Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Attention! Fiction!
ZJGent:
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 02 Mar 2008, 23:12 ---A Man with Beautiful Rotting Teeth
--- End quote ---
Having only been to the dentist that morning, Steven now sat upon a single lens reflex camera of recent times with Dr Kleider. They wandered towards the winding mechanism and talked idly.
"Doctor, would I have needed the two metal fillings had I cleaned my teeth a month ago?"
"It's impossible to say, my dear boy, as you did not. Hence the two fillings. I trust they no longer hurt as much as this morning?"
"They are alright... but surely... surely I can go back and brush my teeth. Surely then I won't need fillings? If I only tell myself to be more careful."
"How were you planning to do that, Steven?"
Steven merely pointed at the escalator that was now affixed to one section of the camera. The two men, doctor and patient, shook hands before Steven walked toward the escalator and stepped aboard, waving a polite goodbye to the dentist who had now perched atop the camera's flash. "Be careful" warned the doctor "it is more difficult than you'd think."
Such was true - the dentist had barely disappeared into the mirrors surrounding the escalator when Steven noticed the motorized steps slowing down under his patent leathers. Before long the escalation had reversed entirely; the steps now descended back the way that Steven had come. Scowling and muttering at the obstinate transitionary aide, he started to climb against an ever-strengthening current. Eventually, despairingly, he realised that he could no longer run upwards faster than the escalator escalated downwards. After a few frantic minutes in stationary movement, Steven realised that he could only travel in one direction. The realisation came less hard than imagined - almost a relief - and on reaching the base of the moving stairs, he recognised a rocky plateau from his childhood in middle America. His father was there, talking to Doctor Kleider, and a boy who could have been his son, if Steven had had a son.
Kleider smiled at Steven and left the scene, as did his father. The boy, however, said only that perhaps Steven had finally got off on the right floor, and good luck. Lightning split the sky, and Steven finally awoke, a gentle sweat creeping across his scalp.
öde:
A simple man comes to terms with the concept of private property in a war novel.
This thread has reminded me that I need to do more writing and that I need to do more stuff of value (for the forum).
ZJGent:
Sorry dan, you'll have to wait a little -
I am taking a half-hour break to eat, drink, smoke, and research war fiction!
Feel free to add more requests for when I get back.
--
The Third Watch
It was two weeks after the first pocketwatch had been stolen from Harry, and three weeks after the attack on B Company. Harry thought back to the night, and the angry sky, and seeing Glenison’s body folded and broken at the bottom of that hole torn out of the earth. He had held the broken form as the last shaky breaths had faded, and when Glenison finally died, he had carried the body back through the metal hail and the streaks of hot, dangerous silver raining from the German encampment. He had not stopped walking until he had reached Captain McAllister’s cabin. The captain had stared in shock at Harry’s bloodied, beaten face as he had lain what was left of Glenison at McAllister’s feet, then collapsed.
It was a week later that the pocketwatch had disappeared. Glenison’s pocketwatch, with the pictures of his wife and two sons cut carefully to fit in the case. Harry didn’t understand – didn’t they want the family to have something, anything, to tell them that there had been a man on that battlefield, a man who loved them dearly and died thinking of them? It was two days later that Garkin caught him thinking and laughed a short, bitter laugh. Garkin’s watery, vapid eyes cleared, if only for a second, as he told Harry,
“After we’re gone, we’re gone. Little trinkets and such isn’t going to fix things. It’s never going to be fixed.”
Garkin had hummed and muttered back into his customary silence, leaving Harry angry and afraid. Two days after that, Garkin himself had died, shot by a sniper through a sagging gap in the sandbags above a dugout. His eyes had cleared one last time, and then Garkin was gone as well. It had been a little over a week since McAllister had had the crumpled husk that used to be Private C. Garkin buried. Harry was hunched over the maps that the captain had given him to decipher – scribbling notes at certain points with a stub pencil. His thoughts were hollow, gripped by that empty feeling we are endowed with when our mind is damaged by so much at once. Stupidly, the circles that ran through his mind kept coming back to Glenison’s pocketwatch. He thought about his own pocketwatch, given to him by a dying father. His thumb ran over the cold metal of the watch-ring, skipping about the dial at the side. He was glad that his watch didn’t contain pictures… somehow, his inheritance was worth less than Glenison’s simple, cheap brass affair – and Harry didn’t want to think about why.
Calaveth:
I'd like something with ninjas, crocodiles and stock brokers. Pretty please.
ZJGent:
--- Quote from: Calaveth on 03 Mar 2008, 02:56 ---Blue Foxglove
--- End quote ---
Kiyohime smiled and her smile was a serpent - thin and dangerous and evil in an old-fashioned way that is hard to reproduce. As she sat counting The Priest's cocaine-rich US dollars, she heard the man himself dying horrifically in the enormous water-tank behind her. The Priest's crocodile collection was the stuff of legend, and now said crocodiles were making him history. Kiyo giggled inwardly at her own joke, and continued counting the money. It had been a hard year, earning The Priest's respect and squirming her way into his outfit, officially billed as 'company stockbroker'. The reality had been a few sweaty, uncomfortable encounters in early May, before The Priest (or Joe Anchin, as his fake U.S. passport stated) had started feeling guilty for cheating on his wife. The rest had been almost easy. Slaughtering several of the Priest's generals, blaming the few living remainders. By late september the entire army upper echelon were on Kiyo's bankroll and riding high. She fed them cash and cocaine and they loved her for it. And now there was this. Again Kiyo giggled; out loud this time - after all, there was no-one to hear her. Or...
The Stockbroker went as sharp as a knife in an instant. There had been a sound to her left, away from the crocodile tank. Kiyo's two sai jumped from her belt just as a katana swept from the shadows towards her neck. The metallic tang of blade on blade filled the air; you could taste it. Whomever hid beneath that all-black garb had evidently calculated the truth from circumstance... almost as quick as Kiyo herself.
"You can't win, you realise. Any of my generals are a telephone call away... not that I'll need to make that call."
The figure in black stayed silent, parrying and lunging with a concentrated excellence. Kiyo was impressed. The black-clad shape again parried Kiyo's short, stabbing lunges, vaulting from column to column in the close, tense room with practised ease. It was only then that Kiyo noticed the ruffling around the chestplate of her attacker's armour that appeared with every leap and bend.
"So you're female? That makes things more... interesting."
Kiyohime treated her opponent to that same dragon smile she had enjoyed alone earlier. What could it hurt? It would be the last smile this little harlot ever saw.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version