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quote:Return to Camp Death Triage 1971 words “It’s one of us,” I say. And in the depths of my subconscious, the demon laughs and spits. Maybe it’s me. Vi is hugging Lance close. “Don’t be dumb, Lesha. We came here to bury this for good. We can’t turn on each other.” “We bury it by getting to the bottom of it,” I say. We’re staring at Earl Steckerberg memorial hospital, twin buildings attached by a small tunnel at the base. Halfway up they’re shrouded by the mist that’s covered this town since that fateful night twenty years ago. The night we woke up the emergency room, drenched in each other’s blood and sweat, and started, after the gauze and IVs and sandwiches and water and questions, so many questions, asked softly then barked like hell hounds, to get pieces, fragments. To see the dead in our dreams. We were young then. The scar on Lance’s shoulder was fresh, bright red against his pale skin. I had given it to him, or so I was told, during a black hole in my memory with frayed, pained edges. I know what Lance sounds like when he screams because I came back to him screaming. And there was me, Alesha, everyone too lazy for that first syllable, and my dreadlocks, which took forever to knot, and my meds to stop my blackouts. And I felt them cramping my qi, and I went off them during that camp trip, which is fine, because at my core I’m pure and I love everyone, and everyone should be loved by me. And there was Vi, who was the oldest, take-charge in even slightly challenging situations, and me hiding things from her, and her not even noticing because Lance could barely fend for himself, because Lance wanted girls who didn’t want him, because Lance couldn’t walk around camp without being harassed and attacked by anyone with more muscle mass than him, which was everyone. There was the three of us, and Camp Clearwater, and then there was the three of us, and there was no camp anymore, because a camp needed campers, and the campers were all gone, falling into the next life, staring into it the whole way. The hospital is still running, but only just, equipment getting more expensive, and the town dying off one abandoned theatre, one ruined market, one lamp post flickering every four seconds at a time. We stand before it like the entrance to some forbidden world. A still over the place, cars spotting the parking lot, a couple of ambulances. The camp’s long since been paved, but the nightmare took shape in the hospital, a shape that they snatched away from us, as they took their notes and tape recordings and vanished into where? The ether? Washington D.C.? The Soviet Union? Vi glances at Lance and he bravely nods, and both of them part, and he scratches the place where his hair used to be experimentally. Then all three of us are walking forward, trying to pretend like the thing I just said, the accusation I just made, isn’t settling all around us. The doors are fogged over. I’m in front of them first, and I push, they don’t revolve, they’re from when they believed you had to work to get where you were going. The door swings open, Vi behind me, and she might be thinking what I’m thinking, that time has dulled her edge, and by the time we’re in the lobby we’re walking to the front desk together, Lance trailing behind like always, the dull thud of his shoes a sign of his passing. There are two nurses behind the desk and they’re talking to each other. We pass them quickly, Vi pulling Lance along. I tug at my straightened hair, still not, after all these years, used to not being the centre of attention. The directions to Triage are easy to spot; they position these things to be noticeable. All around us people walk by; they all seem pallid, grayed out, and I don’t notice because the hallucinations are starting. Symbols are painted on the walls in scarlet splashes. I need to average them out to see the exact shape. But I recognize it. It’s the eight pointed star, the mark of Inanna, ancient Sumerian goddess of fertility, and in some places it’s more finished than others, like the artist ran out of his medium. I know Inanna well, but I’m not used to seeing her in amber. Lance complaining about his feet hurting is a background buzz. I hear screams, sharp bursts that pierce through me and are gone. Some sound like fear, some like pain, some like something else. I cling to them; they feel like answers, but they’re gone, and so are the marks, and I’m wondering what happened, and asking myself why I’m turning my back on my family, who I haven’t seen in years, who I don’t even know. Because, I think, this paranoia that’s taken nest in me is a projection, to escape the idea that it was me, that I’m crazy, that I needed to be medicated and wasn’t. I should be medicated now, too, but I’m not. Three of us survived. One of us was responsible. Flashes of Inanna again, and then… We’re in the emergency room. It’s empty. Nothing but scattered magazines littering abandoned couches. No nurses in the station. No one anywhere. “No one got hurt today,” Lance says, while me and Vi glance at each other. That’s when I hear the screams again, but they’re different. More stretched out; they’re echoing down the long hallways and off the inside of Triage. I’m back there, and it’s happening again, and Vi is moving. She’s shouting over her shoulder, her head whipped back, framed by frizz, and she hasn’t aged a day, it’s twenty years ago and she’s shouting over her shoulder back then too. She’s slamming the door shut, like it’s all coming back to her, or it never left. “Get the other doors!” she shouts. She’s already reaching back for the couch, pulling it against her. Lance closing the other side’s doors is more of a collision; he looks like he actually hurt himself swinging them shut and pressing into it. I’m there with him, more to comfort him with my presence than to actually keep out whatever’s out there. Lance got strong since Clearwater, but he’s looking at me, and his eyes are begging me to tell them this isn’t happening. I can hear the howling of whatever’s out there, slipping in through the cracks of the doors, and fingers raking against the windows. I can’t see much but I see several right hands. The other couch creaks as Vi pushes it behind us. We tumble backwards over it as she wedges it against the door space and we fall onto cold linoleum, Lance on top of me, crushing me, and Vi has to help him off. Inanna, I think. What’s the connection? A memory floats to the surface. 𒀭 Claud and Lorena Havlin, our fosters, are never home. In effect our adoption is to get them social points in the community, giving their vast wealth a tinge of conscience. They’re in line to get a statue raised in the geographically insulated park; all three of us posed around them once, Vi’s frizz covering her whole face so that all you’ll see, when it goes up, is a single eye, staring out noncommittally. They drank away what time they couldn’t sleep away, and that left me free to pursue the arcane arts. Inanna seemed a worthy recipient of my worship, and I’m mid ablution when Lance walks in, scratches his tousle, and asked what’s up with the mark on the floor. “I’ll mop it up later,” I say, and I stopped, because Lance is looking at me with adoration eyes, with I’m-so-much-cooler-than-him-eyes. “She’s the goddess of love,” I say, “and fertility, and some other things. She’s good if you need help in the more tangled aspects of your life.” He moves to the skylight in the corner, stares outside. “It’s not tangled,” he said, “and that’s what’s wrong.” And I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but I’m teaching him the words, the motions, because you don’t need anything, all you need is the mark. The memory arrives in tatters, through the trauma that road blocked my brain twenty years ago and never let go until now. 𒀭 My guilt leaves me like a swan taking flight. “It was you,” I say, and my chest feels like it’s helium. Like I’ll float right out of the hospital, away from everything that’s ever weighed down my soul. “You tried to get Inanna to fix your pathetic love life, and something went wrong, and now we’re all gonna die here. Did you do it again?” I’ve never talked to Lance like this before. He stands up to full height and he’s scary looking, I think, all that muscle buried under a mountain of terrible self-esteem. I start looking for weapons, but this is a hospital. Lance is coming towards me. Outside the wails of the possessed are waxing, ear splitting screams I can hear like the threshold separating us doesn’t exist. No protection. His hands are moving to my throat. I back up, but there’s nowhere to go, horror everywhere. All the people who’ve ever died in here, I think, it’s all the same, no matter how it happens. Whether it’s demons or your own brother it’s all over the same way. Then his hands are clasping my shoulders and he’s saying he never, he understood, he understood it was all for real, that in the end he wanted it to be different. Liar, I try to spit into his eyes, his eyes again, they’re wide, there’s nothing in them but love. And Vi explains, while I’m pushing him away, him holding me, that Lance always disgusted her. “God,” she said, “there’s something wrong with someone who just lets himself be defeated like that. Who everyone laughs at, who spends so much time drowning in his misery that he can’t even stand upright on land.” Lance turns to her. I can’t see his eyes anymore. “She’s visited me in my dreams,” she says. “I can’t really put it together that well, but it’s something about how the world is overpopulated, how it was even then. How she thinks sex should be the opposite of creation now. Everyone gets with each other and then they all kill each other once the endorphins have them good and messed up. Everyone kills and I was right there with them, stabbing and stabbing while you two cowered under the bunks, and then I threw the knife away and came in covered in blood and fell down and we all woke up in Triage. Wondering what happened, but I knew the whole time. I did it for you, Lance, and you probably didn’t even get any.” “I don’t remember,” Lance says, and he’s going for her, strangling her. Pressing her on the linoleum. And I’m hurling myself onto him, but I can’t figure out if I’m pulling him off, or just hugging him, the love we all had for each other that we could never channel the right way. The Havlin kids, sole survivors of Camp Clearwater, killing each other in Triage. I kiss Lance’s ear. “We have to get out of here,” I say, and Lance nods, and pulls himself off, and his body, his body is blocking her, and I can’t tell if she’s moving. I’m clinging to Lance now, and he’s pulling me with him, as he goes over the couch and slams into the doors, and they’re breaking into fragments, and somewhere, beyond the demons, is a place for us, if we can only reach it.
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May 16, 2016 07:27
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:39 |
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i vote muffin cuz the way the information is given, all tripped out and displaced and fragmented, makes me want to know more instead of like the usual result when ppl try that which is just confusing annoyance/annoyed confusion. both are good tho.
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May 22, 2016 05:57
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dmboogie posted:everything is terrible and not going to get better anytime soon truth in
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May 24, 2016 00:27
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in for the megabrawl too there isnt a thing anyone can tell me
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May 24, 2016 03:44
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my insult is that everyone but me is gay and im only like half gay
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May 24, 2016 03:46
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its ok i mentally substituted
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May 24, 2016 04:17
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POST
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May 25, 2016 04:26
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theres a good way to prove youre better than all of us and its called going in this week
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May 25, 2016 19:48
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Chili posted:Ready to write, weeaboos! effective burn
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May 27, 2016 16:15
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I Have Evolved My Progeny As It Pleased Me 973 words I picture my hands strangling Protocol Director Neyl before he can breathe out the next words. My knuckles bone white. An end to the Neyl problem once and for all. Instead I stand there clutching my drink as he tells me that the funding’s been slashed. No, not slashed, obliterated. “Reality research is important, Neyl,” is what escapes my lips. I look for grounding. “It’s more important than the Fatestry, or any of that other stuff.” It’s true. And I had counted on him. It’s a protocol director’s job, pretty much, to take the priority shifts, internalize them, and secretly subdirect funding to get to us anyway. I called Neyl a friend when he reached it. Now I don’t even know him anymore. All the short-sightedness should stop with him, settle into his marrow, calcify there. But one look in his eyes and I can see he didn’t even try. “We need to focus on military efforts,” he says. “Comes from above. Not my decision.” And I consider hurling my drink in his face but instead I sip it, swish it in my mouth, and tell myself it tastes better than his screaming would feel. * We’re going to get atomized in thirty days. That’s the deadline we’ve given our rival nation-state Aras to disarm. But the scions of the Psychic Arm have predicted they won’t disarm. Why would they? They’re as strong as us. Instead, ironically, that’s when they’ll strike. I saw the head priestess of the Fatestry telling Minister Prime that. His face blanched so badly I thought they had exploded his brain. They would never do that, though. I dated a scion once. She said she didn’t need to explode anyone’s brain. She was happy just to see the future. The future’s a gift from heavenly bodies, and when they shine on you that’s all you need. When I asked what the future was like I expected a non-answer. I can’t tell you for cosmic reasons, you weren’t meant to know, or maybe a placeholder like, you’ll find two red crystal shards tomorrow and look suspiciously at everyone on the way to the wealth cavern. Instead she told me that the Fatestry was all messed up. We’d be vapourized inside of a year. The players at the top blew it somehow. We weren’t going to see the edges of the universe. We weren’t even going to see beyond the drowning pool we called Yatroth, pitch black and orbited by fragmented asteroids. I broke it off after that, always associated her with bad news. But that’s why I studied so hard, defended my thesis until it seemed bulletproof. Joined the Reality Researchers, cried when they renamed me. Everyone looks down on us because we don’t care about the Fatestry. But we can tell you why the Fatestry’s meaningless, and if you’ve got a soul, you’ll listen. * So what is reality, really? All my colleagues have theories. That’s what makes you a true Researcher, you fantasize. You fill in the pieces before there are pieces to fill in. I have one that I came up with while scattering my mother’s ashes. She believed in peace and love and hope. A flame in the dark type. Her last wish was for me to scatter her ashes from the terrax of my tetrablock cube. So she could fall on the streams of life that whorled through the capital, land on pawn and player alike. I watched the wind take her and composed a theory, like a poet might compose a poem or a psychic a foretelling. As a species, we call ourselves Biloxir, but I don’t think there’s any proof that’s what we actually are. I don’t think there’s even any proof that we’re alive, that we have souls, that there’s any meaningful destination we can ever reach. No matter how hard we try. I think we’re motes. I think we’re being programmed, or our reality is being simulated, or maybe the natural frequencies of the universe are duping us. I think we’re dust, we always were and we never became anything more. Every cycle of the asteroid fragments that refract us light from distant stars, I spend studying reality, only to see it crumble away in my hands. It entrances me, spills through my fingers, lands at my feet. Until in the end I look in myself and see nothing at all. Dust motes, drawn to each other, so we have someone to hear us shout that we’re something else. * I think it over as the cycles pass. See my chances of proving my theory evaporate. The gloom has been settling for days and now it enshrouds us. We don’t talk to each other. We just go to our cubes and stare at the fragments, try to process the glints of light that make it to us. My ex is waiting for me one night on my terrax. It’s invasive, I think, to use her scion abilities to find out where I live. I think about it further and realize that I don’t actually care. She hands me a half empty flask of the stuff that gives scions their power. “What do you see, when you look up there?” she says. I swig it. “The shreds of light’s last gasp to reach this awful planet.” “I think it’s a message,” she says. “It’s beautiful even if we can’t decode it.” In my brain, my mote’s fantasy, the scions’ drink, the deep illusion, reaches the empty places. I can see Neyl, waiting for the end like me. He’s alone on his terrax. In the background I hear the sounds of crying children. I see apathy in his eyes as they go unconsoled. I see him there, and I see a blinding light, a silhouette, disintegrated, to dust, to truth and vanishment. “It’s okay,” I say.
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May 29, 2016 20:31
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in
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May 31, 2016 00:41
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same
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May 31, 2016 02:34
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CANNIBAL GIRLS posted:Sebmojo, I hearby bequeath my Mojo rule to the first person who quotes this post. He or she may assign the flashrule to whomever they are feeling. i will give it to my honourable rival flerp
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May 31, 2016 03:46
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nvm
take the moon fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jun 1, 2016 |
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Jun 1, 2016 01:05
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Sitting Here posted:BONUS DEAL: Anyone who  flerp must use the word zaftig
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Jun 1, 2016 03:59
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Bad Seafood posted:You may also request a genre or anime-inspired flash rule from me, the King of Anime, directly. i will take one (1) anime flash rule ty
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Jun 3, 2016 03:52
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spectral crit: post week 200 shitposting edition ok so im going to try critting The Rain Beneath by Maugrim from week 199. this will be rough because im in stupid mode but mostly because this story owned and i really liked it. but it technically didn't win or hm so im going to try to explore why that didn't happen and hopefully i will have some constructive thoughts. ok so the first line sets up the story in an effective way. it's not really visceral, though, which ig is like the platonic ideal of a first line. also its the plot to that one asimov story in a sentence so it doesnt really capture how original the story is. but its a solid line that keeps me reading. the second para does something i do which is throw in some alien sci fi terms w/o explaining them. the diff is that this is done well while usually i funk it. but judging by my exp judges are primed to crit this technique so its dangerous. then the writing goes for a sort of economy between poetry and terse description. this is also nicely done and also characterizes the protag and his peers as like on the lookout for the lives of their fellow whatever these are. but the story then introduces a friend for the protag and doesnt give his name either. thats cool cuz i hate names but sometimes judges take issue. i kno its arbitrary i kno dude im so sorry. if you wanna get that hm maybe you should sell out a lil. you keep dropping little details about the society, like maybe it's a matriarchy or the moms are builders. it piques my curiosity but again the judges are like eh to this sometimes. like if you havent gotten a firm foothold they might not care. again you live by the sword die by the sword but i hate exposition too. ok so the section where they launch off i think i can crit. basically the sense i sort of got, and that i would have pushed harder, is the bold explorers searching for the new frontier kind of vibe. like its technically there but the language is grim. it shouldnt be optimistic exactly but it should def be hopeful. and you undercut it by explicitly saying stuff like "we are pioneers," i would go more poetic with that whole idea it could be rly powerful. stuff about mates which could be better explained cuz idk if hes like a ships mate or this is a bro love society. "Oh, the light was still caustic, it painted the rips in the canopy with fire, but I could see." i like this sentence and its when you hit this tone that the story rly works. it slows a little when they stop but the jagged rock imagery kind of carves out the part of yr brain that pays attn. you kind of know nothing goods in store for anyone but thats okay. we finally learn the protags name near the end. actually this is cool, i forgot about this. it's effective, like im like oh shoot i care about this. we lose his friend though, who's done nothing but complain, but in a weird way it makes it more tragic. if i was one of the brainless fops we call judges i mite say something sarcastic about this but i dont think id be onto anything. so the chick expospeaks that they got shot down in flames and the idea is dropped that heaven hates them. this is a good idea and is p satisfying thematically. like you have icarus only this icarus wanted to get away from a dying earth and couldnt go anywhere but up. its cool to think about and acts as like morphine to the part of yr brain that wanted more details about their world. it sounded interesting but its all gone now, in the past of yr reading memory and the past of existence. philosophically the idea that any of it was worth anything is gone too. but id say that maybe someone reading this would feel cheated that its not a conclusive ending. i dont think you should go for like a fully complete ending because i like the idea that you never see firsthand what the angels are capable of. BUT if you think you could pull it off (going by the prose of the story you could) it might make for a pretty compelling final moment. yr choice. so ultimately this story was super ambitious and when you go for such specific chords it sometimes doesnt fully work for ppl. but i liked this a lot and itll stay w me for a bit. pls dont take away my 25 wds this was a constructive post thx
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Jun 4, 2016 07:33
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quote:Man agonizes over his _______ Artemis 1025 words The cats are getting bolder. One is sitting on Mr. Yasushi's head as he explains ancient tribal rituals. "Moon phases," he says, then tries to get it off. His eyes water as its claws dig into his scalp. “Helped tribes know when to harvest and when to hunt," he finishes. The cat is a calico blend of creamy hazel and snow white. Its eyes are twin slivers of darkness and I look away. But they burn into my eyelids and I still feel them as class is dismissed. I get out of there with my backpack which seems heavier than usual. 🌕 The worst thing about the cats is hearing Kita's theories. She finds me while I'm trying to lure out the black and mangy looking cat in my pack. He doesn't look like he's going anywhere. "The cats get stronger by sacrificing humans," Kita says. "I've been looking into this." "Right," I say. I'm using the tuna and lettuce sandwich mom packed to get the cat out. It’s the only lunch I have, but I need to get to my books. Finals are coming up soon. "You won't get anywhere," Kita says. "The cats are at an apex point. They're determined to keep their power." The cat lunges. I yank my hand away but I'm too late. It's got the meat of the sandwich and I'm left with two torn up slices of bread. It’s munching away. "You need to lose weight anyway," Kita says. “Meet me at the library after the final period. If you want to pass finals, that is." 🌕 A cat is two desks down in final period. It’s curled up in the seat. No one dares to approach it. I do my best to pay attention but I keep getting distracted by my backpack, which is wiggling around on the floor like a caterpillar. I keep having to grab the straps and pull it to me, sounding a yowling noise that makes me pray for my books. I bite my tongue to keep from hyperventilating as never to be repeated algebraics zoom past me at lightspeed. In the library I forget my normal social restraints and shake Kita by the blazer. “We have to stop this!” I say. There’s a sudden searing pain in my back and I lose my balance, hitting the carpet with a thud. I’m being attacked with a thousand cuts and I slide out of the straps, lying on the floor, breathing hard as the yowls slowly simmer to a stop. “This is a change,” Kita says, grinning. “Normally you’re too obsessed with school to have cool adventures. What’s up with that, anyway? Are you happy just being a cog in our society?” “It’s hopeless,” I say, staring at the ceiling tiles. “If I’m gonna be a cog I want to be a comfy one.” I know that she’s waiting, symbolically, for me to pick myself up. But I can’t. There are just too many complications in my life. I don’t want to fight them anymore. Finally she sighs and reaches out her hand. It’s warm and gives me the energy I need to stand. “Sakai,” she says. “You need to face your problems head on. Never look back.” I give her a look I hope expresses determination. “Right,” she says. “Now look. I’ve been compiling notes on disappearances from the city. Notice anything?” I look at the notebook she’s holding out. A simple notebook, with some sort of satin sash marking her place. I try to focus on the names and dates. “It looks,” I say, “like we’re steadily losing people. That’s weird.” “Not just that,” she says. “It happens when the moon changes. Look.” Next to every date is a squiggle. It dawns on me that they’re all moons. A moon with lines representing a glow. A moon with a sickle in front of it. And, in front of the last entry, a moon that looks like it’s drenched in blood. That moon is next to today’s date. In place of a name, there’s just a series of question marks. “The cat power ritual is happening under the blood moon tonight,” Kita says. “We need to stop it.” 🌕 We’re hiding in bushes near the bridge in the shady part of the city. After my backpack stopped making noises I got the courage to put it back on. I’ve been being careful not to smack it into anything but it still feels like a bomb about to go off. It was easy to find the sacrificial altar by paying attention to cat migration patterns. You wouldn’t know if you didn’t look, but they’re all steadily wandering in one direction. I see a silhouette under the arch of the bridge, on the far side. I squint a little to make it out in the moonlight. It’s Mr. Yasushi. The cat on his head seems to be controlling his movements with its claws. He’s making muffled noises and he has to come more into the light for me to tell that he’s being gagged with its tail. It’s horrifying, I think, to see someone controlled like that. “Now!” Kita shouts, and she charges out with her water gun. Cats hate water. “We need to stop the control cat!” I freeze. The blood moon is raining doubt on me. Washing me away. I can see cats start to swarm Kita. I can never do anything by myself. Kita is shouting in pain and anger. Then I’m moving. It’s mathematical. Algebraic triangulation. I can read the angles like a book. See a cat’s lunge trajectory. Leap into the air and step off it for a boost. Plant a perfect stream of ice water square on the control cat’s forehead. Stick the landing. The cat falls off. Mr. Yasushi runs away screaming. All around us, cats are flopping to the ground. The shadows are lengthening, covering us again. My pack mews gently. “You can probably get your books now,” Kita says. She’s war-torn, but losing her scratches and clothing rips in the dying light. She’s more than human. Some long worshipped spirit of adventure. “No rush,” I say.
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Jun 6, 2016 05:52
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im critting Benthos by Benny Profane. dude i miss yr old av. this wont really be a progressive type crit since i read it already and liked it and its more something washing over you than a narrative. i rly liked your prose. sometimes you dont rly notice how good prose is until you realize youre so totally immersed in a scene you feel like youre drowning too. the words are undeniably good, but they dont cudgel you over the head with how good they are, which is how words should be. i think anime animals that just wander around asking questions about human life are a thing. i can picture the cate just walking around p vividly. i almost know the inflections; i think ive heard them before, and none of the words get in the way so i can hear them better. i think youre hamstrung by the main theme of the week. like the potatoes dont really tie in thematically. after he almost dies he eats french fries but that doesnt like, i mean im not totally on board. like youre not quite there but i wanna blame the prompt not you cuz the writing is so good. maybe if you were gonna sub this or someth dont make the potatoes such a central idea. "I wonder how many people waste their last moments of life wondering if they are dying." makes u think (unironically) i think theres a metaphor here about how his girlfriend is oblivious to how much hes suffering but hands him a french fry anyway. tbh french fries are tiny and not very satisfying by themself. then the protag starts to shrink which is fanciful and doesnt rly break the tone that much. i like the last sentence a lot, the inverse repetition. this is a good read, i mean its vignette-y but thats obvsly intentional. i left the story with a sort of dreamy melancholic feeling which is not a bad way to feel when a storys over. as like my general crit conclusion thing id focus less on stuff that is too out of place thematically and try to maintain that consistency of nice words that dont get in the way of my visualization. hope thats helpful take the moon fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 23:18
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round one: vs Maugrim just another rc 992 words As Shon watches, people become angels. Translucent wings unfold from their backs like swans taking flight. They soak and burst in the sun’s light, showering everything with knives of radiance. Their skin is patterned with whorls and slashes of dancing colour now, like the sun filtered through a kaleidoscope. It’s been half an hour since they dosed. He looks at Elias. Elias looks the same. He catches Shon looking at him and gives him a rueful look. “People on the drug don’t change. I don’t know how that works. Kind of unscientific, right?” He hands Shon the water bottle. Shon takes it. It’s hot on the boardwalk. He turns back to the metamorphosis. It’s the people walking together that look the best. Where the wings cross each other they explode into beams and waves of light that hit his eyes like he’s awake in heaven. He can’t make out details, now, just prismatic shapes and silhouettes. The people are just lights, lights with skin, and the skin is just paper. “We need to make it to the pier,” Elias says. “Just a second,” Shon says. “I want to stop and look.” “The pier,” Elias says again, and pulls Shon forward. He doesn’t fight it; he wants to, and doesn’t want to, and doesn’t have the energy. It takes all of him just to keep watching the angels. There angels are walking a furred lower life form. There one is hula hooping, a halo of red light around her waist. There one is taking a drink from a tall can. What do angels drink? Light? Fire? He can’t see. But he swears the angel’s glowing even more, like he’s left the material behind in the can’s emptiness. He checks his own skin. He’s still normal, like Elias. Despair, but after short moments he’d rather stare at angels than his own pallid flesh and he looks up again. They’re grouping, talking to each other. In clusters they almost lose their shape completely. It’s like they’re melding with each other, like angels skip awkward groping and move straight to fusing their totalities. Streaming together they’re so beautiful that it takes Shon time to register that they’re talking. Their voices blur together in the same way their bodies do. They don’t sound remotely human. They sound like if someone dunked a scorching frying pan into a mountain river. Like steam hissing and rising, but more like smoke trying to make it to God. The wind is diffusing it, setting it against each other, pulling in all directions. But the smoke is clinging to the breaths and drafts and spirals and climbs and never lets go. And there’s a buzz, too, a crackle, high notes, his ear, crashing through until it reaches his brain, drowning out everything. Elias’ lips are moving but Shon can’t make him out. It’s just heat and static now. Elias stops trying but keeps guiding him forward, step by step on the boardwalk. Then Shon hits separation in the boards and goes over. He doesn’t pay attention to his fall. He hits the ground, skidding, his forearms burning on the splintered wood. The dirty boards fill his field of vision and he has to get away. He gets to his knees, looks back up at the angels, and that’s when he sees it. They’re all watching. He can’t look them in the eyes. Whenever he strays in that direction he starts to feel something cloying, something honeyed, but there’s pain underneath. The sun is beating down. They’re gesturing, waving arms in strange geometric patterns, like divine language. But the limbs end up pointed at him, and his heart feels like it’s submerged in cold water. I’m not like them, he thinks. I’m not pure. I know sin. I’m still of this earth, my skin and bones are of the earth’s clay. My muscles move me to fear, to death, closer each day to stillness. Elias is helping him up. The angels begin to look away. They have themselves, he thinks, to look at; I stand out only because I’m tainted. Elias is saying something. The horizon has opened up. The sea is before them. It’s unchanged by the drug but still vast, barely fitting into the real. It’s at the end of the pier which is sprinkled with angels, moving slowly, the ones that are moving at all. Silence has fallen. “We should try to find more angels,” Shon says. “No,” Elias says. “We’re about to come down.” The angels are all staring out to sea. The very end of the pier is empty save for one, whose wings move back and forth rhythmically. Elias guides Shon down until the two of them are sitting on the edge, their feet swaying above their severed reflections. “Keep staring out,” Elias says. “You don’t want to see angels turn back into people.” He spits, a long thread leaving his mouth, spooling into the ocean. Shon wants to turn back. One final look. But something in him is caught by Elias’ voice. Thermals catching smoke. So he keeps watching, seeing the birds wing out over the sea, small and fragile. They don’t stay high for long. He turns to Elias. “What’s this called?”. “It doesn’t matter,” Elias says. “It’s just another R.C.” “Of course it matters!” Shon says. He’s forgotten himself. The sea carries his voice away. “I need to know what it is, so I can do more.” Elias takes his shoulder. “I do this every day,” Elias says. “Long term users have short life-spans. Slow deaths. Blood filling my lungs. You get me?” He’s somber for a second, trying to breathe in the salted air. “I’m weak,” he says. “Everyday because I forget. You can’t be like me. You can’t forget. People are angels.” Elias exists, Shon thinks, looking at him. Tragic. Beautiful, even. Dying, like we all die. Even angels. But search engines exist too. Maybe I have another high in me.
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Jun 9, 2016 08:09
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Jun 12, 2016 06:11
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i saw this in my nightmares and it wasnt consensual 
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Jun 13, 2016 19:18
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on a mission from god f r o s t e d f l a k e s
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Jun 14, 2016 04:21
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casualty of the invisible war
take the moon fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jun 14, 2016 |
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Jun 14, 2016 06:47
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its hella stupid to make in posts for a book club but this thread is already a wasteland so ok
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Jun 16, 2016 01:36
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THUNDERDOME CCIII : MYSTERY SOLVING TEENS ok so the theme for this week ive decided is teen adventure. these books got big in the 1920s and 30s because nobody wanted to really think about what they just did to germany. its suburban america and teens need stories to inspire them to ask out betsy to the prom already. im going to quickly breakdown relevant subgenres, all of which feature teens having adventures. the most famous is mystery stories. examples would include the hardy boys and nancy drew. kids are usually related to law enforcement figures somehow so they have resources to call on when poo poo gets real. usually tho they do the hard part themselves. bad guys are criminals who break laws to make fast cash. teens can also be brilliant inventors. tom swift is an example of this. usually any adventure they have is related to the pursuit of knowledge and discovery. usually they use their own inventions to outwit the bad guys, who are usually foreign powers. teens can play sports. this is fairly str8forward. bad guys are the opposing team, which usually enjoys cheating. or there is some sort of conspiracy to rig these important high school games to also make fast cash. teens can also be cowboys. in 20s/30s america cowboys were still real. usually these teens help out on their parents ranch. bad guys are usually rustlers. at this point natives are good guys and one will be hanging around to be the cowboy teens pal maybe. there are other genres probably which idk anything about specifically but i hope that breakdown helps out anyone who doesnt know that teens can do things. here are some quick ground rules: no death. the cool thing about being a teen is that you dont have to worry about death for a while. no one dies, not teens, not bad guys, not anyone. no profanity. yeah. no sex. relationships are sweet and wholesome and percentage wise mostly (!) platonic. laws are good. this is important. laws are there for a reason and if someone breaks them its a bad thing. breaking laws makes you evil and i cant stress this enough. break any of those important rules and youre dqed. ok i think thats it. signups end friday june 24 at midnite est. the deadline is sunday june 26 at midnite est. i picked the word count by opening my copy of hardy boys #2 the house on the cliff and seeing how long it was. its 180 pages so you all get up to 1800 words lol im gonna kill my self. if you ask for a flash i start grabbing books at random and assigning obscure macguffins. these are the new editions which have flashlights in the designs so that seems funny. this nets you a neat 200 words to make it 2000 words in total. i will see how i feel about reading extra td words so take yr chances. potential judges hmu everyone else sign up pls judges me Ironic Twist Quid Pro Quid signups flerp Carl Killer Miller (flash: japanese silk) Thranguy (flash: a dinosaur bone) anime was right Tyrannosaurus Fuubi (flash: a sacred stone with strange carvings) Chairchucker (flash: a destroyed sign that looks like it says something but when it was intact it said something else) Black Griffon (flash: a black spaceship) skwidmonster Mr. Gentleman Hammer Bro.  attnquote:it can be set at any time take the moon fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 06:30
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Carl Killer Miller posted:I'm in. Give me a flash rule if you wouldn't mind. I'm not going to torture you with 2000 words. yr flash is japanese silk
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Jun 21, 2016 06:34
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Thranguy posted:In and I'll take a flash rule too. yr flash is a dinosaur bone
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Jun 21, 2016 07:09
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Fuubi posted:Since I've been doing so well so far, I'm in! Give me a flash rule! yr flash is a sacred stone with strange carvings Chairchucker posted:In and flash me. you get a destroyed sign that looks like it says something but when it was intact it said something else Black Griffon posted:I'm in and also give me a flash because I want you to die. i want you to die too yr flash is a black spaceship take the moon fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 21, 2016 19:03
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Blue Wher posted:I'm in, because if I keep ramming my head against the dome, eventually I'll write a story! ghost crow posted:In with a
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Jun 21, 2016 23:48
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signups are now locked you guys
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Jun 25, 2016 20:42
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truly the path of the shinobi is fraught w peril
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Jun 25, 2016 20:57
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subs are now closed i cant wait to read all yr stories 
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Jun 27, 2016 05:02
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idk but tyrannosaurus gets an extension prolly anyone else does if they pm me a good reason i did want to read things gl goons
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Jun 27, 2016 05:23
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black griffon is in too if all the stories are good ill make it rain hms 
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Jun 27, 2016 07:47
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going 2 sleep gn td
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Jun 27, 2016 09:22
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judge post ok ill do this quick cuz phones almost dead. not a bad week gj goons i enjoyed yr words penetrating my oculars no dms most stories were ok. the loser is flerp w dreams high up above. this was super short, barely a story and not rly on prompt. sry dude. candybrain by hammer bros gets a hm. not perfectly written but a neat subversive idea that held my interest the winner is two brothers and a tiger named buddha by tyrannosaurus. good chars and arcs and prose that was better than the other stuff this week the king of the jurassic is now the king of td. please use yr tiny arms to type a prompt now
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Jun 28, 2016 03:39
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im calling out flerp because yr actually p good prose goes to waste on stories about dogs and other breezy calorie lite stuff that hit w the impact of someone slowly whooshing air in front of yr face
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Jun 28, 2016 19:16
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/ approx 1700 words for flerp St. Joan Captain Rex Flopears dreams of clouds breaking over a ruby red sun. Tinged light falls on a girl standing alone on a battlefield. Bodies are strewn around her, sometimes stacked. They’re not breathing, like they forgot how. Tattered flags wave and warp in a desolate wind. His dream soul is behind her at ground level. Dark shadows mass on the horizon. An army, or a monster maybe, of murk or fog, black as space. The clouds fissure, yawing out blood red, and a wail klaxxons out, God the inter-reality energy force dying screaming over his children. The universe itself is crashing, sun splitting, everything disintegrating, particles that explode into more particles and then he’s surf, crashing against the beach of waking life. Fetch He’s on the Fetch, fifty starblips into Theta Quadrant. Code Gray. Blaring alarms. Mr. Fuzzynose yapping no nonsensically over his bedside comm. The Watership has found them. Mr. Fuzzynose greets him on the bridge with a crisp noserub. “Captain, their weapon signatures are active, but they’re bouncing a comm-wave signal off us.” “Talk?” Flopears grits out. “After what they did to us?” “It may be prudent,” Fuzzynose says. “The Watership outclasses us totally, weapons and shields.” The whole bridge crew is watching him. Not a single tail wags. “Onscreen,” he says. The mermaid hangs suspended in water like a wire doll. Bubbles rush up past her, lifting sun bleached hair. Some collide against her scales, splashing them with a filmy vapour that’s gone as soon as it mists out. Gone but not forgotten to Rex Flopears as he tries to process the enemy. “Am I addressing Captain Flopears?” the mermaid says. “My name is Mara. We have records of the crew of the Fetch that left Chewia but we don’t know if you’re all still alive.” “We didn’t leave,” he says. “We escaped.” “Right,” she says. “Captain for five dog-years,” he says. “Five point seven percent casualties.” He flops his ears back, breathes out heavily. “Captain Flopears,” she says. “Beam aboard or we’ll scuttle the Fetch. Our shields have been set to let teleporter particles permeate through. You have three hours. Goodbye.” The transmission ends, the viewscreen a void. Like the Watership’s vanished, but that would be too easy. As he tries to figure out what to do, he hears whines, stray ones at first, but soon the bridge is a susurrus of shivering, scared dogs, a tone of fear corroding the stale bridge air. Dog Tired “It’s a hazard suit,” says Chief Engineer Stripeypaw. “We fitted it with aquatic attachments but it’s, y’know, multipurpose. Not especially made for this.” “They’ll kill me anyway,” Flopears says. They’ve lugged the suit onto the teleporter pad. It clanked the whole way, cardboard box shade padding, plated in chrome. Big plate over the helmet, transparent aluminum. He sees himself in it. Some gray fur. It’s space, he thinks. On Chewia, I was young. He clambers into the suit. It’s stiff, like his favourite bone. “You’re in charge,” he tells Mr. Fuzzynose, who cocks an eyebrow. Then he pulls his helmet on and the transporter room is filtered by small streaks, like comets. Lines of worry on his friends’ faces. As the light starts to rip through his cells he can hear the thoughts of the whole Fetch. The teleporter has pulled him to dream space, where thoughts and dreams swim unstuck from the matter of flesh. It’s cold out here, far from home, they’re thinking. It gets colder still, he thinks back, and then he’s gone. Joan of Arc Exploded out of space and time, waved out by the wash of feeling. That’s the only way dog scientists could figure it out. Always dreaming while other species pushed. It caught up to them. He’s back on the battlefield. Sun still bleeding through heavy clouds. She’s a statue. The shadows have shapes now, heads and things that point, and they blot out the horizon like thick brush strokes on the low line. Getting closer. A creeping hell. His dream soul floats closer, swirls around, so he can see her face. Stringy hair drapes past her eyes, clings to her cheeks. Her nose is small and bridged. She’s armoured, and in front of her grips a sword with both hands, blade pointed to earth. “I feel you,” she says. The wind crosses hair over her face. “Say something.” You’ll die, he thinks. “They took my home,” she says. “Took everyone.” Her eyes glint. “When someone takes something from you, you take something from them. You make sure it’s something they need and you rip it out with your teeth.” She smiles. “You worry it.” They are dark, spiked. Helmets cast shadows over their faces. They stamp their feet on stone and bone. Then he’s torn away, the girl falling away from him as he climbs. Until the tableau is a painting, the artist throwing more and more black on it, trying to get rid of the white space between his vision of entropy and the solitary fleck of paint he began with. He sees this and then the clouds wrap around him and it’s all gray, a charcoal blur and the waves wash him away until he finds himself, choking and coughing, inside the Watership, on the sanded seabed, flecked with rocks. Watership He moves his arm, tries to whoosh it in front of his face. It takes forever and by the time it’s crossed the viewplate it’s not even exciting anymore. He was alone, but Mara is swimming in now, brushing aside kelp. Her scales rainbow in light from anglerfish that float in and out of the room, drifting, lazy. “Follow me,” she says. He does. One paw ahead of the other, pushing each leg forward and then letting it sink to the floor, tethering him again. More fish are swimming in front of him. They all look dazed. He’s exhausted already. She swims a handful of meters, covering them in seconds, waits for him to catch up. Then swims further. They’re moving through corridors of metal, dark and oblique. A slight shine that catches the fish moving by, like they’re traced by white chalk. In the wavering light of the anglerfish Mara seems to change shape, becoming at turns more slender, more zaftig. Fuller, more hollow. Finally he’s clanked his way into her quarters. There’s nothing that marks this room as any different from the one he transported to, except coral arranged sparsely in the corners. Not garish, just a pale pink. He stands unsure. He has shielding, but he can barely move. If she has any kind of weapon she can breach the suit in seconds. Then he hears her voice in his head, concrete as his suit, rushing but harsh, like wind searching through cracks. Talking in dream thoughts is the only way we’ll get through to each other. He stiffens. Feels something hard and cold move through him. You flooded our planet, he thinks, almost not even believing it. Drowned everyone. Our planet overheated, she thinks. Boiled over. We had to. Has his heart stopped? Why did you hunt us? he thinks. Wasn’t it enough? Mara is swimming in slow circles around him, tail flickering. You can do more with dream space than teleport, he hears. You can pick through worlds. Shape them. Make life if you want. Do you want to? With you? Though she can't hear it, he growls, long and deep, and the echo off his helmet scares him, anger all around. You’ve seen her, haven't you? Joan? What did she tell you? That when someone hurts you, you hurt them back, he thinks at her. She’s whipping ribbons of bubbles all around her, chasing light fractaling off rippling skin. The deep dark blue, rozen space above and below. Joan saw God in herself. Her God was ending. I like cycles. Like currents and waves. She descends. Thumps the seabed with her tail. Sand and grit plume out in the water like an open rose. Do you? As he watches, tendrils of seaweed and brine snake up around her tail, wrap tight. She gasps. They’re pulling her into the cloud of spreading dust. Knotting and roping over her gills, the slits vanishing like stars going out. Flopear sets his face in stone. Her skin starts to pop. Vapours underneath boiling and bursting. Her head tilts back and she moans and her pupils shrink to dots. God dying all over again. She floats above the seabed, waving, a drowned paper doll. Or, he hears, we can make something new, and none of this matters. His dream soul far cast, the entity once called Rex Flopears feels, despite himself, what he once called his tail start to wag, and Mara thrum in response. Doggo The sun shines brightly over 26 Peachtree Lane, a shale house with a thatched roof and fresh cut grass. Joshua Shefield stands outside the front door, hairs on the back of his neck raised, feeling the heat on his forehead through his tousle of dark hair. The gray minivan pulls into the lot. He tenses. Already he can see it, something straining against the glass of the middle door. It slides open, thunking against the van side. A tangled mess of fur bounds out, his mom pulled out of the seat trying in vain to hold it back. His dad is outside the driver's side, head visible over the hood, shaking back and forth in amusement. The beast is on him in seconds. Vision gone, fur tickling, bristling his nose, and spit run up and down his cheeks. Trying to wipe his face off. He’s laughing. Gentle tug on his chin. More spit. A flood. Finally he just has to see and wrestles the dog back. Gets it in front of him. It’s a matted looking thing with big, floppy ears. Its eyes are oceans.
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Jul 6, 2016 20:36
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