November 2016 75-word writing challenge -- VICTORY TO HEX!

[farntfar]

Crop of the pick.

It was early. Trent needed sleep. Hard tunnel digging ahead.
But it was for mapping the tunnels he’d got the job.

Keep your thoughts clear lad!
Beware the mental police!
OK. Missed me.
The map was forming now.
Soon! And escape!
Woah!
Careful with those thoughts, Eugene.!
Bam! Strange lights! Darkness...

Eugene Trent entered the pubarama after work at the playground.
Something was niggling him.
MAP! MAP! MAP?
Oh yes.
Mine’s a pint.

 

[Culhwch]

The Mapmaker

They called him the Mapmaker.

He had no special skills, was nobody of note. But once, before the Fall, he’d worked for the Authority. It was a boring job - reading gauges, mostly. But he knew things.

Or, more precisely, knew where things were.

Like water.

If you needed it, and you asked, he’d draw you a map. Getting it was your business. But he did what he could.

Wasn’t enough of that, these days.

 

[mosaix]

The Eyes Have It

The screams are dreadful.

We can't watch. Burning at the stake is an awful, terrible way to go. Especially when it's one of your own.

They want it badly – the route through the high passes. The key to their victory and our defeat.

“You choose,” they said. “Give it up and he'll be spared.”

But he chose for us. We haven't got it – he has. It's tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.

 

[juelz4sure]

Everlasting Peace


A broken man slammed his fist on the map sprawled across the splintered bar, "three shots of whiskey!"

Three law men stood up revolvers drawn... "You know the deal, hand it over!" The sheriff said walking through the door.

Laughing "you've taken everything from us all, NO!" Shots were fired before he finished his last drink.

"No," the sheriff snickered looking the map over destination-peace.

On the back death was written beside an X.

 

[Glen]

Pub with no Beer II: SlabQuest

‘The beer’s in the dunny!?’
‘The Thunderdome, not the Thunderbox!’
‘And where might that be?’
‘The Wasteland!’
‘No need for such an ominous voice, mate.’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Have you a map?’
‘There is no map!’
‘Hey!’
‘No need. Just follow the highway 700 miles. It’s on your right. Can’t miss it.’
‘Roads ok?’
“The apocalypse didn’t reach ‘em.’
‘And there’s definitely cold beer there?’
‘For the taking, they say!’
’Too easy!’

 

[chrispenycate]

Sympathetic connection

The cymbal is the action, the map the territory
the chronicle becomes the true his-story
Pendulum petitive, dissecting time
Base similarity, symbols which rhyme

Ancient contagion, historic contact
Big Brother's thought troops overrun
Relationships distort and contract
As ending's ending is begun

Project down with decreased dimension
Squeeze differences from the pores.
Mankind's reality's extension
Enchantment difference explores.
Diversity grows in dissention
Defined in multiple word wars.

​

 

[Dave Barsby]

Last Chance

The professor had given up on humanity. They were a plague. He wanted them gone.

He used his own unique neural patterns as a password to activate the nano-virus. Self-replicating. 100% lethal. 100% contagious. Stoppable only by his own thoughts.

And that would be humanity’s final test to prove their worthiness: reanimate, digitally map and transmit his brainwaves, or this sickly human race would be wiped out.

Satisfied, he slit his own throat.

 

[Ursa major]

​

Forbidden Knowledge​

“Pull up your sleeves!”

I did.

“A map –” the guard smiled “– one annotated with cheat codes.”

I’d already failed to escape this terrible land. Now they’d want to execute me and the mapmaker… my mother.

“You’re one step short of freedom,” he said.

“Don’t taunt me!”

“Taunt? I’ve been waiting for that map ever since I realised the mistake I’d made by creating my own, personal utopia using Krell technology. It’s my way out.”

​

​

​

 

[Mad Alice]

So Far From Home

Hector traced Daphne's torso, mapping each flesh warm inch by heart. Wonder dawned within her eyes. Ignoring static building up, stinging lips traced a path across golden contours, not backing from his sweet endeavour. Almost home.
Power arced.
Daphne's sea blue eyes echoed his loss. "I love you..." she whispered, from so long ago.
Daphne's landscape faded into cold unyielding titanium.
Always too soon.
Hector sighed.
The machines gave all ... Except life.

 

[Anushka Mokosh]

Myth

Pandora had patiently waited for this night’s blackout to happen.

She lifted the mattress of her bed to reveal a large piece of paper, yellowed and charred on the edges. It was dangerous to smuggle it here.

Pandora stared at it reverently. There was an outline she knew very well from her geography class.

But, it said it was Europe and Europe was a myth. It never existed. It is known.

 

[Starbeast]

The True Cost of Oil

We're told, my country has 100 years of OIL reserves, underground.

Fracking SHALE GAS, was a boon for jobs...then a bust.

Survey maps show thousands of locations in the U.S. that yielded no OIL.

Toxic waste, earthquakes, methane emissions and human casualties, are increasing because of Fracking.

The site where I worked shut down. my well water is undrinkable, my neighborhood stinks of methane, and I'm now receiving treatment for cancer.

 

[HareBrain]

Devil You Know


‘Been told I can trust you,’ he says. ‘This’ll show you the way out.’

‘Balls,’ I say. ‘How much.’

‘Fifty thousand Trumps.’

That’d clean me out. No high-rise apartment for my family, no air con. Swap that for a chance of wilderness? Might be a trap anyway.

Fifty K for a short-lived hope of us all getting outside.

Free. Ungoverned.

Free …

The reward for informing on him buys me a lifetime of mind-numbing Scotch.

 

[ratsy]

Hope

The paper still smells like her. Leather and lavender.

Day after day, ash falls on us. Night after night, another is taken.

I follow the map like a curse, but I can’t find the X.

Her handwriting adorns the bottom corner: Hope

Soon it’s only me left; the rest just dead bodies, covered in soot.

I stand at the edge of the world. Water splashes below the cliff.

The paper smells like her.

 

[The Judge]

Dead Man’s Map


The guards laugh as they drag me naked to Execution Square, mocking the cuts scoring my flesh. Cuts from the lash fences throughout the city, so they think. They never found my knife.

Hundreds of us have tried to find the route to freedom. All left to rot in the Square. All cut. I’m the last, for I found the route’s final section.

My cuts will be noted, analysed, followed. My people will be free.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Sic Semper Tyrannis


“How is this ethical? Caving in to the new government’s agenda?”

.....“We have an agenda, too.”

“But you’re removing things from the map, and drawing medieval pictures. What’s that?”

.....“It was Planned Parenthood. Now it’s a wild, man-eating boar. The president laughed.”

“He seriously thinks people can’t find it if it’s not on GPS?”

.....“Better hope he’s right. Can you find resistance headquarters?”

“But that’s a… ‘hic sunt dracones’, really?”

.....“Well, it is a library.”

 

[The Big Peat]

No Map to the Light

The babe cries as we enter the dark of Underearth. Maybe its the fever; maybe the fear.

I touch my lodestone. It’ll show me out safe.

I can’t see the Folk; just hear their pipes. The babe falls silent. Maybe they soothed her pain. The Folk know their doctoring.

Maybe its the fear.

“What price?”

“Enter and we will bargain. Without iron.”

Without iron. The babe whimpers. I drop my way out and step forwards.

 

[Ursa major]

This challenge is now closed to new entries.

Voting is open at the link below:

POLL -- NOVEMBER 2016 75-Word Challenge -- READ FIRST POST!

​