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Checking In for my first Thunderdome.
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Feb 8, 2023 21:38
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Bellhop 979 words “I don’t want to have this argument again. It doesn’t look as good if it’s all twenties, I need small bills to even it out.” The cashier gave me a look, the incandescent bulb that lit his booth gleaming off his little green visor, “You think the right bill mixture’s gonna be the tipping point?” “I’m not saying it’ll convince ‘em more, it just shows some basic respect. We all know what’s going on, but people appreciate when you put in an effort.” He raised an eyebrow, but he still opened up the cash box and slid over some fives and ones. “Will that suffice for sir?” “Don’t be an rear end in a top hat.” I signed for the bills and hosed off back down to the mortuary. Mr. Plimsoll was waiting there on the slab, dead as the day was long. I stuffed his pockets full of cash, making sure not to get any blood on them from the big smashed melon that used to be his head. We’d pulled him up from the ravine outside the card room earlier that night. Mr. Plimsoll had waited for a moment when no one was looking to make his move. Then it was a foot up on the railing, a jump, and he was over the edge of the patio, plummeting into the darkness just a couple of yards from our award-winning mile-long lobster tail and shrimp buffet. Real class act. Nobody even noticed until the next morning, when the ornamental flamingos found the body. That’s when I got sent in to take care of things. To be honest, I would have appreciated a bit less class and a bit more not having to fight off furious pink birds. I fastened the cufflinks I’d recovered back onto his sleeves, then took a polaroid and clipped it to my notes, writing the date and time in the little spot next to his name and next of kin. We inter these guys in the special ‘gambling suicides’ cemetery for seven years, then dig ‘em up and see if the family wants to re-bury them in their ancestral turf or whatever. It’s important to get the dates right so you don’t leave them in the ground too long and take up valuable graveyard real estate. And you definitely don’t want to dig ‘em up early. You got told that cautionary tale on your first shift. I adjusted my little cap and checked my brass buttons. All present and accounted for. Time for the big show. I hucked Plimsoll onto a gurney and wheeled him out. “Watch out! We got another shrimp mania casualty! This guy’s goin’ in the shrimp graveyard!” All the gamblers in their tuxedos and their cocktail dresses turned to watch him go, the trails of their cigar smoke catching the chandelier light like slug trails on silk. They knew in their hearts they’d never bust out all their cash and plunge it, ravine-style. No, they’d be chugging martinis and huckin’ dice forever. It was sad, they’d say, that ‘shrimp mania’ was such a problem. Then they’d wink and chuckle and probably kiss a little and turn back to their games. Their cufflinks would stay on their cuffs, not have to be strangled out of a flamingo by a bellhop. The hotel didn’t always even have a slab-room. Then they’d put in the baccarat and the games with the dice, you know, the one with the sevens, and the gamblers’d come. And sometimes, a stiff would find they’d gone through their life savings at the table, or the big win to turn it around hadn’t come, and they’d see that big empty space calling to them, and the hotel’d realized they needed a place to process all those croakers. Trouble was, there hadn’t been space anywhere deep in the hotel-guts, out of the way of the clientele. That was all taken up by machines and offices and kitchens that couldn’t legally be within a certain radius of actual human bones. So they’d turned the breakroom into one. Technically it was still a breakroom, but it’s hard to relax five feet away from a guy getting pumped fulla formaldehyde. The gamblers didn’t care if some stiff got wheeled past them though. Some of them came to see it special. We made it out the door and I let my smile drop. I glanced over at our former guest. “Sorry about that Mr. Plimsoll. All part of the service.” Mr. Plimsoll didn’t answer. “No, I guess you wouldn’t mind.” I loaded him into the hearse and climbed into the driver seat. We roared down the street in a billow of black engine guff. I dug in my pocket for my coffin nails and realized I’d smoked the last one that morning. I cussed and pulled over to the side of the road, then jogged back to the hotel commissary. “Six dollars.” I checked my wallet - I only had five. I held up a finger and jogged back to the hearse. “You mind if I borrow a buck?” -------------------------------- We hauled up to the cemetery just as the gates were opening. I signed us in and parked in the employee-reserved spot. The gurney went KLONK-KLUNK as I pulled Mr. Plimsoll back down out of the back. We headed to the drop-off window and I signed him in. “Mr. Plimsoll here will be checking in for his stay.” “Why does he have a cigarette in his mouth?” The sexton on-duty peered over her half-moon glasses. “Well, he paid for ‘em.” ------------------------------- I waved goodbye as Mr. Plimsoll vanished into the drop-off window and lit a smoke, then took off my little cap and unbuttoned my brass buttons. I flipped off a flamingo as it wheeled overhead, the Monte Carlo sunshine gleaming off its pink wings. It wasn’t noon yet and the morning was crisp and fresh like a new dollar bill.
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Feb 12, 2023 23:19
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Oh cool! Welp, time to figure out how to write critiques!
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Feb 14, 2023 23:33
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 Week No. 549 - The Hitchikers Guide to Seraphinianus The Codex Seraphinianus is a surrealist art book made by an Italian architect, that is a guidebook to another dimension. It is written in that dimension’s language, which is totally untranslatable. Guess what? This week, we’re translating some pages! I will be assigning entrants a page from the Codex and you will be writing stories inspired by them. If you're not doing a flash or hell rule, specify in your signup that you're inspired Flash rules this week are all the same - you’re not just being inspired by the page, you’re writing the guidebook page. - Specify in your signup that you're doing a guidebook Hell rule? You get one of the pages from the subatomic particles section. You don’t need to write it as a guidebook, but extra points if you do. - Specify in your signup that you are meddling with forces beyond your comprehension Word Count: I wanna see what you’ve got but I don’t have all day - you’ve got 1k words to write with I've got an extra 500 for flash rules, an extra 1000 for a hellrule. No screeds, no fanfiction, no erotica. You know the rules. Sign up by Friday, February 17th, at 11:59 PM EST, and be ready to submit two days later. Home Office Rohan Pham Nuwen Field Reporters Albatrossy_Rodent - Meddling with forces beyond their comprehension  Thranguy - Guidebook Chernobyl Princess - Guidebook Staggy - Guidebook BeefSupreme - Inspiration IdleAmalgam - Guidebook  Dicere - Guidebook My Shark Waifu - Guidebook Slightly Lions - Guidebook Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 16:13
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quote isn't edit
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Feb 15, 2023 19:28
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:In, hellrule Albatrossy, please enjoy your hellrule of page 141 
Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 15, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 22:27
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Thranguy posted:In, guidebook. Thranguy I hope you enjoy writing the guidebook text for page 113! 
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Feb 15, 2023 22:29
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Chernobyl Princess posted:Also in with a guidebook Chernobyl Princess, go hog wild with page 246! 
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Feb 15, 2023 22:32
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Staggy posted:In, guidebook. Staggy it gives me great pleasure to assign you page 209 
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Feb 15, 2023 22:37
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BeefSupreme posted:in, just the garden variety surrealist inspiration please Beefsupreme, enjoy page 85 as inspiration 
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Feb 16, 2023 04:42
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Idle Amalgam posted:In Idle Amalgam, you'll be guiding us through page 253 
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Feb 16, 2023 04:47
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Dicere posted:In with the guidebook, please. Dicere it is your solemn duty to report on the goings-on of page 115 
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Feb 16, 2023 15:02
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My Shark Waifuu posted:I'm in, a guidebook please My Shark Waifuu I am assigning you as our piscine correspondent to page 75 
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Feb 16, 2023 19:18
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Signups close tonight! Get your signup in before midnight EST!
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Feb 17, 2023 14:52
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Slightly Lions posted:In, Guidebook Slightly Lions, you shall be giving us words about letters from page 276 
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Feb 17, 2023 18:33
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Entries close in 40 minutes. I'm going to bed, so if you wanna slide in at the last minute you'll be getting your prompt in the morning.
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Feb 18, 2023 05:19
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 ENTRIES ARE CLOSED Stories are due Sunday at Midnight EST We STILL NEED A THIRD JUDGE 
Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 14:50
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Pham Nuwen posted:Hey I'll judge if we're still short. I will take you up on that, thanks!
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Feb 20, 2023 04:08
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Submissions are CLOSED
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Feb 20, 2023 14:23
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This was a tough one! There were a lot of strong contenders, but ultimately what made the grade was how well a story stuck to the guidebook conceit (if that was what the writer chose), how well it delivered on High Strangeness, and the overall quality of it's prose. There were a lot of great stories that I really liked, but that just barely weren't quite strange enough or didn't go in enough on the conceit. So, after a long day's deliberations, here are your results. Winner A Candleman's Funeral - Thranguy Honorable Mentions The Vomit-Priests of the City-State of Kherst - Slightly Lions The Mill of Policy - Chernobyl Princess Dishonorable Mention The Pillars of Transfiguration - Idle Amalgam Loser Birdbrain - BeefSupreme Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 00:20
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In
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Feb 21, 2023 01:42
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The City- mid - Staggy This deliberately click-baity story is, in essence, a board of tourism advertisement for a post-apocalyptic City. It’s underlying purpose seems to be not just encouraging tourism, but entrapping people as workers. There’s a nice mix between the language of advertising and the ominous language of doomed propaganda. I think that you could have started earlier and gone harder on the undercurrent of doomed city collecting laborers that becomes evident at the end. I liked the road hermetics and their stylites - good use of prompt, good use of obscure 9th century saint pillars. The Mill of Policy - high - HM - Chernobyl Princess This story grew on me over the course of the day after I read it. Gonzo surreal worldbuilding about a piece of municipal architecture. Loved it, and how the story used that entry point to spin into details about the greater world. The writing felt like a good mix of scholar who is really into their work and oral-tradition-style homeric storytelling. I liked the repetition and rhythm of the sentences, how they built a pattern and used it to shift focus.The plot was a little inconsistent, saying the invasions of the sun war did not continue but then going on to say that the solar war continued. I think it could have benefitted from a slightly tighter focus, the whole thing was just a tiny bit too scattered. The sunbirds turn felt like it came out of nowhere, which I think you could shore up just by going into more depth about what they are and why they guard the sun. Really get into the weeds, you've earned it. The Pillars of Transfiguration - DM - Idle Amalgam So you let me down in two ways with this story. One, you didn’t make a guidebook, as was our covenant. Two, and more helpfully, the first two thirds are really boring. However, what kept you from losing, even with these, was that the last third loving whips. You’ve got a great conceit, you’re using the surreality of the setting in a way that’s interesting, you have a dog howling into a microphone to criticize a guy until he crushes himself into a writhing mass of possibility. You should start there and tell whatever rest of the story you have through these yelled criticisms. I would love to read that version of this story. Also tighten up your prose a bit, we never need to see an "as such" The Fish of A-Declercq Bay - High - My Shark Waifu This story is wonderful. I want to say that first and foremost. I really enjoyed reading it, I liked how you thought about how the locals interacted with these fish, I liked the thought you put into the biology and making it feel realistic. The reason this didn’t place was because it was just beat out in the category of High Strangeness, which is what I wanted to see most this week. I think you can go bigger and weirder and make it work just as well, if not better, than you have here. A Candleman’s Funeral - Winner - Thranguy I will never get tired of starting a story off with a fake quotation. This piece was everything I could ask from a guidebook - careful, rich detail, hints of history and a wider world, and a dash of humor, all wrapped inside some true Deep Weirdness. The perfect thing to make you stare into space and want to learn more. Sustainability - Mid-high - Dicere You took this prompt in an unexpected direction and for that I applaud you. The simplistic, boiled-down tone of a fifth grade worksheet is a very fun way to think about what would be focused-on, revealed and propagandized by this surreal society. You raise mor questions than you answer with throwaway lines like “The aluminum cans that housed most beverages in those days could only be used and thrown away.” Unfortunately, the same conceit of the piece that gives it such appeal also limits it in scope. I would have loved to see the high-school version of this text, with a deeper dive into the idea that you’re kicking around here. Stray thought:“Destroyed lingerie” is a real cellar door of a phrase. Vomit Priests - high - HM - Slightly Lions This wears its Dune Guy credentials proudly on its ink-stained lapel. From references to awareness-spectrum-narcotics to obscure church heirarchy to a conlang that makes just enough sense to sound semi-real, the roads worn into your brain are clearly trod. You brought a lot of yourself to this piece and took the prompt in a direction that was not wholly shown in the image. Your writing manages to paint a clear and baffling picture of strangeness while also making room for a clear personality to interact with that strangeness in the character of the translator. This is charming but at times lets you comment on your own prose in a way that lets you close a door rather than open and explore it. Your footnotography can let you delve into and play with a sidebar or related idea that doesn’t quite fit in the main text, as shown wonderfully in (2), but a footnote like (13) makes me feel like you the author are letting yourself off the hook for not having the time to develop an idea. Overall, I really dug this piece, you big giant nerd. Bird Brain - Loser - BeefSupreme BeefSupreme, you have a great ability here to form an authorial voice that draws from the Lovecraftian tradition. However, you’ve used that gift to tread the same ground that’s been trampled into dust. I felt like I had read this story before a hundred times. And for what? A meme that is already in it's death throes. I wanted to see high strangeness and fresh ideas this week and you’ve come to me with an admittedly well-crafted Mad Lib. It is clear you are capable of agile, active prose, but in using it this lazily you have folded with a focus and intensity normally seen only in success. Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 02:32
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Seance 1948 words I was all painted up and waiting to hop out of the wardrobe. We’d convinced a coterie of dopes from uptown to come down and ask the spirits about the Summerlands and damned if we were going to leave money on the table. I’d been practicing my voice of the fallen soldier and I’d finally refined the wistful note that spoke of flowers cut down on the fields of battle. I’d defy any dame or gent who lost a son or brother on the field to keep their eyes dry for longer than a New York Minute. We were going to make so much money Joe had been eating gauze soaked in glue all day, so his gulleywork was loaded full of ectoplasm and ready to go. He’d been a circus geek, years ago, back before vaudeville’s wooden stage had come roaring into the scene and he’d gotten edged out by dandies in straw hats singing comic songs about getting lost on a boat or kissing the wrong lady. Sometimes when he was practicing his regurgitations with his peeled potato on a string I'd ask him about what it had been like and he’d get real quiet for a while and say something wistful like, “It wasn’t all vomiting on command and biting the heads off of chickens. You had to tell a story too.” Then he’d shake his head and hold up a hand, like it hurt him to think about. One time I walked in on him when he thought he was alone and I’d caught him looking at an old photo of a lady in a veil, but when he saw me he’d folded it up real quick and swallowed it before I could get a good look. Later he’d deny he’d ever had a photo. I didn’t push it. Everyone has their secrets. I’d gotten into the business myself after finding that it paid much better than failing to break into theatre. After a string of poorly-sold performances of Cyrano de Bergerac, I’d been drowning my long false nose of sorrows at a speakeasy, where I’d met Sally and Joe. As it turns out, they were fans of my work, and while they didn’t think the stage held a future for me, they had some thoughts about where I might apply my talents a bit more fruitfully. Anyway, like I said, I was huddling in the wardrobe like a frenchman in a farce, if frenchmen habitually covered their faces with phosphorescent paint. Which perhaps they did, I’ve never been to France, and you can’t trust a farce to give you an accurate picture of how life is lived. There had to be differences, I reasoned, otherwise no-one would get a lick of work done between cuckoldings. I heard the sitters start to file in, the usual pre-seance chatter filling the air. Who have you lost, do you think the summerlands have pool tables, my goodness the spread was fine. I kept an ear cocked. We’d already gotten a pretty good casing done of this lot, so we had a plan in place for what to bring up, but it never hurt to grab every last detail you could. The easiest ones were on the suckers list. They’d been to one of our seances before, or to one held by some other medium willing to part with their details for a few pennies. They were the easy ones. They kept coming back to hear that poor departed Richard was still doing well, or to hear the latest on Zoe’s post-mortem second marriage. Easy money. Slightly trickier was the new blood, but usually they’d come with someone who knew us, or they’d tell our medium Sally who they were trying to contact. She’d give them her patented Brave Little Smile and say that she’d do her best, but that the ether wasn’t always obliging. You had to play them with a softer touch. Give them too much and they’d know they were being played. Give them too little and they’d figure it was all hooey. You had to tantalize them with a little taste, get them hooked and coming back over and over, trying to “strengthen the bonds between the worlds.” By the time they hit their third or fourth spookshow, they’d have humbugged themselves so thoroughly we could jump around in a big mask with a flashlight and they’d tell themselves it was Aunt Josephina doing the Can-Can. This time we’d set up a real song-and-dance. I’d even made myself swallow some ectoplasm just in case we needed an especially gruesome apparition. There was a good crop here, some old believers, some well on their way into our pockets, and a few newcomers we had a good line on. There were even a couple of folks who we hadn’t invited, seems they heard about the seance and wanted to know more. One of them was a little old man with a stoop and a squint who practically had vanished behind his gorsebrush beard. I kept a close watch on him through the little peephole in the wardrobe. I bet an old geezer like him had pots of money sacked away, and he’d give it all just to hear his wife’s voice one last time. If I could catch the details he’d be easy money. He pottered around the room, peering here and there, I figured he was searching for a place to sit, and sure enough he tipped on down right in the chair in front of me. Jackpot. Joe was pretending to be one of the punters, all dolled up in a coat and hat with his little cane he’d found on the riverbank. He was looking a little bloated - I guess he’d really chowed down on that ectoplasm today to make sure he could bucket it up and good when Sally gave the word. He saw the old geezer, same as I did and he came on by to chat him up, see what he could work outta the guy. What a pro. In a wink he’d got the guy’s life story. I’d been right, he was almost the perfect little old man. He was a widower, no children to speak of, wanting to talk to his wife after a long boring life working down at the bank. His voice even sounded like a music house parody of an oldster, cracked and quavering. I didn’t think people really sounded like that. Just goes to show you, you learn something new every day in this business. We couldn’t get much more than that before Sally swanned in in her robe, her eyes half closed as she muttered about the spirits pressing in close. Joe gave her the wink and she came over to speak with the little old man, telling him she felt a presence around him, someone close, someone who missed him. She circled everyone up, making sure Joe was right next to her and the gorsebrush beard next to him. Pretty soon she’d cut the lights and put on a record to “sooth your minds into an appropriately receptive state,” and made sure everyone was holding hands so they wouldn’t look around too much. At first, everything went like clockwork. Sally summoned up her spirit guide, twisting up her face and talking in a low rasp, like how she thought a high priest of Ra would sound. A few of the easier marks gasped like fish at this one. Then she started rapping and tapping and tipping the table, slipping her feet out of her shoes under cover of darkness to lever it about. Her spirit guide started moaning about presences in the near world, presences across the veil, and that there was one here who wished to speak. I heard the old fogey quaver in that perfect old man register of his that he thought it might be him, and Sally let him have it. A presence, she said, was here. They couldn’t make it through, but they missed him. Could she tell their name, the old man asked? Could she see who it was? And Sally said, yes, it was his wife. She said Bess was happy, and missed him, and was waiting for him. And that’s where it all went wrong. The little old guy jumped up and his voice, which had been so cracked and quavering, blasted the room. “By Jupiter I’d bet she’s waiting, I just saw her at home an hour ago!” Then he grabbed his beard and his glasses and whipped them off and stood up straight. I forgot myself and let out a gasp as I recognized his face from posters. “Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Harry Houdini, and you have all been lead astray! This woman is no more in contact with ghosts than I am!” And then he got up and dashed over to my wardrobe and grabbed the door. I tried to stop him, but wardrobes aren’t meant to be held closed from inside. In a second he’d tipped me out onto the floor, as I tried to cover my glowing face with both hands. By this time someone found the lightswitch and the bulbs snapped on. There was a circle of people standing around me, and as soon as their brains caught up with their guts, I knew I was in for it. I felt a grip close around my shoulders as his Houdini hands pulled me up and shook me around. “You see? The ghosts they have shown you are no more than a fool in facepaint! I hope you’ve enjoyed the show these charlatans have put on!” Joe had been standing there, eyebrows touching his hairline, trying to plot a course of action. He saw how my teeth were rattling and bless him, the old carnie spirit rose up and took hold. He vaulted across the table, murder in his eyes. Houdini must have seen something in my face, because he spun around and met Joe’s solar plexus with his fist. Houdini withdrew his hand and stepped away, smoothing down his collar. I did my best to catch Joe as he fell forward. His face was a shade I’d never seen it turn before, and I saw his gorge loosen. He raised his hands to his mouth, desperately trying to hold it in, but it was no use. Soon he was bucketing up ectoplasm all over me, which, I regret to say, caused me to bucket up ectoplasm, and then the suckers, caught as they were in the moment of the display, started bucketing up for real. It was a somewhat cold comfort to know that Houdini had not planned for this, as Sally, who had always had an eye for timing, used this moment to break for the door. She would have made it too, but it was at this moment that the police arrived. And if she had not slipped upon what had become a very slick floor. The whole business rather put the kibosh on our enterprise. It’s hard to rally sitters for a seance by a medium whose vomit-soaked countenance had been plastered across the front page of the Times. Well, page three. There had been a particularly juicy accident at the horse race that day that stole our headline. I still see Joe sometimes. He works sweeping up at a slaughterhouse. They need someone there with a good gag reflex. As for myself, well. It turns out that a director had seen that I was an out-of-work actor, and wanted to get a bit of cheap publicity. Come by next month, you can see me performing in Hamlet. I play the ghost.
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Feb 27, 2023 04:50
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Feb 28, 2023 22:24
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Deadlift 1245 words Fitness At Any Price. That’s what the sign says above the gym. That's what we offer here. A place for anyone to get in shape, flexible plans, flexible payments. A dream of equality in fitness. I remember when we hung the sign, all those years ago, me and Tony Garbanzo. It was the day we’d been dreamin’ about since we met at that illegal underground arm-wrestling tournament. We’d been high fiving and making flexes, watching the place come together. Then when our first customers started trickling in, that had been the limit, the main deal, the coming attraction. We’d had pumpos and pumpettes all building their bodies together. It was a utopia of flex. It didn’t last. We couldn’t compete with the gimmick gyms, the ones where you swung around a sword to get buff, or climbed up on rocks or did crossfit. A sliding price scale and all the nescafe you could drink just wasn’t in the same league. People left to get their meat tended somewhere they could post on their social media, places they could crank out a boast from. We had some holdouts, sure, but it was the kind of guys who were there because they lived up the street. Tony started taking his body real seriously around then. Pushing and pumping and chugging that protein mix to bulk it large, beef it huge. He’d get in before sunrise and lift until dusk. Like if he couldn’t control the world, at least he could control his muscles. And he got gains. He got massive. He beefed it supreme. But one fit guy ain’t enough to draw back customers. When he told people how he got so robusto, it was too much for them. No one wants a workout plan that just says “PAIN” every day of the week. Even then, no matter how vascular his body got, bulging out veins like a dracula’s wet dream, it was never enough for Tony. He started taking supplements, doing freaky switch-muscle plans, lifting and lifting and lifting, longer hours, better gains. Working himself till he dropped asleep on the weight bench, his arms still going as he dreamed of bigness. Until one morning I came into the gym, and Tony was lying dead on the floor. Coroner said it was a massive heart attack. Betrayed by the most important muscle there is. Our gym nearly closed after that. It’s hard enough running a place alone, let alone one where somebody worked themselves out to death. But I stuck it out. Stayed late, going over the books, coming up with new marketing plans like “kids workout free” or “bring your dog to gym day.” One night I was there all alone, cleaning dog crap outta the rowing machine. I’d turned off all the lights to save money, all except the ones right above me, so the rest of the gym was like a vast empty mouth around a little protein bar of light. When you’re wrist-deep in secondhand dog food, all by yourself, in this big dark chasm, your mind goes to a place. I was running on empty, wrung out from chasing dogs off of machines, and I was thinking about poor dead Tony and the look that twisted up his face lying there on the floor, like he was just disappointed his body had failed his gains. And that’s when I heard the CH-CHUNK. There, in the back of my mind. The same sound a loaded deadlift bar makes when you drop it on the ground. A ghost of a sound, almost not there at all. And it came again, over and over, getting louder and louder until it drowned out the hum of the fluorescents, till my head swam and my eyes glazed up like a couple of donuts on a conveyor belt. Until everything went black. I woke up sore a week later, bigger and buffer than I’d ever been in my life. I checked the security tapes and there I was, my body working out without me in it. Hitting the machines doing reps, cramming protein shakes, day and night. I tried to figure out what had happened. At first I thought I’d fugue’d, overwork and stress kicking me out of my head and letting my body take over. But the more I stared at those tapes, the less of myself I saw in there. It was like my body was working to a schedule where every hour was marked “PAIN”. So I went looking for other explanations. I asked around about people losing time. Met up with some weird old guys who smelled like onions, who gave me some crinkly books filled with diagrams and names and cases. And I started sticking around later and later in the gym at night, trying the thinking exercises from the crinkly books and listening close, as close as I could. Started making chalk circles, filling them with jerky, chanting weird old words and holding an image of Tony in my head as clear as I could. That’s how I found out that a demon is just an obsession detached from a way to chase it. When that circle filled up full of thick rolling darkness and out skimmed Tony’s voice demanding a way to bulk up, when I couldn’t distract him with anything else, any of the stuff that used to matter to him before he chased the swole dragon. He didn’t care. The only thing that he wanted was a body, any body, to fill and ride to bigness. It left me sweating like I’d run a 10k. But after that night, I knew how we were gonna save the gym. I started small at first. Invited Pete, one of the regulars who was having trouble making gains to stay after closing, to try out a special workout program. I had him sign a waiver, told him there might be some risks involved. He said it couldn’t be worse than crossfit. We shared a little laugh. Then I pushed him into the circle. Tony boiled up around him, streaming in through his mouth and nose and eyes, until the smoke had whirled its way into him. For a long minute, Pete just screamed. But once he stopped coughing and spluttering, his head dropped and his eyes closed down, light fading out of them like a pizza place shutting for the night. Then, up looked Tony, staring outta Pete’s eyes. He got up and walked out of the circle, jumping straight onto the machines. He went for rep after rep, not stopping, not pausing except to get protein loaded. I’d laid out a big blender full of shake for him, to make sure he didn’t have to stop for long. For seven long days, Pete’s body lifted and sweated and grunted, day and night, other gymgoers moving around him, getting spooked out when he didn’t stop to make small talk like usual. Exactly 214 hours after he started - the same number of hours as the number of pounds that Tony had weighed when his heart exploded - Pete went down like a ragdoll, muscles bulging all over his body. When he got up, he just stared at the big mirrors, gaping over how big he was, touching his new muscles and making poses to show off. He looked up at me, and he asked me, “How?” And I told him to tell his friends exactly what we offer here. “Fitness, at any price.”
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Mar 5, 2023 20:06
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I will judge
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Mar 9, 2023 18:26
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In
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Mar 14, 2023 02:17
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Pham Nuwen posted:I understand that sometimes a flash rule just doesn't tickle your pickle, so I'm throwing in a new option: I will take a Reroll please
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Mar 14, 2023 18:03
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Crits for Week 553 Happy to expand on any of these in the discord The First Bite This felt like a kind of lit-magazine story that I’ve seen a few dozen times. My own distaste for this particular story phenotype aside, it’s well constructed and tightly written, and the apples conceit is an engine with which to write lyrical sentences, which I appreciate. I like the sentence, “Rain like I was Noah sliding down my slicks, so as I could barely see a thing, and the creek looked like a river.” Ultimately though, the literalization of the central metaphor didn’t make this feel fresh enough for me to enjoy the story as a whole. Sharing Economy This story is very sweet, and feels drawn from life. I swear I’ve met the Muttoncard guy, that’s a real sort of person and sort of well-worn joke they’d make. The dialogue is warm and draws you in, even if it is a bit clunky in places. I think that this scene would really elevate a larger piece, but on its own is a bit too thin to take the prize. The protagonist is a thin clear sheet through which we see this world, I would have liked to see more going on with her. But it did make me smile, so well done there. lamb Points for trying something with the formatting, but more points off for the formatting getting in the way of the story. While you’ve inserted gaps for readability sake, it doesn’t do anything that isn’t present in the text. I encourage you to explore stylistic choices that are fun rather than punishing for the reader the next time you tackle stream-of-consciousness. On the upside, I got a strong sense of the personality of the central character and you capture the prejudice with which a lot of city-dwellers view the countryside. Some nice moments of prose in there too - I liked your use of italicized emphasis within the text, it added a lot to the voice of the narrator. tl:dr -- Get out of your own way. Prey Making a bug your point of view character is a strong choice, but you didn’t pair that strong choice with the follow-through needed to make it work. The prose style is more in line with an omniscient narrator and you don’t really capture what it would feel like to operate at that scale, or within the thought processes of a preying mantis. That’d be fine, if not ideal, if you did more with the plot. If you paired both plot and viewpoint together, oh man, what this story could be. This is a ball of promising clay with which you have made a lumpy ashtray. Take a bigger risk next time, an interesting failure is better than a boring success. The Green Zone Dune-rear end motherfucker. I liked this piece a lot. There’s a core story with some stakes and an interesting world that you clearly enjoyed thinking about a lot. You could integrate the worldbuilding a bit better with the rest of the story, this piece sometimes felt like a skein of thread connecting paragraphs of infodump, and I had to read it twice to realize you’d set up the strangler vines earlier in the story. That important information gets lost in the center of the paragraph. I think if you brought the vines to the top of the first sentence and used a paragraph break after the anecdote about practicum it would have stood out better. Really that’s a note for the whole piece - think about how the structure of your paragraphs works with the information that you want to convey. Where would you pause if you were telling this story to an audience? Good story, I would read more if you wrote more. In the Oak-Lot Alright you got me with the little murderous goblin protecting the crops with his idiolectic speech. What a good little guy. What a wonderful fellow. Another variation on the ancient theme of ‘treat fair with the fair folk and they may treat you well in turn,’ but it manages to feel fresh to me. Your prose moves at a good pace and uses detail to evoke images of farm life without getting bogged down by description. This story was mega-solid, with good pacing and characterization, a meaty central conflict, and a giant pig named Big Chungus (if you read Stephen King’s On Writing, this last one is vital to storytelling). Great job, great story. Windfall I am a sucker for a strandbeest and I don’t care who knows it. Sentient wind-driven robots working on a farm is such a charming conceit, and I liked getting to watch them and see them go about their day. The POV character was kind of flat and the ‘noble robber on the run from a job gone bad’ would have been more interesting to me if they had been more contemptible or pathetic. It was hard to follow at times because of all the names and because some of those names were similar to each other. I think the premise could have some legs if you wanted to expand it and chew on the whole dynamic. Leave the Edges Real preachy, a real obvious moral of "jerks who claim to be christian don't even know the bible." This was competently written but also who cares? These fictional people that you made up aren’t interesting enough for me to care about their moral discussions. It felt like you wanted to dunk on someone for being a hypocrite and this story was just a vehicle for that. Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Mar 15, 2023 |
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Mar 15, 2023 00:39
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Tomorrow's News 1373 words Prompt: EVERYBODY KNOWS poo poo'S hosed (week 199) “CLOUDS OF ASH STILL BLOCKING 60% OF LIGHT SPECTRUM” “HORDES OF RAVENING CANNIBALS CONTINUE MARCH WEST” “RADLORD PEACE TALKS FAIL AGAIN” The Editor-in-Chief slammed our articles onto his desk. “No one wants to read about this crap again!” The small slug-like creature he held in his mouth gave a brief shriek as he lit it with an old Zippo. The Chief glared at us through a cloud of billowing pink smoke, the veins around his implants throbbing a staccato tarantella. “You think this horsedick is gonna sell paper? This ain’t news! This is the same half-reheated corpse-cock you’ve been bringing me for weeks! People don't come to us to be told what they already know! They want something new! Something to keep them going as they do the math on which kid to eat first. And we’re here to take their mind off how little Timmy tastes! So get out there and find me some loving news!” “Uh, sir?” A trembling hand raised. Pomporkus Malloy, that was the kid’s name. Cub reporter. Good kid, but then, he hadn’t been here long enough to know better. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a bowling ball on a seesaw. “What about continuity of coverage? Don’t we have a responsibility to keep the public informed?” I winced. Poor stupid bastard. “The public?!” The Chief grabbed Pomporkus by the neck and started squeezing. “The only responsibility I’ve got is to keep this place running!” He punched his hand into the kid’s stomach and yanked out something wet and pulsing. Then he turned and threw him neck-first through the window. I heard a horse bellow in surprise. The veteran reporters in the room didn't twitch. We all remembered our defenestrations. Have to buy the kid a drink later, assuming he managed to hit something soft. And sterile. The Chief took a big bite out of the kid’s formerly internal organ. “The rest a’ you! What are you standing around for?! Get out there and get me a story, or by Christ’s big wet dick I’ll make you one!” He slammed the door shut behind us. We exchanged glances, Lampo Duggins, Cheerwine Smith and I, old dogs sniffing each other’s tails to see who’ll poo poo first. Lampo was the one getting paper trained today. He gave us each a quick nod, then grabbed her hat off the hook by the door and beat feet down the stairs. Cheerwine and I took a more leisurely approach. We’d been rivals a long while, me and Cheerwine. She and I’d started out around the same time and sharpened our teeth against each other’s necks, desperate to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. We’d come to an understanding over the years, or maybe we’d mellowed with age, but either way we were the last two left from those days, gray tendrils showing in the mutations on our scalps. Eyes never leaving the other, we each went through the door, down the stairs, and backed out the alleyway in opposite directions. Same routine as always. I straightened my lucky bolo tie, the little skull the cords ran through dripping its vitriol onto my vest as I made my way through the city. New Virginia was built on the side of a mountain, buildings arrayed like so many terraces atop another. Once I was out of the line of sight of the office, I rode a ladder to the next street down, then squeezed through a hole in the buildings where the shingled roofs sagged together, holding each other up like ancient drunks at a wake. I found myself in the cool damp space between the walls, a labyrinth opening up in the ground before me. Time to visit my lead. ------- I spent the next hour or so squeezing through the hollowed out husks of old silver veins. We’d cared about that silver enough to grind it up out of the earth and snort it down the nostrils of capital. Now it was just another series of empty tubes for the things that crawled beneath the earth to inhabit. One such subterranean nematode was a tolerable friend of mine. Skyler had made herself a nest in a corner of the old mine, where timbers stretched like spiderwebs to pry apart the walls. A glimmer in the darkness soon resolved itself as a lantern hanging from one such timber some yards above the floor, beneath which I presently came to stand. Skyler’s voice floated down to me from somewhere in the darkness. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Twark?’ I took out my notepad and charred fingerbone. “I hear that your flock is planning something big. Thought maybe I could cover it.” I poised the sharp black tip of the bone above a fresh page. “Ah, yes, our great project. I should have known that you’d be sniffing around after it. I’m afraid that I’ve already promised coverage rights on the matter.” “What? To who?” “A colleague of yours. You just missed him. Tall fellow. Polite.” Lampo. I stuffed my notepad and bone back in my duster pocket. “I see. My apologies for disturbing you, Miz Skyler.” “Not at all. A visit is always welcome. And if you should ever wish to join us...” The tunnel lit up for a scant moment, the ropes of living flesh that festooned the beams bioluminescing bright as day. “You know where to find me.” ------ The wan light of day aboveground told me it was gone noon. I leaned against the tentpole of Crazy Harg’s Fine Eels and watched the thinning crowd. Clearly Lampo had gotten the drop on me, digging up a lead I had believed well buried. I’d become complacent in that belief, and now I found myself paying the price. Harg asked if I’d be purchasing a ground-eel today or just holding up his tent. I dug out my last grimy chit and exchanged it for an eel-inna-bun, then pointed my steps toward the casino. I felt like gambling. ----- Cheerwine was perched on a stool on the balcony, watching the pits. She nodded appreciatively as a gobbet of flesh flew into the crowd. After a moment she deigned to notice me, her eyes never moving from the match below. “Twark.” “Cheerwine. You manage to find a lead yet?” Her face tightened enough for me to know I’d hit the mark. If she was raking the casino for muck then her usual pathways must have dried up. I pressed my luck. “That’s what I thought. We both know news these days is thin on the ground. ” “Sounds like you came up short on your friends underneath it.” “Lampo sniped them.” “He’s poaching your leads now too?” “Seems it.” “That leaves you up poo poo creek, don’t it.” “It might. But you’re up there with me. Maybe between the two of us we can grab a paddle.” “What if I’d prefer to see you drown than see myself ashore?” “Do you?” Cheerwine’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Not yet.” She watched as the blood in the circle below sank into the packed dirt, then ripped up her slip and met my eyes at last. “Throw in the bolo tie and you’ve got yourself a deal.” --------- The Chief glared at us over the top of our article. The man needed to learn a new expression. “The hell is this?” Cheerwine straightens her new bolo tie. “An expose, sir. On a public health hazard.” “And you pissholes wrote it together.” I stepped forward. “That’s right sir. I posed as a customer and he snuck into the stall to test the meats.” The Chief sat back and exhaled a long cloud of burning slug. “Alright. It’s not bad. Who woulda guessed that the city’s eel-supply had been replaced with sentient human fleshrope.” I hoped Skyler didn’t have a subscription down in the tunnels. It had been hard enough sourcing the fleshrope. I’d miss Lampo. “I’ll run it on page three.” “Page three!? That’s a front-pager!” “Shut your talk hole. The new kid landed the front page.” The Chief showed us the mock up. I read the headline.”Unlikely Animal Friends: You’ll Never Believe How This Horse and This Monitor Lizard Fell in Love.” “We’re calling it Human Interest.”
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Mar 20, 2023 02:52
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Pham Nuwen posted:Strange Cares - Tomorrow's News Thanks for the crit! Yes, the Mark Twain evocation was deliberate, well-spotted! I'm in the middle of reading Roughing It right now and I couldn't resist. Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Mar 21, 2023 18:28
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I will judge
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Mar 25, 2023 03:14
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My crits for week 555! Late and lovely but they are done nonetheless. Movies are for Everyone Ask anyone, they'll tell you I'm a sucker for things that talk that do not normally talk. I was charmed by this story and I laughed out loud at the joke about how the dog rates movies solely on if the dog in the movie survives. This story is very cozy and affectionate towards the characters. Conversational prose that tells us a lot about you and your taste in movies and relationships. Kind of slow, there's a lot of telling in the story - I think that it would be stronger for having more dialogue with the sunflowers or a deeper look into their feelings on a specific film, as is it's a little surface level. Show us more about what kind of thoughts the sunflowers have about film, what thoughts you've shared with them as well. Good use of prompt. Summer's End Lots of small details in the prose. I like the story about you and your campers, but the fantastical element of your story feels completely unincorporated into the rest of the narrative, and is a bit confusing as to what happened to boot. Strong start but whiffed half of the prompt. Crafting the Heart The story is fun and cute but the prose is really clumsy and repetitive. The action scene was pretty hard to follow and not very interesting. Your descriptions of woodworking are great, it’s clear that you know a lot about the subject and are passionate about it. Overall, this story feels like you went for an idea that was a bit beyond your ability to deliver it, which is commendable. Ironopalis A very personal story told through the medium of time travel. A bit too much description of your future self on the bus. The twist is telegraphed right away, which if it’s intentional I think needs to have something more interesting done with it. Your dialogue is tight and gives a good sense of place. The ending was pretty soft, it kind of just peters out. I like how much of yourself is in this story (two yourselfs, even) and how you took a little more of a risk about what parts of your life you included. I think there's a lot of potential here if you want to dive deeper. Wizard's Work Liked this one a lot. Some repetition in the prose "control such powerful magick except by a demon's control" . Great map of wizards onto social/orderly work, though the overlay was so 1 to 1 that it kind of lost the fantasy element a bit. Genuinely got me a little misty-eyed at the end, even with those flaws though, so you did a good job of conveying the emotional truth behind it all. The Eternal World Ceilidh A story about a groundhog day-style music festival, run by mysterious business aliens who want everyone to have a good time, or at least pretend to. Lots of rich detail, and the prompt feels really well-integrated into the story, like you've taken it to reflect on what about this memory would be enhanced or hurt by the loop. It's not clear to me if you escape the loop at the end? The change in weather seems to indicate it. Love a transcendent fictional music session in fiction, those are always fun to read. Top notch story. Ellipsis Ellipsis we are very disappointed in you, go wait in the car. This one feels like you did the prompt backwards and added a little bit about yourself to a story about time travel. The time travel itself isn't fun to read about though, partly because it's such a broad view that isn't grounded in the emotional moment that you're remembering. I think if you zoomed right in on the moment that, at the moment, is just one paragraph, and used your conceit to really get into the events and senses and whatever stuck in your mind about it so much that it was important enough to put into your story, you'd have something interesting. As is this is the neoliberalism of time travel fantasy - nothing happens because nothing can happen
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Apr 10, 2023 00:45
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Earnest Brawl Idle Amalgam Vs Pham Nuwen A story from the POV of someone without a shred of guile or irony in their soul. 1600 words Due 5/1
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Apr 10, 2023 23:24
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Strange Cares posted:Earnest Brawl Idle Amalgam Vs Pham Nuwen Reminder that this is due MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY BE THERE BE THERE BE THERE
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Apr 28, 2023 00:17
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Earnest Brawl Results Idle Amalgam wins BY DEFAULT
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May 2, 2023 13:02
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Sitting Here posted:
This might get me to sign up more on weeks where I know I have less time to write.
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Jun 5, 2023 21:08
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