saw in their past a small town of makeshift dwellings. Outside, he could see the ramshackle huts, and inside, the shapes of men huddled together around fires and boiling pots. A dry wind blew in from the plains. A weathered face peered out of one of the huts, a solitary figure with a big shaggy dog watching him with immense eyes. They were going to kill me, Malthus thought, his heart sinking with fear, and felt an overwhelming urge to get up and run. There was nowhere to run, though. He was at the end of the road that his decisions had led him down. The quiet between the men lengthened, began to curdle. Any moment now, thought Malthus, one of them would nod, or cry “NOW!” or “TO IT, LADS!” and it would be all on. “If I had something to sell,” Malthus asked, “would I be a salesman too?” The bewhiskered gentleman smiled tolerantly. “No, you would need sales to be your life. To walk the road, sail the oceans, carrying, or causing to be carried, items for your buyers.” Malthus stood up, slowly, eyes on the scimitars in their sheathes on the salesmen’s saddle mounts. "As it happens, I do have an item for a buyer in the city of Madrigale. He is a wealthy man and I'm sure the price he will pay would be generous. I'm sure a commission could be arranged if you were to help a fellow salesman achieve his sale." "Madrigale, eh?" The whiskered man glanced at his fellow salesmen. "Our road does lead us there, though given the unfortunate state of the bridge it will be a roundabout route. This buyer, what was his name? I have many contacts in the commercial area and might negotiate a superior price for you." His teeth were very bright through his whiskers as he grinned. “I am unable to say,” said Malthus regretfully. “Commercially sensitive information.” “A pity,” said the tall man at the rear. “Well, after you then! You would not appreciate our trail dust in your face on the way down!” There was another silence as Malthus carefully gathered up his pack and lifted it up onto his back. This seemed like another decision that he would come to regret in the short to medium term, and he was tossing up whether jumping off the cliff and trusting to the distant river might be a better option when the thylacine, which apparently had been watching this whole discussion from a nearby bush, decided to leap on to the whiskery man and start clawing and biting his face. The whiskery man’s horse objected to this in the strongest terms, rearing right back and shrieking, and the man and cat took the opportunity to fall off. Malthus grabbed the reins by instinct, then swung himself up onto the saddle. Everything was very busy for a few moments, and then Malthus found himself pounding down the path atop his new horse. “Well,” he thought. “I’ll doubtless come to regret this one soon, too.” But he couldn’t deny the freshness of the wind on his face and the sweetness of every continued breath.
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May 24, 2021 07:12
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Flesnolk posted:Why I Don't Toxx Oh for God's sake you idiot don't flounce, post your story, it was fine, no-one gives a poo poo
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May 26, 2021 00:37
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Hella in and I am CHALLENGING surreptitious muffin to enter also The loser will be obliged to address the winner as the dungeon master from henceforth
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May 26, 2021 08:55
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moths posted:In ...from TG. 
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May 26, 2021 23:36
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there's a Thunderdome gangtag! there's a Thunderdome gangtag? yes. what does it look like? this  can I have it? no! why not first you need to write ten stories (this week counts) OR get three honourable mentions OR win once oh sweet I’ve already got 5 hms and a win to go with my 23 dms can I just -- everyone starts from zero BUT I’VE WRITTEN LOTS OF STORIES ALREADY CAN’T I JUST HAVE IT writing a few more won’t hurt you stop whining ok. ok. so once I’ve done that I send a pm or discord or whatever to CC mods sebmojo or sitting here? yes. and if i get a gangtag then lose a round does it... go away? get replaced by the losertar? yes. you have to start again to get a free one, or pay the $5 to add it back yourself ah, thunderdome
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May 28, 2021 03:38
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Loure posted:May I have discord link, please? https://discord.gg/UhJ3SeYM
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May 29, 2021 00:26
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