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The Legend of the Codpiece (666 Words) Sir Largus Valis ruled a minor kingdom on the outskirts of our great empire. Most of the people he ruled were peasants, simple folk who wanted little to do with world affairs. They found their peaceful little lives jostled when Sir Valis's lady love Camilla stole away from the castle into the dark maw of the night. Sir Valis stirred that morning to a commotion. He dressed and trotted downstairs to see what agitated his subjects. When they saw Valis approach, a hush spread among them like ripples in a pool. They backed away, and Valis walked forward to see this couplet carved into the courtyard wall: Poor Largus has a twiddly thing, which lacks in length and girth Its name is "Satisfy-me-not"; I ask, "What is he worth?" - Lady C Sir Valis flew into a mighty rage and ordered a team of his finest stone-carvers to blindfold themselves (as protection from indecency) and chisel away at the mocking verse. When the wall was clear and the stone-carvers' wounds treated, Sir Valis returned to his chambers to think. Soon his mind pounced on an idea. He called for his handler and had him arrange two meetings: one with his blacksmith, the other with his infantry commander. The next morning, he and a peasant-army of forty charged over the hill to the neighboring castle. This was the domain of Lord Lyman, who had quested for the heart of Camilla long ago. The ragged infantry band stood a hundred yards in front of the drawbridge and Sir Valis shouted up, "Get down here, you knave! I demand to take you on, man to man!" A long pause, and then the drawbridge creaked down. Lord Lyman rode out on a white horse, flanked by his personal guard. He opened his mouth to speak, but then saw Sir Valis's new suit of armor. Sir Valis puffed out his chest-plate, projecting the glinting, obscenely-defined steel muscles toward Lyman. The metal sheathing his arms and legs seemed better suited for tree trunks than human limbs. Lord Lyman's eyes flew, however, straight to the colossal, gilded codpiece. It was studded with some of the treasury's finest rubies and amethysts--family jewels safeguarding the same. Lord Lyman stepped down from his horse and Sir Valis sauntered toward him, groin clanking with each step. The two stood, exchanging a taut stare, when Lord Lyman burst out laughing. He writhed on the ground, whinnying with mirth, as Sir Valis stood stunned. He glared down at his cackling foe. "CHARGE!" he bellowed, and as the peasant army ran forth to engage Lyman's royal guard, Sir Valis ran forward and grabbed their Lord by his shoulder plates. It was only when the pair had stumbled back to Valis's castle gate that Lord Lyman's giggling fit broke and he realized he was a captive. The next morning, Lyman was bound and set precariously on the throwing arm of the castle catapult. Sir. Valis sat beside him. "My dear Lord Lyman," he said, "I wish you'd tell me where Lady Camilla is. It would make things easier for you." "Oh? How would that be?" "It would make the burden of your soul lighter, which will be a great boon once I launch you back to your people!" "Why would you tell me that you're going to launch me either way? That's hardly the way to get me to spill the beans." Sir Valis glared. "Just for that rudeness, I'm going to launch you early. Right now." He turned and bent down, not noticing Lyman reach out and grab his pantaloons as he pulled the lever. The two flew out of the castle in a wide arc and splattered against the ground a few yards in front of Lyman's castle. As his soul drifted off to some mediocre paradise, Largus Valis had one last vague epiphany: "If, in a man's mind, his castle is the wrong shape, the mind is easier altered than the castle."
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Oct 14, 2013 02:22
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 14:16 |
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I'll be in for this week's prompt.
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Oct 19, 2013 00:14
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Yeah, I'm out too. Just didn't have the time to dedicate to it that I hoped I would. Will have to toxx myself next time I enter!
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Oct 20, 2013 21:44
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sebmojo posted:You're on! I feel like I could use some redemption, I guess I could. So prepare yourselves for...  THE FUMBLEMOUSE V. MERCEDES OPTIMISM RUMBLE!!!!You have 500 words in which to tell me a crime story centered around a crime that does not necessitate violence. Could be relatively minor like shoplifting or jaywalking, or something bigger. Also, one of your characters must be exceedingly cheerful. Tentative deadline is Saturday at midnight eastern time, but I can be flexible if need be. Go nuts, you two.
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Oct 21, 2013 22:23
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Well, I've written two-thirds of my entry for this week, so I might as well be in. Also, I'll read your stories asap, Mercedes and Fumblemouse. Judgement is forthcoming.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:53
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Fumblemouse posted:Fumblemouse vs Mercedes Mercedes posted:Mercedes v fumblemoose Your subliminal tricks won't work on me, buddy! It's JUDGEMENT TIMEFirst of all, to clear this up: Added Space posted:I'm going to have to call an automatic failure. Being a pedophile, while creepy, is not inherently a crime. Pushing someone so they fall over and bleed could be a crime (depends on the age of the child) and is violent. While being a pedophile is not a crime, what happens in the story is arguably physical abuse, even if the victim doesn't realize it. And by arguably I mean I am going to argue that, so your disqualification is struck down. Both of you followed the prompt well, but I think I've got to give the edge to Fumblemouse. Even though he used around half the words that Mercedes did, his tale felt more rich and fully realized. There's a lot the story doesn't outright say, such as what's going to happen next, but it provides a nice springboard for the reader to imagine from. Mercedes, while your story was perhaps more extensively explained, it felt a bit flat and clunky. Some of the dialogue especially was too obvious as exposition, and sometimes just didn't even make sense. "This plan of yours better work." "That makes two of us." What? There were also a few grammar errors that could have easily been caught with a more stringent edit. Overall, not bad, but not good enough for a win. I can do a more extensive crit later if you guys want, but it looks like the Thunderdome is the HOUSE OF MOUSE today!!! (i'm sorry)
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Oct 25, 2013 23:46
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Parasite (999 Words)
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Oct 28, 2013 00:23
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I'm takin' a chance myself! In.
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Nov 5, 2013 22:58
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I Told You So (1,132 Words) Growing up, Amelia’s favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz. Even when she got old enough to call it “kids’ stuff” in front of her friends and parents, she was secretly glad whenever her little sister picked it for movie night. Cassie delighted at Toto’s antics and clutched the ragged blue comforter closer whenever the Wicked Witch was onscreen. Amelia liked those parts, but nothing thrilled her quite like the twister. Now she perched on a cliff overlooking the Australian plains, staring down a raging storm much like the one Dorothy faced, minus the sepia tinge. The tornado barreled forward with steady confidence, whipping dust and rocks and gnarled brush into a broad cone of destruction. Amelia lifted up her walkie-talkie and pressed the call button. “I think this is it, Joey. It’s the one.” She heard a sigh on the other end, filtered through static. “Please tell me you filed the life insurance policy.” She smirked. “Of course I did. Do you think I was going to let you set it up, so you could have it pay out to yourself?” “Well, with the amount of sense you’ve displayed lately, Amelia, I honestly couldn’t be sure.” Amelia glanced automatically at her buggy. The reinforced steel tubing encircling it glimmered in the late-day sun. “I’ve run all the simulations, Joey. The buggy’s practically foolproof.” “But don’t you see? ‘Practically’ isn’t good enough. Twisters are unpredictable, that’s their nature. Even if your jalopy is less rickety than it looks, which, no offense, I doubt, there’s inherent room for error that simulations can’t predict.” She grinned. “I guess there’s no point in running any more of them, then. And nobody says ‘jalopy’ anymore, Joey. Over and out.” Amelia dropped the walkie, heard Joey’s electronic protestations muffled by the dry dirt as she hopped into the buggy. She pulled the restraint straps tight, tugged at the buckle to make sure it wouldn’t release, and flipped on the onboard computer. The recording software popped on, and she cycled through the ten mounted cameras, a few on the buggy’s chassis and the rest tethered to the outer steel frame. All of them worked. She hit “record”, and slipped on her heavy hood with the built-in goggles. She gunned the engine, hearing the low whine rumble beneath her, then released the handbrake and sped down the hill. Already the grit was catching on her goggles. She felt stifled, locked in place by the full-body restraints. Joey had insisted on them, and she had to admit he was right. She wouldn’t be able to chase many more storms if this one broke her neck. As she drove forward, the tornado loomed over her, seeming to swallow the gray sky with a raging column of sand. Even before she reached it, in the last hundred yards, she could feel the storm taking over. Its pull compounded the buggy’s already substantial acceleration, and before she had a chance to brace herself she was wholly at the twister’s mercy. It yanked the buggy up, its wheels spinning uselessly against the wind. Amelia gripped the steering wheel, more as a mental comfort than anything, and tried to stay properly oriented, but it was no use. The tornado tossed her buggy around, seeming to take malevolent delight in whipping it end over end it until Amelia could only imagine what had once been up and down. Her teeth clenched impossibly tight, her knuckles dead white on the steering wheel. Her neck ached, the restraints feeling like tendons fraying closer and closer to a deadly snap. She felt like a mouse finally snared after scampering through the house like she owned it. The big sinewy cat didn’t care how sorry and frightened the mouse was; it was blinded by single-minded glee. It had snagged a fleshy, delicate morsel, and now it was time to play. She felt the buggy rattle down to its steel skeleton and for a second was convinced that the twister would crack it open like a walnut. Squinting through her dust-caked goggles, however, she could see swaths of gray sky poking through the swirling debris. The sand all around her thinned, and with another nudge she burst free of the storm. The piercing roar of the tornado faded away as the buggy streaked through the sky. Never had Amelia been more grateful for quiet. Thousands of feet up, she sailed soundlessly toward rocky cliffs, only a faint whistle underscoring her journey. Her hands still gripped the wheel, arms shaking even as her hands were frozen in place. She forced herself to let go, to flex her fingers in the open air. The tension in her muscles finally fading as she reached the apex of her flight, she groped for the parachute switch on the control panel. She flipped it, and the entire parachute system launched free, receding and half-heartedly flopping open as the buggy careened down to the pointed cliffs. The blood drained from Amelia’s face. She began gnawing on her lower lip as the rocks below seemed to vault toward her, coming up much too fast. She tried to sift out a thought or a prayer or a plead but the taste of blood was spreading in her mouth and all she could separate from her cognitive soup was that she would be that same blood soon, ladled out generously on the Aussie sand from sheer force of impact. Nose pointed toward the cliffs, she tipped forward and the Earth collided with the steel cage stretching above her head. Amelia felt the jolt in her bones. She rolled helplessly, fastened tight in her seat but still feeling like a tenderized steak each time her vehicle smacked down on the jagged terrain. With one final spectacular crash, the buggy bounced high and split apart in midair, steel ribs twirling in all directions. The seat broke free, snapping the restraints and giving Amelia up to gravity. Looking back, she saw that she had flown past the lip of a cliff. She did not see the drop beneath, did not want to know if it was ten feet or a thousand. She closed her eyes and let go, almost wishing to pass out before the final impact. The final impact swallowed her up in cold, the one sensation she didn’t expect. Amelia let herself sink, embracing the creeping descent, until her lungs began to whine. She kicked and propelled herself upward, then broke the surface. Gasping, she looked to the horizon and saw the last slice of the sun dip below the Earth. Darkness embraced the Australian countryside, and Amelia knew that soon she and Joey would have a compulsory chat about safety measures. She smiled and promised herself she’d smack him if he said, “I told you so.”
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Nov 11, 2013 02:48
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Nov 15, 2013 23:06
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Homo Delphinidae (991 Words) It started back when my Nan took me to see Flipper. I remember thinking how awful it was to sit there, with maybe fifty other people around me, and still feel so alone. It all changed when the screen lit up and I saw that beautiful creature swimming around, so full of boundless joy and energy. Its little chattering squeaks were like perfect love letters express-mailed to my soul. I could feel myself beaming, it was just this moment of beautiful kinship. Of belonging. I watched all sorts of films after that, National Geographic ones as well as the fictional stuff. Read everything I could find, too. After a while I wanted to spend every weekend at the big-city zoo or the aquarium, whichever had the biggest tanks. I’d sit cross-legged on the cold tile, probably for an hour or more, just watching them swim and play. Sometimes they looked my way and let out this knowing, mischievous chitter. And I beamed right back. Of course my parents, being pretty logical-minded, wanted to put a stop to this oblique behavior. They sent me across the ocean to a prep school, and they must have done their homework because, try as I might, I couldn’t find an aquarium or a zoo within a hundred miles of the place. Probably even two hundred. So I studied and got pretty decent marks, made friends with some of the boys, you know. Became average, or tried to at least. After that I went home and got a pretty decent job, and then I met Magda. She was sweet. We got married, mostly due to the begging of our respective parents, and honestly I felt pretty good about it. But when we picked out our first house I made sure it was by the biggest and best aquarium I knew, because there was no chance I was going to live another day as lonely as I’d been at prep school. Magda and I were hardly ever... intimate, looking back. I suspect she had some secret life, some irregularity her parents were eager to hide under a wholesome veneer of marriage, but I never held that against her. Every night after dinner I snuck off to the zoo and sat in front of the dolphin tanks, cross-legged, just like I had when I was a boy. But I was better than a boy now. I held the reins, and I guess Magda held hers. That’s probably why the divorce was so amicable; to some degree, we both knew. For a while things got lonely. I delved back into old obsessions, which felt liberating but took a toll on everything else. My work slipped and soon I lost the job, and then the severance pay started to seep away into nature videos and bus passes to surrounding cities so I could see their aquariums. The extent of my human interaction was the grocery clerks asking if I wanted paper or plastic.One day, after answering that question, I grabbed a newspaper almost on impulse and flipped to the ad on page 4B: “COME TO THE GRAND TRAVELING DOLPHIN STUNT SHOW!” “TRICKS BEYOND YOUR WILDEST IMAGININGS!” “FUN FOR ALL AGES!” I thanked whatever higher power happened to be smiling on me, paid as quick as I could, and rushed home to get ready. A week later I got in line at the zoo for the big opening show. I couldn’t help but be disappointed by the turnout, at least a little. Schlubby middle-aged guys with their wives and squabbling kids. Looking for something interesting to do on a lazy Saturday that wasn’t sitting around watching reruns, but where was the passion, the excitement? I know they don’t share my perspective, but it’s like if someone walked into a cathedral in a wife-beater, sunblock smeared all over their face. It’s just respect. When I saw them I knew I had to go through with it. So when everybody was getting into their seats for the big show, I snuck backstage with my blue jumpsuit on. I milled around and tried to look busy, like I belonged there. Then everyone scattered and the trainer, a twenty-something girl in khaki shorts, strode through the curtain and up to the lip of the big tank. I could hear her onstage, voice riddled with enthusiasm, playing to the crowd, but I wasn’t listening to the words. I closed my eyes, waiting, concentrating. The trainer’s voice reached a crescendo and I heard it, the mechanical click of the trapdoor and the rush of water as dolphins blasted out and into the show-tank. I was overcome with the beauty of it. I pulled the cord on my jumpsuit and it fell away, leaving me entirely au naturel. Ignoring the shouts of startled interns, I bounded up the steps and onto the stage. I sprinted, shoving past the trainer and still going, reaching the edge and leaping outward before splashing down in the wide glass tank. Then I drifted. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. I hung there in the water for a moment, then swam forward. I could see three gorgeous bottlenose dolphins circling around me, the very picture of acceptance. One dove down in front of me and chattered a cheeky greeting. He nuzzled his nose against my forehead. Me. A five-foot ten naked Homo sapiens, a stranger one second and then practically part of the pod. I couldn’t stop beaming. Of course, security hauled me out and I got thirty days for indecent exposure. Talk about a comedown. However, the day I re-entered society, I got a call from a little documentary crew. They read my story in the paper and (presumably after laughing their asses off) decided they’d like to do a film on me, and about dolphins in general. I said yes, with one stipulation. I’ll show them to the dolphins if they’ll bring me to the ocean.
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Nov 17, 2013 04:47
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:I'll bite for my first. I'll snag that one before Sweet_Joke_Nectar can get to it. Flash rule: Your story must somehow incorporate a movie considered one of the worst of all time. Nikaer Drekin fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 16:08
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:Flash rule: Your story must include a stolen toilet. Porcelain Lost, No Reward (961 Words) This morning, I woke up to discover a gaping matter-hole in my bathroom, right where my toilet always is. By my thinking, the culprits were interdimensional travelers with a cruel streak. They're awful. They want to make innocent people wake up at five in the morning and dig holes in their backyards so that they can take a sanitary poo poo. I did just that, played into their grimy hands. After my outdoor sanitary poo poo I took a shower. I turned over the scene in my mind, of the travelers tearing a dimensional hole in my ceramic-tiled bathroom wall, taking out little dark-matter crowbars and prying the porcelain throne from its resting place. I tried to will forward the dormant psychic powers lodged in my brain, so that I could psychically undo this heinous crime. I thought up the scene of my toilet reappearing, played it over and over in my head until I ripped the curtain away and there was still a pocket of air where my toilet was supposed to be. I gritted my teeth and called in sick to work. The tavern was a good place to start, I knew. The lads there were always good to me. I pushed through the door and said, "Hello, lads, swell morning we're having, isn't it?" The one called Lou spat tobacco juice onto the floor. Big Ike asked me, "How is our resident dumbfuck human being doing this fine morning?" That was our private joke, him calling me a dumbfuck human being in front of the other guys. He did that because I wore a lavender bathrobe into the tavern, in order to ward off shadow brain parasites, who hate the color lavender. I knew Big Ike was in on the joke because his trucker hat was always pulled down, which was another, slightly less effective way to ward off the shadow parasites. I winked at him so that he knew I got the joke. "I can't stay long today, Ike. My crapper's gone missing and I'm out looking for it." I used "crapper" as a show of coarse language in front of the lads. I wanted them to think I was one of them. Being semi-ascended, I was not one of them. It's polite to blend in as well as one can, though. Big Ike raised his eyebrows. "Believe it or not, I've heard that, sport! I happen to have a clue that should help you out." He worked a finger under his shirt and swabbed it through his belly button. When he removed his finger again, the tip was coated in yellowish lint. "There you go, sport," he said. "My gift to you." He and the lads chuckled. My third eye began to itch. I could see a wave of psychic energy encircling the lint, stretching away like roads on a map. I reverently scooped it up and slid it in my pocket. I began to tear up. "Big Ike, I don't know what to say. This means more than you could know." I left the tavern and followed the psychic map-lines for nearly an hour. They led me across the city, weaving through the densely-packed streets, before dumping me in front of an alleyway that reeked of human waste. The universe did not seem to understand me; I wanted my toilet back, not some short-term solution and especially not one where homeless people could leer at me as I took a decidedly unsanitary poo poo. I walked down the sidewalk a stretch before reaching down and digging into my pockets. "How about a game?" I said. I pulled out a pair of old, weathered dice. The universe likes playing with its creations. Sometimes, in playing, it will slip and let out a startling truth. "My roll first," I said. the dice clattered on the concrete: a two and a five. Some people think seven is a lucky number, but the universe doesn't like it. It craves order and sameness, so it would not think I had won. "Now it's your turn," I said, and gave up my hand as a vessel to the force of creation. The force of creation rolled two ones. Snake-eyes. I smiled, congratulating it on a swift victory, but at the same time my mind probed into those black dots, striving to discover their meaning. I was hit by a wave of emotion; loss, oblivion, aloneness. But hiding behind that pain was a sense of renewal and rebirth. Of life going on. Interdimensional thieves or no interdimensional thieves, I felt like smiling. I went to the nearest big-box hardware store, at first disheartened because all the employees seemed to be riddled with shadow parasites, but then I found Greg. The energy coursing through him was unbelievably pure and radiant. I could see right away that he was ascended, perhaps even higher than me. I asked to see the toilets, and straight away he led me to what I knew was to be my new throne. It was made of pink, glassy porcelain, a shade harmonious with my protective lavender bathrobe. Most people don't believe in fate. I do, now. The universe is a puppeteer and a guide, leading us to where we need to be. Right then, it took the shape of Greg, standing at the checkout line and scanning my new toilet, the new, improved hunk of matter to be placed in the empty pocket of air in my bathroom. I put my hand on his, and suddenly I could feel my own imperfect energy connect with the source of everything, transcending earthly boundaries. And when Greg said, "Excuse me, sir, you're making me uncomfortable," I heard the voice of the universe; an ordinary yet resplendent melody. I did not let go.
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Dec 2, 2013 00:57
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I don't mean to break up WormFest 2013, but count me in for this week's normal prompt.
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Dec 19, 2013 19:33
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Granny Stitch (789 Words) Up in the chilly north, some say, and probably in another dimension as well, lives an old lady who goes by the name of Granny Stitch. Her time is consumed by knitting, as is true of many Grannies, though she’s been at it a mite longer than most: nearly fourteen billion years, by some estimates. The string she knits with is no ordinary yarn, either. This fantastic, infinitely long thread is none other than the raw material of our own universe. Now, if this material was allowed to pile up endlessly on the floor of Granny Stitch’s cabin, nothing we know would exist. The universe, the story goes, came to be because of Granny’s purposeful manipulation of the matter-yarn. By knitting, she gave it a tangible form, locking all that is into the fabric of time. Granny Stitch kept to her task with vice-grip dedication, weaving the Big Bang into motion and orchestrating the births of stars and galaxies, the scarf of time trailing away for miles as she poured millennia into her work. After a while, she noticed an odd phenomenon occurring in a handful of solar systems. Sometimes, there would be a planet floating just the right distance from its star, its terrain not scorched with acid volcanoes or glazed over with dead ice. Planets in just the right spot for life to flourish. Granny Stitch smiled, cracked her knuckles a bit, and in a few million stitches brought life on Earth into being. While Granny Stitch enjoyed the challenge that human beings in particular brought to her work, she found them somewhat taxing to look after. She barely kept her eyes more than a few inches from her knitting needles, poring over each stitch to make sure even the most minute error didn’t slip away uncorrected. As a consequence, everything else began to slide out of focus. It’s important to note that any particular segment of the fabric of time isn’t locked into being, a done deal, just because it has already been set down. History, as Granny Stitch created it, could be mucked around with just by knotting and fiddling with the yarn the wrong way. Treading on a patch of scarf could cause the spontaneous combustion of Andromeda, for instance, and all memory of the way things had been vanished from the newer parts of the cloth. However, after a few sharp admonishments from Granny Stitch, the rest of her family did their best to tiptoe around the miles of fabric draped about their home, and thus harmony was preserved in the universe. With this newfound focus on shepherding the human race, however, Granny Stitch grew sloppy in watching the parts of the scarf she’d already knitted. With her sharp eyes occupied, accidents happened more frequently. The cat clawing playfully at one particular patch, for instance, brought about the Hundred Years’ War where there once was a Hundred Years’ General Niceness. One of the grandkids tripped on the scarf and tugged a thread loose, inadvertently kicking off the Crusades. Another day, Granny Stitch’s husband absentmindedly tapped his cigar ashes onto the cloth. The ensuing blaze launched a firebrand political movement that would leave a World War and six million dead Jews in its wake. And through all this Granny Stitch kept on knitting; eyes down, fingers quick and precise. Her family initially cringed at every little imperfection they caused in the infinite scarf, but soon Granny Stitch didn’t even seem to notice. They slid into carelessness, assuming that she just didn’t care about the work that was already done. As her grand tapestry was dotted with rips and shoe-prints and coffee stains, she could not bring herself to see the bigger picture. Like a planet locked into orbit, she was transfixed, gripped by the gravity of humanity’s here-and-now at the expense of all history. Still she knits today, the story goes. The needles click and work the yarn of ages, crafting a flawless present destined to become a scarred past. Cultural historians, keen to analyze all myths for some sort of moral truth, have not quite come to a consensus on the meaning behind this one. Some insist that it is a warning against striving for perfection in one’s work at the expense of broader awareness. Others see it as a tragedy of isolation; if poor Granny Stitch had been more open and communicative toward her family, her precious work may not have suffered such degradation. A small but vocal sect, on the other hand, insists that this tale’s purpose is to be told by grandmothers to their grandchildren. That way, the little shits will be aware of the earth-shaking consequences that could ensue if they screw around with their Granny’s knitting.
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Dec 22, 2013 20:15
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