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Oct 8, 2021 01:08
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Also in
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Oct 8, 2021 04:52
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in!
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Oct 8, 2021 05:19
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Oct 8, 2021 05:45
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And that does it! Sign-ups are closed! If you're interested in sharing your progress as you write (totally optional) now would be a great time to either post a link to your google doc, provide us with your twitch information, or request that I make a special room for you in our discord. A few people did this last time and it was good fun for people to follow along! If you haven't yet joined the discord (totally optional) feel free to do so here https://discord.gg/dYdauAyz3v, spectators will nudge you forward in this insane contest if you need them!
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Oct 8, 2021 12:42
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Oh, also, we're still seeking someone to help copy the stories from here, to a google doc, so we can judge them anonymously. If you're interest in lending your hand for this task, let me know!
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Oct 8, 2021 13:02
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If you'd like to follow my writing process in real time, here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TnIWhlxDDkHU2qGJw-_s-F7UNWrNCwJ2YzOFcaCnL3k/edit?usp=drivesdk
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Oct 8, 2021 20:30
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something came up and I gotta bail. I'll join up for the next one.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:49
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Chili posted:Oh, also, we're still seeking someone to help copy the stories from here, to a google doc, so we can judge them anonymously. If you're interest in lending your hand for this task, let me know! Nm, someone who's not writing should do it My Shark Waifuu fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 20:52
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hi, for anyone watching at home, here's the link to mine https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OorM-9IbD0m0iLR1h-L2yEOfB4FCjScRLkrJzalv9xs/edit?usp=sharing
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Oct 9, 2021 01:07
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I'll be adding these wonderful share links to the OP as they come in!
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Oct 9, 2021 01:11
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The idea of people watching me write real time fills me with The Fear, no thank you. Ignore me testing something. Mystic Mongol fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 01:15
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Mystic Mongol posted:The idea of people watching me write real time fills me with The Fear, no thank you. Totally understandable! It's an entirely optional thing, and only share if it'll be fun for you!
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Oct 9, 2021 01:20
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Mystic Mongol posted:The idea of people watching me write real time fills me with The Fear, no thank you. I mean, same, but that's sort of why I'm doing it. If I don't I might just waffle around and not end up writing anything. But with my Internet Reputation on the line...shame is a powerful motivator. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mPqnsinjC8eaSEdy7HUE8jAbEDjdRMhDWNEUFQAwaes/edit?usp=sharing Watch the disaster unfold in real time!
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Oct 9, 2021 01:27
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Hosting mine on onlyfans
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Oct 9, 2021 01:48
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Prompt drops in five! Who's excited?!
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Oct 9, 2021 01:54
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I am!!  Link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Y_iuh8MFKlrZ6XpC6UPKjDCHpYd3HHXnnvSxW2iALw/edit?usp=sharing
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Oct 9, 2021 01:57
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Thank you all for joining! Your first prompt is a word that can mean many different things! Pick one of the things that it means and start writing! Or, just go into the discord and complain about how bad it is. It's pretty bad, isn't it?  The Prompt word is: Bluff
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Oct 9, 2021 01:59
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I choose to believe the prompt is the picture and not the word bluff. To work to work.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:06
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Can I get an extension on my assignment, prof? Dog ate my imagination.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:08
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Your second prompt: Second prompt: At one point, a character is lost Remember, you only need to incorporate one of these prompts! Using both is entirely optional and will not earn you any additional favor!
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Oct 9, 2021 02:09
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We're halfway there, keep it up!
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Oct 9, 2021 03:02
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An Otter Predicament 1094 It’s not every day that you get to play a hand against the Admiral himself. Holding his cards, the young otter realized that he was not going to be able to play this hand straight. Thinking about it now perhaps it was time for him to not give away what he had. A thick smoke around the table enveloped the play area onboard the compliance and ethics ship, the flagship casino of the otter navy. Other otters loomed around watching as the five otters betting on the outcome of the two hands loitered. Those behind the table were discussing possible combinations for useless cards in the hands that the first three otters at the table had folded on. The otter thought for a second, Do I want to give off an air of someone who thinks he’s going to win” I don’t want to give off an air of someone who thinks he’s going to lose... how should I play this one? More importantly, how would the bettors take the odds once he offered a wager on the odds. “Young man,” the admiral said, “are you going to do something?” With that, the dealer to the otter's left looked and motioned for him to drop a clam. He dropped a clam. The dealer motioned again for a second clam, and again he dropped one. Ante up. The cool feel of the wooden table made him realize that his hand was cool and clammy. He prayed that he could fake the funk. There must be a way to get this admiral to go all in, he thought, or maybe I can up the stakes so that he thinks I’m going to win? The otter reached out to his friend. “Give me 6 to 4 on this hand; five clams,” The otter said, keeping his face straight. His friend turned to him, slack-jawed, “Six to four? Are you sure?” Locking eyes, he said, “I’m certain.” His friend nodded,” Very well.” The two otters broke apart, as the Admiral placed his two clams on the table. Wasting no time, the dealer flopped the first card and then turned to the two otters. “The Knight of grain.” This put the otter in a better position. I’ve got to keep this up, he thought, placing the third clam on the table. The admiral returned with his own clam. The dealer nodded and flopped a second card down. “The prince of commerce.” His lips pursed as he placed the fourth clam. “Good,” he said. This was not good. Internally, the otter recoiled, willing his face to keep that calm cool exterior. He felt his whiskers almost floating up in excitement, but he held it. Narrowing his eyes he considered his odds. With one more card to draw, would it be prudent to up the ante? The admiral could call his bluff. He turned to his friend once more. “All right, ten to four, let's see if it draws in the crowd.” Another otter overheard him and gasped. “Ten to four? Are you taking points on that?” He said loud enough for the group. The otter prepared himself for the eventuality that he might have to pay out a lot of money after tonight. His friend glanced at him as if to ask, are we taking points? The otter nodded at the unspoken question. He was in too deep. One more clam for the pile meant a week's pay for him. He stood to win about a month's worth of pay from this main bet and the side bets. He clenched his hand as he felt the outline of the clam in his hand. That silver coin in the shape of his favorite snack felt like something solid. He took the clam. Holding it above the board he released it. “In.” The admiral cast about, seemingly unaware of what he should be doing next. Perhaps the otter's confidence had shaken him? “Do you know what occurs to me that as often as I come here, I’ve never seen you before?” The otter nodded. “Yeah, I don’t make a habit of it.” “Interesting-Why don’t you come here that often? You seem to be an excellent hand at cards?” “Do you wanna hear the real reason or do you want to hear my reason?” the otter asked. “I would like to hear both,” The admiral said. “Well,” the otter said, “my reason is that I would lose too much when they kick me out.” “Are they going to kick you out because you fight too much?” The admiral said, chuckling. “No, they'll probably kick me out just because I won too much... I had to spread out my winnings, you see.” “Find plans a lot for someone of your age,” the admiral said, “but it isn’t for you.” “I mean it’s a round of drinks,” The otter said, “But you must have a day job, don't you? What are you a merchant? Are you a Mercenary?”The admiral said, leaning in to inspect his rival. “Well since you asked I do sell a lot of Fish.” The otter could see the admiral's gears spinning in his head as he calculated his new probability of winning the hand. “To me,” the admiral said, “it looks as if you’re a little overconfident in your bet. You’re a merchant, used to deals.” “And to me, the otter replied, “It looks to me like he wants to get out without paying the extra clam because what’s five clams to an admiral.” “This is true, this is true, but I hear you’re offering points on this so I have to ask, are you that confident?” His eyes belied nothing. “I am quite confident in this,” he replied. He nudged his friend. ”What did I give the points at?” His friend replied, “10 to 3.” Once again the otter tried to not give away anything as he nearly lost it internally. Pushing that part of himself down, he steeled his resolve. I just have to hold off until the end of this round, the otter thought and then I can make enough money, enough money that I’ll be good. A beaver came by with drinks as the eyeball the otters stared at each other. The admiral, resplendent in his dress uniform, had no regard for the drinks passing by. The otter's friend grabbed and downed a fizzy drink “I think you want to put more than one clam in,” the admiral said “I think you want to call it.” “Last card gentlefolk?” The dealer said. “Draw.” They both said.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:33
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Bluff (1333 Words) “You wouldn’t fuckin’ dare.” “Absolutely the gently caress I would.” A standoff between Reynolds and Candace was inevitable, some said, right from the beginning. Not a single moment passed that they weren’t quarrelling one second, consummating their passion the next, often with bystanders and innocents in the crossfires. Not a town in southwest Nevada hadn’t heard of the pair, with the absolute shitstorm they raised up in those parts. They generally targeted stagecoaches, usually folks shipping valuable cargo and hoping it wouldn’t get caught in the process, especially in the parts where the railroads hadn’t come yet. The tricky thing with having a partnership like the two of them had, is that if something comes up, something so valuable as to inflame the greed of another, a wedge is driven between them, especially if that something was a diamond the size of a cat’s paw. Taken on delivery from Fresno, en route to Flagstaff, the papers lauding its discovery meant the whole Mojave knew that stagecoach was coming, and Reynolds and Candace had been the ones to nab it. The robbery was easy, simple as catching them on the tail end of a raid by another group, a certain ‘Bart’s Banditos’ that rose up from a group of Confederate deserters. They’d known to stay far back and let bigger, meaner groups take on the veritable army of guards that tried in vain to protect the Cat’s Paw from theft, and what was left was bloodied, tired, and broken. Gunning down the last remaining few, they shot the driver clean out of his seat, before cracking the safe out and blasting it open with dynamite. After the smoke cleared, there wasn’t a diamond to be seen, but Candace wasn’t deterred that easy. Grabbing an axe, she dismantled that stagecoach ‘til she found a hidden strongbox, and within was the object of desire of every lowlife in the Mojave, the Cat’s Paw diamond. Hung up on a gold chain that was spun like fine lace, it swung and captured the light, looking like a second sun there in the desert. Greed filled both of their eyes, and although they were quiet about it for now, the arguing had started, as it always had. And so they were standing on the top of Beggar’s Bluff, Candace holding the diamond over the edge, mind racing as she looked down that slope at Reynolds, heavy iron weighing her wrist down in the form of a 6 cylinder revolver. Reynolds’ own, finely crafted and engraved, glinting in the high noon sun, was held with feigned ease. A dusty brown eyebrow twitching in the scorching summer heat. His voice, barely disguised anger leaking through, hissed like a rattlesnake tail. “You BETTER not drop that fuckin’ diamond, Candace.” “Or what?” A cocky grin was plastered across her face as she dangled the Cat’s Paw, mounted from a gold chain, ready to force the man she loved and hated at the same time to give up the diamond. She knew she had him by the balls, and wasn’t gonna let him be the one that had it. “You’re gonna shoot me with your shiny toy gun, Reyny? Right liable to blow your own foot off, you piece’a poo poo.” She cackled for a moment at her joke, viper grin stretching across her face anew. “Tell you what, honeybuns, you seem to love this diamond more than you love me, now doesn’t that seem odd, since we’re married? Ain’t you supposed to hold me highest or some other bullshit?” Her voice echoed with faux sadness turning into poison as her eyes shone a razor gleam, piercing into Reynolds’ own. Around her neck were a few thumbs of the lawmen that wanted her dead, or, did a while back, resting underneath a wild and frizzy mane of blonde hair. Reynolds visibly rolled his eyes at the sight of his wife, his flame, the passion of his life once again trying to pull one over on him. This was bullshit and he had half a mind to shoot her on the drat spot if it weren’t for the fact that she put herself in situations like this that threatened a payday. She wanted to wear the diamond, while he wanted to sell it, it was that simple. His voice rose again, temper about to burst. “Yeah, we’re loving married, but that’s no reason for you to be a FUCKIN’ BITCH.” He gritted his teeth, scowling at her, as he cocked the revolver’s hammer back, making his intentions more than clear. “Don’t be fuckin’ selfish, we can get all the pretty bullshit gems you want with the money!” “Oh, yeah, like your revolver, huh? HAD to have it! It called to you! We didn’t sell it when we blasted that US Marshal and you got a shiny new toy. Well, I want one this time,” She almost spat out the word ‘I’, the venom dripping from her voice, before her voice rose in a mockery of his Alabama twang, “Caaandace, it’s callin’ to me.” A sudden shot rang out as the dust near Candace puffed out, Reynolds putting a bullet between her feet in the gravel beneath. For her credit, she didn’t even flinch as she shot a bullet right through the hat on his head, sending it twirling off his head, before the two had their revolvers trained on each other in threat again. Over the heads of the two of them, a vulture circled, awaiting death so that it could feast. It was only one of a flock that had gathered as men died in the stagecoach’s wake. “You thought that was supposed to scare me, Candace?” “Shut up, rear end in a top hat. You get your shiny little toy, I get a nice thing to wear while we steal cattle. That thing’s so engraved, it looks like it’ll break the moment anything looks at it funny. Same with this,” She grinned wickedly at him as she faked losing her balance, the Cat’s Paw diamond shaking around and scattering light brilliantly, calling out to him, “OoooOOOooo, I’m gonna sliiiiip Reyny baby!”, the aim of the gun remaining firmly rock steady on him the whole time. Suddenly, from above, came a cry. With a swoop, the vulture came down from above and reached out its talons to clutch at the necklace, snatching it clean away from her hands and flying away, great wings flapping as it went. At an instant, the two of them swung their gun arms up to fire wildly towards the vulture as it fled, Cat’s Paw in tow. Round after round, hot lead filled the air as they cleared all 5 cylinders each, their anger and their frustration blown and burned in one moment of mutual loss. They missed, each and every last bullet streaking the sky, but not a drop of blood shed. Whipping their guns back around to face each other, Candace and Reynolds were back at it, pointing their guns at each other as if either of them had a single round left. Reynolds was the first to break, a smile starting to crack his lips as a low laugh started to come from his throat. Candace soon followed, low chuckles turning into howls of laughter, as the two of them lowered their guns and reveled at the utter absurdity of it. Holstering their revolvers, they went to each other as only they could, because after every early spring storm came summer’s bounty. Embracing each other, they kissed, and all was forgiven. There are strange things that happen in the desert, and a trick by a vulture who craved gem and gold was hardly the strangest. Pulling away for a brief moment, Reynolds looked his wife in the eyes and said, “I love you, darlin’.” “Love you too, babe.” She flashed him a winsome grin, though a brief look of sadness flashed across her eyes. “Wish we had that diamond though.” As they walked away, Reynolds smirked and simply said, “We’ll get you another.”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:37
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We Will Not Be Okay 1099 “Scooch over,” The old man behind the white mustache didn't look like he was taking no for an answer, so I put down my comics section and let him in. He was tall, but that sort of tall that age had bent like a candy cane after stretching him up in his youth. He wore a cowboy hat, dusty white feather boa and brown leather everything. He sat down next to me with a little fart, pulled an apple from a brown paper bag and held it in my direction. I held up a hand. “Suit yourself. It's a long way to Tippytown,” he said with a bite. His voice was deep and pleasant. I had no idea where “Tippytown” was. The conductor came and promptly took our tickets. Across the sandy red desert, out the window a single green cactus came close enough to wave hello, and the train tugged on. Hours past. I woke up in the late afternoon to a nudge in the side. “Scuse me,” said the old cowboy. “Would you mind holding this bag? It has something important.” And with that he dropped the brown paper bag in my lap and extracted himself, elbows and all, from the narrow seat. “Duty calls,” he said. I opened my mouth to protest, but he was already halfway down the car before I could say anything. The crinkled brown bag was heavy. Across the aisle a fat woman in a pink dress and lilyflower hat dozed while her little boy made funny faces at a comic book in his hands. I waited. And waited. I opened the bag. With a sucking noise the mouth of the bag yawned to a chasm of infinite depth. My glasses began vibrating down my nose toward the void. Far in the deeps a few stars twirled madly into the center and winked out. I shut the bag. Gently, carefully, holding the thing by the neck with my right hand, I felt the bottom of the bag with my left. There was a lump, almost but not quite round. An egg-like shape, uniform around with square bumps. It felt like something much too heavy for the paper, like it would have torn if I'd just lifted the sack without supporting it. “Looked, didn't ya?” He sat down with a chuckle. Outside, the sun was setting. Already? How long had I been asleep? “You looked and now you have the knowledge. Me too. Look at me, son. Look me in the eyes.” He had a smile on his face, long and lean and curved perfect like an upside down rainbow. But his eyes were the same dark as the bag, with two points of light fixed in dead black. And it was like staring into a night sky and the entirety of the night sky turning to stare back. “It's gonna be okay. Just need to do something for me, and all of this'll be okay.” The passengers in the cart were gray. Night peered back from every window. “Just stick your hand in and pull it out. You can feel it from the outside, right? But it's deep, deep in there. I know you can do it. And then we'll all be fine.” Did anyone know what was going on? Did any of them see this? The little kid across the aisle was staring right at me, right through me, but he was frozen and colorless, smeary and strange. Something streaked past the window outside, shaped like the cactus from before but gray. It wore eyes like the stranger's and it seemed to not fly so much as ooze through the dark like paint dripping down a canvas. “They want me, son. They don't want any of you,” he said, and I wanted to respond but the words froze in my throat. “I can leave as soon as I have it.” His voice was so calm, so understanding. “We can all leave. I can't touch it, they made sure of that. But you can.” There were more of the gray things now, large and small and I couldn't tell if they were just different sizes or if some were near and others far. They weren't banging on the glass, but a vibration in the walls felt like somehow, some way, they must get through. “You don't want it. Wouldn't know how to use it. It belongs to them, yeah. But we can't trust them with it. Give it to me.” The other passengers' bodies were twisted as taffy. The whole train wiggled up and down. “Give it to me, son.” I opened the bag and two stars shone in the distance. “Close your eyes. Feel for it. Don't see it.” I thrust my arm into the bag, not to the wrist but deeper, deeper! The bag shouldn't have been so deep. My flesh shouldn't have stretched so long but it did and it was agony. Whatever the thing was it was at my fingertips, cold and metallic. I could only just barely brush it and each time it sent a spike of ice through my veins. The the windows shattered and glass danced and chimed above our heads. The wind rushed in! “Pull! Pull son! You almost have it! They're almost in! They're almost in!” I pushed further in until it felt as if my arm would snap. My fingertips clasped the metal. I had it! I had it! The gray things were now in the train. No, they were on the passengers. The peoples faces and shapes imprinted upon them like comics on putty. They already had tendrils on the cowboy, pulling him away. “Hand it to me! Quick! Quick, son!” I dragged my hand from the bag, the skin was in tatters, every movement was torture. In my hand was a crocodilian thing of dark metal, shaped like a grenade, a nauseating white light spitting from cracks in its sides. I threw the thing at the cowboy and he bobbled it into his hands. He laughed a laugh like thunder. “Now you got the knowledge, and I got the metal. Later son!” The gray things faded. The afternoon sun came out and the train jumped back onto its track from whatever sky it had been suspended. I was too stunned to move or to think. A scream came from my right. The woman in her lilyflower hat. In the aisle, my dead arm lay limp as rope, bleeding from red wounds. And now I knew. Now I had the knowledge. Everything would not be fine. We would not be okay.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:37
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The Base of the Bluff aka total trash Word count: 767 From zero, nine-point-eight-one metres per second. Twelve seconds and four hundred and fifty metres to reach free fall of one hundred and ninety-five kilometres per hour. More, if you worked for it. The gravity of Earth controls everything. The slope of the sun’s rays, the moon, the tides. Attraction. Repulsion. The water rushing past at the bottom of the bluffs. Always going downhill. That’s how things were for Arthur. A dead end job, a dead end marriage, his only shot at ownership a small plot in a local cemetery. Falling through life, taking the path of least resistance, until the Earth finally got its chance to pull him into itself. He didn’t really want to be here today, but it would have been too much friction to say no. Nobody ever wanted to say no to Emily. “Scared?” she called back to him, a smile teasing her lips. She’d already scrambled over the edge, frizzy red hair struggling to escape her helmet. His sister was younger, dumber, and much more successful. She had a white collar job, a wife with legs for days, and fancy initials after her name. Heights weren’t something foreign to her. Arthur had to admit the truth. “I’m ninety-percent scared, ten-percent desperate to take a piss.” She cackled. “Good luck with that, dumbass. Should’ve done the big boy pee before we got dressed.” A family classic: the macho act of standing at the top of a cliff, dropping trou, and letting it rain down on the world below—hands on hips as Joe Shuster and Stan Lee would have intended, of course. In his shoes Emily would have power-posed her way to a big boy pee for the ages, and she wouldn’t have let the “boy” part stop her. “Hurry up and hustle, get your scaredy-rear end down here.” Arthur was keenly aware of the loose dirt clinging to the rocks of the bluffs and how easily it could dunk on him. Jesus. Would it really have been harder to say no to this? It wasn’t even legal. He was pretty sure, anyway. Tentatively, he turned his back on the drop and bent over, placing one hand firmly on the ground. With his foot he searched almost blindly for purchase, pausing awkwardly once he achieved success. His other foot had to go somewhere. Or his hand? Maybe backwards was a bad idea? “Oh my God, what are you doing?” Emily burst out laughing shrilly. “Why the hell don’t I own a GoPro, what are we even doing up here without one. This belongs in a museum.” Out of the corner of his eye Arthur could see her miming a picture frame with her gloved hands, smirking up at him. Well. Dying was probably less ignominious than this anyway. He scrambled down ungracefully, sliding the last leg into a hard landing, steadied only by his hands scraping down the side of the rock face. Thankfully, his suit was plenty tough enough to take it. They stood beside each other on the tiny outcropping, arms kept close to their bodies as they waited for a break in the wind. It should be easy, shouldn’t it? Just do it. Don’t think about the ending. Except this wasn’t like following along in the wake of everyone else, pulled in the same direction. He had to actually do something to get where he was going. “Ready?” Emily asked, when the window of opportunity opened. “As I’ll ever be.” She jumped. Arthur watched, knees locked, as she plummeted over the edge head first. Fearless, but not weightless. Bound by the rules of gravity, like everything else. She never let that stop her. He took a shaky breath and let it out slowly between his teeth. He was ready. When he followed her, for a moment he felt the world stand still—everything condensed down to what was right in front of him and nothing else. Emily, already well ahead of him in her flashy yellow suit. The river, so far below it looked fake and could have been painted. A last deep gulp, the beginnings of the air whipping around his ears as he fell. He saw his wife—Colleen—eating dinner alone while he said “yes” to yet another box ticking exercise from his boomer boss. He saw the way her smile stiffened when he agreed to let his parents spend the weekend on short notice. And he saw the way she looked elsewhere, wistfully, when they were in public. Arthur spread the wings of his suit. A much finer specimen of big boy. It was time to stop free falling, and steer.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:40
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bluff "What am I looking at, besides a failure to dim the lights?" Jokasta Sokolova asked. The central display of the room just showed a massive rendition of the sun and - much like the real thing - it hurt to look at. "Sorry," mumbled a technician from the corner of the room. The display darkened slightly. With her eyesight safe, she peered at the angular outline of her admiral, Gregori-A-192. The admiral stood a good two feet above Jokasta and his lack of real facial features made it hard to relate to him - even more so as he was little more than a dark shape against the image of the sun behind him. "We are not sure yet, Sokolova. But I do not think it is good." Gregori's voice grated on Jokasta. It was too high and tinny for a machine nearly eight feet tall. "Is something wrong with the sun?" she asked impatiently. Gregori wanted to show her something unexpected - she understood that - but she could do without the build up. She was here to make decisions, not participate in theatre. Gregori must have sensed her annoyance because he turned and gave a beckoning gesture to the technician. The image of the sun shifted spectrums into a heat map. Hotter burned white than darker - with inert objects being, she assumed, black. She still had trouble seeing what Gregori was trying to show her. Then the display zoomed into a section of the sun - the sun was just a white hot backdrop. The admiral turned and pointed, reaching above himself to tap the screen with an index finger. There was a small section of the sun that was almost completely black. Unremarkable - it could have been debris or a celestial object moving between the sun and the observatory. But then it shot out four jets of black in a symmetrical pattern. Something artificial. "A vessel?" Jokasta asked. Gregori nodded. "Not only a ship, Sokolova, but one in a configuration we've never seen before. The techs," he paused to gesture at the man in the corner, "believe it's venting coolant. If we hadn't had an observatory doing research on solar flares when it did that, it likely would have gone unnoticed. It's invisible to every other form of detection we've tried - and we don't want to get too obvious with it for fear of spooking it." "It?" Gregori shrugged - a surprisingly incongruous gesture from a robot. "We don't know what it is." Gregori said. "So you immediately think it's aliens?" Gregori shrugged again, much to Jokasta's annoyance. "It's not like anything in our fleets and it doesn't match any Shin-Yi configurations either. Not Pagette or Kruppe - even their advanced stuff doesn't have anything close to a profile like this. Or a reliance on coolant. That is some serious heat dumping we're witnessing." Jokasta frowned. "Spying on us?" "That's my theory," Gregori said. "How big is it?" Jokasta asked - the image didn't really provide a good sense of scale. "Two kilometers." Jokasta's frown deepened. "That's the size of a dreadnought - who would design a spyship that big?" "Someone who intends for it to spy for a long time or at very long range or both." "And how did it get there? At the core of the system, without anyone noticing?" There was a hint of accusation there - noticing potentially hostile ships entering the system was Gregori's entire job. "Don't know. Slid in at sub-light speeds is my guess. Accelerated from beyond our detection range and then just coasted in, trusted in their stealth technology to avoid being seen." "What about their deceleration?" "Against the sun, it's hard to notice that kind of heat, Sokolova. Even for us." Jokasta rubbed at her cheek in irritation, her gaze once again turning to the mystery vessel on the display. "We need to get a closer look at it," Jokasta said. "Agreed," Gregori said, "and we have an opportunity coming up." With another gesture from Gregori, the technician tapped away at his console and the image of the strange vessel was replaced with a map of their star system. "Thorn Aa," Gregori said, pointing again-- "Valorie. The planet is named Valorie." Gregori took a moment to use the non-technical and much maligned official name of the planet. "Valorie," he said, "is going to be passing between us and them." "You think we can approach it from behind the planet? You think they have a blindspot there?" "If they are using sensors, they're either entirely passive or so far beyond our understanding that we can't notice them - so yes. It will either let us get close or let us know we're dealing with something considerably more worrying." Jokasta pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Alright. Mobilize the flotilla." "The whole flotilla, Sokolova?" Gregori asked haltingly. There was a loss of excitement in his voice that almost made Jokasta grin. She held it in though. "Yes, admiral. The whole flotilla. That thing is the size of a dreadnought and if it's armed, I want the whole flotilla there." "Sokolova, if it is monitoring our communications passively, if it understands us--" "Leave that to me. I'm counting on it understanding us. How long until our blind spot?" "Twelve hours." "How long does our blindspot last?" "If we move with it, days." "Perfect." *** Jokasta immediately regretted taking the call from her daughter. Zarya's opening salvo was: "Mom, why is everyone at the palace saying we're going to war?" "We're not going to war," Jokasta said definitively. "Then why are you mobilizing the full flotilla? Are you on your ship right now?" Jokasta looked up at the sloop-of-war beside her as it spun up its fusion reactor. It would be several minutes before it was audible from outside the ship. The tarmac was immeasurably loud, however. It was a great deal more work to get her personal warship operational. It had been too long without proper maintenance. "If I was, you wouldn't have been able to reach me," Jokasta said. "So you weren't going to tell me you were leaving before going to war," Zarya said petulantly. "I am not," Jokasta repeated, "going to war. We're investigating something unusual and very, very secret." She nearly said 'classified' but was worried it might fly over the sixteen-year-old's head. "You mean classified," Zarya said, annoyed, "not for me to know." "Yes," Jokasta hissed. "With luck, I'll be home within a day." "And without luck?" Zarya asked. "We all die horribly." "Wh-what? Seriously? Mom--." "No. I'll be back. Soon." "Mom!" Jokasta closed the call. She did not have time to make her daughter feel better or field all of her questions. She just had to hope her daughter didn't go asking around the estate after 'classified' information. She put a call through to Gregori; he picked up almost instantly. "Sokolova," he said. "Is the rest of the flotilla ready?" "Waiting on you." "gently caress." The expectant silence was somehow disapproving. "I should have kept up with the maintenance on this vessel." The silence disapproved harder. "Are you ready to tightbeam the plan to Blanco Marinaris on Valorie?" Jokasta asked. "Yes. Though I think this is something of a risky ruse we don't need to take." "Why not?" "We're not even sure whatever it is we're trying to sneak up on can understand us. This is a very elaborate plan it might not even understand." "Maybe not - but I'm going to assume 'it' is intelligent enough to understand us, and 'it' is going to need a very good reason to stay put while an entire flotilla of warships cruises towards it." "I don't like it. Too many moving parts." "Admiral." "Yes?" "It's two moving parts. Us and Blanco Marinaris." "Yes. And that's one too many, in my opinion. Plus this plan with Blanco - it's going to be picked up system wide. You're going to have a lot of explaining to do very quickly to avoid a panic." "It's better than explaining how a Shin-Yi spy ship was been sitting in a fortified system for who knows how long." "If it even is Shin-Yi, Sokolova." "Explaining aliens is worse, Admiral. Not better." "Point taken." Her ship's quartermaster tapped her on the shoulder. With a bare nod and a salute he signalled her ship was ready to launch. "We're going, Gregori. Let's go." *** The plan was, Jokasta believed, a simple one. Hours prior, they'd tightbeamed a message to the director of Blanco Marinaris, a large mining concern on the surface of Valorie. In it, Jokasta had asked the director to send out a message saying that violence had broken out on the surface - the exact details of which she'd figure out later. No actual shots were going to be fired - she just needed the distress signal as a cover for why the system's entire flotilla was going to investigate. As soon as Valorie eclipsed the mysterious vessel, the distress signal went out and the flotilla launched. Six sloops-of-war and two destroyers either lifted off from the surface of the main inhabited planet or went straight into cruise from orbit. From that point on, they had to play along with the distress signal - communicating openly between the warships to enhance the sense of confusion. It worked. At least, it worked on her own people. Within hours there were news reports either condemning the confusion around the event or commending the rapid response of the fleet. There was, frustratingly, no way to see if their ruse was working on the mystery vessel - but nothing had exploded yet. There was no dramatic exit taking place. That they could see, anyways. As they drew nearer to the surface of Valorie, Jokasta tightbeamed a communication to Gregori's ship in plaintext - as small a package as she could manage. "skim atmosphere / drop on vessel / full scanner suites" As the flotilla rallied in orbit and briefly dropped out of cruise speeds, a response came in. "yes sokolova / full scanner suites" The flotilla reoriented in orbit over Blanco Marinaris and pushed the ships into cruise once more. They'd made it nearly sunside when things went wrong. "What is that?" Gregori said - open communication to the entire flotilla. The 'what' he was referencing was a very small craft screaming towards them on a collision course. The flotilla dropped out of cruise to avoid striking the thing at superluminal velocities. "Open fire!" Gregori shouted over the flotilla's communicators. "Belay that - capture it if you can!" Jokasta shouted in reply. There was a brief moment as the entire flotilla's weapon systems focused on the small craft which - in response - plunged into the atmosphere of the planet and suffered a catastrophic failure within moments. Her ship's sensors captured as much information as possible on the small craft. It looked like an unmanned drone, or at least, had all the characteristics of one. If it had a sapient pilot, they'd just made the ultimate sacrifice in a split second decision. "Cruise, cruise, cruise! We need to get sunward now!" Jokasta urged the crew, "Gregori, you are not in command, do not give orders!" She was livid that her admiral had given orders to fire while she was in the flotilla. Careers had ended over less -- she had ended careers over less! But the circumstances were too extraordinary to relieve him of command on the spot. They had minutes - maybe seconds - to capture this mysterious vessel on scanners now. The push to cruise felt agonizingly long. But, whatever it was, it was still there when they got around the planet. The flotilla dove straight towards it in cruise. If this had been combat, such a rush would border on suicidal - but this wasn't combat. This was a kind of strange fact-finding mission. How do you learn about something that hides from all forms of detection? Get very close and look at it, of course. It was definitely not a Shin-Yi ship. The vessel was a two kilometer long needle or sliver - almost symmetrical and matte carbon black. There were two long appendages attached opposite one another at one end of the needle, almost giving it the appearance of a blacksmith's tongs holding a shard of obsidian. Even this close, it was almost impossible to scan with anything beyond actual, physical cameras. It was clearly there in space, but it wasn't reflecting anything besides cosmic background radiation and visible light. She was about to order the flotilla to halt when the vessel's 'tongs' swiveled towards them. "Sokolova," Gregori's voice said over comms, "it is scanning my vessel. I believe I might be being targeted." Jokasta's tried to rationalize what she was looking at as anything other than weaponry. Could these be alien scanning devices? Maybe. Was she going to risk it? Or was she going to be the one to fire the first shot at an alien species? The vessel decided for her. Huge plumes of coolant vented into space in what seemed like a kind of emergency procedure and a ring of thrusters near its midsection flared to life. It pushed itself up to speed - all the while with those appendages trained on the flotilla - and pushed into cruise speed. At once her flotilla initiated thrust to push themselves into cruise speed. "Stand down," Jokasta said. There was, what seemed like a breath of relief throughout the flotilla. It felt like she'd narrowly avoided entering a shooting war. "Sokolova," Gregori said, confused. "Let them go. We wanted to get a closer look at it and we did. I don't want to go chasing things we don't understand yet." "Yes, Sokolova." *** The alien vessel vanished near the edge of the heliosphere - even with military observatories trained directly on its engine plumes, it simply cut engines and ceased to be visible. That suited Jokasta just fine - they had already gotten more than enough information to keep every military scientist busy for months, if not years, theorizing about what exactly they'd been looking at. Gregori-A-192 was transferred out of her local command and to a regional one, at her insistence. He did not deserve it, she reflected, but she could let him fail upward and become some else's problem. Her problem now was convincing the people of Thorn that the news reports on a mystery object leaving the system were gross exaggeration - that and getting her daughter to keep from saying anything just to annoy her mother. At least her plan had worked and they hadn't had to fire a shot. She just needed to smooth over the ruffled feathers and pass this on up the chain of command. She had an uncomfortable feeling about the whole incident. And she didn't feel entirely comfortable concealing information about what, she personally, believed was an alien vessel spying on them. But it wasn't her decision to make, thankfully. And unlike Gregori, she wasn't going to try and one-up her superiors by making it anyways. Failing upwards was not her style.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:46
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Drop 847 words I never called it Blind Man’s Bluff, not even after Taryn brought me up there and I realized I could see again. He felt me tense up as we were standing on the edge together, asked me what was wrong. “Oh my God,” I said. He leaned in. “It’s the Blind Man,” I said. “He’s wearing a wizard hat.” His grip on my arm loosened, and I saw his face melt with relief. It was the first time I had ever seen his face. There was a chain around his neck. It had someone else’s name on it. We talked for the next hour. Or rather, he talked to me, and I listened, stared out at the valley below, the strands of sunlight, the fall leaves darting through the sky like how I had always imagined butterflies, crumpled and angry and refusing to touch the ground. The next time I went, I came alone. It was raining, and no one could see that I was crying, but I was glad it was raining anyway. It wasn’t any more beautiful than my blindness, the swirls and stripes of night, it was just–the shock of knowing. The walls and ceiling and floor falling away all at once. I knew about the people that had died here. Four years ago, seven years ago, thirteen years ago. Every time they found a body at the base of the cliff, eyes wide open. A step off the edge and into infinity. I stood in the same place, the rain pouring down, and I waited. I pictured Taryn’s face in my head, and my spine straightened and burned like a metal iron in a furnace. I had felt and heard that look so many times over before I ever saw it. A crumpled lunch bag face. Looking down at something drowned and delicate you’d pick up if you were only sure your touch wouldn’t kill it. I stared bulletholes in the horizon line, blinked once, and the sky melted around me. The rain swam in front of my eyes, and my head felt like a swelling water balloon. I couldn’t breathe. My knees buckled, and I pitched forward, the tiny tips of pine trees hundreds of feet below me. The rain stopped. I opened my eyes. I was floating, floating in midair. The sun was shining through a hole in the clouds, and around me were millions of raindrops in mid-fall, little isolated glass globes. A handful of them broke open and ran down my arm before I realized I could move. I instinctively kicked out, paddled my arms like I was moving through water, because I was. I launched myself up towards the sky. The cliff edge was ten, twenty, thirty feet away. I flipped and twisted in the afternoon sky, smashed handfuls of glittering droplets with my bare hands. I whirled around, water washing the tears from my face, and there he was, standing on the cliff edge, looking up at me. My face fell. Taryn followed me up here. He had known, somehow. He was forty feet away, and I still felt his hand around my arm. “Sarah!” he called up to me. “Sarah, please, come down!” I swam down to him, until I could see his face clearly through the rain. “No,” I said. “You’re going to die,” he said. “Everyone’s going to die,” I said back. “It’s going to take you. Please.” “What is it?” I said. “Please,” he said, looking up at me. “Just trust me. You don’t know what you’re doing. We’ll talk about it once you’re on the ground.” His face was crumpled and wet and sad. He looked like he was about to cry. I wanted to smash his face like a pile of raindrops. “No,” I repeated. He said something under his breath, and my ears perked up. “What’s that?” I said. He said it again, and I still couldn’t hear. I swam closer, looked into his eyes, dripping with concern. They glinted in the sunlight and turned to stone. His arm shot out and grabbed for me, yanked me down towards him. I yelped in pain, wrenched my shoulders, twisted away. He cursed, cried out through gritted teeth, fell forward, other hand grasping wildly at nothing– –and the rain started again. The air rushed past my face, and the world flipped over. We were both floating in midair. My feet were pointed up, dangling towards the hole in the clouds, bursting with light. His were pointed down. “Sarah!” Taryn shouted, wriggling his body towards the cliff edge, six feet away. “Sarah, put me down!” I thought about all the boys at the bottom of the cliff. Boys with a rough touch. Boys with loose tongues. Boys with expanding heads. Boys with airtight alibis. Boys wracked with guilt. Boys as evidence. Boys condemned after death. Boys staring up at the sky like they saw everything, and understood. “Sarah!” he screamed, his nails digging deep into my arm. I smiled, bent over, kissed him on his forehead, his shoulder, his forearm, his wrist–then bit down.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:50
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The Bluffalo 451 words Dear Sir or Madam; Thank you for your interest in the Save the North American Bluffalo Fund! Every donation that our foundation receives goes to the study and preservation of this reclusive and relatively unknown animal species. The Bluffalo is a solitary creature that roams the American west. It can be identified by its naturally occurring unnatural ability to be unidentified. The exact process by which the Bluffalo achieves this is still unknown and the subject of much debate in the broader scientific community. The Bluffalo constantly poses as other animals, disguising itself and confounding zoologists and researchers trying to accurately determine the animals habitat, population, and behaviours. Furthermore, no live Bluffalo has ever been captured. Only Bluffalo that have been pre-deceased and already returned to their natural form. When the rare dead Bluffalo have been found, they exhibit all the usual traits of a common North American Bison. Immense body, hooves, thick coat and hide. The Bluffalos hide is unique and differentiates it from the common Bison in that it protects the Bluffalo by actually hiding it. Perfect camouflage. Instantly adapting to make the Bluffalo appear to be any other animal but the Bluffalo. Truly remarkable. Unfortunately with no direct evidence of how the Bluffalo accomplishes this marvel of biology the debate over its methodology still rages. In this researcher's opinion it’s magic. It’s probably magic. The Bluffalo is also capable of a robust vocalization, able to mimic a complex set of sounds and even human voices! Researchers have on numerous occasions heard the Bluffalo mating call of “Hey, go the gently caress away! This is our spot!” The most common sound the Bluffalo make however is a loud crashing sound as they chase you through the bushes. Socially, as previously mentioned, the Bluffalo tends to be a solitary creature, rarely encountering more than a handful of other Bluffalo in its entire life. With no way to identify other Bluffalo thanks to their natural camouflage the species has mostly propagated through sheer blind luck and a gentle god. If you do happen to locate a suspected Bluffalo proceed with extreme caution. While the animal is not any more dangerous than your average Bison, that's still really, really dangerous. The slightest error in judgement and you could be crushed by something that looks like a small woodland creature, but is infact a multi-ton killing machine. Luckily for humanity the Bluffalo is only interested in the genocide of high plains grasses and not the massacring of the human race. Please let us once again thank you for your support. Together we will continue our efforts to study and protect this noble beast of the prairies. Sincerely, Dr. Izzy Nohtablughalow
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Oct 9, 2021 03:52
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This story is best read after someone puts indentations in front of each paragraph, please and thank you. Mustang Sally 1280 words First contact was made by Captain Sally Ride, bitter misanthrope and sole occupant of the mining ship Lonely Rhinoceros in the second of Epsilon Erandi's asteroid belts. The round trip from Earth took a relative three years there, three years back, so she had brought quite a few books. And by the time she returned to Earth, decades would have passed, realtime. All her coworkers and family would be dead, or at least old enough to be laughable. So there was that to look forward to. But when radiation from the astatine cargo damaged the ignition system for the engines, she lacked the technical background to restart them by herself. Sally turned on the distress signal and kicked back. Captain Ride hadn't been the only pilot to rent a star ship and set off in search of riches. It would only take time before someone else showed up in the area. An offer of a tenth of her cargo when she reached earth would make rescue an enticing act for even the greedy, miserable hermits who had set out to space. Three months passed. When a ship did appear, Sally wasn't sure if she had simply imagined it. One moment, she was floating alone among the radioactive rocks. The next, a craft the tenth the size of her own was floating next to hers. It looked like a rocket that tapered on both ends, bring pink and covered in baby blue fins, with highlights of silver along the edges and dappled across the hull. As Sally stared it it, the top faded away, revealing the passenger within to the vacuum of space. The creature within, a mass of entwined tubes that looped back in on themselves, gave a jaunty little wave. The radio on the Lonely Rhinoceros crackled to life. “你好! Bonjour! 안녕하십니까! Aloha!” “Have I gone mad?” Sally said, staring at the window. The creature didn't wait for Sally to turn her radio on. “Wooof! How would I know! Ha ha!” “I must have,” said Sally. “Or I wouldn't be looking at pile of English speaking alien snakes in a nineteen fifties convertible Cadillac.” “Wa-hayyyy! I don't speak it that good, human! But you all shout so much on all the waves! It is hard not to understand it!” The creature seemed to fold in on itself several times, rotating along a vertical axis. “What do you want?” “You were shouting a lot! So I dropped three bearings to see! Why you are shouting!” “Oh.” Sally tried to figure out how to explain an engineering problem to someone using alien technology. “The, uh, ignition? It starts the engine, powers the reaction, but it isn't working. If I could contact another human, they could help--” “Wa-hey! I can ignite a on! Plasma, yes! Gluons! Zaminitol! Magnetic fields!” The Lonely Rhinoceros shuddered as the fusion reaction in the back suddenly started. “Go find humans! Wha-hey!” “Oh! Uh. Thank you!” Sally checked the self diagnosis of the ship—ignition was still offline. If she was going to start heading back to Earth, she would have to do it now. “Hey, who are you? Are you going to visit us? The humans?” She tried to think of what to say, and only came up with platitudes from old movies. “We have, uh, so much to learn from one another.” “Wooooooof! No! That would be a big bother yes!” The top of the strange spacecraft reappeared, and the baby blue fins began to slide across the hull. “That sounds very thin!” “No, no, it'll be great. Just come to Earth, and--” But the craft was already gone. The trip back to Earth took four and a half years, relative, twenty three years real, because the Lonely Rhinoceros had started accelerating in the wrong direction. By the time she arrived, even Captain Ride was grudgingly eager to talk to another person for the first time in almost a decade. But when she arrived, armies of journalists, bloggers, cranks, and activists were waiting for her. To her outrage, but not surprise, it turned out two other mining ships had been monitoring Sally's condition in the asteroid belt. They hadn't bothered to help the ship, or contact her in any way, but had recorded the alien's presence and side of the conversation. For the last decade everyone on Earth had been speculating on just what she had said to the Botrus Anguium she had encountered. Now, thanks to the actions of some miners who had been happy enough to leave her to die ten light years from home, Sally Ride's life was a nonstop panopticon of interviews from TV hosts, military leaders, politicians, and scientists. Occasionally she was attacked on the street by some radical lunatic. And everyone was extremely disappointed by her actions. Why hadn't she convinced Humanity's first kin among the stars to sign a mutual defense pact? Why was she so clumsy in her words? Shouldn't she have compared basic mathematical concepts? Why didn't she find out how the Botrus Anguium started the fusion reaction? Her ship had taken video recordings of it, but she hadn't done any subsurface penetrative scans? Well, why didn't her ship have that equipment on it, wasn't she prepared for the unknown? She made it all up for attention, right? Because that's what she really wants, all the attention! She was just a liar, right? Admit it! Tell us how you failed! Thirty years passed. The astatine had sold well, although not as well as she had hoped—Earth had developed a way to synthesize it in the half century she was away—and Mrs. Ride now lived in a gated community in the wilds of Illinois. Her neighbors had learned not to ask her about the Alien, because she was a quick strike with her cane and too famous to arrest. Occasionally she would stalk to the store in a black coat, glaring at everyone she passed. Mostly she read books. Sally was enjoying a quiet evening when the alien appeared in front of her. “Woooo! Human! I came to Earth!” It partially unspooled to form a pair of pseudopods, which it waved excitedly in the air. “Took you a while.” Mrs. Ride peered over her book. “Was it a long trip? I wouldn't want you inconvenienced.” “Nah! But I've been doing the things! Also, the oxygen!” The creature folded over itself as it traveled across the room towards a lamp. “So reactive! I had to talk to a colleague! Very fun challenge! And now I can experience your many, many gasses!” “We do have a lot of them,” Sally said. She finished the page before setting down her book. “So, tell me. What can I do for my favorite person in Epsilon Erandi or Sol systems?” “You said come to Earth! So I did a swing!” The creature wound itself tight, arcing across the room. “You have some very funny gravities here! What else to see? Anywhere to go?” Well, here it was. Take it outside, introduce it to a few reporters, figure out how to shake its hand, and Sally would be vindicated. She'd go from a lying moron to history's most important figure, overnight. Of course, she'd have to go on television a bunch more times. “Wooof! No need to go anywhere.” Sally used her cane to stand up. “I've got books, radio, the television, a big system called the internet. You can see the whole planet from right here, without ever being bothered by those shouting humans. I'll show you how they all work.” “Wha-hey! So many facets! Such fun! I knew you displayed variance!” “Yes,” Sally said. “I always knew I was different, too.”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:52
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Comings and Goings 1477 words The island was growing smaller. Or maybe it was just that Elisa felt that way. She gazed out at the ocean from her perch on the eastern bluffs, and wondered if there was really anything else out there or not. Her mother wouldn’t tell her, of course. But she thought that there must have been something. She heard a high whistle, and looked down at the beach where her mother waved at her. She wanted Elisa to come down, of course. It wasn’t safe on the bluffs, which Elisa was very aware of and also did not care about in the least. Danger was the only interesting thing the island had to offer her, at this point, other than dull the monotony of eking out an existence on its shores. Elisa turned her back to her mother and started climbing down the cliff face, choosing to ignore the nearby path that would have taken her back down to the beach. Her mother’s face was tight when she reached the bottom, but she didn’t say anything. She was a woman of few words, and she had already made it clear to Elisa what she thought of her adventures. Elisa smiled and unslung the woven basket from her shoulder, holding out the tubers she had collected from the top of the bluffs. Her mother took them, and they both made their way back to their hut. It wasn’t much of a hut, to be fair, although the passing years had seen many improvements to its initial structure. As Elisa grew in size, she was able to contribute more and more to the hut’s upkeep, and had helped her mother re-thatch the roof only last season. So far it had been standing up to the long rains much better than the previous iteration, and Elisa felt proud of the accomplishment. “What were you looking for?” her mother said finally, setting out the gathered tubers on a woven mat. She picked up a stone knife and began to peel one of the vegetables, her eyes on the work in her hands instead of her daughter. “Something else,” Elisa said simply, pulling out her own knife and sitting down to help peel. Her mother said nothing. She didn’t need to; Elisa heard the words in her head anyhow. There isn’t anything else. That was all her mother would ever say on the subject, no matter how Elisa responded. So neither of them bothered any more. They cooked and ate in a familiar, half-comfortable silence, neither bothering to voice the same well-trod arguments that filled their heads. When they were done, Elisa gathered the dishes and went to clean them in the nearby stream. “Elisa,” her mother said, and she paused in the doorway. Her mother looked tired, and Elisa noticed for the first time the growing wrinkles around her eyes. But her mother said nothing, and Elisa turned and left the hut. *** Three days later, Elisa’s mother collapsed. They had been collecting clams on the beach near the bluffs that Elisa loved to climb, when her mother gave a little sigh behind her. When Elisa turned to look, she had crumpled to the ground like a dropped length of cord, and nothing Elisa did would rouse her. Desperate, Elisa hauled her mother up - had she always been this small? - and half-carried half-dragged her back to the hut. She laid her mother down on the pallet, and started boiling water for the herbal brew her mother favored, but as she set the kettle on and looked down at her mother’s face, she realized that she had no idea what to do. Her mother had always seemed invincible, or at least unshakable; she never hesitated to do what needed to be done, if it was stripping a tree or setting a bone, but looking at her lying there she seemed… fragile. Like the steadiness and certainty she carried had all leaked out of her as she slept, and Elisa had no idea if she would ever get it back. She was entirely consumed as her thoughts chased themselves around in circles, and she came back to herself only at the bubble and hiss of water boiling over its container. Mad at herself, she grabbed the pot over the fire and set it down on the ground, slopping hot water over the sides and narrowly missing getting a nasty burn. Grabbing the dried leaves for the herbal brew, she threw them roughly down into the water before folding in on herself, trying to sob quietly but not quite succeeding. “Elisa.” She turned sharply at the sound of her mother’s voice, then scrambled over to where her mother lay, her eyes once again open and staring at her calmly. “Are you alright?” She felt foolish as soon as the words left her mouth. Of course she wasn’t alright. “I’m making you a drink, it will make you feel better. Here, I’ll get it for you.” She moved to get a cup, but stopped when she felt her mother’s hand on her arm. “Elisa, I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I thought that I could keep you safe here.” She gave Elisa’s arm a squeeze, and Elisa was shocked to see tears welling in her mother’s eyes. “But I am safe,” Elisa said. “And so are you! You’ll be fine once you’ve had some rest, I just need to…” She trailed off, the words crumbling on her lips at the look her mother gave her. “I can’t stay here with you any longer, not like this,” her mother said. “This body has reached its limits, even for one such as me.” Elisa shook her head. “I don’t understand. That doesn’t make any sense, you’re just-” “You need to be with your own kind,” her mother continued, her voice fading. “I can at least do that for you.” She gave Elisa’s writst another squeeze. “You just have to wait for me.” Elisa felt a caress, a whisper against her thoughts, and then her mother was gone. *** It had been almost a month since her mother died when the bird came. She had buried her mother near the hut. She couldn’t stand the thought of animals trying to dig up the body, so she built a cairn out of rocks from the bluffs and stood guard at night for weeks. During the day she slept and ate from the stores her mother had carefully laid in for the future. They would be gone soon, but Elisa didn’t care; she only bothered to eat because she knew her mother would want her to live, even if she didn’t. But then one day she woke up to a shriek, and she sat bolt upright only to come face to face with an enormous beak. There was, somehow, a bird standing over her. It was one of the huge birds she saw sometimes soaring out over the ocean. She’d never seen one up close, and she found that she did not enjoy the experience in the least. The bird pecked at her, pulling the cover off of the bed and trying to grab strands of her hair. She flailed her arms at it, trying to get it to leave her alone, but eventually was forced to make a tactical retreat out of the hut. The bird wasn’t satisfied with taking over her home, though, and chased after her, pecking and flapping its massive wings as it screamed its horrible call, herding her all the way up the path to the top of the bluffs. Elisa stared at the bird as it approached her, cornered at the edge of the cliff, wondering if the thing was bent on killing her after all. After her mother died, Elisa had thought often that she wished she was dead as well, but when faced with the prospect, found that she would actually rather live. She spread her arms out and screamed back at the bird, hoping to scare it off, but it didn’t even seem to phase the creature; with a flap of its wings, it launched itself directly at her, missing her only narrowly as she ducked beneath its talons. But when she whirled around to look at the bird, it wasn’t circling back to attack her - it was flying back out to the ocean, towards a strange shape on the horizon. It floated on top of the water like a leaf in a stream, and had great white shapes billowing out from tall trunks along its length, and grew steadily larger as it approached the island. She had never seen anything more fascinating. Elisa felt a familiar caress against her thoughts, and was filled with a sense of warmth, of love, and of hope. When she closed her eyes, she could hear her mother’s voice. I am here. I love you. You are not alone.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:54
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The Bluff Again?, Jim thought. How many more times would they move that goddamn table? This had to be the fourth time this night, at least. He fished out his cellphone from under his pillow. I really need to stop doing that, it just wakes me up more. That was also the fourth time he’d had that thought. 3:30 AM, the screen read. Three loving thirty in the loving morning. What a ridiculous concept. As far as he was concerned, human beings should not even have words to describe the stretch of time between 12 and 8. It should only be referred to in abstract terms, like when physicists try to explain what happens within a black hole. How was it that they called that point where math broke down? The singularity, the words floated into his consciousness. There probably wasn’t any sound at the singularity, so as far as he was concerned that was a better place to be right now. Jim had read- well, not read. Heard about it in a podcast. Did that count? Were podcasts the new magazine articles? That vague place where you picked random factoids that you later repeated as fact to people, hoping that no one demanded to know your source. In any case, Jim had read slash heard about the possibility of microscopic black holes popping into existence randomly, a byproduct of the weirdness of quantum physics. Maybe one could form right now, approximately 9 feet above him. How long would it take for it to expand enough to swallow those speakers? Another thundering scrape drilled into his brain and jolted him back into reality. He had almost drifted to sleep that time. That loving does it. He was going up there. He’d been a good neighbor, he’d been patient, he’d been a good sport. And now he was going up. He’d explain to them that he’d been young too, once. When? Years ago. At some point in that indefinite period he had hosted his own parties, and when asked by his own neighbors to stop making noise he’d complied. You loving liar, what party? 8 nerds arguing about the Lost finale and drinking lovely beer? gently caress off. Mrs. Birch had asked them to keep it down after Dan had ranted at full volume about what a hack Lindelof was. That had been at 11pm, everyone was gone by 12. Jim stayed up till 2am, kept up by the sounds of Mrs. Birch’s tv, permanently tuned to Fox News at full volume. He had gone up to her door a bunch of times but really, what was the point? She was so old and hard of hearing she would probably not even hear his knocks, anyway. In any case, she had died eventually, and the sounds had stopped. Jesus Christ, does everyone at this party wear heels? Mentally, Jim tracked whoever this was all the way from the kitchen to the bathroom. He’d been up to August and Jerome’s apartment twice and had a hazy picture of it in his mind. The first time was when Fred had moved out. That loving rear end in a top hat. Random acts of nature destroying the apartment upstairs had also been a popular plot point in his late-night musings when Fred was living there. At least these two don’t snort a line of coke every weekend. In truth, Jim didn’t give a poo poo about the coke, it was the fact that Fred would blast EDM all night when he got high. Even if Jim had ever asked Fred to keep it down, he had his doubts Fred would have been able to even parse the request. Jim had started drafting, well, final revisions, really, his letter to the coop board when Fred had moved out. Whoever was in the bathroom flushed and images of piss rushing down the pipes that ran in the walls behind his bed burst into his head. With a sigh, Jim got out of bed. His cats were not happy about that. It was the fourth time he’d woken them up. Where are my loving jeans? He wasn’t about to go up there wearing his PJs. What would that even look like? Oh, hi, Jerome, yeah, I’m a cool dude just like you, I’m sure you’d be in your PJs right now if you weren’t having this party, no? Speaking of this party, any chance you guys can turn down the music a bit? And also, can you ask all your guests in heels to take them off? Also, have you given any thought to finally sticking those felt pads I gave you under the table and chairs? I can do it for you, it’s just a second. No, yeah, obviously we can do it tomorrow, but maybe ask your guests to lift the chairs when moving them? Oh, you guys are winding down any second now? That’s great. No, I can definitely be cool for a bit longer. Jim looked at his phone again. 4:30AM. They’re probably about done, anyway. If he went up there now, he’d just end up looking like an rear end in a top hat for what? Thirty extra minutes of sleep? He should have gone up two hours ago. Maybe if August ever read any of my loving texts, this wouldn’t need to happen. Maybe August would answer tomorrow, like she did last time. “sorry!!!!! i never look at my phone 🤦♀️ next time just come up and let us know!! won’t happen again! 😬”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:55
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Edge of Everything 853 words It’s late morning, and from the right angle the lake shines like a vast field of diamonds made the more beautiful in that they slip out of my grasp every time. I’m in the water with my father, me nearly submerged while it's barely past his waist. I am the Rainbow Fish, until he lifts me one-handed with such incredible strength that I am propelled twenty or thirty feet into the air. I am Flipper now, rocketing back toward the water with a mighty screech. He is Tired, though, and as my mother reclines under her umbrella fully protected from any risk of a tan it is clear to him that I am not to be left unsupervised. With tremendous skill and agility, he snatches me from my supersonic dive, saying only “that’s it, Bug,” as he absconds toward the shore. I know better than to struggle, but as he carries me toward the sand I begin to formulate my escape plan. The cottage is my home base, which is of course troublesome in that I share it with the Bad Guys. If I had my teammates with me, we might be able to even the odds a bit, but George has swimming lessons and Nate’s still in trouble for what he said to Ms. Williams the other day. I’m going to have to lean on my spy skills. We’re out of the water now, but I’m still trapped in my father’s iron grip as we make our way toward my mother. She looks up and laughs at my misfortune. “Look at you two! It’s like when you used to carry Hercules when he got tired on his walks.” (They claim that Hercules was my father’s dog, but I have no memory of this.) He looks down at me and smiles. “Yeah, but at least he behaved most of the time.” Finally, he sets me down, and my moment is here. “Can I go back to the house? I need to use the bathroom.” My father sighs as his gaze ambles to the chair next to the cooler. “Yeah, sure, that shouldn’t-” “Lucas.” Uh-oh, she’s overruled him. She pulls her sunglasses down and scans me for a moment through half-squinted eyes before turning and looking back toward the house. I can almost hear her android brain running through every possible scenario, and for a moment I think all is lost. Then she looks back to me. “Yes, go ahead. But be careful on the stairs, OK?” I’ve done it! I offer some basic reply in the positive and head off toward the house. I make sure to keep a reasonable pace for a few seconds, but once I’m sure that the noise of the waves will mask my footsteps I break into a sprint. I don’t have anywhere to go except the cottage, but there’s no reason I can’t have fun on the way there. A few miles between the ocean and home base stands the cliff, which juts thousands of miles into the sky. At its highest points you can float off into space if you don’t mind yourself, but any time I’m going to be up there I make sure to wear my extra-gravity shoes. Of course, that’s where the path to the cottage is, so I make sure I’m fully equipped before I take the teleporter to the top. No sooner have I arrived at the cliff’s greatest height than I see impending doom. Hundreds, no, thousands of aliens line the cliff’s edge, hissing and gesturing wildly in the direction of the beach. I’d fought these monsters before, but never in such numbers, and given that I’m the only human that can see or hear them I have no hope of calling for backup. There’s no choice. I have to save the world again. Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months, and still we fight. Time is relative like that when you reach the speeds we’re capable of. In the end, though, they never have a chance. I’m up in the air preparing to crash down like an asteroid and blow them all away when the Alien King raises a white flag, and the battle is done. He grumbles in his mysterious language as they load into their invisible mothership and blast off toward their home planet. Still hovering in the air, I realize my mistake. Extra-gravity shoes aren’t meant for use in battle. I’m floating off into space. The vacuum of space may intimidate lesser men, but assuming you’ve got a good enough space suit you can theoretically live forever. I take no pleasure in the prospect, but I suppose there’s some chance that I could be found drifting hundreds of years from now. If nothing else, at least I get a chance to live among the stars while I wait. They’re quite beautiful even in a hopeless situation like this, an endless sea of diamonds against- “Alexander!” Uh oh. “What do you think you’re doing, young man? Get away from the edge of the wall, now.” Well, at least it didn’t take hundreds of years. I really like my room at the cottage, actually.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:55
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prompt= 'bluff' Black Sunflower 997 words (lol i had zero time to cut down, did the best i could) A worm strings my guts. It threads through them like needle-stitch, drawing what little I send my body from my body. I am skin and bone, my arms like spindles and my thighs creased. I once had a mouth but Gerar sew it shut. He will sew every gap shut, in time. The seams then will be like my wrinkles, webbed across my face, my body, but I am not old enough yet for him to wall me off. “Eris,” he says, “the weak eat the food of the body and the strong eat the food of the spirit.” When he says this his eyes glint like cut diamond but there’s an ache behind them as if could he starve for me he would. Where the garden has become the desert there is nothing left of it. Nothing but the leaves I have pressed into my pages since I was a child. When I was a child I drank the sap of the trees. The trees were legion, the grass electric. The leaves parsed the sunlight like spears of honey. Now we live in a small hut of clay, the earth blistered and peeling. But Gerar says he has built our home strong, the way the insect encased in amber bears with its shell the weight of time. One morning I woke up, and the worm was in me, and my mouth was sewn shut. Gerar says there’s nothing more for me to say. Every word, he says, messed up something he was doing. And, he says, the worm in your belly will eat what’s wrong with you and leave the rest. I knew then that his nerves were screaming. Gerar, God had said, it is yours to die like a dog when I decree it. Holding Gerar’s hand I had looked up at him, and the look in his eyes had said, perfectly good child sacrifice right here. But Gerar says that God doesn’t undo what has come to pass, for He’d never finish a genesis that way. If He let himself do that He would never stop getting started. I watch Gerar sleep and the lips of his mouth turn in moan. Spittle trickles down that sallow jaw, his thatch of hair parted by his beaked nose. I watch him and the morning’s glow burns against my back from where it spills in through the hut’s threshold. The morning’s glow burns and I creep out across the sand. In the sun whose light bleeds into the white waves in phosphorescence. Glittering streaks of mercury race along my sight lines. My shadow is translucent felt skeined and tattered over the sand. Defined more by the ridges and whorls than any substance itself. And I see, spiring from past the next dune, a single pillar, obsidian. Lancing the air and in the morning sun like a testament to an age that treads ever closer to us with the heart of a beast. For there will not always be light, like there is now. And yea though the light has bleached away my joy, still I fear I will miss it when they take it away. I unsling my pack, draw with trembling fingers my book of pressed leaves. I have not left the hut since the shadows fleeted away like ghosts to stand or die as God commands. Yet my sight is steady, my head held high, as I appraise it, arched back the way no crone can, the way Gerar’s back would throw out. I see that pillar clear to the sky. I hear grunting behind me. Gerar is forcing himself over the sand. He braces himself with a stave and his body heaves with each movement like he’s about to collapse. “You’re supposed to eat yourself,” he says in a hiss. “That’s the message.” But of course I am tired of trying to say what I can't. I don’t even incline my head towards him. I continue to stare up at the black pillar as it climbs the blood-red sky. “You think that has something to do with Him?” Gerar says. Cackles. “You think He’d make a tower of all things? I know how he thinks about you and me.” He coughs. Spit mists the air and drizzles onto the white sands like droplets of ink. “No, the dead earth shaped a tower in defiance of Him. The way I wish I could.” I am seeing the sky fringed in red like the pit of fire has opened in the sky. Seeing red the eyes of Gerar they are blood-shot, haggard. Were I to open my book of leaves it wouldn’t be that way. Because I have kept the patterns. Etched through strength of spine into memories. Elegies. Gifts from presence long gone that would rather not be nothing right now. All I have to do is thumb the pages and I can lose myself from life for the instant it would take not to make a mistake. But he is saying now there will be more of us, a drat sight more, before the myths are through. The memetics. Maybe you feel hopeless right now, knowing that’ll all be on you, and the dead earth hates you too. I mean when there’s not enough to go around, I mean He is one thing and there are two of us. I didn’t ask to be born but thank God it surely must be over. And so I leave him by the sand, on the sand, he will forever and always be on the sand or in it. I carry the book of pressed leaves with me and am called many names. They say Eris, you are skin and bones, but you are a lovely thing. Poor dear can’t help being so silent. They say social skills never come to some. Those eyes hungry for wonder, you’d know them anywhere. Like I saw them in a movie, or read about them in a book.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:55
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maybe it is 1521 words My dead wife is not happy with me. At all. I’m glad I at least used the old hand mirror to summon her because she keeps trying to walk out of frame and dissipate. Fortunately, I was smart enough to also close all the doors. “Stop turning the glass,” Nia snaps. She crosses her arms and glares at me through the reflection. “Let me go!” “Honey,” I say. “Honey. Honey. Please. I need your help here.” “You need to listen to me. You needed to listen to me. I told you not to invade Channing’s dreams. I told you to give her space. I just died! That’s going to be traumatic for anyone! Let alone a teenage girl. Let alone a teenage girl with my heritage whose powers still haven’t kicked in and is undoubtedly worried that they never will and who I am one hundred percent confident would like to talk to her mother. I told you to take her to a loving therapist!” “But... you’re a witch?” I say. “You don’t believe in therapy.” Nia presses her translucent palms against her eyes. “Ryan,” she says. “That’s like saying I don’t believe in the moon. That I don’t think birds are real. That, I don’t know, loving magnets are magical. It’s a profession and it’s helpful. It’s not a loving prayer request at white woman’s Baptist Bible study group.” Her reflection sits down on the bed. She sighs. “If you’re going to trap me in this conversation, can you at least light a cigarette for me?” “Yeah,” I say. “Sure.” I open her old pack and place one between my lips. I have to inhale to get it to light and I end up coughing. I never understood the appeal. I hold it out in the air and watch the mirror as she takes a deep drag. “Thanks.” “Yeah,” I say. “Sure. How’s, uh, how’s being dead?” “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. Your mom found me somehow. Says, ‘hi.’ Wanted to know if you became a doctor.” “What did you tell her?” “I lied, of course. You’re welcome.” “Thank you.” “You can come clean with her on your own when you cross over. Just don’t bring me into it. That bitch is loving crazy.” I laugh. “You’re not wrong.” The cigarette burns quickly as she smokes. I can smell it. Even if I can’t see it. We sit in silence. When the first one dies, I light another. Nia wipes a tear from her eye. “Did I,” she asks, “or did I not specifically tell you to not enter her dreams?” “You did,” I say. “But… she’s so distant. She’s totally shut down. She’s totally shut me out. She won’t talk to me. She barely comes out of her room. I didn’t know what to do!” “So you, what, thought you should engage with her subconscious? What the gently caress did you even see in there?” “Well,” I say. “I, uh.” I take a deep breath. “She was… she was having a threesome with two guys. I think they were on the baseball team at her school. I’m not totally sure. You know how dreams are.” Nia just stares at me. “Un-loving-believable,” she says. “I know, right? She’s only fifteen. Like, how do I even approach that conversation?” “No,” she says. “Ryan, shut the gently caress up.” “But-” “Shut the gently caress up. That’s why you don’t go into dreams. You see weird poo poo that you shouldn’t see and is, ultimately, mostly loving meaningless.” She exhales. “I mean, I don’t care what she does anyway. As long as she’s safe. Make sure her birth control is getting refilled on time.” Nia purses her lips. “Oh, relatedly, a seer friend of mine over here says polyamory is about to come back in a big way so have fun with that. You and your stupid Southern conservative upbringing, gently caress me. I still have no idea how you seduced me.” I shrug. “Just good ol’ fashioned romance, I guess.” “I guess,” she says. “How quickly did she notice you?” “Pretty much immediately.” “And she woke up and saw you standing over her bed?” “Yup.” “What did you say? About knowing how to do that?” “I told her that you broke the rules. That you taught me the ritual when she was a baby. To help sooth her when you were exhausted.” Nia nods. “Does she know you can summon me?” I shake my head. “Good. Good. I know she wants to talk to me but… poo poo… if we do it now, before she gets her powers, it’ll gently caress up the connection. You’ll always have to be conduit.” “I’m aware,” I say. “I didn’t tell her.” “I should have taught her the ritual. I just... I thought we had more time, you know? And it’s better, stronger, if she does it the right way. Ritual poo poo is weak. I thought we had more time.” “You couldn’t have known you were going to have an aneurysm,” I say. Nia starts crying. I desperately wish I could hold her. Comfort her. Kiss her. But all I can do is watch. After a moment, she wipes her face with her hands. She motions for me to light another cigarette and I do. “What if she doesn’t get powers?” I ask. “She’ll get powers.” “What if she doesn’t?” “She will. It just takes time. It’s different for everyone. It’s normally around puberty. I mean, I happened to be ten but my sister didn’t get hers until she was twenty-two. My great-aunt until she was almost forty.” “Your grandmother didn’t get them at all.” “We don’t know that for sure,” Nia says. “She converted to Catholicism. You know how they are.” “What if she doesn’t, though?” Nia shrugs. “I don’t know. Can I go, please? I’m getting tired.” “Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Just… please… tell me what to do. I hosed up.” “I already told you,” she says. “Take Channing to a therapist.” “Like.. a… witch therapist? How- how would I even find one of those?” “ Just a normal loving human therapist. Specifically one that deals with trauma in adolescents. If you took her to a witch and she tells her that you know how to do rituals, even something as mind-bogglingly stupid as dream hopping, her coven will literally dismember you. And if you think I’m going to spend even one loving minute of my afterlife sewing your body back together you are dead loving wrong.” Nia pauses. “I mean, I would. Eventually. But I’d let you lie like that for a long time.” “Deservedly so,” I say. She smiles. “Can I go now?” “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry. I love you.” Nia rolls her eyes. “I love you, too.” I put my hand over the small mirror. When I pull it back, my wife is gone. *** Channing is silent when she gets into the car. “So,” I say. “How did it go? Did you like her? What did you talk about?” She puts her head against the window and doesn’t respond. “Right. Therapy. Personal. Forget I said anything.” We don’t speak as I drive home. “Are you hungry?” I ask. Channing shakes her head. “Do you want to get something to eat? Fast food? McDonald’s?” She doesn’t look at. But she does speak! “Mom said McDonald’s serves literal garbage and, as a corporation, is partially responsible for the destruction of our planet.” “Yeah,” I say. “It’s somehow really gross and really, really good at the same time.” “Mom would hate it.” “Yeah, well, Mom’s also dead.” Channing laughs. “That’s hella dark, Dad.” “Mhm.” She runs her tongue over her teeth. “Have you ever had a McGriddle?” I say. “It’s like a sausage biscuit but between these greasy pancakes. You’ll love it and you’ll hate it. It’s amazing. And disgusting. You have to try it. You want to try it?” She shrugs. “Okay?” “Okay, Dad. Fine. Whatever.” We sit in silence in the tiny orange booth. Neither one of us saying a word. On the way home, she finally speaks up again. “You were right,” she says. “I loved it and I hated it.” I nod. That night, as I’m walking to my bedroom, I pass her open door. She’s sitting criss-cross in the dark, surrounded by candles, her makeup mirror on the floor in front of her. And she’s talking to my wife. Her mom. “I just miss you a lot,” she says. “It’s been really hard.” She stops when notices me. I give her a weak wave. “They come?” I ask. “Your powers?” She shakes her head. “My therapist told me it was okay to pretend like I was having a conversation with her. That it would help. Just to, like, get my thoughts out of my head.” “Do you want me to leave you alone?” Channing shrugs. She bites her thumb nail. Then she pats the floor beside her. “Do you… do you want to say hi to Mom?” I step inside and get down on my knees in front of the mirror. There’s a slight, ever-so-slight, ever so subtle ripple in the air behind us. So small I’m not even sure that it’s real. But… well… maybe it is. Maybe it is. “Hi, honey,” I say. “I miss you.” Channing waves. “We love you, Mom.”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:56
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Mover The Mover’s brakes squealed, a high and pained sound that carried through the mountain behind the driver’s cabin. Aken gripped the wheel tighter. It took, in his estimation, about three hours to meaningfully decelerate two hundred million tons of moving rock just enough to handle the one-degree decline fifty miles ahead. The massive vehicle groaned onward at a half-mile an hour clip. He spat out the cab window before erupting into a spasm of cough. “Fuckin’ air intakes.” The wind whistled around the cab in response. The isolation out here, miles of grassland both before him and ahead of him, was crippling. He’d allocated a daily scream, a concentrated bestial bellow at poo poo pay, his B.A. in Roman civilization, poor working conditions, shoddy equipment, unsympathetic bosses, his minor in Latin, an objectively topheavy payscale, low tire pressure, the layered bullshit of sedimentary rock, an eastward course of sunchoked day driving, probably coyotes, one degree inclines, one degree declines… Aken screamed long, mournful, and wobbly. He checked his watch, only partially sated. It was just a bit after noon. He sighed. The scream was getting earlier. Then, in the distance, he heard something new, something he hadn’t heard for hundreds of miles. A voice in response. “Hey!” He scrunched up in the cab, cupping his hands around his ears and focusing over the onerous roar of the Mover’s engines. “Hey!” Definitely a voice. He unbuckled his safety harness and got up, then climbed the ladder to the roof of the Mover and looked back over Scott’s Bluffs, currently located near its home in western Nebraska and moving ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly east. Aken squinted into the sun. His mouth went drier as he saw a small cluster of dots, scrabbling down the sloping back of the bluff toward the cab of the Mover. He rushed back down the ladder and to the driver’s locker. He pulled out a large binder and began flipping through it. “Hey! You!” It was closer now. He flipped to the letter ‘S’. It should have been there, somewhere between ‘storm safety’ and ‘strait crossing’, but of course it wasn’t. What to do with a stowaway? “You! I saw you coming outta that cab! I want to talk to you!” The words were clear now, cutting through the wind. Aken gripped the ladder, unsure whether to climb or stuff himself into the driver’s locker. He did not enjoy confrontation. Confrontation peered into the driver’s cabin. The man was old but well-kept, his beard knotted into several thin braids. Aken gave a weak wave. The man glared at him. “You. Driver man. Up here.” Hostage to concern, he climbed up the ladder. It wasn’t just the man on the huge, flat roof of the mover, but a gaggle of men, women, and children. Aken was at a loss for words, so Rothfuss continued. “What in the everloving gently caress is this?” Aken wasn’t sure where to begin. “It’s a Mover,” he said. “Not the truck, dummy. I mean this whole thing.” Aken still wasn’t sure what the man was getting at. After all, the facts of the situation seemed obvious. He stared at braid-beard, who was working himself up into a real mess. “Don’t just stare like some kinda’ heifer and don’t play stupid. You tell me why the hell you’re moving our home!” Aken held up one finger and disappeared down the ladder. He emerged a moment later holding the job contract binder. “Uh, well, Mr., what was it?” Braid-beard tapped his foot. “It’s Rothfuss.” “Well, Mr. Rothfuss and, I presume, clan Rothfuss, we at Albion Logistics have been contracted for the movement of one…” Aken checked the binder. “Scott’s Bluffs, from the state of Nebraska to Illinois, in pursuit of a debt collection claim. All information herein is to be considered sealed and binding.” Aken frowned. Like his boss used to say, “they pay for the thing and we move the thing.” Not an official company slogan, but close enough. Still, the personalization of the whole business was making him fairly uncomfortable. Rothfuss stepped back in shock. “You’re moving the bluff? They told us all that roarin’ and dynamitin’ was to lay down water lines! You’re moving the bluff?” He repeated the phrase a few more times, dumbfounded. Aken groaned internally, then went over the company line. “Albion Logistics is not responsible for the contrivances, arrangements, and suppositions of its locational contractors, sir.” The words sounded hollow, awful. He wasn’t even sure how a company could not be responsible for its own contrivances. Rothfuss looked over his shoulder. The children were tugging on one of the Mover’s smokestacks. The metal cylinder swayed unsteadily. He looked back to Aken. “Okay. You’re moving the bluff. But no one got in touch with us. We’ve been livin’ on the bluff for generations, three entire generations! We’ve got four cabins, a water wheel, and Jonas is building a putt-putt!” Aken surveyed the three generations of Rothfuss milling around the top of the mover. It seemed more Manifest Destiny than an ancestral right to land, but Rothfuss’ argument had shaken him a little. Reluctantly, he looked back to the contract binder and flipped to the red-lettered ‘disputes and claims’ tab. He sighed and read the company line again. “Albion Logistics considers the ‘land’ referred to herein as all inanimate and animate carbon, including flora, fauna, and all structures, improvements, and notions not specifically named.” His mind wandered. Something of the inverse of Rome’s relocation deal with Carthage after the third Punic, about 140 BC? No, must have been closer to 150. Rothfuss had begun to stamp his foot and wave his hands in the air, furious. Aken was deep in thought now, some reptilian instinct to avoid a coming struggle. Probably the ‘freeze’ out of ‘fight’ and ‘flight’. He faintly recalled telling an old college professor that you “couldn’t like, own a mountain, man”. Rothfuss grabbed his wrist and jerked him back to reality. “Well, we refuse. I speak for the Rothfuss family and we demand you turn this thing around, right-quick!” Flustered, Aken flipped to the very back of the binder and pulled out an orange envelope labelled ‘non-binding contingency gratuity’. He peeked inside. Aken decided not to offer Rothfuss the stack of chain buffet coupons. He set the binder down and looked at the old man. His voice was pensive. “I can’t do that, Mr. Rothfuss. They’ll…” What would Albion do, exactly? Fire him? Somehow hold him responsible for the wage-based replacement of two hundred million tons of bluff? Lock him out from driving a smelly, lovely Mover? He studied Rothfuss’ face. Tears were beginning to well at the corners of the old man’s eyes as the Mover ground ceaselessly forward. Aken shrugged and disappeared down into the cab. There was a sudden clanking, a din of grinding gears, and a belch of smoke from the stacks on the roof. The children scattered. A few moments later, Aken climbed back up onto the Mover’s roof. He sat down on the edge, looking over the waving grasses. Rothfuss walked over and sat next to him. “Look, Mr. driver, I know you feel like this is out of your hands, it’s just…” The old man trailed off as the Mover began the hours-long process of coming to a stop. Aken’s voice was soft, barely audible over the decelerating engine of the Mover. “You can’t, like, own a mountain, man.” Rothfuss nodded in understanding. He was silent for a while, then smiled wide and gripped Aken by the shoulder. “So fella, how ‘bout some putt-putt?”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:57
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Last Call 1563 Words The guy to my right was full of poo poo. I could tell that, no question. One of his eyes was lazy but that didn’t stop it from twitching every time he glanced down. Dead giveaway, even if he hadn’t been sweating a bucket a minute. He’d pushed in too much too fast, with too much showing. Bullshit. The next time he looked up from his hand I tossed him a big old smile, with a slow wink at the end for good measure. I toyed with a pair of red chips as I pretended to have a think. The chips weren’t in play, just a personal good luck charm. They tended to draw attention, though, and that made them another useful tool.“Call,” I said, while I pushed out chips to match his raise. He swallowed hard and looked away. I know I shouldn’t play with my food; it ain't professional, but sometimes I just couldn’t help it. Poor kid, he was in way over his head. I could have pushed back with a hard reraise but he would have folded like a cheap cigarette. My gut told me one bluff was all he had him in. Leave him a little wiggle, though, and he might hang himself. To my right was a player of a different school altogether. Real hard rear end. His hat was pulled down low over his face, leaving nothing but the hard scar of his mouth and the wobble of the unlit cigar hanging there for me to work with. Dodging was poor form, in my book, but not a lot I could do about it. Not my table, not my rules. But hell, hiding told me something, too. The fella across the table was the main attraction; the reason I was here and the only serious card player I’d come across in this whole two-bit town. Gable Griftin. The game was his, the table, the tavern. Hell, from the way I heard it, most of the town, too. We’d been at it for an hour, maybe. The two other players still had chips to play with but they were a sideshow, mostly. From the first hand it had been one on one, heads up, the other two players so far outclassed they didn’t even realize it. They couldn’t even see the game we were playing. “Your play, Mr. Jacobs.” Griftin said, jarring me back to the game. Lot more chips in the middle than the last time I’d glanced up. He’d pushed out his stack, all in, and just as I’d thought the kid had folded under pressure. I took another long study of my hand, and back to the cards on the table. Let the moment linger a little. No reason to, really. The only play left to make was mine; call or fold, and I knew what I was going to do. Had since the flop, in fact. But there’s always the next hand to consider, or the next game. Whatever game that turns out to be. Griftin and I were close enough that matching his all-in was the game, one way or the other. Just clean up after that. A bit of dessert after the main course for the victor. Not the first time we’d toyed with it this game...he’d pushed more than once, so had I. Hadn’t been the right moment for either of us to make the call, though. I took a moment to look up at my opponent. He was a slick looking son of a bitch, give him that. Fine black suit, snakeskin boots to match. Black top hat like a proper gentleman. A pearl handled revolver peaked out from a hostler that probably cost more than my entire ensemble; hell, I knew it did, and me in my Sunday best. From what I heard, he’d made his stake back west, hustling cards, mostly, same as now. Only there were whispers of other things, too. Some said he’d made his own luck when the cards didn’t turn his way. Rumor was, before he’d turned all respectable and bought himself a town, he’d been a killer. I could see it there, in his eyes, as I watched him across the table. Cold and black and not a touch of pity. I wondered, too, as I reached for chips and shoved the lot into the middle of the table, what those cold, dead eyes saw when they stared into mine. For good measure, I dumped the pair of red chips on the pile, too. Every chip I had was in that pot, now. And for the first time Mr. Grifter’s eyes showed some life. Glee, I reckoned. Glee and greed. What a dynamic character he was turning out to be. He flipped his cards even as he reached for the pot, a hearty belly laugh telling me what I already knew. I’d played right into him, and the game was over, despite all the players left at the table. “Well played, Jacobs. drat fine game,” he said, as he restacked his winnings. “Plenty of potential. Give it a few years, you’ll be a proper touch.” “Cards have never really been my game of choice, being honest. Thanks for the chance, just the same,” I said, pushing back my chair and standing. I nodded to the other two men still in the game, tipped a few coins to the pretty lady dealing, and made my way to the bar. I ordered a drink or two, waiting for the next hand to play out. As I’d guessed, the pleasure went out of things for Grifit after my exit, and he made short work out of LazyEye and Cigar. Fifteen minutes later he joined me at the bar. “Buy you a drink?” he asked, holding up a handful of my own drat money. “Never say no to that,” I replied. He was the sort to need a proper wallow in his victory. Just like I’d figured. He settled into the stool beside me as the barkeep brought the round. “Passing through town? Aiming to stay? Could find work for a man who knows his way around a poker table.” “Be gone by tomorrow, I expect. Just one bit of business left.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the two red chips I’d brought with me, the ones I’d tossed into the pot at the end. “These chips...almost seems like I’ve seen something like these before. Back west, isn’t it? Little casino off the Woodchuck river?” He grinned wide, showing bright white teeth. “I remember now. drat near cleaned the place out. How about that.” “Not quite how it went, Mr. Griftin. Way I heard it, someone got the best of you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Oh really? And who’s been telling stories like that? I’ve been beat, sure, but you can be sure I remember every time. And I walked out of that little bit of nowhere with every coin and chip in the place.” “That’s drat near true enough, as it goes. Only chips left were those two in your hand. But you didn’t win, did you, Griftin. I heard you just shot the place up when you lost.” The friendly smile left his face and his fist clenched around the chips he held. “I’d like to hear who is telling tales like that, Mr. Jacobs. I’d like to answer their slander with lead.” He caressed the fancy hilt at his belt as the words left his mouth. “I do. I was there. My ma’ beat you cold, and you slaughtered every eye who saw your shame, then you looted the place. Just because you lost to a woman.” “You did make one mistake, though. You missed me, though, Griftin. I was just a little thing, cowering under a table in the corner.” I showed him my teeth. “You shouldn’t have missed me, Mr. Griftin.” He swallowed hard, but otherwise he didn’t make a move. I watched his eyes. Still a killer’s eyes, but there was something else there, too. Fear. Good. I downed the shot, stood away from the bar. “Your play,” I said, as I drew back my duster to show the gun at my hip. It was a cheap piece of hardware, a long crack down the handle making it seem barely fit to fire. But, like me, it was game enough, and ready for another hand. The place cleared out quick as you please. The bartender thought about protesting for a moment, took another look at me and made for the door with the rest of them. Smart man. For the last time, I stared into those black, soulless eyes. For once, I liked what I saw. I waited. He stepped away from the bar, protesting, but I paid him no mind. Just distraction. And as I expected, midsentence, he drew, fast and clean. Still a killer. But while he’d been playing cards and drinking in taverns I’d been training and dreaming every day for this moment. This one chance. His pistol came out quick but mine was quicker. A thin cloud of smoke drifted from my battered second hand pistol as his rattled to the saloon floor. I dropped the pair of red chips on his corpse as I stepped over the mess. “Guess that makes you all in, Griftin,” I said, as I stepped out onto the dusty street.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:57
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A Character is Lost 1225 words "Just admit that we're lost." A stern silence swept the cabin. Everyone had been thinking it, but Dr. Dumont was the first to say it out loud--and with that, all eyes fell upon her. The captain of their little expedition--Marcus Burns--was quick to break that silence. "We're not lost. ...We've had to take a small detour on account of the weather. That's it. S'not that big a deal." "If it's not," chimed a voice from the far end of the room, "why are you sweating?" All eyes shifted once more to find the photographer, Jersey Carlisle. Kicked back. Relaxed. An idle smirk upon his face. It was really all the same to him, after all--he was down on his luck, desperate... willing to lend a hand if it meant a free trip and a couple bucks. He'd hoped to grab some shots of penguins--penguins were an easy sell--but any place outside the states would do. The captain gave Carlisle a firm squint. "You can spot the difference between sweat and rainwater... from over there?" "I've got an eye for the out of place," replied the photographer. "You're just stirring the pot," the doctor pointed out. "If you don't have anything to contribute--" And Jersey grinned. "Yeah. YOU'D say that, huh? Remind the class what your field trip to the Antarctic's about...?" Dr. Dumont sighed deeply. "I'm doing an experiment with Adélie penguins--" "No, I got that part," Carlisle interjected. "But why? You've been... fuckin' serenading us with tales of all the cutesy poo poo they do, how great it feels to change the world--what's the experiment? You've been dodging that question since day one." "I don't see how the details of the experiment matter right now," Dumont replied. "We're lost. I KNOW that we're lost. I've been to see the penguins numerous times already, and we are absolutely off course." "Numerous times with who?," pressed the photographer. "Other crews," came her reply. "BETTER crews, apparently." The captain sniffed. "Then why not call one of them?" "What?," scoffed the doctor, "to sail out here and save me?" "No," said Marcus loudly, shaking his head. "I mean in the first place. I told you I'd never made a trip like this... if you knew other crews--" Dr. Dumont's voice rose to match the captain's. "So you admit that we're lost." The sound of the storm outside spiked, peaking at a low roar. The four were once more pressured into silence. Eventually the storm quieted, the ship settling. "...My experiment has nothing to do with this," Dr. Dumont finally stated. "Is that what you think? That my work with penguins somehow... CONJURED this storm, like I'm some sort of witch? If I say yes, will you admit that we're lost?" "I just think," began the captain, "that if we're all gonna be honest here, maybe we oughta take it from the top." "I've been nothing BUT honest," the doctor said firmly, but-- "What got you kicked off the other boats?" Once more, all eyes fell upon Jersey Carlisle. "'Cuz I'm betting it wasn't witchcraft. You said what you're doing is life changing, why don't you wanna talk about it?" "I was not 'kicked off the other boats' Mr. Carlisle," Dr. Dumont huffed. "There were scheduling complications--" "Bullshit." "Yeah," added Carlisle, "I'm also callin' bullshit." The doctor's silence transitioned smoothly into the next overpowering roar. The tiny vessel shook harder than it ever had. Even once the storm had calmed anew, the doctor hesitated. "You want the truth?," she asked. "Harrassment, aggression, and--you'll never believe this--paranoia. Every ship I've ridden with, the crewmen take some mysterious exception to me and my profession and my mere god damned presence. You want to know why I withold the details of my experiment? Because the details are boring, and the significance of the potential findings isn't immediately obvious. If you want me to sit here and bore you with details about proteins, and... twelve generations of penguin breeding, then fine, but it's not going to change the fact that we're lost." Carlisle was the first to respond. "...So you're not just settin' up a little penguin society? You're gonna cure cancer or something with penguin blood." "Sure," the doctor replied dryly, rolling her eyes. "Let's go with that. That reductionist attitude is exactly why I don't want to drag out the details--if it's not curing cancer or solving world hunger then I'm just setting myself up to be demeaned. We're still lost--we've been lost for days. I know the route, I know what it looks like, and we're going to end up... well, in God-knows-where--" "We're just taking a detour," the captain repeated. "Trying to work around the storm." "That storm really came outta nowhere," remarked Carlisle. "...Amazing that you saw it comin' a couple days ahead of time." Marcus turned his weary attention back to Carlisle. "You believe her?" Carlisle shrugged. "You didn't argue with her sayin' we've been off course for days, lost or not. Didn't even flinch. Just thought it was funny." Dr. Dumont joined the captain in furrowing her brow at Carlisle. "I'm... glad you can find humor in all of this, Mr. Carlisle." "I'm just bein' honest," he replied. "I figure somebody oughta be. See, I've been up and down the docks a few times trying to score a free cruise--I've seen you around, Dr. Dumont. Heard the rumors blowin' around about why you have to keep finding new rides, too." With a grin, the photographer pointed a fingergun at the captain. "...But you, I never saw. Not 'til the day you pulled up with nothing better planned than a trip to the Antarctic on the whims of some goofy doctor. The fuckin' ANTARCTIC! Never made a trip like this before, he says." The photographer paused... his grin steadily reigniting. "We were never gonna make it to the island. Were we?" Somehow, the clash of thunder that followed managed to suck all the tension from the room. "You're just stirring the pot," the doctor said firmly. "Yeah," Marcus agreed, "I can see why Dr. Dumont thinks we're lost, but... man. Don't be ridiculous." Carlisle simply shrugged, and leaned back in his seat. "I'm just sayin'. The doc, and your little reject first mate... I've seen 'em both, regular tourists where all the ships hang out. You?" He shrugged wider. "You're a stranger to me, buddy." "If you think I'm some kind of serial killer," Marcus muttered, "and you think the doctor's... I don't know, cursed--then why'd YOU want to come?" Carlisle smiled. He smiled wide. A genuine smile. "I told you, Marcus: I got an eye for the out of place. And this ship? It's goin' outta place." "...Jesus Christ," grumbled the doctor. "I'm going back to bed." The captain merely shook his head, eyeing the photographer one last time before he, too, made his exit. It was clear the conversation was going nowhere. Days passed. The argument was forgotten. It had been late, and the storm had everyone tense. The vague shape of the island appearing over the horizon eased the atmosphere aboard the small ship. It was forgotten as the island drew nearer--Bluff Island, part of the Magnetic Island and home to a large colony of Adélie penguins. The argument was forgotten right up until the point that the penguins, watching the boat pull in, began to whisper among themselves.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:58
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Nothing is ever truly lost 1140 words I didn't make it back to the surface vehicle in time. Must have been too busy clawing my way out of the ravine I fell into, dragging along what I could salvage of the sampling kit that took the tumble with me. Before that miserable climb and after, I tried everything I could think of. I sent distress signals to the vehicle, the hab, the shuttle, even in the direction of the orbiter. All long shots at best given the comms troubles that have plagued this mission from the start. Back at the top of the ravine, I sent up one of two operable flares in my suit's inventory, which I could hope some autonomous system would notice and mention to my crewmates. And then I did the only thing left to do, which was to travel as fast as I could back to the vehicle. The fall could have gone worse, I know. I am essentially intact, as is my suit. The climb was strenuous, but doable. Not so utterly draining as I'd feared. But it's true that I am tired as I slog through deep sands and across jagged regolith. And the light of the primary star is fading much faster than I'd like. And it's possible that I might have lost my bearings a little, left to my own pathfinding abilities until my suit's positioning module decides to start working. I'm maybe a little lost, but nothing is ever truly lost. True story: when my parents met, before they'd even gotten onto the train where they'd go on to share a life-changing twenty minutes of conversation, Pop noticed Dad on the platform because of his unusual wristwatch. When they tell the story, there's frankly too much detail about the watch in question. My version's more interested in the concepts, so for our purposes, let's say it wasn't a conspicuously expensive one, more the kind of thing no one except a specific kind of nerd would even know about. And so anyway, Pop uses the watch as an excuse to start talking to Dad once they're seated near each other, they gaze into each others' eyes, the rest is history. I've heard that story so many times since I came into the picture, and so has everyone else those two have ever met more than twice, but the story and its endless retellings are only one small part of the veneration the watch receives in their home. Almost right away, it became a sacred relic of The Fateful Meeting. Dad stopped wearing it casually, kept it in a fancy case he'd had to purchase separately because he'd picked up the watch itself from some foreign flea market on a photography assignment. Then that wasn't enough and they moved it to a glass case in the living room (a younger me was convinced that this was a pretext to get visitors to spring the trap of hearing the whole story), and then it wasn't long before they realized the old thing could really use a professional cleaning. Then the cleaning became an annual ritual of its own, one which Pop always invoked by announcing, "This old watch is looking awfully dusty!" and which ended with the two of them taking a long lunch in between dropping the watch off and picking it up. This went on the whole time I was living with them, until a year or maybe two before I moved out. That was the year when some small-time crook knocked over the watch repair shop and took The Watch along with all the actually valuable pieces in the place. They (or possibly their fence) probably dumped it once they had a chance to look up what people were paying for the model, is what the authorities said. Nothing more they could do for us, hope you had it insured, please go away. Pop took it in stride, which surprised me at the time. Lots of "I'm just glad no one was hurt," and "I loved that watch, but it's much more important I hang onto the man who wore it," and so on. Dad...well, Dad kind of went off the rails in his own quiet way. All I knew at the time was that a couple weeks after the loss of The Watch, Pop and Dad had a fight about something. They failed to hide the fact of the fight, but I didn't learn until a few years later that Dad had been living a secret life as a vigilante in search of his stolen property. Maybe vigilante's not the right word; as far as I know, he never became a costumed crime-fighter. It was more like he was a self-hired PI on the case. But it did involve a lot of lying to Pop, whose disapproval upon discovering the scheme was as predictable as it was dramatic. Dad had no choice but to drop the hunt or escalate hostilities with the very person he was trying to demonstrate his love for. Telling the whole story to me for the first time, they both kept throwing in assurances that this really was the truth. Partly, I guess, because they'd held so much of it back at the time, but they also seemed to expect me to disbelieve. I said something like, Well, Dad, you're good at a lot of things but I have a hard time picturing you singlehandedly taking on the criminal underworld. And I'll always remember what he said back: "I was getting closer to finding it. I think eventually I would have. Nothing is ever truly lost, you know. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to go through to get it back." It's night now, the really dark kind. The last smoldering glow of the dying red star in this binary is long gone behind the horizon, and it'll be at least seven hours before the return of the primary's ultraviolet-heavy rays. My suit can recycle the air for twice that long and keep me hydrated within tolerable limits for a hundred-plus hours beyond that. But out in the open and on foot, the cold is going to be a problem. My chances of finding the hab on foot before hypothermia takes me down are not great. But I should be easy enough to pick out against the landscape until then. It's probably about time to use that last flare, come to think of it. Maybe they've all made it back to the hab and have already noticed I'm missing. Maybe they're looking for me. It's far, and cold, and more than a little dangerous, but still, maybe they're already on their way. I'm a little lost, but nothing is ever truly lost. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to go through to get it back.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:58
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Just two minutes, the deadline is firm here!
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Oct 9, 2021 03:58
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