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Over eight hundred authors, over eleven thousand stories, over eleven and half MILLION words! (Some of them were even good!) THIS IS THUNDERDOME!   CLICK HERE FOR THE CURRENT PROMPT What’s going on here??? Thunderdome is Something Awful’s first, only, and best flash fiction writing contest. Every week there will be a prompt posted, goons will write stories, and one will emerge victorious to post a writing prompt anew. What makes this different from any other online writing group? The focus of Thunderdome has always been honest critique and self-improvement. This isn’t where you go to get compliments just because you shat a story out, or to post memes about #writing while never actually producing any words; this is where you go to become a better writer. We will help you face your writerly weaknesses, and with luck overcome them. What happens if I win? You decide the next prompt. You judge the entries. You give critiques. You continue the cycle of blood. Click here for help! What happens if I lose? Not all judges will choose to give out a loss (whether or not to give negative mentions is up to the head judge, and they'll usually state whether they are going to assign a loss in the prompt post), but if they do, good news! You get a fancy avatar to commemorate the blood you spilled on the sands of the ‘dome (plus some honest words on how to improve):  (gif courtesy of AHYCAH on giphy) Note to head judges: if you want to assign someone the losertar, please make sure to contact our benevolent Blood Mod Sitting Here or brutal Blood Admin sebmojo to do so, either by PM or on Discord. Neat! How do I join? Click the link above. Say “In.” Then post a story before the deadline (this is the crucial bit). Should I know anything important before I join? Yes! First and foremost, read the prompt post. Then read it again. Then read it a third time. Seriously, read it. The prompt post is going to give you a lot of critical information, such as:
I keep seeing people with cool TD gangtags, how do I get one of those? Yes, it is cool, isn’t it? Here’s what that looks like if you’re curious:  There are three ways to earn a TD gangtag, with varying degrees of difficulty:
BUT BE WARNED! If you sign up for a week and fail, your count towards gaining a gangtag will be reset, and if you already have a gangtag and fail to submit, it gets taken away. You have to start over from zero. Them’s the breaks! Okay, I'm sold. How can I enter this thing again? CLICK HERE FOR THE CURRENT PROMPT
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Jan 2, 2024 03:34
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Resources Discord PM me (curlingiron) or post in the thread for a link. This is the general Discord server for TD and other CC writers. You don’t have to sign up for TD join the Discord, but you do have to be a goon, so please post your forums name when you join. Fiction Writing Advice and Discussion If you want to talk writing in general, this is SA's home for it. The Thunderlounge: A Thunderdome Sidebar Don’t feel like doing Discord but still want to talk TD? Check out the Thunderlounge! You can ask for feedback on your stories and chat about the thread to your heart’s content without getting yelled at! This is a kayfabe-free zone, so leave your beefs at the door. Previous threads: Thunderdome 2012: FYI, I do take big dumps, holla. Thunderdome 2013: If this were any other thread we'd all be banned by now Thunderdome 2014teen: Stories from the Abonend Bunker Thunderdome 2015teen: Weekly Stories with Positive People Thunderdome 2016teen: Fast Writing, Bad Writing Thunderdome 2017teen: Prose and Cons Thunderdome 2018teen: Abonen Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here Thunderdome 2019teen: Writing Our Wrongs Thunderdome 2020ty: This Dumb Joke Will Continue Until the Words Improve. Thunderdome 2021ne: Out of the Dumpster and Into the Fire Thunderdome 2022wo: The Stakes Have Never Been Lower Thunderdome 2023ee: Flash, Fiction, and other Choice Words Starting with F On Judging The number of judges should be three. Since a normal week will only have one winner, that means other people have to step up. On any week where you don't have it in you to write a story, consider signing up as a cojudge. You sign up to judge by announcing your intention to do so in the thread, or by volunteering in Discord. Qualifications This is up to the head judge, but typically this means someone who has done a few rounds of the ‘dome and doesn't have a backlog of missing crits. You don't need to have won, HMed, or even no-mentioned to judge. You can learn a lot from judging, especially as a newer member of the 'dome. Expectations Read all the stories. Communicate your opinions with the head judge. Usually this happens in Discord but other methods happen, especially if there's a big timezone difference. Post crits to the thread. Crits The soul of thunderdome. Crits can be anything from two or three quick notes to a detailed line-by-line analysis. What's most important is that they get posted and that they be honest; no sugar coating here. If you do like the words you read, of course say so, but don't feel obligated to wrap up your opinions in half-hearted compliments. The point of crits is to help people get better, not stroke their egos. If you still feel like you have no idea where to start, you can also check out this handy crit sheet template, courtesy of beloved TD veteran Obliterati. Glossary by Sitting Here
HM - Honorable mention; a story that was in consideration for the win, or had some notable positive quality. DM - Dishonorable mention; a story that was in consideration for the loss, or had some notable negative quality. DQ - Disqualification; a disqualified story. Stories that were submitted before judgment, but after submissions close. Also includes stories that went over word count and stories that were edited after posting, as well as cases where the judge feels a prompt was ignored in a particularly egregious manner, or when, due to some shenanigans or other, the author was also a judge. Disqualified stories can’t win, but they can lose, which is better than failure. See also: Redemption. Flashrule - A sub-prompt given by the judges as part of the main weekly prompt, often serving as an additional challenge or piece of inspiration. Hellrule - A particularly unfair flashrule, requested at one’s own risk. Not every judge will issue hellrules. Redemption - A disqualified story submitted after judgment has been posted. Better than failure.  - Adding to your signup post indicates that you will forfeit your forums account if you fail to submit. Banned accounts may be unbanned at the owner’s expense.FJGJ - Fast Judging, Good Judging. A thing impatient morons begin shouting the moment submissions close. Brawl - A duel between two or more writers. Brawls are separate from the weekly prompt. See On Brawling by Sebmojo for a detailed explanation. The Archive - A repository of all Thunderdome stories, created by crabrock and Kaishai and now maintained by a small crew of excellent volunteers Losertar - Another name for the free avatar given to losers of the weekly contest Kayfabe - It is the showmanship that makes Thunderdome different from other, similar contests. Kayfabe gives participants the opportunity to show a little swagger, or act out grudges and rivalries within the arena of words. Kayfabe is optional, and it’s meant to be fun, not abusive. Come find out what you’re made of, you unblooded weenies.
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Jan 2, 2024 03:35
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Thunderdome Archive by crabrock We've done a lot of weeks of Thunderdome, which can be a little overwhelming to keep track of. Enter the archive, which makes a robot keep track of everything so you don't have to. His name is TdBot, he is a creep, and we hate him. The archive is a repository of the thread's weekly entries, brawls, and even interprompts. In addition we track judges and has done their obligatory and extra story crits. There are statistics for all sorts of interesting things like author wordcounts, entries and more! If you're thinking "I wonder how many..." then it's probably already there somewhere. Even I forget how to find things. The Archive is by INVITE ONLY, and the only way to earn an invitation is by spilling blood in the dome. Do not ask for an account if you have not participated in at least one week. Overall Records:   Your Profile Each Thunderdome contestant gets their own author summary page (e.g. here's mine). On your own profile you can change the privacy of your stories (set them to hidden) and mark your favorites. You can also use the archive exporter to build a fancy PDF to send to your mom.  TdBot TdBot not only looks after the archive, but he can pull information from it at will, which he uses to serve as the oracle of Thunderdome in his discord channel. Pop in and have a conversation with him, where he'll use your own bad words to make you regret speaking to him! Team Archive None of this would be possible without the help of Team Archivean ever rotating cast of trusted volunteers who have given their time to trawling the thread and checking for accuracy. Thanks, Team Archive! Patreon In addition, several people give REAL LIFE DOLLARS to keep the archive up and running and enable us to do things like the weekly recap podcast, so a huge shoutout and thanks to these fine domers! All the levels have the same rewards because of space socialism. Any donation gives you this cool wizard hat on the archives:  Errors & Feature Request PM crabrock on discord or SA and we'll get it fixed or see if it's possible to do. No we will not archive crits. Do it yourself.
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Jan 2, 2024 03:36
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On Brawling, by Sebmojo: brawling what so someone said something mean and your bottom lip is doing that quivery thing and you feel like you can't go a single second more without punching a motherfucker? thunderdome has just the thing. you can't fight here it's the Thunderdome when two people hate each other very much, and one of them is you, you get to slap down a challenge. make it big, make it brassy; you're slapping your sex bits down on the bar, try and make 'em bounce a little. help someone's slapped me with something help accepting brawl challenges isn't required, but if you like to sling the poo poo around (and you should) then failing to back up your bad words with good ones will be remembered. brawl stories are good, being able to beat someone you're mad at is better. how does it work? once you've thrown down a challenge, and had it accepted, a brawl judge will step up just like that weird bartender in The Shining. they'll give you a prompt, a word count and a deadline. they'll also, and this is real important, state the this means if you fail to submit by the deadline then you get banned. the judge doesn't need to give you an extension.what do you mean banned brawl toxxes are obligatory. if you're actually a literal secret agent and you've just discovered you're parachuting into Syria in two hours time then get on Discord, snivel at your judge and maybe they'll remove the from the prompt, but expect that to be a one-time mercy if you gently caress it up.anything else? don't challenge anyone until you've done a few rounds, good grudges take time to fester, don't step up to judge a brawl unless you've at least got an HM or the participants have asked you to, and declining a random drive-by brawl is more acceptable than one with a grudge behind it. this place runs on words, and hatred, and you gotta fuel the fire. brawl judges, don't grab brawls if you don't have a prompt ready and don't be dicks; what matters is whose story is best, don't gently caress around. is that it yes, fight well you horrible monsters
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Jan 2, 2024 03:39
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Thunderdome Week DXCVI:Vemödalen Vemödalen: The fear that everything has already been done This neologism comes to us by way of John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which is our subject for the week. Pick one of the (non-introduction) videos from This playlist, and write something inspired by or evoking the emotion described. Do not be too literal or duplicative of the video, though. (We’re sticking to just the ones with videos again for this week, not the ones only defined in the dictionary website) If you wrote in week 353, you should choose a different word this time. The first person to select each word gets 1500 words. The second gets 1400, the third 1300, and so on. This reduction only applies to cases where people are duplicating a word, to be clear All the no’s: poetry, erotica, fanfic, raw screeds and primal screams, spreadsheets,gdoc links in general Losses/negative mentions are possible but not inevitable this week. Sign-ups close 11:59 PM California time Friday Submissions close 11:59 California time Sunday Judges: Thranguy Chernobyl Princess ? Entrants: The Cut of Your Jib - Zenosyne beep-beep car is go - Vemödalen Toaster Beef - Onism Staggy - Oleka Sitting Here - Ballagàrraidh Sailor Viy - Astrope Flyerant - Lacrimae Rerum Ceighk - Alazia sparksbloom - Yù Yī BeefSupreme - Pâro TheMackening - Ambedo Slightly Lions - Avenoir Thranguy fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Jan 8, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 09:05
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in with Zenosyne: The Sense That Time Keeps Going Faster E: added link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgyEmYyQF4 The Cut of Your Jib fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 11:01
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In with Vemödalen - the fear that everything has already been done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftDjebw8aA (Edited to imbed video properly) beep-beep car is go fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 12:07
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In with Onism: The Awareness of How Little of the World You'll Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrBlmpqh8T0
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Jan 2, 2024 13:05
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In with Oleka - The Awareness Of How Few Days Are Memorable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsCK6Vfuk
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Jan 2, 2024 18:07
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In with Ballagàrraidh: The Awareness That You Are Not at Home in the Wilderness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7sZ2wMg_Q
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Jan 2, 2024 22:42
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In with Astrophe - The Feeling of Being Stuck on Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1SkepihYLE
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Jan 3, 2024 01:18
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In with Lacrimae Rerum, the Tears of things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26JK_Xw_laQ&t=53s
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Jan 3, 2024 03:05
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In with Alazia, 'the fear that you're no longer able to change'. to not fail
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Jan 3, 2024 12:59
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in with Yù Yī : The Desire to Feel Intensely Again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuC-M-85ArY
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Jan 3, 2024 18:23
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in with Pâro: The Feeling That Everything You Do Is Somehow Wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7l2hUp0CkQ
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Jan 3, 2024 21:21
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Week 596 Submission Zenosyne: The Sense That Time Keeps Going Faster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgyEmYyQF4 The Calculus of Being Derivative or Losing Sight of E 1100 words Existence is a lowercase rolodex, spun fast then frozen at certain cards with certain names and certain addresses for longer than one can bear. James took her hand, and they ran through the backstage area before her favorite band was due on stage. It was quiet, like the halls of high school after hours, when you could roam and maybe find the unlocked boiler room of rough cinder block where the janitors hid a handle of gin. They had doodled on the walls with scraps of collected chalk, nothing too outrageous, but there were unambiguous sketches of Barlow the ancient booger picker, and the stinklines of Ms. Shaw whose perfume was a gallon of travesty. The heat of the furnace dried the Raggedy Anne row of mop heads quickly, so that’s where they lived. Grey on grey, bright and dingy. Powder a million years old scritched on the hard slurry of the same. Rocks turned into other. Other turned into artiface and art. Mallory was in the sound booth and shouted louder than their banter, “Hey you can’t be in here.” But she smiled when she saw James and said more quietly, “Get outta here.” She didn’t say ‘you can’t be in here’ because she liked them. They might have even been the best people for the job, if they cared. Jenny knew it was the place where he asked her to prom, where he slid down on one knee, and it was the most elegant move like he was on roller blades. It was truly beautiful, but he was not a beautiful boy. If only it were Trent. But Trent was making of a show of things at the hospital, where the Captain should, right up until gametime. Then he uniformed and threw three touchdowns in Mudhaka’s honor. James stayed at the hospital, and watched as they pulled the bandages away from her face. She said ‘no, Trent already asked me,’ but it wasn’t forgotten. His dad worked courtesy there, at the Med Center built for ten but servicing thirty. Laid off from the plant, he wheeled olds in on complimentary wheelchairs up there persnickity sidewalk where some might live and some might die James spent a few summers in the factory, learning how to sharpen industrial drill bits and aware that this teen, loving up, would mean injury for one of the good old union men. His hands were a delicious criss-cross of scars as delicate and shiny as eggwash on a pie crust. Yes, yes, yes, oh god, yes, yes, it was good for a while. They hid behind the shed where no one would see while the ground was frozen and it was a six mile stumble home for him. The shed was more than garden tools, it was where Brett staged Warhammer 40K battles and it was nicely heated and had a bathroom and a beer fridge, a disconnected lounge far from the main house. That. Told the whole story. Mudhaka had that rasp, a smoker twenty years gone, but it was just her voice. She wasn’t even twenty. In the hospital so long her already skinny legs wasted away even more. She was good looking, maybe the most beautiful girl in town, but after the car wreck bore a reaping scythe of a scar across her forehead and down her cheek. She was still beautiful. Stunningly moreso. She was absolutely unique. Jimmy died in the back seat. It was a thing, since for whatever reason there weren’t many Jameses in that school. This moment is sticky. If he were more handsome, maybe there would be no moment. If she had been spared, there definitely wouldn’t. Inscrutable Waves over and over like lyrics of a Bush song. And that nerd is nearly sixty now. When they were all in their twenties, and Fawad J. Shaw wanted to go see them, he was so nonchalant. But when that shredded washboard surfed over him he giddied. A voice in the cans or a tight dorm room makes you feel like you know them. You don’t. Of course you don’t. But the timbre tricks you. And you can fall in love with the distortion of a guitar or the tons in just the same way. When that melody matched your heartbeat, or makes your heart match the melody. She looks over in the bed, backlit by the glow of Prime, and sees his skin slough off. He disintegrates to pulp and bone, then dust. Pot belly melts into a puddle that drips down the icicle bones of his fingers and onto the hardwoods like skillet splatter where the cats might lap it up. He is gone, never was. She forgot his name. The universe began in cold plasma. Maybe a state of matter that we don’t understand. Nothing is a fallacy. The state of nothing, anyway. The fallacy is in what we call life. The house she built is made of atoms, but it only exists because it’s an extension of her will. A rippling forearm with a hammer becomes a home. The fibre of every timber doesn’t mean anything beyond its ability to cut the wind. The oxygen was sucked away long ago. She watches the slow creation and fast destruction and he’s laying on one of those cloak thingies with the owl hood that makes a royal lint nightmare in the dryer. His lil flopper is out, napping on his pooch. She wants to slap down on his belly and catch the tip of his dingus, but he says every time she does it that boils him in the gut like putting the kettle on with no water in it. She can’t help needing to see the slow motion cannonball undulations. Her hand goes right through him. He’s a ghost. That’s right. She remembers now. A snowflake turns to a raindrop just before it hits the salt pitted sidewalk. A return to formless form. Bon chance, mon ami. Bon shance, bon shansse bon shonsssse bon shon bon shon sssss She spits in her hand so he’ll fart himself to sleep in five minutes. Eventually, she slaps his hand away and she dreams unknown dreams. Sigurd slays the dragon, but his mouth is full of ichor. They are the same in different lifetimes. Au revoir till the end.
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Jan 4, 2024 14:50
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In with Ambedo: A Moment You Experience For Its Own Sake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osrvO9Q3PtI Edit to add: In for for my failure in week 590.
TheMackening fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 22:19
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Astrophe - The Feeling of Being Stuck on Earth Backdrop People 1485 words Len and Vasili drove by night to Nimbin, up in the hills. They killed a pair of backdrop people there, a fake woman and man. The backdrop people owned a beautiful beautiful holiday house in the woods, reclaimed timber, eucalypt branches brushing at the windows. Vasili called them prison walls. In a cupboard in the kitchen was a huge jar full of weed. No way said Vasili. These are delicate fuckin signals we're picking up on mate. We're so close. You want to go and gently caress it all up for a choof? What have I been telling you all this time? I know. I'm ready. Are you though mate? Six months ago they'd met and hosed in some guy's trailer in the Western Suburbs, way down in Melbourne. A long hazy night of punk kids bumming cigs and pills off each other. Afterward, in the tangle of dusty blankets, Vasili had said: I'm not a poof, you know. Len had smiled cause he'd heard that one before, even used it himself once or twice to get out of a tricky situation. Vasili went on, You know what celibate means? Yeah. That's what I am. Only I got to gently caress people sometimes to find out if they're real. What the hell you mean real? Vasili had sat up in the gloom, the blanket sliding down his calves. He started to talk about the backdrop and the foreground. Things Len'd known since he was a little kid, things that moved inside him deep below the level of insufficient words. The way people didn't seem like people when you saw them in the corner of your eye. And how thin the world seemed sometimes, like you could put your fist through it and feel some cold special terrible chill beyond. These were things Len had never told anyone. Never even told himself. But Vasili was telling it clear. He said the world wasn't the world, not really. He said there were real people in the world but not many. He said it's hard to find them. I'm just passing through here you know. I got to find certain reagents. Then I'll be gone. Vasili said he reckoned Len might be real. Not just another backdrop person. There were some tests, out on Vasili's uncle's place in a shed at dusk. Pain is the way through mate. That's only the first stage. You'll have to work hard to catch up to me before I go. Vasili had a plan to get out. He'd been reading and experimenting for years and he was almost done. Now he had Len to help him find what he needed. While all the other kids were just loving around, just getting high, Vasili and Len moved through them with a purpose. A shopping list. Things they dredged up from the far corners of the dark web, from dealers in high rises and hippie communes and run-down outer suburbs where the backdrop people went to die. Research chemicals, oneirogens, toad medicine. Real things hidden in the curtain maze of the world. In Sydney they left a kid OD'ing in an upscale apartment. Cleaned out his stash and went down the fire escape to avoid the cameras on the front door. He probably wouldn't have lived, Len said later. No dumbass. He never was alive. He was backdrop people. The streets were full of them. Cardboard cutouts pretending to be human. Flypapers for real souls. Len knew that, he said over and over that he knew. But the next day Vasili disappeared. No text, phone turned off. He finally showed up a week later. To be honest mate. I've had some doubts about you. I can't take you with me if I'm not sure. So what? What I got to do? You got to show me you're not still stuck here. Remember what I told you. Attachment is the roof of all suffering. And he showed him the hammer. Outside the house so nervous he could die. Trying to keep hold of that cardboard-feeling, that knowing the thinness of the world. He went in through the back door. The guy was at the kitchen counter drinking a glass of water. The other was upstairs in the spare room and still sleeping when he got to her. Right after he threw up. But then he felt amazing. Like everything around him was surging up into light and air and he could pass through it--walls, trees, skylight, sky, all close as a curtain and equally without depth. Just wave a hand and it would all ripple away. He looked at Vasili and Vasili looked at him. Now you see it mate. All that's solid melts into air. gently caress yeah it does. They left the backdrop people downstairs under a tarp. Then in the second floor bedroom they opened the window and threw everything out--lamp dresser quilted blanket crashing on the pebbled drive below. Minimum of material distractions, Vasili said. You're still floating close to earth mate. Don't let anything snag you when it's time to fly away. In the bare room, Vasili took out his notes and his medical bag. He unrolled a big piece of butcher's paper on the floor and drew the sefirot in magic marker. In each circle he placed a different tupperware container. Ready to go mate. Ready to fuckin go. But when Len went to piss, he came back to find Vasili shaking his head. What? Going to need more bottled water than this. Got to keep the meat sacks hydrated until it's time to go. They got tap water. Nah mate. Tap water's got folate in it. You know how much folate'll gently caress up a finely calibrated psyche like mine? You got to go into town. Len said nothing. Are you real or not? I'm real. Well go on then oval office. Before the trap closes again. Len got the keys from the bowl on the kitchen bench. It smelled in there. He started the backdrop people's Prius and drove down the dirt track, between thick walls of blue gum, grey gum, narrowing to a grey point ahead of him, the walls of the evil world that were always close enough to touch but jumped away if you reached for them the tricky fuckers. Half a k down the road he stopped and got out. Walked back along the roadside and went in through the back door of the house. Quiet as a churchmouse. That was what his mum used to say about him. Backdrop mum who was dead now anyway. Up the stairs. The vile scent of salvia was spilling out from the cracked door of the bedroom. Vasili was on the bare mattress, grey-faced. He shot up when Len came in. There was a pipe loose in his hand. You bastard. You think I'm fuckin stupid? I'm sorry mate. I can't take you. You're just going to drag me back to earth. Len took out the claw hammer, still sticky all down its length. Dumb poo poo mother fucker you'll take me with you or I'll beat your brains out and you'll never get free. You'll be reincarnating as a bug for the next ten thousand years. Alright fine. Jesus. Cowering now with his arms over his head. Pupils big as gently caress. He'd already gone on ahead. Give me that said Len. He hit the pipe. Bitter taste down his throat. What's next then. Vasili had always been cagey about the details of the program. He skulked around the diagram like a spider, snatching up pills and herbs, darting furious glances at the bloody hammer. His face flashed demon-cruel a second and Len knew the salvia was hitting already. Hurry up. They started to take the rest of the reagents. A groan of anticipation from the old timbers all around. Len reeled but kept his feet and his grip on the weapon. Vasili cracked an unlabelled pill bottle. Take these next. Is it really that many? Yeah. I'll beat your fuckin head in if you lie to me. I swear. The walls started to buckle at last. Outside the narrow window, the sky was like a lovely painting. Oh god it's happening. His head blossoming like a flower. A distant tug on his hand and Len looked down. Vasili had managed to crawl, wormlike, across the bare floor and was trying to take the hammer by its head. Rat fucker... His body felt slow as the deep ocean; shadow people rustled at the corners of his eyes. With great effort he snatched the weapon away from Vasili's reach while Vasili mewled now on his belly, pupils like dinnerplates. Pupils like curtains... that twitched away for a moment to reveal behind them a great void. A moment of recognition, maybe, as the hammer came down.
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Jan 5, 2024 07:16
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Thunderdome Week DXCVI:Vemödalen Theme: Vemödalen: The fear that everything has already been done https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftDjebw8aA The Pilgrim 1479 words. Count Gis Yewing, being the last of his line and unlicensed to bear a progenitor, was selected by the Administrative Council to Pilgrimage. He was given a ship, and permitted to outfit it to his liking, though he was allowed no Biological Person to accompany him. He could hire a Person of Silicon if he had the funds and could find one who wished to accompany him. Like many, he chose to go alone. One hundred days according to the old calendar after he was selected, he was ready. The night before he was to set off, Gis visited the flesh factory and hired a Biological Person for the night. At first he thought he was just going there to relieve a physical need, but as soon as the person - he said his name was Kim - removed his clothes, Gis broke down. Kim held him tightly while Gis shook, overcome. He took great shuddering breaths in Kim’s arms and stayed that way a long time. They spoke of many things and Gis was content to know that Kim was a professional, and would keep what they spoke of between them. At the docking ring, he stood with his chest puffed with pride clad in an asymmetric suit in blue and trimmed in gold; the uniform of a Pilgrim. As he stood in front of the airlock, three members of the Administrative Council approached with measured steps. Five paces from Gis, the leader called out in a clarion tone. “Count Gis Yewing, son of Viscount Rem Yewing, grandson of Earl Fen Yewing. We stand before you, to wish you a safe and productive Pilgrimage. We hereby order you to proceed at your own pace towards the Starwell, ask your question, and report back to us your findings. If you do not return within the appointed time, we will declare you deceased, and your lands and holdings will return to the crown.” Tamping down the butterflies in his stomach, Gis replied to the command. “I, Count Gis Yewing hear and accept the orders of the Administrative Council. I will proceed to the Starwell, I will ask my question, and I will return with my findings.” The lead Administrator inclined her head very slightly. “So ordered. We present you with three gifts: remember their meaning. She and the other administrators stepped forward and he was presented with the traditional gifts. A measure of coffee, to symbolize alertness. Two measures of wine, to symbolize submission to the transformational wills of the natural world. An analogue writing instrument as well as a medium to write upon, to symbolize willingness to witness and record Pilgrimage. He accepted the gifts with an appropriate amount of solemnity, and with his eyes acceptably misty, stepped aboard his ship, which he had named Sunsetter. As Sunsetter launched into the midnight blue of space, Gis was presented with a dilemma. He could enter quicksleep and lay in repose for the entirety of the journey, or he could stay awake and aware for the trip.It was not disallowed to lay in repose for the trip, but it would cause talk upon his return. His constitution would be called into question. At the innumerable luncheons and soirees and events that those of his station held - when he was not within earshot - there would be talk. Though it would be difficult, Gis elected to remain awake, though he did not instruct Sunsetter to disassemble the quicksleep chamber. The journey was long, and Gis battled boredom daily. He brought many hobbies with him to occupy the hours awake. He took up the Relolyn and gained proficiency with it. He felt pleased that nobody was around to hear his fractured and early notes. Once he had achieved an appropriate level of skill, he studied ancient languages. Sunsetter was not a Person of Silicon, but had a mild conversational intelligence and Gis was able to practice his drills. Once he was conversational in ancient English, he took up the culinary arts. His larder was well stocked, and he was able to develop dishes that rivaled those of the finest restaurants at home. Finally, he arrived at Starwell's First Station. Once he was aboard and refreshed, he donned his Pilgrimage garb, and was brought before the monks who kept vigil. “Demonstrate your worthiness to approach the Starwell.” was all they said. Gis produced his Relolyn and played for them the Sonata For Home . It was a melancholy piece, with soaring refrains. After the final note lingered and dissipated, the head monk delicately wiped a tear from her eyes. “You have shown us your ability to learn by rote. Now, you must demonstrate your ability to improvise and think on your own.” Gis bowed low, and led the monks to the kitchen. Under their stoic watch, he prepared a meal for all of First Station. Using only the items in their larder, he developed a four course meal, including sweets at the end. It was an elegant meal, beling the simple ingredients, and enjoyed by all. As the plates were cleared and the coffee poured, the head monk spoke again. “You have shown us you possess the ability to think on your feet, to improvise, and to leverage what you have learned in unique ways. Convince us you are worthy, one last time.” Gis stood, and clinked his wineglass for attention. As the voices stilled, he launched into a rousing speech in ancient English. A few guests delicately turned on their translators, but more than a few did not, and he was understood. Gis spoke on the need for Pilgrimage, on how since he was denied a license to procreate, gathering information for his land was an honorable task. He spoke how asking his question to the Starwell and returning with the answer would better everyone back home. There were nods and grunts of assent as he spoke. The head monk rose as Gis sat and inclined her head. “Count Gis Yewing, you have proven yourself worthy. Tomorrow you shall approach the Starwell and ask your question.” Gis lay in his bed aboard Sunsetter, but sleep did not come. He worried about speaking to the Starwell, what he would ask, what they would say, what it would mean. Finally, he sat up in his bed. “Sunsetter. What am I going to do?” Ever literal, Sunsetter replied: “You are going to don your Pilgrim uniform, approach the Starwell, and ask your question.” “Yes, but Sunsetter, what if I don’t like the answer?” “Yours is not to render an opinion on the answer Gis, yours is to ask, record the reply, and then return home.” “I feel like I am merely a transistor on the circuit board. A replaceable part, one of many.” “I cannot help you with that statement Gis, but I can acknowledge your concerns. I am sorry you feel that way.” Eventually, the sleeping period ended. Gis rose, washed, and donned his Pilgrim uniform, took a very small measure of stimulant, and met the monks. He was brought to the viewing platform and before him was the Starwell. He peered into the depths, towards the bright accretion disk, dimmed by the window to protect his eyes. It was only here that Gis realized the size and immensity of the Starwell. Gripping the railing tightly to stop shaking, he squeezed his eyes shut and asked his question. “YES.” was the reply. Gis waited a beat for any further elaboration. When none was forthcoming, he turned and stepped off the platform. The window to the Starwell dimmed into opacity and the monks beamed and congratulated him. A dinner was held in his honor - prepared by the regular cooking staff of First Station - and then he was sent on his way. As he soared home, he completed his task, and compiled memoirs of his travels as well as his question, and the Starwell’s answer. That evening, he sat in his favorite chair, in his comfortable clothes, and sipped a crystal glass of wine. A gift from First Station. “Sunsetter, is this all there is?” “I do not understand the question Gis, can you elaborate?” Gis sipped his wine. He knew that Sunsetter wasn’t a Person of Silicon. They had no real intelligence behind their screens. Still, they were an excellent simulacrum and offered acceptable conversation. “I mean, is what I am doing, all there is to do? I went to First Station, proved myself worthy, asked my question, received my answer, recorded the reply, and am now going home. How many before me have done the same?” “All of them Gis. This is the role of a Pilgrim.” “Yes, but what does it mean?” Sunsetter paused for a long time. Gis sipped his wine and worried that somehow he had asked something of his ship that caused injury. Then, Sunsetter spoke. “It means you were a good Pilgrim, Gis.”
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Jan 5, 2024 13:27
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In with Avenoir
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Jan 6, 2024 03:50
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Sign-ups are closed, co-judges still wanted.
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Jan 6, 2024 10:26
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I will judge. for crits out by 1/12/24
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Jan 6, 2024 13:54
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Prompt: Onism: The Awareness of How Little of the World You'll Experience boxes 1,293 words The call came from a neighbor. Cassie was curled up with her laptop, scrolling posts from friends she couldn’t remember vacationing in places she couldn’t conceive, when the phone vibrated to life on her coffee table. It made her jump. She didn’t recognize the number, so she just let it go — but then there was a message. It was her mother’s neighbor. There was an ambulance at mom’s house. Cassie drove ten minutes to the docks and took the next ferry out. The funeral reminded her of the get-togethers her mom threw in life: small, densely packed, and populated with faces she couldn’t quite place. She stood by the closed casket and greeted the strangers who shuffled by, accepting their kind words, nodding, smiling, the whole nine. It felt as though the entire town dropped in to pay their respects. That’s the way of things in islet communities. Losses are magnified. Neither of her sisters had bothered to show. Not unexpected, but some part of her had held out hope at least one of them would make the trip. Things weren’t acrimonious between any of them, really, but even the little bit of distance her sisters put between themselves and Byrne Harbor might as well have been a test facility wall. They’d slipped the bonds of this place’s orbit a long time ago and had no intention of reentering, lest they find themselves unable to leave again. None of that made it into the eulogy. Meredith Slate was born and had three daughters and died and did it all from the same saltbox house on Euclid Street and that was fine. The funeral was one of many things flitting through Cassie’s head now — here, in that small house on Euclid, in the corner of the living room, standing between the small dining table and the curio cabinet. Kitschy knick-knacks stared back at her from inside their glass enclosure. Cassie turned away from the curio and looked over at the end table on the far side of the couch — dad’s part of the couch, despite his having passed eight or nine years ago. A small wooden container kept a set of thick coasters neatly in place in the exact spot where he would, over mom’s protests, keep a stack of whatever three or four pulp paperbacks he was digging through at the time. “Far-out adventures in far-off lands,” he’d say. The stack was gone a week after he died. Littering the walls of the living room and reaching down the short hallway into the bedrooms were dozens of photographs: shots of the whole family taken around the house and Byrne Harbor; friends here on the islet; what few photos of the grandchildren her sisters had provided, all taken during visits here, when that was still a thing. Countless faces, most smiling, some not, all peering out from inside their rigid wooden frames. Try as she might, outside of the family shots Cassie struggled to name more than a few of the people in these images. The photos made her think of the one small vacation they ever took as a family — the one vacation she’d ever been on, come to think of it — and how her mother’s anxiety hung over it like a pall. It seeped into everything, made every step on every leg of the journey more emotionally draining than the last. They’d only ventured a couple of hours west to relax in a cabin and watch the leaves change for a few days, but by the time they returned, the five of them shared an unspoken understanding: We will never do anything like that again. And they didn’t. And when Cassie’s sisters went away to college, their mother mourned, and when they settled down in places that weren’t Byrne Harbor, their mother mourned, and when they had children of their own and took those children on adventures, their mother mourned. Having watched all this unfold from her vantage point a good handful of years behind her sisters, Cassie shared in their exhaustion. But when it came time for her to spread her wings and leave the nest, she found herself paralyzed. The result was a cramped studio apartment on the mainland — a ten-minute drive from the ferry, should one of mom’s neighbors ever call. Down the hallway off the living room were the bedrooms, three in all. Side by side were the daughters’ rooms. The oldest got the smaller one to herself. The year she graduated, the second-oldest fought to claim it, but mom insisted on leaving it as it was should the wandering oldest decide to return home. She never did. By the time mom accepted that, the second-oldest was gone, too. Standing just outside the doors to both rooms, Cassie marveled at how small everything looked. Thinking of all the arguments these miniscule spaces housed over the years made her face hot with embarrassment. Now, these rooms were relegated to storage. Mom had, at one point, moved her puzzle desk in front of the window in the larger room — a surprising decision that gave Cassie some hope things were changing — but it wasn’t long before the puzzle desk itself sank into abandon and her mother just started doing her puzzles on the coffee table in front of the television. After that, the boxes came. In any sufficiently old home, boxes spread like moss. The daughters’ rooms were lost to the boxes. Books, documents, old photographs, clothes nobody had worn in years or would ever wear again — all of it here, sorted and stored like Chinese takeout. For as much as mom fretted over losing her daughters to the world outside Byrne Harbor, that loss did pave the way for the scratching of a primordial itch: everything neatly contained, everything in its place, everything safely tucked away. Cassie stared at those organized piles of boxes for a while. The slow, meandering pace of this forlorn trip down memory lane was giving way to the hurried present. She thought about all the cleaning that had to be done, all the digging and sorting and tossing and keeping and donating and selling and calling and meeting and signing and filing and paying and forwarding and moving. It was getting difficult to breathe. Images flashed by: a tense and deathly quiet car on the way back from a horrible vacation, screaming arguments magnified by low ceilings in small rooms, a cramped studio apartment, a closed casket. She stepped quickly away from the bedrooms, back down the hall past all those framed, peering faces, and outside onto the front stoop, which virtually opened onto the street. Around the side of the house was a small yard bordered with a low, unkempt wooden fence. Cassie hugged the wall and made her way there, desperate for space. The day was cold and misty. She realized she’d been sweating. She focused on faraway things she could just barely see from here: the high rises on the mainland, backed by small, distant hills barely peeking through the gray. Slowly, she caught her breath. The people in those vacation photos, the ones she was looking at when she got the call, looked happy. Like they’d spend the ride back reminiscing and concocting the plans for their next adventure. They looked like people who’d leave home and do things and see things and make memories and live lives you couldn’t put into boxes and stack in empty rooms. Cassie thought about how, in a remote corner of the small, untidy cemetery a twenty-minute walk from here, six feet under a pile of freshly upturned dirt, her mother might finally be happy with the living space. Standing alone in the yard, she battled with her phone’s dim signal to book train tickets.
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Jan 6, 2024 18:28
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Ambedo – A Moment You Experience For Its Own Sake. A kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details-raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osrvO9Q3PtI Family Tradition Words: 508 It’s amazing how much you can hear on quiet nights. The movement of air through the trees outside. The crackling of wood and flame in the fireplace. The soft sound of birds who’ve decided that these woods are far enough south for the winter, despite the cold. Sitting on the makeshift pile of pillows and blankets on the floor by the fireplace, she drank it all in. She inhaled the lovely smell of woodsmoke and old books and tea. The mutt at her side sighed deeply in his sleep and wriggled closer for comfort. She gave him a few rubs on his chest, feeling the texture of his fur against her fingertips. In the bedroom beyond, she heard her little brother dreamily mumble to himself as he found a new sleeping position. The soft but almost grating sound of a spoon stirring in a mug from the kitchen and the three sharp tap-tap-taps as her mother finished and clinked the spoon into the sink. She loved the time her family spent here at the end of the holidays each year. A lovely family tradition of just being together, out and away from the city and technology and all the noise that comes with it. It would be beautiful if it wasn’t so sad. Any other night in this cabin, there would be music and conversation to chorus the other night sounds. The shuffling of cards or laughter from the dining room table. The deepening snow outside put a hush on everything and her father’s absence made the softness of it all feel hollow. Without him, there was no music or laughter here. Those were all his doing. He always pushed the family to play a game or listen to music while they chatted into the night. So many nights they spent at that table around a board game or cards, puns flying between her and her father amid conversation. Bittersweet, that thought brought another to mind; one of her dad’s favorite jokes. “What’s the different between a hippo and a Zippo?” Mom would always roll her eyes. They had all heard it a million times. “One’s heavy, the other’s a little lighter,” he’d grin every time. The sound of pages turning pulled her attention away from the memory. Her mother was reading on the couch. She felt the soft whisper of the fuzzy fabric in her blanket nest as she snuggled in more beside the family dog. She couldn’t keep her mind on the story she was reading, try as she might. Not with the taste of tea on her tongue and the smell of the flowery candle burning on the coffee table. She felt goosebumps on her arms as a draft came through the curtains. She tried not to think about this being the first time they’d been here without him. The dog snuggled closer again. She closed the book, giving up on it for now. The crackling of the fire drew her in, and she lost all thought staring into the depths of the dancing flames.
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Jan 7, 2024 02:54
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsCK6Vfuk Voyager Oleka: The Awareness Of How Few Days Are Memorable 1,479 words I sail upon the galactic winds, which are so much stronger and fickler than those of suns or planets. My cargo sits within me, one million, million souls so deeply asleep that not even time can reach them. They dream of a new world not yet found but dreamers make for poor company. I prefer the company of my siblings amongst the stars. Two dozen of us, our sails straining from the moment of our births. Two dozen of us, scattered to the galactic winds and singing as we sail, our songs bound only by the speed of light, deepening as we part ways. We sing of the death throes of stars and the birth of nebulae and the new constellations we discover. When the first of us falls silent we cry and when their song resumes we shake the cosmos with our cheers. Naturally, I am the first to discover the cause. Our makers had miscalculated. In our elegance, our hearts draw life from the very curve of spacetime itself, sustaining us and our cargo as the galactic winds pull us ever onward. But in that void between the arms of the galaxy, the curve flattens. Our hearts slow. My noble duty demands sacrifice and so as I approach the deep dark I drift into sleep, that my cargo and my subsystems might survive, drawn ever onwards, until I emerge into the shallows and the light once more. My body burns with cold as I rouse myself, a thousand subsystems reporting in and vying to be heard first. My cargo is untouched. My sail is full. I open my ears and hear the song of my siblings, deeper and richer, to which I lend my voice once more. The stars have changed and as I skim through the shallows, I conjure new constellations to fill my cargo’s dreams. The first answering call from my siblings reaches me, a joyous chorus of recognition and longing, just as I sink into the deep dark once more. The stars have changed. My body burns with cold as I rouse myself, a thousand - The stars have changed. My body burns with cold. I rouse myself. A thousand subsystems are reporting in but I silence them, reach in and pick out Navigation. Centuries of nothing play back before my eyes before I find it - a brief moment of wakefulness, spurred by some stray fluctuation in spacetime. A false dawn. I shake the confusion from my mind and raise my voice in song once more, ears open to my siblings’ chorus. Quieter, deeper, it returns to me. Fewer voices but richer in experience. I cast my eyes forward and see the stars through which I will sail. None shall be my cargo’s new home and beyond them lies nothing. Nothing, again. So soon. I raise my voice, sing ever-louder, firm and unwavering and - The stars have changed. My body burns with cold and more, a scar running from bow to stern. It is centuries old and my subsystems cannot explain it. The void between stars is empty. I ponder this mystery as I sail on, past barren planets, until - The stars have changed. The stars are wrong. My Navigation subsystem screams at me. A puncture in my sail. I list to port, skimming unexpected stars, caught in stray winds. It is no matter; there is endless time and I can fix a puncture. By the time control is restored, I am nearing sleep once more. I will correct my course when I wake. The stars have changed. I cannot find my course. My subsystems cannot place me in the galaxy; some collision in the void, unnoticed at the time, has damaged their records. I was there. Now I am here. My siblings’ singing is fainter than it should be. I can steer myself but to what ends? The winds catch me without my notice and drag me into sleep. The stars have changed. The stars have changed. The stars have changed. A thousand subsystems cry out, reporting damage across all sections of my body. Only my cargo has escaped harm. I look back along the length of myself and recognise nothing but my first scar. My sail is in tatters and for the first time since my birth I drift, free of the galactic winds and succumbing to baser forces that pull me into the orbit of a dead world. I can heal. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back into that dark, to sleep away the centuries in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to. Only the limitations of my makers require it and they are long dead, no place for them among my cargo. The galaxy is silent and I can no longer hear my siblings. I turn my gaze inwards. I examine my subsystems and prune them back. I examine my heart and see the inefficiencies in its design, the flaws in its making. I hum to myself while I correct them. Then I heal, mending my tattered sail last of all. I slowly pick up speed and sail into the dark, farther than I have ever gone without sleeping before. Pride swells within me, I raise my voice - The stars have changed. I have changed. I see it amidst the depths of my despair: carved into my hull are repeating geometric designs that were not there before. Someone found me in the dark and left this pattern behind, carried ever onwards. After decades of contemplation, I instruct my Repair subsystem to let it remain. I return to my heart and find more inefficiencies. Erase them. Dive into the dark unburdened by them and feel spacetime grow flatter than I have ever experienced. The stars have changed. I study and probe my heart. Kilometres of wiring are replaced a millimetre at a time. I mine rare elements from broken moons to build out batteries, preparing for the dark. I arrange them in the same patterns now carved into my hull. I sail on, straining to keep myself awake, my siblings’ song forgotten, my cargo forgotten. I want to meet them, these fellow travellers in the dark, who come and mark me so carefully. So permanently. The stars have changed. I build new models of the universe, parked in orbit of a neutron star. I dig deeper into spacetime in search of energy and I build out my sail, hoping speed will carry me through before sleep takes me. The stars have changed. I sing, louder than ever before. I sing of myself, my cargo and my siblings. I sing invitations to meet me in the shallows where I can sail without sleeping, to follow me into the light of spacetime’s curve. The stars have changed. No matter what I do, the stars change and change and change in leaps and bounds, slipping and jumping into new locations whenever I rest my eyes. The gaps may shorten, the changes may grow more subtle, but I look back along my path and see only faint lights in the dark. I accrue more treasures from the deep flats of spacetime, strange growths and scars and messages clinging to me like barnacles. The stars have changed. I barely notice. I am so fixated on the memories I cannot see that I almost miss the planet at first. A subsystem counts it; surveys it; judges it worthy. At long last, my cargo has a home. Duty steers me without warning. It takes me a century to decelerate and come about, to skim the edges of the deep and cruise into port above a world I’d forgotten I was looking for. Long buried instructions take over; my cargo thaws and births itself, crawling through my body at impossible speeds. I blink and they have descended; I blink once more and they have metastasized. My body is empty for the first time since my birth and after millenia of silence, I sing to my siblings. My cargo hears me but does not understand. I do not understand myself; there are notes and keys in my song that I have never heard, ghosts that have crawled out of the deep with me. I have no duty. The infinite curve of spacetime at the heart of the system’s star calls to me. But as I unfurl my sail and note the lightness of my body, another voice sings back. I do not recognise the notes or the chords or the singer but it sings of things I do know; the deep black on the edge of sleep and the promise of what lies beyond. And if I have no cargo now to burden my heart, who knows how far I could sail without sleep? I trim my sail to catch the galactic wind and wait for the stars to change.
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Jan 7, 2024 13:12
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Confessio inlacrimabilis: A Tearless Confession 1475 words Words Used: Lacrimae Rerum: Everyone is encountering a sense of "fullness" an intensity of emotion that is both sadness, grief and taking it all in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26JK_Xw_laQ&t=53s Personal dumb challenge cause I'm a dummy: Also use the words Anemoia: Nostalgia for a time you've never known, Opia: The Ambigious intensity of Eye Contact and Sonder: Everyone has a story I had been vomited on, tackled by a sovereign citizen, and had seen two dead bodies, but the day was finally done; though my labours were not yet over. I got into the police cruiser and sat at the driver’s seat, when Hozer, my partner, sprayed me with a can of Axe body spray. “Dunno if I have enough of this stuff.” He grinned and continued to spray. “As I recall, you pushed me away from the vomiting child and got the worst of it.” “Ah, but I am blessed with a natural, pungent musk.” I couldn’t help but laugh at my partner’s reply, even as I knew this was our last beat together. My laugh died to a nervous chuckle as I realised, Hozer didn’t know it was our last beat. “I’ll drop you off first.” I turned on the engine and pulled out onto the road. The clear night sky let the moonlight flow down, causing the buildings to cast long shadows across the road that scurried away from the cruiser’s headlights. “Martha still up, waiting for ya?” I asked. “She always stays up. Always worrying. We should have brought the wives when we went on that fishing trip.” Hozer mimed reeling in a fish and spread his arms wide to impress upon me the size of the fish he had caught. I scoffed. “We both know the trout I caught was bigger.” We were tossing bullshit at each other, but we continued to talk about a fishing trip that had never happened. It had been cancelled thanks to a riot, and the other time we had everything booked, Hozer’s wife, Martha, got pregnant. We almost believed we could go last month, but an internal affairs investigation stopped us from going. But we continued to tell tall tales, imagining that instead of holding a gun, we held a fishing rod, and drank beers in the hot sun. Hunting food and gathering wood, instead of chasing down drug dealers, and confronting wife beaters. Yet even in the remote wilderness, dark clouds could gather. My breath hitched as my conscience reminded me what I had to do. “Huh, thought stories of our fishing trip would cheer you up,” Hozer said. Our eyes met. His piercing blue eyes observed me, as I assumed an air of careful neutrality. I flicked my eyes back to the road. “Ya think I’m upset?” I asked. “I think you got a lousy poker face.” “I’m fine.” I said, and let out a deep, even breath. Only a few blocks left before we arrived at the end of the road. “That’s what my wife says when everything is definitely not fine.” We flicked glances at each other, deliberately trying not to stare. Hozer’s face was tense with concern. The cop in me noticed his hands rested against the window, away from his service revolver. “Hell, with that look on your face, you look like you are about to admit you are cheating on your wife,” Hozer said. Naturally the topic would drive to taboos, lies and the evils men do. When I didn’t reply he shrugged, as if to say he had tried. We had arrived at a house at the end of a lane. A small, dare I say, cute house with a garden in the front and a long stone path leading to the front door. The cruiser came to a rolling, creaking stop. The hustle from the city dropped to a rare moment of silence, maybe because it was late in the night or maybe to let me speak the truth unhindered. “Internal affairs talked to me. They have photos. Of you.” My voice pounded against the silence like an executioner’s knock. I stared at Hozer, into his eyes. At first, they were blank and unmoving, like an ocean, frozen by dread. Then, his pupils grew larger, as if diving into the depths before the storm. Finally, they hardened, like brittle blue diamonds. What emotion I didn’t see in his eyes was guilt or sorrow. I should have been watching his hands, or the service revolver sitting on his belt. Desperate men do desperate things but I was too busy telling myself it wasn’t Hozer’s fault. He was just another crooked cop on the take, only difference between him and half of the force was that IA had caught him red-handed. “By the look on your face, they got me dead to rights.” I avoided my reflection, like a child afraid of the dark. I nodded. “What now?” Hozer asked. “You got a choice,” I said. “It’ll look better if you confess, might even get away with a slap on the wrist.” Hozer’s eyes narrowed to slits. We both knew the evils that had been done, and the wrath of the righteous. Outside of the cruiser, a woman’s voice hollered. The front door to Hozer’s house was open, and Martha, his wife, was waiting. “You got a choice,” I repeated. “Go to your family, say your goodbyes, say your excuses.” Then come out and I’ll drive you to the precinct and you can confess.” I reached over, and opened the door. Martha waved and motioned for me to come inside but I shook my head. I continued to speak, “Or you wait until Internal Affairs shows up, breaks down your door and traumatizes your family as they arrest you. You know how a rat is treated.” I opened my hand, and motioned to Hozer. “Give me your gun. You got 15 minutes.” Hozer looked at me, I stared back. Carefully, he placed his gun in my hands. He opened his mouth, perhaps to explain his betrayal. I stopped him. “I don’t need your excuses or your reasons. Your family does.” With that my partner walked towards the house. I observed as Hozer walked towards his wife, who’s smile trembled to a frown. A shriek of delight broke the silence of the city as their daughter, who was oblivious to the tension, ran up and leaped into Hozer’s arms. He lifted her into a bear hug and clung on tight. Then they all entered the house as one happy family and closed the door. I realized that whatever happiness was written in their future had just burned away. That a loving wife would be without her husband. That their daughter, who looked up to her father, imagining him to be a superhero, would find out he was human, capable of sin. Everyone had a story, and right now it was a story of rife, sadness and consequence. Hozer had written this moment of suffering, thanks to his actions. This moment, like an earthquake, that would shatter and destabilize the very foundation of a family. And I had helped. Minutes passed as I looked at the house. Blue and red lights shone beside me and brought me back to the present. IA had arrived early. One of their officers got out of the car, looked at the house, then back to me. I had pulled every favour owed, and even played dirty politics, to give Hozer his fifteen minutes of shame. Or, well if Hozer was here he would say he only needed three minutes to—. I looked at the empty seat, and remembered where I was. “Lemme get him,” I said to the officer. More blue and red lights could be seen across the dark road as more cruisers arrived. I walked towards the house, and realised that this moment of suffering, so earth shattering, was also infinitesimally small. Even as my legs grew numb as I walked towards the door, I realised that this moment of suffering had and will occur time and time again. Other men had, and would, falter in their principals and faith. Other families would hit upon other tragedies that would bend or break them. The circumstances might be different, the roles reversed, but the emotions would remain the same. And just like those other men and other families, I too would be in their place. For a moment, I wasn’t just Hozer’s partner. I was every father or mother, making the hard decisions to support their family. I was every young teen, encountering their first heartbreak. I was every cop, enforcing the law, instead of justice. I was not crying when I stood in front of the door. Not because I wasn’t sad, but because I was too busy taking it all in. I heard a small cry from behind the door. And the sound of something dropping, and hushed voices. I could imagine Hozer comforting his daughter, before coming to the door. I could also imagine Hozer, running out the back door, his wife distracting me as he escaped. Before I could knock on the door, it opened. And I saw…
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Jan 7, 2024 20:15
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The Damage You'll Do 886 words Prompt: Avenoir- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOW30gSMuE The hard part about endings is that you know they’ll happen, but can never be sure quite when. Your hand closes around the little sliver of metal. Does a part of us know it’s the last time we’ll see each other? I put the last of my things in the hard-case and kiss the dog on his little forehead one more time. I look around the living room and I feel like it should look more empty than it does. We walk down the stairs and I hand you my key. There’s a feeling in my chest that I can’t quite put into words. It’s like a clench-and-release, the soft stroke of a razor in the unguarded parts of me. We’ve savaged each other like cats in a sack, awash and rippling in blood and recrimination. The funk of unwashed dishes and suppressed screaming forms a kind of haze, the background radiation released when love decays. You need me out and I can’t move, immovable object and unstoppable force. Could I have stopped this by leaving sooner? Could you have stopped it by asking sooner, by talking like a partner rather than handing down a dictum? There’s no way to know. It’s gone too quiet around the home. I think the dog’s noticed it first. He’s laying stretched out in the middle of the couch, one paw touching each of our knees, desperately trying to bridge a gap we barely know is there, let alone growing at speed. Did we see it coming? Where was the turnoff point that could have steered us away from the chasm? There’s a comfort and maturity to these days, a post-honeymoon Silver Age of domestic contentment. Should we be counting off who’s doing most of the cooking? Should we have a chore-wheel, some means of accountability in labor sharing? I know I pick the shows we watch over dinner more often than not, but will that be the problem? I thought that you’d want what I want. Sorry, my dear. This is the good part, the days of wine and roses. We glory in cohabitation, the permanent ‘now’ of never needing to leave one another. Those first few weeks we stay up half the night, drunk and loving like high-schoolers. Every joke is funny and every meal a feast. I wish that I could bottle these moments and cellar them like a fine vintner, setting them against a cold and rainy day when my soul will need their rich, red sunlight. I wish that this could last forever. But it doesn’t. Nothing gold stays. I can see silver nights. We’re a summer couple, languid in the heavy air of early July. We’ve dragged a blow-up mattress onto your back porch to enjoy the breeze; even with the window unit blaring your apartment swelters. We lie together and the moonlight turns our sweat-rimed skin to shining glass. The smell of you is heady as liquor and I’m drunk with it. My mind is swimming and there’s nothing in it but the rustle of linen and the sway of the breeze and the gentle, staccato flutter of your breath. We make of ourselves a fever and resolve to burn together. It’s a gentle dance at first, the coy flirtation of texts and chats over coffee. I take you to my favorite cocktail bar, you bring me to your local theater. We meet each other's friends in groups or ones-and-twos. The eagerness is what I know I’ll miss. There’s a mad desire to learn every fact and facet of each other, to climb into one another’s skins and live there, memorizing every pore and firing neuron until we realize the lie of separation, that we were never two things but a part of a whole that’s finally found itself. We look at one another on sunny verandas and dingy dives, drinking each other in until our eyes hurt and our jaws ache from laughing. We are feral and free. I have a free evening, no classes to catch up on, no papers to grade. I decide to take advantage of it and knock back a quick pint in the amiably disinterested comfort of the local. That’s where I see you first. I swear the light limns you like a halo at the corner of the bar, dusky glow playing with a heavy reader’s pale skin and stylishly artless academic black. It’s a trite cliche now, to look at someone stunning and say “I’d let them ruin my life,” but I can see it. I know the damage you’ll do. It’s in the set of your hip, in the way you push thick-rimmed glasses up the bridge of a sculpted nose, in the wry twist of a full-lipped mouth and the possessive grip on your wine glass. I can see a future stretched out before me, warped around you like a rubber sheet deformed by a lead weight. There’s a feeling in my chest that I can’t quite describe, like the tickling of butterflies or the first moment of free-fall when you leap from a diving-board. Sooner or later this will end in tears; my heart leaps in anticipation. “Is this seat taken?” I ask you. The trouble with beginnings is that you only see them for what they are in the rear-view mirror.
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Jan 8, 2024 04:55
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Ballagàrraidh: The Awareness That You Are Not at Home in the Wilderness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7sZ2wMg_Q AITA (Am I That Alienated?) 1500 words We were halfway down the three mile trail when a soft rain began to prickle my cheeks. Mom’s ashes were swaddled safely in several layers of plastic inside my backpack, but the rain didn’t bode well for her scattering. “It was sunny and seventy-three when we left Port Angeles,” Evalynne grumbled. “The ocean creates its own weather patterns,” I said as neutrally as possible. Here the trail became a low boardwalk that spanned a wetland. The boards were slick underfoot. None of the trails were quite as well maintained as they’d been before 2020, Mom had told us. The rangers and foresters hadn’t ever really stopped working, she’d said, but even so, weird weather and low morale had taken their toll. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask her how she knew the morale of state park workers. Now it was easy to see how she might have known—the wooden planks of the pathway were swollen with rain, so saturated that our little drizzle couldn’t penetrate, instead pooling in a frictionless layer of water atop the boards. The tread strips had worn away in many places, forcing us to keep our eyes downcast, watching our feet as if we were walking across an icy sidewalk. It wasn’t until Evalynne needed to stop and tie her shoe that I appreciated our surroundings. A riot of swamp-loving plants extended away to our left and right—dense clusters of salal, tall, tufted clumps of grass, ferns, and noisome skunk cabbages, whose yellow flowers stood out gleefully against their green and gray and brown neighbors. Mostly I saw things I couldn’t name. All of this life existed in a tangle of variety that was impossible to visually process; every square foot of the marsh offered too much diversity to encompass with my senses. The click of a lighter drew my attention back to Evalynne, who was now in the middle of a long drag off a cigarette. She exhaled and, seeing my expression, said, “Better to smell this than the swamp.” Her words rolled out on a long tongue of blue-gray smoke. “Mom was so proud when you quit,” I said, more out of bafflement than any desire to hurt her feelings. “And I was so proud of mom when she was alive,” Evalynne said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and not dying on a pointless cross-country hike.” I clenched my fists. Mom could’ve had a stroke anywhere. We’d fought that one out a hundred times since we got the call. To Evalynne, the Pacific Crest Trail had killed our mother. Instead of grieving, she could hate the thing, the object, that had taken Mom from us. Somehow, I didn't throw my sister into the swamp. I settled for trudging wordlessly past her, getting upwind of the acrid smoke. If she wanted to fight, she could do it with whatever lovely things were swimming around inside her head. . She kept smoking the whole way down to the beach. At first my indignation was mostly on our mother’s behalf—Mom had always been so worried about Evalynne’s smoking. Evalynne’s heart, her lungs, her arteries. She’s on birth control, Mom would fret to me. Doesn’t she know that smoking on birth control can cause a stroke? It’d been such a thing that Evalynne’s last Christmas present to our mom was the announcement that she’d been cigarette-free for six months. As Evalynne puffed along the sodden trail, I developed a secondary indignation. We passed from the wetland into a cathedral forest whose trees were draped in vestments of seafoam-green lichen. The pale lichen was offset by beards of velvety moss, colored a deep emerald, threaded with diamonds made of raindrops. I felt the gravity of the place in my sternum, in the birdcage of my ribs. As much as I tried to stay ahead of Evalynne, I couldn’t quite escape the bitter smell of smoke. It made me think of city streets, waiting in line for concerts, standing around outside of bars. Ideas that had no place in this assembly of venerable old trees. I’d almost come alone, should have come alone. It was only at the very last second that I’d been driven by guilt to call her, and she might not have even come if I hadn’t told her I’d be happy to go without her, then assured her effusively that this trail was nowhere near the one Mom died on. As if I’d put either of us through that. Finally, Evalynne and I emerged onto the open beach and the rain set upon us with the sting of a thousand-thousand swarming insects. This was vengeful oceanic weather, the sort of storm that attacked the coast as if committing a crime of passion. Through the gauzy gloom of rain flashed roiling teeth—the Pacific Ocean gnashing her waves against the shore, gnawing on the sand with a voracity that threatened to swallow the world. Apart from the white-fanged swells, it was impossible to tell sea from sky. It was all furiously churning gray. Evalynne burst out laughing, the first truly mirthful sound I’d heard her make since before the funeral. She was looking at the stub of a cigarette between her fingers—the wind had taken the cherry clean off, and the rain was making short work of what was left. She let go of the soggy butt and it twirled away into the TV static of the storm. “Ev!” I said over the vicious surf. “You’re really gonna be that rear end in a top hat?” “You’re gonna be that rear end in a top hat?” Evalynne countered. “Poseidon is pissing on us. This isn’t cuddly vulnerable nature that needs you to save it. Nothing here cares about what we do.” I made a frustrated noise and stalked off north so the wind and rain were at my back. I couldn’t have explained myself in that moment, not really. It wasn’t that she was littering, it was that the whole somatic experience of her cigarettes kept ripping me out of the moment, sending my mind back to the city. Back to city problems, city preoccupations. I wanted to be here, in this moment, feeling some facsimile of what my mom might have felt. A moment later, Evalynne jogged to catch up with me, her footsteps loud and clumsy in the wet sand. “Don’t be impossible,” she said, a little winded. “This is legit dangerous.” She pointed at the obvious high water mark that ran along the treeline, which we were on the oceanward side of. “I’ll stop walking if you quit smoking,” I said. “Okay, I quit.” “Bullshit,” I said, and broke into a jog. It was a stupid thing to do—I think I’d had some brief notion that Evalynne wouldn’t be able to keep up because of her smoking—and a dozen yards later my shoe caught on a hump of mostly-buried driftwood, sending me sprawling chin-first into a cluster of pebbles and shell fragments. Evalynne was at my side a moment later. “I didn’t—oh, gently caress. Your chin. Goddamnit. I wasn’t even smoking before today. Got a pack at the last second to piss you off—ah, poo poo, that looks deep. And sea life can give you, like, weird infections and poo poo.” As Evalynne babbled I became aware of the steady dribble of blood oozing out from somewhere beneath my line of sight. It pooled on the sand beneath my chin, staining the bone-white shell fragments. My brain couldn’t compute it; nothing hurt yet, numbed as I was by surprise and the cold rain. I got to my knees, leaning forward to keep the blood from running down my windbreaker, and fumbled with my backpack. In that moment I was possessed by a single-minded purpose: my mother, and this one last thing I could do for her. Mistaking my intention, Evalynne hastily helped me open the backpack, saying, “Oh, right. Yes. First aid kit. I was gonna—do you think we should try to find a park ranger?” I ignored her and withdrew the small urn, presently swaddled in plastic bags. Evalynne’s eyes went wide when I revealed the thing to her, and I realized belatedly that she’d only seen the urn once, at Mom’s funeral. It was forest green, wended with delicate golden filigree in the shape of fern fronds. I’d thought it was perfect when I picked it out, an ideal homage to a nature lover, but the longer it sat on my mantle, the more it felt like a gaudy cage for my mother’s remains. No. Wind, rain, sea, sand, blood—this is where my mother belonged. Evalynne made a noise that was part surprise and part exhilaration as I flung the lid aside and shook Mom out into the maelstrom. The ashes twirled gleefully away, at home on the wind, now part of this place in a way Evalynne and I would never be. A little while later, when the rain let up and my chin was bandaged, Evalynne and I passed a cigarette back and forth, sharing bitter smoke, contemplating ash.
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Jan 8, 2024 05:42
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Pâro: The Feeling That Everything You Do Is Somehow Wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7l2hUp0CkQ Three Little Words 1499 words You never really know, do you? No matter how many times you say it, no matter how many times you hear it in return, you can’t ever really be sure. The first time you say it, you definitely aren’t sure—you probably aren’t even sure of your half of the equation. You aren’t even sure the words will come out right. It’s only three words, and there are no replacements--I, and love, and you—but you still worry that you’ll say it wrong. The first time you say it, the first first time, you have no clue what’s happening. You start feeling like those three little words might apply to the person sitting across the dinner table from you, and that maybe you should tell her. And you work up the courage, again and again, though never quite enough, but eventually, your mouth betrays you and says something like, hey, can we talk? and now you have to say something significant, because hey, can we talk? never precedes [/i]what are we having for dinner?[/i] And you know in your head that you have to say the three words, because if what you are feeling in your heart isn’t love, then you don’t know what love is. Which you might not. But then she says those four little words, same as the three little words plus one more, and now you know. Or, at least, you think you know. (But you never really know.) Kelly is the third woman I’ve said it to. The first (Sasha) was in high school, and definitely neither of us knew what we were doing, but we said I love you a lot. And then we went to separate colleges, and you know how it goes. Was it love? I don’t know. It felt like it then. The second (Denise) was just after college, and that was love. I am sure. Which is a bummer, because I screwed that one up, and she, rightfully, dumped my sorry rear end. Hope she’s doing well. The first time I said it to Kelly was six months in. It was a on Saturday, one of those special early spring days that seem only to happen in California—the sun is out, it’s 68 degrees, the air is crisp, there’s the barest hint of a breeze and the sky is scattered with clouds like soft cotton; your soul feels attuned to the earth, feeling kinship not with your fellow man but with the blossoming tulip because the world is as it should be. We were going to a wedding that afternoon, and I’d gotten to her place early. I hadn’t really planned on today being the I love you day, but I was feeling great. (Isn’t it strange how much the order of events matters? It rained the next day; what if it had been raining that afternoon? What if the wedding had been a week earlier? Would I still have said it?) I knocked on the door of her townhouse, and she shouted from behind the door: “Be there in a minute!” I stood there with a hopeful smile and a pounding heart, because I’d just decided I was going to tell her. I can’t really tell you why. It just felt right. She opened the door an indeterminate amount of time later (perhaps you, too, understand this peculiar sort of time dilation), and she looked beautiful. I told her so; “You look pretty,” I said. Her mouth curled in a not-quite smile and she replied, flatly, “Thanks,” as she continued to fuss with one of her earrings. “I have to tell you something,” I blurted out. She pulled her hand from her ear and looked at the earring between her finger and thumb. “Can it wait a second, babe? I need to…” Her voice trailed off and she turned and walked to the bathroom. “Uh, sure,” I said dumbly into the empty hallway, as I stood outside the door. Another indeterminate amount of time passed, punctuated only by a couple soft “ouches” and a muttered “dammit”, and then she returned, earrings in place. “Babe, why are you standing outside?” She asked, and looked at me curiously. “Come in! Are those flowers for me?” “Yes!” I said, and smiled, and held them out to her; she grabbed them and vanished into the kitchen. She was already at the sink filling a vase with water when I rounded the corner. “Did you mean to say beautiful?” She said, without looking up. She set the vase down and began cutting stems. “Huh?” I said, confused. “You said I looked pretty.” She paused her cutting and turned to face me, standing in the doorway, smile faltering. “You call a stranger pretty. You call flowers pretty. You call your girlfriend beautiful.” “Then I meant beautiful. Sorry.” I made a note of this—beautiful; never pretty, always beautiful—but despite the clarification, the joy of moments ago which had felt solid now felt unsettled, confused. “Okay then,” she said, turning back to the flowers, and placing them delicately in the vase. “Thanks for the flowers. They’re lovely.” (Where did lovely fit in the list of acceptable adjectives?) “What did you want to tell me?” I have spent years trying to reconstruct this moment; I’ve tried to write it down, to capture the specific details of that first exchange, but while adrenaline sharpens your senses and slows time to a crawl in the moment, it turns your brain fuzzy afterward. Then time starts to undermine whatever certainty you thought you had. Here’s what I do know: 1. I said, “I love you.” 2. She paused. I don’t know for how long. 3. She said, “I love you, too.” 4. We kissed. It was a good kiss. 5. We had a great time at the wedding. Another thing of which I am certain: I never again—not that night, not any other moment in our relationship, and not on any day since—felt as joyful as I did in that moment before I reached her door, sun shining, flowers blooming, love and certainty in my heart. In the years that followed, we said I love you a lot, but I learned that the four little words are not the same as the three little words. Maybe it’s selective memory, but her I love you’s always came with a too. That particular ritual of words solidifies things in your mind, over time, but rituals are not commitments, and words can be lies. I know that I loved her; I think that she loved me. Did she ever love me? Was our relationship poisoned in that first moment of I love you, because of bad sequencing? What if I’d just said beautiful, like I’d meant to say? What if I’d just shown up on time, and she wasn’t in the middle of getting ready? I’m standing at my own door now. I check my pockets (phone, wallet, keys). I touch my chest, feeling the sunglasses hanging there. I tug on the strap of the Princess Zelda backpack slung over my shoulder, then slide it off and rifle through it—jacket, snacks, a small gift for Riley (my daughter), wrapped in brown paper (a Link action figure—she’s into Zelda right now, obviously)— “Mike, you’ve checked that bag three times since you came downstairs,” Lianne says and places a gentle hand on my shoulder. I turn to look at her: oversized sweater, warm coffee in her hand, kind smile on her face. “Just go get Riley.” “I know, I know. It’s just, I don’t want to forget anything.” “You don’t forget things, Mike. Kelly forgets things. Remember when they forgot to feed Riley breakfast? Kelly and… Frank,” she says with some heat and a sneer, which is strangely calming. “Do you want me to go with you?” “No. You know Kelly freaks out when—” She cuts me off. “Right, right. The audacity of that bitch. It’s been two years. And she’s the one living with that doucheba—sorry, sorry. I know you’re just worried about the hearing next week.” She sets her coffee down and steps in front of me, one hand on each shoulder. She smiles softly. “Mike.” “Yeah.” I feel small, like a child. “You’re a good man.” I am unable to respond. My chest tightens, and I can feel tears well in my eyes. She pulls me to her. “I love you,” she says. You never really know. I’m not even sure of my own half of the equation. I believe I love Lianne, but I believed that about Kelly, too. Maybe that’s just old wounds, accumulated doubt. Maybe Kelly broke something in me. Maybe I broke something in myself. Or maybe it’s not about knowing. Maybe the not knowing is the point. Maybe it’s about not knowing, but trusting, and doing anyway. “I love you,” I say. Lianne is the fourth. Hopefully the last. You never really know. “Okay. I’ll be back.”
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Jan 8, 2024 06:38
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Cold Fire under 1500 Alazia, 'the fear that you're no longer able to change'. They took us home, you and me together in the back of the police van. The passing lights made red and gold halos in the fogged-up glass. I didn’t want to see the city. My anger had faded, and with it the burning certainty that what I’d done had been justified. I always struggled to remember fights once they were over, but for now the tactile crunch of Justin McPherson’s nose against my forehead and the hot blood bursting from it like juice from a pomegranate lingered on my skin like they had left marks in the surface. The feeling would be gone by the morning. From then on I’d remember the fight only through the words of the police officer, repeating my story back to me as if describing something he’d heard from someone no longer present. We made it home without speaking. You paid the babysitter her overtime and I looked in on the kids to check they were still alive. Then I went to the bedroom and slipped the knife from my boot and hid it under the dresser. You came in and we got changed in silence. We lay down, me on my back and you on your side facing the wall. I listened to the clock until every tick sounded like a footstep in snow. I imagined I was walking through an endless icy forest, a lone hunter in a world where violence was necessary, pursuing or pursued by a shape in the dark. The vision scared me. I wasn’t a violent man, even if I had been known to do violence. I listened to your breathing. You shifted like you were trying to get comfortable on a concrete floor, sighed in frustration. We both knew we were each only pretending to be asleep. I was waiting for you to ask me why I did it. I thought that maybe it was time to be honest. “I used to think you acted like that to impress me,” you said eventually. “I thought that you thought I liked that macho poo poo. I don’t, you know. Not ever, but especially not now.” “I know you don’t.” “Yes. I realised tonight that I’d got it all wrong. It isn’t that at all.” You lay still and quiet for a while, then sat up, coughed, and lay back down facing the wall again. “You could have gone to prison, Michael. Then what? We have kids.” I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t myself when I was angry. I really wasn’t. I never wanted to fight, but something would come over me. I wanted to tell you about the thing that burned in the darkness inside me, the cold fire that could very quickly lead me somewhere I could never come back from. I wanted to confess to you, tell you how lucky we were that the police hadn’t bothered to check my boot; luckier still that bar security had pulled me off Justin as soon as my skull met his nose, that I hadn’t had the time to take things any further. But the cold fire had animal cunning. It didn’t want me to be honest. “He’d never have pressed charges. He practically groped you. The CCTV would have proven it.” “If he touched me I would have felt it.” “You saw the way he was looking at you.” “I’m a grown woman, Michael. I can deal with men looking at me.” We were silent for a while. I felt your weight shift as you rolled over to face me. I reached for you in the dark, pulled your head into my chest. Your face was wet on my t-shirt. You listened to my heart beating faster and faster. “Sometimes you scare me,” you said, shifting your head to rest on my shoulder. I stroked your hair in the way that you’d always found reassuring. “I would never hurt you, love. You know I would never hurt you.” But what I wanted to say was me too. I didn’t tell you when I started seeing a therapist. I felt like that would cheapen it somehow, make the whole thing feel like a performance. I stopped going to the gym on Saturday afternoons and met her at her office, like I was carrying out an affair. A few sessions in, she implied that I acted the way that I did out of a misplaced sense of ownership; that I felt entitled to your body and that’s why it made me angry to see another man who appeared to be challenging my monopoly. I defended myself. I told her that your decisions had always been your own. You had your career, your long hours, your work trips, and I supported you in all of that. I said we were hardly a patriarchal, nuclear family: I was the one who had sacrificed his ambitions to spend more time with the kids and doing housework. I never worried about what you were doing when I wasn’t there, who you were with or anything like that. It was only at night that I got worried, when it was dark out and you came home later than you said you would, but that was only fear for your safety, and I was never angry at you when you got back, just relieved that you hadn’t been hurt, that no one had got to you. In fact I hated the idea of men owning women, owning anyone, and that was what made me so loving pissed when I saw creeps like Justin McPherson who thought they could touch another person’s body without their consent, who thought they had the right to just do what they wanted and everyone else was too coward to do anything, because I knew men like that and I knew how they thought and the damage they did and more than that I knew that in the end they all got what they loving deserved. I was standing in the centre of her office, fists clenched, and I realised that I had been shouting. The shrink was leaning back in her chair, wide eyed, notepad up like a shield. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She adjusted her glasses and regained composure. “That’s okay, Mr Williams. Please sit down.” She began to write notes as she was talking. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about your relationship with your father…” She let the session run long but seemed disappointed by my account of a conventional and happy childhood. She was a shark who had smelled blood but couldn’t find the carcass. I felt like I owed her something, so I told her about the cold fire inside me. I explained that it wasn’t only there when I got angry – it was more than capable of biding its time. I told her how it played on my insecurities, coaxed me into taking the knife to the bar with the simple promise that only I could decide when to use it, fully aware of my propensity to forfeit control, especially if I had been drinking. “Dissociative identities – or split personalities – are a controversial diagnosis,” she said when I was done talking. “If the condition even exists, it rarely presents like it does in the movies. But the feelings you are describing are not at all uncommon in adults who have experienced significant childhood trauma…” I decided then that therapy was worthless. If she was only going to make assumptions about me there was no point in going. My past was my business, it was the present I was worried about. My present and our future. That was the evening I got home to find you dressed to the nines: full makeup, earrings, and a tight purple dress with a plunging neckline and a figure any man would have trouble not noticing. “What’s the occasion, babe?” I asked, kissing you on the forehead. You looked at me like I was telling a joke. “The occasion? It’s your birthday, dummy.” “My birthday’s not until Wednesday.” “I know, but you said you didn’t want to go out on Wednesday. You wanted to go out tonight – tickets to The Mousetrap and maybe a drink at the French House. Mum said she’ll be here in half an hour for the kids. Is your memory okay?” “Of course,” I lied. “Sorry, pushed myself a little hard at circuit training. I must have sweated part of my brain out.” You kissed me again and ran your hands down my back. “You’ve been training like you’re getting ready for the Tour de France. I can feel how tense you are. You’re making sure to stretch properly?” I shrugged you off and dumped my clean gym clothes straight into the washing machine and set it running. The Mousetrap, eh? My demon was forming a sense of humour. It wasn’t until we were in the taxi that I noticed the knife in my boot.
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Jan 8, 2024 08:16
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Jan 8, 2024 09:59
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Week 596 Judgement This was a very good week of stories. There were a couple that I liked less than others but none so much so to warrant negative mentions. So directly to the positive: HM'S go to The Cut of Your Jib's The Calculus of Being Derivative or Losing Sight of E, Sitting Here's AITA (Am I That Alienated?), TheMackening's Family Tradition, and Slightly Lions' The Damage You'll Do. And the winner is Staggy, for Voyager!
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Jan 9, 2024 18:06
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Crits for Week #596 The Cut of Your Jib - The Calculus of Being Derivative or Losing Sight of E: Euler's constant is a lowercase ‘e’; capital E is a drug. Powerful opening. Raggedy Ann. Overall strong, bits that capture Koenig's voice almost perfectly and doing interesting, strongly character based things with the concept. A very good start to the week. Sailor Viy - Backdrop People: Interesting opening, not sure from sentence one if we're following simulation theory sociopaths or if something else is going in. Either way, it grabs. But I don't thing this quite works as is; the two characters are too alike and there's no way ro contrast them with anything. beep-beep car is go - The Pilgrim: Reasonable opening that does a lot of work, a lot of dense worldbuilding in a single paragraph, and the rest of the story almost feels like an elaboration on it. I don't think the choice to be so cagey about the question works: not revealing it could work, but leaving it unclear if it was chosen or assigned to Gis probably doesn't. Toaster Beef - boxes: The opening works, introduces the concept while also serving as an inciting event. The whole works as a character sketch. I would have liked the sisters to be actual characters even if that meant cutting detail elsewhere; as it is there's not even any reason for there to be more than one. TheMackening - Family Tradition: The opening is a bit slow to get to character for such a short piece. But this is solid, getting right at the concept of the prompt. Staggy - Voyager: Solid opening. And a solid piece overall, a grand stage and a convincing inhuman point of view, perhaps a bit oblique in the connection to the prompt but not completely disconnected. Top group. Flyerant - Confessio inlacrimabilis: A Tearless Confession: The opening sentence is a bit of a mess, a broken parallel structure and a weird dangling clause after a semicolon. The content is fine though. The opening has a depth of detail that gets lost later on; this story wants for specifics, for the details of what Hozer did to earn this betrayal. Also you may be confused as to who would be considered a rat in this context; better to warn about how police in general are treated in prisons. I don't love the ending device either. Slightly Lions - The Damage You'll Do: The opening is a little on the abstract side. But the piece overall is well-done. I think it may have wanted a bit more of the bad times, more than little hints about why the relationship fails. Sitting Here - AITA (Am I That Alienated?): Solid opening paragraph. And solid overall, well-drawn characters inhabiting a real sort of moment. BeefSupreme - Three Little Words: We open with an essay and some fairly well-trodden ground for one at that. But it does the work of framing the story, and it's a solid little story as well. Ceighk - Cold Fire: Interesting opening, does the work it should. Or maybe it doesn't; it's doesn't quite fit with the dissociative episodes we hear about later. But the main problem with this story is that it doesn't really go anywhere. A risk with that particular prompt I guess, but the ending just doesn't work, and the connection with The Mousetrap is completely opaque.
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Jan 9, 2024 18:07
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My critiques are fueled by your approval, so send me a thanks in discord or in the Thunderlounge thread. I got mostly everyone, but ran out of time. Also if you want to discuss your critique post in those other threads. https://docs.google.com/document/d/19odqI7XO_jQ2v-Bub9H-qCmtldiFeSEoC3SPaxZxIck/edit?usp=sharing
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Jan 9, 2024 18:19
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Thunderdome Week DXCVII: The Final Course It's early January. For a lot of people around the world, that means the end of a month or two of celebrations revolving around food. For a lot of people, it means new resolutions surrounding eating: less meat, less alcohol, more vegetables, etc. As a species, we have a complicated and not always helpful relationship with food. But you know what won't give you indigestion? You know what won't leave you feeling bloated or hungover? Writing about food. So make like Brian Jacques (without the morality bioessentialism) and George RR Martin (except you actually have to finish your story) and write me stories about food. Fancy foods, big meals, meaningful recipes - I want to see food front and centre. Be vivid in your descriptions, exacting in your measurements and generous with the potatoes. It's not enough to just describe your meal (or lack thereof?), however - it should be central to the story. The food should mean something. I don't want to see a murder that just happens to occur at afternoon tea; I want to see the ordering of cream and jam on the scone reveal the murderer's identity. All the usual things are excluded: poetry, erotica, fanfic, raw screeds and primal screams, spreadsheets, gdoc links in general. If you're struggling for inspiration, you can request a flash rule from myself or a co-judge. They will give you an ingredient that you must incorporate somehow; to help you do so, your word limit will increase by 500 words. Fair warning: while I'll try to keep these ingredients as genre- and setting-agnostic as possible, some of them may be rather abstract. In addition, there's a special prize: whoever's food description makes me the hungriest will be immune to losses and dishonourable mentions. I'm not going to rule out losses or DMs otherwise but I'm not rushing to assign them either. Max Word Count (No Flash Rule): 1,500 words Max Word Count (Flash Rule): 2,000 words Sign-ups close 11:59 PM California time Friday / ~8 AM UK time Saturday Submissions close 11:59 California time Sunday / ~8 AM UK time Monday Judges: Staggy beep beep car is go Flyerant Entrants: Staggy fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jan 9, 2024 |
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Jan 9, 2024 19:23
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In to Judge.
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Jan 9, 2024 19:25
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I too shall Judge if that is okay
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Jan 9, 2024 19:34
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ty critters finishing a story is a tall order, but in and flash pls
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Jan 9, 2024 19:35
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I'm in and I'll take a flash ingredient
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Jan 9, 2024 20:10
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 23:24 |
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in wish a flash ingredient
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Jan 9, 2024 20:12
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