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CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?
I sat here for way too long trying to think of a clever and original way to say I am in on this.

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CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?

Mercedes posted:

Mercedes v fumblemoose

Word Count: 485 - Crime, yet no violence with a cheerful character.

Concert

"Oh, goddammit - Bram, why aren't you wearing pants?!" Elise blurted as she placed a hand barrier between her eyes and his fruit of the looms. She rushed past him into the smoky apartment, the pungent aroma of marijuana firing up her craving for a hit. So how much of this actually matters to the story? Dude is pantless, cut it. There is marijuana that does nothing but explain why he has such a dumb plan--something which could just have easily been explained away by him just being a moron with a history of dumb plans.

After shutting the door, Bram grabbed an envelope from on top of the dusty, box television. He held it between his index fingers and flicked it from behind. “Baby sister, feast your eyes on the tickets that will offer us entrance to the concert of the century. A concert that will blow our minds and theoretically make us one with God.” Woodstock?

"Can I see them?" Elise asked as she blindly held her hand out, barely able to contain her excitement. Get rid of the word blindly unless she's blind, which from the first paragraph she obviously isn't. And if she's still covering her eyes it's still a dumb word.

“You may have them until I find my pants. Then, we head out.” Bram said as he disappeared into his bedroom.

Elise pulled the tickets out of the envelope and gradually her smile disappeared. "Bram!" she shouted.

So what I'm getting is that Bram is a filthy smelly pothead hippy. Highdea, away! To the crimemobile!

.*BATMAN TRANSITION MUSIC*


Elise wiped the sheen of sweat from her face and leaned in to whisper. “This plan of yours better work.”

"That makes two of us."

Elise grabbed Bram’s arm and squeezed. He squirmed in her grasp. "You told me you did this all the time." Her whisper harshened. The red squiggly line informs me that harshened is not, in fact, a word.

"I lied." Bram smiled. “Cheer up, this will be our grand adventure.”

"Oh, I'm going to kill you." she said through clenched teeth. "You scalped tickets that are from last year's concert. Now, I'm wearing tear-away clothes over regular clothes, in the middle of June, for a plan that you've never tried before!" Tear-away clothes? Stripper time! Also exposition.

Bram nodded and waggled his eyebrows. "You know that's right." Every single thing in this story points to them being boyfriend and girlfriend, not siblings, so knowing that Elise is his "baby sister" makes things creepier and creepier. Good job on making the non-violent crime incest.

The din of the crowd’s excited conversations did nothing to temper Elise’s frustration. “This is supposed to be my birthday present.” she said, her eyes fixated on the ticket collector who was only a few people ahead. Further exposition!

“And you’ll get your birthday present as long as you stick to the plan I just made up.” Bram said.

Elise opened her mouth to argue but the old ticket collector held out her hand and addressed them. “Tickets please?”

“Go.” Bram murmured, right before he wrapped the surprised ticket collector in a warm embrace. “Mmm… you smell like licorice.” Admittedly amusing but ultimately unsatisfying. Still could be argued that assault is a violent crime.

Elise moved through the door at a brisk pace, weaving between all the concert-goers. When she rounded the first corner, she ripped the disguise off and dumped it next to a trash bin. She's worse at changing costumes than Superman is.

Just walk past the ushers as if you already have your seat. Bram’s instructions echoed in her head. It was the only thing that prevented her from freaking out and confessing to the first staff person she saw.

The concert had already started by the time she found an empty seat. The crowd roared in excitement as Josh Groban ran on stage, singing one of her favorite songs. Who?

Elise sang along, silently thanking Bram for giving her the greatest present.


(edit was to add title)

I have been ordered to crit this.

I feel like you could have written a more amusing and overall better story if you'd just stuck to the pot at the beginning of the story. Unless this is set in WA or something. Overall the story was uninteresting. Elise, supposedly the main character, was boring. Bram was far more interesting but was purely a device to get the story moving. I much rather would have read about the adventures of Bram, the happy-go-lucky pothead.

CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?

inthesto posted:

Okay, I'm done with this poo poo. If the Hawks actually won over the Lakers, I would have put up with this, but gently caress it.

CantDecideOnAName, you've been a serious rear end in a top hat to me since I've joined. You've taken every opportunity to make fun of me and grind my nose into the dirt.

But oh, one of us has a loser avatar next to their name. Lemme check to the left real quick.

Right, it's not me.

Because I'm so sure that you suck, I'm going to handicap myself. It's NaNoWriMo, right? Not that I'm fully participating, but I'm still fully confident that I can pull this. I will write 500 words for NaNoWriMo, enter into the next TD, and still write a brawl entry against you. EDIT: You know what? gently caress it, I'm doing this all on a WORKDAY. Tuesday through Sunday, I'll write all the words. And I'll still dunk on your rear end.

Think you can handle this? I'm going to write three entries at once. Come at me, bro.

e: I'm drunk so I forgot: Let's brawl

Bring it, bitch. I've been waiting for you to do this, ever since your pansy rear end backed out of my IRC glove to the face. I'm gonna take all those words you write and shove them down your throat. Eat it, drunkard.

Let's brawl.

CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?
BRAWL TIME, INTHESTO
PREPARE YOUR ANUS

Body Heat (738 words)

“Goddamn it’s cold.”

Chris, wrapped in two blankets, sat as close to the fire as he could possibly get without setting anything alight. Jesse sighed and crossed his arms.

“I thought you’d like it. You liked the hiking in Arizona. And the rock climbing in Utah.”

“Arizona was warm. And I thought I was gonna die on that mountain. Skiing, you said,” Chris continued to complain. “The exercise will keep you warm, and then there’s a lodge with a big fireplace that you can curl up next to. It’ll be fantastic. You suck, Jesse.”

He glared around the small cabin, glowering at the two beds, the door to the bathroom, and the counter and fridge that were supposedly a kitchenette.

“I’m sorry it’s not what you expected, but it’s plenty warm in here. There’s not even a draft. You’d never know there’s a blizzard out there at all.”

“Do a spell,” Chris demanded. “Do some magic. You want me to stop bitching? Then be a real wizard and do something to make it less cold.”

“You know I can’t change the weather.” Chris always demanded that someone else use magic to fix his problems, and that someone was usually Jesse.

“Don’t do that. Just make me warmer.”

“Suck it up, Chris. You have to deal with life sometimes. Magic isn’t always going to bail you out.”

“Swear to God, I will punch you right in your sissy magician face. Do it.”

“No.”

If there was only one thing Chris was good at in life, it was glaring at people. He had finely tuned it, honing it into a dagger-sharp point, and it always worked on Jesse.

“I hate it when you do that,” Jesse said. “Jerk. I like you more when we’re having fun with sports.”

He hadn’t brought his full kit, just some chalk and a few different rocks. Drawing the circle on the floor was easy enough, but putting the rocks in the proper spots was a bit more difficult without knowing which way was north. His copper ring was the final touch, with a strand of hair plucked from Chris’ head wrapped around it. Chris finally left his blankets and stood shivering in the center of the circle.

Jesse knew he shouldn’t be doing magic angry. Chris always pulled this bullshit. But Jesse knew he wouldn’t hear the end of it until he did it, and he wanted to enjoy the long weekend with Chris. So he concentrated on the warmth from the fire and redirected it.

Nothing, at first. Chris gave him the finger.

“Come on, Harry Potter,” he said. “Give it a real try. Wingardium leviosa.”

Jesse felt the spell flare up and immediately cut it off, scuffing his foot through the circle and letting go of the energy.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“It’s done,” Jesse said, continuing to scrub out the chalk. “It’s done. I’m done. Deal with it.”

“Oh come on. You—” Chris paused, then grinned and smacked Jesse on the shoulder. “Nice one, Jesse. Good job.”

Jesse collapsed on the bed and put his head in his hands.

Within an hour Chris was screaming at him again.

“What the hell did you do to me?” he howled, taking off his pants and throwing them onto the bed, where they lay next to the shirt that he had torn off ten minutes ago. “It’s too hot—take it off!”

Jesse redrew the circle, placed the stones, set his ring spinning on the floor with the hair wrapped ‘round it, concentrated on his own body heat and tried to recalibrate things. Where resentment had made the spell go out of control before, fear now made it wither out.

“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Chris was shaking, face red with fury, his voice hoarse from screaming. “I’m burning up—you killed me! I’ll kill you!”

Jesse fled to the bathroom and locked the door, listening to Chris pounding on it and watching it tremble and shake in the frame. “I’m gonna loving kill you, Jesse! I’m gonna kill you!”

There was a primal scream and the sound of running. The front door slammed. Silence.

Jesse waited a minute, then crept from the room. The door had been splintered and there was blood on it, and his heart leapt to his throat.

“Oh God. Chris.”

He grabbed a jacket and ran outside, but Chris was already gone, vanished into the blizzard.

CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?
gently caress ALL OF YOU

Submission for Outlaw Week that I wrote and never submitted. Taking my DQ like a man.



Infection (643)

Rider pulled the last of the steel shutters closed with a resounding boom and activated the quarantine lock. Then he turned around and headed back to the steps to wait. There was no way that his pursuers hadn’t heard the noise of the shutters being closed one by one.

Sitting down on the cry concrete steps, he imagined the route that Samantha and the others would have to take to get out of the city, and prayed that they would manage it without getting caught. Footsteps from down the tunnel broke his train of thought and he looked up.

“You’re here faster than I thought you would be,” Rider commented dryly.

There were six men in the quarantine suits, five of whom were carrying guns. The sixth stepped forward, his face partially hidden by the mask.

“Which way did they go, Kearny?”

Rider pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the closed tunnels. “That way.”

“Don’t be smart with me,” Agent Adams threatened. “Just tell us where they went and I might be able to get your sentence mitigated.”

Rider laughed hoarsely and made a big show of coughing. “Which one? Breaking out of police custody? Aiding and abetting known fugitives? Breaking quarantine? Or are you going to trump up some kidnapping charges?” Rider coughed again, enjoying watching the men with guns shift nervously.

“You aided in the spread of a disease, Kearny. There’s nothing I can do to help with that charge,” Adams pointed out. “You let potential carriers escape. But if you tell me where they went, I might be able to get the other charges dropped.” He approached and squatted in front of Rider so that they were eye to eye and a couple feet apart. “I don’t know what you said to get Miss Hart to go along with you,” he added quietly, “but rest assured that we will find her and her little entourage. It’s only a matter of time.”

Rider hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat it at the plastic mask of the suit. Adams flinched.

“And if I don’t talk?”

Adams gestured behind him to the other men. “Then they shoot you. Granted, the contamination would be a mess to clean up, but if you’re not going to talk then you’re not much use.” He pulled a tissue out of a large pocket on the suit and wiped the facemask off before putting the tissue in a biohazard baggie and sealing it up.

Rider thought about it. He had to buy them time to get away. He took a deep breath of the musty air in the tunnel and put his head between his legs while he hacked and coughed, flipping Adams the bird while he did.

Adams stood up and moved to the side, nodding. Rider quickly raised his head when he heard the click of safety being taken off.

“Take me in,” he said, throat raw. “I’ll take all the charges. Every single one. Escaping custody, breaking quarantine, kidnapping, aiding and abetting, outright treason, whatever you got. Lock me up in the infected wards or hand me back to the CDC guys. Doesn’t matter to me. But I’m not telling you where they went.”

“You severely underestimate how much political power Miss Hart has when she’s not with her father,” Adams pointed out. “And now that she’s gone, no one’s around to stop the military from sticking needles in you. The strain you’ve got is an impressively nasty one, from what I hear, and everyone’s just dying to know how you’ve survived so long with it.”

Rider laughed. “Dying. I get it. Funny.”

Adams smirked slightly. “Get up, Kearny.”

Rider sighed and got to his feet. “Sure. Where are we heading?”

“Does it matter?”

Rider thought about it. “I guess not,” he said finally. “I’m a dead man walking either way.”

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