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Feb 17, 2023 17:39
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The Vomit-Priests of the City-State of Kherst Guidebook, 982/1500 words Artifact awaiting cataloging: a fragment of a burnt manuscript found near a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus. Both book and damaged manuscript are carbon dated to the early 19th century. Since this is well over one hundred and fifty years before the publication date of the book, and there is no London Society of Transdimensional Explorers, we believe it may be a hoax. Director Evers was nonetheless insistent we keep it on file until it can be better examined. -Dr. Bernard Kynes, 27/7/2004 City-State of Kherst, cont Translated by Sir Guy de Bussey, Fellow of the London Society of Transdimensional Explorers, 1819 As mentioned in Chapter 2 “Mytho-politics of the Greater Northern Basin” the Consensus of Kherst centers it’s political-religious life on a strange form of haruspexy called Geralten-meht [Future-Vomit](1) practiced by Geralten-schen [Vomit Priests]. Since the formation of the Consensus at the end of 1282 2ndKL(2) the Geralten-schen augurs have been the backbone of policy making and their continued accuracy is a cornerstone of the Consesus’s legitimacy. The priests are trained from childhood, reared on secret teachings of Kherst’s symbol-gods(3) and raised on a steady diet of emetics, awareness-spectrum narcotics, and scripture. On every Consensus day(4) these augurs are brought to the Speaking Place and gorged on consecrated ink. As the Councillors debate, pose questions, and propose policy the Geralten-schen grow consumed by religious ecstasy and begin to dribble and vomit ink across their sacral vestments. The Bishop of Blackbirds(5) will read out the resultant letters, words, and thought-forms, believed to be messages from the Hidden Pantheon. The debate will then often turn into new argument about interpretation of the regurgitated texts, resulting in very little getting done. The people of Kherst would, of course, never dream of altering the tradition.(6) In times of great crisis this staid and true formula may not be sufficient. It is then that the solemn duty of transcendence falls upon one of the augurs. They are taken to the Orbet-nahn(7) and fed their last meal, a cocktail of hedlek root(8), ergot, hidden truths, and crystalized time sifted from the slow-light caverns(9) beneath the city. This mixture is invariably fatal, but in the minutes and hours it takes the Geralten-schen to die their carefully honed prophetic powers are tremendously amplified. In an act of both pragmatism and grief their companions and handlers will harvest these nuggets of wisdom in the ancient manner: pulling words and visions straight from their failing bodies like Schren(10) anglers of old. This author has had the disturbing honor of watching the ritual performed and I do not know which is more indescribable: the solemnity of the occasion with its silent priests and the doleful scratch of quill on paper, or the smell. In exchange for this grisly sacrifice the prognostications of the dying Geralten-schen are much more complete, accurate, and actionable then the common Geralten-meht ritual. It was a transcendence that led to the appointment of Carolus dan Glotka(11) as Grand Strategist in the Kherst-Stoblast War of 183 3rdKL(12), whose genius all my readers are surely familiar with so I will not belabor the point.(13) While the precise rituals and mytho-poetic synchronies of the Geralten-meht are of course state secrets of Kherst, and rather disgusting aesthetically, none can deny their efficacy. Translator’s Notes: (1): I have chosen to leave the names of the subjects in the original High Kherstic to preserve the feel and tone of the text (2): the Consensual Revolution that swept the Greater Northern Basin in 1282 2ndKL unseated the New Kingdom of Kherst, among other despotates of the northern city-states, and created a radically democratic new governmental order (see Chapter 2), though sometimes one wonders why they bothered. (3): The symbol-gods or Hidden Pantheon are a mysterious aspect of the religious life of the Greater Northern Basin, separate from the Basin-wide solar cult of Jehrd. Little is written about them in the Codex or the supplementary materials I acquired in my travels. (4) A semi-monthly event when city-wide business is discussed and conducted by the Consensus and its Councilors, diplomatic envoys are received, etc. (5) see Chapter 6: Religious Life of the Greater Northern Basin pg 295-297 (6) This is not the only grotesque tradition of tremendous importance the Kherstites practice and will defend to the death. See my translation of dan Grobst’s Crime and Punishment in the Basin City-States (7) A primary temple of the Hidden Pantheon. The Orbet-Nehn of Kherst is a picturesque example of lower-dimensional architecture believed to date up to 400 years pre-1stKL. (8) Recording trans-planar botany is a difficult science but what research I can scrape together indicates hedlek is a rough analogue of the nightshade family from our more familiar flora kingdom (9) I have yet to find any other reference to the phenomenon of slow light or time crystalization in any part of the Codex or any other Seraphinian literature yet recovered by my fellows. If any reader has such information please send a letter or calling card to 27 Hanover Court, above the sign of the Twisted Keys (10) I believe that a Schren may be one of the fish pictured in the yet-untranslated chapter 1, pg 75. What it has to do with fishing words from a dying man’s stomach I’m still not sure about. Answers on a postcard, as above. (11) Carolus dan Glotka (121-205 3rdKL), a successful haberdasher before his military appointment (12) References are thin on the ground, but given that he have found no record of a city-state of Soblast existing post 190 3rdKL I think it can be concluded the war went poorly for them. (13) I bloody hate it when they do this, pardon my French. Don’t just leave important information out of a text because you assume subsequent readers will be familiar with it. It’s infuriating.
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Feb 20, 2023 04:18
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Feb 25, 2023 06:12
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A Tale of Two Guineas 1410 words “We pillage and plunder, we rifle and loot, drink up me hearties, yo-ho,” The Captain sings to himself as he walks his deck like a lion walks the savannah, unshakeable and unpretentious in his mastery. Twelve years the crew of the Zephyr have terrorized the South Seas and the Spanish Main, stealing silver, sugar, and slaves from Spaniards and Englishmen grown fat and lazy by abundance. The south wind fills her sails and sets the rigging to singing. The sun hangs overhead, round and golden like the guinea he twirls between his fingers. It’s going to be a beautiful day. The merchant galleon flounders to their port bow, struggling to keep the wind at its quarter, struggling to escape like a rat in a trap. The Zephyr has chased her for a day and a night; her captain is skillful and wise in the way of the sea, but it won’t be enough. She’s low in the water, loaded down with spoils bound for Portsmouth if her company colors can be trusted. The Captain tosses his lucky guinea in the air, catches it, slaps it to the back of his hand: heads. It’s been lovely, but it’s time to end the chase. His coin is never wrong. It’s been a constant companion since his mother gave it to him all those years ago, before she died, before his brother went to the counting house and he went to the sea. He nods to the bosun who bellows the orders that will bring the Zephyr about to rake the merchant-man. It doesn’t take long. After a quick volley from the port guns the merchant-man strikes her colors, reefs her sails, and comes about to be boarded. The Captain sees no reason to be uncivil about the whole operation. His men strip the cargo hold with practiced efficiency. She’s carrying cane sugar, rum, cotton cloth, and coffee, which they take, and a tonne of rice, which they leave. Sailors have to eat, and the Captain is not an unkind man. The Zephyr pulls away from the stricken ship, low in the water herself now, and sets a course for Nassau. She needs a refit and a scraping before the shipworm and barnacles eat clean through her keel. Her cargo will keep them sailing for the foreseeable future, and what more could a captain ask for? It was all going so well, and then the wind changed. The guinea flashes in the sun as the captain tosses it: tails. He curses and calls for lookouts at all quarters. It isn’t long before they find what they’re looking for. Two cutters, heavy sailed and up-gunned, flying Company colors. A bad sign, that. When plundering Company ships the Navy can be surprisingly open to bribery. The Company itself takes a harsher view. The gun cutters are riding high and fast, tacking about to pincer the pirate ship. The Zephyr, loaded with her ill-gotten spoils, can’t outrun them. The Captain will have to fight. He hates doing that. He orders the Zephyr to come about hard a-lee. If he can kill her speed and come back to port he can put the starboard ship to his port, fill her with shot, and be away before her sister ship can come to bear. It almost works. They slide around the heavier ship like water on a greased pan and the port guns sing a terrible tattoo. For a brief and blessed moment the cutter begins to fall away and the Zephyr comes around on a beam. The Captain feels the cracking before he hears it. The hull begins to creak and split under the stress of the hard turn. Maintenance long deferred will always present its bill at the most inconvenient moments. They come out of the turn and put the wind to port, but the cutters have swung into position. As the cannonades come down on his ship, the Captain knows it’s over. He gestures at the bosun. They haul down the black flag. The Zephyr is captured. It’s a miserable morning in London. The Judge’s robes cling to him in the cold damp and the weight of his wig makes his neck ache. The majesty of the Law is a terrible burden, if not quite so heavy as the regard of Lord Berkeley. The infamous Captain of the Zephyr is on his docket for the day and the First Lord of the Admiralty of Great Britain has some very particular views of how the case should be handled. The Zephyr spent a decade embarrassing the Navy and His Majesty’s Government up and down the South Seas, and an embarrassment to His Majesty’s Government is an embarrassment to the national debt and His Lordship is leveraged to the hilt in government debt. An example must be made, a display of monarchic power to remind the people, and more importantly the City, of Britain’s power. The problem is that the Captain of the Zephyr is popular, a hero of London’s broadsheets, a nautical Robin Hood, and Lord Berkeley, the Navy, and His Majesty’s Government, are not. The Judge has seen the crowds gathering around the Bailey, heard the street cryers’ harraunging. He’s been forty years before the Law, man and boy, and he knows the makings of riot when he sees one. This will require tact. A public confession, full of contrition and submission to the power of the state, that might be enough to assuage the crowd. But the Captain is a proud man, he’s made a living of scoffing at the law and calling no man master. But the Judge is wise in his trade. He knows the ways of men, and knows that there are always levers. He pulls the stack of broadsheets across his desk and begins to read. The sun is hanging low at Execution Dock. It’s the last hanging of the day, and the day has been a long one. The Captain stands before the noose and gives his final words. “I betrayed my king and country. I robbed, I cheated, I killed, and abetted the crimes of other men. I repent my deeds and abase myself before the law, not in hopes of absolution, but in genuine contrition. People of England, I implore you not to follow in my path. Cleave to the law and the king so that you won’t end here on the gallows like me.” The words taste like ash in his mouth, but at least he won’t have to live with them long. And the crew will be safe. They’ll be bound for penal servitude in the colonies, but they’ll live. He holds hard to that thought as the trapdoor snaps open. A single golden guinea rolls across the gallows. The Company Factor hums to himself as he walks away from Execution Dock. It was a good hanging, very emotional, well choreographed. The Factor’s learned to appreciate such things. And it’s going to make the Company, and him, a great deal of money. The Company has quietly been buying government debt at discounted prices as the news of naval humiliation rolled in from the Spanish Main. Now that the Zephyr’s been caught and her captain executed its value will balloon, and government debt backs Company stock prices. It took the Factor a lot of work to set up a trap half a world away, to leak news to the broadsheets, to feed intel to the pirates at Nassau. A delicate balancing act, but one that will all be worth it when the money rolls in. He twirls a golden guinea between his fingers as he mentally calculates share prices. He came from nothing to reach his position, apprenticed to a counting house when his mother died and his brother went to sea, he clawed his way up the Company ladder. Intelligent, ruthless, and sentimental as a snake, Sir Blunt had personally selected him for the scheme. He flips the guinea into the air and expertly catches it: heads. He smiles. It’s going to be a beautiful night. A beggar on Fleet Street comes out of his doze to find himself deprived of his bottle of rotgut rum, but richer a shiny half crown. The Factor fingers flash with his spinning gold coin. The rum tastes like fire and victory. He sings to himself, “We’ll maraud and embezzle and even hijack, drink up me hearties yo-ho.” There are many kinds of pirate.
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Feb 27, 2023 04:10
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Mar 1, 2023 03:10
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Rooks and Blackbirds 1483 words Late morning sunlight glittered on the surface of the Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer turning the horizon to a haze of blue and gold. The warm breeze brought the smell of salt and of sand beginning to bake in the summer heat of southern France. Odette Delacroix sat on the patio of her rental home gloomily picking at the last of her palmier and coffee, dreading the end of the month and the return to Albany. After the long, sullen tension of her marriage’s death-throes the past three weeks had been a near-magical escape. Returning to the town her grandmother had left as a little girl had been like coming back to a home she’d never known. And too soon it would be over, back to the dreary, samey landscapes of upstate New York and an apartment that wore Michael’s absence like a missing tooth. Then, with a fluttering and a flash of black feathers, a crow landed on her table. It did an anxious little dance on the table rim, looked at her breakfast plate, and cocked its head inquisitively. She sighed and pushed the plate towards it. “Go ahead, little guy. At least one of us should have a good morning.” The crow repeated its little dance, pausing to gobble down bits of pastry, then cawed loudly and flew away. She checked her watch: it was time to clear breakfast away and go to the beach. She sunbathed, drank wine with a stranger, and generally felt better throughout the day. Her time in Villefranche-sur-Mer might be fleeting, but she was determined to enjoy it. As she had her night-time tea on the patio she saw on the table a sea-glass earring. A gift. The crow was back the next morning. She was pretty sure her pain-au-chocolate would kill it, so she tossed it some sunflower seeds leftover from the beach, which it ate happily and flew off. That night she got an old 2-franc coin. The next day she fed it a financier and got a polished blue stone. The third day was eggs for breakfast, so it was back to seeds. She heard a laugh from the street. A dark-haired young man with a large nose was watching her. She recognized him, he was some sort of street merchant who made the rounds on Av. Georges Clemenceau. He grinned, baring a gold tooth. “If you want to get something good off him, I can help,” he said in heavily-accented English. “I see this bird around, he likes madeleines, the fancy kind with raspberry jam in them.” He proffered her a large cardboard box, “For you? Twenty Euro. He bring you something good, guarantee.” Odette sighed. She knew it was a rip, but the man seemed friendly and she wanted to treat her new feathered friend. She bought the box and tossed the crow one. That night, when she came home, a diamond ring glittered on the table. * The grime on the windows of the pawnshop off Rue Barillerie lent the early afternoon sunlight a grayish tinge as it shone off the silver ring. The old man who ran the place had skin the color of teak and a mustache like a push-broom. “Mademoiselle,” he said in a thick Punjabi accent “where did you get this piece?” Odette thought fast, ‘a crow gave it to me in exchange for pastries’ probably wouldn’t sound great. “My grandmother gave it to me. It’s been in our family for generations. I always thought it might be worth something, so when I came out here I thought I’d check.” “Mademoiselle,” said the man, “This is priceless. Unless I miss my guess this is a Mellerio maker’s mark. Judging from the purity of the silver, this ring is pre-Revolution.” Odette could feel her stomach flip. A pre-Revolution ring? That had to be worth tens of thousands, at minimum. With that she could stay in France for months, at least until her tourist visa ran out, maybe longer. “How on Earth did you get it past customs?” the man asked. Her stomach flipped again. “What do you mean? It’s my ring.” “The Cultural Ministry might disagree, mademoiselle. There are some strict laws about the handling of historic artifacts, especially ones of… dubious provenance.” She hadn’t thought of that. She didn’t even know France had a Cultural Ministry. “I feel privileged to have seen it, but you should not have brought this here. Very dangerous for you, could get your visa revoked. A shame, it would be worth a mint at auction.” “Well couldn’t I sell it here and not have to bring it back through customs? I could really use the money,” she said, panicky. “Weeelllll,” drawled the man, “Not officially, no. Not without impeccable paperwork. But… I know a man, a collector of ancien regime artifacts, and if he would offer less than 50,000 euro for it I’ll eat my hat.” 50,000 euro, the number seemed unimaginable. That was as much as she made in a year. “If you would like, I could arrange a meeting. It would take a few days to reach him and get the money together, of course. Say, Friday?” “Yes. Yes, absolutely. Tell him I can meet him any time.” She gave the old man her phone number and skipped back to the bus station, the ring in her pocket and a spring in her step. She’d have to reschedule her flight, but it didn’t matter. She’d never considered kissing a bird before, but if she saw that crow again she didn’t think she could resist. * Of course it couldn’t last. The next afternoon she left her house for the beach and saw a hunched man with a large boil on his chin putting up fliers, “Lost: Silver ring, antique. If found, call +01 84 29 11 43.” She walked over to him, dread building in her gut. “Excuse me, monsieur. You lost a ring?” “Oui,” he sniffled. “A family heirloom. I brought it out to polish and when I turned around it disappeared. It was the only hope I had. My sister, she needs an operation that the national insurance won’t cover. I had a buyer, he said he would give me 3,000 euro for it.” Odette perked up. The man had no idea what it was worth. She took the ring from her pocket and showed it to him. “My ring!” he cried. “Oh mademoiselle, you have saved my sister’s life!” “Well monsieur,” she said, “when I found it the other day I took a liking to it. How about I buy it off you? 3000 Euro, you said?” “I don’t know, mademoiselle. Jean-Claude, he’s an old friend. He wants it for his wife…” “5000,” Odette snapped, “I’ll give you 5000. I really like the ring.” She watched the resistance leave the man’s eyes and he nodded. They went to the ATM and she handed over the wad of colorful bills. He shook her hand vigorously as he thanked her. It was nice to do a good deed and get rich in the process. She was so elated she didn’t even notice she’d lost her watch. When she got home the crow was back on the patio. She set her purse down, went to the kitchen, and got him the whole box of madeleines. After she went inside the crow grabbed something from behind a bush and flew away. * Raul sat by his push-cart on Av Francoise peeling a false boil off his chin. Crowmez alighted next to him. “What’d you get, her wallet?” “Caw!” “Good work. The watch was a bust, cheap junk.” “Caw!” “Yeah, I know. Tourists.” He threw the boil in the bag with his other tools: a large false nose, a gold tooth cap, brown face paint, and a bushy false mustache. “Three in one job, that’s pretty good, yeah?” “Caw!” “I told you it wasn’t too complicated for a fiddle game.” He rifled through the wallet. American IDs were always worth something to Armand, and she’d had another 200 euro in there. Not a bad haul for the price of a glass ring and some stale pastries. He tossed the wallet and watch in the cash drawer of the cart and began pushing it towards the butcher’s on Rue de l'Eglise. Crowmez didn’t take his cut in cash. “To think, she was gonna cheat me out of more than forty grand. The nerve of some people. It’s enough to make you despair.” “Caw!” “I think when we go to Marseille we should try the Broken Wing scheme again.” “Caw! Caw!” “It is not demeaning. The pigeon drop’s an artform, my friend.” “Caw!” “Hey, language. I’m trying to keep you in sheep’s eyeballs over here and all I get is criticism.” The sun went down on the bay as they ambled towards the butchershop. Another good score for Raul and Crowmez, interspecies con artists.
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Mar 6, 2023 03:58
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IN, flash me
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Mar 7, 2023 22:47
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Is it too late to ask for a picture to go with my principle?
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Mar 9, 2023 22:35
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The Green Zone 1496 words The new orchard was proving to be a problem. The drain the new root systems were causing on the rhizosphere was cascading into the moss carpet, leaving a widening swath of limp, dying green cover across the roof. This was even more of a problem since the orchard was not, technically, supposed to be there. Hayes walked under the boughs of the assorted fruit trees, breathing deep the scent of living earth, dying vegetation, and the ozone tang of the neon signage that adorned the ivy-covered walls of the urban canyon around the orchard site. If he could get the problems fixed before inspection then he’d be fine, the Authority’s first rule was always “If it works you’re not in trouble,” but if the site still looked like this when the auditors came around he would catch it in the neck, and since he worked for the The City Authority that was probably not a euphemism. It could be a thankless job, being a warden in the Green Zone. Hayes could still remember his urban permaculture classes with Professor Pardot, the old man droning on about the history and function of the Zone and its importance to the City. “The Green Zone is a marvel of ecological engineering and urban design,” he would say, “A band of reclaimed built environment, seeded with plant life for air purification and carbon capture. It is the built greenspace to end all built greenspaces. And the few of you attentive enough to pass this program may be lucky enough to tend it one day.” Well, thought Hayes, with luck like this… He trotted down what used to be a fire escape, in the days before suspensive mag-rails replaced them, now a trellis for kudzu-derivates. A former invasive species and an obsolete technology wedded together into something new: the very essence of the Green Zone. Or one of them. The other, of course, being to ease the lives of the rich inhabitants of the Inner City, fixing the air quality and keeping the teeming masses of laborers and industrial zones of the Outer City out of their view. The Zone was supposed to consist mostly of ivies, vines, bines, and mosses, the most space-and-resource efficient photosynthesizers available, suited for purpose and nothing more. But, wardens being wardens, it didn’t stay that way. Everyone had a side-gig, whether for income, enjoyment, or proof-of-concept: Teller had mushroom gardens for culinary and psychoactive use, Wensleydale had her hop farm, and Scotch grew the finest marijuana in the City. Hayes liked fruit trees. When he reached street level he ducked through a curtain of flowering vines into the courtyard where he kept the rain-catchers. In theory the microclimate that prevailed over the Zone, it’s kilometers-thick band of dense vegetation creating wet, cool air pockets between the concrete jungle of the Outer City and the glass-and-steel edifices of the Inner, should be enough to keep the water cycle stable with minimal interference (“Principle five: use and value the renewable” said the Pardot in his head), but in practice there were a thousand ways it could be hosed up, so you checked manually. The levels in the tanks looked fine, but he made a note in his PDA to double-check the draw differentials for the increased biomass on the roof above. Hayes went up the side of what used to be a line of row-houses by ladder, careful to avoid the deceptively still strangler vines. He’d seen Hawkins lose two fingers to one in practicum and didn’t need any more lessons to steer clear of the thin, red-flowering tendrils. He walked across the roof, pausing to check the ferns he’d planted back in the spring. They were yellowing at the edges. He pulled out his PDA and ran a quick spectro-scan of the soil: low nitrogen levels. It looked like he’d have come up here with some beans or other nitro-fixers. Curious, the levels shouldn’t be off that badly. He made another note and went down the other side of the building. Something was definitely wrong. He paused on the way down to look at the glittering skyline of the Inner City. There were rumors, legends really, that if you could keep on the job and hit your targets for bio-growth and infrastructure reclamation for the full 20 year stint you’d be invited to live there. Hayes tried to imagine it: walking down streets not choked with weeds and wildflowers, going to restaurants and shops instead of relying on supply depots and emergency drops from Authority air drones. He thought of buildings not covered in creepers or carefully perforated by great trees, their planned decay forming substrate for the next generation of plant life (“Principle six,” muttered Pardot in his memory, “Produce no waste.”) Of course, he’d never heard of anyone actually making it. The average career of a warden was less than twelve years. The work was dangerous, the pay low, and private sector opportunities for a skilled graduate in the Outer City were plentiful. Hayes had been at it for eleven years. His feet took him towards the inner rim of the Zone. Here he’d spent years carefully arranging flowering trees and shrubs: cherry blossom, honeysuckle, lilac, rhododendron. Their root systems kept the rich loam of the Zone from spilling out into the manicured lawns of the Inner City, whose cleaner air let the bushes and trees thrive. And the wealthy Inners liked the way that the micro-climate breezes blew fresh floral scents across their enclaves. He’d won a minor award for it last year. And now he found that artful arrangement disturbed. Heavy footfalls and uncaring bodies had torn their way through his installation like wrecking balls. He frowned and followed the trail. It ended not far from the new orchard site. A small gang of rough-looking men were gathered around a machine tucked against an old Art Deco facade. Hayes stopped up short. They had the white and purple uniforms of Praetorium Security, Inc. Priv-sec toughs regularly patrolled the Inner rim to keep out the riff-raff of the Outer City and any wardens with ideas above their stations. But they weren’t supposed to come into the Zone. Hayes swallowed hard and approached them. “Hey there, boys. You get lost?” “Nah, but you should, green-thumb,” said the largest of them. He had the three pips of a sergeant on his collar. Hayes craned his neck to see what they were tinkering with behind the big man, and a great many things became apparent at once. It was a bio-processing unit, the one for this block, but not up on the roof where it belonged. They were fairly crude matter-processors, not like the makers that were a staple of an Inner house. Their purpose was to take in waste and spit out fertilizers and complex biological compounds. But anyone who’d passed high school chemistry could rig one up to produce any number of other things: explosives, drugs, plastics. There was a steady trade in stolen BPUs, and priv-sec types were always looking for new ways to get on the take. No wonder the nitrogen levels in the local soil were out of whack and the rhizosphere was running on fumes. “Look,” said Hayes, raising his hands placatingly, “I don’t want to report this, but we need to get that back up on the roof where it belongs. If we don’t get the nutrient gradient leveled out we could see a cascade failure of this whole block.” “Yeah?” said the sergeant, “Maybe we feed you into a mulcher and that takes care of the problem, you think about that, green-thumb?” Well, said Hayes to himself, that’s actually not a bad idea. He turned and ran down the street, back towards the neon canyon and rowhouses. The guards pursued, they couldn’t let him spill what he knew now. The Authority wasn’t any more lenient on its contractors than its employees. Hayes leapt over fallen streetlights and dodged around moss-covered fire hydrants, heading for the entrance to a courtyard. As he reached it he dropped into a slide. The guards didn’t. They ran right into a curtain of thin, red-blossomed vines. After a few minutes the screaming stopped and the strangler vines hauled their grisly prize up to their root clusters. Hayes spent the rest of the evening getting the bio-processor back up in its place, then slept the sleep of the righteous. A few days later he went back to the new orchard to confirm his hypothesis. The moss was surging back over the roof and on one of the trees a small pomegranate was starting to grow. Bonemeal, iron, gut flora, and the repaired nitrogen cycle had stopped the cascade. The first principle of permaculture: observe and interact. Professor Pardot would be proud, even given the… unorthodox methods. Hayes looked over the City. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine a life on either side of the Zone. He belonged here, a creature of the green.
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Mar 13, 2023 03:58
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Mar 14, 2023 04:15
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The Even Chance 1798 words Prompt: Degenerate Gamblers It’s not really a sound, but it’s deafening. It isn’t a light, but it’s blinding. Every part of me is compressed and expanded at the same time, the view of Jupiter outside dissolves into unnameable non-colors as the ekpyrotic chamber tears the fabric of the universe apart around itself in a miniature Big Bang, puncturing space-time and depositing us in the liminal space of the Planck brane. Sound and light filter through the chamber windows: alarms, shrieks, clattering glass, flashing strobes in many colors, a violent cacophony. The brass-and-hardwood doors slide open and we step out onto the casino floor. I take a drink from a cocktail waitress with the willowy build of one raised in micro-gravity, flipping her a chip from the case of them I bought at the transfer station on Titan. It's a Saturnian Fizz, made with a nice distillation from Ganymede; they only have the best at the Even Chance. I join the general flow heading towards the gaming area. I’m surrounded by the cosmopolitan creme of the System: a voluptuous Earthling glides past me in a dress made of hardlight and vapor, a pantherman from the gene-colonies of Ceres peels off to play higher-dimensional roulette, a Martian vintner in a suit the color of his products flirts with an Ionian in the sober wool-and-mail couture of an entanglement broker. And at the end of every aisle, tucked between rows of slot machines and game tables upholstered in Bayes-space are the sinister pairs that keep the peace: the Bouncers, corded with vat-grown muscle and chromed augmentation, and the Technicians with their heavy black gloves and faceless mirror-masks. I shiver as one of them looks at me, my face distorted in the surface of the mask like a funhouse mirror. I finish my drink and park myself in front of a slot machine. I can feel the continuity of seven centuries of gamblers as I pull the bandit’s single arm and the mind inside calculates my odds with ruthless, uncompromising precision. The Even Chance is built in the liminal space between dimensions, a Planck brane lying above the quantum foam, free from the unpredictability of entanglement and no-clone principles; it’s a realm of pure, mathematical expression. Management bills it as the first truly fair gambling house in all creation. If there are any gambler-gods to hear your prayers elsewhere in the System they aren’t welcome at the Chance. Here it’s just you and the math, and math is a cruel mistress. Millions of souls have spent billions of units of dozens of currencies over the decades, all of them convinced that their luck is due to turn around, that they have an unbeatable system, and they’re always wrong. I don’t have a perfect system. I’m just going to cheat. I throw a few more tokens down the black hole of the slot machine. Filthy things, they are, naked Skinner boxes designed to suck in wealth from the dopamine deficient clods who can’t calculate odds. Urban legend among the System’s gamblers say that the Chance powers its machines with the disembodied minds of welchers, troublemakers, and cheats, that the Technicians have upload boxes built into their gloves. I’m pretty sure that Management started that rumor to keep incidents down. I finish my turn on the machine with an affected scowl; it’s important to seem like a real schmuck right off the bat. Disgruntled gamblers don’t attract much attention, if they did then no one would have time for anything else in here. I’ve been running scams for years all over the System from the Velvet Hall orbiting Venus to Arcadia on Oberon and there are certain ways that every casino manager thinks, blind spots that they can’t see past. The perennial loser hopping from game to game is foremost among those, in my experience. So I spend a few hours and a few thousand chips gliding from one table to another. Four and five dimensional roulette, pazaak, major league cockfights, no-limit no-prescience Hold ‘em, I hit them all and gleefully lose. After a fine dinner of steak au poivre and a bold Chateau-neuf from the Mariner Valley I move on to the main event. Accession is a game of kings. Not literally of course, the System hasn’t had a king since the fall of the Lunarchate, but if we still did they’d play Accession. It’s a game of chance, skill, and wit, where bluffing and calculation must be blended with intuition and a certain wild flair. It is a game where one can take one’s true measure against all comers, and everyone knows it’s quite impossible to cheat. I pull up to the table as a new game is about to start. I recognize the Earthling woman from the chamber I came in on; we’re joined by a tall, muscular woman with the heavy tattoos of the Pallas ship-wright’s guild, a Venusian whose face is hidden behind their breathing mask, and an uplifted ape from the Lunar colonies. The dealer places a fist-sized nugget of computronium in the table’s receiver; there’s a humming and a sharp scent of ozone as the powerful minds in the table turn the computronium into a new Accession deck. Each deck is bespoke and procedurally generated, created for the game in question and then destroyed afterwards, returned to its proto-matter state. There can be up to ten suits and five dozen trumps, the goal being to assemble hands of particular values and symbolisms. It takes a long time to learn and is generally considered impossible to master. It is the only thing in this world that I truly love. But love doesn’t pay the bills and I have three ex-wives, a bar tab, and a bookie that rely on me. Accession is like chess, there are several phases to a full game. The early game is simple enough, we spend half a dozen hands learning what’s in the deck and how we each play. The ape-man, Ronald, is a safe player, he doesn’t chase and he doesn’t bluff. He folds the first two hands before he sees a five and six of stars in the turn and runs up the pot with a Star-and-Cloud flush. The Guildswoman, Sophia, is erratic, chasing broken straights and clumsy allegories. The Venusian is hard to read behind the mask, but they tap their foot whenever a flop goes their way. But the Earthling woman, Ming, is a genius. She plays with the speed and grace of knife-fighter, and just as much mercy. On a table full of deeps cards she clumsily bluffs the Kraken, only to reveal it when she gets called by the Venusian. Brilliant. If I was planning to play an honest game I’d be in trouble. If I wasn’t done with romance I’d propose. The mid-game is all about jockeying for position and hammering on weaknesses. I bait Sophia with a false tell and a few thrown hands before gutting her chip stack with a double-straight. Ming cleans out the Venusian after a few rounds of extravagant play. Ming and I pass the chip lead back and forth with Ronald holding a steady third as Sophia slowly bleeds out her last reserves. We break before the turn to the late game for a snack and a round of drinks. I refresh myself with spinach puffs and the best attempt at a Deimos Incident I’ve had this side of the Belt. I order a second to steady my nerves. We’ll be coming back to the late-game, a phase of big moves, bold bets, and grand reversals. It’s coming time for me to make my move. The Even Chance is devilishly hard to use modern cheating methods in. Its separation from the quantum makes many of the basic elements of the cheater’s panoply useless: q-folders, foam scrapers, Schrodinger Boxes, and Bell states are all so much junk once you’re in the ekpyrotic chamber. There are alternatives, of course. But the Technicians are always on the lookout for new iterations of Von Neumann spoofs, anti-Bayesian logic suites, and ad-hoc crypto-engines. But like I said, you have to find blindspots to stand in. I’ve found that a casino focused on preventing high-tech shenanigans will overlook more mundane techniques. Up my sleeve is a micro-maker and a wafer of computronium ready to be programmed into a Accession card of my choosing. All it takes is some elementary sleight-of-hand to swap cards at the right moment and I can walk out of here with a payday that will keep me liquid for the foreseeable future. We’ve played enough that I think I have the layout of the deck memorized. It’s all about choosing the moment now. A few hands later I have it. Sophia’s been chasing a flush that just busted when the last table card failed to come up swords. Ronald and Ming are both betting heavily. He must have something decent, he hasn’t bluffed all game. Ming I’m not sure about. The pot’s ballooning and I’m carrying the knights of hearts and clouds in the pocket. With a minor effort of will I send a thought to the maker in my sleeve and it reprints its payload into a copy of the High King. I haven’t seen it on the table yet, so it should be safe. With that, the two knights in my hand, and the three sword cards in play I have a round table. It’s one of the three best hands in the game. The odds that Ming or Ronald have the full consortium or splendid panoply needed to beat it are astronomical. I raise my hand to cover a cough and with a practiced motion swap out the three of deeps for the King. I smile and raise when the bet comes back around. One by one we reveal our hands. Sophia, as expected, has nothing but a few swords. Ronald surprises me: he WAS bluffing. Didn’t know he had it in him. And then comes Ming. She turns up her cards: the knight of pentacles, the knight of stars, and the High King. It might be my imagination, but I think I can feel my heart stop. I mumble about folding and try to excuse myself; the game’s a bust but maybe I can still make it out of here with my shirt. A black-gloved hand settles on my shoulder and forces me back into my seat. “Patron,” says a voice echoing from a mirror-finished mask, “please turn over your cards.” I laugh until I cry. *** There’s a new slot machine by the door of the ekpyrotic transfer chamber today. The regulars have been taking their turns with it, as they do with all new games. But no matter how many of them try it, it spitefully refuses to pay out.
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Mar 20, 2023 02:32
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I've got no gas in the tank to write this week, but I'll take a spin at judging.
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Mar 25, 2023 02:13
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Crits: Week 555 Movies Are For Everyone by BeefSupreme Charming is the core word for this piece. You have a very strong start, I love the opening line and you set up the fun magical-realist conceit quickly and deftly. i immediately believe in the world of the story, it feels very natural here that plants and dogs should talk. I like the characterization of the sunflowers, and though I think that information should have been put earlier in the story, their different approaches to film appreciation is fun and well done. I just wish we got to see a little bit more of our narrator's approach to same. I think the narrator-character is a bit underdeveloped, which is a shame because the rest of the piece is lively and cute. Summer's End by Chili This was actually rated the highest for me. I absolutely adore your prose. It's rich and textured but not self-indulgent and perfectly captures the warm melancholy of late summer. The characterization of our narrator-protagonist is quick and clean, I immediatley feel like I know what he's about and like him immensely. I really like the immediate building of the central fantastic element, starting subtle and reaching crescendo at the confrontation with Purple Eyes. The problem of the piece is that confrontation. It gets bogged down cramming a lot of idea into a small space, and as a result we don't get to see any of what it means to lose this inner child. I don't need a lot here, I think we're all old enough to have experienced the grinding effect of daily life on our sense of wonder and contentment, but I need something to reify the metaphor. I think the denoument helps salvage that a bit, I just wish it didn't have to. Still, great piece. Crafting the Heart by Admiralty Flag The title is fitting, because you have a well-crafted sense of heart to this story, it's just the rest of it isn't up to snuff. The core relationship and father-daughter bonding activity is very warm and wholesome. Similarly the core activity of woodworking was well described: even if you get a little in the weeds with some of the tools and techniques your knowledge of and enthusiasm for the craft are impressive and infectious respectively. Unfortunately those core strengths aren't held up by the other elements. The urban fantasy stuf is... fine. I don't love it but I don't hate it. It exists and serves its purpose but adds very little. Your prose is a little clunky with some repititious word choice, and your big action scene at the end is muddled; I would have liked some better defined geography and stakes set up before the spells started flying. The parts of yourself that you brought to this were very strong, you just need to build up the framing elements to match. Ironopalis by ItohRespectArmy I really enjoyed the sense of place in this one. I'm a Neighborhood Guy and even with the sparse word budget you allowed I could very much feel the type of place you're evoking, both in the fridged bus stop and the Majorcan beach. I quite like the concept of time loops and meeting your future or past selves, so I enjoyed the fantastic-element-as-emotional-catharsis. Our protagonist is whistful but not self-pitying with a strong narrative voice. I don't have a lot to say about this other than that I liked it. Well done. Wizard's Work by Albatrossy Rodent This was a divisive one in the judgechat. It took me a few tries before I could really see what part of you you were bringing to this story. After rereading it and talking with the other judges I get the conceit of orderly work as seen through the lense of being Literal Wizards, and the sense of burnout being resisted by a genuine commitment to doing good with your work is a good emotional throughline that I liked. I just feel like the prose and the otherworld fantasy elements were very flat. There was nothing about them that was particularly special or intriguing, they were just there as a metaphor for metaphor's sake. I'm also not sure I like the use of modern colloquial speech, especially since it doesn't jive super well with the narration. It pulls me out of the fiction of the world, which is death for a secondary-world fantasy. I think if you'd spent less wordcount on spells and more on drawing out the central concept you'd have been on more solid footing. The Eternal World of Ceilidh by Digital Raven I loved this one. I'm a big sucker for time loop stories and this one is very well exectuted. It's got Vibes and it's got Atmosphere and those are things I love, especially in short fiction. The opening is very strong, bringing us into the drudgework of the cubicle farm and immediately throwing us out again into the bizzare. It really drives home how long our narrator has been trapped here, that professionally touching computers under flourescent lighting is preferable to jamming with your friends in a Scottish field. The Audience is an unnerving and sinister presence, even when they're barely there. I actually like that you don't focus on that element, and instead drill down on how it effects our central character and his friends. The mystery doesn't need to be solved, only experienced. Mysteries are cool, answers are boring. One could say that there's not much 'story' here, that not a lot happens, but I don't think that much needs to. It both reifies the basic concept of nothing much happening because you've already done everything thousands of times, and I also think that sometimes in short fiction you don't need a gripping plot, you can just provide a thoughtful study of character and surf the vibe. Ellipsis by Thranguy Now I know what I just said in the last crit, but all those things didn't quite work here. I don't know what you brought of yourself here, I really don't. It feels like you just wrote a time travel/loop story happening to a first person protagonist and called it a day. It's pure concept, and while that concept is intriguing and even delightful it feels like empty fluff. There's a lot you could have done, but you didn't, and it's not like you were threatened by the word count, you used less than half your budget. That said, the language itself was quite nice, and there were some good bits. I was quite tickled by the "35 cents of nuclear exchanges" line. You manage to communicate the core conceit well, including some if its rules and limitations, with remarkable economy, which is impressive, but you've given us a lot of bone with no meat on it.
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Mar 28, 2023 04:31
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In, flash me
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Apr 3, 2023 22:06
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Dr. Zonfrelli's University for Unusual Youths 1585 words Flash: drugs Roy Dubinach had never considered himself anti-drug, in his younger years. Live and let live, that had always been his policy. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, who cares what you put in your body? But today he resolved that if he found who was moving magic mushrooms through Dr. Zonfrelli’s University for Unusual Youngsters he was going to take their thumbs. He squared his shoulders and pushed through another blast of -Freezing time and dissolving perception the quad and the horizon become triangles and whorling nameless shapes as they rise into a cerulean infinity students speak in tongues I don’t understand do they know I think they know why are they looking at me why are they looking at me why are they looking at me- He fought off the nausea as he came back to himself. He couldn’t imagine what kind of campus dealer would give psychedelics to a kid who went by the alias Mind-warper, but whatever Darwin award they were in the running for would have to wait. Getting Spark hooked on Adderall had been pretty bad, but at least that could be solved by non-conductive material and patience, telepaths were an entirely different ball game. Everyone who worked on the staff at the University learned pretty quick that the old tinfoil hat thing was a myth. Sometimes there was nothing you could do but weather the slings and arrows of -I’m alone in my house I’m always alone in my house but this time there’s no one else there either Mom left after I told her what Dad really thought about her and none of my friends will return my calls after I started talking to them without words and I’m watching Fresh Prince of Bel-air and crying and crying and I have no idea how bad life is going to get- someone else’s memories and impulses. It’s such a raw experience, being subjected to another consciousness in the same way a flan might be subjected to a firehose. Roy rushed past the floral clock of the east wing, passing a young woman in the fetal position crying tears of blue fire. He pulled out his radio: “Brigid is in a bad way out east, put the fire suppression team on alert.” He kept running, not waiting for a reply. He wished he was lucky enough to be on fire suppression today. They got to laze around most of the time, occasionally put out a chemical fire in the science building or douse a pyrokine like Brigid in foam and go home to medals all ‘round. But he bore the terrible curse of competence and so had been promoted last semester to Assistant Director of Campus Safety. It was all on him today, but that’s why they paid him the big bucks. Well, not actually big bucks, come to think of it. As he rounded the corner, a stitch developing in his side, they seemed to get less big with every labored breath. He quickly looked around the quad: it was all looking normal, full of stone benches and a fountain so ugly it had won a major architectural award. He still didn’t see the kid but he could feel -The spring sun is warm and the bushes are growing and I can see the buds filling out and the branches lengthening as they reach toward the sky and I reach out and I reach out and I reach out and I don’t find it and the earth is thrumming under me and I try to hear it but all I can hear is everyone else and they’re mad at me and what did I do and what did I do and what did I do- the young man’s powerful mind reeling out of control, casting spikes of perception around at random. There were bushes in that last flash, and an open sky. There was only one place he could be. Roy turned left and was almost flattened by the barely visible blur of Jack Flash running at full tilt in the other direction, trying to use his speed to get away from the mental fog enveloping campus. Roy winced as the poor guy, tripping by proxy, veered off and hit a wall. He called in the medical team on his radio. A few more minutes of running brought Roy to the campus hedge maze, famously featured in all the school’s brochures. A network of tall, imposing plant life guided visitors through small gardens, sitting areas, more tasteful fountains, and picnic spots. He wandered in, hoping that he could find his way to Ming Wu by the trail of -Ants there are ants on the branches in front of me and they’re carrying little crumbs of someone else’s lunch back to their home I want to go home where is home do I have a home the little ants know the way to go their minds working furiously to follow a path set by pheromones and instinct their voices so small and all together a Lilliputian chorus how have I never noticed ants before- second-hand altered consciousness. He crept up the path to the main picnic area, a small open field covered by a large, sprawling apple tree. Sitting at its base, chin resting on his knees, is the slight form of Ming Wu, aka Mind-warper, perhaps the most powerful telepath to ever grace the halls of the University. Roy approached delicately, like the young man was a tiger he wanted to avoid spooking, which was fairly close to the truth. He had a responsibility to keep the campus and its residents safe, but sometimes with great responsibility comes very little power. He had no meta-human abilities, just a radio, his wits, and a few Xanax he’d grabbed on the way out of his office. He wasn’t sure what he could do against -Someone coming around the corner and they’re scared and that makes me scared why is everyone afraid of me I didn’t even do anything I just wanted to have fun with my friends why can’t I just have fun with my friends why does everything have to be so hard why can’t I just feel safe for once in my loving life what did I do to deserve this what did I do what did I do what did I do- a prime-grade psychic. He’d never really thought about it before. Super-geniuses and speedsters and strongmen, there were obvious solutions to those problems, but how do you deal with a person whose power is thought? And then it hit him. You fight thought with thought. He slowly walked over to Ming and sat down across from him. He let the late spring sun warm the back of his neck and felt the cool of the grass under his hands as he lowered himself down, ignoring the twinge in his back. “Hey Ming,” he said, “Seems like you’re having a rough day. You want to talk about it?” -No I don’t want to talk about it I don’t know if I can talk my tongue feels too big and I’m nauseous Mr. Dubinach I’m sorry I know I messed things up but Luke and Mike said it would be fine God I can’t do anything right I miss my- Roy reached out and took the telepath’s hand. He summoned up all his concentration and tried to push a slow, steady thought towards Ming. [I’m in the rear-facing back seat of my parents’ station wagon. We’re coming home from grandma’s house on the Cape. I sunburned my shoulders but it hasn’t started itching yet and the ache is still pleasant. There’s sand between my toes and under my fingernails. I’m drifting off to sleep; I know my dad will carry me to bed when we get home. It starts to rain, slow and heavy in the way that only late summer rains are. I know I’m as safe as I can ever be.] Ming flinched, -Mom and Dad are fighting again and it’s about me they always fight about me Dad won’t even look at me anymore how am I supposed to feel about- Roy shook his head, [A young man raises a medal over his head, first place in the intramural track and field competition (non-powered division). His face is beaming, he doesn’t need telepathy to communicate his pride in himself, or to feel it from his friends. I watch and smile as they lift his slight frame up on their shoulders. They don’t care about his powers or his traumas. They’re his friends and they’re happy for him and the victory he earned.] -A break up with Susie how do you keep a relationship going when- [Two friends sharing a quiet joke in the library] -Fear in waves from adults as they look at me- [Affection from teachers as you succeed] -Terror, uncertainty- [Safety, reassurance. You’re ok, kid. You’re gonna be ok.] Ming’s shoulders slumped and leaned back against the tree. Roy handed him a pair of blue, bar-shaped pills and a bottle of water. Ming knocked them back. A few minutes later the frantic pace of his mental broadcasts slowed. After a while Ming fell asleep, exhausted in mind and body. Roy lifted him up and carried him back to the dorms, then went to file the paperwork. Responsibility might not come with power, but Roy’d never felt like he needed it. That’s why they paid him the big bucks. Well, big enough.
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Apr 10, 2023 04:13
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Week 558 Lights, Camera... Action Sequences! You know what I've been thinking? This is the Thunderdome but drat if we haven't seen much blood recently. Let's rectify that. This week I want to see some action. I don't care what form it takes, but it should thrill and/or chill. Foot races and car chases, shootouts at high noon, brawls or battles or duels, none will be turned away. I want to see bold characters and strong stakes and watch them collide and preferably explode. You have 2000 words to work with, but if you choose a flash rule you can get another 400 for an even 2400. If you choose to flash I'll give you a particular genre or type of action to work into the story. Word Count: 2000, 2400 with a flash Sign ups close: 11:59pm Friday, April 14th EST Submissions close: 11:59pm Sunday, April 16th EST Judges: Slightly Lions Yoruichi You?? Entrants rohan (flash: Admiralty Flag Thranguy (flash: wuxia) Albatrossy_Rodent Idle Amalgam (flash: samurai duel) WindwardAway (flash: bar brawl) BabyRyoga (flash: wizard duel) Dicere BeefSupreme Sebmojo (flash: car chase/race) You?? Slightly Lions fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 11, 2023 00:09
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rohan posted:in, flash please I'm on that Ben-Hur poo poo, show me a chariot race Thranguy posted:In, flash Everyone should be kung-fu fighting in your wuxia story
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Apr 11, 2023 00:32
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Idle Amalgam posted:In and flash Do your best Kurosawa impression and show me a samurai duel
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Apr 11, 2023 00:35
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WindwardAway posted:I'm travelling this week and probably shouldn't commit time to this, but what better use of time on a flight than to write a story? 🙃 Crack open some boys with a cold one and give me your best bar/tavern brawl
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Apr 11, 2023 01:34
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As an addendum, as I know it's a pretty hit-or-miss prompt, if you take a flash and don't feel you can do anything with it you may reroll the flash exactly once by sacrificing the extra word count and also a measure of my respect. Second flash will stand.
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Apr 11, 2023 02:29
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rohan posted:requesting a re-roll please I'm calling you out, kid. It's gonna be a showdown at high noon
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Apr 11, 2023 03:22
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BabyRyoga posted:I return to write words Summon up all your arcane prowess because you're writing about a wizard duel
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Apr 11, 2023 04:27
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sebmojo posted:In, flash Start your engines and hit me with a car chase/race.
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Apr 13, 2023 19:14
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There are 12 hours left to sign up. I also need at least one more judge willing to grapple with grappling.
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Apr 14, 2023 17:15
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T-t-triplepost! Sign ups are closed! Still looking for judges for this gore-soaked convocation of carnage. 
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Apr 15, 2023 05:00
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submissions are closed
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Apr 17, 2023 07:57
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Judgement: Week 558 Thank you to those who submitted for this week of frankly quixotic violence. The final standings are as follows: Loser: Just Like Old Times by WindwardAway Honorable Mention: A Hole in the Sky by Thranguy Winner: Half-Cocked by Admiralty Flag Stern Look of Disapproval: the six no-shows. Congratualtions, Admiralty Flag. You have reached heaven by violence, now ascend the blood throne.
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Apr 17, 2023 22:31
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Crits for Week 558 A Hole in the Sky by Thranguy This story had a lot going for it. Your usual clear and descriptive prose, a strong voice from our narrator protagonist, a lot of the high-concept sci-fi flim-flam that is like catnip to me, an imaginative premise, and a nice father-daughter/master-student relationship at its core. I really enjoyed this one, but it missed out on the win for very week-specific reasons. First, the action wasn't really the center of the story, the setting of the falling civilization was. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, it definitely lent sharpness to the central character and a weight to the stakes, but the swordfight at the end felt a little tacked-on in comparison to the lush realization of lost galaxy. Secondly, it wasn't much of a wuxia story. It was a sci-fi story that had a kind of kung-fu-ish swordfight at the climax. It owes a lot more to Dan Simmons than Jin Yong. It seems like the more traditionally wuxia trappings were waiting the wings for our protagonists daughter to mess around with in the second chapter. In another week this could have easily take the win, and it feels like the prelude to a series I would very much like to read. Half-Cocked by Admiralty Flag This story won because you understood the assignment. The action is the star of the piece, front and center at all times. The pacing crackles, the prose pops, you have a lot of nice texture with all the mil-sci-fi nonsense but don't let yourself get bogged down with it. I like your narrator-protagonist a lot, he has plenty of character and a strong point of view achieved with great word-count economy. The problem is that while the action is great, the whole story ends up feeling like a first chapter of a longer piece. We never get a super clear picture of who the Squibs are and why they're in violent conflict with the humans. I don't know if we need it at this kind of word count, but it would have made the stakes of our real conflict clearer. And that real conflict only happens in the last few lines. A man clearing a sector of insurgents and snipers is some nice plot, but the story is that said man also assaults an officer for doing warcrimes, and while that certainly endears them to me, it feels like it came out of nowhere because we have so little grasp of why our lovely, polished action is happening. Still, you really excelled on the shoot 'em up front and that's what counts this week. Just Like Old Times by WindwardAway This was a bit of a disappointment. I was excited for the bar brawl story, and it started well enough. I liked the initial introduction of our main character, the very generic but comfortable back drop of townies bitching about the weather established a very nice sense of place. I've been to this bar in a dozen different cities. But then it kind of falls apart. There's no real inciting incident other than a drunk guy being drunk and mean, the stakes are comfortably low (which I like), but don't feel impactful. The action itself is kind of muddled and confused with poor geography, and it doesn't feel like our protagonist really does anything. The kind of "twist" at the end didn't work for me because nothing really set it up. I don't really care that Xavier's dad is a cop because we know nothing about the town and its police force, and we don't know all that much about Xavier, either. This one is disappointing in part because you had the words to flesh this out to the point that it could have popped more, but it just feels underdone, and in a narrow field like this week it needed to have some sizzle. New Arrival by Dicere This was, while not really my favorite offering this week, probably the one I'll remember the most. I hugely respect the risk taken by framing it as a play and doing a lot of the story telling through the medium of stage direction. I'm an actor and playwright by training, so I'm always going to be positively inclined towards the form. Tom is a great character, he's got personality coming out of his ears. I've met this guy before. The action, when we get to it, is clear in both his recounting and your stage direction. It accomplishes the rare feat of only using a fairly small fraction of the word count but still being the clear focus of the piece as a whole. And it was hilarious. I actually laughed out loud reading it, which is not what I expected from any story this week. Nor was I expecting to get misty when Georgie died. Your story's big strength was mood, you struck a really nice balance between the comic and tragic while cheapening neither. The problem is that the fight, while fun and central, was also kind of a nothingburger in story terms. There's no established stakes to it beyond the kind of mutual loathing that only suburban neighbors can share. And worse, there's no satisfying resolution. If the community had evicted Tom over it and that's why he had to leave and interview at a new living center, we'd be having a different conversation, but it feels like the fight was more of an amusing piccadilo than a life-changing event. It's the center of the plot, but not the story. The story is about Tom's decline and grief, the fight is just an example of that. But still, I want to commend you for taking a big swing on this one, even if it was more a pop fly more than a home run.
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Apr 17, 2023 23:17
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Yeah, gently caress it, I'm in
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Apr 22, 2023 02:16
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Jack and the Boxes 1490 words It’s morning again, which is great because that’s Jack’s favorite time of day. This is the time when Mother will open the door to his little house and he is free to zoom around the Small World and then sit on the couch and watch Uncle Bob, who’s Jack’s best friend. Today, though, Father is on the couch. This is unusual, but it’s time to go to the Big World and pee with Mother and Brother, who are Jack’s best friends. Jack loves to go out to the Big World, it’s his favorite thing. Brother does not always like to go out, he is lazy and Mother and Father yell at him about it sometimes. But never Jack, he is a good boy. They come back inside and Father is eating his breakfast. The Bowls have been filled with Boy Food, which isn’t as good as Parents’ Food, but is still tasty. Brother goes and begins to eat, growling whenever Jack tries to get some food. This happens, it’s usually best to just let Brother eat his fill and eat your own breakfast when he goes to the Frog House to nap. Jack sits with Father, who is staring at the Medium Rectangle. Jack jumps up beside him and wags his tail. Father is his best friend. He smells sad, but Jack kisses him to make him feel better. This is Jack’s Power, he has found. Father’s face tastes like salt, which is a nice bonus. Father finishes his own breakfast, puts on Uncle Bob (Jack’s best friend), then leaves for the Big World forever. This happens sometimes, and is sad, but Father always comes back. It’s always Father who takes Jack for the Long Walk, every afternoon. And sure enough, Father comes back after forever with a bunch of folded up boxes. But that’s unimportant, it’s time for the Long Walk. This is Jack’s favorite time of day. There are many smells to smell and many friends to play with or who will give Jack his favorite thing: Attention. The sun is bright and cool today, which is Jack’s favorite weather. Jack and Brother do their Business and return home. Father begins to unfold the boxes and put things into them, which seems weird to Jack, so he takes a nap about it. Mother comes home after forever, but she and Father don’t talk much, they just watch the Big Rectangle and look at their Small Rectangles then put Jack and Brother to bed. +++ It’s morning again, which is great because that’s Jack’s favorite time of day. Father is on the couch again this morning, which is curious, but it means Jack can snuggle up after going out to the Big World with Mother, which is Jack’s favorite thing. Father stays asleep longer than usual, but Jack doesn’t mind. When Father gets up he still smells sad and spends a long time staring at his Small Rectangle before he makes breakfast. Jack hops up on the back of the couch and puts his head on Father’s shoulder, to better sniff the Parents’ Food. Brother might try to steal sausages, but not Jack. Jack is a good boy. Father spends forever putting more things in the boxes. Jack does not like the boxes. They’re taking up too much of his zooming space and, more importantly, Father’s attention. Jack fetches his favorite toy, the duck, and brings it to Father so they can play. Father loves to play with Jack, and Jack loves to play with Father. It’s his favorite thing. But today the boxes get in the way. Jack will be glad when they’re gone and he has more space to zoom in pursuit of thrown ducks again. That afternoon Father takes Brother down to do his business separately, then takes Jack for an especially Long Walk, which is Jack’s favorite thing. They sit on a bench in the sun for a while, which is unusual, but Jack doesn’t mind. Jack doesn’t mind most things. Father takes out one of his bitter plant sticks and lights it on fire. He doesn’t do that much anymore, now that Jack thinks of it. Usually he only does it when he smells sad or stressed, or has drunk a lot of the sharp smelling water he likes. He talks to Jack, which Jack likes even if he doesn’t understand most of the words. There’s a few he knows, like “Jack” and “good boy” and “walk,” but more he doesn’t. He wags his tail anyway. It’s good to be encouraging, even when Father and his friends do silly things like use words Jack doesn’t know. That night Jack gets to go out to the Big World again, which is a treat. He and Father go over to Uncle Scott’s house, which is Jack’s favorite place. Uncle Scott is there, who is Jack’s best friend. Uncle Scott always has treats for Jack, and sometimes he or Father will pick Jack up and hold him up around Parents’ height while they talk. It doesn’t help Jack understand more words, but he likes to feel included. Father and Uncle Scott stand around forever drinking their sharp smelling water and talking. At one point Father does the strange kind of yelping that makes his face get wet and taste like salt. Jack hops up on the couch and gives him many kisses, to help. Jack loves to help, he is a good boy. They go home after, and Jack goes to bed. Father stays up a long time, though. +++ It’s morning again, which is great because that’s Jack’s favorite time of day. The boxes have multiplied over the last few days, which Jack views with suspicion. There’s less and less space around for a boy to play in. Even when he plays the growling-and-wrestling-game with Brother, which does not take up much space, they can hardly begin before they run into a box that Father has loaded down with things. Mother hasn’t put anything in the boxes, which is strange to Jack. Usually when they’ve engaged in mysterious box-filling activities both parents put things in them. This is a mystery to Jack, but he doesn’t mind. Father takes him and Brother out for Long Walk that afternoon, as he always does. It’s Jack’s favorite thing. Father smells sadder than ever, even though the sun is bright and warm, which is Jack’s favorite weather. This is not Jack’s favorite thing. Jack wants to cheer Father up with games and kisses, but when they get back to the Small World Father leaves forever. Mother comes home after forever and begins to move the boxes over to the front door. She smells sad, but also angry? And relieved? It’s a mystery to Jack. There are many mysteries today. She sits down on the couch when the boxes are all out of the way. Jack wants to snuggle up with Mother, but Brother is being territorial and snaps at Jack so he can have all of Mother’s lap to himself. Jack is annoyed, but he doesn’t mind too much. Brother and Mother have a special bond, like Jack and Father. Mother is, obviously, Jack’s best friend, but Father is his best friend. After forever, just before dinner, Father comes home. This is very exciting. And he’s brought friends, which is even more exciting. It’s Uncle Scott, and Uncle Max, and Grandfather! Jack wags his tail so hard he can’t keep his feet still. He does his back leg dance, and his big jumps, and runs in circles. Parents and their friends love it when he does this. But today it doesn’t seem to register. No one pays him much attention, which is Jack’s least favorite thing. But Father and his friends do take the boxes away, which Jack approves of. They were annoying and Jack is glad to see them gone. Then Father comes back in and picks Jack up like a baby. This is not Jack’s favorite thing, but he puts up with it. He is a good boy. He gives Father many kisses on the face, which still tastes distantly of salt. And then Father leaves forever. This is not unusual, Father often leaves at night. But tonight he doesn’t come back, even after Mother puts Jack and Brother to bed. This is not unheard of, but it is unusual. Jack is sure that it will be fine, Father always comes back after forever. +++ It’s late afternoon, which is usually Jack’s favorite time of day. It means it’s time for Long Walk. But Father hasn’t been home all day. This is unusual. Usually if Father has been gone for the night he comes back in the morning. He wouldn’t miss Long Walk with Jack. It’s their favorite thing. So he must be coming home soon. Jack sits by the door. Father will be home any minute now. Jack will wait for him. He’s a good boy. He can be patient.
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Apr 24, 2023 02:03
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May 5, 2023 04:33
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Two Feet From the Mirror 1277 words The phone by my bed buzzed away insistently, hauling me out of sleep. I pawed at the touch screen until it stopped, then rolled on my back and stared at the ceiling. The cracked, off-white stucco stared back. I hated that loving ceiling. I’d been looking at it every morning for a month now, and it didn’t get any less bland or ugly even as the weather warmed up. I looked out the window at the scrap of lawn and it’s one old tree bathed in early morning sunlight. The air was clear as blown glass and limned in soft gold. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Some time later I pushed myself out of bed, the aging twin mattress creaking under me in a symphony of springs. I missed my old bed. It was quieter, more comfortable; less lonely. Bird song filtered through the open window, carrying the scent of newly opened flowers. I shut it. I went to the bathroom and ran cold water over my face, letting the shock of it blast away the last cobwebs and scrub off the rime of night-sweat. I stared at my face in the mirror. The haggard puffiness had been scoured away by the wash. Quick work with comb and razor smoothed out the roughness of a few days’ stubble and tangled hair. If I didn’t know better I’d say I was looking at a real, live human being. I threw on my old jacket as I ran out the door to my borrowed car. It was a therapy day and I was dreading it. Not that I have anything against Dr. Greg, quite the opposite. He’s a great guy, very positive, very kind. And that’s good most of the time, when what I need is a life coach to keep me on track with things and affirm my progress. It’s less easy to talk to such a relentlessly upbeat person when everything is crumbling beneath me. He ran his practice from a home office, an old all-weather porch stuffed with psych texts, both academic and pop, kitschy knick-knacks and antiques, and Pratchett novels. He sat in an old overstuffed armchair while I lounged on a reasonable approximation of the classic therapy couch, picking at the threadbare edge of my jacket sleeve. “How are you feeling today?” he asked. He looked at me expectantly. A lot of people had been asking me that question, looking at me like that. And I always said I’m fine. That I’m dealing with it. That I’ll be ok. “I’m not ok,” I told him. “I’m tired all the time. I can’t go to sleep properly and I can’t wake up properly. Something always, always hurts. I can’t focus on work or on pleasure. Everything feels harder than it should, like I’m pushing through molasses to accomplish anything. Nothing excites me more than it exhausts me. And I know what this means, I know why it’s happening, I get it. And all this knowing doesn’t help at all. “I had to see her on Sunday to sign the last bits of paperwork. I thought it would hurt more, I think I wanted it to hurt more. But it was just the same gray morass as every other part of my day. And I can’t envision a better future anymore. My health is deteriorating, I live far away from my friends, and the most important relationship in my life just disintegrated. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know if there is anywhere to go from here. I’m tired, Greg. I’m so tired.” Dr. Greg looked nonplussed. He hadn’t expected that. We finished out the hour with some discussions on coping mechanisms. He wanted me to try a new medication “just for now” and see if it’ll blunt the worst effects. I told him I would. “This is only temporary,” he told me, “I know it feels insurmountable now, but you’ve just suffered a terrible shock and are hurting. You’ll bounce back, with time.” I turned away from him, looking at a faint reflection of my face on the window by my head. I saw the man Dr. Greg expects to see. Struggling, but put together. Working through it. The good patient who always makes it through the worst and comes out the other side. A success story. Right then I hated that man. “Yeah,” I told Dr. Greg, “I’ll be alright.” I left my car at the train station and took the light rail into the city center. I went to the outlet mall downtown, a new construction of brushed steel, glass, and faux-marble sitting among the red brick and brownstones like an abscess. Hideous loving thing, but they had great deals. I’d decided, in the office, that I needed a new jacket. Something lighter weight for the coming spring. Something not falling apart on my back. Something that didn’t make me think of her. I picked out an off-white linen number, and got some new shoes while I was at it. I needed a haircut, too, and isn’t it amazing what they’ll pack into a mall these days? I changed in the food court bathroom, then sat by the window with a smoothie that tasted like $9. I tried to decide if I felt any better. A lot of people swear by retail therapy. I’ve never really been one of them. I looked at myself on the surface of the burnished table. I looked different, more together, sharper. I decided that had to be enough. It didn’t last. I walked around the city center, trying to let the sunlight warm me through, the shopping bag with my old clothes in it slapping my leg with every other step. I made a mental note to drop them at Goodwill, knowing I wouldn’t. I sat on a bench and looked over the park at the center of town. I wished I had a cigarette, or a joint, but I wasn’t supposed to have either. Mess with the meds I’m on. I wished I had a drink, but I wasn’t supposed to do that, either. Everything I loved was being taken from me, bit by bit. I wondered what would be left of me when all my vices and indulgences disappeared. I let the thought go as I stood up and brushed pollen from the seat of my pants. It was almost five and I was supposed to meet Kate for an early dinner at Grove Street. Kate’s one of my dearest friends, the kind that no one deserves. I stayed with her and her husband for a few days, right after I had to move out of the old place (it helped to think of it as just ‘the old place’) and they’d been insistent on checking up on me ever since. It was so nice of them that I never let on that it rankled at me. I met her outside and we sat down at a two top in the corner. She ordered a glass of wine, I got a mocktail that I hoped would be good enough to justify charging that much for various syrups and juices. She caught me up on her husband, on their dog’s antics (with pictures of course) and complimented my new jacket. When the drinks came she put her hand on mine and looked me in the eye. “Hey Chuck,” she asked, “how are you doing? I mean, really?” I opened my mouth and paused at her earnest expression. I checked my smile in the reflective surface of her glasses, made sure it was appropriately nonchalant. “I’m doing fine.”
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May 8, 2023 03:43
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I love action movies. They're often denigrated as "low art," relegated to summer popcorn fare, but I think some of the best films ever made are in the action genre. Die Hard is a masterclass in pacing and character, Hero balances historical context with otherworldly visuals, and John Wick has some of the most interesting and effortless world building and cinematography of the 21st century. I love the balletic quality of good choreography and the efficiency of plotting and character exposition a good, tight action movie requires. There's a level of craft required at every level of the film-making that I think gets unfortunately overlooked when your Drunken Masters and Speed's get lumped in with Transformers and the like.
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May 10, 2023 02:17
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First Loves 1995 words The sun hung low on the horizon casting long, black shadows of trees and telephone poles, limning the sere late summer landscape with gold. The air smelled like crushed grass and baking earth with a slight salt tang carried by the sea breeze from the east. It was quiet, save for the rustling of the leaves and the distant warbling of birds in the conservation land to the north. It was one of those days when the world itself seemed to bask in the heat like a lizard sunning itself on a rock, slow, languid and content. All God’s creatures were at peace with His creation. Except Jake Lipton. Jake stood by his bike, trying to lean nonchalantly against a telephone pole by the roadside. He checked his hair again in the compact mirror he’d swiped from his sister. His mouth was dry with road dust and nerves and his palms were sweaty. He knew, with the desperate certainty only available to 16 year olds, that this was the most important evening of his life to date and he was realizing he had absolutely no idea how not to blow it. He checked his watch for the fifth time: ten til seven. Sara Trainor would be there any minute. Definitely. Probably. Maybe. He checked his watch again. When he looked up a new shadow was reaching over top of the shallow hill. Jake’s heart lept a little in his chest as Sara hopped off her bike. His stomach flipped when she smiled. She was a year older than him, and while his growth spurt had started, she remained a few inches taller. The gangliness of the early teens had melted away into a confident, long limbed grace that made him feel even more awkward than 16 year old boys usually do. She had an oval, sharp featured face dominated by large eyes the deep blue-gray of the open ocean and a wide mouth that sported an easy smile. She was beautiful, even with her short, sandy-blonde hair stiff with salt and the beginnings of a sunburn blossoming across her shoulders and arms, beautiful in ways Jake struggled to articulate through the cloud of hormones drowning his brain. “Hey,” he said. “Hey yourself,” she replied, and laughed. He thought it sounded clear and lovely as struck crystal. Jake smiled back at her, feeling foolish, feeling nervous, feeling brave. The moment stretched. “So,” she said, “Do you want to get going? The movie’ll start at sundown.” He shook himself and nodded, mounted his bike for the short ride down to the drive-in. Jake had known Sara since they were both little kids. Their families had been vacationing in the same southern Maine town every July for years, and the two had been inseparable every summer. Then puberty had raised its sweaty, pimply head and Jake had started to notice girls, and there was no girl he noticed more than Sara. He worried it had made things awkward, that their easy camaraderie might be damaged by his crush. It never occurred to him that the awkwardness might coming from two directions. After all, he was just Jake, the small, quiet boy with the unruly dark hair and coke bottle glasses. Who’d be stiff or nervous around him? They’d spent most days together this year, as usual. She’d gotten a part time job lifeguarding at the beach and he’d spent much of the time sitting under the lifeguard chair, talking listlessly about a lot of nothing much, carefully avoiding anything that sounded like feelings. But they were nearing the end of the month and his family would be going back to Boston soon. So he’d plucked up his courage and asked if she wanted to see a movie, just the two of them. She’d given him a shy smile, her zinc-painted nose crinkling in a way that made his breath catch, and said “Yeah Jake, it’s a date.” He’d floated his way home to dinner on that sentence, then spent the night staring at the ceiling and pondering the many meanings of the word “date.” They hitched their bikes to an old wooden fencepost just out of sight of the drive-in and continued on foot. They were going to sneak into the movie, his idea. He didn’t have any money and he couldn’t ask her to pay for him, that would be mortifying. She’d seemed to find the idea amusing. He’d decided to try being a bad boy on for size, but his imagination on the subject was still limited. He tossed his backpack over the fence and offered his hands, stirrup fashion, to boost her over. She snorted at that, but graciously accepted his very unnecessary help, then he clamored over in what he hoped was a cool, debonair fashion. At least he managed not to land on his rear end. The two teens crept as quietly as they could to the back of the crowd of picnickers surrounding the actual screen, stopping well short of the pool of lights staked into the ground. Sal’s Theatre was nominally a drive in, but few people in the little vacation town of Spinnaker Point actually drove anywhere once they got in, so most of the movie-goers were settled on blankets and lawnchairs in a broad semicircle between the projector and screen. Jake hauled a blanket out of his backpack and spread it out the ground and gestured gallantly for Sara to make herself comfortable. She offered a mocking curtsey as she settled in on the blanket and then patted a spot near her where she thought he ought to sit. It was awfully close. He sat down next to her, knee nearly touching her thigh. They were close enough that he could smell her, a melange of sunscreen, sea salt, sweat and something floral and earthy he could only think of as the smell of her. It made his head spin. He wondered if this was what being drunk was like. “Have you seen this one?” she asked, turning towards him. He shook his head, too distracted by her proximity to form actual words. He wasn’t usually this tongue-tied when they were hanging out, she wasn’t intimidating in the way his crushes at school were, but here in the warm, breezy night as the sun disappeared and the stars began to twinkle above them it felt different. “Well, you’re in for a treat. It’s amazing.” In an effort to bring some culture to the extremely white vacation spot Sal’s had managed to score some foreign language movies for their Friday night showings and that night they were playing that year’s Oscar winner Hero. It had come out over the winter but Jake hadn’t managed to catch it. “That’s what I’ve heard,” he said, trying to keep up his end of the conversation. “It’s gorgeous, it really is. And that Jet Li is a fox.” She made a growling sound in the back of her throat, then dissolved into peals of laughter at his consternated expression. “Don’t worry, Jake,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder “You’ve got no competition tonight.” He was saved from fumbling his way through a reply by the dimming of the ground lights as the projector behind them whirred to life. And for the first time that week Jake found his attention directed entirely away from Sara. From the opening credits on he was transported. The wide, sweeping shots of an arid desert and a rattling coach and the imposing edifice of the Imperial Palace made him feel small. He didn’t know much Chinese history, but the visual storytelling made him feel like he didn’t need to. He was delighted by the twists and turns of the plot and enraptured by the rich color palette that kept its dense narrative intelligible with nothing but the eye. And violence had never looked so pretty. He’d seen other action movies, but for all that they’d been fun their approach to combat had been workmanlike, even a little clumsy when gunplay wasn’t involved. He’d never seen anything like the lightning ballet of sword strokes, kicks, and punches that unfolded before him to bring to life the tragic romance of Broken Sword and Flying Snow, or the doomed and pragmatic heroism of Nameless. He’d never known movies could be like this. He hardly even noticed when Sara leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. And then it was over, the final credits rolling as the film’s enchantment slowly dissolved like fog in the morning sun. And as he came back to himself he very definitely noticed Sara’s head on his shoulder. They looked at each other and smiled. “You were right,” he told her, “That was stunning.” “I’m glad you liked it,” she said, standing up and offering him a hand to pull himself up, “Now let’s skedaddle before anyone notices we didn’t come in through the front gate.” “Sure thing, grandma,” he chuckled as he stood up, “Who the hell says skedaddle in this day and age? Are we gonna go down to the sock-hop and dance the Jitterbug?” Sara looked back and stuck her tongue out at him as she jogged away. He packed up the blanket and they legged it over the fence and back to their bikes grinning like idiots at having pulled off the crime of the century. With part of his mind back in ancient China, puzzling the mystery of why he’d liked the movie so much, Jake felt more relaxed than he had all night. When they got to the fencepost he hardly even hesitated to ask if she wanted to stay out longer and go to the town’s main beach. They walked their bikes over in the cooling air, Jake gushing all the while about the film. Sara nodded along, offering some insights about the use of color and the difference in effect of close up and wide angle shots. She’d taken a film class last semester, she explained, and he immediately pressed her to tell him more. They left their bikes by the lifeguard tower and went to sit on the jetty of rough hewn rocks still warm from the day’s sunlight. They sat shoulder to shoulder as Jake rapidly exhausted Sara’s knowledge of film theory. He kept right on opining about the fight choreography as she fell silent, resting her head on his shoulder again. Finally she heaved an exasperated sigh and turned to look up at him. “Jake, do you just want to talk about that movie all night?” He looked down at her and realized, really realized, that their faces were inches apart as they sat on a deserted beach with nothing but the soft susurrus of the surf for company and he decided that no, he didn’t. There was actually something else he very much wanted to do. He made the boldest move of his young life and cupped her jaw in his hand and leaned in to meet her lips. Her mouth tasted like sea salt and cherry lip gloss. After a long moment that went by far too quickly they broke apart, both of them grinning. “It loving took you long enough,” she said, punching him in the shoulder. He caught her hand before she could pull it back and hauled her into his lap, her body warm in the night air, and kissed her again. They stayed there a long time, until the moon started to dip towards the horizon. A month later, at home in Boston, Jake got a package from Connecticut. It was from Sara. It had a note in it with the number to a cell phone she’d bought with her summer job money, and a book on film theory. “Read up,” the note said, “And pick a movie. Call me and we can talk about it. It’s too long until July.” The book smelled of fresh paper, cherry lipgloss, and an earthy, floral scent he thought of as her.
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May 15, 2023 06:18
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In. Obviously, the losertar is not an impediment to my enjoyment of the thread. I like that it gives some stakes to the contest, though I do find the much more motivating factor to be desire not to lose my shiny gangtag, which is why I don't enter if I don't think I'll have time to write a passable story.
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Jun 7, 2023 01:23
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The Line Is All 500 words The Priest carefully donned his vestments. They were old, pre-Fall, and in the decades since had been maintained with reliquary reverence. Their black silk had faded to charcoal gray. He fastened his Noose of Atonement around his neck in the traditional half-Windsor and secured it to a once-white shirt with the gold pin that indicated his rank as a Boardsman. He did up the top buttons of the jacket, as was the manner, and smoothed down the lapels. An intern-acolyte brought his shoes, polished to a mirror sheen. He looked out the great windows of his vestibule: the sun glittered on the waters of low tide. The Canal of the Wall swarmed with gondolas, some bearing the grey-green livery of the Church, others were workers and lay-managers going to and from the farms of the Central Greensward or the factory-cathedrals of midtown. The morning’s gray sunlight glittered on the water and the remains of the sea-wall that gave the old street-canal its name. It had been one of the city’s many casualties in the Resource Wars that had followed the Fall. Sections of her perfect grid were still shattered where the Accountist warrior-monks had battled the soldier-fanatics of the Universal Brotherhood, ecstatic with battle stimulants and crusader zeal. He proceeded, surrounded by a cloud of acolytes, to the conclave chamber at the heart of the Basilica of Exchange, the most holy building in the city. Four times a year the Boardsmen gathered to perform the Rite of Report. He watched his fellows shuffle into the chamber and take their seats. They were dressed in the ceremonial jackets of their order, the color and width of their flat Nooses indicating their diocese. Last came Her Holiness the Chairwoman; she solemnly set her plaque of office before her and took her place at the head of the long table. “Brethren,” she called, “The Quarter has been fruitful. We have leveraged our synergies and expanded our core competencies, as The Line commands.” “Blessed be The Holy Line, we are right to give it praise,” the assembled clergy responded. “Now let us join together and read the Reports of the faithful,” the Chairwoman intoned. “Blessed are the faithful, may they remain ever solvent,” chanted back the Boardsmen and their attendants. The Chairwoman read out the sacred Reports, listing figures of production and trade, of accounts opened and accounts closed. Behind her the analyst-monks added to the diagram of the Holy Line, charting its rise and fall. A bountiful quarter indeed. The Board finished with their oldest prayer: “Blessed be the Holy Line. May it forgive our market interventions against it, and deem us worthy again. May it never lead us back into recession, but rise ever upwards.” The choir of debtor-castrati shook the windows with hymns as the conclave departed for their office-manses. They had work to do. The Line must go up. Its collapse had caused The Fall and the Church must entreat its forgiveness by any means necessary. The Line was all.
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Jun 12, 2023 02:06
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In, flash me
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Jun 15, 2023 18:59
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Southbound 1196 words Flash: set on a train with an otherworldly destination The window in the passenger car wouldn’t close all the way. It remained stubbornly stuck half-open. Through it the car was filled with the lonely wail of passing wind and the damned-soul shriek of metal scraping metal. The actinic staccato light of struck sparks played counterpoint to the swaying of the overhead lamps. The dull, red glow on the southern horizon inched ever closer. The air smelled of smoke and hot iron. Al shifted in his seat, struggling to find a comfortable position on the benches that lined either side of the car. He wasn’t sure how he got there or where the train was heading. He remembered a deep, aching sense of loss, a flare of pain and panic and regret, then he was here, on a train that looked like it was out of an old movie, going who-knows-where. His neck hurt abominably. He hugged his guitar case to his chest and looked around. He wasn’t alone. There was another man lying full length on the bench across from him in every appearance of comfort. He was older, hair and beard long and bedraggled, dressed in prison orange. His snoring was lost in the train’s clattering cacophony. Al inched away from him. The door to the forward cars opened and a muscular shadow in a conductor’s uniform forced its bulk through the door. “Tickets!” it growled in a voice like chewing glass. The older man produced his without opening his eyes. Al frantically patted the pockets of his jacket, he didn’t remember getting a ticket. He found it in his breast pocket. It was a scrap of parchment, red ink dividing it into nine sections, each with a few stops labeled. The logo said “Charon Passage & Freight.” When the looming conductor stopped before him Al nervously handed it over. The… thing inspected it and touched a finger to its surface that ate through it like an ember. It handed the ticket back and stalked out of the car. “What stop are you off at?” asked the old man, startling Al near out of his clothes. He peered at the ticket, “Seventh zone, second stop. Apparently.” His throat felt raw, his voice was creakier than it should be. The old man whistled softly. “Sorry to hear that, kid. Rough luck and then some. Guess we’ll be together most of the way. I’m off first stop, zone seven.” “Uh-huh,” said Al, wearily. “Um, do you know where we’re going? I can’t seem to remember.” That made the older man finally sit up and look at him. “You don’t know? We’re going south kid.” “How far south?” asked Al, still lost. He reached up to massage his aching throat and found a thin line of welts around it. “All the way south, kid. Last stop, no return ticket.” Al’s hand fell nerveless to his lap. “Oh. So you mean we’re…” “Yep.” “And that I…” “Looks that way.” “poo poo.” “In it up to our necks, yeah.” The older man’s eyes flickered to the raw, red ligatures around Al’s. “Sorry, just speaking figuratively.” “It’s alright, I can’t remember anything about… doing it. About dying.” He could remember the months beforehand, though. The mounting debts and vanishing friends and fallen-through gigs. An isolation deep and cold as winter. “Wouldn’t try too hard, if I was you. Might be a mercy, unlikely as it seems.” The older man walked over and sat down next to Al. “Name’s Clyde,” he said, offering his hand. “Al,” said Al, taking it. “So, you were… uh…” “A con? Yeah. Wore these clothes 20 years. Guess I can wear ‘em for another eternity or so. Seems in bad taste, but that’s not surprising.” He patted his pockets, eventually finding a pouch of tobacco and packet of papers. “Who’da thunk? Maybe they’re not all bastards, eh?” The door at the back of the car creaked and Clyde quickly stashed his contraband as the conductor ambled back through. Now that he was paying attention Al could distinctly smell sulfur and some other, organic scents. “Hm, maybe I shoulda asked ‘em for a light,” mused Clyde as he finished rolling his cigarette. Al wordlessly offered him a book of matches. “Ah, much obliged kid.” Al shot him a sidelong glance, “You seem awfully… relaxed about this.” “I’ve had more time to prepare, is all,” Clyde said through a cloud of smoke. “I’ve known where I’d go for a long time, kid. I made some choices in my youth, most of ‘em bad, and I wound up in the hoosegow, where all the choices are bad.” “Yeah, I know the feeling,” sighed Al, remembering. “No, you don’t. I don’t know you, kid, but I was in the clink half my life. I seen plenty a’ guys go your way. I ain’t so sure it’s a bad one. Life can wear you down. Sometimes the best choice you can make is to leave the show early. I always hoped it was a bunch of BS, folks like you ending up here. Real mean-spirited. Ya’ll had it hard enough before. Guess I went similarly, really.” “You mean you…?” Al gestured vaguely at his neck. “No, not as such. I broke out, me and some pals. Doc told me I had cancer, guess where from,” he gestured with the cigarette, grinning. “So I figured I’d die free, one way or another. We cut our way through the fence one night. I made it a couple hundred yards before some SOB in the tower brought me down. Never was too sanguine I’d make it, but I went out free. That's good enough for me.” ”You make it sound romantic.” “I suppose, for given values,” Clyde chuckled. “I wish I’d had the option of breaking for freedom,” Al sighed. “Well, you do now,” Clyde said, and smiled at Al’s questioning look. He pointed at the back of their car. “There’s a door that goes right to the back of the train. It’s got an end, I checked out the window before you got here. There’s only one conductor. You could make a run for it.” “Would that work?” Clyde shrugged, “Who knows? Dunno if anyone’s ever tried. Maybe you can catch a northbound train. Maybe you can sneak outta the cut and go wherever you want. Maybe you get caught and end up right back here. Only one way to find out.” “What about you?” “Nah. I did my big escape. And the big guy’s up ahead of us. I’ve never liked guards. I dunno if he’s got balls, but I do know I have a foot and an abundance of curiosity.” “You’d kick a demon in the sack for a stranger?” “What’s he gonna do, torture me?” Clyde flicked his cigarette out the window and ambled to the south door. “It’s your choice, kid. You can sit here and wait for your stop, or you can go for broke. Good luck.” He went through the door, whistling a jaunty tune. Al stood up and hoisted his guitar over his shoulder. He rested his hand on the doorknob and looked back at where Clyde had gone. “Thanks, man.” he whispered. He went through the door.
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Jun 19, 2023 02:46
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RNGesus has determined I am in with #414, my sound is This
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Jul 24, 2023 16:43
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| # ¿ Sep 9, 2024 05:50 |
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Surf and Stones Prompt: Week 414, this sound Extreme Flash: No human characters over 13 years old 1762 words Fwoosh-crash, blurble-hiss, crash. The pounding surf slammed into the great, craggy stones of the beach, white spray arcing through the air. Echoing crash gave way to the soft sound of water dancing across pebble and sand, over and over as regular as a metronome. In the moments between waves the stiff breeze set the stand of pine trees above the beach to creaking and swaying, adding their own sibilant hiss in counterpoint to the sea. Whirr-CRACK A hurled stone flew through the air and ricocheted off one of the larger rocks lying half-submerged in the tide, landing in the water with a sad Plorp And sinking down to the sea-bed. Steph scowled. She was mad. She was mad that her shoulders were beginning to redden and crisp under the merciless sun. She was mad that she was lagging behind the group of kids roaming the landscape of sand and cyclopean rocks that made up this stretch of Maine coastline. She was mad she couldn’t get these dumb stones to skip across the water. But mostly she was mad that she was twelve years old. It seemed, to her, a stupid age to be. You weren’t a little kid anymore, with all the leeway given to them, and you weren’t a teen, ready for the extra responsibilities she was sure they got. Ben, her brother, was a year older than her. This year he’d been allowed to invite up some of his friends from school for the last weekend of vacation. They were a knot of sunburned skin and acne in bright-colored bathing suits a few dozen yards ahead of her. She thought about calling out again, telling them to wait for her, but she decided against it. Even if they could hear her over the surf they wouldn’t listen. The wind carried back to her the sound of the older kids’ laughter. It had a brittle edge of cruelty to it that adults seemed not to hear. Fwoosh-crash, burble-hiss, fwoosh-CRASH The tide was coming in rapidly. The boys had strayed further ahead while Steph had stewed and looked for more stones to throw. The briney water had filled in a depression between the cliff-like rocks that separated her from her brother and his friends. She knew she could get across it, she was a strong swimmer, but she wasn’t sure she cared to try. She picked her way across the mass of granite, scattered with broken seashells. A long summer spent outdoors had left the soles of her feet thick and hard as old leather, so she had no difficulty reaching the jutting promontory facing the sea. She sat on the sun-baked rock, a little pile of stones and pebbles beside her and began to throw them. Whiiirrr. Plorp She frowned, threw another. Whiirrr. Plorp. The sea swallowed it. Whirr-CRACK. Plorp That one deflected off a mostly submerged tower of rock. But still no skip. She sighed. Her anger at Ben and his friends was leeching away, aiming towards herself. Ben had been able to get at least three or four skips since he was eight. Even Lauren, their little cousin, could do it. So why couldn’t Steph? It seemed like just one more thing she couldn’t do, no matter how hard she tried; one more way she didn’t fit. Her grades had been mediocre this year, and she’d stopped getting invited to slumber parties with the other girls in her class. She hadn’t enjoyed them much anyway, not since they’d become all about breathlessly giggling over the boys in the magazines. She didn’t get what the big deal with boys was. Her only real skills were swimming and an encyclopedic knowledge of Sailor Moon lore. Sailor Saturn was her favorite. She frowned and threw another rock. Whiirrr-CRACK. Plorp. “You’re holding your wrist too straight.” Steph started so hard she almost fell off her perch. She looked frantically around the shore; no one was there. “And that stone’s too round. You want them nice and flat.” Steph turned back to the water. About half a dozen yards beyond the surf there was a roughly square tower of dark rock (she vaguely thought it might be basalt) and leaning on the other side of it, with just her head and arms visible, was a woman. She was pale, like she’d never seen the sun, and her eyes were large and dark. Her hair was long and silver blue. She smiled and her teeth were the color of pearls. “Oh,” Said Steph. “Ok. Um. My name’s Stephanie, but you can call me Steph.” “Pleased to meet you. I’m Undine.” Steph furrowed her brow. “What kind of name is that?” “An old one. Try it again, with a flat rock. Keep your wrist loose, let the stone roll off your index finger as you throw it.” Steph sorted through her small pile of stones until she found one that was oblong and mostly flat. She held it horizontally and threw it side-arm like she’d seen her brother do, trying to keep her wrist loose. Whiirr. Plorp. Steph cursed. For some reason having a pretty woman watch her fail made it feel much, much worse. But Undine just laughed. It sounded like the silvery trill of the waves receding through the mass of stones and pebbles at the water’s edge. She dove into the water, a lithe, pale shape in the dark blue-green sea. She came back up near the probably-basalt tower again with a round, flat stone in her hand. Her fingers were long and thin, Steph noticed, and had pronounced webbing between them. Probably some sort of skin condition, she thought; it would be rude to mention it. Undine pushed herself around the edge of the towering rock so Steph could clearly see her right shoulder and arm. Steph noticed that she was naked from the waist up, her long, wet hair clinging to her skin. She found this intriguing in a distant way she didn’t fully understand. But it had nothing to do with skipping rocks, so she put it aside. Another great wave came rolling in Fwoosh-CRASH, burble hiss, CRASH soaking Steph’s legs with seafoam. She noticed Undine barely moved, riding the swell with the unconscious grace that Steph would use to cross an uneven sidewalk. She waited for the lull between waves, when the water calmed for a moment to only the gentlest swell. “Watch my arm closely,” said Undine, rearing her arm back and to the side, ropey muscles moving under her pale skin. She whipped her arm around, supple and swift, in a loose arc that culminated in a flick of the wrist. The stone went coursing away. Whirr, thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip, plornk it danced across the water four times before sinking. Steph clapped her hands in delight, and the older woman beamed her pearly smile. “See? It’s easy. You just have to stay loose until that final flick.” “Where did you learn to do that?” asked Steph. “Right here, a long time ago. A young sailor taught me.” “Do you come here often? I’ve never seen you around here before. We come every summer.” “I know, I’ve seen you. I live here, year round. I usually come up here at night, but I heard you throwing stones and came to check it out.” She shrugged and the sun flashed on something on her shoulders and clavicle. It was some silvery pattern, almost like scales. It must be a tattoo or something, Steph thought. “Oh. Sorry. Which house is yours?” Undine smiled again, “I’m afraid you can’t see my house from here.” Steph wasn’t sure what to say to that. She seemed to be getting tongue-tied with this mysterious stranger. She looked around for her brother and his friends, saw them disappearing around the end of the point, crawling over the rocks like the spider monkeys in that nature documentary they’d watched the night before. She hopped down from her perch, splashing up to her waist in the water and began to gather more stones, looking for flat ones. “You’re not like your brother and his friends,” Undine said, following her gaze. “I’ve watched you both over the years. He’s afraid of the sea. He’ll get in the water, but he’s never comfortable. He doesn’t stay. He doesn’t play. You do. Why is that?” Steph thought that maybe she should find it creepy that this woman had watched her family for years, but she was weirdly flattered by the attention. “I don’t know. I guess I just feel… at home here. I like the freedom in the water. I don’t feel clumsy or out of place there. Mom says I’m a natural swimmer. I guess I just fit here, where I don’t elsewhere.” “Yes, I suppose you do.” Undine’s dark eyes held hers for a long moment. There was something in them, some emotion that Steph couldn’t articulate or understand. She felt seen, down to her breath and bones. She took a step forward, deeper into the water. Undine arced herself around to the far side of the basalt tower. Steph noticed she kicked her way through the water like a dolphin, both legs together. Another silvery flash under the water. Maybe more tattoos, or some type of swimwear, she wasn’t sure. “I’ve got to go now, Steph. But it was nice to meet you. Keep practicing.” “Will I see you around again?” “Yes,” said Undine, flashing that smile one last time, “I suspect you will.” And then she dove under the waves, the splash of her passage covered by the soft susurrus of the waves receding through the rocks. The woman must have champion lungs, Steph thought, good enough to stay under until she reached the next outcropping of rocks because she never saw her surface for air. Steph looked down at the stones in her hands. She carefully selected one. It was flat and round and smooth. It was warm from the sun, and its texture put her in mind of an unripe peach: hard, but with a plush roughness. She held it loosely, her index finger along the edge of it, just like Undine had done. Fwoosh-CRASH, burble-hiss, fwoosh She waited for that calm moment between the waves when the surface of the water would be smooth as glass, and then she whipped her arm around, loose and supple until the instant of that last flicking motion. Whirrr, thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip, plonk-CRASH The stone danced across the sea until the swelling waves swallowed it. Their crash against the rocks was almost loud enough to drown out her cry of triumph
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Jul 31, 2023 04:23
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