300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- VICTORY TO THE JUDGE

[crow.]

A Gun isn't Strong as Me

Here's why I put down the gun:

I heard the tell-tale cracking. I heard the leaves. I heard trunks stripping bark off. I heard the dumb oaks walking. I heard the world ending. I heard . . .

I heard that punk band I used to love when I was a kid. I was, like, 17.

And I didn't want to think about how death was coming.

I remember some girl--God, I think her name was Ruth or Amy--rich dad, poor mom, broken broken home . . . Same old ****, new butterfly. I wanted to give her this roll of quarters my folks were keeping. This stamp I thought she’d like that I found across the street. Whatever I thought was good, you know?

I've never heard quiet drums before, but she played quiet drums, with her wrists uncertain, not quite on beat, she’s holding the drumsticks like pencils, but--you leaned in to hear. And that was really something.

So, there's people screaming. La di da. I'll be one of them. Soon, from the sounds of it.

I'm gonna--humph--frisbee my gun out the window. I struggle with the weight of it, because all the pollen makes you sluggish.

I'm fighting back, though. I can’t win shooting. I’ll win remembering.

They'll wrap the house in cellulose soon enough. They'll drip water all over the tape decks as they squeeze . . . *play*. They'll never understand the Beatles. They’ll never hear the music.

They'll never hear my girl, with her legs smooth and sweating. They'll stuff acorns down my throat, and the last thing I'll think is . . .

C#, Gb5, tat-tat-a-tick. Snare, snare, snare. “This song is about nothing, for the nothing people.”

That’s where I was, when I died.

I was there.

 

[Tisiphone]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

"The Arms of an Angel"

She came everyday to the same spot. She'd sit and talk to the sapling she'd planted. Her tears mingled with the soil and the ashes.

It was autumn, she'd skulk amongst the leaves, crunching, angrily kicking; sharing the silence with the wind.

Winter, with snow on the ground, she clamoured close to the tree, wrapping branches around her for warmth, sobbing gently as snowflakes touched her face.

Springtime, she'd bring armfuls of sunshine yellow and lay on the ground in quiet reflection.

It seemed she hardly noticed the sapling growing with unusual speed. Taller and taller, until it touched the sky, building a stairway to heaven.

Summer, her mood lifted slightly as sun shone through the branches reflecting warmly on her face revealing the glint of a smile.

Autumn once more; she crunched amongst the leaves.At peace; and she'd learnt to laugh.

A year to the day she told the tree, "It's time for me to flit and fly, little one. You think I haven't noticed but I've seen how beautiful and strong you've grown. I see your long flowing locks. Your wings have formed and I've lain in your growing arms and you've shared my pain. You've comforted me when no-one else could. You've sheltered me, given me your strength. You've stayed with me when you ought not.

It's time for you to be free, my angel. You've earned your wings. Don't worry about me. I'll never forget you little one but I've to start living again."

As she turned and walked away, a gust of wind gathered the leaves tossing them into the air. Taking a backward glance she found the tree had vanished. She caught a glimpse of shimmering wings passing through the sunlit clouds and heard a whisper on the wind "I love you Nana".

 

[stormcrow]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Arbor-Essence

Ashore in the New World; Seers’ sage: Salvia Divinorum; vaporised and brandy-filtered. All sense of reality unfolded in wheels of colour, and Ensign Beech, he thought he was an ivy-covered tree, rooted near the beacon.

“I’m old…” Ensign Beech had intoned, “And I’ve seen much change. The view from up here has afforded me that dubious privilege.” Ensign Beech: so verbose when he’s seeing his visions! “Beyond me the land is unspoilt, before me – where you stand now – it’s a wasteland: cut down, burned black, and eroding.”

I was wondering “How old, exactly?” and laughing, disconnected.

“Look at me”, Beech had said “I’ve stood here long enough. There’s plenty of moss on me!”

“No rolling stone then…” I muttered.


Beech’s story:

“My lover and I would dance through the night on this hilltop, then whisper idly through the daylight hours, “Now then,” she’d begin, “If one of us falls in this forest when no-one’s there to hear it, do we still make a sound?”

She‘d pause for effect, thinking. “Of course” she’d continue. “It’s only those arrogant humans who assume they have to hear it for the sound to count!”


I’d heard that somewhere; but just then I had no proper concept of there being a ‘before’ at all. What came next surprised me.

“Humans” Beech had ranted on through the evening “I wish you’d stayed away, you and your constant noise, your filth and your greed!” He’d torn distractedly at his shirt before rolling into a giggling, sweaty ball. Enlightened; rambling on about what has been and what never shall be again.

Tight grained – that was me. Ship’s carpenter; good for turning and sawing and screwing: strong; load-bearing and buoyant. My ship-mates could have burned me too. Ensign Beech’s lover was taken noisily away and burnt, after all.

 

[chrispenycate]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

To proudly go…​

Looks good from up here, all that greenery. Very Rousseau.

Underneath it's dark, even at noon, and wet, drops percolating through the canopy even when the sun is shining above. Underfoot, slime and stinking swamp, humidity suffocating.

Up here there's no food, but we'll be dying in sunlight. There isn't even a dimple where the gondola plunged through the branches. Even were a rescue expedition to set out (and how? In what? We've demonstrated that an airship's not the answer; with thunderstorms every afternoon, rising columns of hot air reaching the stratosphere and lightning threatening the hydrogen bags with the explosion that brought us crashing down through the branches. On foot, through that soaking labyrinth? Ornithopters would need regular resupply posts, and how could they penetrate the canopy?) it would never find us.

Even had any been willing to go back into that green gloom we were all too weak from hunger and fevers from the water we'd been forced to drink down there. And the other side of this ridge, the land drops back down into more of the same. We'll walk along it until we find a reliable water supply – the rains have sufficed till now, but who can tell for other seasons? – filling in our waterproofed journals with notes on the flora, geology and fauna as long as we can still write. One day someone will find them. How can I speak so confidently? Because, if you are reading this, they are found, or we are rescued, or we discovered food and made it back.

Not that the last two are likely. We knew exploring was dangerous before we set out, and proudly accepted the risk. We will die overseeing vistas no human eye has previously observed, for the greater glory of his magesty.

 

[Brev]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

The Proving Grounds


Maygri doesn't tell me we're in the Ancestor's Woods, until we are deep beneath their canopy. A damp stench fills the air; sweet, with a hint of decay. Broad trees surround us; ancient, twisted, and choked by moss. Sunlight cuts through their branches in amber shafts, which cavort to the whim of the wind.

We've wandered up from the village, straying far from the Buula fields, beyond even the hunting territory, to reach these woods. I'd been happy to stay by the stream, and tickle fish in the cool shade of the leaning Pruggah, but Maygri had wanted to prove his worth again.

'We shouldn't be here!' I keep my voice to a respectful whisper.

Maygri pulls a face. He's two years older than me, nearly old enough to join the hunt, a fact he's fond of repeating. 'I followed old Shruppah up here, he came to talk to Spirits. They live in the smoke on that peak, he knows the secret words to summon them.'

'So do I.'

'No you don't.'

'Shruppah taught me.' I cross my arms and grin.

'Liar, you're too little to know!'

'I'll prove it!'

He hesitates. 'Go on then.'

I raise my hands toward the distant mountain, and mumble some words.

'Wait!' Maygri's face has gone pleasingly pale.

'Too late...they're coming.' I point to a fleeting shadow.

'Where?'

'There...Oh no!'

'What?'

'They're Dark Spirits! I said it wrong, they'll eat our eyes! Run!'

I flee. Weaving a trail back through the trees, I hear Maygri's heavy footsteps just behind me. I am smaller than him, slower on the flat, but far more agile. Over the soft, irregular terrain, I remain in front. We don't stop running until we've reached the safety of the leaning Pruggah. He never notices my sly smile.

 

[JoanDrake]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

He followed one of the several Shagreen into the trees, Skylara by name, who had invited him to her tent with another three girls on the first night. She was a better climber than even her companions, seeming more bird than human. Twice, she seemed ready to jump to another tree where the ascent looked easier and then restrained herself for his sake. Many more times she waited for his relatively slow advance. He would find her, smiling, and couldn’t help but smile back both at her and at the graceful poses her slender form fell into.

Finally, she stopped. As he caught up with her Tyler looked out over the landscape and was amazed. An enormous vista of unbroken forest covering rolling hills stretched away to mountains on an impossibly far horizon. It thrilled and scared him.

Skylara stood beside him, her small face beautiful in its happiness. “Home”, she said simply, pointing to the left.

Tyler shook his head, as much as these girls looked and acted like wood nymphs they actually came from the high desert surrounding…

Good lord, that crag on the horizon? But it was over a thousand miles away.

And about 20 miles high by this point, his mind completed, in a non-eruptive phase by the look of it, in ten million years or so…

He looked back at Skylara. And after another billion she’ll be red dust, with not even an organic molecule to show she ever existed.

He kissed her, her surprise eliciting that odd combination of a giggle and sigh he found so charming. It suddenly seemed important to make use of the time they had, though he knew Mars should be green like this for at least another hundred million years.

 

[farntfar]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Well we’ve been tree dwelling for eons.
And like, I MEAN EONS

And I guess I don’t mean tree-dwelling like YOU mean tree-dwelling.
I mean its not like a bird is tree-dwelling.
or a squirrel.
It's not like what any of you SO-CALLED solids mean at all.




I say so-called “solid” ‘cause I aint never heard the word before the other night.
I heard it on the television; on one of your SCI-FI programs.
”Don’t start getting all sympathetic with the SOLIDS, ODO!” she said.


Well, what d'yer expect?

Sheesh!

I mean she was a LIQUID for cry’s sake.
I mean it’s almost the same thing!



If you wanna be cool, then yer gotta be non corporeal.
(Cool don’t really apply when you ain’t got no molecules, but yer know what I mean.)



Where was we?
Oh yeah. Tree dwellin’!



Once upon a time....

(an’ don’t start me on about time coz’ we’ll be here all night, if yer get the pun)

we was a bunch of non-corporeal, non dimensional, non-functional, (if not entirely dysfunctional beings, if ye get my drift), bumming about in the unvastness of unspace.

(JEEZ! Is it difficult to talk in DIMENSIONS!)

Suddenly,and though no fault of our own, (whatever our parents may think), we was flung into this universe full of SHAPES and DIRECTIONS and TIME, fer cry’s sake.

I can tell you man, to start off we had A BALL! There was things here to play with like we’d NEVER dreamed.



But you know what?
Sooner or later, in a dimensional universe, yer has to settle down.
And we found that the best place to do it is in the soul of a tree.



AND NOW!

YOU GUYS IS CUTTING US ALL DOWN, MAN!

 

[Rafellin]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Avert​

I hear the pod come to rest behind me and chose to ignore it until I am called.

Soft footfalls approach – Celestine, at a guess.

“It is time, Genairius.”

I look up and back at her: “We’re finished?”

She nods: “The last conurbation has fallen. All sources of toxicity have been neutralised.”

Sentences that cover a multitude of horrors.

“Such a pity. They had so much potential.” My whispered comment as I stand up is overheard.

“Wasted potential. We have done them a service.” Not a shred of doubt in her voice.

I turn to look at the shades of green: “Hopefully those old divinities with strong respect-for-nature creeds will be sufficient.”

She places a consoling hand on my shoulder: “You liked them.”

With a smile, I look deep into her eyes, hoping she will understand: “I always like them. Planetary salvage is a noble cause, but we commit atrocities to implement it.”

She does not understand, considering them all to be aberrants. With a sigh, I gesture for her to precede me. I look back for a final time.

Dear humanity, you had it all in your hands, but your adherence to religions of self-service perpetually denied the utopia you sought. So we have reduced you, in population and technology, to primitive tribes with new gods. In this global pantheon, we are the penalty for you becoming anything that harms this verdant planet that you occupy.

It has taken us ten of your years to remove the poisons you deposited. If not for the unique shades of green, we would not have bothered. Next visit, we will annihilate you if you have redeveloped along similar, ecologically damaging lines.

All I can do is hope that the lesson has been learnt.



*** With apologies for not working out how to get indents and 1.5 line spacing to stick. ***

 

[Boneman]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

LOOOK OUT​

“Come on, let me have it.”

“All right, but keep both hands on the controls, keep the horizontal line in the middle of the ball, and don’t touch the throttle.”

"Duh. It’s not like I haven’t flown before.”

“Look what happened last time – we had to pay for new undercarriage, the landing was so heavy.”

“That wasn’t my fault. The downdrafts were stronger than predicted – even the Tower cleared me to land, they weren’t expecting any changes. There’s no comment on my log, it was deemed a freak weather anomaly. The pilot behind me did the same thing, and he’d trained at the Space Academy.”

“Have you applied yet?”

“Of course. Old man Harrison gave me a recommendation.”

“Really? I thought he hated you— watch that height, we’re dropping.”

“I got it. Nah, he wants rid of me – giving me a blue note so I go off-planet will get me out of his hair. Can I push the speed up a little? Seems really sluggish today.”

“I’ll do it, you’re too heavy-handed.”

“Heavy-handed? I’ve got a lighter touch than you, and you know it.”

“Yeah, hot-shot, so why are we drifting two points off?”

“Thought we could do some low-level stuff. The Academy says it sharpens your reflexes, develops your concentration, and makes you less reliant on the computer.”

“I don’t think—”

“Mayhew says he let you fly the canyons when you were my age.”

“In a T-Eleven. Slower than Mrs Fisher’s dredger.”

“But you still did it.”

“All right! Descend another hundred – but don’t increase the speed.”

“Okay! Here we go.”

“Wait, what have you done?”

“Switched the computer off. I need to sharpen up if—”

“LOOK OUT FOR THAT TREE!”

Instructor’s recommendation: Hamill must never be allowed in the cockpit of any aircraft. Ever.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Still Life


I visited him in the hospital every Sunday: picnic lunch, reading, laughing, silly in love.

At home, alone, I cried.

Verlin took my breath away, the first time we met; he was beautiful and brilliant, and with him, I was brilliant, too. We went to the movies, the theater, ice skating in the park. We made love in the ocean, in our backyard under the moonlight, and in broad daylight on top of the greenest hill imaginable. We made plans, and dared the gods deny us.

In bleakest November, I got the call. A bus had run a red light. Three hours to cut him out of his car, and he wasn't expected to regain consciousness.

Never predictable, Verlin awoke, as sharp as ever. The sharpest of minds, the sharpest of wits, in a dull body -- paralyzed from the neck down.

The best hospital was hours from home, and I still had to work to pay the bills. One Sunday, I found he had taken up painting -- holding the brush in his teeth. It hurt to watch, but he was determined, and had lots of time to practice.

Verlin painted people from photos, and landscapes from memory. He started painting the greenest hill imaginable. He smiled, just as he had when he first took me there, and I watched him paint.

He managed to finish his last painting, and I hung the verdant landscape in our bedroom.

After the funeral, lost to the world, I stood in front of it and stared into the green hills. As tears blurred my vision, the mossy green tree seemed to beckon. I could almost see the figure of a man, in the gnarled branches, pointing toward the future. It was beautiful, and it took my breath away.

 

[mosaix]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Putting Down Roots

Day 1

We’re down okay. Navigation say we’re about fifteen miles from where the Caledonian landed. Unable to establish any contact. Search And Rescue can’t wait to get going but I’m following regs: checking the ship over, preparing for emergency evacuation.


Day 3

Compound now totally secured – but the place seems benign enough. Heady aroma in the air from the nearby vegetation – quite relaxing.


Day 4

Continuing to take readings. Everything perfect – atmosphere, air pressure, climate, water. Apart from the surrounding vegetation there are no other signs of life. Some of the crew have been eating some local, purple fruit. Against regs, but it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm.


Day 5

S&R had to be ordered to go. Expected back in four days. Fruit is quite delicious.


Day 7

We’ve moved out of the ship entirely now – living in the compound. Feels wonderful in the fresh air, plenty of sunshine and running water. We sit around most of the day just enjoying the view.


Day 10

S&R overdue. Not overly concerned.


Day 11

S&R 'sauntered' back into camp. Caledonian found intact and undamaged. No trace of crew, compound overgrown with purple fruit bearing vegetation. Suppose we should leave now but no harm in waiting a while. Uniforms discarded, just wearing shorts.


Day 13

Realise I’ve just been sitting here for nearly thirty hours. Soil feels so good between my toes, breeze in my hair, sun on my skin. We’re all just sitting or lying around – naked and totally relaxed.

Limbs, neck and back stiffening up a bit. I don’t believe I could move my feet if I wanted to and, strangely, I don’t. Fingers stiffening up too, don’t think I’ll write much more – just sit and feel the breeze.

 

[Fitzchiv]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

The Growth

“ORDERS: Growth spitting refugees like puss from a wound. Confirm settlement lost, then follow us down river ~ Capn. Beren”

***

Dawn came as it always had in the forest; shrill insects giving way to soft yet startling birdsong, inky blackness to dappled greens, and the carrion stench of a Rouge Cap eager to share its spores.

As Talen lay, his surroundings dripping through to consciousness slowly once again, he almost without pause expected to hear the sigh of a companion or the hiss of a fire nudged into life to brew morning tea. Almost.

Gingerly rising onto an elbow, he rubbed sandy eyes before checking where his terror driven flight from the consumed village had abandoned him to exhaustion. The brilliant-white flash of agony from each joint as he moved was matched by the final glimpse of his companions seared into his mind; bulging eyes, muffled screams from moss-choked mouths with lolling lichen-covered tongues. No amount of rubbing would take it away.

Through fogged vision he could see not far from where he had lain the trees thinned and broke, and beyond lay a valley or meadow. Twenty, maybe thirty more paces and he would have been saved.

Slowly rising, the effort left him breathless, grasping frantically for the support of a nearby branch. The night on the loam had taken its toll; thirty paces short had cost him too much.

‘Make it to the treeline, others will see you and know’ – he clutched the thought with all his strength and started his final, stumbling steps forwards. If it was to end this way, he could at least spend oblivion looking towards home.

On numb limbs he arrived, leaning against an ancient cousin. His last breath departed, his body stilled, he knew relief and Grew.

 

[The Judge]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Strange Fruit


They find Lizzie Ford two days after she’s gone missin’. Find her body. Her skirts all ripped, an’ bruisin’ on those soft, lily-white thighs. Old man Ford, he goes crazy wantin’ her killer, an’ he ain’t interested in no trial. So we go lookin’ for some buck to hang.

I find him, up by the dead shagbark hickory. He’s strange coloured, like hickory wood, an’ green eyes like new buddin’ hickory leaves. I call, an’ the others come runnin’. He swears he’s done nothin’, but they find half Lizzie’s missin’ kerchief there.

We string him up on the hickory, pull him high, an’ leave him. Let the crows do their work. Only, when I go back, a week later, he ain’t been touched; still looks the same, those green hickory eyes starin’ out his strange-coloured face.

I go back reg’lar after that. Nothin’ changes, ’cept in the spring the old dead hickory starts buddin’. I watch them buds open, watch the leaves spread. Each one’s got a coloured bruise, shaped like a hanged man. I hear the wind whisperin’ through the leaves. His voice. Swearin’ he’s innocent.

After that, I’m there every day, watchin’, listenin’. The hickory nuts start growin’. Only they ain’t nuts, they’re fruits, coloured like hickory wood, two green eyes on ’em. The wind still whispers at me.

When fall comes I cut the hickory man down an’ sit talkin’. I don’t want to, but I can’t stop myself. Like when I was with Lizzie that last night an’ she kept saying no.

A hickory fruit falls. Inside it’s soft, lily-white. Like Lizzie’s thighs.

The wind don’t whisper no more. The hickory man’s gone. Old man Ford’ll be here in the mornin’. He’ll find the other half of Lizzie’s kerchief.

They’ll hang me on the hickory.

 

[Ursa major]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

.​

Leave of Absence​

“Go on leave. Consider it an order.” An odd command from someone who begrudges every moment not spent working. He had his reasons; initiating some devious scheme, probably. I no longer care. Soon I’ll be free of this world.

The so-recently barren planet offers few holiday destinations. The people of the colony’s only city look like me but are, in truth, horribly alien. And profoundly xenophobic. So I pitched my tent in the woods on the far shore of the lake, a hundred kilometres from the city’s stink. I thank the gods I won’t be smelling it again.

The accident was so stupid; my first day here, I tripped, damaging my leg. Sort of. Not a scratch spoils my smooth, golden skin; my explant, though, is badly torn. I mustn’t see a doctor; not that one lives nearby, luckily. How can I explain away my explant, or why the body it encloses fails to match my outward appearance? Not that I’d be explaining anything, not with colonists queuing up to rip me limb from limb.

I’m due to return to the city four days from now. No chance: the jagged edges of the tear won’t knit, not now the wound’s infected. Instead, I’ve dug my grave deep in the forest. No one here can be allowed to see my true self. I will not be the one who reveals the truth about my people, not even in death.

Until now, the thought of Forced Apoptosis – the genetically engineered process that will dissolve me and my explant from within – has never troubled me. I believed something whose use seemed so unlikely a small price to pay to be allowed to travel the galaxy.

Now I must die for my people. And they did promise Forced Apoptosis wouldn’t hurt. Sweet.


.

 

[jastius]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

The Death Valley Mermaid Suffrage and Aid Society


It was over 115 degrees this morning and the sun was barely up. I fed fluids into the next passed out body. Whereupon the desiccated skin shrank into an actual skeleton which promptly giggled and spat a geyser of sand into my face. Theophile laughed as I shook my fist at the dancing bone rack. “… you’re just encouraging them.”

Burning Man Festival is fun enough. But my cat Theophile, being a ghost as well as more then cattily contrary-wise decided to liven things up by inviting the whole afterworld.

I watched a surfer howl into the dawn arm in arm together with a werewolf in board shorts.
Not that you could tell them apart from the rest of the party animals. I poured out the rest of the water bottle onto grey tree roots.
“Thanks,” the dust washed off revealing the shimmering tail of a very attractive mermaid. “I really needed the drink.” she was ensconced within the lineup of charity busker's collecting coins in cans.

I grinned, “Here,” and sprinkled water bottles for an impromptu shower to the mermaid’s delight, “water!”
She sighed, sated. “Once this was all ocean. Now only the ghost of water remains. All who were we are left dry.” A bone faced pirate dropped what looked like a silver doubloon into the can.
”Ah good, now only two more ounces of silver remain needed.” She whispered conspiratorially, “We are ransoming the water.” Theophile was surprised. “From the wight that stole it underground. Then you will know green.”
Theophile nudged me, “Give your silver dollar.” As I dropped it in, she faded smiling.

It started raining... up. First time Burning Man was called on account of rain. It's a lake. No mermaids yet though, just flowers.
She was right. There was green.

 

[Ursa major]

Re: 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #11 (October 2013) -- READ FIRST POST

Challenge#11 has now closed for entries and the voting is open. To cast your votes, use the link below.

Please vote for your top three choices; note that all three votes must be cast at the same time to count.
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