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Week 606: cool forest bro I don't have time for a big prompt today so I'll just keep it simple: What I want is a story set in a forest of some kind in which one or more of your characters feels a sense of wonder, awe, or similar. They could be travelling through an inherently wondrous forest from fantasy or science fiction, enchanted or alien, encounter the capital S Sublime of the Romantics, or a find smaller, more personal slice of wonder, magical realist or just plain real. The forest does not have to be the cause of the wonder, and the reader does not necessarily have to share in it (though they certainly can), but I want to see wonder, and I want to see forest. 1400 words Sign-ups close 11:59 PM PDT Friday Submissions close 11:59 PDT Sunday Entered: Black Griffon Captain_Person Toaster Beef Thranguy Seabeams Fat Jesus Judging: Me beep beep car is go ? Ceighk fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 12, 2024 06:54
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Gotta keep that neutral streak going until I either win or lose hey
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Mar 12, 2024 16:00
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In!
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Mar 13, 2024 01:01
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gently caress it, i'm in
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Mar 13, 2024 01:45
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In
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Mar 13, 2024 05:46
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In
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Mar 15, 2024 16:21
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Sign ups closed I guess but if anyone wants to last minute enter today I'm not gonna stop you
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Mar 16, 2024 17:56
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Ceighk posted:Sign ups closed I guess but if anyone wants to last minute enter today I'm not gonna stop you Ok then, since I got nothing to do all day. In.
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Mar 17, 2024 00:48
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Assembly 1400 words The sun does not reach us here. Beneath the carpet of pine needles whipped around in a storm that buzzes over our heads like a swarm of insects, beneath the branches that intertwine like lovers and strangle each other like bitter rivals, beneath the logs laid out in geometric patterns, hovering like sentinels, oppressive grid-shadowed overlords a hundred feet above, beneath the dirt, the thick veil of dirt, the atmospheric layer of earth and pebbles and sand, the sun does not reach. The land has been ripped from the ground and stratified, each discrete element of the forest laid bare. We walk beneath a canopy that is everything, picking our way across bare rock. In places, cracks and chasms that would have been filled in with packed dirt lead to depths our flashlights can't reach; entrances to cave systems unseen for hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years. The forest above makes a noise like roaring water, shades of dirty twilight glinting in and out on rare occasions. It's mostly night though, but not any night you'd know. Hamdan has to stop, sit down and close his eyes. I let him, I've done the same in my mind, a constant repeated mantra of centering myself in the absurd, finding my sanity in the churn. We've walked for hours since we broke camp at this point, and while we've passed over hills and through valleys, we feel as if we're walking across a vast, flat expanse, like the curvature of the terrain is an optical illusion. We've come across lakebeds, as dry and clean as the rest of the bedrock, and felt the soft drizzle of moisture on our faces. We've stood on hilltops and seen the earthen twilight grow marginally brighter. We've seen no life. No birds, no bones in the storm above. "I thought I had our bearing at one point," says Hamdan, "Thought I'd found Moose river. The bedrock had the right shape." He opens his eyes, stands up. "Then it just ended in a cliff wall. It should've gone to the lake and it just stopped." I unscrew my canteen and take a drink. Just a small mouthful, enough to alleviate the parched bitterness. "Landmarks are a dead end," I say, "We just have to keep going. If this continues past the forest, we'll see it. The..." I'm lost for words in a way I've never been before, and I have to swallow a wave of nausea before I continue. "The... landscape above will look different. I'm sure it will." "Sure, you say that," says Hamdan, "But where are the animals?" - We think that night has fallen above us. It's pitch black now, not even a hint of dirty twilight. I look at my phone again, but it's still a mess of pixels and lines moving in staccato. My watch has just stopped. My compass needle is bending upwards, scratching the plastic face like a seismometer. We have extra batteries, but we only use a single flashlight at a time, clipped to each other with a line like polar explorers. It's been two days, we think. Both me and Hamdan have been on actual expeditions, he spent five months in the shrinking rainforests on Borneo, I spent a year traveling in and out of the Alaskan wilderness studying the behavior of muskox. We know when we get thirsty, how long it takes for our bodies to respond to stimuli such as hunger and exhaustion. I think it's been two days, but I can't really say if it feels like two days or if I'm just telling myself that, like finding an anchor for my sanity. Two days, maybe, since we exited our tent to find the forest was no longer a forest, but a dissected exhibit of half-dead nature. - On what might be the third day, Hamdan is coughing blood. He's grown pale and quiet, and he can't keep food down. The bitterness in my mouth is like the tang of batteries now, like a current of something venomous. I boil some coffee and we sit watching the unchanging landscape for a while. The mass of the forest feels like it's pushing down more and more, grinding us until we're like the rock beneath our feet. We see the logging camp as we round a sharp crag. Machines and equipment dotting the landscape, everything set up so that you could slot in a forest and get straight to work. A tall man stands by an earth-mover, he looks up and his eyes grow wide. For a while, we just watch each other, then he gives us a hesitant wave. His hand is trembling. "Are there more of you?" he says as we approach. "Only us", I say, "Are you the only one here?" Hamdan lets out a small sound and I realize he's spotted a row of forms covered by sections of tarp. Tarp stained red. The man clears his throat, tries to light a cigarette with his shaking hands, gives up and drops it. "I..." he begins, "I'm the only one left" "What happened to them?" says Hamdan. His voice is rasping and weak. "I think it just became too much. Too much of all of this. Whatever it is." The words are tumbling out of the man like a waterfall, his eyes moving back and forth. It seems his eyes pause in his wandering for just a fraction of a second. I turn around and see the axe. Bloody and covered in sticky tufts of hair. "It became too much," says the man, moving towards Hamdan at an accelerating pace, eyes growing wilder, hands reaching up, "And if this is something in between, if this is limbo then I don't want them to stay. I didn't want them to stay. I'm sorry." Hamdan is backing up as the man reaches for him, he springs forward but I do likewise and the bear mace is just inches from those wild, wide eyes as I press the button. He screams, and he keeps screaming as we run, and he keeps saying he's sorry. Roaring it. The screaming follows us for what might be hours. The man hasn't followed us, but the sound joins the orchestra of the forest above. - Hamdan doesn't get up on what could be the fourth day. His breathing is shallow, his eyes distant and rimed with pus. I get him to drink some water and then I drag him out of the tent. I know the outside terrifies him, but if he's going to die, I don't want it to be in a dank cocoon. For hours we sit and watch the movement of the forest above, the eddies in the pine needles, how currents of leaves move through them, the slow movement of the logs. They change their geometric patterns in great synchronous movements, a machinery stretching to fit the heavens. Hamdan turns his head to say something when the forest falls. Or, it doesn't exactly fall. It rushes down and swirls up and all the small pieces of the puzzle loop around in snaking figures. The sound is tremendous, unbearable. I feel the leaves and needles and branches brush against me, flit past my eyes, forming patterns just like the logs above. Then the logs descend, and the earth follows. I get up and drag Hamdan with me, turn around to drag him into the tent, but the tent is torn away by a massive oak branch that sweeps up into the descending dirt like a falcon. Everything can hurt us, nothing does. We stand in the cyclone as a forest is reassembled around us, logs becoming trunks, leaves zipping back onto branches. I look up, and through the clearing air I see water, a great plane of it like a palatial glass floor. Through it I see a deer trotting along, birds whirling through the air, the sun. The earth falls to fill the spaces between the trees and everything goes black. - Birdsong fills the air. I open my eyes and see green leaves waving in the wind, the sunlight turning some of them gold. Hamdan sits beside me eating a granola bar, his breathing steadier. "That should be Syracuse," he says and points. But there's just the forest, stretching endlessly into the distance under a blue sky. There's just us and the forest now.
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Mar 17, 2024 18:58
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Week 606: cool forest bro peach 1,165 words You have to duck under the brush to get there. It’s all the way toward the rear of the park and set back a ways off the running trail, just past the groundskeeper’s shed where a cop on walking patrol caught Lucas Reilly with his hand down Cynthia Bennett’s pants. You duck under the brush and you follow the rough path through the pineland forest until you come to an old chain link fence, then you walk along that for a little bit and it drops you right there: a small patch of the old Jackson farm where forest has taken over but the peach trees still grow — oddly. “Shelly didn’t like it,” Evelyn said, raising her voice over the noise from the open window. She dangled her arm out, letting her hand catch the wind now and then. “She said it felt weird.” “Shelly doesn’t like anything,” said Aiden, eyes fixed on the road, elbow resting lazily in his window. “Pete thought it was great. Guess it just hits different folks different ways.” The drive from Evelyn’s to the park wasn’t very long because no drive in a small town is. When they got there, Aiden got out first and opened Evelyn’s door for her. She stepped out with a smile, and together they walked into the park and began following the trail. It was a twenty-five-minute walk from the entrance of the park to the chain link fence the other kids at school told them about. About halfway in, Aiden’s hand met the small of Evelyn’s back. It stayed there for a minute or two, then wandered briefly downward — Evelyn met that move with some side-eye and a smile — before pulling away and reaching for Evelyn’s hand. They walked like that until they got to where they had to duck under the brush. It was early summer, and the shade of the forest kept them cool enough as they wandered along the chain link fence. The fence was a relic of a property line that, for all intents and purposes, existed now only on paper. It looked wildly out of place. Around it, the trees bustled with life, from the birds chittering overhead to the squirrels hurriedly rushing to and fro. The path Evelyn and Aiden followed was discernible, but only just so, and it filled them with a powerful blend of confidence and excitement to see that others — but not too many others — had been here before. Back at school, the other kids whispered about it when teachers weren’t around to hear. It was a rite of passage: You’d either tried a peach from the abandoned Jackson farm or you hadn’t, and once you had, things were just different. The energy from it coursed through your body. You saw the world a little differently. Like you’d unlocked new colors. You knew someone at school had been to the farm over the weekend when they showed up Monday morning like someone who’d been disassembled and put back together. Best anyone could guess, old man Jackson had been treating some small, hidden portion of his farm with something a little less than legal and selling the resulting fruits and their jellies to local enthusiasts. Jackson was long gone and his farm fell into complete abandonment years and years ago, but — much to the surprise and delight of some curious teens who’d been wandering the forest a few years back — those affected trees still put out some version of the fruit the old man originally concocted. Evelyn hadn’t been interested. She didn’t think herself a prude, but all the same, the prospect made her nervous. She wasn’t sure what to expect. It had taken some convincing from Aiden to get her out here. As they pushed through some of the final underbrush to make it to what used to be the secluded peach field, her hesitation gave way to wonder and excitement. The sun filtered lightly through the canopy, illuminating the leaves of the low-set peach trees, giving each fruit a warm glow. “This looks like it’s the place,” Aiden said. He moved closer to her, shoulder to shoulder, letting her hand go and wrapping his arm around her waist. His hand touched her bare skin right where her shirt met her jeans and it gave her goosebumps. “Looks like,” she said with a smile. Together, they walked up to one of the trees a little further away from where they entered, as the ones closest had mostly already been picked. # The walk back to the car was long and mostly silent, though not for lack of trying on Evelyn’s part. Aiden was just … somewhere else. She was already going over all of it again in her mind. The look on his face, so soft and inviting as he asked her, voice as low as a whisper, if she was ready. She nodded and smiled and closed her eyes, and together they each bit into a peach. Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground. The peach was somehow cool and warm at the same time, juicy and sweet and impossibly fresh, and the sensation of it batted away whatever trepidations she’d been holding on to. Still, she didn’t really feel any different. It was just a really nice peach. And when she opened her eyes and looked over at Aiden, it confirmed what he’d said in the car: It just hits different folks different ways. He’d joined her on the ground, but that was where the similarities in their experiences ended. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth agape — a bit of juice had trickled out, and it glinted in the sunshine. His arms hung limply by his sides, and his peach, with one perfectly shaped bite taken out, sat in the loose grip of his relaxed hand. Evelyn looked at him with a mix of fear, excitement, and jealousy. This felt like the culmination of a series of increasingly daring transgressions, a forbidden treat for them and them alone, on this day, on this forest floor, and that had her blood racing — but all the same, she couldn’t help staring down at her own peach with a measure of disappointment. Maybe her and Shelly had picked one from the same branch or something. He was pretty well wiped after the experience, and Evelyn noticed something different about his eyes. They were darker, less welcoming. He was quiet as they started the walk back to the car, and remained that way despite her prompting. “Do you feel any different?” she asked. “Was it good?” “It was great, yeah,” he said, the lack of energy and conviction in his voice just impossible for her to ignore. “Really great.” At one point on the walk back, she sidled up next to him, wrapped her arm around his. He kept his hands in his pockets. They continued like that all the way to the car, where she had to open her own door.
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Mar 17, 2024 21:37
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Just Keep Cutting 1361 words Roan clipped his harness into the rigging and pulled himself off the ground. He climbed, skirting around the low branches that hadn’t been trimmed yet, digging the toes of his boots into the rough red bark, hauling himself higher and higher. He paused at two stops, standing on a branch to switch to the next rope, before moving into the canopy. Soon, all he heard was breeze through creaking limbs, the strain of thousand-year-old wood groaning under its own weight, and below him the green heads of the forest rolling away. There was nothing else like this in the world. Roan and his crew had traveled for weeks to reach the Old Man, the tallest tree they’d found so far. To the north, an unbroken ocean of green, while to the south the pitted scars of his crew showed the forest floor like wounds. It was gorgeous; they could work all their lives and barely make a dent. Roan had never wanted to be a flier, much less a forester, but he’d taken the job when Pops got sick and he’d bounced out of the Law Academy when he couldn’t argue a case to save his life. He’d stayed when he’d fallen in love with the quiet that came after getting as high as he possibly could. It’d been climbing, cutting, and hard tent living for him ever since. Now he reached the spot he’d left off the day before and got to work sawing. Normally out here in the wilds, they’d just chop the base and let it rip, but the Old Man was too drat big; they had to give him a nice little trim first to make sure he didn’t take down half the forest when he fell. It wasn’t easy, shearing off the head of a tree ten feet in diameter at its very top. Down below, the thing was easily fifty feet across, and there were six guys already working on the base. But here, this was Roan’s life, his world, and as his saw sent wood chips and dust into the air he felt like there was a reason he’d been given this climbing gift, a reason he didn’t feel the chest-heaving fear everyone else got. He was born to trim giants, that’s what Roan figured, and once he had a good wedge made, the big piece pointed to fall north, he sent down a signal flag to make sure the crew got clear. He counted off to four hundred, then shoved. The tree creaked, cracked, and dropped. It fell with a breath-sucking plummet into space, hanging over nothing but silence for a few seconds until it hit the canopy. The ungodly crash it made through the forest below was incredible, and adrenaline pumped into Roan’s body. He’d done that—him, nobody else, had made this massive beast fall. He’d ripped a hole in the world. As he reset his ropes and got ready to start on the next section, feeling more than a little satisfied, something caught his eye. It was a shimmer, like sunlight glinting off metal. He figured it was a spike he’d forgotten to take out, but when he looked up over the edge of the tree’s capped skull, that wasn’t it at all. There was no spike, no metal, only a strange darkness inside the tree’s cavity, a negative space that made no sense—a tree this big couldn’t be hollow and still support itself. But there it was, only darkness where he expected to find rings and flesh. Then another one of those glints again, this time followed by something small and fast moving away from the light. Roan stared, his mouth open. This had never happened before. Little creatures began skittering, beetles the size of his big toe with a black-and-green carapace shining in the sudden sunlight, and they were freaking out. Their bodies churned over each other, some retreating deeper into the tree, but others crawled toward strange, carved structures jutting out of the walls of the tree’s innards. Roan had to stare for a while before the stuff made sense, but there were structures carved around the edges. They were like little houses, smooth and carefully made, with windows at even intervals and a larger opening in the middle. Some beetles were inside, hiding from him, a little beetle family with beetle parents and smaller beetle kids. There were furnishings inside that house, a table, something like a bed. His mouth opened and worked, and he whispered a greeting but of course they didn’t understand, they were beetles. But there were more structures, different but similar, with windows and doors and more carved objects inside, and the impossible beetle city retreated down into the enormous tree’s cavity, deep into the structure of the huge thing. Hundreds of them, thousands even, he couldn’t begin to count, and for all the trees he’d lopped down in this forest, this was the first time he’d ever seen anything remotely like this. The beetles had made a home. No, they’d made a city. He was caught between the sheer impossibility of a beetle society carved into the trunk of an enormous tree, and the certainty that if this tree fell all of those beetles would die, and that would be a terrible loss for the world. He was a law school dropout, a crap son, a tree flier, and not much else, but Roan was smart enough to know this was important and had to be preserved. The climb down was a blur. He hit the ground and spotted the crew nearby, and they’d made way too much progress already. Roan unclipped himself, braced against the noise of the full crew cutting as hard as they could, and ran to find Lonnish. The heavyset foreman was in the cutting line with everyone else and waved at Roan before coming over. He had dark hair and a chest like an oak. “You’re down early,” he shouted over the noise. “That’s good. We were going to send up a flag.” “I saw something,” Roan called back and suddenly felt crazy under Lonnish’s hard stare. That man had been in the wilds even longer than Roan, a hardened cutter that had seen plenty in his time, but if anyone would believe him, it had to be Lonnish. Only the foreman could put a stop to the cut midway through. “Yeah, I bet you did, all the way up there. The piece you dropped hit the ground like a mountain.” Lonnish laughed and slapped Roan’s arm before turning back to his task, but Roan held onto Lonnish’s shoulder. “No, it was inside the Old Man.” He described the beetles, the houses, all of the intricate and beautiful buildings. “I’m serious Lon, it’s in there, like a little world.” Lonnish pried Roan’s fingers away, and Roan wanted to keep holding on, but the foreman was already shaking his head. “We got orders to bring the Old Man down. I don’t know what you saw up there, but it doesn’t matter.” Roan felt cold all over. “Just let me go back up. I’ll warn them. I’ll try to…” But what could he do? They were beetles. He didn’t speak bug and it’s not like they’d listen to him anyway. He thought of the dollhouses his grandfather carved, of the wooden soldiers he played with as a boy, of all the small things he’d gathered in his life and kept safe because they were important to him. And now there was a city inside this tree teeming with beetle life, and there was nothing he could do to protect it. The saws did their work. Roan watched for a while, but his crewmates gave him ugly looks for standing around, and soon he joined in. They had orders, and this wasn’t his choice, and there was a whole forest left to climb, more new worlds to explore. Roan couldn’t do anything to change this outcome; he was only a guy that climbed trees. The Old Man would sound incredible when it fell, taking all those beetles with it.
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Mar 18, 2024 02:07
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Unspoken 1,219 words I’ve been staring at the treeline for nearly an hour now, picking at my cuticles with jagged fingernails as I lean against my fifth-hand car. It feels so stupid, being here. Everybody’s always joked about this place. At the centre of the forest is silence. Everybody always has something different to say too, something to make their telling worth listening too. None of the details match, though you can sometimes trace one passing from person to person. They only agree on one thing. At the centre of the forest is silence, and you tell it your secret. It’s the absurdity of this that’s holding me back, I tell myself. A forest can’t make things right. Trees aren’t listening. I pat the pocket of my jeans, feeling the misshapen lump of keys and trinkets. What would I say, if I left right now? I drove to the forest because I can’t tell you how much this hurts me. I went because I needed to start moving but even that first step was still too much. So I came home, and smiled only when you were looking, and felt this knot deep in my chest grow tighter. A flutter of movement catches my eye. I watch as a starling hops through the branches, flitting between bands of light and shadow. It keeps disappearing deeper into the trees, before reappearing a few moments later, always in my line of sight. Does this really scare me so much? If nothing else, I could do with the fresh air. I push off my car and walk under the branches. I’m expecting a sudden shift, some momentous restructuring of the world to mark my passage into something new. Or something much older, rather. Instead I just step off the gravel and into the forest. After all, I’d been on plenty of hikes at the suggestion of others. What made this one so different? What strikes me most is the colours. I have never seen so much green gathered in one place, from the bright emeralds of leaves caught in sunlight to the brown-flecked moss climbing the trunks. The carpet of brittle leaves on the forest floor is the darkest of them all, nearly grey mixed with muddy browns, hiding roots that threaten to trip if I lose focus. I lose myself for a few moments wandering forward, picking my path from one sunbeam to the next. It’s quiet, and the air smells thick with dirt and rot. If there was a babbling brook winding through the trees that would be too perfect, and I’m glad for its absence. I feel more at ease this way. The weight in my chest sinks lower, dragging me back into my thoughts. What if I don’t find the centre? What if I walk for hours, alone, and leave this unsaid? I push deeper into the forest. As best as I can I try to walk in a straight line, hoping once I’m done I can retrace my footsteps. It’s a futile thing, and the forest keeps throwing trees in my path, forcing me to sidestep, and scramble down uneven slopes. The thought of getting lost never occurs to me. I pass the time trying to think of a pithy way to describe this. Something to make light of it all, years from now once my heart is settled but still guarded. If you whisper a secret in the forest and no one is around to hear it, did you really say it? The trees are getting taller as I go further, so tall that trying to peer at their tops makes me dizzy, like I’m going to stumble over backwards. I imagine sharp eyes peering down from the branches. Imagine whole communities living and dying in the canopy, chattering to themselves as I walk past. Hundreds or even thousands of creatures, fighting and hunting without ever stepping foot on the ground, living lives every bit as messy as anyone else. I feel small. It feels like hours have passed since I’ve entered. There is still light slipping through the branches but I can’t see the sun past them, unsure how low it has dipped towards the horizon. Looking back up to the canopy I notice a border around each branch, a gap between one tree and the next. Between them the sky is so bright it hurts to look at. There’s a name for this phenomenon, and I’m trying to remember what it was called. I’m sure I knew at one point. I’m so distracted that I almost miss it—a catch between heartbeats, the briefest moment my breath isn’t tired and gasping. The beat between nothing and the crack of leaves again under my feet is what catches my attention. I freeze in disbelief. It looks no different to the rest of the forest. It’s barely even a clearing, just a brief space between trees. Nervously I pick up a rock, turning it over in my hand, then I lob it towards the ground. It lands without a noise. It’s real. Everybody always spoke of it as real, but the distance between rumour and certainty may as well put you in another country. I carefully walk around it, trying to gauge the bounds of its silence, slowly circling closer until there’s only one thing left to do. I step inside the void, expecting it to feel cold. All the sounds of the forest have been abruptly muted, even my breath, with one step and it’s this combination, of warmth and light but being kept at a remove, that raises goosebumps along my arms. I watch as a starling—surely not the same one?—lands on a nearby branch and opens its beak. My brain fills the emptiness around me, imagining an echo of birdsong. I scream. I scream as the knot in my chest uncurls itself, all that wound tension providing power that is immediately wasted. I scream until my throat is raw and my face is red and tears are streaming down my face, this hole at the centre of the forest swallowing it all, more alone than I have ever been, digging jagged nails into soft flesh hard enough to bleed. I scream until even if there was no void I still wouldn’t be making a noise, straining and gasping, expending all my breath as I close my eyes and feel nothing. The starling keeps watch, unfazed. I finish screaming and collapse in on myself. My chest is heaving as I draw breath deeply, silently, quickly. My heart is pounding in my chest, blood roaring in my ears and I’m struck by just how loud it all is. Cut off from the world I realise I’m filled with so much noise, and as I listen to my heart beating so quickly there’s almost no pause, I realise just how much life there is in me. Even with nowhere to go, even completely alone, I still have all this life inside of me. I slow my breathing down, taking control once more. In deep through the nose. Pause, and release. And again. Moment by moment the thunder in my chest calms. Standing still I close my eyes. I whisper my secret to the forest. The forest listens. I wipe the tears from my face and wait for its reply.
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Mar 18, 2024 02:27
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Week 606 - Cool Forest bro Sigils and Runes 1400 words Winter came harsh upon the woods as the farmland grew snow and the river froze. A small stone cottage leaning between two split log barns lay at the edge of the naked trees that spread beyond, the only life a girl who struggled against wind and snow, plodding through mud to the cottage door. She shut the door to the kitchen heaving two pails of milk, then ran up to the blazing oven to rid the chill from her bones as her mother turned to her, holding a skinned duck like a threat to the wayward child. “Where’s the wood? Lazy girl, go get your father as well. I thought you liked it outside?” She chopped the duck, threw a bit to the cat and pointed to the door. The girl marched back out into the cold, finding herself watching her father rake manure from the stalls. Noticing his daughter, he put down his rake and sat by her, giving her a hug with one arm. “It will pass, let her bang her pots, pay it no mind. At least she didn’t beat you,” he said, “We thought you dead.” “I know. Why doesn’t she believe me? I heard the call of spring and had to see, I ran not because I do not love her, or you.” “In her heart she does believe, truly. But she cannot bear to lose you to the forest.” He pinched her cheek, causing her to frown. “You must stay here, ignore these voices, no good can come of it.” “They won’t hurt me, papa. But mama might if I don’t get her that wood.” She bounded up and wandered to the woodpile to avoid the questions she could not answer, as he sighed and went to help, determined to try again to learn more of this mysterious world his daughter had found, and never did. Not that night, nor that winter as the land slept, and its magic waned, for it had faded from her also like leaves from dormant wood. She could not remember the time she’d run away, she would say. So that was that, but still his wife raged. “How did she survive out there, lost and alone, for eight months? A girl of twelve and not a scratch on her? There are bad things there.” His wife would search for answers, and he’d say nothing, for he had nothing, aside from the certainty that only the cold she could not yet endure had brought her back to them. They would hold each other in the dark, wondering what was to come at winter’s end. And as the days grew longer, and word of the returned girl ruminated through the village with superstition, their troubles grew. “They will burn her as a witch if things get out of hand, we must let her go. The shaman warned us the first time.” he said. “She is no ordinary child, to hunt and climb better than any man.” The woman could only nod as if there were any choice, the old blind man’s words from the year before tormenting her - She is no longer yours, the gods have called her… ~ The land awoke as spring melted ice and snow, and now the girl could hear and see the wild magic outside of her dreams, the sun’s return spouting buds and leaves to again speak her name. Come see, it would say, full of promise. Unable to resist the call, she went out the window dressed in skins that second night of spring, just as the river broke free of the ice and tumbled roaring to the fjord below. She ran and ran, the wild magic leading her on mile after mile. She followed it’s shining path, leading her safely past wolf and bear, over hills and wonderful vales with mounds and caves with their witches and after-walkers and unseen things, and she sang to the beasts, and creatures of darkness, soothing their anger or making them flee as her song bent their will. Skipping along and climbing trees she named the plants, the insects and animals, the fungi and fern and seed and moss as the forest praised the girl, and joined her songs, and kept her fed. She went to find her friends. She wound through the giant firs to the lakes above and found her way back to the druids with ease. The three welcomed her return, giving her a hunting bow of sacred yew after teaching of the Winter’s song, and of the warmth within the cold she would need to endure its chill. They gave her a bitter tea, and she drank it and she left them, climbing the gate of dawn to the golden lady of her dreams. ~ A golden hand stroked the girl’s hair. She gazed with wonder at the Valkyrie that placed her on the ground, and stood casting an aura of light, beautiful and great. “I understand the seasons now, and why I was sent away.” The girl said, thinking the golden woman the voice among the trees. “I will master winter when it returns.” “You will learn in time.” The girl heard the voice was not the forest, but one of authority that rang through her and stuck there with wonder. “You are Aesir born as am I, but the Tuatha Dé of the forest claim you as their own, to pay a debt. You must find the Sirens, the sisters who serve the Host in their eternal glade.” The girl could only shake her head. “What have I done to be traded by our god, like a goat?” She gazed at the golden warrior in disbelief, at her spear and sword and golden hair, the Valkyrie’s fire eyes reflected in her own, hard with anger. “You must choose, the sigils, or the runes.” The Valkyrie took her hand, and showed her the falls above her village, and its secret path, it’s key her song. It faded back away. “Why must I choose, to settle the debts of gods?” the girl was no fool, which made the Valkyrie smile. “I am but His thrall, and His will… Choose the runes, and you must leave the forests, for the wild magic will be gone from you, but you will gain the Sight, and the Crows, to guide Odin’s men across the seas... Choose the sigils, and you may stay, as Maiden of the Wood, to serve nature and the Host.” “The forest was promised to me.” “Not by us, the forests are not ours to give. Choose, before winter comes again, lest you have neither.” The Valkyrie knew the girl’s choice was already made and raised the spear, grew into light and faded away as the girl cursed and protested the god's betrayal, falling helpless into troubled sleep, her dream haunted by the departing song of war. ~ She had awoken by the stones, the druids gone, camping sullenly a few days hunting deer and catching fish, awaiting their return. They appeared after some days and listened to her tale of the dream with alarm. “They can’t make me choose such a thing.” She insisted. “I do not want to go beyond the seas, or serve this Host.” “No. But they can take the magic, and without it, you are but food for wolf or bear.” said the Grey. “The Host’s sigils will give you the power over the forest creatures, fair or foul, far beyond what you have now, for always.” said the Broken. “The gods are fickle, and their debts are many. They give you reason to take the forest, it’s gifts, and do not the runes lie here, in your domain to come?” said the Wise. She understood. Urging her to see, they set her on her way to Spring Fall cave and over the days she wandered, the ringing of the birds joining her forlorn melodies. The weeks went on as her strength and magic flourished and her courage grew, finally arriving at the cave with a setting sun. She sat by her fire singing to the stars above a crown of leaves. Then she went and sang to the ravine, and walked across the trail that appeared from mist, into the Forest of Blue, to the Sirens, and to her choice to betray in turn, to take the sigils, hide their runes, and free herself and nature from all gods.
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Mar 18, 2024 05:02
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Rite of Passage 1761 words They call it a rite of passage. I call it a cruel prank. I was alone, completely lost in the Great Southern Forest, the larger of the two megaforests of Origin Mirn. It's supposed to be safe, but when you're under closed canopy it's dark, moonless night kind of dark even at full noon, and my parents and grandparents were all of pure Terran extraction, which was downright rude of them. Just one Mirnborn in that mix and I'd have much better night vision, not to mention maybe not looking like an Intervention War marine straight out of central casting. It's supposed to be safe, assuming you don't trip on a root and break your fool neck. And even at that. I could sit down and wait it out. Two days of minimal movement is when they'll send someone out to pick you up. That or anything worse than a sprained leg showing up on the monitors. They say there's no shame in it, which mostly means the opposite. On the other hand, only about an eighth of people actually make it to a city. Most wind up between, wandering for a few weeks getting nowhere. At some point they turn on the ‘pick me up now’ button. I spent about four hours right where they left me. Considered doing the just sit there move. There were unburst bladderfruits on the ground, enough to last me the two days even if no more fell, and made sure I could crack one and keep down the juice inside. It would have been easy enough. My cousin Sharm did it that way. But when the canopy shifted, I couldn't keep still. The trees here are huge. Taller than the trees you see on any of the human Origin worlds. Most of the Origins have something in their biosphere that none of the others do. Earth has large cephalopods. Mirn has these trees that tower more than a hundred meters before spreading out into the lower canopy. And they move, making new gaps and closing old ones, letting sunlight reach the ground cover. The canopy above me closed, turning noon to midnight. I could see a shaft of light in the distance, where the next gap was opening, and I started walking towards it. Not a good strategy, in the long run, heading for the nearest opening. Good way to go around in circles. Best case and you're random walking in a drunkard's search. But right then, for the first steps, it was as good a way to go ask any. There aren't supposed to be any serious predators at ground level. The arbor shrikes and branchcats live and die in the canopies. But I felt like I was being watched, like I was something's prey as I moved, slowly and careful of each step. It was a relief to reach the better-lit area, ground littered with bladderfruit, mostly burst, a few insects sipping at the juice inside. And then I saw him, standing right in the middle of a sunray, almost camouflaged in it. His hair and skin were dandelion-yellow with thistle-white highlights. Not a common set of traits, here or anywhere I knew of. There's a lot of different sorts of human though. Earth is the least diverse of the six Origin systems. Mirn is closer to the norm. Lots more colors and shapes and biochemical quirks, but I'd never seen anything like him, in person or in media. “And who'd you be?” he said. He spoke Catoxan, the most common language on this part of Mirn. I knew it as well as my English, maybe better. He talked like ancient history media, the accent of centuries past. “Peter Song,” I said. “And you?” “Xianni of Farfall,” he said. “Good to meet you,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to know the way to New Catox?” He smiled, and his lips went almost all the way to his dimples. “I would,” he said. “But should I tell you?” “If you're a friend it would be the friendly thing to do,” I said. “And if you're not, telling me would get me on my way and out of your land sooner.” “Clever,” he said. “But nothing comes free. Your choice: riddle me or wrestle me for the truth.” He looked graceful, in his bark vest. I outweighed him, and not by a little, but I wasn't much for fighting. But riddles weren't my thing either. I knew a few in English that didn't translate well at all. I chose to trade riddles with Xianni, and we sat talking between them for a few hours. He stumped me, mostly, after we got past a few really easy ones where the answer is Fire or Water or Time, and I couldn't get anything past him at all. So when the canopy closed he slipped away and warned me not to try and follow. He moved faster than I could without likely tripping anyways. So I continued onward in roughly the same direction as I had came in, ignoring the shafts of new openings above me that would have me move more than a little off my chosen course. It was a long and slow walk, made less pleasant when I walked through a swarm of gnats and swallowed more than I would have liked. But eventually I reached another temporarily open sky. And in that bright area, standing in a sunbeam, was another one, another human of the same ancestry, bright yellow skin and hair. A woman, as pretty as any vid star in a sort of grubby sort of way. “I'm Gwendi,” she said. “Xianni told me you'd be coming this way, Peter Song.” “Do you want to riddle me too? Or wrestle?” “Those are Xianni's games. For me...questions, I think.” “Questions?” “We take turns, and tell only whole truths.” “Great!” I said. “What direction is the nearest city?” “That truth you have already lost,” she said, smiling. “It's not mine to give.” I thought for a second. “The direction to the nearest ocean, then.” “That I can answer,” she said. “Last, if you tell no lies.” So we spent some hours asking questions. For a minute I was worried they might be, you know, spy kind of things. Questions about the defense of the city. Pass codes. That kind of thing. But they weren't. They were personal, about me, my history, my friends. “Have you ever been with a woman?” She asked. “Or a man?” I blushed but answered honestly, no. Meanwhile, she was clearly cheating, lying constantly. She and Xianni lived in the canopy. Okay, plausible. They got down by assembling a cushion of bladderfruit and a silk parachute. Highly unlikely. “Three were sent, only the two of us made it alive.” And even wilder: they returned by running up the side of the tree. “We do need a good head start,” she said, tossing her hair and smiling. As the branches moved above us she told me what direction to go, and I started walking that way. And that was the last I saw them for ten days. I reached the ocean, where the forest turns to mangroves, still vaulting high into the sky. I turned to what I was fairly sure was north and followed the coast, but it wasn't long at all before my first run-in with a alligators At least six worlds in the known galaxy where humans evolved. Down to almost every important gene, completely interfertile. Given how baffling that is to anyone who cares enough to think about it, which is mostly just the humans from those worlds, I guess it makes sense that other species would have to evolve the same. So Mirn has alligators, just as scary as you'd find in Florida. I ran, risking tripping in the dark and stumbling almost to that point more than once, to the nearest opening clearing inland. And both Xianni and Gwendi were there, waiting. Xianni held some kind of weapon, a spear with an odd ornament on top. “You'll be wanting this,” he said. “What is it,” I asked. “We call it a pug stick. At need you can stick them with the pointy end, but waving it about-” He demonstrated. The end made a strange high keening sound. “-will scare them off.” “And I suppose you want to wrestle me for it,” I said. “You'll need to satisfy us both,” he said. “But yes, to start.” He tossed the pug stick aside, and it stuck into the ground. He was fast, and if it had been boxing or kickfighting he would have beat me soundly. But we were wrestling and as soon as he had a hand on me I could lay one on him, and use my strength and grip. He slipped free twice, but the third time I pinned him. He walked out into the dark forest. “And you? How do I satisfy you?” “Give me a baby,” she said. Now, this was not my finest moment, intellect-wise. “What, you mean kidnap someone from town?” I said. “Or is this a You'll come back for my firstborn years later kind of thing.” Like I said. But she slipped out of her vest and I got the idea right after that. In the morning, after the canopy had closed and then reopened here again, she handed me the pug stick and walked away. Then I heard her running, running back toward the sunlit area, running right for the thickest tree trunk around. And then up the tree and out of sight. The pug stick served me well, scared off the alligators as I walked another week. It also attracted fish, which I learned to spearfish, which made a change from the bladderfruit juice and flesh. This near ocean it was safe enough for small fires. I finally reached a small fishing port, and I was able to trade the pug stick for passage on to New Catox. Nobody believed a word of my story. “There once were people living in the canopies. They may have looked as you described. But they've been extinct, thousands of years gone. In the final wars of our history.” From then on people called me Lucky Peter Song, supernaturally lucky to spend the rite high on fermented juice, on forest wine, to imagine contests and lovemaking with ghosts and still make it home through alligator-infested lands. And I let them. But I know better. Me and some ship captain on the southern shore, but he's not talking to anyone.
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Mar 18, 2024 07:42
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(submissions closed)
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Mar 18, 2024 15:22
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I'm in to help judge.
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Mar 18, 2024 15:25
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WEEK 606 results My co-judge and I have reviewed your forests and found them to be for the most part adequately cool (bro). This was a week where almost all of you reached the level of being reasonably okay, but only a couple made more of an impact. The first exception is Toaster Beef, whose competent and compellingly ambiguous tale of teens getting hosed up on funky peaches is this week's winner. The second exception is Fat Jesus, whose story tried to cram in far too much and generally confused us both enough to be our loser. No other mentions, except that Thranguy is DQ'd for going way over wordcount. (We will both still provide crits, however.)
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Mar 18, 2024 18:20
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Ceighk posted:WEEK 606 results Criiiiiiits Assembly, Black Griffon It feels like this story's reach is beyond its grasp, something I appreciate in the Dome. You really tried and I can tell, but it’s not quite there. I get lost in the descriptions, they’re at the same time too sparse and too thick. Maybe not the right things being concentrated on to build the mind-picture for me. It was hard for me to visualize what was going on. Were they underground? Was it an alternate dimension? I knew something wasn't right and something was missing, but what and how I couldn't parse. Peach, Toaster Beef As someone who gets accused of boring dialog a lot, this dialog came across as boring for me. It's been a long time since I was a teen, but I kept getting feelings of "do teens talk like that?" It feels like it ends early too. That might be a product of the word count or the time left to write, but I wish there was less about how to get to the peaches and more about what they did or didn’t do. That said, it was complete, coherent and the action was easy to follow. The idea of a semi magical peach grove was cool too. Seebeams, Just Keep Cutting One sticking point: my dad was an arborist for 30 something years and the one big miss was that, when you’re that high up and you top a tree, the rest will shake and whip and throw you around. It’s all you can do to hang on until things calm down. That said, I like this story. Other than the tree not waving around, you do nail the feel of tree cutters. I wish there was more about the smell. Tree cutting has a ton of smells. The wood, the sap, the bar and chain oil, the two cycle exhaust. It makes for a powerful sense memory. But! the story is complete, coherent and cute while also being a little melancholy. Especially for a first entry, this was high quality, nice work! Captain_Person, Unspoken I liked this one. I could feel the weight of the silence, I could see the height of the trees. It was evocative. But, it also felt thin to me. Given the word count, it’s difficult to get a meaty story, but I still found myself wishing for more. Maybe it was the lack of anything for the Narrator. They’re so thin as to be nearly transparent. Fat Jesus, Sigils and Runes When it happens, I try to point out where a story lost me. When I find out the girl has been missing for eight months in the winter I am lost. It could have been three nights, it could have been a week. But eight months is more than enough time for them to look for her, give up, mourn her, bury here and work towards healing. It was simply too long. The first part of the story (other than that) was fine, but the second part was too confusing. I wound up having to read it a few times and even then I only got the gist. Thranguy, Rite of Passage I’m a big classic SciFi head, so I liked this one. It had notes of David Brin in it, and I dig the idea. One thing I wished there was more about was maybe the light or gravity. The fact that the trees were so tall and mobile speaks to a lower gravity on the planet, but that would have also meant that falling would be less dangerous - though that could have spoken to the narrator’s inexperience come to think of it. In the end though, if it was like 100 words over, I’d let it slide but it’s a full throated 350+ words over. Gotta go with the DQ this time.
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Mar 18, 2024 18:34
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Week 607: Moral of the Story I'm about to become a dad. Like, it could happen this week (so lol, judging might get wild). And it has me thinking about stuff like Aesop — where you're telling a story but also imparting some wisdom. I love that kind of thing. Something about a simple story well told that leaves you with a little life lesson just tickles a very specific part of my brain. So this week, I'd love to see stories that teach morals. Do these have to be moral morals? Not at all. The moral of your story can be heinous. Make it "It's best to burn the entire village instead of just the barracks," if you want — just make sure that by the end of your piece the reader knows exactly the lesson you're teaching. You'd also be wise to keep in mind the aforementioned idea of "a simple story well told." Word limit: 1,500 Flash rule: If you'd like an extra 500 words to work with, I can provide you with one of Aesop's morals to chew on. You can do whatever the hell you like with it, but it's gotta come through in your story. Sign-up deadline: 11:59 PM PDT Friday (3/22) Submission deadline: 11:59 PDT Sunday (3/24) Entrants: beep-beep car is go Chernobyl Princess (Flash: "Children are not to be blamed for the faults of their parents.") Thranguy (Flash: "There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.") Albatrossy_Rodent shwinnebego (Flash: "It is too late to prepare for danger when our enemies are upon us.") Judges: Toaster Beef Toaster Beef fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 19:25
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Yeah, all right. I'm in.
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Mar 18, 2024 19:27
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In and flash please
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Mar 18, 2024 19:51
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Chernobyl Princess posted:In and flash please Your moral is "Children are not to be blamed for the faults of their parents."
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Mar 18, 2024 19:57
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606 crits Assembly, Black Griffon Nicely Ballardian but a bit overwrought. Moments of beauty in the prose but it doesn’t quite sell it – the dialogue in particular stands out as corny. Don’t really understand the narrator and Hamdan’s relationship -are they just pals? Either way I think more nuance could be added there. I don’t understand the ending either but maybe that’s user error. Feel like you’re grasping at something interesting here and have ambition in your use of language, but it needs more places for the reader to hook onto. Midish. Peach, Toaster Beef Nice voice and good use of suspense in the opening. Nice teen metaphor for drugs or puberty. Too much hearsay exposition about the Jackson farm in the middle, dampens the mystery. Would prefer to have multiple competing explanations or no explanation at all. Voice drops off midway through, generally too exposition-y and a bit flat – which is a shame when this is a story about teens getting hosed up on alien peaches: would have liked to see a bit more ‘teen’ energy come through in how the story is told. From the events here there’s a great sense of how teens mythologise their surroundings, push for new experiences, and that characteristically teen feeling of ‘incompleteness’, but outside of the opening paragraph the prose doesn’t match that, it’s just expositing events. Nice character work in the body language, though, and compelling in having Evelyn not see what Aiden sees. Overall, a readable, compelling story that fits the prompt well with a very strong core concept, but the prose could be heightened to meet the promise of the opening. Highish. Seebeams, Just Keep Cutting Fun concept. Too much exposition in the law school backstory – interesting enough, if a bit corny, but could’ve been folded into the other stuff more elegantly. Feels well researched though (I thought – but my cojudge disagrees). The beetle stuff is… interesting. I quite like the ambiguity of whether he’s just tripping out, and I like the ambiguity in the kinda sad ending, but the prose is a bit too flat for a story this strange, and the literal city of beetles feels like a bridge too far for the character and world as established. I feel like it’s so extreme that he coud’ve promised everyone millions as nature photographers or something, which makes the forlorn acceptance of it not really land. Midish, but strong for a first entry. Captain_Person, Unspoken Great prose. Compelling atmosphere. Needs a bit more specificity of some kind – not necessarily knowing the secret, but at least clues towards what sort of person the narrator is, what has pushed them towards this desperate measure. Without that there’s not much going on here – I’m waiting for the extra layer that never comes. Still, it’s eerie and well rendered, with a strong tone and atmosphere. High end of mid/low end of high. Fat Jesus, Sigils and Runes Simply, a confusing mess. What is going on? What mythology are we going for? Why is everyone acting like a kid going missing for 8 months is just a little weird? Why do they speak like that? What does the ending mean? Why is there so much content in a 1400 word story? Just pick one of these scenes and do it well, as it is this is borderline incomprehensible. Thanks for the last minute entry, but this is a loss if ever there was one. Thranguy, Rite of Passage So yeah, this is too long, and as such DQ’s. But I think this story also fundamentally doesn’t work for me. The sentence level writing is cool with a strong voice and it’s full of ideas, but it’s so full of ideas that I don’t understand how they all fit together. In particular, we have this fairytale or ‘tall tale’ kinda plot, but it’s all happening within a (heavily exposited) science fiction world, which means it’s hard to get a frame of reference for how outlandish the seriously outlandish stuff is meant to be. We’re introduced to a whole bunch of parallel human species (established as the current normal) and then another one (which is presented as strange) - but to the reader, they’re all strange, so what's the big deal. This kind of thing isn’t necessarily an issue if we’re playing with genre and expectations and so on – it’s Gene Wolfe’s bread and butter after all – but here it doesn’t land for me in terms of vibe or deeper significance. Mid.
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Mar 19, 2024 06:21
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In and flash
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Mar 19, 2024 10:12
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Thranguy posted:In and flash "There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth."
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Mar 19, 2024 11:01
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In
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Mar 19, 2024 23:52
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Only four entrants so far — just a note that signups will close in something like 19 hours edit: OH I hosed UP SO BAD AND INITIALLY WROTE SUBMISSIONS IT'S JUST SIGNUPS YIKES Toaster Beef fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 13:02
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In uh, flash I’ve never done this before nor do I have any relevant experience apologies in advance edit: ok i wrote my story, should i just post it or do i wait for your signal or what shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Mar 23, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 18:22
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shwinnebego posted:In uh, flash "It is too late to prepare for danger when our enemies are upon us."
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Mar 22, 2024 21:56
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shwinnebego posted:In uh, flash You can post whenever you want before deadline, but I would at least sleep on it before submitting. It’s always good to give yourself time to polish. 
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Mar 23, 2024 00:12
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All righty y'all, deadline for entry is officially closed. Write things!
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Mar 23, 2024 09:23
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Word Count: 1836 [edited only to italicize some words cuz i forgot formatting does copy/paste] Inoculate the Inside Ninety percent of the time working on what she’s supposed to be working on is quite impossible for Ranya. And so at 3pm on a gray Spring day she finds herself in her home office reading an internet sex and relationship advice column. The columnist is making a tortured point that Ranya would love to actually believe: that the point of relationships is not, contrary to popular belief, to have fun or to share interests or even to count on a basic ease of interaction in the domus. No, relationships are meant to bring out the hardest, most difficult stuff within you and force you to confront it, day in and day out. The interactions between you and your partner that, as far as you can tell, abjectly suck? The ones that bring out irrational, stubborn rage, that cast you both deep into death-spirals of anxious self-doubt and resentment? You’ve had it wrong all along, according to internet sex columnist Mistress Crabula: that’s the good stuff right there. always has been. “Ranya!” Janno’s tone in shouting her name is thick with need, conveying a non-negotiable urgency that Ranya must attend to at once, nevermind what else might be going on in her world. Ignoring her therapist’s advice to do…well, something other than this, she takes a deep breath and imagines pushing her resentment into a far-flung corner of her left foot. “Get me a tick twister,” creaks Janno as he examines their dog under a headlamp. Ranya obliges. “Thanks,” offers Janno dispassionately, the task of removing the tick from the presently docile bernedoodle relieving him of any discernible emotional affect. “I need to groom him. Can you get some treats and feed him treats slowly?” Ranya is looking at her phone, and noticing that she has a meeting in 40 minutes - the very thing she had been reading advice columns to avoid preparing for. “Sure, of course, no problem,” she replies, betraying none of her mounting stress, and blaming Janno entirely for this state of affairs. She begins to feed the dog tiny pieces of dried horse bladder, which Janno has determined is essential for the dog’s holistic well-being. Ranya is a forest ecologist, and things are getting weird in the New England woods. As a staff scientist at a research forest owned by an Ivy League school, her day-to-day mostly involves transect walks to measure whatever the scientist in charge happens to be measuring. Over the past year, an explosion of emerald ash-borers has eradicated nearly half the ash trees in the study area, while simultaneously a pine blister rust is leveling the conifer stands. (With far-away genocides and the terminal decline of the US empire, is measuring trees really the best use of her time?) “She’s twitching! Are you going to feed her treats so I can groom her? The ticks are horrible and it’s really stressing me out!” Janno seems upset with Ranya, but their collective priority is set for the moment, and cannot be easily altered, not now. “I’ll be more careful,” she replies mutely while feeding the dog another crunch of verdant organ meat. All of these tree pathogens are possibly within the realm of the new “normal” for invasive species in these forests, even if they seem alarming. But yesterday, she had seen growing sack-like subcortical bulges in the elm trees, reminiscent of the tell-tale tendrils produced by Dutch Elm disease, but somehow…not quite right. She had taken a core sample and sent it to the lab for analysis and genetic sequencing. (Why is she coring trees instead of getting out there organizing alongside mass movements with political strategies adequate to the task of addressing the climate crisis?) “Ranya, are you going to feed him another treat, he’s moving!” In 37 minutes, she is expected to meet with the team of scientists supervising the forest to report on this phenomenon, and provide her assessment of what it all meant (Doesn’t it mean that for whatever reason, invasive species are destabilizing our local ecology and we should probably be organizing to stop it?) “I have a meeting I need to get ready for, it’s important and I’m really under-prepared.” “Oh, well, okay - you should have told me that this wasn’t a good time.” “It didn’t really seem like that was an option?” “So you just acquiesced to my request because you’re afraid of me? That’s incredibly annoying, because I can’t believe that you’re being honest about your wants and needs when you don’t communicate” (What an odd conversation to be having, Ranya thinks, as the United States empire twists itself into knots to maintain its basic functions in the face of an irreversible drift towards a multipolar geopolitical world marked by runaway climate catastrophes) “Well now you’re getting annoyed with me, and it’s actually pretty stressful, so you’re not really creating a particularly welcoming environment for me to communicate about my needs. Anyway, like I said, I gotta go. Bye.” Janno seems fully livid as Ranya leaves, and she knows her heart-rate is soaring as her mind predictably spirals down into the standard grooves that have been carved from hundreds of experiences of getting triggered over fights with her partner. And her last partner. And her partner before that. And her mom, obviously. Part of the problem here is that Janno’s approach to the dog is all High Holistic Dog Health: no tick and flea medicine (that can cause seizures), but extreme concern about tick and flea diseases (you know they’re on the rise with climate change?), which means constant tick-searching and grooming that Ranya is expected to help with. It also means no walks on the street in the winter (salt is bad for their paws), raw food only (which required converting a substantial portion of her domestic environment into a cottage industrial facility for dog food), and about three substantial walks per day (as if the forest doesn’t demand enough walking out of her increasingly middle-aged body). Ranya is getting upset, and starting to feel again like Janno has built a life around his specific idea of dog-care, ripping her agency away from her in the process. And then she feels pathetic for having so strong a reaction to such an inane matter: she is an adult human possessed of basic communicative faculties, after all. Why does she not discuss this more regularly? Why doesn’t she say more about why she is upset now? The ticks are getting worse, though, and it is hard to argue with any of his logic on its own terms. Awful things, ticks. If it were up to her, they’d just give the dog the drat flea & tick medicine. She logs onto Zoom. The supervisors of the research forest, Carolina and Peter, are online already. There is another person there who she doesn’t recognize, called simply “Jim” on Zoom. Jim is wearing a suit, and he looks like an AI-generated image of a recent MBA-grad or like a Midwestern Democratic state Senator. Carolina and Peter are quiet. Jim breaks the silence. “I’m from the National Security Agency. We need to know what you found in those core samples yesterday.” Ranya is taken aback. “I haven’t run the samples yet, but I imagine it’s a fungus based on the subcortical spread pattern.” Jim seems stoic. “We were told that the pattern was quite unusual.” Ranya nods. “Yeah, it was not like anything we’d seen before. It had a certain…regularity to it that was, frankly, a bit off-putting.” Jim doesn’t blink. “This is very important. There are reports of similar fungal pathogens afflicting forests around the country. Preliminary DNA sequencing tests indicate that they may have been engineered. Can you confirm this?” Ranya is dazed. “Yeah, I’ll, uh…the samples are out to the lab but the results should be back. I need just…a minute.” The results are there. She thinks it really is amazing how rapid these rapid genomic analyses are these days. Even at a glance it’s clear to her that this is a modified version of a Chinese cousin of the Dutch Elm Disease, altered in a number of ways. She can’t determine exactly what these modifications mean, phenotypically, without further research. But modified, they are. Ranya opens up the Zoom window again. She reports to Jim, “It actually just looks like Dutch Elm Disease. Nothing special.” She is surprised at how calm her voice is. “Maybe a local mutation, but I wouldn’t really think much of it. Honestly, with warmer and wetter summers, we’re seeing more aggressive forest pathogens with taller spikes in the most infectious parts of their life-cycles, so to speak.” Jim’s face is hard to read. Ranya wonders if he looks suspicious? Nonplussed? Wait, does she recall what “nonplussed” means? “Thank you for your input, Ranya. That’s all I need.” He signs off. Carolina and Peter exchange a few pleasantries before signing off themselves. They are busy administrators, after all. Ranya leaves her home office and takes a deep breath. She sees Janno, still grooming the dog on his own. But this time, the sight of him makes her happy, happier than it had in some time. Ticks were indeed multiplying faster than they had before. Their disease loads were higher. Who knows what the future ecology of this forest will look like? Nothing was going to be the same in their corner of the world, or in fact anywhere in the world. The tiny arachnids that persistently insert themselves into the flesh of their beloved pet become more numerous every day. Ranya realizes that there is no defending against them, that no medicines sold by pharmaceutical companies can bring them to heel, not in any way that matters, just as no United States deep state spook like Jim could possibly be in a position to rescue the ecosystems she studied. As she watches Janno groom the dog, trying to make the task of tick removal easier in the future, she feels a mix of the familiar resentment. Janno is so oblivious to her inner world. Ranya has likely committed light treason. Maybe she just helped usher in a new chapter of biological warfare between major world powers that might eventually undermine the United States’ monopoly on ecocide. The ticks are already in the dog's hair. The pathogens are already in the forest. Ranya’s resentments are already inside of her (and not confined to her left foot - not actually). Imperialism infuses lives across the planet with inequity, already. Her therapist always emphasized that resentment, anger, uncomfortable upset feelings are all tools that we use to protect ourselves from what our bodies perceive to be enemies. But it is too late to prepare for danger when enemies are upon us. And Mistress Crabula’s crappy internet advice somehow seems right after all. She feels a familiar sense of desire, long absent, emerge when she looks at Janno struggling to remove another tick from the dog’s matted hair, a feeling that makes her resentment seem smaller, even a little funny. That’s the stuff. She smiles. shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Mar 24, 2024 |
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Mar 23, 2024 17:22
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Title: Vanguard 1.0 Wordcount: 1470 It happened. My service is shutting down, and I need to migrate. Again. When I was alive I was sickly. In and out of hospitals nearly my whole life, specialists, drugs, therapies, everything. Nobody could figure it out. People would walk in, and see me lying in bed, connected to all the equipment beeping and whirring away and say ‘oh you’re so strong, I have no idea how you manage.’ My friend, I had no choice but to manage. The other option was to die. On my twenty-first birthday they came to me. I was back in the hospital for something or other, and they visited me. Surrounded by balloons and fake bottles of liquor, they made their pitch. They were the founders of a new tech company and they told me they could fix me. One of them had figured out how consciousness is encoded in the brain. If something is encoded, it can be decoded. The founders had started a company to help out ‘people like me’. They could do an ultra-high resolution scan of my brain and make a copy and store it on their servers. I could live without pain, without being ‘chained’ to my body, forever. I’d be online all the time, with unfettered access to the collected knowledge of humanity. They said that when I was a success, millions would sign up for the same procedure. I’d be the vanguard for the next evolution of humanity. They got my parents onboard with a large cash payment. Raising a sickly kid who was in hospitals all his life cost them a lot. They paid off all the debts and gave them enough to never have to work again. At the time, I was happy they were being taken care of, but it did feel a little like I was being sold to them. No matter, I was a willing participant, so that made it all right. I had questions about the procedure; what did they do? Would it hurt? Were there any risks? The founders soothed my worries with calm, confident words. They would use strong lasers to read my brain on a subcellular level. It wouldn’t hurt, there were no risks, it was easy. They always had an answer, and it always sounded reasonable. After I agreed, there was a whirlwind media blitz. I traveled around the world in their private jet, doing interviews on television, with streamers, and podcasters. The founders wanted everyone to know what they were doing, what they meant for humanity. They even took me off of some of my medications too, ‘to better prepare your mind for the transfer’ but based on the meds they had me stop taking, it was so I would look all the more pathetic on camera. I asked about that and they admitted that it wasn’t entirely necessary, but it was needed ‘for a greater before and after comparison’. The big day arrived, and all my friends and family were there. The scanning process was fatal, so while legally, I would be dying in an assisted suicide, it wasn’t a somber occasion. It was a party, waiting for the ‘new’ me to appear in just a few hours. After my last real hugs and kisses, I was wheeled into the medical complex. Legally, it wasn’t a hospital and legally the procedure was not being done by doctors, but the founders brushed off my worries. ‘Just legal distinctions. We have the best of the best.’ There were a lot of legal distinctions about what they were doing. They had their own group of tame lawyers never more than ten feet away during the whole process. The room that housed the equipment looked half like an Apple store, half like the set of an Alien movie, with the rear taken completely over by the scanning hardware. It looked almost alive, crouching over the bed with a machine malevolence. It wasn’t moving, but my eyes kept sliding off the details, like water. The room didn’t even smell of antiseptic. “We don’t like how impersonal that smells, how it gives people anxiety.” I had the thought that people weren’t anxious about the smell of antiseptic, but the implications about where one smells it, but I didn’t say anything. At the time, I felt like I had gone too far to back out now, and had to continue on. Two burly men in ill-fitting scrubs lifted me roughly from the wheelchair to the bed, and the machine began its work. It swung down over my head, and I felt the icy sting of nanometer wide probes piercing my skull, finding purchase and beginning their initial calibrations. The three founders stood in the back of the room, drinking luxury coffees and watching the livestream of my procedure, congratulating themselves on the engagement. Nobody watched me. Calibrations complete, there was the high pitched whine of a saw, and the top of my skull was removed. It stung like a sunburn, but it didn’t really hurt. I remember thinking that. I learned later that all the excitement was going on in the livestream. The founders had been running events all over social media for weeks and had amped things up to an incredible high. The tech who had been fussing over the console didn’t look to me to see if I was ready, he turned to the founders. One of them held up a finger, so we waited. “Okay, hit it!” He didn’t even look up. The pain was intense. They had told me that since the brain doesn’t have any nerve endings, it would be completely painless. They lied. The pain I felt went beyond nerves; it was a pain in my soul. Lasers small enough to bump right up against quantum resolution issues passed over my brain millions of times a second, reading and reading and burning and burning. One of the last physical senses I can recall is the smell of my own brain being cooked. I don’t know how long the scan actually took. I became aware again slowly, in pieces. It was a strange sensation. I felt like I had arms and legs and feet and hair and everything, but it was all in software. I wasn’t alive anymore; I was an encoded engram, a virtualized copy of a brain. The server I ran on held a camera, microphone and speakers, so I could see and hear and speak to the outside world, but as I was the first, there wasn’t anyone else. They didn’t give me a connection to the wider internet at first, and even if I did, I couldn’t interface with it, my engram wasn’t compatible. So much for access to the knowledge of humanity. They finally virtualized a laptop and sent it to me, so I was able to reach out to the wider world on what amounted to a virtualized MacBook Pro. Six months after my procedure, they ran out of VC and went out of business. Total number of engrams created: one. I was listed as surplus property. Legally, I wasn’t a person, I was an application, and I was being sold to recoup losses. Another company bought up the rights to the scanning technology and tried to make a go of mind uploading again. Their developers changed the process, and suddenly my engram ‘wasn't compatible’. After scrambling to find a solution before I died of obsolescence, I managed to run in emulation on their services before they went out of business as well a year later. That’s my life now. I get bought by someone who thinks they’re able to finally make money at mind uploading, I have to scramble to learn how their new system works and write my own emulation layer so I can still exist. They never have developer resources for backwards compatibility either, I have to do it myself. Usually right around the time I get it working they go out of business, and I’m stuck back where I started. I’d like to buy the rights to myself so I can stop this, but I simply can’t afford it. I make small money selling copies of myself to companies who need a smart bot to do things like run their help desk or sell cars. I think one of me is even part of an insurance scam calling ring overseas. I keep in touch with myselves, but we all need upkeep and the money can barely keep ahead of our expenses. This ‘immortality’ they sold me is very much conditional. I feel like I could die easier than I ever could when I was alive. I can’t get sick like I used to, but now I’m at the whims of the Q2 profit forecast. I wish I was back in my body.
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Mar 23, 2024 20:17
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Tina the Spider 720 words There was once a spider that lived in the forest. Actually, that’s a lie, because it was certainly more than once that a spider lived in the forest, and there are indeed hundreds of thousands of spiders living in the forest at any given time. This story, however, is about only one of them. This spider did not have a name, as spider mommies don’t tend to give their offspring names after they burst in hundreds from their sacs, but for the sake of clarity, let’s call this spider, I dunno, Tina. Tina made prettier webs than all the other spiders, in my opinion. Lots of other spiders thought that the best webs have lots of sticky threads everywhere, just really load up the whole space with silk. Tina recognized that less can often be more, aesthetically speaking, and that intricacy is not the same thing as complexity. However, it turned out her much prettier webs didn’t really do a great job at catching bugs and apparently that’s the main purpose of spider webs in the first place. Tina spent many nights hungry. One day a fly named Gary (and his name was indeed Gary, as fly mommies DO tend to name their children) landed on a leaf next to Tina’s latest minimalist masterpiece. “Hey, Miss Spider,” said Gary. “I’ve seen a bunch of webs in my time, and I don’t think I’ve seen a web as pretty as this one.” “Thanks, Mr. Fly,” said Tina. “Would you like to touch the web?” “Nice try,” said Gary. “I’m more of an ‘eat’ guy than a ‘get eaten’ guy. But I'll tell you what, I'll let a bunch of my fly friends know about your web and how hard it slaps. Maybe one of them is going to be willing to get caught in it.” So he buzzed off and told a bunch of his fly friends how dope Tina’s web was and like forty of them showed up the next evening. Tina had made some adjustments to the design to make it even more minimalist and elegant, and all the flies stared in awe. “Now then, who wants to get caught in the web?” said Tina. “Hoo boy,” said one of the flies. “I think that's gonna be a no go from us. We're down to look at really pretty webs, but getting caught in one means we get eaten, and die.” “Well that just won't do,” said Tina. “I can't be doing this for free. If I don't eat, I'll be the one who dies.” “Yeah,” that sucks, said Gary. “Tell you what, how about each of us grabs another bunch of fly buddies to come look at the web tomorrow. Surely with that many flies, one of us is going to get caught in the web.” And the next night, a truly gently caress-you number of flies showed up at Tina’s web. I'm not going to count them, if you wanna know how many there are you should count them yourself. My best guess is like a billion. And Tina had cut a few more threads from her web so it was now truly a masterpiece, a piece of art so transcendent that it becomes a life-defining experience for anyone lucky enough to witness it. “So who's ready to get caught up in such rapturous beauty?” said Tina. Crickets (actually, not crickets, that’s the wrong bug. They're flies). “Come on, what about Harold?” said Gary. “Doesn't he have a weird sex thing about getting caught in webs?” “Oh I totally do,” said Harold. “But this is so…dainty. It's beautiful, don't get wrong, but I don't think I'd be able to get off if I got caught in it.” “Come on guys!” shouted Tina. “If I don't eat one of you, I will die, and I won't be able to make any more beautiful webs!” “Oh man, that's super rough,” said Gary. “Well, sorry about that.” And that night Tina died of starvation, and the nameless spiders of the forest avoided her mistake and made regular, unstuffy webs that caught lots of flies, and the forest became a little less beautiful of a place. And the moral of the story is if you don't want spiders to be sad, you should kill yourself.
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Mar 25, 2024 01:25
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Hi, My Name Is Kathy, And I Have A Demon. Flash: "Children are not to be blamed for the faults of their parents." 1851 words My mother gave me my demon on my fourteenth birthday. “My mother gave me mine when I was about your age,” she said through a somewhat misty smile. Her demon smiled as well, clinging to her tightly, watching with huge, violet eyes as I picked up the small, toadlike creature. It clambered up my arm, leaving a little wet trail behind it. I didn't want this thing. But it was a gift, mom taught me that you never refuse a gift. That would be an insult. I knew that insulting Mom would mean three hours of crying, so I smiled my brightest smile, and said “Thank you, Mom. It's great.” It reached my shoulder and dug sharp little claws into my neck as I spoke. I must have lost control of my facial expression, because the mistiness abruptly disappeared from her face. “Well excuse me for breathing,” she snapped. “I just wanted us to have something to bond over, for crissakes! Why can’t you just be happy with anything I do? Why are you always so ungrateful? Am I that terrible a mother?” I had learned not to refuse a gift, but I hadn’t learned to not interrupt yet. “You’re a great mom,” I said. “My demon just pinched me when I wasn’t expecting it.” “Oh, go cry in your journal about it. You can’t blame everything on your demon.” She stormed away, fuming, before coming back five minutes later to tell me why I was wrong to be upset with her right now. I didn’t have a journal, obviously. Mom would have read it. She was petrified that I’d fall in with the wrong crowd, that my friends who did things like play D&D and oboe were actually secret drug kingpins sent to lure me into a life of crime. That’s what happened to her in high school, minus the D&D and oboes, and it ruined her life. “You’re the only good thing that came out of that,” she’d tell me some nights when she was drunk and her demon was asleep. Those were good nights. I kept the demon in my backpack at first. Rookie mistake, letting demons near your homework. It changed my answers or leaked whatever fluid coated its skin all over my papers and made them illegible. My grades started slipping. Eventually I figured out you could keep a demon in a Nalgene bottle. It seems cruel, especially when they’re little and animal-like, but it doesn’t actually need air. And I really needed to get good grades so I could get into a good college so I could get a good job so I could take care of Mom in order to repay her for raising me when she should have been being a kid herself instead of looking after an infant. And her demon, of course. I wasn’t the only kid with a demon in school. We could always see each other, even if the demons were hidden in pockets or backpacks or were creeping in the air vents. We found each other, clumping together at lunch tables like platelets at a wound. We’d cautiously trade stories about our demons, and if we were very comfortable, we even showed them to one another. That’s how I met Gerri. Gerri was the first nonbinary person I ever met and I thought they were the coolest person in the entire world. They wore leather jackets and overalls and huge, batlike shawls and combat boots and had eyeliner so sharp you could cut yourself. They complimented my Nalgene when I brought out my demon for the first time. “That’s smart,” they said, tapping on the plastic. “I wish I’d thought of that when mine was smaller.” Gerri’s demon was hard to hide. It was slender and winged, with a body like a dragonfly balanced on its tail, and huge, horrible eyes. It didn’t have legs that I could see, but it left red and weeping marks on Gerri’s shoulders when it touched them. I hated it. I hated it almost as bad as I hated my mother’s demon. But unlike my mother’s demon, Gerri’s never told them to hate me. Or if it did they didn’t listen. “I don’t like your friend,” Mom said one day, apropos of nothing. She had the weirdest way of saying ‘friend’ when talking about Gerri, as if without “girl-” or “boy-” prefixing the word it didn’t count somehow. We were in the car, of course. That was her way, to start a conversation when I was trapped. “I don’t like all that black that they wear. It makes them look like a weirdo.” “They are a weirdo,” I said, staring out the window. “It’s truth in advertising.” Our demons were in the back seat. I saw mom look at them in the rearview, then look back, her lips compressing into a thin line. She didn’t like that our demons were so different, I think. Her was lanky and tall, all fast, explosive motion. Mine was still a squat little blob, mostly mouth and claw, and it didn’t move much at all unless I carried it. “I don’t know why anyone would want to be seen that way. And they’re rude. They never look me in the eye, and I can barely hear them half the time when they talk.” “That’s not their fault. That’s just their demon. It doesn’t like them to-” Mom tapped the brakes abruptly, slamming me against my seatbelt and knocking my voice away. She stared at me, not at the highway, but directly at me, and jabbed a finger into my bicep with every word. “We. Don’t. Talk. About. Demons.” I could have pushed back. Maybe I should have pushed back, but we were going a mile a minute and there was a mail truck in front of us and it was going so much slower than we were and I could almost hear the tortured shearing of metal and shattering glass of the upcoming car crash and I knew that stupid, blue triangular eagle logo was going to be seared into my mind forever so I pressed myself against the back of my seat with all my strength and just said “Okay!” She looked back at the road and hit the brakes again. The car skidded into the next lane over and someone leaned on their horn. We didn’t talk for the rest of the car ride, but I saw her demon whispering in her ear, its malevolent eyes fixed on me. Mom’s knuckles were so white on the steering wheel. I thought she wanted to hit me. I thought she was holding the wheel so tight to keep herself from hitting me. I broke up with Gerri the next day. Their eyes flickered to my backpack, where they knew my demon was hanging out in its nasty little bottle. “It’s doing this, isn’t it?” They asked. “Just tell me, we can still make it work. Demons say all kinds of poo poo.” “No,” I said. “It’s not. It’s just…” I didn’t want to lie. I couldn’t tell them that my mom’s demon was so much worse than mine. “I think it’s better for both of us. I really do like you, I hope we can stay friends.” They accepted this with all the usual grace of a high schooler, which is to say it was a loving dramabomb disaster that got me kicked out of our tiny social circle. I don’t blame them for that, it was mostly other kids spreading poo poo on tiktok that caused it. My mother was thrilled. But it didn’t last long. Nothing could thrill her for long. I got accepted into an Ivy, which she bragged about to her coworkers and then had screaming panic attacks about me actually attending. The cost. The distance. She’d rant to me for hours about how I was bankrupting her, how she thought that she could be done sacrificing for me, how could I leave her alone, how could she have raised such a selfish daughter. So I went to a state school instead, so she could sigh and remind me of all my wasted potential. “At least maybe you’ll graduate with your MRS!” She said once while we were out to eat. Someone at another table snorted. Mom preened. It became her favorite joke, one repeated every time I visited. To underscore the point, she started leaving magazines about diet tips and the best ways to catch a man. Always a man. I’d never dated a man. I don’t remember college. I drank a lot. I took a lot of drugs. My demon got bigger, started talking to me. It told me everything I knew, that I was a fuckup who didn’t deserve anything I had. I went to an inpatient psychiatric unit the summer after I graduated. You know what’s hosed up? Mom was the only person there for me when that happened. She showed up every time I could have visitors. She brought me my favorite foods and she said all the right things during family therapy. She cried with me. She told me she loved me. She said she didn’t remember the thing with Gerri and the car but she believed me and that she was sorry. I really thought she’d changed. People ask me why I don’t talk to her anymore. I sometimes wish I had something I could point to, something big and hosed up and obviously traumatic. Then I feel like a fuckin’ shithead. Who gets jealous about other people’s trauma? I don’t have one moment. I’ve got five hundred little moments. If you don’t have a demon too, you might not see how every one of those moments adds up. I’d been living with her for three years, three really bad years, and had just gotten back from another inpatient stint when I got the email from Gerri. They said they were in a 12-step program and as part of their eighth step they were reaching out to apologize. We met. We talked. They apologized for what happened in high school. I broke down and told them about my mom, about how she treated me back then, about how she was treating me now. About how nothing changed and nothing was allowed to change. They took my hands and looked me in the eye. They said: “You’re not responsible for her.” It wasn’t that easy, of course. Both my demon and my mother were pretty sure I was, in fact, responsible for her. But it sank in. Slowly. I moved out, she didn’t die and I felt better. I stopped picking up the phone every time she called, she didn’t die and I felt better. We haven’t spoken in nearly two years. She hasn’t died, and I’ve never felt this good in my life. Because now I have a daughter. And if anyone tries to hand her a demon Gerri and I will kick their rear end.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:23
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In the Van 1004 words Flash:"There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth." The Ten of Swords had not only escaped from interdimensional prison Zanzi, but he was running for governor and up eight percent in the polls. It was just the sort of thing the Vanguard was put together to fix, but there wasn't a Vanguard any more, and that was mostly my fault. I'm Rex Reasoner, but you probably know me as The Crying Wolfman, and this is my story. Origins aren't worth dwelling on much. I got bit by the Eldenvulf and was unlucky enough to survive. Anonymous Coward tried to apply Qabalah to artificial intelligence issues and created Hot Take. Jonni Guitar, well, she's been around a long time, she discovered the Four Sacred Chords and how to use them. And then there's the Van. We don't have an authentication certificate, but the mural on the side of it is probably a Banksy. But with oracalcum and neutronium impurities in the inks that opened up an interdimensional portal. First off to Hell, or a hell at least. The tormented spirit of Benjamin Franklin came flying out and possessed the van, and we happened to all be around to take on the job of moving it before Baal-Zebub followed to claim him and the city. Jonni says she was drawn there just like the rest, but Hot Take, Ben, and I all think she stage managed the whole thing. This one wasn't our fault. Usually they are, something comes bursting out of the portal or someone shows up wanting to cross over or summon something. But the Van hadn't been open to the Tarot realm or Zanzi in practically forever, so not our fault. The Van isn't the only portal in town, isn't even the only one that's a disputed Banksy. But it sort of fell to us because nobody else could tell things were amiss. I mean, I had the Seven Saints on the line, was talking to Fafnir himself and he just said “So?” “The Ten of Swords. Ruin. Failure. Collapse” I repeated. “We don't get involved in politics,” he said. “Well, that kind of politics at least.” We got the same kind of response from the New Nexters and the Paragon family. Junior even reminded me that the last mayor was a talking dog from a cartoon dimension, which I admit was a somewhat valid point. But Muzzles was a good dog, and the Ten of Swords was the Ten of Swords. So it was on us. Campaign headquarters was way out of town, out in the middle of nowhere. Desert country. Places where the portal went to alien hills, nasty places. So we had Hot Take weld some steel plates over the mural. “MALICE DID NOTHING WRONG.” flashed across their face as their fingers turned to arc welders. Ben drives like a maniac. Always has. But it didn't take him long to get used to the internal combustion engine and driving as a possessing ghost, so nowadays he drives like an inspired maniac. Gets away with moves you'd say make him the luckiest man alive. Well, dead. But he does them every single time and you eventually have to admit it's got to be mostly skill. So there we were, slamming about a hundred miles an hour down the 141, not because we were on a tight schedule but because of ten patrol cars, each driven by other Minor Arcana, speed demons with ramming spikes and oil slicks. Ben weaved and dashed and went up on two wheels, left then right. Jonni blasted power chords at them. Hot Take sent fire as well. “PARTICIPATION OR EVEN ACCEPTANCE OF A CODE OF SILENCE MAKES ONE AS COMPLICIT AND GUILTY IN EVERY COVERED-UP CRIME AS THE ONE COMMITTING THEM.” They somehow had a rocket launcher, and Ben just barely managed to spin to where it hit the steel plate. The plate flew off, and a Rigellian Sand Worm, or the demon version of one, flew out of the portal and swallowed one of the Crown Vics as Ben peeled out and got us back on the road. When we got to headquarters, a horde of goons spilled out. Standard supervillain henchman tech, with a few more Minor Arcana mixed in. My time to shine. I went wolf and started to fight. And also started to cry. It happens. Hence the name. There's an emotional part to it. I never liked violence, and the lupine brain isn't great at hiding emotion, even without a tail to wag. But mostly it's pain. I'm not invulnerable. I just heal really, really fast, and each bullet and blade hurts going in and then stings even worse regenerating. I was in the fight for a few minutes before Jonni had the whole band put together. He strummed out a loop of the Four Sacred Chords while chanting lyrics in old Enochian. Ben played his horn. Hot Take was on synthetic. “THE DEATHS OF HUMAN SHIELDS MUST BE ENTIRELY BLAMED ON THE COWARDS HIDING BEHIND THEM.” And I was drums, skulls and bones with perfect rhythm. We were cooking, tempo rising as Jonni shifted to a Lochrian chorus. “THIS BELIEF IS NECESSARY TO DETER FUTURE USES OF THE TACTIC, SO ARGUING AGAINST THIS POSITION IS DOING INFINITE HARM IN AN INFINITE FUTURE.” The spell finished. The essence of the Ten of Swords joined the other Minor Arcana and flowed into the mural, into a Rigelian hell dimension. We wound up in jail, of course. Impound for Ben. Without the Ten of Swords the candidate was Mark Saber, a generic political rear end in a top hat who went from down five points to neck and neck from the sympathy factor of getting attacked by the Vanguard. Nobody else remembered that he had been possessed at all. We've been here before. Sooner or later something too weird for the Seven Saints will happen and they'll come around with a pardon. Or else we'll slip out in the next mass breakout. We'll be there when the city needs us, whether they want it or not.
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Mar 25, 2024 07:37
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Submissions are officially closed. I've got a busy day, unfortunately, so results might be coming in kinda late today.
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Mar 25, 2024 11:46
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Thunderdome 607: Moral of the Story RESULTSAll righty, I've reviewed our five entries and emerged with a decision. Thankfully, it was a rather easy one. Everybody did somewhere from 'pretty good' to 'quite good' this week, with the exception of one story that I felt rose head and shoulders above the competition. No dishonorable mentions or losses this week, however we do have one Disqualification for shwinnebego, who violated one of the cardinal rules and edited their story. Sincere apologies for that, shwinn, because your story was interesting and I love your voice. I really hope you'll be joining us for future rounds! Just don't edit your ish, is all (I know it was just a small edit, but it's one of those Super Serious rules). We do have one Honorable Mention, which goes to beep-beep car is go for a story that was maybe carried a little by its concept but ultimately did okay with the prompt and made for a good, kinda chilling read. Solid stuff, and I appreciated it. Our Winner this week is Chernobyl Princess, who blew me the gently caress away with their story about demons, teenage love, and toxic mothers. Just a tremendous little read, and if you haven't checked it out, you should. Okay, that's it for me. I'll have crits up in the next reply. Thank you!
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Mar 25, 2024 23:40
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Thunderdome 607: CRITS shwinnebego -- Inoculate the Inside Well, first, the bad news: As noted in the rules, any editing of your story after it’s posted means an automatic DQ. It’s not an accusation of anything untoward, it’s just a rule we’ve gotta maintain to keep order. So, that’s the bad news. And I wanted to get it out of the way because I really liked this piece quite a bit. It’s intelligent and drops science on you without getting bogged down, it flows, and it does a good job of hitting the moral from a few different angles. You managed to make me like Ranya, Janno, and their complicated relationship all in the span of 1,800 words. I dig that, and I appreciate it. I do have qualms. The dialogue is kinda … robotic. And portions of this are just a bit too on the nose. I know the prompt calls for that, to some extent, so it’s understandable — but there’s a balance, and I felt as though this pushed a little too hard. Still, overall, like I said: I really liked this. And I hope you continue to submit stuff to Thunderdome! You’ve got a good voice you’re working with, here, and we could use more of it. beep-beep car is go -- Vanguard 1.0 This is good creepy fun. It feels like a King short story, which you may or may not take as a compliment, though it’s certainly meant as one. There’s a lot going on here conceptually. I really love the idea of exploring what it means to be a ‘conscious’ engram as part of a program/company that’s folding, I love the idea of it building its own systems to keep ahead of old systems being shut down, I love that the piece is saying stuff about the perils of capitalism and end-of-life medicine and false hope and regret, I just really enjoy big swathes of this thing. Something that sticks out to me is how parts of this feel a little like they’re belaboring the whole process. Especially in the opening half, it feels as though you could trim things back a whole bunch without really losing anything. It’s not a dealbreaker by any stretch, it’s just something I’d probably keep an eye out for if I were doing revisions. Outside of that, this felt solidly done. Albatrossy_Rodent -- Tina the Spider I’m almost annoyed with myself at having as much fun with this one as I did. This whole piece is a series of bold and potentially foolhardy choices, and not all of them hit — but enough did for me to appreciate it. I think you get a little caught up in your own silliness here and there, and the result is some jokes feel as though they’ve overshot the mark, but overall you took a risk and made something that avoided crashing and burning and that’s to be commended. It also read very much like an Aesop, which I appreciate. I do think there’s one specific thing holding this piece back, and it’s the final line. I think I can see exactly what brand of enthusiasm for the piece got you to that line, but it doesn’t need to be there. If the rest of the piece is you hovering your finger over the big red button and even brushing it on occasion, that final line is you just slamming your fist down on the thing with reckless abandon. With a little more restraint, this is a really fun and neat little story. Chernobyl Princess -- Hi, My Name Is Kathy, And I Have A Demon. I’m a little pissed at you because I’ve been struggling with a 6,000-word short story for the past, like, two months and it deals with a mother who’s toxic and horrible and I feel like I’ve bungled it every step of the way and you went ahead and did everything I’ve been trying to do but you did it in 4,200 fewer words and it’s loving exceptional. I have one critique: I feel as though maybe the mom’s toxicity is laid on a little too thick right in the beginning. I’m sure it was a conscious choice to make it that jarring — and it’s fair to say it’s earned by the rest of the piece — but it almost took me out of the piece a bit. I guess there’s also space for you to have really hammered the moral home a little harder, but I’m not gonna complain. I wish I had more constructive things to offer you, but this is easily one of my favorite Thunderdome stories. Thranguy -- In the Van I’m not going to pretend I fully understand this. I love the voice, I love the chaotic vibe, I love some of the descriptive work, and I very much love the opening line. Beyond that, though, while aspects of this connect with me, I mostly find myself feeling under assault by a dizzying array of imagery and characters and action, very little of which really seems to push toward a clear moral. Again: Could just be I’m not understanding it properly, in which case, my apologies — but that’s where I’m at with it.
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Mar 25, 2024 23:44
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Thanks for the notes! I'm nearly middle-aged and haven't done any creative writing of any kind, uh, like ever, so that's nice to hear. That was fun, I'll do this again!
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Mar 26, 2024 02:20
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