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Seems like a fun week, I'm IN
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Feb 18, 2021 23:33
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Marianna ~580 words “The gently caress you think you’re doing here, campesina?” “I have a name.” Gustav’s eyes were pale. He spat a yellow wad onto a pile of blackened rock. It glistened in the light from the electric torch. “I’m sure you do. You know what I have? A dozen soldiers. Outside. Ready to come when I yell. But we don’t have to do it like that.” She kept the old pistol trained at his head. “You won’t live long enough to call them.” He sighed, gave her a toothy grin. “Neither will you, campesina.” “That’s not my name.” “The gently caress I care? I have hundreds like you. And they’re stronger. Younger.” “Where are they, Gustav? How will they help you now?” “Your time’s over. Your ticket is punched, esclava.” His lips wrapped the last word like an oily snake. The sharp edges of the gem cut into her palm. She squeezed it tighter. She thought of her daughter, of their new life. He took a step forward. “Come on. Put down the pistol. Let’s get out of here.” His voice softened, the edges of his eyes crinkled. “We can walk away. Give it to me.” “It’s mine. I found it.” She hated the way the pitch of her voice wavered. “True, campesina. You did find it. And Oscar told me all about it. The biggest emerald from this mine in many years. But you work for me. What you find, is mine. The contract. So. Hand it over.” He took another step, his face a rictus. “Please. Let’s go home.” She swallowed. She had signed the contract. It had nothing to say about the starvation, the beatings, the black dust that forever choked your lungs. Drunken men who came into your room late at night. It was about the mine. Always the mine above everything else. She was desperate, so yes, she’d signed. And now, in this cavern, the contract ended. She remembered Ernesto, his voice thick with booze, telling her about emeralds. Of their powerful magic. The gift of vision. Foresight. She’d said that sounded like hocus-pocus mierda, but now as the sharp edges of the emerald cut into her palm, she felt pain, and something else. So she squeezed it again and her mind shifted shifted shifted forward and she sees him lunge at her, pulling a knife from behind his back, and she feels cold metal plunge into her neck, his tobacco breath wash over her as he grabs at the emerald, and then she's inside his head, and sees he is alone, there are no soldiers, how could this old campesina be any match for him how dare she take what is rightfully his and then she shifts shifts shifts back and the emerald is back in your palm and you still hold the pistol at him. Now you sees the tension in his legs, muscles coiled, his hand inching behind his back. “Don’t,” you say, a whisper into the darkness. “I won’t hurt you campesina, I promise.” His eyes are hard as he readies to strike. “That’s not my name,” you say. “I don’t care, he says, and leaps, pulling the knife out and slashing-- But you’re gone. You’ve twisted away and his momentum carries him onto the sharp corner of the mining cart, the bones of his face crunching wetly, and he collapses to the cavern floor. You tell him your name. You spit it at him as you pull the trigger, but the sound is lost in the detonation.
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Feb 21, 2021 17:29
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crabrock posted:ok sure Ya know, this garbage-tier poo poo has been stuck in my craw all week. I know that nuance and complexity isn't exactly your strong suit (obviously your skills lie more in the "failure to submit" area), but this was not a complicated scene and the fact that your flaccid brain wasn't able to wraps its little mind-tendrils around it speaks to your laziness rather than any shortcomings in my writing (as garbage-tier as it may be). I just can't let this low effort poo poo go by unchallenged. So, fight me. 
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Feb 26, 2021 18:52
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Azza Bamboo posted:DON'T FORGET: There's just over ONE WEEK remaining on the magical sword brawl! 1419 Danzig ~1300 words Elwein’s skinsuit snapped tight against her lithe form as she stuffed the regulator into her mouth. An angry punch at the airlock switch and she’s outside, the star field wobbling above in a dizzied dance. Another jackal. During naptime. She’d been curled up with her daughter, breathing in silent unison, when her compad chimed: time to go. Upshaft, through the airlock and onto the surface. She held Mother low as her purple magboots crunched across the regolith of the asteroid. Yet another invader. More killing. She crept across the metal skein that bound together the crumbled piece of rock she called home. They’d stopped mining years ago—she, and the few others left at this outpost. Since the Earth went dark and the jackals appeared, survival was enough. Direct whatever energy was left to the algae pools, the air scrubbers. Sit in the cold darkness, and wait. For what? Ten long years, and only a handful of families left. The unspoken fear that they were the last. What little hope and warmth she could muster, Elwein gave to her daughter. She pulled out the compad. A ray-trace of asteroid 1419 Danzig appeared with a red smear indicating where radar had detected the jackal. Less than a klick away, just over the lumpy horizon. 1419 Danzig, a cold and dying rock of the inner belt, but it was home—and her job to defend it. Compad in one hand, Mother slung in the other, Elwein worked her way across its mottled surface. At first, jackals were rare—one every few months or so. But now they came in swarms. Exploratory tendrils from the Hive, reaching out from the dead Earth to see if any humans yet remained. Relentless killers. The first one, mere weeks after the invasion, had breached the airlock and killed dozens. It was Elwein’s mother who’d set the micronuke that finally destroyed it, shredding its exoskeleton into shards of alien metal that ripped open the shuttle bay—and everything, everyone inside it. Her sacrifice saved the outpost, but also yielded another prize: the sharpened slice of alloy Elwein now held before her. The only material that could pierce their exoskeleton, shaped into a meter long blade with an AI chip implanted the pommel. Mother. The jackal flashed over the horizon, fast, too quick to track with the human eye. Odd angles and strange geometry that could spray energy beams that melted steel. Its attention currently focused on a derelict solar array, it blinked in and out of Elwein’s vision. Tracking it was a job for Mother. Elwein sighed and whispered the sword’s AI activation phrase through the comm: “Mother. Mother. Do you wanna find Hell with me?” Her sword flashed as the AI burst online, infusing the alien metal with human intelligence. “Honey, this jackal isn’t even a new model,” Mother said. “Doesn’t matter, mom. We need to get rid of it.” “Oh, isn’t that sweet. Nice of you to call on me when you need me.” Elwein pressed her free hand to her temple and counted down from ten. “You’re a sword,” she said at seven. “Get over it. Let’s go.” She clomped across the regolith towards her quarry. The jackal was flitting around the outside of the array, spraying the flimsy panels with laser blasts. They exploded into a haze of razor sharp fragments that impacted Elwein’s skinsuit as she approached. The suit hardened with each collision, pinching her skin painfully as it contracted. She pulled at the tight fabric to gain some relief. “Quit fussing,” Mother said. “You’re always fidgeting.” Elwein squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Techs had known for a long time that AIs were more stable when imprinted with a strong personality. So they’d chosen her mother, to honor her sacrifice in the docking bay. Now it was Elwein whose patience was being sacrificed. “Okay. It knows we’re here,” she said. The jackal had stopped detonating solar panels and moved towards them at staggering speed. “I can see that,” Mother said. “I have eyes in the back of my head, remember?” Elwein grunted. Mother’s AI was linked to a spinning LiDAR mounted in her pommel. It was the the only way to track the enemy’s insane velocity. That, combined with the accelerated musculature of Elwein’s skinsuit, gave them a fighting chance. Maybe. No time to think, a flash and the alien was on them. Easily three meters tall, articulated limbs extended in strange angles, always at the edge of her vision, shifting and folding tesseracts of deadly architecture. Elwein moved too, graceful in the near-zero gravity, spinning and twisting away from the deadly appendages, moving so its lasers couldn’t lock onto her form. And Mother danced with her, the blade flashing and piercing and cutting away at the jackal’s metallic hide. This one was quicker than the others. Elwein had a hard time finding weak spots in its armature. A limb folded out lightning fast and pierced her side, slicing the skinsuit and her abdomen beneath. She twisted away as pain and icy cold gripped her gut. “Motherfucker!” she gasped. “You kiss my granddaughter with that mouth? Tut tut,” Mother said as the suit closed around the gash and numbing chemicals pumped into her wound. A deep moan escaped Elwein’s throat. Her muscles were tiring, and still the jackal attacked, coming at her with right angles of sharpened alloy at inhuman speed. With a final burst of energy, Elwein ducked a spinning arm and brought Mother up into the midsection of the jackal, right where its abdomen and thorax joined. The creature flexed inward around the wound and disengaged, staggering backwards. “Well, what are you waiting for? Hell to freeze over?” Elwein stole a quick glance around. “It already has.” She clicked her heels to disengage the magboots and launched herself at the jackal, bringing the sword down onto the back of its neck. Mother sliced cleanly through the exoskeleton and into the soft alien tissues beneath. Elwein twisted the blade as black-flecked orange liquids seeped from the wound, evaporating as they splattered against her skinsuit. The jackal buckled and twisted beneath her, extending bladed arms to try to cut her away, but she held firm and kept twisting. The exoskeleton beneath her spasmed one last time, then seized up into a frozen rictus. “Good job, honey!” Mother said. “That was a really good effort.” “Uh, thanks,” Elwein said as she disentangled herself from the dead alien form. She climbed down to the asteroid’s surface and reactivated her magboots. “No, I really think you’re getting better at this,” Mother said. “Keep practicing. And don't worry--I'm always here for you when you need me.” “Too much practice lately, mom. And what’s the point? They just keep coming.” “Nobody ever said life was fair, my dear.” Mother and dead alien in tow, Elwein made her way back to the outpost. Maybe this time the techs would find something when they dissected the corpse, some way to slow them down, to end this ceaseless barrage. Something to give them hope. Maybe. Maybe not. Back through the airlock Elwein kicked off her boots and peeled the skinsuit gingerly away. The wound in her abdomen was already sealed, pseudoskin and stem injections working their healing magic. After a quick shower to rinse off the sweat and grime, she made her way back to her bunkroom. Her daughter was still curled on the bed where she’d left her, sleeping the deep slumber that only children know. Elwein hung the sword on the the wall and quietly slipped in beside her. The bed was warm, and she slowed her breathing to match time with her daughter. “Nobody will ever love you like your mother,” she whispered, and hugged her close. It was a long time before sleep finally came.
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Mar 26, 2021 18:45
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Thanks for the crits! I enjoyed all the stories that arose from this brawl, good game everyone.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:19
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Jun 2, 2021 18:21
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The Eighth Year ~895 words Helga sloughed off jacket and gloves as the door irised closed behind her. Monitors across the far wall lit the control room with a green glow. She glanced at her compad, eyes scanning rows of digits crawling across the display. Geothermal Reactor 103.A was acting up, probably due to the change in season. Direct sunlight on the terminator hosed up the temp gradient between the planet’s darkside and the dayside. No gradient, no power. Helga moved across the room and started running diagnostic checks. As the numbers scrolled by, her mind wandered. As a kid Helga would daydream, trace figure eights in the snow outside the habdome, describing the path of their planet around its twin red suns. Twin suns that she almost never saw, living on the dark side. Instead she would look up into the blackness above, into the riot of stars and galaxies, and the depth of the sky would pull her in, swallow her. It was incomprehensible: the vastness, the endless possibility. So she sought to understand it. Orbital mechanics, quantum theory, organic chemistry - under the dim light of her halogen she poured through lessons left behind from the arkship. Movement in her peripheral made her gasp and her compad clattered to the ground. Spinning, she realized she’d been joined by another figure: a daysider woman, beautiful, with dark, crimson hair, tattoos that danced across her body to encircle dozens of bright rings and gemstones scattered across her olive skin. Of which Helga could see a lot. A lot of skin. Too much skin. She dropped her eyes quickly and scrambled to grab her compad with fingers that suddenly seemed too clumsy, too fat. “Oh! So sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you!” the woman’s voice fluted in manner typical of daysiders. Half singing, half speaking. “You didn’t,” Helga rasped, her voice catching. She cleared her throat. “Just wasn’t expecting anyone.” “Yes, I don’t normally come into these places”—she looked around is distaste—”but I saw you off the tram, and I wanted to talk to you. I don’t ever get to meet people like you, your type I mean…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Darksiders,” Helga said, to ease her obvious discomfort. “Yes! Exactly! I’m writing a poem about the Eighth Year—” now the words flooded out, a deluge of melody and rhythm, “—and your perspective would be so valuable! To finally see the suns after seven years of darkness, it must be so terribly exciting for you—and your people?” A loving poem. Daysiders were enraptured by their art, their music and performances. Forever prancing about under the constant light of the twin suns, never seeing the blackness of night, or sleeping beneath the comforting blanket of stars. Never truly knowing their place in the universe. And when their one year of darkness finally came, did they look up? Did they run calculations, point telescopes back towards Sol, ask questions or attempt to understand how this all came to be? No, they wrote more loving poetry, and then locked themselves into cryosleep pods scavenged from the arkship until their precious suns rose again. Secure in the knowledge the darksiders would take care of the machinery that kept them all alive. Like Geothermal Station 103.A. “I have work to do,” Helga grunted. “I’m Bianca,” the woman offered. “Helga.” “A lovely name, strong and proud.” Was that a note of mockery in her voice? “So, Helga, soon you will have the light, and we will be dark! What will you do with this gift?” She began to dance around the control room, spinning dials and pressing buttons, prancing footsteps with a lifetime of joy ahead of them. Helga very quickly had enough of that. “Stop!” she barked, and tried to wedge her body between Bianca and the consoles. But Bianca just laughed and danced around her, punching buttons. Realization dawned like five gees of pressure pounding into Helga’s skull. This was not random: the sequence of buttons she pressed was overloading the reactor, triggering it to fail. Bianca darted to the last station and clicked a red-lit button with a half-spin. “How will you, and your people, face this reality, darksider? That this season will be the last? For us all?” “Killing one reactor won’t do anything—” Helga said, but stopped as Bianca’s grin widened. There were others, at the other reactors. Doing the same dance. Without the reactors, no heat, no air, no food— They wouldn’t last the year. None of them would. “The final act!” Bianca sang. “Bound together--daysiders and darksiders, at long last! After one hundred years apart. Alas, our play turns out to be a tragedy, in the end. But the greatest art is found in tragedy.” Helga stared at her as cold fury gripped her gut. She had to warn the others. She punched the control for the door and stumbled outside. Before her stretched kilometers of permafrost and ice. Beneath her feet the rumble of the reactors sputtered, then stopped. All was still. The tram pulsed a red warning glow—offline. Nowhere to go. Helga collapsed onto the snow and stared at the twin red suns, now barely above the horizon. She felt an arm around her shoulder as Bianca settled in next to her. Helga didn’t pull away. Together, silently, they watched the new season dawn over the horizon.
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Jun 7, 2021 05:01
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In and give me a photo, please!
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Aug 2, 2021 18:24
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Effluence ~1025 words It was a Sunday morning. Elene pushed the old bike forward as she powered across the rocky scrabble. Her trailer kicked up a dusty contrail as she wound her way to the cliff edge. A hard brake, and the Koepel Arcology came into view below, its matte black dome rising from the dry plains. And, strewn across the fields before it, the corpses of those who’d fallen in the assault. Broken bodies shriveled in the desert sun. Jackals the color of shadow flickered through the carnage, sharp teeth pulling at limbs and picking exposed flesh— She wrenched the bike around and turned her back to the bloodshed. Yesterday that one boy had tried to talk her into joining them--“A final assault, hit those l’arcologie pricks late at night when they are partying, drugged and dosed and distracted.” He was pretty, and a tiny voice inside her pleaded with her to go, to say yes. But she did not; loyalty to her papa was stronger than such foolishness. Elene worked her reluctant bike down the winding path to the base of the canyon. There she unharnessed the récupérateur from the trailer and carried it to the riverbed. Untangling a complicated array of tubes and piping from its boxy frame, she set up the apparatus. Satisfied, she pulled the brim of her hat down, stretched out in the sand, and waited. It was a Sunday morning. The effluence would be spiked with glitter: opioids and painkillers and ibogaine from the previous night’s partying, in addition to the urea and nitrogenous solids upon which the récupérateur fed. Just as Elene began to drift into sleep the sound of moving water stirred her. A rust-colored discharge filled the dry river bed, flowing down from the arcology. The machine sucked the fluid into its plastic maw, drawing it across plates of bacteria and yeast. Later, she’d scrape the paste from the plates and cook it into biscuits on the fire. She and papa would share them over the week ahead, he would whisper stories of the old world until the ibogaine took hold and he drifted from her. Elene, always judicious, never ate too much — outland raiders were a constant threat, and a sharp mind was the best defense. Along with her AK-47. Her papa was her world, her sole responsibility. Keep him alive and she’d never be alone. But he fought against living, wasting away from the ceaseless infections and tumors that ate at him; last month she’d had to amputate his remaining leg, as gangrenous lesions spread from his toes towards his torso. His mind, however, stayed strong. Elene would not be alive without his guidance during those chaotic early days, when the arcologies cut themselves off from the rest of the world, taking the resources, dooming the rest of them to an inevitable extinction. The récupérateur was his invention, a brilliant idea to live off the effluence of the Arcology. Elene focused on keeping her papa alive. If she could manage that, then maybe other hopes were also possible. A new sound jarred her from her reverie. From across the riverbed, a serviteur ground its way down the muddy bank, dragging a combine behind it. From the looks of it, the robot was an agricultural model, built for long hours under the hot sun. The effluence was ebbing, and the river bed grew splintered as it began to bake in the heat of the day. “Hello, are you lost?” Elene called. It didn’t respond, just dutifully dragged the combine down and into the soft mud of the river bed, where it stuck fast. “Well, that won’t do,” Elena muttered. She made her way to where the serviteur was floundering in the slippery clay. Pulling up its ceramic carapace, she found the voice module and flipped the jumpers. She cleared her throat and repeated: “Hello, are you lost?” A whirring came from within the machine as new circuits actuated. : Unit 413 reporting : task complete : awaiting instructions : “You’re a long way from home,” Elene muttered. The farms that fed the Koepel Arcology were in the hills far to the north-- entirely automated, so those “l’arcologie pricks” never had to leave their protective domes. High walls and serviteurs with automatic weapons protected the farms from outlander raids. This unit, designed for general farm work, must have glitched and wandered off; the lumpy sand barnacles gripping sections of its exoskeleton indicated many futile months of dragging itself through the wastes. Curious, Elene examined the combine machine attached to its grapple. Opening the main compartment, a blast of mildew and stale pollen stung her eyes and sent her into a sneezing fit. A small drawer below pulled open to reveal a trove of what looked to be seeds, separated from the moldy grain above. Safely tucked away. Whether they were viable or not Elene could not say. But surely papa would know. And if they were—her heart grew two sizes in her chest. Real food, a path forward. She looked over her shoulder at rusted bike that lay on the path. Then back down at the robot, whose dome light glowed a soft green. : Unit 413 reporting : task complete : awaiting instructions : She smiled. Elene spend the next fifteen minutes pulling the robot across the muddy riverbank and up onto the path. She scooped the seeds into a pouch on her pack. She could always come back for the combine later, if things panned out. For the first time in her young memory, Elene felt a glimmering of possibility. She hooked the récupérateur onto the grapple and issued her first order: “Follow me!” As she pedaled back towards home, towards her papa, the robot dutifully followed at a steady, plodding pace. Her old bike, now free from having to pull the boxy récupérateur, felt light and fast, and she pedaled joyous circles around her companion. It felt like flying. She giggled and thought of the names she might call her new friend. She imagined a garden full of colorful plants, papa smiling down on her from the porch as she gathered food for supper. It was, after all, still a Sunday morning. She had a whole week and a lifetime ahead of her.
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Aug 9, 2021 00:53
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Sep 14, 2021 17:18
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French (the language) ---|--- 'Close to You' (the 1970 album by The Carpenters) the one answer that is waiting to be heard ~1295 words The murky river burped a fat bubble that rose up to meet the approaching patrol boat. Navy Lieutenant James “Lucky” Kelly sat on its bow and thought about how much he loving hated the water. It wasn’t just that it seeped everywhere and rotted everything it touched, or that it was full of venomous creatures looking to either bite you or lay their eggs inside your skin; no, it was so loving dark. A black void, blocking all light, hiding within its depths secrets both ugly and unknowable. Like my loving soul, he thought, and spat another wad of chew into its depths. It was after midnight, and his watch had just started. The smell of diesel drifted from engines that propelled him and his crew upriver. Behind him his gunner’s mate worked the wheel, keeping the patrol boat away from the dense jungle that lined the banks of the river. There were still plenty of VC in this region, near the Cambodian border. A long rear end haul up the river, five days in with five to go, traveling by night and hiding the patrol boat along deserted stretches during the heat of the day. Extract an old French POW-turned-deserter-turned-“political commissar” for the NVA named Broussard. Another loving frog to ruin his life with a never ending torrent of “le, la, les” and “Petit-dejeuners” and other French bullshit. What other kind of hosed up language tacked on extraneous vowels and consonants to make the speaker sound like they’ve just gargled horse piss? What in the ever-loving-gently caress did Marcie ever see in that exchange student? Lucky could feel his blood rise so he grabbed the eight-track and pulled the headphones over his ears. Straight away the soft contralto of Karen Carpenter washed over him, and his pulse slowed. The crew gave him endless streams of poo poo for it, but there was nothing like the Carpenters to center him, take him back to the world before the steaming jungles and illiterate villagers and sucking chest wounds and commie French commissars and exchange students and of course the loving water. Marcie had sent him this tape, in her last care package. Along with her letter. At dawn of the third day they’d been pulling reeds over the patrol boat, preparing for a days’ rest, when a boy appeared. Like a ghost he apparated from the jungle, grabbed Lucky by the arm, and tugged him toward the thicket. Lucky wasn’t falling for that poo poo. He toyed with the idea of putting one between his dewy little eyes, but then saw the hut and the old man through a break in the trees. The old man smiled and waved. Lucky definitely wasn’t falling for that poo poo, so he raised his carbine and took aim at grandpa. But then a fragment from a Carpenters song swam into his head—somewhere in a fairytale forest lies one answer that is waiting to be heard—and while this was no loving fairytale forest, it got stuck in his head and shooting the old man and the kid suddenly seemed like a bad idea. Ten minutes later he was cross-legged across from the old man, carbine across his lap, listening as the kid translated the old man’s words. He was spinning a yarn about some sort of ancient sea creature. Lucky wasn’t sure why, but it seemed important, somehow. So he listened. The old man released a stream of gibberish. “It’s drawn to the rumblings of war,” the boy translated, pointing up river towards the highlands, where the bombing campaign had intensified in recent weeks. “The Con Rit leaves its home in the sea and moves up the river, seeking its destiny. Like you.” The old man’s yellow eyes locked onto his. More gibberish. “The Con Rit is balance. Its many segments are links in the chain that connects the living to the dead. By moving towards the war it finds peace.” Again with the eyes. There was more like that, and eventually Lucky grew bored, tossed them a few C-rations, and returned to the boat. Since then, the old man’s words grew tendrils in his mind, slithering through his cortex like ARVN tunnel rats. So that night when the black water before him rippled and parted to reveal a massive, chitinous body slithering across the river, Lucky simply pulled off his headphones and watched in silence. It circled the boat several times, hundreds of small, centipede-like appendages paddling it through the moonlight, before sinking back into the depths. Lucky saw the Con Rit often over the next five days. Each night, while on watch, it would rise up from the water and languidly circle the patrol boat. It spoke to him once, in loving French of course, all gargled vowels and swallowed consonants. He had no idea what it was saying, how to respond to it, or if it would even hear him if he tried. So he just turned up the volume on the eight-track and let the Carpenters settle his uneasy mind, keeping his eyes on the river ahead. Together they made their way up the river. The extraction point was a small village in the highlands near the Cambodian border. The locals gave them distant, shell-shocked stares, and freshly dug graves surrounded the homestead. The relentless bombing campaign had taken a heavy toll. But they had the Frenchman Broussard, hands and feet bound, and they produced him in exchange for a bag full of Vietnamese đồng and a crate of rations. He was a skeleton of sunken cheekbones and paper-thin skin stretched tight over aging bone; the first thing Lucky did was stuff a rag into his mouth before he could utter a single parlez-vous or sacre blue. gently caress that poo poo. Lucky’s nerves were stretched tighter than a bullfrog’s rear end. His ears buzzed and his brain felt swollen inside his skull. It was dusk when they loaded the Frenchman onto the patrol boat and pushed off from the village. Marcie was there with the French foreign exchange student, holding hands and waving from the dock, along with the boy and the old man from down the river. Others, too, from his past, were among the villagers. Faces he caught out of the corner of his eye but blurred away when he tried to focus. The black water all around, lapping against the hull as burps of prehistoric gases rose from the depths. This was when the Con Rit struck. Its armored carapace burst from the water, mandibles chattering as it brought its bulk down on the patrol boat, swamping it. Instantly Lucky was in the water, gasping, clawing for anything to grab onto, desperate. It yanked him down into darkness. The Con Rit’s chitinous hide, slick with algae, sliced his abdomen, opening a deep gash. His blood mixed with the black water. He surfaced briefly, and could hear shouts and screams as the jungle lit up with muzzle flashes in every direction. Munitions pinged off metal, and from somewhere above sighed a soft, organic gurgling. Then it pulled him down again, wrapping its segmented body around his, squeezing his breath away. Its insectoid face rose before him, large compound eyes reflecting back his own face in a thousand, shattered facets, each a discrete version of himself, each more broken and incomplete than the last. Then the black water took him. He awoke in the hut by the river. The old man and the boy looked down on him. Scattered around were items salvaged from the wreckage of the boat. Lucky blinked the black water away from his eyes, and his vision landed on a blood slicked object. The old man followed his gaze, gave a crooked smile, and handed him the portable eight track player. “Putain cette merde,” Lucky sighed, and pressed play one last time.
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Sep 20, 2021 05:45
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Oct 12, 2021 04:09
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Prompt: Teen Drama Horror Akron ‘84 ~1850 words The Cloverleaf Mall in southwest Akron, Ohio, was the most dangerous place in the world for 15-year old Daniel Jacobsen. The jocks hung out at the Orange Julius, letter jackets stretched tight across hypertrophied physiques. The metalheads gathered by the Sam Goody, a petulant sea of demin, leather and electric blue eyeshadow. And the goth kids could crop up anywhere, at any time. You just never knew. Danger lurked everywhere. Daniel darted between the Lane Bryant and the Waldenbooks, keeping his gaze low, moving beneath the shadow of the large ferns surrounding the central fountain. Things seemed quiet, but then the unmistakable scent of Drakkar tickled his nostrils: the jocks were close. Daniel paused, keeping his head down, utilizing the age-old (and thoroughly disproven) theory that if you can’t see them, they can’t see you. Holding his breath, he waited for the group to pass, but he was in an awkward spot at the bottom of the stairs. Confrontation was unavoidable. “Look at that loving nerd!” a cheerleader cackled, bouncing down the stairs, and reached out a bony hand to slap Daniel across his head. He flinched and banged his elbow against the handrail. “What a spazz, oh my gawd!” The group surrounded Daniel and pinballed him back and forth between them. A jock from his algebra class—who he’d let copy his last quiz--tore off his backpack and tossed it into the shallow fountain. Daniel avoided eye contact and kept quiet. Eventually, the strategy paid off, and the jocks lost interest and moved onward to the Orange Julius. Daniel fished his backpack out of the fountain. Checking inside, he was relieved to see the contents stayed somewhat dry. He would need them later. Cloverleaf Mall was, unsurprisingly, shaped like a four-leafed clover. Each “leaf” was a circle of shops surrounding a fountain area dotted with stained lounge chairs, sunglass kiosks, and brooding high schoolers. Daniel’s destination was in the northwest sector, across the tiled expanse of the food court that linked the clovers in the center. He approached the food court with caution. Bits of wrapper and stray French fries littered the brightly lit linoleum. A pair of metalheads tore into a plate of corn dogs, smacking and drooling, splintering the wooden sticks as ketchup ran down their necks and stained denim. Elsewhere, lone mall employees munched on the occasional dry burger and cement milkshake, sneaking furtive glances before returning to each bite. In the far corner a middle-aged, uniformed mall cop sat hunched over, unmoving, staring at the floor. Daniel navigated the maze of tables and chairs, keeping his distance as best he could. His backpack felt like a cold, clammy hand across his back as the moisture soaked into his skin. A lone speaker mounted to a central pillar crackled a discordant, tinny melody. A heavy scrape sounded as Daniel bumped a chair, and for a moment all eyes locked onto him. Panic bubbled up and his stomach clenched. He almost stopped, but that would have been a mistake—instead he kept his eyes forward and tried to ignore their burning glares. He’d made it across the food court to the other side before he heard more sounds behind him. A quick glance confirmed the corn dog metalheads were rising from their chairs, turning towards him, rictus grins across their ketchup-and-mustard smeared faces. They’d caught his scent. Daniel was close now, but the most dangerous leg of his journey lie before him. Ahead loomed the Piercing Pagoda. Brooding goths hovered around it, glowering him from beneath jet black spiked hair. They passed around clove cigarettes stained with black lipstick, and their pallid skin glowed sickly white under the fluorescent lights. Taking a wide berth, and keeping one eye on the metalheads behind him, Daniel jogged around the far side of the fountain, head low. The blinking neon, chirps, and squawks of safety lie ahead: a blank storefront that housed the Cloverleaf Mall’s arcade. A warded zone: the jocks and metalheads and goths stayed clear. A gaggle of preps stumbled out of the United Colors of Benneton store, clad in garish bright pastels, pants parachuting as they pushed each other, right into Daniel’s path. They spun towards him, pink bloodshot eyes fixing upon his frail form. “What’s this?” the leader stepped forward, a blond boy with feathered hair and scaly skin. “Oh look it’s Daniel from school," the last sung in a mocking, sing-song voice. But it came out in a raspy wheeze, as if the boy’s vocal cords were paper dry. Daniel ducked under his outstretched arm and made a break for the arcade. His shoes squeaked across the tile and his heart hammered in his chest, this was it, his only chance, but as he looked over his shoulder he saw none of them were giving chase; no, they watched instead. Even the metalheads from the food court. Dozens of cold eyes upon him, watching, and waiting. Inside the safety of the arcade, the cigarette smoke and dim light washed across him like a healing prayer. The jocks, preps, goths—this was holy ground, and they were not welcome. Daniel pulled two crumpled dollar bills from his pocket—his dad wouldn’t miss them, passed out as he was (again) on the couch when Daniel had returned home from school. He’d pilfered the bills, then headed straight to the mall. There was maybe an hour or two to play before the sun dropped below the horizon and the mall changed. “Hello Daniel,” an angel’s voice sang. The Change Girl appeared from behind a Q*bert machine. She was older, but still in her teens. Freckles and light brown hair, a pixie tattooed on her arm. She was, well, an angel. “What’ll it be tonight?” she smiled. “Yeah, uh,” Daniel stammered. “Just two please.” As she ejected the change from her apron, she gave him a sideways smile. “No, what game will it be tonight?” “Ah, uh, dunno. Maybe Battlezone.” “A good choice, but I can think of something better. A game where you are alone, one man, pitted against a variety of foes in an ever-escalating battle to escape--to escape once and for all.” Her gaze softened for a moment. “To escape forever.” Daniel just stared at her, his jaw numb. Never before had a girl *gotten* him like this. “What is it?” he asked. ‘Oh, it’s a new one. Tron. You ride motorcycles and fight spiders and there’s like, tanks and poo poo.” The Change Girl snapped her gum. “It’s over there.” Daniel knew the movie, of course. His father had taken him, at Daniel’s insistence, and had almost made it halfway through before the Jim Beam kicked in and he stood up and began yelling at the screen to not be so goddamn bright, people are trying to sleep here, and what the everloving gently caress is a MCP anyway? So it was with some reticence that he approached the machine, the quarters in his palm already damp with sweat. Daniel put in a quarter and the world disappeared. He gripped the electric blue joystick and it was just him and the screen, two souls connected, man against machine in the battle of eternal will. He laughed his way through the absurdly easy early levels, blasting spiders and encircling lightcycles like a cybernetic Jeff Bridges on steroids. “See, I knew you’d like it,” the Change Girl said from over his shoulder. Maybe it was the Strawberry Bubblelicious on her breath, or PTSD from his journey through the mall, but Daniel’s hand slipped. The light cycle crashed into a wall, and it was game over. “Oh, that’s too bad, you were doing so good!” the Change Girl said as she walked on. Daniel put in another quarter. It was the last one he would need. By the time he’d reached sixth level, he’d pretty much figured out the game. When he passed level ten, a few watchers had assembled. He looked for the Change Girl among them, but saw instead unwashed denim and prepubescent mustaches. And the unpleasant smell of teen body odor. Level twenty-two was the last. Daniel was locked in, with extra lives and a smattering of arcade-goers watching him silently. No problem. His breath caught in his throat as he lined up the final tank for destruction, when the screen flickered, then went black. Daniel stepped back, bewildered. The Change Girl stood beside the machine, holding the power cord in her hand. She gave it a small twirl, then tossed it aside. “Forget it, Daniel. There’s no escaping. Not from here, and not in there.” “There’s always a way out. And, like, wow, you broke my game. Not cool.” She looked down at the power cord at her feet. “Yeah, that was—“ “—not cool. But, it’s okay. It’s only a game.” “I don’t know why I—“ she started. “It doesn’t matter. But you’re wrong,” Daniel said, and grabbed her arm. “We can get out. Together.” Daniel walked her to the front of the arcade. Before them lie a pulsing mass of arms and legs and dead souls. The sun had set, and the mall had transformed. From under the neon lighting, shambling, hungry forms lurched towards them, colorful Swatches dangling from diseased wrists, empty eye sockets and grasping mouths gnashing. Cloverleaf Mall was hungry, and it was time to feed. Daniel took and knee and unzipped his backpack. From it he pulled out a slightly damp RF transmitter. He turned the dial to the first tape mark and with a click sixteen ounces of Blastgel ignited behind the ferns around the central fountain. The explosion ripped through the assembled high school zombies. A shower of limbs rained down across the clover. “My dad’s in construction,” Daniel said to the shocked expression on the Change Girl’s face. “C’mon,” he whispered. “We can escape. Forever. You and me.” Daniel looked into her green-flecked eyes. She gave him that pixie smile and nodded. Together they dashed into the carnage. Three more explosions shook the Cloverleaf Mall before Daniel and the Change Girl burst through the front doors and into the cold Ohio night. The mall shuddered and shook behind them, furious at its loss. They stopped and turned around to watch the flames reflect off the overcast skies above. Daniel, adrenaline surging, put his arm around her waist. She gave him a curious look. “We did it, Change Girl! We escaped!” As the words came out, Daniel’s face crumpled. So stupid. He didn’t even know her name. He felt like an awkward freak. “You loving nerd,” she said. “My name’s Holly. And that was—awesome.” “Thanks,” he said lamely. She gave him a warm smile. “Let’s go. My car’s over there. If we hurry we can make it back to my place in time for Cosby.” Daniel held her hand tight, too afraid to let go.
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Oct 18, 2021 02:54
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Nov 9, 2021 18:08
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Rule: Your protagonist must be relatable Submission: Physics 102 Final Exam (key) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OygqKNAkYABvfrHRr7V1RnYeYo4wRUYP/view
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Nov 15, 2021 02:31
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