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Dearest Nelly, removed derp fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dead Weight 1000 words Jim roused with a shriek, pawing at the throbbing spot on his chest where Deacon’s slug had struck. His fingers found a black-singed hole in the drab cotton, right over his heart, but no blood, or pain. Confused but pleased, Jim looked up to smirk at the preacher-turned-lawman only to find he was no longer in the dirty back alley behind the White Elephant, but in a courtroom. He was seated at a great mahogany table. Moonlight streamed through the windows, and he was alone. The half-grin went as fast as it came. “Where in hell am I?” A voice boomed from the bench. “Not there yet, son. Let’s give the mouths a chance to jaw a bit.” A grizzled, man-size staghound in judicial robes towered above him. Its voice was heavy with Texan drawl. Jim smacked his palms to his face, dragging at his eyelids until they stung. When he looked back up, the staghound was still there. It had dark fur and its muzzle was filled with white, luminescent fangs it bared in a smile. He was about to speak when a hand – no, a vise – clamped onto his shoulder. He twisted painfully and found himself face-to-face with a skeleton. Jim shrieked again and impotently tried to wrench his shoulder from its grip. “Don’t you worry, Jim, we’ll get you in apple pie order.” Unlike the staghound, the skeleton had the lilt and garb of a northern dandy, its charcoal suit a stark contrast to Jim’s grimy chaps. “Evening, y'all!” A second booming drawl, this time from across the courtroom, drew Jim’s bulging eye to a fresh horror: a rotting corpse in a blood-spattered paisley vest, doffing a Stetson in deference to the judge. The skeleton let go of Jim. “Oh, gods, it’s Hicks.” It rose to exchange tense pleasantries with the dead man across the aisle. Jim sunk into his chair and tried not to vomit. Slipping a hand under his shirt, he felt for a heartbeat and grimaced. When the skeleton came back and started taking notes, Jim gave its elbow a nudge. “Hey, skeleton, I’m dead, aren’t I? This is judgement day, and you’re my lawyer?” The skeleton didn’t look up. “Not as stupid as you look, then. Name’s Willard. Listen, Jim, it’s not looking good." “Why, ‘cause of that dead feller? Hicks, you said?” Willard turned to Jim. “Understand me, Jim, Hicks doesn’t lose. Never has. He's the best, and good friends with the judge to boot. I’ve got some ideas, though. You just sit there and look like you didn’t rob and murder people for a living.” “Hey now, I didn’t murder nobody. I was defendin’ myself.” The lawyer scoffed and went back to his notes. “Sure, and those stagecoaches just gave you the money.” Jim considered bickering, but thought twice; he’d pissed off lawyers before and suffered for it. His eyes flicked to the back of the room. Where he had hoped to see an escape route stood a gargantuan mural of people ascending to Heaven. He smiled, thinking fondly of his mother’s badgering about guardian angels. Leaning out of his seat, Jim craned his neck to see the bottom of the painting. He felt his knees give out. Poor souls down there weren’t going up, no sir! Jim cursed his Ma roundly. --- Minutes, or maybe hours, passed as the lawyers prepared arguments. Jim was sure he was stuck when a shrewd look rose on his face like a bad moon. It was the same last look most of his co-conspirators saw before Jim declined to share the loot. Jim’s hand drifted down to his hip, but found only an empty holster. That was it, then. He was out of ideas. Thankfully the judge spoke and saved him the struggle of having to think too hard. “All right folks, let’s get this pony shown.” The hound waved a paw, and the prosecutor began. Jim felt a familiar cockiness as the lawyer droned. He’d beat the noose before. But Jim paled as Hicks ran through the litany of his misdeeds, ranging from the greatest – murder, theft, arson (“…of a CHURCH, Your Honor!”) – to the least, including lies he told Ma to get out of chores as a kid. At the end, Jim’s bile bubbled at the back of his throat. The staghound’s lightless eyes took him in. “An outlaw to the manner born, James.” Its voice took on a resonance that Jim felt in his bones. A pair of ivory scales appeared on the bench, a bloody heart on one side. With another flourish of paw, the judge drew a handful of bullets from nothing and dropped one for each of his murders onto the other side. It added a leather-bound book and a stack of gold coins. Each addition made the pan sink lower until the heart was raised to its apex. The judge looked at Willard. “The defense, if you please.” Willard opened by extolling the meager set of Jim’s virtues with exaggerated reverence. Jim prayed silently for deliverance, hoping God or whoever would keep his feet out of the hellfire. He watched as the judge listened impassively. Hicks looked unimpressed. But perhaps someone was listening. As Willard increased his fervor and delivered what seemed to Jim a flexible – but appreciated – version of the truth, the judge moved. Sometimes it tore pages from the book, or removed a heavy gold coin. A single bullet was withdrawn. To Jim’s amazement, when Willard concluded, the scale stood even, and Hicks shot a grudging look of respect at his fleshless opponent. Jim sneered. He did it! He beat the most important noose of all, the Devil’s Own! The staghound nodded. “Well argued. His heart seems to have been in the right place...” “Just a moment, Your Honor.” They all turned to watch as Hicks stood. In one mottled hand he cradled a well-worn magnum. Jim closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see his gun, or the grinning corpse placing it on the scales.
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Apr 3, 2023 02:20
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Lawyers, guns and money. 1,000 words exactly “A dispute over what?” Kyle is laughing so hard that he snorted coffee all over the table, drawing disapproving looks from the other patrons. Not that we care what they think. “A pair of pearl-handled pistols - old school, gunslinger type. Total value of $12,500, apparently.” “So Mike wants to be, what, a cowboy?” Dinah cocks an eyebrow in that irritating way she has, the one that suggests she knows something you don’t. “You don’t know that. Could be he’s planning on killing someone”. That’s big, dumb Fredrik. One day I’ll figure out how he passed the bar. “Who’s he gonna kill? He’s single, and he spent the last five years gunning for partner so it’s not like he has any friends left.” Dinah again. “It could be a crime of passion,” protests Fredrik. “Maybe he’s got a secret lover.” “The perfect crime,” I said. “Shot by the only weapon owned by the murderer, whose possession is a matter of public record.” “You don’t have to be such a dick, Andy.” “Whatever, I’ve got a call. See you all later.” I flip them a cheerful bird as I leave Coffee Republic. Mornings before 10 aren’t for working, but you still don’t want to be too late to your desk. The law offices of Adamson Meyer occupy a smart, nondescript building on the corner of 6th Avenue and West 51st street. My little corner is a tiny office shared with another associate, Liao Guang. Functionally it’s windowless, although you could technically see the skyline if you removed the boxes full of unknown documents that are too unimportant to store anywhere else but just important enough that we can’t move them offsite, and are currently stacked up on my table in front of the window. Guang is leaning back in his chair, shirt straining to cover an expansive waist. He’s on a one man quest to disprove the hypothesis that corporate lawyers are universally well dressed. Or at least something other than totally slovenly. Crumbs and poppy seeds from his breakfast bagel cover the desk. “Hey Andy. Mike was looking for you.” Annoying. Mike’s office is only at the end of the corridor, but if I don’t get to him before something else catches his attention, he’ll sit on it till the end of the day and I will be here past midnight, again. Which means another fight with Jess, and I could live without that. Five yards, four, three. His door is still open, thankfully. “Andy! Was just looking for you, buddy. Take a seat.” Mike Garfield is a big man, but when he speaks, something in his manner takes up all the space you’re not using. I hate when partners are jovial. It’s more honest when they’re vicious, and you don’t have to pretend not to notice. “How can I help?” I say, trying to hit the perfect mix of eagerly alert and mildly obsequious. The trick is to present like a social and professional equal, while also subtly making it clear that you understand you’re really, really, not. “I was wondering if you had an update on that inheritance dispute I asked about?” He’s looking too studiedly casual. He really cares about this for some reason. “The one about the pistols? I’ve gone over the docs, but isn’t this something for a local firm?” He’s not listening. “Those pistols, yes. They have a value to them that’s more than monetary, for me. They were my uncle’s, you know. He used them when he killed my aunt’s lover. Aunt Mary was a very lovely woman, you know. But sadly careless in her affections.” This is getting weird, but that’s his prerogative. “Well I can call local state counsel and line up someone to get back to you today?” “Good. I’d like a debrief at about 9pm. You can come by then.” He waves; I’m dismissed. Back to my desk, and my phone is buzzing. It’s a text from Jess. Hey babe. Gupta’s later? We’ve been together a couple of months now; the usual pipeline from Tinder to bar to bedroom, but when we hit the third or fourth hookup it felt official, somehow. She had some thing going on with an older guy when we met, but she hasn’t seen him in a while. Can’t. Got work. Sorry. She sends me a gif of a large woman crying colourful cartoon tears. I put the phone aside - time for my zoom call - and sink into my work. The hours pass. Local counsel is fine to handle, but it seems there’s some problem tracking down all the assets and it’s not clear where the pistols are right now. I stare at the details of the dispute - it seems Mike’s aunt left most everything to her sister already, and only the pistols to him. It’s a strange bequest, but I guess a woman in her 60s doesn’t much need a pair of pistols. Probably thought Mike would value them more. Evidently wrong, given the dispute. Maybe she’s planning a murder too. Nine p.m. I make my way to Mike’s office. He’s standing with his back to the door, staring out the window. Unlike mine, his is floor to ceiling, wide and not covered in boxes. Except for one, at his feet. “Andy,” he says, his tone level. “What did you find out about the estate?” I start to tell him about the challenge to the bequest, about the missing pistols. But then I see them, nestled in the box at his feet. He stoops, picks them up. Cocks them. What the gently caress, they’re loaded? “It doesn’t matter, Andy. Nothing does, any more. I had someone in my life, someone special. But the she stopped coming round. Stopped taking my calls. It took me a while to find out who stole her. It was you, Andy. It was you all along. And now you’re going to pay for that, Andy.” He fires. Goodbye Jess. Goodbye law school debt.
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Apr 3, 2023 04:00
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Quietly, Quietly 1454 words Flash rule: Warren Zevon - The Indifference of Heaven As usual, I woke with the sun, dressed, and slung my rifle over my shoulder. There were a lot of wolves around Seattle in those days. That's not a metaphor about muggers or anything, I mean literal wolves that wandered down from Canada. Nothing gets the heart pumping like rounding a corner and coming face to face with a pack of those big rangy bastards. There were no wolves in sight that morning, though. It was a sunny day, fresh from an overnight rain, and I enjoyed the quiet on the walk to my garden. Near the corner of Prospect and 4th, I found an ex-human who needed some help. It was pooled up on top of a discarded trash bag which had covered the storm drain, a big glob of bright blue goo that kept sloshing gently from side to side and making little whimpering noises. Careful not to touch the goo, I grabbed the edge of the trash bag and pulled it to the side. The ex-human slipped between the bars of the storm grate, making a grateful "hmmmmm". I carried the bag to a trash can nearby and threw it away, feeling one of those big whole-body shudders. The ex-humans creeped me out, so I was glad I rarely saw them anymore–the worst part is hearing them in your head when you get close. When the pills first showed up (nobody knew from where) and people started changing, you'd see those goo puddles everywhere, just waiting for the rain to wash them down into the sea. I used to go from house to house with a broom and a bucket just in case somebody took the pill in a room with a sloped floor and got stuck in the corner. I know it's a weird thing to do if I find them creepy, but I just didn't want anybody getting trapped. After I checked my beehives and my garden, I walked over to Dave's house. He was one of the only other people still sticking around in human form. He saw me coming through the window and was out on his porch before I even turned from the sidewalk. "Hey Maya, how's that .308 working out for you? I've been thinking about it and for wolves you'd probably be good with .223, better even, and of course I've got lots of that around." Dave had been a prepper before the pills started showing up. His basement was full of guns and canned food. "Thanks, Dave, but this is fine. I haven't even had to use it yet," I replied. "Here, have a tomato. They're just starting to get ripe." "Oh, man, perfect! I haven't had breakfast yet." He bit into the tomato right there, leaning forward so the juice didn't drip on his shirt. "Good stuff. Hey, I thought I might drive downtown today, see if anybody's still around there. Want to come along? I found a sweet old Studebaker station wagon a couple blocks away. Keys were in it with a note that said 'she's all yours', so I thought I'd take that." I thought back a few months to when I first met Dave. The neighborhood was pretty well emptied out by that point. He chased me off his lawn with a gun, thought I was a desperate looter. Now he was just desperate for company. "No, I'm just going to wander over to the library again, pick up some more books. I never got to read fiction as an adult, you know? I spent 10 hours a day reading legal documents and the last thing I wanted was to read more after work." We chatted a while longer before I finally extricated myself with a promise that I'd meet him down in the park that evening. I never would have talked to Dave before; I'd have thought he was a weirdo gun nut, and he surely had no use for a Democrat-voting lawyer. Turns out we had one thing in common: a weird streak of misanthropic stubbornness. There was no one else on the streets, and no one at the library. The library doors were still unlocked, with the sign in the window that read "please be gentle with the books, goodbye." I took some Mark Twain and Dickens; their writing felt comfortingly conversational. On the walk back, I saw a herd of elk grazing on the playground at an elementary school. In the distance, a dirt bike roared briefly. I met Dave down in the park that evening. He brought a spread of beer and wine lifted from the liquor store. We poured drinks and he told me about his trip downtown. "Pretty much dead down there," he said. "I drove around and honked the horn, but I only saw one guy, and he ran into Pike's Place and I couldn't find him. Something big was on fire down at the Port, but I didn't want to go too far in case the car broke down." "Did you go down by the water?" I asked. "No closer than the front of the market building. I could just barely hear them from there." "Gives me the creeps," I said, slugging back my wine. "I used to like going to the beach to think. It was quiet, peaceful. Now it's just all these voices in your mind." "Yeah, it's kind of creepy. I did listen for a little bit, though. Just for some company, you know?" At that point we heard a motor, and turned to see a nice silver BMW pull up. Katie was the only other person we knew who was still in the area, but we didn't see her often. She liked to hop around from house to house, apartment to apartment, picking the nicest places and just lounging around until they got too messy. Katie told us about her latest spot, a luxury apartment over by Lake Union. "It's nice, and the view is great, but you know the power's out and I'm getting pretty sick of climbing all those stairs. Maybe another couple days." As the sun set, Dave pulled a bag from under the picnic table. He dumped out a big pile of gold coins and jewelry, spread it around. "You guys want any of this stuff?" he asked. "The coins I was saving from before, and the jewelry I mostly picked up wandering around. I was thinking the other day and I'm just not sure why I'm keeping it." "Some of this stuff is niiiice," Katie said, poking through the pile. She pulled out a necklace with a large sapphire pendant. "Hell yeah, I'll take this. Thanks, Dave!" I picked up a coin and hefted it. I'd never actually handled gold coins before, and I felt kind of like a pirate. It was heavy. "You're just going to give it away?" I asked. "There's tens of thousands of dollars here." He looked up at the moon rising up above Mount Rainier. "At this point, I don't see what I'll ever spend it on. Who's selling anything? I was planning for revolution, war, famine, that sort of thing. If everybody just gets up and leaves, well, everything you could need is just sitting around." He sighed. "The stupidest thing is that when I have it in the house, I still worry about protecting it – but from who? Stupid. Just take it." I slipped the coin into my jacket pocket. Katie took a few more things. We drank a little, talked a litte, and watched the Milky Way come up. When we went our separate ways for the night, we left the pile on the table. When I got home, I put the coin on the table in the entryway, next to the unopened pill bottle that had arrived at my house (and everyone else's house) a few months ago. The label just showed a peaceful ocean, with the words "Reject Modernity" printed above it. "Not yet," I whispered to it, and I went to bed. The next day, I got up with the sun, grabbed my rifle, checked the garden and the beehives. The deer had nibbled my corn. For once, Dave didn't come running when I walked past his house. "You still hung over?" I called, knocking at his door. When he didn't answer, I let myself in. I found his note on the kitchen table: Basement's unlocked, help yourself to anything you like and tell Katie the same. I got tired of being alone. Hope you understand. You've been a good friend. PS: I'm going to take the pill down at Pier 91, can you make sure I make it into the water? I know you don't like the voices. Sorry.
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Apr 3, 2023 04:10
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Up Country 805 words Flash: Poor Poor Miserable Me Ohio was a battleground state and there we were, behind enemy lines in a black minivan with a mural full of fire and snakes and a bronze-skinned man throwing a javelin, doing fifty nine on a sixty mile an hour road. 'Course, don't do much good to follow the rules. Piggie want to play they can always find themselves a reason. We had Cyrus on the horn, up on the speaker so we all could hear, and Gianni was flying Artemis on his laptop from the back seat, so we were sitting pretty all things considered when we hit the roadblock. Three unmarked cars and a tall piece of bacon in a suit, long neck full of nicks from poor shaving jobs and a white ball cap over a crew cut. "You or me, X?" said David, from behind the wheel. "I'll take care of it this time," I said. "My turn, I reckon." "Three times past your turn," he said, stopping the van ahead of the roadblock. I waited for the command, then opened the door and stepped outside, hands over head. "Howdy," I said. "Who exactly am I dealing with today?" "What you mean?" said the tall man. "Are you Seneca County officers today?" I said. "Or the Northern Free Militia? Or is this a private shakedown?" We were prepared for each, more or less. If it came to a firefight, well, we had them outgunned. Could be bad for me, though. I had a vest and if they were well trained they'd be aiming for center of mass, but there was a good chance this was a headshot cowboy, and an outside chance they packed armor-piercing bullets. If they were going legal, well, we had Cyrus on the horn, ready to send legal hotshots to here and the courthouse on quick notice and tie down a warranted search for at least most of the day. Luckily, his eyes lit up at the last. He holstered his pistol, and his men did the same. "Send the bird away," he said, "And we can talk." And talk we did. The final number was a serious one, a good chunk of our operating budget, enough to keep Sheriff Talbot and his men in donuts and oxy for a month. "That was close, X," said Gianni. "Thank you," said Helen. "I...I can't go back." Helen Scaggs, daughter of State Senate Leader Clay Scaggs. Refugee once we make it across the border, kidnap victim in the eyes of the locals until then. In a hell of a lot of trouble. She has a great big old shiner and a ripped near to shreds jeans and t-shirt when we picked her up. Gianni's kit was close to her size and shade, he helped her clean up a lot, but still. She had the kind of story you don't ask about, the kind you probably don't want to know. "Just the job," I said. I almost said it should be smooth there on, but I had enough experience not to jinx it. But maybe just thinking it was enough. We caught a pair of caltrop mines that tore up the rear tires, and with only one spare we had to wait out a drone with another. At least it was a lousy ambush spot, at least with our air cover, but that was an hour and a half of three-sixty intense watch duty, then another ten minutes with two of the crew changing the tires. I don't know if he planned to double dip all along or if word about Scaggs had reached him and he put two and two together, but there he was, with about a dozen cars, maybe twice that many men just outside sight range of the Indiana border. Defiance County, so out of his jurisdiction as Sheriff. Not outside Militia territory though. The line to Cyrus cut out. Jamming. Artemis too, switching from Gianni's eyes and gun to autonomous mode. I could signal attack three different ways and call her off two more. We had a dozen mortar-drones ready to launch. They had their cars in a V-formation, hard to ram through, and our weapons tended to the incendiary rather than high explosive. I've seen a lot of fights in the SCW. I was at First and Third Baltimore, held the Vegas redoubt. Lost more than a few friends each time. This is the one I don't talk about, not the details, not until we get to the part that doesn't happen most nights when I manage a bit of sleep, where Cyrus's other company hit them from behind and picked up what was left of us, Helen and me and maybe half of Gianni. "The good half," he always tells me when we get together, and I think he even believes it.
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Apr 3, 2023 06:59
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Submissions are closed.
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Apr 3, 2023 09:00
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Thunderdome 556 - Judgment Day We had an interesting crop of stories this week, only a couple of which ended up dividing the judges. Certainly interesting to see which way people went with their prompts. FlippinPageman is Disqualified. Do not hit the edit button. This is not rocket science! Beyond that, they also take the loss for Make Some Noise, a story we all thought was confusing, boring, and with an ending that doesn’t land. This week also brought with it two DMs, ItohRespectArmy’s The Bacchanalia and Dead Weight by sephiRoth IRA. derp takes this week’s sole HM for Dearest Nelly, which brings a charmingly distinct voice. Quietly, Quietly gives this week’s win to Pham Nuwen, for a combination of strong characters and good worldbuilding. The Blood Throne is yours!
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Apr 3, 2023 13:11
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And for my triple-post, Crits for week 556 The Bacchanalia by ItohRespectArmy The style flits between the anodyne and the violent. I could get it if we're meant to think Alfie's a Patrick Bateman type but there's no other indicators of that. As a fan of a terrible pun I do at least like the last line, but there’s real issues with phrasing and formatting that makes my eyes start to glaze over by the third paragraph. You do have the week’s most interesting take on the prompt, but it’s not enough to save you. Make Some Noise by FlippinPageman Yes, I am going to harp on this: preview twice, post once, and DO NOT EDIT! As a fan of ridiculously over the top metal, I’m here for the band descriptions but the twist isn’t really a twist because, err, what?!. There’s no sense of the band’s intentions or what the ray’s meant to be, and the conclusion strips out whatever tension may have remained. I should have loved this, but it’s a lot of wasted potential. Dearest Nelly by derp If you’d replaced e-signing and digital documents with telegraph/telephone I’d have thought this a period piece from a hundred years ago — the language and style lends itself very well to that, in a way that I really like. I get the sense that the writer’s a spoiled rich brat from the start so I’m not surprised he walked out, but it does mean that there’s not as much impact to what he does. If it was written as that period piece and the money involved was a serious amount even for the protagonist this could easily have been a winner. Dead Weight by sephiRoth IRA I like the style, and I get the feeling that Jim’s a right bastard (at least, given he was about to draw on the judge) but I don’t get a sense of his personality to back that up. I know you didn’t have many words, but you could’ve carved out enough for a sentence or two to add context. The court doing an Anubis-style weighing of the heart is a strong visual and one I’d have liked more of. Lawyers, guns, and money by Beefeater1980 This kind of slice-of-life-with-a-dark-ending couldn’t be more my poo poo if you’d written it with an empty gin bottle on an old D&D character sheet. I really really liked this. Yes, the end’s telegraphed from the very beginning, but the tone of the coffee chat means I kinda don’t care. I do have some stylistic nitpicks - snorted/snorts (tense agreement), and I think you have a missing ‘not’ when describing Mike as ‘a big man’. Quietly, Quietly by Pham Nuwen I love tales of community and human connection in the post-apocalpse, so you’re coming out of the gate strong. I like that this particular end is something you can choose that isn’t death, more like joining a liquid hive mind. I was originally disappointed that Dave taking the pills happened so soon after his attitude shift towards gold and jewelry and such, but it does make sense from his POV that he only came to that understanding once he’d already decided to go, since it’s such a big thing for someone who was a prepper/goldbug. Up Country by Thranguy There’s a lot of style and worldbuilding here, but I just don’t give a poo poo. It’s a couple of scenes from a trashy airport novel rather than an actual story. That can be fun, but you’ve got nearly 700 words that could have made the names into characters, and the last five paragraphs into an actual story. I’m actually angry because I feel like there’s so much wasted potential. And where's the flash rule?
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Apr 3, 2023 13:28
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Thank you for the crit! It was not enough words. I almost decided to DQ and not post because I didn't like the finished product for the very reason you gave - I didn't do a good enough job fleshing out Jim. Probably bad choice to try and get description in versus characterizing Jim. In the end I ran out of time/mental re-write energy. Anyway cheers and good prompt.
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Apr 3, 2023 13:44
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WEEK 557: You thinking what I'm thinking? Much of the interesting conflict and suspense in fiction comes when one character can't tell what another character thinks... so let's throw that all out the window and write stories about telepathy. Other than that, go hog wild. Write about mind-readers. Write about identical twins who can mind-talk with each other. What would caveman telepathy look like before language was invented -- or what's the Cyberlink like in the year 2525? You get 1200 words to work with. If you ask for a flash, I will give you ~something~ to work into your story, plus an extra 400 words. Word count: 1200 words, plus 400 more if you take a flash Signups close: Friday April 7 at 23:59, US Pacific Entries close: Sunday April 9 at 23:59, US Pacific All the usual rules about Google docs, editing, erotica, and so on remain in place. Judges Pham Nuwen Albatrossy_Rodent Entrants ItohRespectArmy (flash: detectives) crimea rohan (flash: https://i.imgur.com/J4Vs964.jpg) Slightly Lions (flash: drugs) Admiralty Flag Idle Amalgam Thranguy (flash: https://i.imgur.com/peZmgm4.png) Copernic Mucking About WindwardAway (flash: piety) Beefeater1980 Pham Nuwen fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Apr 5, 2023 |
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Apr 3, 2023 17:08
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In and flash please.
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Apr 3, 2023 17:12
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ItohRespectArmy posted:In and flash please. Flash: detectives
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Apr 3, 2023 17:18
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In
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Apr 3, 2023 18:29
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in, flash please
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Apr 3, 2023 22:03
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In, flash me
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Apr 3, 2023 22:06
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rohan posted:in, flash please 
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Apr 3, 2023 22:18
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Slightly Lions posted:In, flash me Flash: drugs
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Apr 3, 2023 22:22
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In
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Apr 4, 2023 00:32
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In
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Apr 4, 2023 01:38
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In, Flash
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Apr 4, 2023 02:00
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Thranguy posted:In, Flash 
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Apr 4, 2023 02:16
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You know what I'm thinking
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Apr 4, 2023 05:46
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Sure, I'm in
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Apr 4, 2023 12:26
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in with a flash!
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Apr 4, 2023 13:06
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WindwardAway posted:in with a flash! Piety
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Apr 4, 2023 16:18
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Crits for Week #556 ItohRespectArmy - The Bacchanalia: Your story was the first offender in what’s going to become a recurring theme in crits this week, in that your protagonist had no agency within the story, and the stakes are unclear. First, the agency: I understand there’s not much your character can be doing in this story. The whole premise is that he’s waiting for a date, the date is late, and he’s getting increasingly cynical while downing G&Ts. The problem is that this, in itself, isn’t a terribly interesting story. When the only tension is “will the date arrive” and there’s nothing the protagonist can do to affect this, much like Alfie, I’m sitting here waiting for the actual story to arrive. Second, the stakes: as above, I get that the story’s tension derives from “will the date show up”. The problem is that the opening lines, with “I’m half expecting to be turfed out if they catch onto the little scheme my friends have cooked up for me”, set up an expectation that there’s something more going on, which is never resolved. I’m fairly certain the waitstaff at a fancy restaurant are well accustomed to people waiting for their dates. Is this an early sign that the narrator is overly paranoid? Perhaps, but again, it doesn’t lead anywhere. Beyond that: the writing is competent enough. Watch your dialogue attribution tags. “You need a trailing comma,” he said. FlippinPageman - Make Some Noise!: I really wanted to like this! The opening is really solid and you set up some nice intrigue. The introduction of MEAT NEBULA is fun and I was keen to see just how literal you were being with “the gates of hell” and the stakes set up at the beginning — are these literal demons? And then you fumbled the landing. I think the story fell apart with the line “Over the next few days, an 11-second zoomed-in video of Plaguetopus, shrugging nonchalantly as the Ray emerged, would garner over 90 million views.” This effectively kills the tension you’d been building to this point, as it pulls it out of the scene’s immediacy and gives us … a nonchalant shrug? It also implies that the most exciting part of the night wasn’t the gun actually being fired, but this short reaction, so I’m led to assume nothing groundbreaking is to follow. Worse, though, it leads to confusion with the following section, which I assume is meant to happen immediately after Rip makes the announcement; but the above line has set up the expectation that at least a few days have passed. This is all about the loss of immediacy the line introduces, and it takes work to get back into the high-stakes scene you previously had us in. The actual ending is just overall a bit confusing, and stems from your trying to keep the weapon’s actual purpose secret and then revealing it offhand at the very end. It stretches credulity that Joyce hadn’t read the full dossier well before now. I’m a bit confused about why Spurner Labs apparently wanted Geri Barker to make the gun but then wanted to prevent its use; it’s misdirection that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny on a re-read. I can’t even imagine why some Big Energy corporation wouldn’t want a magic anti-climate-change gun. A way to continue mining with impunity? They’d love that, surely. I don’t get the very ending at all. Why had their sales plummeted? There’s nothing here to really support them falling into obscurity as a result of this. derp - Untitled: I’m honestly a little surprised more stories this week didn’t start with the premise of a lawyer executing a will involving valuable weaponry. It’s probably one of the more straightforward interpretations of the prompt, but avoids the soggy middle largely on the strength of its voice and character, and the neat little subversion of someone saying, nah, not going to I don’t agree the period should have been set much earlier, I think the juxtaposition between this old money narrator and the modern world works for the piece. sephiRoth IRA - Dead Weight: Another mark in the “protagonist has no agency” column. Again, I wanted to like this because it’s so damned inventive … I dig the concept of purgatory as a hearing, the nod to Anubis’ scales, the sense of courtroom drama in the underworld. I’d happily read a series about skeleton lawyers defending clients against the decomposing corpse of the prosecution. But the story here fails to really capitalise on the inventiveness of the premise. Jim doesn’t do anything, and the ending feels both pre-ordained and arbitrary — why does Hicks wait till the very end to reveal the magnum? Does he just have a flair for the dramatic? This would be a very different story if Willard had managed to get Jim off scot-free and Jim had then done or said something to ruin his chance at redemption. Maybe, at a pinch, the preacher-turned-lawman made his own dramatic entrance at the very end, holding the single bullet that would tip the scales against him. Beefeater1980 - Lawyers, guns and money.: Welcome to the dome! I didn’t love this. Parts of it work — it’s a solid first draft. But, for a story that so openly telegraphs the ending from the opening lines, this story doesn’t introduce the central relationship and the source of the stakes until more than midway through, so it doesn’t feel like a satisfying and cohesive story. This is, again, a story where the protagonist doesn’t do anything — even the search for the guns is a complete red herring. I’d cut Liao from the story. He doesn’t add anything, and in a story as short as this, every character needs to pull twice their weight. I’ve been guilty of this before: over a thousand words, I’d suggest limiting yourself to two, three characters max. Here, you’ve got Andy (the protagonist), Kyle, Dinah, Fredrik, Liao, Mike, Jess … and then off-hand references to Mike’s aunt, her lover, his uncle, as well as a nameless older man who Jess had previously dated … I get that downsizing the cast will make that revelation more obvious. I posit that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Right now the ending, as above, feels telegraphed, but also a bit cheap: how did Mike get the guns? How did he find out about Jess and Andy? My unsolicited suggestions are as follows: introduce Jess earlier. I’ll credit sebmojo with this when I can find the link, but (from memory) you don’t want to be introducing pivotal characters after the first third or so of the story. We need to know about their relationship as it forms the basis for the stakes. Next, have Andy be the one to actually find the guns. This gives him agency and adds an ironic twist to the ending, when he gives Mike the very weapons he’s about to be killed by. Finally, Jess needs to do more than send a booty call. If her message had been something like “babe, need to talk to you about something important” and Andy had been “can’t, need to go and deliver some guns to my boss” we’d be putting things together well before Andy knocks on Mike’s door, and that would drive the tension for the final scene. I get the intention to surprise, but it doesn’t work here because everything is way too opaque — but there’s no reason not to lean into this. Tension works really well when we know what’s going to happen while the characters are blithely unaware. Anyway. For all the above, I think this was a decent story, I’m hoping to see you around in the Dome again! Pham Nuwen - Quietly, Quietly: Yeah this is the good poo poo. I’d cut “nobody knows from where” as it’s a jarring interruption in otherwise seamless exposition; I dig stories that take a strange concept and run with it without any explanation, and feel this line is a half-hearted attempt to justify the strangeness of the premise. (On the other hand, it does indicate pretty strongly that the mystery of where the pills coming isn’t the point, and that this story is really much more about human connections in some sort of post-apocalypse society. Right now it just feels too blunt a tool.) Otherwise, I really enjoyed this. I got a sense as soon as Dave offered his haul to the others where this was going, which is good; the ending had a creeping inevitability to it, and tied nicely in to the protagonist’s motivations as established at the start. A nice complete story with a satisfying ending and a deserving win, well done. Thranguy - Up Country: This is decently written, but it’s a scene from a larger piece I’d be more interested in reading. Like other stories this week, the central stakes — transporting a refugee across a border — aren’t established until more than halfway through, and they hardly play into the story at all, which quickly devolves into a battle between two sides I know little about (beyond presumably good vs violently corrupt). What happens if the bad guys win? I imagine it’s nothing good, but all I can bring to this story is external context, and I think this would be stronger if there were personal stakes, and the battle was more than a jargon-heavy clashing of toys.
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Apr 4, 2023 23:41
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@DigitalRaven, @Rohan, thanks both for the crit! You were much kinder to it than I feel it deserves. And of course Andy should have handed over the pistols, that’s a real kick-self. In for the next one.
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Apr 5, 2023 03:55
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Crits for Week #556 ItohRespectArmy - The Bacchanalia: The character’s voice in this story is strong, strong enough that I happily read through most of it before realizing that nothing was really happening. From the descriptions of the atmosphere (I particularly liked “Greco-Roman Disneyland”) and the title, I was expecting things to get weird to justify Alfie’s paranoia. Or Alfie’s paranoia would get the better of him in this environment and he’d do something regrettable. Instead, his date shows up and they’re polite to each other. The last line seems like it belongs to a different story, as this story is all violent imagery and sharp metaphors, not wordplay. One more editing pass for formatting would also help– I was especially tripped up by the dialogue in the fourth-to-last paragraph as I thought Alfie was still speaking. FlippinPageman - Make Some Noise!: Don’t edit your posts. This story tried to pack way too much narrative and character into too small a word count. The beginning section is meant to drop us right into the action, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Joyce seems to flip flop from being against the plan (something involving Hell?) to saying that at least she’ll get a commission, which removes any tension the introduction created. The next section is the strongest, I was back in for the descriptions of the band (who I still thought were actual demons at this point) and the introduction of the gun. The next section loses me again, as we get yet another character and Joyce is now someone with a dossier, not an arena techie. I sort of get that the band would lose all their edginess after they solved climate change, but this revelation also feels unearned as all we know about the band is that they have a theme and they’re popular. There’s flashes of fun in the story, I just wished it was more focused. derp - Untitled: Sorry, I wasn’t sure if your title was Dearest Nelly or not so I left it as Untitled in the archive. I liked this story: I grew up in Western Washington so the setting made me smile, and the character’s voice was fun. The contrast between the stuffy upper-crust narrator and the modern setting worked for me. As a modern person affecting such a style, he seems like the type who might embrace a quest to be completed “before the first rays of sunlight grace the snow,” which makes his refusal more satisfying. However, the revelation that he’s rich enough to casually buy a cafe lessens the effect, as he never had any reason to accept the deal. He’s not proven to be a man of his convictions, he’s just too rich to bother, which makes him a less sympathetic character. sephiRoth IRA - Dead Weight: This was another story that had some fun elements, but didn’t quite come together. Unlike Make Some Noise!, I think this story could be told within the word count with some ruthless editing. Specifically, the beginning section takes up half the story, slowly introducing characters with descriptions and characterizations that don’t earn their word count, before we even get to the trial. This makes the trial, the actual meat of the story, go by too quickly, leading to a lack of clarity in the ending. I didn’t get why Hicks got to put the gun on the scales; my interpretation was that it was punishment for Jim wanting to draw it in the courtroom earlier? Beefeater1980 - Lawyers, guns and money.: I liked this as a realistic-seeming slice of lawyer life, but as a story I ended up confused. The first speed bump was that Mike was both Andy’s boss as well as his client: when Mike asked for “an update on that inheritance dispute,” it sounded like he was asking about a case they were working on, not a dispute that he himself was involved in. We never learn who this dispute is with, then we learn the pistols are lost, then they show up in Mike’s office. So was there any dispute at all, or just something Mike gave to Andy to … waste his time? The ending is fine, if unsurprising as it’s telegraphed so clearly at the beginning. Once again, this is a story with too many characters. Guang’s characterization is good, but superfluous for someone who’s narrative job could be replaced by a text message. Likewise, the friends at the beginning could be replaced by, say, a conversation with Jess. Overall, though, this is a pretty solid first story in the Dome, come again soon! Pham Nuwen - Quietly, Quietly: This was a lovely little story about creating human connections and going back to the basics. Again, the setting made me smile, and it’s a refreshingly nonviolent apocalypse. The idea of people freely, generously leaving their material possessions behind for those who come next is hopeful and compelling, especially as Dave, the character who as a prepper represents the opposite of that, is the one to come around to this way of thinking. I did want more of an explanation for the goo pills. It feels like they need more of an obvious upside than “turn into goo and flow into the sea” for the vast majority of the population to take them. Thranguy - Up Country: The character's voice is strong and the prose paints a picture of this scrappy team in post-apocalyptic America, but it’s all impression and vibes and not much substance. When there were details, they just confused me: why’s one guy on a speaker and what does “sending legal hotshots” mean, what’s an Artemis, what are these guys doing that they’re preparing so hard for trouble? The story at least provides an answer to the last question in the form of Helen, but she and the stakes of the story are introduced quite late. This phrase in the last paragraph– “not until we get to the part that doesn't happen most nights when I manage a bit of sleep”– didn’t make sense to me, so I almost missed the meaning of the end of the story. Like a few other stories this week, the first half is all setup, which could be condensed to give more breathing room to the action.
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Apr 5, 2023 11:12
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Redemption post for failure in week 556. I got Covid and lost a few days there.. Justice is Blobby 1500 words A yellow jackboot with pink buckles crashed through the thin door of the hut, a yellow denim-clad calf and muscled thigh following quickly after. After that the details blurred - a tornado of wide shoulders, billy clubs and testosterone filled the room with Alice at the centre. The men shouted over each other, a cacophony of commands that she couldn’t parse, paralysing her in place both too terrified to move and terrified she wasn’t complying. A small flock of birds launched themselves frightened into the air, squawking as they barrelled between the branches and away from the invading force. Their panic rippled through the trees. The small village was shaken awake by this dawn raid, makeshift houses coming alive as valuables were quickly hidden and children tucked away. Amid the din they hauled her up by her armpits, wrenching her small frame up effortlessly, waving the rusted pistol in her face and dragging her bodily out through the splintered doorway. While there was a brutal efficiency to their invasion and exfiltration, it would be more impressive if her abode was larger than a single-room shed though she caught herself wondering whether they would have struggled if the geometry was any more complex. That little glimmer of snark was enough to start grounding herself among the five barking, jostling yellow suited thugs. The lizard brain and the limbic systems taking a small step back as her neocortex started to sort through the mess. Alice heard her own voice in her head, like she was talking to one of the village children in her classroom. “Just breathe. Count to ten and then tell me what you want to say.” She took a deep breath. She counted to ten. “I’ve been arrested. It was something to do with the antique starter pistol. They’ve sent enough goons to send a message to my village so it’s something they feel quite strongly about.” She said it out loud, nobody was listening anyway. Nobody ever listened except for the children she taught. She held a wealth of observations, analyses and strategems that she believed were tragically underutilised by the village elders. A shove from behind bounced her out of that familiar, bitter rut. They were at the village threshold. In front of her stood a large man in a slightly crisper slightly yellower jumpsuit than the others. On his left shoulder was an arbitrary collection of pink dots, the arrangement obviously confirming his status as the person who says what happens next. “Well done, lads. Putting the do in do or die every day, boys.” “No foe too strong! No odds too long, sir!” His moustache twitched at one corner, either in gentle appreciation of their discipline or their blissful lack of irony. He turned his gaze to Alice. “Now young lady, you have been found in possession of an instrument of insurrection.” He reached a hand out to one of the men, who quickly placed the small gun in his meaty palm. Holding it high for the rest of the villagers, who had emerged from doorways or between trees to watch cautiously. “You must atone for this transgression. The Judge will decide how.” “That’s - it’s not a weapon! It’s a child’s toy, you ca-” Something hit her hard on the back of her head and she slumped to the ground. As the lights went out she heard the man with the moustache “For gently caress’s sake Brick, now you’re going to have to carry her.” *** She came to in a small stone room. The floor was smooth and cool against her cheek. As her senses started firing again, she noticed the walls were smooth too. The corners were neat and perfectly square. It was the most uniform room she’d ever been in, unfamiliar in comparison to the lean-tos, cabins and sheds that formed the village she’d always lived in. It was a sickly, alien pink hue. The man with the moustache stood in the doorway. There was very little room for any doorway around his imposing frame. “Glad you could join us, love. Now, unless you had a secret stash of these,” he tapped a small, rough hewn rectangle with a dull shine against his temple. “The Judge will see you.” Alice didn’t say anything. Things were still swimming into focus. It had been months since the yellowshirts had been seen in the forest. Alice knew of them, but today was a series of firsts for her - first contact, first arrest, first concussion, first.. what.. trial? Everybody knew about them, sad folks playing soldier in the bones of dead cities. She pushed the floor away, unfolding as she rose. How did they find out about the toy gun and why make the show of force over it? She was manhandled through the doorway and down a featureless corridor, floors and walls again unnervingly smooth. The man with the moustache walked behind while another nameless man (maybe it was Brick?) led her by the arm around and through a series of corners, corridors and antechambers. Splashes of pink and yellow a creeping unease against the smooth greys. They emerged in a large chamber. There was more wood in this room than the others, but it looked like it had all the joy and life beaten out of it. People had tamed this wood instead of listening to what it wanted to be. It covered the walls in smooth sheets, and rose up in ornate partitions and tables out of the floor. There were two others waiting for her in here. A man at one of the lower tables, and another seated at an elevated box - a little like the village elder’s speaking tree. The man in the higher box wore long yellow robes with a hanging ragged pink sash flowing down from each shoulder across his chest. A pink shell with yellow spots sat uneasily on his head. He looked comical, like a child playing dress-up, but his face was stern and the others were unbothered. The man leading her by the arm pushed her toward the unoccupied table and down into the seat. The man in the higher box cleared his throat. “Ahem, yes. Well, young lady. It appears you’ve been caught being a bit of a sneaky weasel. That’s not very Blobby of you is it now?” He looked at her, red-rimmed and wrinkled eyes peering out from beneath the cracked pink shell on his head. “We have the rules for a reason. Without rules we’re no better than gunge.” Alice felt completely adrift. These weren’t words. The tone sounded very serious, like a grandfather telling you why it’s not ok to start undoing the twine holding up the family table - but the words weren’t shedding any light on why she was there, what was going to happen or more importantly, what she could do about it. The man sitting closer to Alice, at the other table, stood up. He waved the toy gun that Moustache had taken off her while babbling about Blobby (which she was starting to read as verb, noun and adjective depending on context), naughtiness and pedigree. She felt his words were even less tethered, as he didn’t have the sage delivery to match the man in the cracked helm. The two men babbled nonsense back and forth. With each ‘Blobby’ her hands tensed into tighter fists, nails digging into her palms. This was lunacy. She decided that there was no hope for her in this room. She might as well get it over with them, insult them enough to kick her out and hopefully find herself in another setting with more of a chance of escape. During a lull in the bluster, they paused and looked expectantly at her. Exasperated, she stood. She blinked slowly at the man in the cracked helm. Threw up both arms and shouted “Blobby Blobby Blobby!” while waving her hands about, doing her best parody of their idiocy. The Judge beamed while the other man recoiled in shock. “Blobby Blobby Blobby!” he shouted, clapping his hands gleefully at her expert argument. “Oh ho ho, young lady I have not heard your generation speak those words with such conviction in all my years.” He waved her up toward him, while Moustache and the others stood dumbstruck. “Blobby Blobby Blobby indeed. My word.” he chuckled, leading her out a hidden door behind his raised dais. “Come with me, you’re free to go by all means - I can’t sentence such a promising mind. But I’d like to offer you something.” He reached into a small compartment under the solid dark wood table in this smaller, cosier room. He extended his open palm to her, holding out a small pink and yellow crest, a garish smiling face above a tied bow. “You can go, or you can stay and become a keeper of the word here. We could use a clever head around the table, so to speak.”. Alice ran her thumb across the crest. “Blobby Blobby Blobby” she whispered.
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Apr 5, 2023 12:26
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Still looking for two judges!
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Apr 5, 2023 16:20
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Judging.
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Apr 5, 2023 17:15
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Note: We're probably going to have a lot of people trying to figure out how to express non-verbal dialog this week. Be aware that putting your dialog in angle brackets, e.g. <my dad died and i'm sad>, will break the archives. I assume this is largely due to some HTML parser in the archive code, and most other brackets are probably fine, but perhaps an archivist could pop in and give some examples of things that will work.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:32
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Pham Nuwen posted:Note: We're probably going to have a lot of people trying to figure out how to express non-verbal dialog this week. Be aware that putting your dialog in angle brackets, e.g. <my dad died and i'm sad>, will break the archives. I assume this is largely due to some HTML parser in the archive code, and most other brackets are probably fine, but perhaps an archivist could pop in and give some examples of things that will work. I just checked my story from week before last and <<double angle brackets>> seem to work fine in the archive. Search for "By my strength" in https://thunderdome.cc//?story=11176 I'll wait for official word though. e: vvv Word must've changed them like it does smart quotes. Thanks for checking it out. Admiralty Flag fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 06:04
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Admiralty Flag posted:I just checked my story from week before last and <<double angle brackets>> seem to work fine in the archive. The symbol you used in your story is a "double angle quotation mark" (at least in Microsoft Word) which is different from two angle brackets. This: « vs this: << The first is archive acceptable because it's one discrete symbol. The second is not and they will disappear upon archiving. That said, just write; just post and us archivists will figure it out. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 13:36
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Signups are closed.
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Apr 8, 2023 15:24
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Hmm.. I wonder how the recent thunderdome went…? *Had someone who got DQ’d and lost, something not even I did* Hoo freaking boy… Loser Crits from a “loser”: Make some Noise! (TD 556) Word of advice, mate. When making your story, double space your paragraphs on whatever you use to write it. Otherwise, they appear like this. Other than that, I think I agree with the rest of the crits in that the ending fell flat. Only thing I can really say that differs from them is that I think it started falling flat about the part about Rip going to that conference. Thought it was too early, and there should’ve been more info on what happened when the ray was fired. Might’ve helped explain why MEAT NEBULA lost their metal cred. Otherwise, it just makes it sound like their fans are saying, “Dude, saving the planet?! Totally NOT metal!” Your ending, as Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne once said, ”just raises too many questions.” I don’t know about the others, but I see some potential in your future stories. We will watch your career with great interest.
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Apr 8, 2023 16:37
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Twenty-Eight 976 Words There are twenty-nine telepaths on the planet. My Dad is one. We’re traveling to kill one of the others. This would be easy if Alec lived in the outskirts of anywhere. We’re in the suburbs of Cincinnati, and the streets curve and kink down long stacks of single-family homes. Dad can only point in the compass direction, as the psychic crow flies. There’s no way to say how close we are, and no broad avenue to triangulate down. Its causing Dad a lot of pain. Like pressing closer and closer to a puncture wound. Uncle Alec has advanced dementia. Twenty-nine minds get to share the pain. “He gave us an address,” Dad says. He has his eyes squeezed shut. He has already apologized for Alec many times. “He said he’d leave the lights on and the door unlocked. No clue who moved him.” “It doesn’t matter,” I say, again. I turn left, towards Dad’s outstretched finger, and the road immediately kinks back to the east. More two-story colonials in beige paint tones roll by. Dad hisses. He’s already plugged his nose with hotel toilet paper, but blood is nonetheless seeping through. I pull the car over. “Dad–” I start, but his eyes open, and, as the son of a telepath, I recognize when its someone else behind his eyes. “Y-yellow,” he says, and slumps against the passenger side. Blood speckles the door handle. Our rental deposit is in real danger. My own gifts lie elsewhere. I liked Dad’s. He can speak some twenty languages, shunting vocabulary from twenty-eight other minds. Few of the others had kids, and they liked my brother and I. Aunt Janet would babysit all the time, joking in poor English about how big and fat Dad’s body was, while he jogged her form up and down the Seine. We had a Dad and twenty-eight Aunts and Uncles. Including Uncle Alec. If you aren’t raised by a quasi-hive mind its hard to say exactly how I know Dad is back. Something about how he sets his shoulders, gnaws his lip. He notices his shirt, how blood-stained it is. “Aw. drat it. They won’t let me on the plane like this.” “You didn’t pack a single other shirt?” I say. “A backup shirt! Dumb concept,” Dad grouses. This is much more Dad. He goes borrowing too often to care about appearances. The Aunts complain about this. They say when they get back the neighbors ask why they were bicycling in pajama pants and a button-down. “Alec said something was yellow,” I say. I’m not sure if he remembers it. Generally he does – the memories get stored in his local-copy brain, regardless of who is inhabiting it. But who knows how it works with a man suffering from advanced dementia. “I don’t know. And, you know. It’s a primary color. Doesn’t knock it down. Could be the color of his socks.” “It isn’t,” Dad says, unusually terse, and I know where and who he’s been. We retreat and enlist two Aunts with engineering expertise. I drive in a twenty-mile circle while Dad points. Eventually Aunt Charlotte just takes over, exasperated, and takes notes with Dad’s fingers. “Here,” she says, with Dad’s voice, handing over Dad’s phone. “Dead reckoned. I’m trading back. I don’t know how Oliver manages, this close to Alec. Its like waking in a tomb.” I always know when it’s him. They all sound different, my many relations, my father. My brother needled him once about it – what if he was just a long-term resident, a cuckoo of a Dad? He’d said no one else with an option would stick with two ugly, fat children, and then he’d wrecked us with thrown pillows. There is a bright yellow fire hydrant on the street Aunt Charlotte pinned. Its the only one in garish neon. We’ve passed several in unobtrusive matte-brick red. Some sort of paint regime change at the fire department. The ride has been fast but very tense – Dad is really struggling. Uncle Alec is dying, inside of his head. Alec tried to keep it secret from the others, which is how they knew he had developed dementia. He needs to die in a specific and safe way. “Okay, okay Dad, you did it,” I said, soothing. He managed to point at one of the beige-built homes. I deposited him at a park, miles away. His seat was runny with red streaks. Dad had been the obvious choice to do it – the hive’s fitness nut, he paid for babysitting and other assists by whipping foreign bodies into better shape. Living through the exhausted frustration of their bodies. He was in the best shape to survive what was needed. I’d volunteered. I owed him, and the Aunts and Uncles, and I owed Uncle Alec. I went around back and let myself in. He was in a side bedroom, under a yellow sheet. “Uncle Alec,” I said. He was not that old, and had long black-gray hair. I knew he wore glasses – he would check for them while prepping me for English tests. Press his hand on Dad’s nose. “Uncle Alec. It’s William.” “William… William…” he said. I put a needle in his withered arm. He’d been very serious, very much so, but he’d laughed Dad’s lungs hoarse when he realized I didn’t know what “gestalt” meant. Laughed and laughed. And I had too. I waited until he was asleep, and then gone. A safe, single death. Dad was fine when I got back to him. He’d turned his shirt inside out, to hide the bloodstains. There was a pullup bar nearby, and there was a good chance he’d done a few, just to feel himself again. He grinned, then remembered he shouldn’t. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not gonna ask you to do that to me.” “You already did.” I said.
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Apr 9, 2023 05:58
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Plague on the Horizon 1200 Words Rain like this used to remind me of childhood, the smell of wet grass. My big black Labrador, Chester, and him bounding across the green, my cherubic face reddening with the effort of keeping up. Chester and the rest of those memories had scampered off to friendlier climbs, since I played my small part in the debacle in Italy. The sodden banks of the Gari where our boys stumbled around like new-born calves, and the shock that cut through the downpour from Jerry’s machine gun nests on the other side. Considering my condition, it’s a wonder I didn’t just rip away. That was then, of course. In May of ’45 the whole affair was wrapping up – apart from in the East, but all that was the purview of the Yanks – and High Command felt a man of my talents could be retired from battlefield support to what I understood to be a post-War career in intelligence. The Kolkhagen internment camp, a dour little place outside Lueneburg, saw a rotating cast of sullen German officers, some of whom knew something worth knowing. An interpreter beside me for show; the captive sat there unknowingly as I scooped up his secrets. Every tenth man, it seemed, had hidden away a stash of loot in the forest or a still-operative intelligence network which, pragmatism willing, might be convinced to come to some amenable agreement. It is rather tempting to claim that I found the Reichsführer hidden in one of his underling’s heads, but I must admit that we found out about his presence in the camp though the traditional means. I was not present at Kolkhagen at the time – I had shot off for a few days to Lueneburg to give my report to Second Army headquarters. Down the wire, the camp commandant rather impatiently explained to Major Walsh that he had Heinrich Himmler sitting in his office. “Pull the other one.” Walsh said. The little tin noise came through the telephone in reply. The electric arc of the chords suggested splendid colours. I turned and looked at Walsh. “he’s telling the truth. We should head down there as soon as we can.” Walsh looked at me then, and his lips curled up in some funny way. He looked down on me because of my ability, and that I went to Winchester. I looked down on him because of all those nasty thoughts he had rattling around in his head. Light drizzle at the camp when we arrived. On the other side of the fence on the barrack’s west side, the minds of three idling Krauts swirled in sickly yellow resentment, making a horrible lattice which hung behind the heads of each like a halo. Their eyes were headlights, a trench-line to Leningrad. I rather hurried past Walsh to get to the commandant’s office, to make distance between myself and them. The commandant, a Captain by the name of Sullivan, sat behind a plain wooden desk, water-damaged and laden with paperwork. He looked over his spectacles, and then stood to salute me, as well as the two lads standing guard. Across the desk, facing away from the door, a quiet little man looked over his shoulder. He was in the middle of taking a swig of tea and had a half-eaten sandwich in front of him. He had recently shaved, but his short hair was still unkempt and unruly. In his mind, a chivalric knight climbed silently into a tomb of blind dead, theoretical physics carved into the ancient concrete. By the time we got back to the city, with the man positively identified as Himmler, Colonel Murcroft was waiting. Though the droop of his eyelids and furrowed brow spoke to the heavy victory party fresh on his mind, the Head of Intelligence Second Army was keen to take charge of the highest-profile prisoner in the care of the British armed forces. The Yanks had Goering and Speer, and the Soviets who knows how many poor buggers, but the Reichsführer in our possession was a major diplomatic and intelligence win. It’s a shame, then, about what happened in the House for Special Purposes. It was a requisitioned domicile on Uelzener Strasse, and the unfurnished rooms seemed eery and inhospitable. I was only aware after the fact that a week before the prisoner, Murcroft, Captain Rigg – an army doctor - and I arrived for the examination, there had been a suicide in the house; an SS officer by name of Putzman. The front foyer of the house seemed particularly cold. “Before we get on with your business,” Murcroft said to me, then turned to address the doctor. “I want the prisoner searched for poisons.” The prisoner exhaled, frustrated, it seemed, to be subjected to yet another body search, and Rigg wasn’t too pleased either. “I’m a doctor, not a detective.” He mumbled. “You will follow your orders.” Murcroft shot back. Everyone stood there for a moment before the doctor sighed and nodded his head. As Rigg approached the prisoner, Murcroft excused himself, muttering something about the lavatory. I could feel his hangover grey my thoughts from a mile away. “Open your mouth,” Rigg told Himmler, and he complied. What a pathetic little man, I thought. There’s something about a medical examination that is so humiliating, and for a subject like this! Rotten piece of work. He and the rest of those madmen were the cause of all this destruction and chaos. So many lives snuffed out by his evil. It would be so easy to wring his scrawny neck. Whose thoughts were these? This didn’t sound like me. In the doctor’s mind he was in his garden, minding the bluebells as they came up. Beneath the flowers, cannibals ate. The prisoner’s mind was a trap, and I felt myself step into it. Just like at the Gari river, where we laboured unaware of the guns trained on us. His guns! On the bank, men were shredded to bits, and in their panic, their egos looked for places to hide from the rushing blank, carousels to nowhere. My heart was a beating hammer. I saw some brave Indian boys storm Monte Cassino, their fight so spirited that they evoked Shiva to annihilate the enemy. On that plateau, the terrible god, True Aryan, massacred its European imposter. I felt my ribs become the monastery, and I willed them shut around the prisoner, collapse on top of him. I felt sick. Plague was on the horizon; I told my men that. In the blue night, they were gone. Boys, some of them. The doctor reeled his hand back from Himmler’s mouth, yelping in pain. The prisoner’s jaw had clamped shut, and it was only a second until the veins of his face came up to the surface in a rictus mask, a silent shout of panic in his skull. He fell to the ground like a stone. The two of us watched him writhe in pain for a moment before the stillness of death came over him. “What in God’s name?” Colonel Walsh had appeared at the doorway. The doctor was in shock. I didn’t think I would want anything again. “He had a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth.” I lied. I looked at Rigg, and as our eyes met, we made a secret pact. “That’s right.” Rigg said, shaking his hurt hand. “Behind his teeth. He bit down on it when I found it.” Walsh covered his eyes with his hand and cursed. The room had become colder. The whole affair was quite embarrassing, and I spent a few months ruminating on the impact it might have on my career. I had never cast an arrow like that, nor did I again. I have diminished everyday since.
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Apr 9, 2023 21:31
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My crits for week 555! Late and lovely but they are done nonetheless. Movies are for Everyone Ask anyone, they'll tell you I'm a sucker for things that talk that do not normally talk. I was charmed by this story and I laughed out loud at the joke about how the dog rates movies solely on if the dog in the movie survives. This story is very cozy and affectionate towards the characters. Conversational prose that tells us a lot about you and your taste in movies and relationships. Kind of slow, there's a lot of telling in the story - I think that it would be stronger for having more dialogue with the sunflowers or a deeper look into their feelings on a specific film, as is it's a little surface level. Show us more about what kind of thoughts the sunflowers have about film, what thoughts you've shared with them as well. Good use of prompt. Summer's End Lots of small details in the prose. I like the story about you and your campers, but the fantastical element of your story feels completely unincorporated into the rest of the narrative, and is a bit confusing as to what happened to boot. Strong start but whiffed half of the prompt. Crafting the Heart The story is fun and cute but the prose is really clumsy and repetitive. The action scene was pretty hard to follow and not very interesting. Your descriptions of woodworking are great, it’s clear that you know a lot about the subject and are passionate about it. Overall, this story feels like you went for an idea that was a bit beyond your ability to deliver it, which is commendable. Ironopalis A very personal story told through the medium of time travel. A bit too much description of your future self on the bus. The twist is telegraphed right away, which if it’s intentional I think needs to have something more interesting done with it. Your dialogue is tight and gives a good sense of place. The ending was pretty soft, it kind of just peters out. I like how much of yourself is in this story (two yourselfs, even) and how you took a little more of a risk about what parts of your life you included. I think there's a lot of potential here if you want to dive deeper. Wizard's Work Liked this one a lot. Some repetition in the prose "control such powerful magick except by a demon's control" . Great map of wizards onto social/orderly work, though the overlay was so 1 to 1 that it kind of lost the fantasy element a bit. Genuinely got me a little misty-eyed at the end, even with those flaws though, so you did a good job of conveying the emotional truth behind it all. The Eternal World Ceilidh A story about a groundhog day-style music festival, run by mysterious business aliens who want everyone to have a good time, or at least pretend to. Lots of rich detail, and the prompt feels really well-integrated into the story, like you've taken it to reflect on what about this memory would be enhanced or hurt by the loop. It's not clear to me if you escape the loop at the end? The change in weather seems to indicate it. Love a transcendent fictional music session in fiction, those are always fun to read. Top notch story. Ellipsis Ellipsis we are very disappointed in you, go wait in the car. This one feels like you did the prompt backwards and added a little bit about yourself to a story about time travel. The time travel itself isn't fun to read about though, partly because it's such a broad view that isn't grounded in the emotional moment that you're remembering. I think if you zoomed right in on the moment that, at the moment, is just one paragraph, and used your conceit to really get into the events and senses and whatever stuck in your mind about it so much that it was important enough to put into your story, you'd have something interesting. As is this is the neoliberalism of time travel fantasy - nothing happens because nothing can happen
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Apr 10, 2023 00:45
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| # ? May 29, 2024 00:37 |
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Like an Open Book 1190 words “Dr. Gomez, come in here. We’ll get nowhere without talking.” What the hell? Wilson should be hopped up on enough psi-dampeners to knock out a horse. How’d he Scry me through a solid wall? The warden looks at me, eyebrows scrunched, and shrugs. «Reinforce his dose?» Ugh, receiving him with my Shields charged high was like listening through a fogbank. The voice rings again from the wall speaker. “They’d only pull me into the rec room for an interview. I’ve already sent two psychometers home with migraines. They need someone who can probe me with verbal talk, no Tapping or Dredging. Who else would they get, without going to Paneuropa, or south of the border?” The warden breathes a sigh of relief and gestures to the panel. «If you’re ready?» I walk through the first door. A flash of lust catches me as the warden glances at my legs, then waves of shame radiate off him as his weak «I’m sorry» echoes toward me. Yesterday’s news. Shields to maximum. Deep breath. The mantrap cycles. Through the second door. I stride into the recommendation room. “You’re quite pleased with yourself,” I say, sitting in the chair opposite Wilson’s. “Showing off like that.” “Had you worried, didn’t I?” I begin taking notes. “They treating you well?” “How’d you get this job, anyway?” I pull the paper from my folio and hand it to him. “Judge said our relationship was as professional acquaintances; no conflict of interest.” He scans it, then crumples and throws it into the corner. “That’s fine. Let’s cut building a therapeutic alliance and all that loving bullshit. You’re not here for that anyway.” His sudden crudeness rocks me, though I keep my face a mask – remember, he’s not your colleague anymore; he’s a patient now. “You’re here to do a competency exam. What’dya want to know?” I write, Subject agitated but apparently compos mentis. “OK, let’s skip the bullshit.” I get the word out right, not too hard, not too soft. “Why’d you do it?” “Dr. Gomez, I’ll ask you a question. No, wait, it’s part of my answer. When was the last time you dropped all your barriers, I mean, every single one?” “We’re not here to talk about me.” “Just think about it. You’ll see where I’m going.” It must’ve been, what, two years or so since that backpacking vacation with Andi in the middle of nowhere, since we were truly together, body and soul. Took me a day to unwind the last of the bulwarks, and two days to put them back into place. “…It’s been a while.” He’s nodding. “But you remember what it’s like; I saw the look cross your face: being completely open, vulnerable, and receiving.” “Even we get that luxury occasionally.” Subject evasive but garrulous. Deflecting while displaying an open demeanor. Changing approach. “What happened that day?” “You’ve read the police reports, seen the news blasts.” “I haven’t heard you tell it.” He laughs; it’s an ugly sound. “Gomez, how do you do this job? You can’t even ask the right loving questions.” A spark of fire burns in my belly. “What are the right loving questions?” I bark it too fast. “Mirroring? Or are you genuinely curious? Maybe a little pissed? … Doesn’t matter. We’re cutting out the bullshit, remember? Think. Just jump to it.” We lock eyes. I’m off my game; I don’t think I could have done that Sherlock Holmes routine and I can’t help but see a colleague in this monster, scratch that, this patient. His smile taunts me. What does he want to tell me? … Now I’ve got him. “How’d it feel?” A broad grin splits his face. “Like catharsis. Every blow I struck was like inverting a pencil and erasing her infidelity, one stroke at a time. Did you know, I dropped as many of my shields as I could? I felt her fear, her pain, her desperation. I was weeping with joy by the end. It was loving magnificent.” My stylus clatters against the floor. He chuckles. “Looks like I made an impression. Surely, I’m not the worst case you’ve ever dealt with. It’s not like I killed her.” I duck to retrieve the stylus, hoping the flush will leave my face. I have to recover my position – honesty, that’ll be my tack. “No, but the others were different. A traumatic brain injury and they went berserk, or they isolated themselves and did their crimes where no one could overhear. You…you were conditioned, trained, someone like me. Why didn’t you ask for help?” “What if your wife, I met her at that conference in Chicago…Andi’s her name, right? Let’s say Andi struck up a close relationship with her personal trainer, who’s half your age, has a body you never had – even when that young – and you suddenly felt all the lust and shame and guilt and desire pour off her in a moment of truth, all normally hidden and tamped down under the surface, where your and my special conditioning stops us from Reading, for our safety’s sake. Don’t you think you might have a visceral reaction?” I scoff. “What you had was not a visceral reaction. What you had was a narcissistic outburst, driven by a lack of discipline and empathy and professionalism and common sense, because of your own insecurity. This was jealousy over transient feelings. There wasn’t even an affair—” “Not yet—” I know I should stop, but I don’t. “Wilson, you should never have been in this line of work, or at least someone should have seen you going bad long before you went off.” The crime scene photos of his poor wife’s face stare back at my mind’s eye. “You were a menace to her and to society, a rabid animal out of control.” He hasn’t dropped his gaze. Quietly, he says, “So, you’ve got an inkling of fury in you. Maybe you can understand why I did it. Maybe you’re not so far away from one bad day yourself.” I take a deep breath before continuing…“You also possibly committed malpractice with your patients. Your recent cases will have to be reexamined. They may not have gotten needed care, or may have received inappropriate treatment.” “And now she’s back to normal. How quickly that rage fades without the feedback loop of thoughts laid bare. But if you could’ve Read the filthy underbelly of her mind, you’d comprehend—” Enough! I raise my hands before I realize it. “Dr. Wilson! Do you understand? You’ve done something unspeakable—” “—Yes…” “Good. Now maybe—” “—Finish your sentence.” I can’t help but sigh. “You’ve done something unspeakable. You’ve already lost your wife and career. Do you know what type of rehabilitation you’ll endure? It’s likely to include partial lobectomy! Your Teep won’t be just psi-blocked with drugs – it’ll be gone, amputated.” Wilson starts: a titter at first, then a chuckle, a guffaw. He collapses into laughter for an uncomfortable length of time. Is this a joke to him? When he finally stops, he wipes tears from his eyes. “My dear Dr. Gomez, I’m praying they do nothing less.”
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Apr 10, 2023 01:43
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