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May I have a try?
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Aug 27, 2023 06:29
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The Cut of Your Jib posted:The current prompt is a story that conveys the night. It can be a mundane graveyard shift office job, or a rave, or spooky stuff, or even a little romance. That doesn't matter so long as the vibe feels right. Every car passing under the new street light takes on the tone of an emergency services vehicle, to the clerk. Once a customer had asked him why the light was that color in a very earnest way as if expecting him to answer with an authority he didn't have. He worked in a shop and didn't have anything to do with the putting up or maintaining of suburban infrastructure and wondered how the guy could so plainly ask him that. The ones who call you sir not out of some sly disrespect or a knowing joke but with total sincerity. They bother him. The ones that wheedle and plead not for anything in particular but just a license to continue on their way without fear of--what? The slap of a newspaper? The burn of a cigarette on their skin? What do they expect from life that causes them to address a total stranger with all the authority of a pricing gun or a headset as sir? If he and others like him go around perpetually with an external locus of control what will happen if something put that out, or caused it to flicker? He supposed there was no flickering for a man like that it was always on or if once lost, well the mind reels, Lovecraftian horrors. The light is blue he supposes and as it glints off the glass and paint of passing cars the frequency of it shouts to him cop or ambulance. Some gut feeling that says something is emergent in the corner of his eye every time they pass. That light is special in his mind and shouldn't be misused it signifies something and is diminished by the wearing away of one after another. How would he know a real cop car now out there? Because he's always waiting for one isn't he? That's disturbing. He hadn't done anything wrong. But had he? Was he afraid of another? Needing intercession? The regular asks him to double bag the bright red hand grenades of hard apple something. She buys a lot of them most nights which wouldn't be noteworthy but she's real small. He's carded her more than a few times absentmindedly because she looks like a child and he wonders sometimes if it's fake and he's selling to a delinquent but his boss knows and sells to her too. She's a grown woman you can see in her eyes and hear in her voice but she's really small. At first he thought they must be for someone else but no, and then he wondered how she could drink so many with her size. She mumbled something about dropping them before that was masked by the air conditioner and it's clear even though you can't see in her walk that she's lit. She's overly familiar in the way of the drunk and ever present as if you must know not just her name but her mother's as well. And then she does, out in the parking lot she drops them. He wouldn't have pegged her for it. Thought she must have some kind of grace to her in spite of the booze because she's really beautiful in a way and so must. He figured the drinks were tougher too but nope at least three were taken out in the fall and she's coming back in. And she's with someone, suddenly a car arrives and she is known and they must be going out together. Her compatriot is at least sober he thinks but then is he even a good judge of that now? The new woman goes back in her slip ons and pajamas to get her own drinks and the little one follows without an explanation and grabs replacements for the fallen comrades. She sets them on the counter to his left away from the driver's purchases by just a little as if to say she's next in line. He rings the thank god someone's in charge here woman up first and she heads out towards the door. The measure on the wall by the door of every shop is for the cameras and the witnesses for the inevitable robberies he supposes. Not sure how useful it is he's never even practiced on regulars or even this one who might be shorter than five foot. The girl with her hair dyed the same shade as the glass bottles she now reaches for follows in step without paying, alluding to the smashed ones she left on the sidewalk out front. Dumbfounded the clerk just lets it happen and the two walk out in to the night to a car to a party or a concert or a club that he can't attend. He has to hold the counter down and clean up the dribbling remains of her party fouls later. He lets some customers obviously steal or take that way if they have the right attitude. His boss who supposedly watches at all times would not like that but has never said anything so he wonders if he's taking advantage. Guy has a kid on the way and can't be watching video feed from several stores all the time like some lesser god using a phone app to peak down on him and check on the floors or the stock that he should be cleaning and primping in low spots in the night. Sometimes he doesn't remember to turn on the outside lights until late in his shift but there is no complaint from the customers or a boss. Sometimes he deliberately doesn't sweep and mop before close because he doesn't like the job and doesn't want to keep it. He really doesn't get a lot of complaints and it makes him wonder if he's just great, or being ignored or maybe he's not really here. On enough dissociatives those kinds of thoughts do run rampant. In life in general it seems like feedback is at a lull and in the dark at night he sometimes wonders if after the plague and the ongoing war most people don't want to engage with the small stuff. He knows there are types of people who believe there only a few others in the world or none, besides themselves. Solipsists who think that a few actors or holograms make up a small universe to test or contain them and how lonely that must seem. He believes in other people but feels like the world is depopulated some nights. If there was a nuclear exchange out of the blue and the pulse knocked out concentric rings of communication cutting people off from the wider world when does the notification come? Checking a phone for a signal that isn't there, if news or weather doesn't come up and then text and last to be checked actual phone service is gone what then? In a fit of ebullient paranoia he decides the girl actually likes him and wanted him to join her later and had left the broken bottles mostly full of booze by the trash instead of in it to entice him. He guesses it would taste good after the initial stench of alcohol is washed away by its effects. All he'd have to do is pick one up from over by the trash and walk away from here drinking. In the direction of music and the smell of hot food. He had the run of the place, money, snacks, all manner of intoxicants all at his fingertips and all held down by himself alone. Could walk away at any time to follow them down the street and hope he wasn't some kind of sicko for finding someone that young-looking attractive. Part of him knew the consequences to all this would be tremendous. His lost sobriety, the crashing realization of unemployment, a little tease from a girl who would probably lose interest in him immediately after sex. She'd laugh and go on heedless and he would probably go to jail again somehow for job abandonment and theft and whatever they do to people who walk away thoughtless into the night after strays. He never cleans up the bottles and leaves them for the wanderers. Locks the place up and walks under the blue light looking down the road towards a club she might be at and back to his house. After The Fourth there had been some fireworks set off in the city, even though it was forbidden as a fire hazard among other things. Some nights there would be a string of explosions that sounded to him like gunshots. He was almost as worried about gunfire as he was about how embarrassing it is to think about drive-bys in a tiny quiet city like this. He speculates he should have told the guy it's so not to attract insects. He plans out a lie he'll tell someone else about it knowingly as if he'd read it in an article. There aren't any bugs circling around the flat head of the thing. There is no bulge either like there was before for a yellow bulb like before. He wonders about the lack of bugs and whether it has do with a somehow shrinking biomass. Is the world getting thinner? You'd think if it were dying there would be more flies to feed on the corpse. Engines revv and shriek and howl in the distance and in his imagination they are road warriors in from the dirt on missions to steal identities and wifi and sell dope for food. Pick up girls like they must with their tattoos and shiny chrome. Always at the periphery since the cars he sees come in are modern sleek and efficient, or at least bloated gas hogs with mortgages. No toy cars like in Mad Max but serious adult vehicles of people who have careers and families and places to go at night. But out there beyond his scope people are wild and free and careless. They don't sleep alone or maybe that much at all and probably smell like sex and gas and booze. All the things he sees leaving from here but never for him. And when the fear grips him at night after all the pills settle in up down and sideways and he is content he checks the news. It's true people have been shot around here, one in front of his house, another in a club. This woman was murdered in her home but they don't say how. He wonders if he was the murderer sometimes because he reads those stories and has seen the movies, his own kind of Tyler Durden id because he seems so dispassionate, even to himself that there must be something more under the surface. A killer, maybe a rapist. Something awful and animalistic and real. Does the murder necessitate rape? He feels guiltier about the idea of rape than of murder. Being able to see his place of work from his home is disconcerting. It's not that small of a town but he managed to finagle a job that near. People used to live at their jobs, farms and mills and mines just right there, like incidentals in a video game. The light is very efficient in only illuminating the road beneath itself. It doesn't scatter everywhere messily like those old yellow or orange ones but that leaves him in darkness very quickly across the way. Walking up the driveway he has to be careful not to stumble on loose pavers the light is so low and irregular. Maybe people need to watch for stars he thinks, or satellites at least. At least he can see that he's turned the sign off at work to settle his mind.
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Aug 27, 2023 10:39
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Thanks, I guess I have to do up a prompt now so I'll get on that in a moment, I have an idea.
BaldDwarfOnPCP fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 28, 2023 |
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Aug 28, 2023 23:29
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 Thunderdome Week DLXXVIII Forces of Nature Personified. I won't specify if they should be classical or scientific. Should Mud be a force of nature? Sure. Should the Up, Strange, Charm, etc from quantum physics be forces? Sure. Lightning, Water, Gravity (Love? please no) can all be forces. They all need personification somehow, I won't even go so far as to say they know each other familiarly or must interact a certain way. They don't have to be superheroes and they don't have to have powers or be in a club. It might be nice if they recognize each other of course but it's on you. Good luck. The deadline will be midnight Friday GMT September 1st for signups, midnight GMT Sunday September 3rd for submissions. I read fast but comprehend slow so I'll just keep the ball rolling with 1750 being the word count as was the last round. That seems like a good amount to shoot for. If you overshoot and can't finish by all means pull back but don't feel like you have to trim a bunch of lines to get that exact number. Just in that range really, be reasonable and check the word counter every so often. You do you. Judges: ____________ Beezus, derp Entrants so far: ____________ The Cut of Your Jib, beep-beep car is go, Fuschia tude, Thranguy, Fat Jesus, Ouzo Maki, rivetz BaldDwarfOnPCP fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 01:00
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rivetz posted:Yeah it's very much prominently mentioned in the goddam OP Being a newcomer myself I feel like I'd have to have clearance from the OP, the resident mod, my fellow judge and all participants before considering putting you in actual contention but I'll gladly informally judge it along with the others and give an appraisal/ranking. I did note the timestamp and would appeal to anyone reading for your clemency but don't feel like it's my place to be unilateral here.
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Sep 3, 2023 18:02
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. I've been lurking this thread for some time as mentioned above; having participated in the past, it didn't even occur to me to review the rules. For the record I was fixing vB tags (my submission is heavy on italics) and adding a title/word count.
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Submissions are closed.
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Sep 4, 2023 05:16
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In the spirit of video games forums I'm going to  these one pellet at a time like a pac-person.Also, thank you all so much for your submissions they're amazing I enjoyed the whole thing. beep-beep car is go posted:Carry Me Home Great, workmanlike. I was hoping for more but the format is limiting, so much like the space the boat has, your story felt crumpled up and cut short early. I was in it though and wanted something magical but in the end there isn't a brass ring is there? I did want to know more though so good construction here.
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Sep 4, 2023 06:40
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The Cut of Your Jib posted:The Humour of it All Someone else had this pegged as the winner but I'm gonna have to call it the HM. I liked that I didn't know what was going on or what was coming next. I don't know enough about this bodily humour theory stuff to tell you what say, Choleric should be like, although listening to This Podcast Will Kill You the other day, I would guess scary. But you made me feel clever with each revealing trait, as if you'd had more space you could have written the characters out large and still given your reader a chance to guess these semi-obscure forces. I won't claim to understand all of it but blood is red--I picked up on that. Probably a lot of subtlety went over my head here. Great fun story, liked it a bunch.
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Sep 4, 2023 07:03
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rivetz, you dirty dog you edited your post after 4 minutes or something. Awful dumb way to put your foot in but okay I don't think this is shenanigans and am going to declare you the big winner  rivetz posted:The Wind In Their Bones Collect your prizes. I enjoyed a lot about this and in spite of some misgivings would like to spend time down south with these women. I almost called them raucous because they seem like they're on the verge of it don't they? It works so well it's elemental. Clem, I don't fully understand other than he had to be the counterpart, someone to offer them a ride up to the club maybe all the way to Mardi Gras or whatever little old thing they do down there. Honestly, I'm northern and don't know from pecans or patois so probably should stop trying to type like it. The use of language here is so great it really gets me and I don't know how sustainable that sort of thing is or if it's just the magic of the form here but I'm feeling lashed like Odysseus with a bunch of nautical nonsense that's so subtle it's not funny it's just delightful. It doesn't feel effortful but it's just so elegant and crafted I love it. I don't get out much maybe but for a short story to do so much with so little and leave me wondering about a lot and wanting to re-read it? Weird. I must be in a mood. The subtleties are, forgive me if I'm gushing, good enough that if you pointed to them someone might be like, "nah you're imagining things". And maybe I was but it wrapped me up with word choice so well.  Congratulations to you and the other players for really fulfilling the spirit of the challenge in a surprising and robust way for such a small showing. and, To the tune of Alanis Morissette's Thank U -- Thank you Eleanor, Thank you Hilary, thank you thank you, Thank you 2 all the wet and wild ones
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Sep 4, 2023 08:24
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Fat Jesus posted:RECOLLECTIONS OF A HOLY WAR Honestly, the voice here is a bit off-putting and I don't know why it could be on me. I'm not a historical expert, I'm someone who's been trained by movies to expect people from the antiquities to have a strong English accent regardless of the country or language. But it doesn't quite tick for me and probably in the sense that it doesn't sound like what I'm used to, not that you are in any way wrong here. The story itself is good, staid and on firm ground or terra firma, if you will. I can't blame you for not having a Shyamalan reveal here to send tingles up my spine but yeah it wasn't super spooky but I could maybe imagine it feeling that way to a YA audience or if you had more time and space to let your idea take flight. Also not sure how a cursed spear of destiny that's like from another dimension is personifying a force of nature but I guess it's war or something? It wasn't clear to me if it was some kind of Lovecraftian thing or technology but then again I'll give you credit for the murky lens of ye olde scanner darkly. Who knows what maddening tools our elders left out or thrust upon us in the middle ages of our upheaval from ape to gun god. I mean you could do worse than Canticles of Leibowitz at the Mountains of Madness.
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Sep 4, 2023 09:00
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Thranguy posted:Unsettling This was very blunt but also left me with lots of questions, which is good? My experiences with Catan have been limited and highlighted by my niece's insistence on trading only in sheep and having unwarranted success. I was mostly indifferent to the game but do find it amusing, kind of like this story.
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Sep 4, 2023 09:11
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Ouzo Maki posted:The Great Anarch Thank you for submitting this. I enjoyed it muchly. Like a lot of stories I've read that kind of whoosh over my head I feel better and cooler for having read it but don't want to admit what I don't understand. On a bad day reading Gaiman or King or Wallace I'll stumble over a story and just. not. get. it. And I don't mind, I'm not that bright of a guy it's okay. I don't know everything. I like things as I call it experientially sometimes. It's how I plowed straight through A Song of Ice and Fire drunk as a lord the entire time and came out roaring like Tuco from Breaking Bad (and then of course hadn't learned anything much beyond GRRM is a bad man who doesn't write, but I enjoyed it). Well, I'm not drunk right now but I will say I don't get all of this but I'd like to. And that's the great thing about stories, huh? We can come back to them later and re-read and be like oh yeah it's so obvious what they were doing. So that's my compliment I suppose, that there is definitely a lot going on here which I did not parse but I enjoyed the journey. And I hope everyone reading this did too because the submissions were all awesome, thanks y'all.
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Sep 4, 2023 09:21
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Thunderdome Week DLXXVIII Forces of Nature Personified. Winner:rivetz posted:The Wind In Their Bones  Honorable Mention:The Cut of Your Jib posted:The Humour of it All
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Sep 4, 2023 17:11
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In it to win it
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Sep 5, 2023 10:41
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TD Week 579 (I [Rise/Fall], Only to [Fall/Rise]) Word Count: 1800 Meat World Being the game was a little secret he kept from everyone else. Like an addiction to pills or private religion it was something that could live in the back of his mind all day and reinforce his every choice and make light the rest of the world. Sometimes the pain would be a little more fierce though, or the numbness spread a little farther than what seemed comfortable. The sensation of losing touch with his body was acceptable in long sessions. He’d heard of gamers dying from inactivity and dehydration but also knew it couldn’t happen to him due to his thick plot armor. Death wouldn’t stop him, of that he was sure, even if it did make an appearance he’d just continue to exist as himself without the body. They’d still make the games and he’d still play them. All of the challenges would be met before the end and the series never seems in a hurry to wrap itself up completely anyways. Always leaving things open for another chapter so he could continue on. Still sometimes the health meter would seem to indicate he was not going to live in the physical much longer. The stabbing sensations correlated with the stabbing his rendered avatar of self took and the numbness left him less able to grip the controller as his hero was less capable with the sword. It was a vicious spiral but a fitting end. There would be a refresh, he thought. And then it troubled him that this wasn’t quite right. He’d liked the game a lot in the past but, he was going to have a life independent of the one written by the game’s manufacturer. He wasn’t going to marry a princess from that world, he actually preferred the flesh and blood ones who let him into their lives from time to time. He really didn’t see defeating a giant monster as an end all be all goal. More of a brass ring, the big football game for the Al Bundys of the world. It was too bad that most of his body south of his waist wasn’t really up to snuff now though wasn’t it. The old wedding tackle wasn’t going to factor into his future relationships much, but he valued and understood many kinds of intimacy and diabetes with alcoholism co-morbid tends to do those things. Had it always been so hard to get up to get a drink of water? God, he was thirsty and the beer was not being his friend. Running low on those, he expected, not really sure how to get out to the store to replenish them either. And for how long was his face flared up? He really had to start taking better care of his skin because adult acne really is a sign of poor hygiene, he thought. And it felt a mess, not just flush from the booze and drugs it was burning quite brightly now in sync with the game’s brutal lambasting of him as his control skills regressed towards infantile. His face was always a shining beacon of his heroism to the meat space and he didn't\want it soured with rosacea or whatever this was. There was a light behind the monitor he played on briefly, some background thing maybe the sun had come up or someone opened a door somewhere. Which room was he in? In an after-flash he saw the perfectly round lights, plural, and the stuttered halo effect they made reminded him of being at the dentist somehow. Still even though he’d died and restarted quite a few times just now he was progressing well through the game and his minimalist touch on the controls was enough to get him through some pretty tight jams with even some post victory flourish. No one to see it but himself but he’d always been okay with that. He was an unsung hero and that made it all the greater. When he died they probably wouldn’t even mark his grave he thought, or attend it. Who would? The unknown soldier, stalwart to the last, putting duty and honor before self-promotion as a hero does. Some of the pain seemed to start being less achey or throbby and more vital, not conducive to life. Sharp strong impulses from deep in his chest and under his ribs where he imagined his liver was. That thing had been under fire for a while now, he had to admit. And just as in the game, it throbbed and his magic use lost some efficiency. Suddenly there was gauze in his field of view for a moment and that was bad that was not happening that was just from his dream. That bad dream he’d had where the fall out of the car—yes fall, he hadn’t really thrown himself or he didn’t have a choice did he—kept him being taken somewhere he didn’t want to be. That corrugated steel guardrail rushing up at him as the car tried to slow. The crisp mid-day air and bright sun on the hard packed road dust hitting his shoes and him flying over it at a dead run. He’d caught himself admirably and dusted himself off, even had the wherewithal to dicker with the medics and consider opting out of transportation, which was ungodly expensive after all. A small miscommunication and talking at cross purposes at his folks trying to get him to go somewhere for his own good ending up a little dusty but with a lesson learned about volition and the hero’s quest. And a little respect for speed, he'd hurt his leg some, he could admit that. He wasn’t sick—to be treated, he was dealing with life on its own terms in a healthy and reasonable way. He’d told his therapist the same on the regular and saying it made it so for him. She heard him and validated even as she questioned and took on her devil’s advocate position. All to make him more mindful of his reality and shore up that sometime sensation that he wasn’t really in control of that other world. His thoughts were becoming hard to form because strangely his mouth wouldn’t make words in the little mind's eye where he spoke of himself sometimes in the third person. The lips and gums and teeth were all mushy and numb and so without language even thinking now was a chore. How could that be that his mind and body were so tied up that if he couldn’t mouth a word like “onomatopoeia” he then couldn’t play with the concept? But it was so, and the game and all the markers in it were drawing distant and hard to understand. The pain was not integrating him the way it had before but separating him from the fetching mission he was on. He had to find more apples, he thought. He was fairly certain that was on his internal chore list as it was on his external grocery list. He liked it that way for synchronicity. But now it was just pain and the terrifying absence of feeling in his legs and that awful white light so unlike the nicely dimmed and natural tones of his game. There was a voice calling now and a face swimming into his vision and he was not lying in his bed playing a game after all. And he knew in the back of his mind he’d been here before and asked to have it blocked away for a time. That he couldn’t face something in the mirror—couldn’t face the sight and feel of his own remaining limbs. He was reassured that it would be okay to go back to the game, to be in charge but he needed to be awake for this. For what? He thought it unfair that he had to be awake for this dream, this recurring dream that he’d rather sleep through the dream if it was all the same because it was always painful and dull. The things they told him were boring and so limiting, so unimaginative. He was unfettered and in control of himself first and foremost. He could nearly fly, gliding everywhere, used magical summons and teleports and rode all manner of vehicles and creatures at his whim. But here he was motionless in one of those rotten sleep paralysis things he'd commiserated with about with others before and knew was only a trick. It wasn’t real but it was hard to take, the sight of all that white gauze over what he knew was abraded or absent flesh, limbs that didn’t respond, lungs that might have collapsed. A face that wasn’t a face anymore. They didn’t taunt him with it, it was he that had demanded it. Like the Joker in that Batman movie asking for a mirror knowing the results were going to be maddening. He wouldn’t ask for it this time this dream should be more peaceful he needed the rest and to think—to get back to his game. He was confident and sure of that one thing though that the game would be there for him and he for it. He was it and whether anyone else knew was irrelevant. He was sustaining it, with his body, not the other way around of that he was sure. And so, the sharp prick in his arm ended the dream and he was back flying high and chasing dragons, a little thirsty but becoming more aware of his admittedly squalid surroundings. He hadn't made much of his life he supposed but that was okay, it was just a shell around the joyous revelry of his true self. He played half in full knowledge that in that other room his body was a shambles and maybe not long for that world but he also knew that as he pushed that knowledge aside it would fade in importance and then become the dream again. Not real to him any more than the sex he had in other dreams, weird or wild and awesome or sometimes creepy, he had to admit, but fictional in the realm of not real. Something to be played with in the mind as you do while they crumble into sand and leave you only with tantalizing fragments you can share with friends over coffee and laugh about. He knew what was real and what mattered and that was the world of dragons and magic and royal imperatives and the simple life of work and loose associations with friends that kept that in perspective. That let him juggle his meat groceries and the ephemeral grocery list he always had going for magical items and checkpoints and characters met and challenges taken up and half completed and always ready for his attention.
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Sep 10, 2023 22:57
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Fuschia tude posted:Thanks! Yeah, thank you, curlingiron
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Sep 13, 2023 05:57
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