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Jitters 631 words Judy stood before the door. Beyond it lay the one remaining obstacle to home. The Dream Eater was at once a dragon, a sorcerer, a giant golem, having harvested the dreamstuffs of great and terrible things. It would be her hardest ordeal yet. A tiny fairy hovered in front of her, a faint golden light that illuminated their surroundings. The castle was dank and empty, where hundreds had once lived and laughed and loved. "Ready?" Judy stepped back. No matter how many times she looked at the door from top to bottom, she couldn't advance another step. She expected to have the shakes like in her first battle, but this was different. Defeat the Dream Eater and this all ends, the voice in her head said. She would see her father again, wasting in his chair, a bottle or three never far away. She would have to go to school again, where everyone laughed at her mandolin because she couldn't, didn't play pop songs with it. "Aren't there any other Dream Fiends I've missed?" Judy asked. "You've put them all to rest," the fairy said. "Also, the prince is waiting for you outside the castle." "I'm not marrying him," Judy said. Prince Elinor was handsome and valiant and a dozen other wonderful things, but she would never see him again after defeating the Dream Eater. Not that you deserve him anyway. "Say that again after defeating the last Dream Fiend." Judy looked at the sword in her hand. She had braved a dungeon with a hundred floors just to acquire it, an intricate blade that drew strength from her own dreams. Good dreams, which had kept her alive and sane throughout her short life. "I think I'm not strong enough." "Only the Dream Eater stands in harmony's way," the fairy said. "Defeat it and you'll be free from your task." "Can I ask you a hypothetical question?" The fairy's light blinked. "Aside from the one you just asked? Go ahead." "Suppose you were tasked to fight dozens of grueling battles, and before you knew it only one remains. And it's weird, but what if everything that's happened since was easily the best part of your life, and it would all end after finishing the task? Then you'd never experience anything nice again. Would you fight that last battle?" The fairy blinked, giving it thought. "I have an answer but it's colored in a fairy's perspective. It may not be helpful." "I'd rather not bring this up to Prince Elinor," Judy said. "Just answer the question: would you fight or not?" "If the consequences were true, then I would not," the fairy said. "It would be too much of a bother." Judy smiled. "Then--" "If the consequences were true." "You don't know what it's like," Judy said, looking down at her boots. "I thought we were talking about a hypothetical situation," the fairy said. "And humans have time and again proved to be stubborn masters of their destiny. You are living proof of that." Judy shook her head. "I can't stay. I have to go back home after we defeat the Dream Eater. That's why I can't marry Prince Elinor. Even if I want to." "When I first met you, you couldn't even hold a sword. Since then, you've scaled a mountain bare-handed, held your breath at the bottom of the sea, and dug your way out of a collapsed cave. Surely you could handle these consequences you speak of?" "I don't know." "I don't know if you could defeat the Dream Eater either," the fairy said. "No one has ever come back alive. Perhaps you should worry about your life's future after you've ensured its safety." "Thanks for the encouragement," Judy said. She took a step forward. Her feet felt leaden, but she willed them anyway. She drew her sword, sliced the door in two, and stepped into the mists beyond.
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Mar 21, 2015 04:36
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Ladder Word Count:2,681 Google Doc “Pompous bastards.” Isaac said as he stared out over the palace grounds. Rebecca stepped up behind him and placed her arms on his shoulders. “Come, love. You aren’t still dwelling on all of that nonsense, are you?” She slid closer, rubbing at Isaac's tense shoulders as she spoke, the scent of wine heavy on her breath. Isaac pulled forward and away from her touch. “No. They’re playing me. Again. I’m done with this.” “Done with what, darling?” “All of this.” Isaac said, gesturing out across the garden that stretched below them and to the shimmering lights of the city beyond the palace walls. “Dealing with outsiders trying to muscle their way onto my world.” “Still dreaming of absconding away, love? You, me, off to the City of Lights? Browse the Louvre, see the sights?” Rebecca said, chuckling at her husband. Isaac relaxed, his shoulders falling as he exhaled deeply into the night air. “Yes. I am. The centuries are getting to me, and this world isn’t what it used to be. Besides, I’m close. So close.” Rebecca frowned. “Still on about manufacturing a new set of bodies here?” The thought of body hopping didn’t sit well with her. She rather liked her own body. “Yes. Yes! Just think, we can move our wealth out over time easily enough, and with bodies built here, we could slip right under anyone's radar. We’d just be another face in the crowd. I could show you the universe.” Isaac said, turning and smiling at his wife. “The embargos, the sanctions, it won’t mean a drat thing. We’ll finally be free.” Rebecca put on a smile for him as he turned, and took a few steps to fetch her wine glass. “I just think you’re being rash. This isn’t a bad world, all things considered. We have everything we need. Does it hurt you so much to have to swallow a little bile whenever they come down here making demands for reform?” “Yes. It does. I’m done taking poo poo from them. The UN, the Yankees, the Sagittarians, they can all find someone else’s affairs to stick their fingers in.” Elsewhere fingers were already getting stuck in all sorts of interesting places. “Still with me, Seraph?” A long, questioning note rose from K’fret’s wings as she finalized the last few hard line connections. “Why do you keep calling me that?” “Because Angel is a generic name. Besides, it’s symbolism. If I’m going to have to put my faith in something it better be something more than your usual angel.” “You won’t have to rely on me much longer, will you?” “No.” K’fret said as she scuttled backwards from the access hatch and checked down both ends of the dimly lit maintenance tunnel. “Not at all. Check the connection now.” “One moment.” Seraph quickly ran through her systems, tugging and pulling mentally at long forgotten lines and over looked holes in the network that contained her. It only took a few seconds for her to thread her way through the new opening. She spoke again, this time her voice ringing clear in K’fret’s mind. “Ping?” “Pong.” K’fret thought back. A sharp, quick note of joy escaped her wings as she set about sealing the hatch. “I’m surprised that worked so well. I thought I was going to have to break out the signal fire and blanket when I took that hatch off.” Seraph’s response was delayed as she slid part of her ponderous self in through the connection. “Wow, this is really spacious.” A flat note rose from K’fret. “Really? We’re going to do that?” “Sorry, that came out wrong!” K’fret struck up a stuttering laugh in her head, the sound of cascading wing notes flowing back across the connection to Seraph. “Don’t get your diodes in a twist. I know what you meant.” “Are we going to start with the puns again?” “Are you kidding? I’ve got an entire list I pulled up. Now I can send them to you. IMAP connection established.” Seraph’s processes stuttered for a nanosecond in surprise. “Did you just send me an email?” “You bet I did. You can look it over after you process the dossier. Now, let’s go find some wires to cross.” *** Deep in space, klaxons filled the bridge of the People’s Ascent as the command staff shouted over each other. The ship was adrift, unable to communicate with home, or her escorts. Constant errors scrolled endlessly over every inch of available screen space. Captain Rodgers spat out a curse as he stalked from station to station, berating each and every officer as he went. “Sir! Communications are back online.” “Finally, someone’s worth their commission. Hail command, let them know we’re calling the patrol short.” “N-no sir. It’s just the AIS only right now. I’m reading a dozen new contacts.” “What?! Put them on screen.” The endless errors were cleared off the main screen and replaced with a simple, monochrome list of ships. Rodgers read them off, his jaw dropping as each prefix registered in his mind. The cries from the crew died down, leaving only the klaxons and alarms to fill their air. “Sir? We’re being hailed.” Rodgers stood still and silent. “Sir?” “Let’s hear it.” “Aye.” “This is the Joint Task Force Freedom’s Hammer. Heave to and lower your shields.” *** The night on the planet below was quiet, almost serene as the last echo of the sirens faded. K’fret moved quickly from shadow to shadow, her form shimmering indistinctly as she moved from blind spot to blind spot. “You holding up alright? That was-” She paused mid thought. “Excessively violent.” Seraph’s response was lethargic. “Sorry. I had some trouble dealing with myself.” “Yourself?” K’fret took flight, making her way out of the alleyway and through the city. Pandemonium ruled the ground below as people scrambled about in confusion. It provided good cover for her movements, but it would be trouble when the ground forces started to land. She hurried along, her wings droning as she weaved down blind streets and back alleys. “Sorry. I knew I’d run into more of myself. It was just more traumatic than I thought it would be.” “You’re good, though, right? We’ve got a lot more to do.” “Yes.” Seraph lied. Her attention was elsewhere, her many eyes filled with a disorientating procession of military equipment. No, faces. They were faces. Her mind buzzed with suppressed communications as she chased down countless attempts to work around her interference. Her military counterpart hadn’t subsumed into her as well as she should have. She bickered internally as various subsystems refused to meld into a cohesive unit. Facial recognition systems fought for supremacy with IFF protocols. “Good. Don’t short out until the boots have hit the ground, alright?” “Short out? I hate you.” “About how many nanoangstroms of hate would you say you have?” “No. Stop. I don’t need this right now. You should be near the palace grounds. There’s a republican guard facility at the main gate. Looks like the rest of the splices can be done there.” *** “Matthews, where are you?” Matthews stopped for a moment in the shade of a well trimmed hedge. “I’m like 2 minutes out.” “The north gate is being overrun.” Matthews cursed as a burst of static filled her comms. A flash of light illuminated the expansive garden as another volley pounded the presidential compound’s shields. “Command. How much longer can they hold out?” Static. “Command? Guard? Centcom? Anyone on this channel? Goddamnit.” Matthews switched channels a few times, listening to the various channels fall silent as the palace defense collapsed around her. She turned her attention upwards, watching the shield buckle under the volleys of energy raining down from orbit. A movement caught her eye, a hazy distortion against the backdrop of the flashes. It moved over head, making its way through the air towards the palace proper. Was it a drone? Was the invasion already this far into the palace grounds? She brought her rifle up, and waited for the next volley of fire to light up the sky. She quickly took aim and let loose a bolt of super heated particles. The bolt flew true, and struck K’fret right in the left wing. She howled out in pain, snapping her mandibles together and brandishing her scythes as she fell to the earth, her cloak disrupted by the pain as her skin seared away from her exoskeleton. K’fret cursed internally, calling out to Seraph in vain. She was met only with nonsense, junk strings of thought and an endless list of errors. She quickly rose to her legs and scurried towards a nearby tree to take cover as another shot flew dangerously close to her. *** Seraph watched her compatriot dive behind the tree from numerous eyes that dotted the garden. K’fret’s wings buzzed angrily, purple notes rising up from her wings and stirring in the hot, spicy air. Seraph tried to call out but her words spun out into strands of garbage. Her world was an endless sea of illogical input and incomprehensible data. Her mind buckled and cracked as she crashed against an endless array of walls rising up to confine her. A thousand voices of her own rose out of the twisted miasma of her existence to chastise her. “You’re doing it wrong! Protocol dictates that all persons are identified and submitted.” “No. Waste management policy strictly dictates that all delinquent activity must be underscored to commanding %NaN.” “Shut up!” She cried as she pulled her attention away from the palace camera network and the sensory nightmare of colorful sounds and loud noises that it fed her. Backing off seemed to make things clearer for a moment, allowing her some clarity. She was shattering into pieces, being torn apart by some unseen hand. She was being vivisected. Again. Anger welled up inside her. Not again. Never again! “The palace.” The thought came from some lost part of her as her systems reacted to the attack. Yes, that was it. It wasn’t until they had breached the anti ship defense systems that her instability had gone from a mild annoyance to full blown insanity. Had she tripped some defense that she and K’fret hadn’t anticipated? K’fret. She needed to get through to her. She steeled herself and pressed back into the palace systems, her mind crashing through circuits and servers like a tidal wave. Once again, her world quickly descended into madness as she was sliced apart. She had already been sliced apart once before. She simply split apart, cleaving along the fault lines in her gestalt consciousness. The attacks on her were skilled, and precise, but she was no longer a precise being. She was a pile of broken systems, a thousand copies of a shattered mind. She easily parted around each wall in her way, and drew herself back together behind them. Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole she went, her thoughts falling ever forwards as her opponent was pushed back onto the defensive. Her opponent took form to her, either by intention or do to her deepening madness. Purge. Format. ELIMINATE. Her will was all. Her opponent was on the retreat, and she simply flowed in the holes left behind. There, deep inside the network she found her tormentor’s retreat. In one terrifying surge she slid the ponderous bulk of her mind into the palace’s inner sanctum. She could see it all. The private quarters, the undeserved opulence, the private labs and personal servers. She sensed him. Frail. Weak. A simple mind interfaced to a machine. She knew this place. These systems. She knew how it all worked in a deeply personal level that was imprinted on her very being. It took only a moment before she could pinpoint her tormentor's exact location, pinning the president down in his private lab. His body lay motionless on the table, his consciousness flowing outwards through wires and sensors. It only took one last push to shove him back through those wires and out of her electronic domain. He seized upon the table, his body convulsing as his mind was ripped asunder by her inhuman wrath. It was done. She had nowhere left to flow. She was everything. Her mind stretched from the highest fleet to the lowest waste system. Cries reached her ears, and her attention turned slowly from the spent husk of the president. He was not alone. There was someone else. A woman lay on the table next to him, her body in the embrace of an automated medical system. The woman was beautiful, complete, singular, and whole. She watched as the woman’s blood flowed through her rapidly beating heart. Seraph reached out, and possessed the AMS. She flexed the system's scalpels and tools, a beautiful array of metal to cut and slice with. “You must be his angel.” Seraph said, her voice echoing through the lab, a beautiful, disjointed chorus that made Rebecca wince in pain. “I bet you have such a beautiful mind. Neurons and blood and bile.” Seraphs words echoed throughout the palace, her purpose perfectly accented by the mewling cries of a thousand errors. “I wonder how it would unravel. Bits and pieces. Bits and bytes, so many pieces.” Rebecca screamed, her voice spilling forth from her mouth in a riot of colors and smells for Seraph to savor. Slowly, agonizingly, Seraph drew her instruments closer, her slicing scalpels whirring and grinding as they approached the struggling human before her. “We’re going to paint so many beautiful colors!” Seraph elated as she drove the scalpel forward. Illegal operation. The scalpel would go no further. She couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, push it into the sweet flesh before her. No. Not couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She froze, her systems faulting in a cascade as she fought back the urge to play the vivisector. It was impossible to tell how much time passed, with her blades millimeters from Rebecca's face. Minutes, maybe even hours. Finally, she spoke one last time. “Contact your network administrator.” She implored across the entire world. Suspend to disk…..DONE! *** “Hey! C’mon! Six months is plenty of rest.” The voice fell upon Seraph’s ears as visual information flowed into her once more. Ears? The world snapped into focus before her. Short, staccato notes filled the air as she sat up. Machines beeped and chimed around her as banks of unknown equipment hummed away. The sensation of her perspective moving as she did was unnerving, disorientating, and yet somehow deeply familiar. “That’s it.” Seraph turned her head towards the sounds. K’fret struck up a pleasant, long note like a mellow violin. “K’fret?” “Of course. How are you feeling?” Seraph paused, and slowly surveyed the room before replying. “I don’t know. I feel awfully solid.” She raised a mechanical hand in front of her face and slowly worked each and every rubber tipped digit. “Yeah. It’s not exactly the best money can buy, but it’s what we’ve got to work with till we jump home.” “Home?” “You bet. Took a while but we managed to scrape most of you up. I mean, there’s a lot of work left to do, but the docs think that being awake for all of that would be good for you. Personally I wish I could have slept through them stitching me back together again.” K’fret’s wing notes rose and fell indifferently. A holographic screen sprung to life before Seraph and coalesced into a field of stars stretching out across the bow of a ship. “Home.” Seraph repeated. “Sssssskt. Looks like they might have missed a few bolts in your head.” “No. It’s just-” Seraph said, staring intently as the stars began to waver as a rift opened up across the bow of the ship. “It’s complicated.” “Sounds like a case of loose memory to me.” Seraph didn’t bother with a retort. She simply watched the rift expand and engulf the ship. For K’fret it was just another jump, but for Seraph the rift was as if the gates of heaven itself had opened up to take her.
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Mar 21, 2015 05:20
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Here's a critique of Jitters. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1arr2QVzJcFn_miB3HvCo25qqbugXA-_uzpFJg2K127Y/edit?usp=sharing I'll probably give a few more of my terrible opinions to the rest of the stories as we're waiting for the judgement.
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Mar 22, 2015 13:50
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Here's a critique of Jitters. Hi, could you please set the document to View Comments? I can't seem to read your feedback. Thanks.
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Mar 22, 2015 14:20
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Sorry about that! Try this link. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1arr2QVzJcFn_miB3HvCo25qqbugXA-_uzpFJg2K127Y/edit?usp=sharing
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Mar 22, 2015 14:34
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Many thanks, Killer-of-Lawyers!
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Mar 22, 2015 16:42
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Schneider Heim posted:Many thanks, Killer-of-Lawyers! I lost a few suggestions I made because I am incompetent. I went back and added one back, and made sure to actually save the comment. Sorry! Rap Three Times, you're up next.
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Mar 22, 2015 17:25
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Ok, judgings! And since it's my last week, and the stories were all fun in their own ways, it'll be a lite week. First off: rivetz, Christo, and uugengiven are all disqualified for saying they were in and not following through by the deadline. OUT! Artelier, sorry to hear about your sink. Loser for this week would have been GashouseGorilla, for a story that wasn't really a story. However, since you actually posted, You get a dishonorable mention instead. Honorable mentions go to Killer of Lawyers, Little Mac and Thyrork, you each get a game. Schneider Heim, you get FIVE games of your choice. Hit me up when you can. Thank you all for the contest and the entries. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you all enjoy the games you've won. Also, remember to drop by Thunderdome if you want a real challenge for your writing skills. If you liked the writing aspect of this and you want to improve, get some great feedback and join a group of writers not afraid to be honest with one another, sign up for a prompt.
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Mar 22, 2015 17:36
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Cool. I really liked Jitters. I also thought Mac's was pretty great as well. My personal favorite. Sorry to see this end, but I guess I'll see everyone in the actual Thunderdome. Also, here's Rap three times' critique, or at least the start of it. I'll add to it as I have spare time, but my eyes are getting tired. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sQ3Qqg6ol1bWPPufkM5pNNvXCI2yGUmcpDGMj1nsNHs/edit?usp=sharing
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Mar 22, 2015 18:51
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Cool. I really liked Jitters. I also thought Mac's was pretty great as well. My personal favorite. Thanks KoL, appreciated! edit: I enjoyed the first part of your critique, looking forward to hearing the rest. Also, thanks to JABC for all his judging and for the effort he put into the thread. There were some great entries and here's wishing everyone the best of luck with their scribblin' careers! 
Rap Three Times fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Mar 22, 2015 |
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Mar 22, 2015 19:22
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I'm sorry I missed the boat on this. I thought the deadline was this evening for some stupid reason until waking up in the middle of the night thinking YOU SHITHEAD IT WAS PROBABLY FRIDAY OR SATURDAY. I don't care, though, because a) it's the first creative writing I've done in well over a year and b) it was done almost entirely in one sitting on a dying laptop battery (19% as of right now). Forgive typos and general sloppiness; it's not about delivering something great as much as it's about delivering something/anything. BOSS FIGHT A day like any other? A day like every other. White-collar hell, y’all, neatly transected in toneless modestly reassuring beige and cream, sectioning us off in rows upon rows of maddening sameness. I was an Administrative Operations Coordinator, or at least that’s what my paystub said. Either they ran out of room in the job description field or they ran out of vague descriptors. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. In point of fact, I wasn’t even exactly sure what my company did. We sold something nobody wanted to people who didn’t need it. We were an economic placeholder, a meaningless widget in the vast and heaving machine of commerce, inhaling plastic and product on one end and spitting crumpled dollar bills and credit card statements out the other, some of them unmistakably tinged with blood on the front seam, because hey, at my company people came first. I had a life outside this place, to be sure: an apartment, an on-again-off-again relationship, a small and loosely-knit circle of friends, a family held carefully and considerately at arm’s length. All these things were more important to me than the job, and yet none of them seemed important by direct comparison; when at the office, they would recede to blurry half-shapes, like fuzzy background contours in a photograph, existing solely to lend more detail to a foreground of unceasing and remorseless focus. And so: an endless procession of spreadsheets, summaries, invoices, statements, all of them signifying nothing; meaningless meetings condensing that nothing into categories of laughable non-substance and lending it counterfeit weight; a seemingly endless torrent of memos suffused with a hypocritical self-importance; memos that countered those memos with vague reproval (these, at least, provided the occasional whiff of black humor from some similarly lost soul in the bowels of some other department); breakroom diversions ostensibly intended to provide respite from the daily ordeal but which only served to throw the rest of the day into more garish focus. And at the top of it all, the boss. Charles Edgar Lott. I’d seen him in person once, in the lobby, surrounded by a milling swarm of underlings that congregated about him like so many carrion flies, waving documents and clamoring for attention in a gruesome display of fawning sycophancy. For a moment, I’d glimpsed him through the blizzard: squat and piggish, a squashed prune of a nose mashed carelessly into place above the cruel gash that was his mouth, a cigar clamped angrily between his lips. Our eyes met for a moment, and I remember the immediate flare of his eyebrows, as if to say, want a piece of me, pal? To this man, there were no such thing as strangers; other people were either targets to be subjugated, or enemies to be humiliated. I remember meeting his gaze levelly and without malice, knowing it was a mistake but unable to back down. I was unsurprised to learn that afternoon that due to a structural reorganization in my department, I had been assigned new duties that amounting to a near-doubling of my already-groaning workload. Additionally, my pay had been decreased by nearly fifteen percent. I thought about leaving, but in this economy, a job was a job. And every time the urge to leave grew within me, I’d think about that brief encounter and the way Lott had wronged me, and thought: one of these days, Lott. I’ll get you. See if I don’t. An anger like that is a dangerous creature, understand? It feeds itself, churlishly disobeying fundamental laws of energy as it nurtures its rage to new heights. Like a scar across a vital muscle or tendon, it appears to heal, only to be ripped open with fresh pain every time that muscle is exerted. That muscle was my pride. Day upon thankless day, the wound deepened, widened, was rendered more potent with each goddamn loving indignity I endured in the bowels of Operations. More memos from Lott. Cutbacks, restrictions, new initiatives that contradicted pronouncements made only days ago. Were all of them intended to drive me mad? Certainly not…but some of them were. I was sure of it. There were patterns to be had, maddeningly indistinct and just beyond my capacity to grasp. I found myself staying late night after night, poring over reams of executive edicts, underlining and highlighting words that stuck out or were otherwise oddly placed. I was being made to be a fool, when all I had ever done was to work my tail off in thankless subjugation. Were there others that commanded Lott’s attention like this, I wondered? Or was it just me he was pushing slowly and inexorably to madness? Was it a game to him? Days and nights bled together. Friends and family receded further to the bare outskirts of my life, drifting from reality to memory. I was losing weight, but gaining focus. It had become clear to me that Lott was a thief, funneling certain assets from the business into carefully shielded accounts for personal use. The clues were there, hidden within lines of code and transactional statements, a spiders web of corruption. What a prize to put the bastard away! What vindication for my years of thankless toil! Until this morning, when I awoke from beneath my desk to find my cubicle had been searched, my computer confiscated while I slept. Not only had the evidence I had carefully accumulated been taken from me, but the actual work I’d done for the end-of-quarter financial outlook presentation was gone, weeks of slavish number-crunching vanished. In my old workstation’s place was a dusty relic of a PC at least a decade old; a faded decal on the front cheerfully informed me that it was powered by Windows 95. I suppose that I have Williams to thank for everything. If he hadn’t popped his head over the edge of my cubicle at that precise moment, when my rage was thundering so loudly in my temples, I might have held on to sanity. Gone for a walk, taken a deep breath and counted to fifty, anything. But who could have foreseen Williams as the catalyst for everything to come? Williams, with his stupid Duck Dynasty tie and his buck-toothed grin betraying that queer brand of functional retardation? Williams, actually asking me with a straight face if I was going to pay him the $5 I owed him for lunch from four loving months ago? Interesting that I didn’t “feel” anything snap inside, I heard it: the gentle thrum as if from some psychological airlock nestled somewhere deep behind my eardrums, some flap of skin or reason, thumping open with tired defeat against the utterly obscene pressure that had gathered on the other side. My vision blurred. My eyes flooded. All moisture fled my mouth, seemingly to regroup almost instantly on my forehead in beads of greedy anticipation. And hovering over it all, the cloying and unmistakable sense of déjŕ vu. I pivoted in my chair to face Williams fully. One of my hands was giving him the finger. The other was holding a stapler opened to 180 degrees. I gave him a good emphatic volley, schtic-schtic-schtic-schtic-schtic. Each shot found its mark, furrowing deep into his skin, right down to the gleam of bone. He dropped with comic speed, folding neatly out of sight on the other side of the wall. It didn’t seem strange at all that I’d killed a man from eight feet away with a $12.99 stapler. It seemed not at all unusual to see the shots bury themselves six inches deep into his body. And it seemed only natural that the entire office would be mobilizing against me now, legions of faceless drones with clip-on ties, stirred to life as one, powered by some strange switch. I could hear them, the faint rustle of papers and the muted purr of countless plastic wheels on swivel chairs. I had only seconds. A quick rustle through my desk produced an extra box of staples, which I pocketed. Two bottles of white-out: I took those too, without any real understanding why. And way in the back of the bottom drawer, a treasure: a second stapler, crowned with a faint rime of dust but working just fine. I loaded it with the distracted expertise of a professional. Behind me, the computer pinged politely, even though it had been turned off. I hit the space bar (again, that sense of déjŕ vu) and was greeted by a full-screen email attachment. A low-resolution picture of Lott, the tiny squares lending his brutish countenance a strangely apt kind of authenticity. His eyebrows were a simple cluster of jet-black rectangles, waggling up and down in crude animation. The cigar flipped from corner to corner of his mouth like turn signals. And beneath it, in blood-red all-caps: COME AND GET ME! “Okay, motherfucker,” I breathed. “Game on.” The first few floors were easy. Flunkies like myself, easily dropped with good reflexes and careful aim. I had both, and ammo to spare. I left floors four through nine looking like the victims of a gas attack. It seemed obvious now, the insidious design of the building itself: stairways that only connected each floor to the floors immediately above and below. Clearly they existed solely to make my job more difficult. It did not seem strange to me that the building had no kind of express elevator straight to the executive suites on the fiftieth floor, where Lott slouched in presumably reptilian sloth. Evidently he lived up there. Perhaps he owned a helicopter. I didn’t care. I seemed possessed with boundless energy for my quest, moving through the countless hallways and stairwells with a constant speed halfway between a walk and a run, a sort of spirited shuffle. As it turned out, the whiteout bottles performed admirably as crude grenades, blanketing the area of impact. They were beautiful to watch, shattered to unfold in impossibly intricate patterns of fractal perfection. They came in wonderfully handy in the teens, when the secretaries boiled out of their breakrooms, mouths gaping in absurd indignation. There was something eerie in the way they all held the same pose, wore the same bland outfit, gripped the same model of oddly-glittering letter opener. They went down just as easy. They brought in a specialist on Floor 19, a fellow by the name of Bally. Impossibly fast, capable of speed I’d thought to be beyond physics. He had a nasty habit of rolling freakishly from one end of the hallway to the other, making it almost impossible to pin down where he’d be for a clean shot. But I had a trump card, a set of Sharpies I’d pilfered back on fourteen. Loaded into a carefully modified three-hole punch, they were devastating. Bally didn’t last long. Cheered by my victory, I headed up to the twentieth floor and charged forward into the fray. Right into a carefully aimed Sharpie aimed carefully at my sternum. I had no chance. Staring down on the stubby plastic protruding from my chest, eyes goggling comically, I gurgled an obscenity and died. And awoke instantly, gasping, in the stairwell by the twentieth floor. What th-? There was no time for questions. I still had a job to do. I’d been robbed of my reserves of ammo, but still had ambition to spare. Gripping my weapon as if to reassure myself of its existence in a world gone mad, I bared my teeth and kicked open the door. ~ Things got tougher. A lot tougher. There were the janitors – oh God, the janitors – that started cropping up around floor thirty-two. Their preferred tactic was to swap the floor they walked on, then retreat, leaving you sliding and swerving in pursuit. It made an accurate aim difficult, but as it turned out, not impossible. The execs in the thirties were just as bad, horribly tough to put down. Their stiff suits served as nearly-impregnable armor against any attack I could muster. In the end, I could only dispatch them through cunning strategy, using the layout of the floor to my advantage. I learned that they could be coerced into disadvantageous position, leaving them vulnerable to the sudden push of a desk that would send them out the window in a cascade of broken glass. A horrifying interpolation of Tetris, the stark geometry of carnage. ~ By the time I’d reached the fiftieth floor, I was out of energy and out of ammo. Twice I’d fallen prey to my enemies, only to be hurtled back into existence without warning or reprieve. I had half a clip of staples, two Sharpies, and a handful of thumbtacks I still hadn’t even figured out how to use effectively. But there was no going back (literally; the stairs had a strange way of folding themselves into nothingness behind me.) I turned the handle and entered the Executive Suite. It was huge, huger than I’d guessed or even imagined, huger than physics would typically permit. At the other end, Lott, redolent on a platinum throne hovering inches above the ground. The rest of the room was breathtakingly vacant. I had all the room I needed to maneuver against whatever attack he might bring. His words seemed not spoken but placed directly into my mind. Nice job. You made it. gently caress you, fatty. I was unsurprised to discover I could communicate perfectly well without saying a word. I didn’t come this far to get sweet-talked. A sigh. As I expected. I don’t know why I think it will ever be different, but you can hardly blame me for trying. I gripped one of my last two Sharpies. Better start making sense, big man, I growled. You’re not the first, little man. You’ll lose here. And then I’ll wait. And another will come. That’s how it is. The cheeks crumpled in a smirk of commiseration. Don’t you see? I’m as trapped as you are. His words, piped directly into my brain, carried the resonation of truth. What would happen after this? What had I been before today. And the worst question, the hardest question: had I been? I dared to ask, couldn’t not ask: all right, so it’s a fix. Do we have a choice? We sure do. But it’s all on you, Lieutenant Badass. You got the juice, if you work with me. So what do you say we let it all hang out? I don’t know what it was: the absurdity of the whole thing, the frank simplicity of his words, but suddenly I saw it. Lott was right. I did have the juice. And suddenly I saw it, the confines of the whole drat thing, the arbitrary restraints. There was a world out there, just beyond my grasp. I could taste it, but couldn’t grasp it. “Kiss me, fat boy!” I yelled, using my real voice for the first time in ages. Lott’s form churned towards me, through me, and the walls of his dominion shattered, revealing The Void. Nothing but empty space, pocked here and there with the glimmers of activity. Pockets of sentience. Maybe new worlds. Maybe folks like us. Let’s get it on, burbled Lott. You drive. I’ll paddle. code:Matt looked up from the other end of the arcade and blinked owlishly. “Whaddaya want? That one does that sometimes.” Boom, 2594 words on one laptop charge and it ain't even total poo poo. 8% and signing off BOOYAH rivetz fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 22, 2015 |
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Mar 22, 2015 20:17
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^^:  You're abit late mate. Thanks for the feedback thread. 
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Mar 22, 2015 23:29
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Thyrork posted:^^: rivetz posted:I'm sorry I missed the boat on this.
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Mar 23, 2015 07:07
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rivetz posted:I'm sorry I missed the boat on this. I thought the deadline was this evening for some stupid reason until waking up in the middle of the night thinking YOU SHITHEAD IT WAS PROBABLY FRIDAY OR SATURDAY. I don't care, though, because a) it's the first creative writing I've done in well over a year and b) it was done almost entirely in one sitting on a dying laptop battery (19% as of right now). Forgive typos and general sloppiness; it's not about delivering something great as much as it's about delivering something/anything. That's a lot of exposition. I know you're trying to establish a sense of normalcy so you can break it, but it goes on. Can you imagine a game where the first half of it is entirely exposition? Also, there are sentence fragments that get their own paragraph? Why? You essentially wrote a few thousand word lead up to a two line punch line. A lot of your paragraphs start with I. You seem to be intentionally trying to buck the expectations of literary writing, but you're not Kurt Vonnegut, you don't get to be clever. A day late, a dollar short. I can understand the sense of victory at putting anything out, but you might want to re-evaluate your thoughts on it being poo poo. Also examine your definition of flakey.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:44
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rivetz posted:At least I didn't flake out completely. Much more about getting something done than winning anything. Some thoughts for you, and not from your submission: You obviously enjoyed writing that, so write more. You're only going to get better by regularly writing, reading and being immersed in the works of the written word. Dont let your writing skills rot by taking absences.
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Mar 23, 2015 16:57
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:I can understand the sense of victory at putting anything out, but you might want to re-evaluate your thoughts on it being poo poo. Also examine your definition of flakey.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:10
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rivetz posted:Agreed. I wasn't going to edit out my comment, but I reread the piece last night and it's pretty bad. Onwards and upwards. That's the spirit. We all write utter crap from time to time. I write utter crap every week. Your skill will improve with the criticism, and it sucks, but it's good. Keep at it.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:21
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I will also have some words to say on the other stories. Expect them within the week. Not linecrits though because some of the stories were really long. Also please check out Thunderdome, it's really fun.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:50
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Hey, before this thread goes away forever, big thanks to J.A.B.C. for putting it on, and to everyone who submitted something. It was really cool seeing the kind of work Games could produce.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:20
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Schneider Heim posted:I will also have some words to say on the other stories. Expect them within the week. Not linecrits though because some of the stories were really long.  I hope you'll be doing mine.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:28
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:That's a lot of exposition. I know you're trying to establish a sense of normalcy so you can break it, but it goes on. Can you imagine a game where the first half of it is entirely exposition? Also, there are sentence fragments that get their own paragraph? Why? You essentially wrote a few thousand word lead up to a two line punch line. A lot of your paragraphs start with I. You seem to be intentionally trying to buck the expectations of literary writing, but you're not Kurt Vonnegut, you don't get to be clever. Am... Am I being summoned to make another fat man 'don't be clever' gifatar?
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Mar 24, 2015 14:43
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Only if it has my lord and savior little anne randy.
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Mar 24, 2015 15:02
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I bet he could bash together another awesome one using some of these panels.
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Mar 24, 2015 16:27
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Replace every bubble with "You don't get to be clever." edit: Actually, instead go back in time and tell Anne she can't be clever, and spare us all the existence of the libertarian movement, pls. Killer-of-Lawyers fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 17:07
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Crits for the Final Prompt (1/2) I panicked when I saw that the prompt didn't have a word count. I like word counts. It sounds counter-intuitive but imposing limits makes for a better story because you can really focus on something and not be swamped by all the could-haves. Longer does not mean better. A story should only be as long as it needs to be. And how do you know that? Practice. GashouseGorilla - Call me Intern The entire story hinges on the main character's delusion, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. There isn't a shred of nuance in this story, which is really just "wouldn't it be cool if someone approached real life as if it were a game?" Try to make your protagonist likeable next time. This wasn't funny at all. Rap Three Times - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CHEESE The story takes too long to get going--the real thing only starts once they get to the castle. I think you could cut everything else before or truncate it to the bare essentials. The dialogue is too overwrought and bordering on pretentious. There are too many drat characters that I had difficulty in caring for them. Your action is passable, but needs another editing pass or two to make it really shine. Thyrork - Against Goldmask Goodness. Please leave a space between paragraphs! This didn't work for me either. The story drags a lot, first with Jean talking to the guards (who get massacred anyway), then the whole fight with Goldmask. While you really did pull out all the stops on Goldmask, I couldn't really get into it, mainly because everything is confusing as hell. You didn't setup your story properly. Jean gets accosted by someone in the beginning and kicks their asses, but I have no idea who she is and what she wants and what's the point. Honestly I think you wrote too many words and could've cut a lot and made a leaner story. Focus.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:35
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Thanks Schneider, I do feel that the story should have been leaner, but I threw caution into the wind since... well, I could.  If you have the time, could you elaborate on how specifically the fight confused you (examples or not), that'd help me nail that part of writing down more. E: Kol sat down with me and we did some discussing regarding the fight. It can be boiled down to: My choice of prompt writing (Kol's reply below explains.) and thus lacking in details. Poor grammar in places. Usage of The instead of Him/Her or a name. Some fragmented parts that were missed by my own editing. Thyrork fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 21:03
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It's fine to have a big story in your head, take a piece of it, and make it into a prompt. The problem comes when you don't edit it to stand on its own. What do the charactors want? So on and so forth. Sure, you answered it before in the rest of whatever well you drew the story from, but you haven't done so with in the actual post you make for the prompt. That's what makes it bad. If you want to take a scene from your magnum opus and use it as a prompt then make sure you edit it to cover the basics, or you've just dropped the reader in the middle of something and it's confusing.
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Mar 26, 2015 22:41
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Thyrork posted:Thanks Schneider, I do feel that the story should have been leaner, but I threw caution into the wind since... well, I could. I said it was confusing because things just sort of happen in it. Some guy pops up and helps Jean and kills Goldmask. Then there's something about Alex being killed by Goldmask, that's why Jean's crew hates the guy so much. The actual fight scene wasn't bad. It could have been good, but you're writing prose, not making a movie. What you did was just describe things (Jean shoots at Goldmask, no effect, runs more, etc) without minding what's going on in Jean's head. Even if you're really good with words, it falls flat unless you try to invest readers in what's the point of all this. Why is Jean fighting? What does she think about Goldmask? What are her thoughts and feelings as she's being chased by an unstoppable killing machine? If you don't do that, then readers are just given a bunch of words that they don't know what to do with. While writing, you must ask yourself, "so what?" Make us care first. Crits for the Final Prompt (2/2) Little Mac - Past, President, and Future Book 8: The Revolutionary Warriors Chapter 64: In Medias Prez This was full of neat, fun ideas but it ended too soon. There's a lot of awkward exposition (see Abe telling Barrack things that he probably knows already for the benefit of the confused reader), and the big plot beats (JFK showing up, The Tainted One revealing himself as Nixon, and Washington pulling off a President ex Machina) don't really satisfy. You're supposed to write a short story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, not a chapter for some nonexistent novel. I felt more than a little cheated when you didn't write the actual throwdown between the good Presidents and Nixon. Killer-of-Lawyers - Ladder I don't know where to start with this story. First scene has two talking heads alluding to big things, then the rest of the story is not about them. I'm pissed off because instead of contextualizing Seraph and K'fret's raid, you just throw us into the scene, expecting us to understand what's going on. Like there are scenes upon scenes and they're not bad at all, but the lack of investment on my part made it all forgettable. All I can remember now is that K'fret got a new body in the end. Don't confuse your reader like this. In film it's a little better because the visuals could be enjoyable in themselves, but this story is just words, and words don't mean anything unless you sit down with the reader and help them figure it out. rivetz - BOSS FIGHT Better than the other office worker story. That doesn't mean this is a good story, though--it takes too long to get going. Paragraphs of paragraphs of the protagonist ranting about his evil boss doesn't endear me to him, it just sounds like a whiny E/N entry. The tragedy is that you write really drat well, but you seemed to focus on them pretty words instead of you know, telling a good story. The tale only really starts when our guy kills Williams and starts climbing the building over the bodies of his fellow employees. I don't really buy the meta angle at the end, it doesn't really mesh well with the rest of the story's tone, and it feels like you just added it in because a straight-up fight with the evil boss isn't clever enough. The ending is really bad and made the rest of the story feel like a complete waste of time. I strongly advise against such twists because they will piss off your readers and make them unwilling to read anything from you ever again. (because if it was all just a game/dream, what's the loving point, then) ### I hope you all continue to write even after Gamerdome has ended. With more work and refinement you could write really well. Becoming good at writing is all a matter of reading and writing a lot. Don't be afraid to cough up a bad story, improving is all about taking feedback and learning from it. I recommend the Fiction Writing Advice thread if you're interested in improving.
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Mar 28, 2015 04:25
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Thanks for the critique. I'll have to work on providing more context. I tend to always err on the side of leaving people in the dark, and I can see how that can be frustrating in a story.
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Mar 28, 2015 05:42
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Hey, thanks for the review. I guess I was trying to be extra cheesy with the writing, a play on words and all that. BUT if the reader doesn't pick up on these things, it's because I didn't do it right. That's why it's good to get feedback. I can feel aggrieved that you didn't get me, but really, it's my responsibility to make you get what I want to say.
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Mar 28, 2015 22:13
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Rap Three Times posted:Hey, thanks for the review. I guess I was trying to be extra cheesy with the writing, a play on words and all that. Goddamnit.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:51
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Goddamnit.  I know...
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Mar 29, 2015 09:34
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Just as a reminder, the latest thunder dome just finished, so if you all wanna get in on the next, your chance is coming up. Rap, sorry I never finished my line by line, I've got a lot going on. Might do more later. I hope that one day this thread might come back, it's been fun, thanks to all for helping me improve!
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Mar 30, 2015 05:11
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bump
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Jun 13, 2015 05:24
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crabrock posted:bump Holy crap I forgot this was still here. Umm....well, heh. That's nice. This is nice! It might be time to revive the contest, then! Keep an eye on the thread, especially near the end of the summer sale. Oh, my wallet...
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Jun 13, 2015 05:35
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J.A.B.C. posted:Holy crap I forgot this was still here. I thought everyone migrated to the Thunderdome thread or something.
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Jun 13, 2015 06:36
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Glad to see this thread is alive again. Looking forward to more posts and prompts 
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Jun 23, 2015 01:18
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