ENW Short Story Smackdown Summer 07 (Winner Announced)

[FickleGM]

Hehe... I've found that I usually enjoy myself while I'm writing, and I always look back on it as having been fun. For whatever reason, though, I seem to have trouble getting started a lot. And, of course, I often stay up too late with these sorts of things and then being tired at work the next day (and the anticipation of that) is no fun at all.

[sblock]Yeah, I tried this out in the spring to see how well I'd do and I didn't enjoy myself very much, but I decided that I should give it at least one more try in order to see if I could find the same joy that others seem to find in writing. Unfortunately, I haven't found that joy...I guess that writing just isn't my cup of tea.

I think that this will be my last competition, but I'll give it my all until I'm ousted (being as "raw" as I am, my all isn't all the great). Last night my wife asked me why I didn't just quit. I told her that my pride and competitive spirit will not allow me to roll over, so I am in no way throwing in the towel on this competition (just in case anyone thinks my story is bad, I want it known that it was not intentionally bad).

I'll spoiler block this, so as not to influence the judges.[/sblock]

 

[FreeXenon]

Ascension

ENW Short Story Smackdown Summer '07
Round 1, Match 3 -- FickleGM vs FreeXenon

This is going to be painful. Good Luck FickleGM!

Ascension
[sblock]'And the answer was right in front of me the whole time.' Anton thinks to himself as he looks at the mural in the lobby of his uncle's office building. 'How could I have been so blind. He is so arrogant.' as he continues his internal monologue. 'I am, now, not surprised that he has not removed this archaic art as most everyone else has - vying instead for holographic banners and art.'

The mural depicted the villagers of our great, great, great, great grandparent's hometown to meet the priest who came as 'angels' descended from the sky to supposedly consecrate the horrible burning of his great, great, great, great grandparents alive for crimes against the church which included witchcraft and heresy. That's what the history books say. Just below the mural were supposedly the last condemning words of the priest "By the flame of the righteous, I consecrate thee."

Our family history paints a slightly different image. The local priest desired Anton's great, great, great, great grandmother, Dorus', recipe for her spiced kelp balls and she would not acquiesce a treasured family secret. Her rebuffing naturally earned the priest's ire and then he condemned the pair to death for it. An annoying part of their family history, but that year marked the beginning of their family's success and rise to riches. Shortly after Anton's great, great, great, great grandparents' immolation the spiced kelp balls started to sell like wild-fire and the money started to rolling in. The family has been rolling-in-the-spiced-green ever since.

This building has been in Anton's family for a little over 2000 years and has had quite the history of violence, war, and disaster but yet it still remains standing in one form or another. Part of the building has been burned down to the ground in a freak candle fire. It has been bombarded by cannon fire during a civil war. It has been the home of human and halfling sacrificing religious sect that killed their members in a group pixie juice suicide. The family has kept this as their seat of power in spite of the many problems that it has had. Someone in the family has always owned it either personally or by a business that they controlled.

Anton is abruptly brought out of his thoughts as his shoulder is not so gently shoved forward. Behind him looms the chimpanzee brothers who look like two very tall, strong, dark haired, West Virginia, back-hill, inbred hillbillies with large ears, slightly protruding forehead, large mouth, and wild eyes that scream 'I am my own Grandpa.'. If you know what I mean? The not so bright and not so occasionally drooling half-ogre brothers that are errand boys for my uncle have bent sent to bring to Anton at his whim. His uncle is comforted in knowing that he receives a tax break for their full time employment.

The brothers shoved Anton from his thoughts about the mural and into the magic suppressing elevator a few feet away . Once they were inside the simian brothers looked at him and then at each other, furled their brows, and then grunted in unison. Brother number 1's big hands mashed the controls for the elevator and they started to ascend to the top floor. Brother number 2 snapped out his stun baton and played with it menacingly behind Anton. He could hear the its quiet hum as well as the smell the ozone in its wake. He felt very naked without the charge pistol that they confiscated from him during his impressment.

Anton tapped his left arm a few times trying readjust the servos back into place. His cybernetic arm has been recently damage in a 'misunderstanding' and he need to have it adjusted. The arm suffers from occasional spasms or ticks that have caused him to break a few peoples noses. It is the strangest thing. The random ion pulses discharging has not helped his case either.

Anton's uncle is the current patriarch of the Seven Swords family and all of its estates. It is hard not to admire and loathe his rich and successful uncle. He has never met the man and as far as he has heard no one can remember seeing or meeting him either. As it is often said the rich are often eccentric, especially with our family. It is hard to argue when their leadership is so profitable.

The Elven Clan of the Seven Swords was very keen to keep their bloodline pure and looked unkindly upon the genetic stain that Anton was. The family was above having Anton killed or neglected outright as he is literally the red headed half-elven step child of this family. It is difficult to find a place in the various businesses that his family owns or is involved in so he am usually moved from place to place and business to business as problems occur due to his bastard origin.

As the elevator came to a stop and doors opened Anton looked quickly back trying to hide a smirk as he remembered that he broke brother number one's arm as he left an elevator once. Brother number one squinted his eyes, grunted, and shoved the half-elf from the elevator and into the foyer.

The foyer room's walls and ceiling was composed of a dark and shiny blue marble. It was an immaculately clean room that contained a small stand with the Xcentar 2000 Bionetic Verifier and the door. The X2BV appears more like a 4-person game controller because the manufacturer's original chassis was destroyed in a freak fire storm at their factory and they conveniently found a rather strange and convenient replacement in the game controller that the owner's son used for his virtual science simulations.

The X2BV is made for high capacity bionetic security points identifying 4 people at a time via a hemoscan, thermoscan, as well as a electro-resonant brain scan. The three of them approached the device and grabbed a hold of the handle and spoke out their names. Following the slight prick into their palms and the line of light that passed over their bodies quickly the light on the top of Anton's handle lit up green and the other two lit up red.

The chimpanzee brothers scowled and walked their seemingly simian gait back to the elevator, mashed the buttons, and then disappeared as the doors closed and the elevator descended. As they left Anton began to feel really anxious and alone. He had never met the head of the family and he really had no weapons with himself. 'You never can be too careful.' He had no idea what to expect, but assumed that it had something to do with his snooping around their family's history and private archives, as well as asking meaningless questions about a long lost past. 'Perhaps, my moment of reckoning had come.' he thought to himself as he tried to suppress a smile.

Once the the elevator had left this floor the light above the door that led to where the patriarch lay turned green. He could hear the heavy 'chunk[/]' of presumably metal locks opening. The double doors quietly slid open little bit so that a dim light could be seen emanating from with in. Quiet sounds of microfans and, most likely, the glow of computer monitors seeped from the room beyond. Anton stood their and tried to slow his breathing and to keep his pulse from racing as this could be the moment when all is righted.

Anton walked slowly forward while nervously running his left hand through his hair. He used his right hand to open the doors and look into the room to try to assess the situation. Whether he should run or whether he should get ready for the showdown.

The half-elf walked slowly into the darkened room and he looked at the sole occupant in the room a woman not too much older than him - 24. She had long brown hair with delicate pale skin. Her eyes were wide, confident, and full of concern and fear as she sat in a bed with the covers pulled up to her bent knees. Anton was shocked. 'This is no patriarch. But everything made sense in light of it.'

The window was open behind her and the curtains were laying still with no breeze coming in. There was not a lot of light here as it was night time and the only light that was available was from the picture of the family crest on the wall screen behind him. His keen partially-elven eyes allowed him to see well enough and he stared at her. She stared at him as did her black cat who sat quietly at the foot of the bed and indifferently looked at him and then looked away at something obviously more interesting. The darkly wooded bed was contrasted by the statue of three scowling bulldogs' heads with wide eyes that was made out of a light marble at the foot of the bed.

It was an all together surreal moment and it is nothing like he would have imagined. He expected to find a man here, his uncle who bore the family secret, but instead, he found the family secret. He imagined an epic battle to the death with thunder, lightening, storms of acid and hell-wrent flames. But there is only this. This moment looking at each other. Rather anticlimactic after a few years of searching for the truth, and for the right of ascension.

Anton cleared his throat and began to speak in an ancient tongue that has long been forgotten. "In the name of the fathers of Auld I command you, Dorus Seven Swords, heir to the patriarchy and secrets of the Seven Swords of the Fathers, and to the fabled recipe of the Spicey Kelp Balls to abdicate you throne at the head of Family."

At that moment a great wind blew the curtains opened and it started to rain. Thunder and lightening ripped across the sky as the flash wrent the magics in the room. The cat bore the antlers of a hell-bound servant and the three dog-headed statue at the foot of the betrayed something more insidious - a Beyhound with swirling red enthralling eyes that beckon you to doze and relax. Its greenish skinned tentacles and toothy maw lashed out from under the bed and poised to strike.

'This was more like it." he thought as he readied the appropriate spell and incantation to take his place as the head of the family. The Beyhound's eyes called his attention and assaulted his will. The hellbound cat glowered at me with a vicious and uncaring indifference while its horns pulsed and throbbed with electricity that lanced out toward Anton seeking his flesh.

The electricity arched to him and found itself drained by latent protective magical field that emanated from his cybernetic arm. Anton smiled and pulled out a black sapphire the size of a human fist and presented it as he continued "In the name of the Elders and the heirs of the Seven Swords I command you to relinquish." The Beyhounds tentacles lashed out to him but he was not there, at least not physically there to extradimensional creatures as they were.

The wind howled and blew hard and lightening struck not too far away outside. The woman smiled and said "Thank you, my love. I am ready." The black sapphire flashed and the room was empty of all creatures save himself. He could still smell the aroma of her perfume on the now still air. His heart sank.

The room was quiet and the tousled bed was wet from rain coming in from the open window. He could still see the impression on the bed from where the woman sat. He whispered to himself "By the flame of the righteous, I consecrate thee." He sighed in sadness and a longing that no one else could ever understand, but this is necessary for the family line to continue appropriately. The surface of the Black Sapphire was warm to the touch and seemed to flare at small moments like flame was trying to free itself from within.

The mural at the entrance to the building fade slowly away and all that remained the phrase 'By the flame of the righteous, I consecrate thee.' below was a clean blank wall. [/sblock]

 

[FickleGM]

Hey, FreeXenon, I just noticed that your location shows you as being from Wisconsin. Awesome. Good luck.

Yeah, I know...we are totally sucking at the trash talk. We're like the anti-trash talk and if trash talk were to happen, the world would end. It may not seem fair, but it is. Trust me.

 

[FreeXenon]

Yup! Baraboo Area!
Oh yea! Well you rock, so deal with it!

 

[maxfieldjadenfox]

Oh yea! Well you rock, so deal with it!

*sighs deeply and gives up on any possibility of smack talk for this round*

 

[Trench]

The Real Beginning

by Shawn Feakins


When did it start? Hell, may as well say the Big Bang or God fartin', all amounts to the same thing. You can get all sorts of metaphysical with that question. You wanna talk about the squid heads invading? The day when the world wakes up and finds the Midwest is the nicest place to live? Or do you want to talk about the retaliations, when we made it worse? Hell, hundreds of nukes set off in the oceans hoping we'd hit something and instead we melt the ice caps juuuust enough to raise the water for the squid-heads to spread their wobbly bits into the coastlines. Either way it's a sad tale of bad to worse.... least from the human's perspective.

Nah, you want the skinny on me. You want to know about The Voice. Well, honey, if there's one thing I can talk about, it's me.

Now when I started was in some Moline, Illinois ER of '91. Momma had a bit of a meth habit and could never afford no doctor or ultrasound, so I came out with the leftover bit of a conjoined brother attached to my head. He decided he'd up and stop growing five months in. The way the world turned out, he maybe had the right idea. Now I know lots of people hold that bit o' evidence up as why I am the way I am trying to read meaning into it, but I just think it's just one of those things. Just my momma not ready to face up to herself and that turned inward just enough to make my brother fold into the closest spot and hide- namely my skull. Grandmama's church ponied up the money for the surgeries to make me a real boy and I always wondered where the rest of him went.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30093

Watch your step honey-britches. Now I know my office is a little strange (by the way tell me when you stop throwing up since the ears and nose ain't what they used to be), but not as weird as Cancun. When the Deep Ones started crawling out of the oceans, all those ocean paradises suddenly became the worst place on earth. You look like you're barely old enough to remember when it all started, so let me tell what it was like- cause history footage don't cut it.

You wake up one morning and go for a jog on the beach when suddenly you have a dripping, shambling mess of tentacles and screaming gills bearing down on you like a drunk tractor. Oh it was bad on the coasts of all the continents, sure, but at least they had somewhere to fall back to. We lost Manhattan, but Jersey survived (least before the nuke floods). But islands were just floating snack bars to the squid-heads. Japan went under fast and I don't blame the chinks at all for nuking them. Resort islands had the worst of it. You saw pictures in the news of Hawaiian shirts torn to shreds in the maws of lamprey mouths. Flags of flayed flesh with tramp stamp tattoos waving in the breeze from long pikes. All those shitfaced college students and doctors on drug company junkets didn't have a chance.

Cancun at least had the advantage of being on a peninsula. And when the Deep Wars cooled it was one of the first tactical cities to get. That there Lagoon was the perfect testing ground for any captured squid-heads and we had a perfect view of Cuba- which was squidy central.

So when I got there it was "Welcome to Cancun: Hell on Earth". Fourteen years after the Apocalypse and still going strong like a semi with the devil in it's pistons. We turned a buncha hotels into a command center and spliced power in from all those carnival generators. The rusty skeletons of bungee jump platforms and abandoned roller coasters shot outta the concrete like the earth rejecting something vile. Least that's how it felt, but maybe that's just cause we knew what was under the water and that made us distrust the earth too. Made for paranoia it does.

Now I'm a country boy at heart but I was fortunate enough to be drafted into this holiest of holy wars. See by this point, some of the squid-heads starting talking- or at least not killing. No real rhyme nor reason as to who they started talking to it seemed. See they don't think like we do, you know. They'd tear through a city block smelling of brine and gore just to sit down and wiggle their bits at some kid with a Tonka. You 'member that time they hit out to Chicago? Last big city left in this grand ol' country and everyone thought this was the end as those yellow beach ball eyes rose outta Lake Michigan and all they wanted was to have a sandwich with some old colored lady. All random we thought, but it made sense to the squid heads since they don't rightfully think like us. See, they see patterns right differently then we do. See across time and see how one pat on the back could make some kid be nicer who then invented mint flavored chewing gum which is what the president bent down to get outta his pocket before he ducked a bullet meant for his head. Squid heads see to the beginning of that chain I think and that's who they're interested in. Now, I don't rightfully know what I did to put me up there, but here I was.

Now I ain't gonna go into how I was discovered by the government since that's been covered in alla those zines. By the way, good for you getting newspapers out again. People need that! Point is they shipped me and a buncha others out to Cancun, since that was one of the biggest squid-head nesting ground right across the way and they wanted to maybe open lines of communication.

I tell you, first time I stood on that beach, all cleaned up and megaphone in hand ready to talk to those squid heads well it was a right proud moment. It's intimidating staring into that clear blue and knowing what's underneath but you find a way to face it you do. Felt my whole life starting to turn into something better when the first squid heads came outta the water. Sure, people complain about the smell, all licorice and salt water and most people can't stand that little burbling noise they make- but I ended up being more bothered by the bits o' humans they had hanging off of them. On my first time talking to them, one even had a leftover thong wrapped around an eyestalk, which made me feel skeevy and a little turned on at the same time I gotta say.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30092

Now an operation like that has got to have some people helping it along. (And pay attention here cause this is the beginning now.) You had linguists working on seeing if those burbles were anything special. You had secretaries, file clerks, and scientists. Hell, you had janitors. People never think that government operations need janitors but they do. They need people to restock the candy machines and empty the garbage and do the laundry too.

One of those people was this girl named Rachel. She mostly just transcribed whatever I said after this little nervous guy gave her the tape recorder of our Deep meetings. I liked her. She had this hand cream she used that smelled like vanilla that made me think of ice cream and eating some offa her ass. She'd sit down by her keyboard and I'd watch her hand type away as that little cyber-pet o' hers ran around in his wheel. Lotta pets died after the Deep Wars and animals were mostly raised for food not companionship, so there were plenty of companies that tried to make up for that fact. People sometimes need to think they can take care of something in these times. It was just a little hamster with those white glowing eyes that makes you know it ain't real, but she doted on that thing like nothing else and I fantasized about being that rat and climbing into her cleavage to snuggle down and think of Dairy Queen.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30095

And that was life for near on two years. Now I know everyone wants to believe we were doing some deep thinking and communicating out in Cancun, but truth be told it was pretty one sided. Squid heads marched outta the water every week we called and watched us as we shouted back at them. They sorta burbled occasionally, but there was never any sense of any language or nothing. More like they was just waiting. Military would rotate us out regular so none of us would get too scared, but I never had a problem. After a year of that it became routine. Call out to the squid heads, watch them slosh on up and we shout questions and pleas to them till our ears bled and they marched back in. it was kind of the only thing you could count on anymore.

We played cards. Talked about what we did during the war, except how we survived- cause no one liked to talk about that. Here's the dirty secret, you weren't a good person if you came outta the war intact. You had to cheat, steal, and maybe kill to stay alive and well... people tried to forget that and forget the faces they trampled on to keep breathing. Suicides were still a problem, even when you were working on something like we were. Only thing to really look forward to was maybe hooking up with anyone else on the compound. I had plenty of girls. Couple guys too. You got bored easy. Rachel had plenty of folk too, but in all that time we just passed by each other. I was with this girl who had hooked up with Rachel the previous summer and I made her mad all the questions I asked about their fling.

Around then I was starting to have dreams. I'd see myself when I was born with my brother still attached to me. And he'd start to breathe out of these little air holes in the top of our head. And then he'd start to grow and pulse and wrap around the gloved hand holding me up. Soon he'd be a giant tentacle reaching down and around and enveloping everything around us in a hug that felt like you inside someone's nose. Wet and sticky and warm and salty. I'd wake up feeling... good.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30093

Squid heads were looking at me different to. Not that anyone noticed much. All those scientists and linguists around and all they concentrated on were the burbles trying to figure if it meant something. But I was looking into their eyes and beaks and suckers. I saw them look and breathe at me differently. I felt tides washing over me and coming over and making me warm.

But it all REALLY began when Rachel lost her hamster.

Word travels fast, even in a government compound with five hundred or so people. Rachel was flipping out cause her hamster got out of its wheel. Now I never saw it do much else but run around and fake breathe and mindlessly munch pellets but that was enough to make my vanilla girl love it. Everyone pitched in to try to find it: under bathroom stalls, in wall pipes, outside in sand dunes, under the ragged flaps of beer garden tents. We looked everywhere in the safe zone. It wasn't till that night they found it. It had gotten out and just did what it as programmed to do. Just run. Not its fault it got stuck in the drainpipe and cut itself up till all that was let was a patch of moldy fur and tin joints. When the janitor gave it back to Rachel it rubbed against her cheek and she gasped as its sharp metal nose peppered her face like she had acne.

Now this shouldn't be no big thing. Cyber-pets break down alla time. They ain't perfect. They even put warnings on the box to realize this, so that people accept it. Kinda skuzzy since why they sell 'em is for comfort but hey; I'm not in advertising. Least I wasn't then. We had plenty of smart folk people willing to fix it up and in about a week the little rodent was up and running again in Rachel's wheel, spinning around in time to her keyboard taps.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30095

Thing is, she never took it right. I could tell cause she stopped using that vanilla hand cream. Something about being confronted with the fake nature of that rodent just snapped one of the little lies she had been telling herself.

They found her underneath the roller coaster car looking like a pile of red, wet matchsticks. The generator still powered some of the rides, so she apparently got right on the most rickety, old one and took a dive. I wasn't there but the people that saw it said that rusty cart almost fell apart as she went off the edge- her eyes closed so she couldn't see the ground coming up towards her. Maybe she was thinking about her hamster, both of them spinning around in circles and riding the small, red girders of their prison till they couldn't take it no more and had to run off.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30094

Dreams got worse then. My brother would whisper to me inside our head and his teeth would bite my brain as he grew. The holes would open and close like little mouths exhaling air and burbling like the squid-heads.

I ain't even gonna go into the next year. Read all the papers people wrote and saw a couple specials on the networks. I know how it went down. You know how it went down. I spiraled, I retreated (even though I was never really there) yadda yadda yadda. Who cares?

The real beginning (for real, really) is when I went back down to the beach all alone. Decked out to the nines in the suit the government gave me to look all nice for the cameras when I talked to the squid heads. Course people noticed me going down there, but they didn't get it as I screamed out into the deep. No one said much. The squid-heads were punctual and never showed up except at their appointed time. I was screaming into nothing.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30092

Imagine their surprise when the squid heads came up when I called. Then imagine it turning into bowel churning confusion and terror when I stripped off my clothes and walked in to meet them.

See, it's all Rachel and that damn hamster. People said she closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the ground rush up. But no one who smelled like pleasant childhood memories would do that. Nah, she was a dreamer. Anyone who wears vanilla scent likes to think back to the good days. She got on that roller coaster to know what her hamster felt, even though it wasn't feeling anything it weren't programmed to feel. She closed her eyes to feel connected to something again.

http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30094

She damn lied to herself. Just like we all been doing all this time since the Deep Wars ended. She closed her eyes cause she couldn't well face the future. She lied just like my momma did about her habits when it turned inward and killed my brother. Just like it's turning inward and killing us. Lying to yourself don't do no one no good.

Which brings us to the question you've been plum dying to ask, huh? Do I miss being "human"?

Tell you what honey, I'm more human than most. Shoot, no denying the fact I don't look it. Hell, my pretty mouth is about all they left alone with all the tentacles and gill things that popped outta my skin. I'm getting used to eating out of my pooper but I gotta be honest I have no CLUE what this here organ is 'sposed to do. Just throbs and looks like a dried bogie when I push.

And yeah, I hear all those broadcasts about "Deep Benedict Arnold" and "Squid-Lovin' Betrayer" and all that. Listen missy we're tuned in to just about all your networks, even the top secret ones, so it don't get by me. But the thing is, I'm doing this for human kind see? Like I said, you gotta stop lying to yourselves. Do that evolution thing like Darwin said and move on when you know the chips are up. That's what I saw when Rachel was crushed like a buncha laundry under that roller coaster, I saw the future of humankind if we don't forge ahead, be brave, and explore this new frontier. And hell, ain't that American? Ain't that human? You try to grab a piece of that pie and like it or not our Undersea Overlords are where the apples are nowadays.

Truth be told, I almost kinda like those "Aqua Antichrist" monikers. Now sure as shootin' my grandmamma would twirl in her grave like an eager whore looking fer a dollar if she heard that. But it's true since he was 'sposed to be all charismatic- and that's why I'm here. I'm still heading to that beach trying to convince the others that this is the right thing to do, 'cept from the other side this time. See, they got me as a mouthpiece and we're reaching people. More than the governments wanna say at least. Listen, try as you like, ya'll can't keep track of everyone walking into the deep blue like I did. We're growing every day and pretty soon it's gonna be mighty lonely on those dusty shores.

I'm just another man trying to get by in the New World. That'll be the byline for this here story.

Oh I'm sorry you thought you had a say in this?

Heh. Honey-britches, you're in our world now. Best get in line ya hear? It's a new beginning.

 

[Trench]

Comments on my story and such.

[sblock]So writing in the first person is rather difficult when you're supposed to use pictures as reference... And then I figured... hell, why can't they be used like memory? Same image, different perspective?

The use of the pictures twice might disqualify me... Not sure, but I think it still works, cause it's the same exact image both times- just different context or perspective. Hence "The Real Beginning". It all looks different the way you look at it...

And if it does disqualify me, so be it. I'm cool with it.[/sblock]

Anyway, I have work tomorrow, and a bachelor party to prepare for. I have been asked if I have trouble breathing through my nose and to try to bring 16th or 17th century clothes if I have them. Also to have a bail card.

I think I have it easy. I know my bride to be will be subjected to zombie burlesque as the girls tear out their own entrails. That equals fried gold AWESOME.

 

[Hellefire]

Quick update, whil I can - have to leave immediately again for the weekend. Will post more on Sunday/Monday. Good luck guys! And sorry again

Aaron

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

*sighs deeply and gives up on any possibility of smack talk for this round*

Quitter.

 

[FickleGM]

Quitter.

Ninja editor.