August 2016 100 Word Anonymous Challenge

[Shyrka]

**PLEASE DO NOT POST STORIES DIRECTLY TO THIS THREAD**

100-Word Anonymous Writing Challenge for August 2016.

THEME: Prison

GENRE: Science fiction or fantasy

**PLEASE DO NOT POST STORIES DIRECTLY TO THIS THREAD**

Thanks to @mosaix for providing this month's theme.

Please PM (Private Message) all entries to me, @Shyrka, and I will dutifully post the entries to this thread with only mild grumbling. Entries can be sent from August 8th (now) - August 29th 00:00AM GMT. (to avoid voting conflicts with the 75 word challenge)

Once the challenge thread closes, a voting poll will be created (eventually, once I figure out how) where you can vote for your ONE favourite entry. The winner will receive the admiration of their peers, albeit indirectly as no one will know who wrote the entry.*

There will also be a fabulous guessing portion where you can try to match the stories to their mysterious creators!**

To PM me, click my profile and select 'Start a Conversation'.

Anyone caught posting entries directly to this thread will be gently mocked - because, you know, it's meant to be anonymous - and then sent to @Bowler1 for raygun-based re-education.***

* There are no prizes.
** There are still no prizes.
*** You can consider that a prize if you like.

 

[Shyrka]

The D'Zort Dropoff

I found myself on a piece of doom, uninhabited but for murderers. Dropped unceremoniously on a dusty, forsaken pod port, the only strucure this hemisphere. I knew this how?

As I stepped off, I felt Insight, awareness of D'Zort's complete unforgiving geography. Ok, then: they had Insighted me in stasis.

Ah – the colony was almost antipodal and, hey, I just knew how to get there. How convenient.

Against "my" will I turned the other way. I dislike convenient. Your will be damned, bastards.

Ten miles later I was lost. Yup, Insight fails when rigged. So I must be somewhere right.

 

[Shyrka]

Masquerade

During his second year of imprisonment in the Bastille, the year 1700, he received a visitor in his cell. Through the eye slits of the cloth mask he was forced to wear always, he saw an oddly-dressed, furtive man.

“So not an iron mask, then,” the man muttered. “Monsieur, I have travelled from the future to settle a mystery. Some historians think you were the illegitimate brother of the king. Others say his father, or identical twin. Will you show me your face?”

He removed his mask.

The man's face paled in shock, for he looked upon his own.

 

[Shyrka]

Solitary Confinement

Within these adamantine walls I see
My clockwork guardian, with Argus eyes.
Mindlessly awake it watches me
As if to ask what vile traitor lies
Within its gaze. I raise my head and wave
My hand. Somewhere a bureaucrat will smile
At salutations from this living grave.
I vanish into sleep, and in a while
My food arrives; is it my breakfast, lunch,
Or evening meal? Impossible to tell. I tear
The foil packet open, start to munch.
Synthetic wafers, with no flavor there.
This is how I spend each night and day.
My freedom lies one thousand years away.

 

[Shyrka]

Daily Coffee with your Copy

"You have to get me out of here, Dave!"

"You and I both know I can't afford it, Dave."

My offense was minor. I was a first time offender for a nonviolent crime. I was guilty; they got me red handed.

"Dave, I can't take another day in here. The guards beat me every chance they get. I haven't slept in days. Please, you have to do something!"

Jesus, it's torture talking to my copy. Is my hour up yet? No? I take another sip of my coffee.

"Ok, Dave, you win. I'll pay the fine for my speeding ticket."

 

[Shyrka]

The Trophy

He said I was beautiful, and that he loved me. He said it whilst holding my severed head, my neck stump throbbing. I screamed and tried to kick with legs that weren't there.

I try to convince myself it's just a nightmare, and every morning I wake, look down at him from my shelf, and the tears trickle. Why won't I die? Why's he forcing me to live like this?

I've stopped counting the days. I can't help but scream when I catch my reflection. I've stopped biting when he kisses me; it only makes him more ravenous.

 

[Shyrka]

Perplexed

“Who’d our robbery victim pick out?”
“Kerry Clark. He’s doing a nickel for a smash-and-grab up at Telfair.”
“Paroled?”
I shake my head.
“Escaped?”
“I just called the prison; he’s sleeping comfortably.”
Sheppard sighed, pushed her hair back. “So it’s a bad ID.” She wasn’t happy. Neither was I.

Kerry got out of bed soon as the CO left. Smiling, he pulled off the Cena poster and waved his hand. The wall faded and he stepped inside the portal to admire his haul. “I’m never leaving this place!” He smiled. “Thanks, whoever made this… doorway?” He laughs.

 

[Shyrka]

Worm
Four years earlier, I'd been ejected from the waveline and landed somewhere without water. I'd spent the first tedious year slithering across baking sand imprisoned in the thoughts of a particularly uninteresting character. Thankfully it had bitten a humpy creature who'd been transporting a higher species.
My current host entered the building and approached a specimen in uniform whom she liked and admired.
She extended her hand, 'Ready?'
The uniformed specimen made contact. 'After two years training. Hell yes.'
I transferred before the uniformed specimen finished speaking. His reservations about quarantine lost in his excitement of space exploration.
Yippee. Freedom.

 

[Shyrka]

Assault on Blood Island Prison

Explosions and gunfire rocked the floor above me, I could hear guards shouting, then screaming. A booted foot smashed open the wooden door to my room. A six foot, muscular, yet voluptuous, humanoid lioness sauntered in femininely, her fierce eyes scanned my human body. She wore a black sleeveless shirt, commando pants and was heavily armed. After giving me a wicked grin, she spat out her cigar stub. Her powerful hands grabbed my drab uniform lapels. The feline slowly pulled me closer. We kissed in heated passion, and felt each other's warm body. My wife saved me again.

 

[Shyrka]

Father's Day

The orbiting prison resembled a cluster of grapes, each a single unit housing a single prisoner. I looked for Father's face in the solitary circular window. Only darkness.

We docked. I entered the keycode. Within the airlock, I entered the second keycode.

Hunched in a chair, Father gazed downward.

Wearily he looked up. "What do you want?"

"It's Father's Day. I brought you a gift."

I held out the earpiece.

"A message from your children."

"My thousand clones? I doubt it. You hate me for the life I gave you."

"Only society hates you. How could we hate our Father?"

 

[Shyrka]

A Place to Rest


The door moaned open, torches nipped at my eyes clearing the mud from my mind. A guard slapped chains on my wrists, snatched me forth from the cells womb and into stabbing light.

A wave of anger flowed from the crowd as I was forced upon the block, a tad wet from the last fella's trimming. I breathed in his blood scent, teasing my nose sweet as roses. Smiled at the sunlight winking on the raised axe.

Freedom.


***********************************


Darkness, thick as treacle. Can't move. Scream but none hear.

Bastards buried me.


Trapped. This tomb my eternal cell.

 

[Shyrka]

Houdunnit

Had it been just walls and bars I would have been out long ago. Electric fences, alarms electronic or mechanical might have slowed me a little, but I would still have been long free. Illusions – good idea, but I'm wise to them.

I admit it – I commit crimes for the challenge of avoiding capture, escaping incarceration. I'm rich enough the spoils are irrelevant, but the stimulus – aah. The trick with the void, that took me centuries to work out – lovely. A genuine challenge to my ingenuity.

But whose sadistic, unsporting idea was it to trap me in a body?

 

[Shyrka]

Lover's Promise

They say, they say, that you killed three for me,
And now, they say, you never can be free,
It hurts, they say, you’ll never be with me.

I won’t, I won’t, let them destroy you,
And now, I won’t, forget what we went through,
It hurts, I won’t, I’ll hold this pain for you.

Do it, do it, I’ve steeled myself for war,
And now, do it, I’ll break that dungeon door,
It hurts, do it, it’s all I’m living for.

- Folk Song, Unattributed.

 

[Shyrka]

Ascension Cubed

They came from beyond all known. Technology like magic; hunger like locusts', the choice given was simple, attractive even—calling it the “Great Ascension” gave it that shiny finish that often enthralls Man.

We could not win, so it was a mercy as much as absolute dominance. Man's consciousness was herded into the Cube, to be kept from what was to befall Earth, freed from confinements of time, space, and individuality, to be let out once they´d had their unhampered way with the planet.

They left Earth a husk; left Man to roam, now a different creature. Just the one.

 

[Shyrka]

Dejuvenation

Fifty Years. Might get some back for good behaviour – not everyone gets out alive.

The nurse bends over the bed, all smiles and pearl-white teeth, her ever-youthful face ripe with pity.

I hate her. I hate them all.

I reach for her unmarked neck, close my bony fingers around it. Words scrape from my throat like dust.

“...kill you...”

She smiles and takes my palsied hands away, her skin snow against my ravaged leather.

“Shh, don’t get worked up,” she says, laying me back down. Everything aches.

“You’re not as young as you used to be.”

 

[Shyrka]

Ten Million Times.

There is something wrong. I shock awake and listen. I hear footsteps, movement, downstairs. I slide from the bed and grab the golf club I keep nearby.

In the lounge, a figure crouches over my safe. My heartbeat’s so loud he must hear. I creep forward, breath held, the club slick in my shaking hand.

A noise behind me. I swivel, club crashing from my grip. An accomplice, with a gun. A flash, a thud.

I look up at my killer, and see he wears my face.

Five fearful minutes from waking to dying. Five minutes, repeating for twenty-five years.

 

[Shyrka]

Prison tales...

'Sentenced to forget,'says the graffiti over my cell door.

Some inmate or taunting screw wrote it. No-one knows who...

...because, in Lethe House, it’s true.

A tap on my cell’s bars: 'Ben' is there, smokes in hand. I pay in plausible scraps: "You're a lawyer, divorced from Irena. You juggle."

He juggles in the yard – always include something verifiable for them.

I've tailored histories for each inmate. Traded sparingly, they buy some comforts. I wonder about the truth...

...but we all know: There's no truth in here.

Truth is: Tonight I'll smoke, and 'Ben' will smile...

 

[Shyrka]

Solitary

When the loneliness threatens to crush what is left of my pathetic soul, I seek out solace. They’re all the same. None have her eyes, her smile that makes me giddy or her good heart.

A sad, desperately lonely year since she passed. Each day since I reach for the pistol. Each day I prove my cowardice.

One day she laughed and said, “I’ll ruin you for other women.”

It was funny at the time.

 

[Shyrka]

Freedom

Bacchus carefully placed the last knife on the table. His guests would arrive soon. A warm buzz filled his stomach. A great night was imminent.

He grabbed a glass. Time for a cheeky drop of wine. Strange, where's the bottle of red? He was certain he'd placed it by the flowers.

The doorbell rang. Opening the door, his friends tumbled through, gesticulating enthusiastically, many offering bottles of various hues.

Bacchus awoke in his cell. Realisation dawned. His rations were by the hatch. Why did they keep messing with his dreams? He had already learned to respect his freedom long ago.

 

[Shyrka]

Life Reflections

She was made of glass. All broken. Every shard of her scraping against walls no one else saw. Only reflections of standardized perfection were permitted to leave her punishment chamber.

New Newtopia loved its citizens. Too much. All must be perfect. But bodies were too imperfect. So underneath the shining streets catacombs of sleepers lay. While hologram "bodies" walked the streets.

You couldn't cheat their governance. Even with death. She had tried. Now she was soul trapped in silicon for her attempt. Sentenced to life.
Carefully she laced the magnetic dust into her carapace's cracks. Short circuit!
Freedom.