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I'd like to judge this week.
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 12:12 |
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Jan 29, 2020 04:33
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Save Your Breath 1,336 words With every twitch of Abbas's diaphragm, a harsh desert wind blew across the burning tar fields of his lungs. He could imagine his cells, his alveoli, straining, nearly bursting at the heat. Shallow breaths meant less pain but more breaths meant more pain. An experimental deep pull scratched his lungs against the iron lattice wrapped around them, through them. The blazing ache made him squeeze tight, like a towel wrung dry, hoarse coughs filling the air for as long as he could push air out. Tears streamed from his face; they felt hot enough to evaporate right off. Abbas balled his hands and tried to stop coughing, control something about his body, but the pain shifted up to his brain and spots blossomed in his eyes like burning filmstrips. Eyes closed. Imagined himself on a burning shuttle screaming back down to Earth. He could make it if he tried. He could let sleep take him and give him enough relief to get back to his next shift. Only three more launches until— The smooth glide and click of the front door opening. "I'm home," his roommate said. Eyes open. Jerome wasn't supposed to be home this late. Early? What time was it? Had Abbas spent the whole night writhing and sleepless with no recovery in sight? Fresh tears came to him. He couldn't show up to work like this. His boss had enough of an eye on him as it was. Another series of loud, whooping coughs came out of him before he could stop them. The buzzard sound drew footsteps in return, then an alarmed cry. "Dude!" Jerome scurried around as Abbas tenderized his throat, returned with water. Abbas could tell without seeing because of the splash some made when it hit the floor. Typical. He'd have to clean that up before it stained something. "OK, man, open wide. I got two pills of your stuff and two Advil," Jerome said. Through blurry vision Abbas saw the glass in one hand and pills in the other. He took as big a gulp as he could manage, sending a chill wave through his ribs and into his gut. His fingers hunted for two small blobs of color in Jerome's palm, feeling for Advil, and he swallowed them both with his next sip. Cup affixed to lips, he chugged until Jerome forced the steroids between his lips. "Dude, take your poo poo!" Jerome said. Abbas pushed his tongue against Jerome's fingers, trying to expel the medicine, but one errant jerk caught a pill on a tooth and split it open, spreading the taste of paint thinner through his mouth. What a waste. Dozens of dollars down the toilet. He dry swallowed and took the rest of the water to chase it down. The plan was ruined. Spiraling thoughts of what he'd do without his last pills lulled him to sleep. ----- He woke up to the scent of stale sweat, the moisture of it squishing through his blankets and back onto his skin. With a lurch he propped himself on an elbow. Jerome tilted a chair back with feet on his desk, a laptop balanced on his knees. "Ey, don't worry, bro, I just called you in sick," Jerome said. He turned to face Abbas and swiveled his chair further off-balance. "Your boss said you can come in Saturday to make up your shift. That work for you?" "No," Abbas croaked. "You had no right to do that." "Come on! Your phone was ringing. You were out cold. He was asking for you. What else was I supposed to do?" Abbas glared and sank back into bed. Minutes passed. "Why didn't you tell me it was getting this bad?" Jerome asked. With the first inside him reduced, Abbas took another strong breath. The lattice scratched him, but no maelstrom followed. "Why bother?" he said. "I mean, I didn't see what you could do about it." Jerome turned the chair around to face Abbas's bed. "I dunno, try me. Why you been acting like this? Is this—" He reached for the bottle of steroids and shook it, making two lone pills rattle like beans in a salad bowl. "—not doing it anymore?" Now he cared? "Not covered anymore," said Abbas. "Had to make 'em last. Could have gone a week without—" He held his hand to his mouth and coughed once, twice. "Gotta go longer now. Until payday." "Goddamn, I thought you worked at an upscale restaurant or something!" Jerome said. "What, they can't spring for worker's comp or whatever?" "Can't complain," Abbas said, turning over. He hoped Jerome could infer why not. "Moving on soon. Resume's ready." "Look, fam, if it's money that you need, I know a guy," said Jerome. "Real generous, can't wait to get rid of it. 'Specially since y'all need it more than he does." Another few coughs. "And you don't?" Jerome scowled and put his hands on his knees. "Hey, man. I know things ain't been tight between us lately, but that wasn't cool. It's been months since I was broke." Abbas flared his nostrils. After the first year they roomed together, it had been a long string of gently caress-ups on Jerome's part. Overflowing garbage. Dishes piled up or loaded wrong. Using Abbas's cookware like it was his. Dirty laundry everywhere. Lost and unpaid bills. They came so close to being evicted. Abbas got tired of hearing so many worthless apologies. "Not cool," he repeated. "Tired of talking." "Yeah, I figured," said Jerome. He moved to rest his feet on the side of Abbas's bed, then lowered it again. He had that much tact. "Me too. I got tired of you looking at me like I stepped in something. Figured I'd just stay outta your way. 'S why I got the night shift, y'know?" Silence reigned for minutes on end. Abbas tried to drift off again, waited for the sound of Jerome typing on his laptop again. He thought it'd only be a matter of time until Jerome got bored of him again. No such sound. Abbas pushed his pillow aside to check, and met Jerome's eyes. "You need anything?" Jerome asked. "More water? I should get more water. No, OJ. Cough drops, too." He got up off his chair and went to the door, then looked back. "Anything else?" Abbas shook his head. "Th-thanks. Jerome smiled. "No problem!" ----- The day after, Jerome got home, and Abbas got ready. He'd showered, shaved and dressed, and his lungs felt free enough that he could work. Not healthy, but better than he'd felt for a week. He sighed and looked at Jerome. "I hate to ask, but could you change my sheets while I'm gone? I don't want to sleep in sweat again." "Yeah, sure," Jerome said with a shrug. As Jerome turned away, Abbas put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure? I don't want you to forget or blow me off or make a promise you can't keep again. Not for this and not for borrowing money." Jerome nodded. "Yeah, definitely! I'll do the sheets before bed and talk to the guy tomorrow." He frowned and looked away. "Sorry I couldn't pick you up." Abbas remembered the squish of his socks and the wet dirt he had to scrape out of his shoes. He remembered the hard plastic benches at the train station that made his back ache before he decided to walk. "I never asked, why couldn't you pick me up?" "Family emergency after you texted. Sorry. Why didn't you call earlier?" "You weren't my first choice, because of... everything else. I had a couple of other options and they couldn't come either." "Did you give them a hard time, too?" Abbas pursed his lips. "Not as much, no. Tell you what. Let's just help each other out and we won't have to act snippy with each other anymore." Jerome pulled Abbas's hand in to shake it. "That's all I wanted to hear, man. Good luck out there."
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Feb 3, 2020 01:15
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In, flash
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Mar 19, 2020 03:41
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The Garden of Ephemeral Delights 1,212 words Lord Tydus Grey, Master of Jussar Academy and the Isle of Redoubt, stood on the other side of 9-Mei's door. Through the inset window, she saw him stand up straight and stare back at her, though the window was opaque from the outside. He looked like a stature hewn from black marble and bedecked in glossy linen. After a few seconds, he added a soft smile to his face, a forgotten adjustment to his otherwise impeccable grooming. Little else about him looked soft; his appearance at the door would intimidate most people on the other side, even if they didn't know him by reputation. 9-Mei chittered and stretched her arms, sleep still fading from her brain as she opened the door. "Good morning, Tydus. Is there an experiment that needs my attention?" For the last few days, she'd spent her day in the biochemistry ward, leaving only to eat and sleep while she categorized more information scouts brought in from the far reaches and assisting whichever students came her way. It had begun to affect her sleep schedule. "No, you finished the last such assignment last night." Tydus replied in a level voice. "As always, you've done well, though in the future I would advise taking a more leisurely pace unless the situation is urgent. Other faculty have questioned me about your absence from the public life." "Oh." 9-Mei's antennae drooped. "I didn't mean to worry them." Tydus reached for her shoulder with only a moment's hesitation. "I know you didn't. You get strength from time alone, as I do. In fact, that's the reason I visited." He left her room and beckoned her out, looking her in the eyes with one of his friendlier looks. In the light of the rising sun, the Academy corridors less crowded than usual. Nearly everybody they met stopped and made room for Tydus and 9-Mei to pass, the one exception being a first-year salamander, yanked aside by senior fellows before he could get too close. After crossing the second bridge, Tydus arrived at a mahogany door and pulled from his robe an iron key wrought to resemble an amalgam of bolete, cordyceps, mold and stag beetle pincers, among other things. The sight of it made 9-Mei spread her mandibles in excitement. "It's beautiful." He nodded and fit the key into a lock. "It's yours, as is this room and all of its contents." When he pushed the door open and a bloom of phosphorescent light hit 9-Mei's eyes, she staggered and took a few clumsy steps inside. Lit by a rocky ceiling, a small forest of low-light plants, fungi, and lesser insects lined a circular path leading to the back. She skipped down one side, gasping at a shimmering swarm of nacreflies to the left, an intricate pattern of triskmorelion to the right. Bolete and mycoli clung to the walls and the sturdier plants that formed pillars and macabre hedges, in formations she knew would change from day to day as old specimens died and new ones replaced them. Coming upon a gap on the center wall, she saw an alcove with stone toadstool in the center, made for bipeds to sit on. Excitement flashed across her face as she rubbed her forearms together, producing a sound like a violin bow. The mossy floor muted Tydus's footsteps behind her. "It seems that I guessed correctly," he said playfully. 9-Mei embraced him tightly, burying her face in his sturdy chest. "It's wonderful! More beautiful than I could imagine!" She looked up at him, beads of tears still clinging to her faceplates. "How did you know?" Tydus smiled, more comfortably this time, and took a seat on the far side of the toadstool. "In short, because I know you, Mei. Your priesthood may be over, but you still value the tenets, don't you?" She nodded. "There is nothing more sacred than life-from-death." It was true when she found his egg, pulling at her soul in dreams and visions over many miles. She hatched him with the warmth of freshly-spilled blood, watched him tumble from his inky confines with a demonic rictus on his face and dim torchlight silhouetting his monochrome form. It was just as true now that he had regained his dignity and traded the wildfire of ferocity and suspicion for the furnace of resolve and dedication. "Once I had a direction," he continued, "it was a simple matter to review your notes and collect more from your fieldwork assistants. Rhos and Val's contributions were especially valuable, so I hope you have thanks for them in store as well. Once I enlisted the upperclassmen most likely to keep a secret, it was all but finished, though I couldn't have asked for better timing, considering the strain you've been through recently." 9-Mei fingered a scratch on the back of her hand, recent enough that she'd yet to shed the plate. "I took the strain of my own accord, Tydus. Maybe it wasn't always pleasant, but someone had to do it, yes?" She turned her head to face him, a cross look coming over her face. "I hope you didn't treat this like an obligation, too. You know how I feel—" "—about treating relationships like ledgers, yes." Tydus scowled and looked away from 9-Mei. "This was borne of gratitude and appreciation, nothing less. I realized I hadn't shown my first friend, without whom the Academy wouldn't be, the gratitude and appreciation she deserves in some time. I don't need to keep exact figures to realize that needed to change." "You're right, that's fair," she said, before sitting back and taking in the ambiance, leaning against Tydus's back as they both looked over the hedge surrounding them. After some time, she asked, "Do you like this place, too?" "I doubt it holds quite as much significance to me, but yes." He stood up and reached for a marble cap, prodding it with a fingernail. "This room is a closed ecosystem, a whole formed of many short-lived parts. I trust I don't have to explain what it represents in microcosm. We can both appreciate such synergy, hence our fruitful relationship. "Not only is it smaller, though, but simpler. Every specimen has simpler needs, unified by species. No need to question and examine each one individually for aspirations, aptitudes, habits, phobias and so on. The ecosystem only needs the slightest touch to continue, now and then." He prodded the cap again, and it fell off, having ended its life cycle in the shortest order. Turning back to 9-Mei, he found her giving him another look. "Don't mistake me. The complexity of the Academy and its surroundings is worth preservation as well, but it wears on you if you look at it too long. In my experience, a dose of relative simplicity is the best therapy. If you should ever need recuperation, you know where to go." He handed her the key to the room, which glinted with eerie light when passed to its rightful owner. "Not even I can enter this room without your permission, but I do hope you'll allow me the occasional visit." 9-Mei gave him one last hug before turning to the door. "Of course. All you have to do is ask."
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Mar 23, 2020 07:37
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Apr 9, 2020 19:33
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Harbinger 1,243 words Chapter 1 of Friend, You Will Never Learn "Are preparations complete?" asked Her Radiance, the Solar General Apollonia. She and her twin, Lord Selenicus Many-Moons, stood in illusory form before their protege, Triana Sixsmith, as she sat in her tent. Triana twirled her whisker around a claw before looking Apollonia in the eye. "Mt. Alorn has been fully shaped, and construction finished on the ley lines hours ago. All we need is the spark." "Excellent," Apollonia said. "The other sovereigns reported the same. We should be ready to proceed on my signal." Everything was going according to plan. The best magisters in Ymir had checked the ritual specifications hundreds of times in theory engines. The ley lines surrounding foci like Mt. Alorn spanned hundreds of square miles but were accurate to the inch. By the day's end, the crisis gripping the planet would reverse itself and the world could begin to heal. So why was Triana shaking? Why did her breath catch in her lungs and her pulse threaten to consume her? Why did her scales feel so cold? "Why so tense, little flame?" Selenicus asked. His image stepped forward and inspected Triana, a wry, toothy smile on his scintillating face. "I-I don't know," she replied. "As Her Radiance said, everything's gone right so far." "So far, hmm." He stepped to her side and leaned in to whisper. "I can't deny I'm on edge, too." Apollonia remained standing, in resplendent armor. "What we are attempting is without precedent, but we live in unprecedented times. I have utmost faith that you and your comrades will bring peace once more." She smiled as well, gentle as a sunbeam through a window. Triana took another deep breath and nodded. "You're right. I'll doubt us no longer. Peace be with you." "And also with you," the twins proclaimed, before they vanished. As she left the tent and rejoined her subjects outside, she thought of Janar, Scribe of Possibility. He would not be joining the ritual; there was ample evidence to suggest that he and the other New Gods were part of the problem. Still, she had visited him, for old times sake, to find out what might be and what could have been. Was plague, unrest, despair, and war between the sovereigns inevitable? He'd refused to tell her, refused to even leave his palace to greet her. "Nothing to be done, Triana! It was all decided before our lives began!" Those were the only words he'd speak before he left for his sanctum, where he was still for all she knew. Whatever had touched the New Gods' heads touched him as well. Nothing to be done, indeed. Instead, she took her position at the mountain's peak, ready to channel the planet's energy and harness whatever mystical malady was at the root of the problem. Once she could get a glimpse of the big picture, she'd be able to chart a new course and steer her demesne away from danger. Every problem had a solution, after all. Her eyes scanned the area for Apollonia's signal, catching glimpses of magisters and magelings at the peak's periphery. They looked so small from her height; some of them hadn't even started their transformation yet. Their skin looked so soft, their faces young. They were as infants compared to her, but their anxiety was hers. They needed inspiration from her as well. Triana stood up straight, at full height, doing her best to match Apollonia's poise as she waited for the signal to begin. That signal never arrived. Instead, the sky erupted in boils, blanched itself to a jaundiced yellow, and rent itself open to reveal a weeping wound so vast it could not fit in one field of vision. A horrid amalgamation of sinew and muscle with torn skin and misshapen chitin, lumpy eyeballs with thousands of pupils and gash maws with fractal teeth. There was no beauty to be found, no pattern to be discerned. Her sense of magic was as assaulted as her sense of sight; an oily sensation swept over her brain and made her gorge rise. It was the source, or at least a manifestation, of the crisis plaguing their planet, and nothing short of her full godhead would suffice to address it. As she bared her fangs and wreathed herself in a blinding flare of energy, her body unfolded like a tesseract, expanding to the proportions of a small village. Wings covered in formulae and complex signets unfolded from her back, spanning the mountain's peak and covering her subjects in deepest shadow. Cracks of violet light shone from between jeweled, geometric scales, and halos of numbers crowned her head. She roared and took flight, prepared to rend the monster asunder. Her thoughts reached out to the other Old Gods; they had each responded to the same stimulus in the same way. Only once had they been forced to battle unfathomable power and evil; it had been so long that even with Triana's long, steadfast memory she had started to forget what bloodlust and vengeance felt like. As she ascended into the atmosphere, she tapped into the vast reservoir of power she kept hidden just so she could walk among mortal men without setting them ablaze in her presence. It would be the scalpel she used to excise this disease from Ymir's sky. A javelin of piercing light erupted from her hand and shot into the heavens, gouging into the side of the beast and unleashing a torrent of black blood upon the land below. In response, a vast, unfathomable pressure the likes of which Triana had never experienced in her life clamped onto her brain, grinding upon it like two continental plates shattering diamond deposits caught between them. Even her thoughts betrayed her, forcing memories she never had and conclusions she knew she'd never come to, disconnecting cause from effect and past from future. All throughout came a splitting, electrocuting migraine that brought back one more sensation Triana had thought she'd left behind: a paralyzing, all-consuming fear of dying a horrible, meaningless death. She had survived a grueling life under Ymir's tyrannical creators, a life of being honed into the most lethal weapon they could manage in cruel war games. She had wrenched that weapon around to pierce her former masters instead, cutting her hands bloody on the edges. She had convinced their children to help wrench off their parents' tyranny, found fire-forged friends among other suffering soldiers, and dragged them all from the jaws of death into the fires of apotheosis. Under their watch, the line between god and mortal had blurred, the populace at large had learned more about the rules of creation than the makers had ever intended, and most had tasted a life free of fear and want and base survival. All temporary, it turned out. All ephemeral. An ungodly force had just came to balance the books against her. Triana emitted the most unholy scream, a squarewaved ululation born from her beloved equations and pierced the air and ruptured the eardrums of every last supplicant on Mt. Alorn. Several brains liquefied, and the rest struggled to maintain solidity. The few who could stand to watch saw their leader molt in midair, shrivel to bones, become a living tumor, and finally explode in a blinding supernova of violet light, which turned Mt. Alorn into a massive crater. The immortal dragon Triana Sixsmith had perished, and the Enlightened Age, which she had midwifed a thousand years prior, died with her.
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Apr 13, 2020 07:31
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In, tactical advantage
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Apr 23, 2020 01:20
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 12:12 |
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Flight of the Fool 1,249 words My first mistake was meeting Omias in our usual watering hole, rather than not giving him a warning or fond farewell at all. I sat on my usual perch and stretched my wings, knowing that he'd show up in a matter of minutes, always punctual. Sure enough, he swooped in by the time I got my glass of beetlebrau. Guy looked like he'd had the poo poo kicked out of him, refilled, then kicked back out again. He'd lost half his noseleaf years ago, his blindfold plate had a spiderweb of cracks on one side, and at least one of his fangs had a nasty chip in it, to say nothing of the scars blanketing his ears. That and the dopey grin he gave me when he sat down made what I had to do all the more nerve-wracking for me, probably enough to tip him off early. "Look," I said after we both had a drink, "Aglas ain't stupid. He's not gonna let that garnet cache go, and he's closing in on who took it. Only a matter of time until he gets his claws wet, alright?" By now the rest of the clientele made a good show of acting deaf as they were blind. Omias lowered his ears, twitched his lip and fiddled with his empty glass. "Ey Sig, you know that ain't how it went down." "Tch. What matters is someone stole gems that weren't his to steal," I said, leaning forward to bare my teeth in irritation. "Now this can go down one of two ways. Either you were smart enough to stash that cache in full, and you can present it to Aglas with only a new scar to show for it, or GYYYAAAAHHHFUCK!" In the middle of my ultimatum, that sly rear end in a top hat had detonated a noise scrambler he'd hidden in his other hand. The sharp screeching noise the thing made was soon joined by the pained shrieks of me and everyone else in there as our map of the area blurred like a pond reflection barraged by pebbles. Not guessing he'd do something stupid and impulsive like he does every single time he's in a jam was my second mistake. Once I got a clear head, Omias had flown the coop. I rushed to the exit and listened in panic before I heard him open his wings in a glide, transferring from a freefall drop to a safe landing on a walkway five stories below. Mistakes number three to I lost count came when I went after him, cuz if you'd heard your boss as frothing mad as I did you weren't gonna let that poo poo stand. I dove headfirst and spread my wings to turn up and barrel through a few bystanders who picked the wrong place to rest in the middle of their flights. Up ahead, Omias scrambled and weaved through a bigger crowd, including a few goods baskets on ropes and pulleys crisscrossing between doors in the walls. Every moment I was exactly the wrong speed to let something or someone block my momentum was a mistake, though some folks were smart enough to get the hell out of my way once they knew who it was doing the chasing. I doubted Omias had anything left up his sleeve to conjure wind at his back, so I knew he'd be relying on the catwalk network to really get a head-start on me. Two could play at that game. After I saw him make his first jump, I scrambled up onto the railing, latched my toe-claws around it and leaped off like a catapult load, sailing in an arc that would put me within stabbing distance of Omias upon landing. No sooner did I reach for my knife than his ears perked and he caught hold of a tramcar crossing over, going so far as to slide under it with barely a palm of empty space between it and the catwalk floor. In a panic I unfolded my wings to keep from crashing right into it. Thinking he'd emerge from the other side and keep sprinting, I hit the ground and jumped over the tramcar, frantically listening to separate him from the merchants in the market ahead. What I should have heard was the click of his claws still gripping the underside of the tramcar, and by the time I did hear it he'd let go into another dive. "How much longer you think you can go before hitting bottom?" I shouted, trying my best to streamline my descent. Even facing away from me, I heard him chuckle and knew he had a poo poo-eating grin on. "If there's one thing you learn in Rubaiyoht, it's that there's always more bottom to hit!" Then he gripped a hook in his hand, latched it onto a rope, whirled around and kicked me right in the faceplate. The force of his blow sent me tumbling rear end-over-teakettle into the far wall, and thank my lucky stars I barreled through a door held open by some dame letting her sweetheart in to have a romantic evening at home. I sent the two of them scattering like ninepins before we collided with a bookcase and got showered with foreign magazines. Shaking off that paper, I could hear the couple griping and yelling at me, threatening me with this or that. Thankfully they shut up once I got to my feet and revealed myself to them as someone they didn't want to gently caress with. I chucked them a hundred-ruble note as compensation before I left their hole and took flight, searching for Omias and grumbling to myself. I might have lost him then and there, but I knew one last place I might be able to head him off. Before the two of us hooked up with Aglas's gang, we had our own petty operation using a storehouse in the poor side of town where groundbound refugees lived. Sure enough, I caught him knocking on crates inside, looking for something. Thinking I was lucky enough to catch him off-guard, I rushed him with a knife, only for him to spin around and catch me in a wrist-lock. "Oh look, we have a matching set!" he said with that same stupid smile, an inch away from my face. Turns out that kick did more damage to my faceplate than I'd thought. "You're a real pain in the rear end, you know that?" I snarled, trying in vain to maintain my grip on the knife. My other hand shot out to grab it as it fell, only for Omias to twist me out of the way. "I've put too much work into this to watch you gently caress it up!" Then he asked, "And how much work did Lyta put into it?" It was a name I hadn't heard in a long time, and I froze up when hearing it, making my final mistake. Omias slammed my head into the crate, knocking me out. I came to at home, with nothing but a note goodbye from him to show for the chase. I read it and tossed it into the fire. I still work for Aglas, too attached to a comfy life and afraid of reprisal to do anything so brave. Fool that I took Omias to be, he was still lucky enough to escape, and I enough to look like I hadn't let him go. He said he'd be back for me, with an army. I'm still waiting.
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Apr 27, 2020 07:39
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