I'm thinking again about Mary's role as an unreliable narrator.
A quick recap, since I haven't discussed this project in a while: Mary is a teenage girl whose family runs a rural Midwestern motel. She investigates various paranormal/supernatural phenomena with her cousin Ben, and details their "adventures", for lack of a better word, on her blog.
Anyway, I'm thinking I'd like to add just a twinge of arrogance to the way Mary writes. At the outset, she's coming from a sheltered suburban existence, and openly admits that this paranormal stuff is all new to her...but I think it would be interesting if she let her newfound knowledge go to her head fairly quickly, and began writing as if she viewed herself as an "expert". I need to find a way to hint to the reader that the conclusions Mary draws, while usually fairly solid, aren't always a 100% accurate picture of events.
I'd suggest a character (doesn't have to be around here all the time) that may be a bit more experienced than her and corrects her from time to time (much to her chagrin, if she's going to go through a period of thinking she knows everything).
If you want to stop and bring her down to earth, you could always have her draw a conclusion that's not so solid and almost gets her or someone she cares about injured or killed (or actually do one of those things depending on how dark the theme is or how hard you want to hit with the idea that she's not as experienced as she likes to believe).
There is a saying, passed down through countless generations of the dwarfs who live on the rocky southern peninsula of The Tail. It is said that if you are to commit any sin, do so there, for in The Tail your only judge will be the wan light of the two moons.
Few roads run through the tail, and the few watchmen who would patrol it were generally too lazy or too immoral to pursue a criminal. Civilization was sparse. No one would ever know.
It was the dead of night and the normally parched dirt of The Tail was made a thick mire by an unexpected storm that had flown in from the east. The tempest’s clouds had covered the moons, allowing only the light of an occasional bolt of lightning to illuminate the drenched plains.
Hroldi Pikes drew his cloak over his head and bore on through the rain. He wore a stately soldier’s uniform in addition to the worn, ragged coat. The uniform and cloak were not his; his clothes were lying discarded in the mud a mile back, near the naked corpse of the unlucky soldier who’d made the mistake of recognizing Hroldi’s face from a wanted poster and attempting to trail him. Hroldi was a swaggering brute whose cruelty and pettiness were only matched by his stupidity. Hroldi never had second thoughts. He would always blindly seek whatever he thought would benefit him the most, going through anything that got in the way of his shortsighted goals in the most straightforward manner possible, with no regard for the consequences of his actions. He was also extraordinarily lucky. Without any sort of plan, he would break into a mansion and find that its occupants were on vacation and hadn’t taken their possessions with them. Or he would be hanged on the gallows only for the rope to break as soon as the trapdoor opened. On one occasion, he was sentenced to a beheading, but the headsman stumbled as he swung his axe and severed Hroldi’s bonds rather than his head.
As rain and thunder roared around him, Hroldi considered his need for shelter. He scanned the horizon, look for a cave or overhang of some sort. Lightning flashed and an unnatural looking shadow caught Hroldi’s eye.
He squinted his eyes and tried to make out what it was. Lightning flashed once more and it became apparent to Hroldi what the shape in the distance was: a small farmer’s shack. He made his way to it.
He walked to the doorstep and banged his fist on the door. A few seconds passed and the door opened, revealing a squat old dwarf with a snow-white, chest-length beard. His eyes were closed.
“Hullo?” croaked the old man. “Who is this?”
Hroldi puffed out his chest and tried to affect the demeanor of a soldier. “Joric Milford, infantry of the thirty-third legion,” he said, reading off the name he found in the uniform. “I demand you quarter me for the night.”
The old dwarf straightened his back as much as he could and flashed Hroldi a grin. “Certainly, sir!” the old man said, leading Hroldi into the pitch-dark shack. Hroldi couldn’t see anything, but heard the old man shuffling through shelves. Hroldi heard a match being struck and the room filled with flickering light as the old man lit a lantern.
“I don’t have much need for the light, unless I have visitors.” He opened his eyes. They were a dull grey color. The old man set the lamp on a lopsided, splintering table in the center of the shack.
“I don’t have much in the way of food, except for some potatoes,” he said, setting a plate down on the end of the table near Hroldi. Hroldi scoffed and sat at the table, and started shoveling the potatoes into his throat. “ I wish I had more to give you legionairre, but I sold the rest to the inn nearby.”
“Inn? What inn?” asked Hroldi, cursing himself for staying at some rickety shed when there was an inn a short distance away.
“Cliff’s Edge Lodge, run by an elvish lady, Avana. It’s upriver, across a gorge.”
“River?” asked Hroldi. He hadn’t seen a river when he entered.
“This house is right next to where the river feeds into an underground cavern. It waters the plants.” As the old man explained this, he put his left hand on the table, and for the first time Hroldi noticed the ring on the old man’s finger. It was gold and set with brilliant gemstones of various colors, far from the simple iron wedding band most poor farmers would have. Hroldi almost salivated.
This is part of a story that I'm submitting to a writing competition. Will post more when I transcribe the rest.
“Where’d you get that ring?” asked Hroldi, almost unable to hide his greed.
“The wife was from a rich family. Gave it all up to live with me,” the old man said, wiping an eye. “Lost her ten years ago. Lost my eyesight soon after. Guess I couldn’t bear looking at an empty house anymore,” he said, with a bitter chuckle. “But enough of that. A bright young legionnaire like yourself doesn’t need his head filled with the sob stories of old men.”
“Yes indeed,” said Hroldi with an avaricious smile that the old man couldn’t see.
***
An hour passed, the old dwarf excused himself to go to bed, and soon after Hroldi sped out of the shack with the ring hidden in his boot.
“Upriver, across the gorge,” he thought, running next to the river with torrents of rain pouring around him. “Get to the inn, stay for a night, then sell the ring.” Hroldi was exuberant, bursting with newfound energy. Once he sold this ring he’d be set for life. He ran as fast as he could, never stopping, never slowing down.
He followed the river for five minutes before he saw the gorge. The clouds broke and the light of the moons shone on his goal. Past an old wooden bridge lay a ramshackle inn. Hroldi smirked and for the first time since he left the old man’s house slowed down to a walk. He peered down the gorge and felt his stomach lurch. It was a long drop, with sharp rocks at the bottom.
Hroldi swallowed hard and made his way to the bridge, which was looking older and more unstable the closer he got to it. He stood between the two wooden posts and took his first step on the bridge and felt the wood crack beneath his feet. The plank crumbled and he felt his foot fall through thin air.
He fell face first onto the bridge, one leg still in the mud and the other dangling over the gorge. Owing, Hroldi presumed, to his extraordinary luck, only the first plank broke. He grabbed the ropes to his sides and hoisted himself up.
Hroldi never considered that it might be prudent to walk carefully, nor did it cross his mind that the rain might make it hard to see gaps in the bridge. As soon as he was upright he charged headlong to his goal: the single moonlit patch where the inn stood. When he reached the other side, it never occurred to him that it was a miracle he stepped over every gap and loose step. He walked to the door of the inn.
***
It is said if you are to commit a sin, commit it on The Tail. But it’s an old saying, warped by the passage of time and the fallibility of its propagators. Hundreds of years before Hroldi’s time, it was said that if a sin were to be committed, hope that it was committed in The Tail. For there the only judge is the wan light of the two moons, the eyes of God Himself, and that is the harshest and fairest judge of them all.
Hroldi’s charred corpse was found by the innkeeper the following morning. It was lying just on the inn’s doorstep. After the initial surprise of finding a dead body subsided, it occurred to the innkeeper what must have happened for the body to have been roasted in the midst of a rainstorm.
“Poor sod was struck by lightning,” thought Avana the innkeeper, closing the door to keep out the smell.
As for telling rather than showing, I'm doing that for a few reasons:
there's a 1500 word limit.
certain aspects of his character can't be adequately expressed without outright stating them, at least within the context of this particular story.
the long spiel about his luck has to be there because of the implied divine intervention at the end is supposed to provide an ironic counterpoint to what is said of him at the beginning.
I'm sure I told a bit more than what was necessary, but I feel like some telling is necessary.
I can do all of that in fewer words, as can you.
Like so.
Hroldi Pikes drew his cloak over his head and bore on through the rain. He wore a stately soldier’s uniform in addition to the worn, ragged coat. The uniform and cloak were not his; his clothes were lying discarded in the mud a mile back, near the naked corpse of the unlucky soldier who’d made the mistake of recognizing Hroldi’s face from a wanted poster and attempting to trail him. Hroldi was a swaggering brute whose cruelty and pettiness were only matched by his stupidity. Hroldi never had second thoughts. He would always blindly seek whatever he thought would benefit him the most, going through anything that got in the way of his shortsighted goals in the most straightforward manner possible, with no regard for the consequences of his actions. He was also extraordinarily lucky. Without any sort of plan, he would break into a mansion and find that its occupants were on vacation and hadn’t taken their possessions with them. Or he would be hanged on the gallows only for the rope to break as soon as the trapdoor opened. On one occasion, he was sentenced to a beheading, but the headsman stumbled as he swung his axe and severed Hroldi’s bonds rather than his head.
...becomes...
Hroldi Pikes drew his cloak over his head and bore on through the rain. He wore a stately soldier’s uniform in addition to the worn, ragged coat. The uniform and cloak were not his; his own clothes lay discarded in the mud a mile back, near the naked corpse of the soldier who had the misfortune of recognizing Hroldi’s face from a wanted poster and had attempted to trail him
Hroldi never had second thoughts, either of himself or others; with his luck, he did not need them. He could break into a mansion on a whim and find that its occupants were on vacation and had left all of their valuables behind; or if apprehended, he might be taken to the gallows only for the rope to break as soon as the trapdoor opened. On one occasion, he was sentenced to beheading, but the axeman stumbled and severed Hroldi’s bonds rather than his neck.
I thought you were telling me that I needed to have him do something to demonstrate his personality, rather than providing examples of what he's done. That's why I might've seemed a bit defensive.
Thanks for going to all the effort to fix it, by the way.
I think that his actions already speak to his unpleasant nature; it's just a matter of letting them speak for themselves. Not saying he's a lunk-headed lout, but presenting how he thinks and acts and letting them come to that conclusion.
De nada, señor. I like taking the knife to writing.
The rain spilled from the gutters as the Orca sipped his sake. Poor weather for anyone else, especially this late at night, but a nice change of pace for him. The sushi bar was almost empty; even the regulars were out sleeping in their warm beds. Every couple of minutes, he saw the flash of headlights at the window: the only signs that anyone else was awake besides him, the staff, and...well...
"Hey! Stop dozing off, Panda! We haven't even gotten our food yet!" said the Shark, her eyes flashing with mischief. "If you fall asleep, I'm taking your nigri and making you pay both of our bills." The Orca slowly turned from the window, regarding the Shark with a slight smile.
"Hmm? I thought letting the guy pay for the dinner was supposed to be archaic."
"Well, only an archaic savage would ignore his dining partner for a window." They both grinned at each other, the tension broken.
It was their first meeting in weeks. The local aquarium had the Orca performing more and more often, as he was popular with the children. The Shark, likewise, had gotten a role as a stunt shark for Deadly Waters, one of the various Sealife Terror films trying to make a buck off of the recent influx. They barely had time to schedule a date, much less go to one.
"So, how's the filming going?' said the Orca. The Shark narrowed her eyes.
"Those hacks! They had me do a scene over a dozen times because my performance didn't seem 'authentic' enough to them. Like they'd know how to tear a man's arm off with nothing but their teeth!"
The Shark suddenly put her fins together and stared angrily into the wall. The Orca got the feeling that the Shark knew exactly how to tear a man's arm off with her teeth.
The Orca heard a small cough next to them. The waiter, a young merman with drooping eyes, waited patiently by the table, carring two plates of nigri. The Orca takes the plates from him, reminding himself to give a large tip. Merpeople had it better than the rest of the seafolk, but not by much. After all, he was working the graveyard shift.
"How old do you think he is, Grey?" whispered the Orca. The Shark snapped back into the conversation.
"Who?"
"The waiter, the one who brought us our food." The Shark, just realizing that their food had arrived, quickly dug into her plate.
"Probably eighteen or nineteen" she muttered between bites. "Maybe sixteen."
"He's too young, don't you think? I'm worried about the merfolk. The ones at the aquarium look as young as he does, and they work longer hours than me." The Shark paused, looking as if she found a fly in the sushi.
"...Not exactly the best stuff to talk about on a date, Panda." The Orca blushed and stared down into his food. They both picked at their food in silence.
"Look, Panda, it's not like it's going to last forever. The humans know that we run the seas. They piss us off, we lock down the seas and they lose their fish. They'll give us equality or we'll take it."
"And if it comes to that, what then? The people who need the seas to live aren't the same people making the laws. Innocent people would go broke and starve to death."
There's this idea that's been running around in my head.
There's this guy. This shady guy. Rumors that he runs with a bad crowd. Like, a bad, bad crowd. Black magic type and whatnot.
His trade goes as so: Your satisfaction at the cost of another's.
You go to him in the dead of night. He takes you into a dark room. He makes some pretty lights, splashes you with some crazy potion, and then you fall asleep.
You wake up. Might be a few hours, might be a few weeks. Stuck in a closet, or lost in the woods somewhere. Blood on your hands or on your clothes. Not your blood. You wander around until you find your car. Something's in the trunk. A machete, bloodstained. A golf club. Sometimes a suspicious burlap sack. You toss everything and drive away.
You get home and, eventually, you realize that something has changed. You can now play the piano, just like your mother always wanted. Or you got a promotion at your job. Or you have enough money to pay rent this semester. Or you have a date with that cute cashier at Starbucks.
The news reports on some mysterious disappearances lately. You turn off the TV.
I like the premise, but I don't know how to make it compelling without using a viewpoint character, and I feel like that would limit the scope of things.
here's this guy. This shady guy. Rumors that he runs with a bad crowd. Like, a bad, bad crowd. Black magic type and whatnot.
His trade goes as so: Your satisfaction at the cost of another's.
You go to him in the dead of night. He takes you into a dark room. He makes some pretty lights, splashes you with some crazy potion, and then you fall asleep.
You wake up. Might be a few hours, might be a few weeks. Stuck in a closet, or lost in the woods somewhere. Blood on your hands or on your clothes. Not your blood. You wander around until you find your car. Something's in the trunk. A machete, bloodstained. A golf club. Sometimes a suspicious burlap sack. You toss everything and drive away.
You get home and, eventually, you realize that something has changed. You can now play the piano, just like your mother always wanted. Or you got a promotion at your job. Or you have enough money to pay rent this semester. Or you have a date with that cute cashier at Starbucks.
The news reports on some mysterious disappearances lately. You turn off the TV.
i think you could do it in a style almost like you have done here. make it a super short story?
idk maybe it is a silly idea but that text itself that i have quoted compelled me
A mile in the air flies a ship of copper, clockwork, and steam, sailing the sky in a predetermined path, its only cargo being five persons of great wealth who had elected to spend the voyage’s duration in a frozen sleep. The airship’s destination was a small Atlantic island housing the mansion of the eccentric billionaire and business mogul Nicholas Harrisonborough, who’d invited the five to his residence for a meeting, as they all had stock in his particular enterprise. The ship had a pilot, who, owing to the fact that an airship’s course was permanently set from its creation with the only room for variation being when the ship landed to refuel, mainly served to send and receive messages in the captain’s cabin and manage the passengers’ cold sleep pods. A few hours after setting off, the captain was told, for reasons unknown, to land at a refueling station as soon as possible.
The captain was a man of slight stature that sharply contrasted the deep lines, thick brown mustache, and square jaw that adorned his face. His logbook (of which only one page, with the message EMERGENCY/LAND/IMMEDIATELY/AT/NEAREST/STATION and neat rows of dots and dashes, was immediately visible.) lay on his lap as he sat and stared out the lone window of his cabin on the starboard side. Then, at the first sight of a speck on the horizon, he began adjusting various buttons and levers and felt the ship slowly begin to land.
* * *
Beatrice Thurman awoke, choking on water. She hacked and coughed for a few moments, and when she felt the water leave her throat began to take in her surroundings. She was lying horizontally on a wet grate in a small, white, oblong chamber. Inches from her face was the chamber’s ceiling, with a wheel labelled “OPEN” and a small, nearly opaque, frosted window. The interior was damp and cold and quite uncomfortable. Though there was little space for her arms to move, she reached up, turned the wheel and almost immediately felt the top open and was met with a rush of hot, humid air. Beatrice sat up and examined the area she was in. She was at the far end of a rectangular room in the center of a semicircle of open pods similar to the one she awoke in. It was a reddish-brown room, its walls and ceiling criss-crossed with copper pipes that occasionally let out blasts of thick, white steam. The floor was heavy grating through which could be seen a complex network of gears, pipes, and pistons. Beatrice hoisted herself out of the pod and made her way to the open end of the semicircle.
“Why,” she thought to herself, “did the cold sleep pods stop working in the middle of the flight?” She stepped through the doorway and into a cramped, poorly-lit hall and followed the path for a few moments before finding herself in an octagonal room where the hallway branched off in several directions. The leftmost hallway had a sign indicating it led to the captain’s cabin, so she headed towards it. She walked through passages for a little while, and noticed the space was gradually widening. Before, she had to keep her arms at her side due to the wall’s narrowness, but now the space could easily accommodate a second person beside her. It eventually gave way to a triangular chamber, and at the end of it lay the heavy brass door to the captain’s cabin. Beatrice reached towards the doorknob, but jerked back her arm and jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned on her heel and stared into the face of a large, bearded, man. He had a grandfatherly air about him, but seemed weighed doewn with something of great gravity at the moment. His broad shoulders were slumped and his blue eyes were downcast.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said, sadly. “But I doubt you want to go in there. The captain has been killed.”
The launch of an airship was a rare and interesting sight, so it would usually attract a large crowd of people from the area surrounding the launch site. This occasion was no exception. Flocks of people crowded around the roped-off enclosure holding five people and a grounded airship.
Beatrice Thurman sat on her suitcase a short distance away from the other four people. She had no idea how to talk to the rich. The week before she had received a massive inheritance check from an uncle she barely knew and a ticket for an airship to Nicholas Harrissonborough island; she had no experience being wealthy. So she simply sat and observed. Two people: a large, bearded old man and a powerfully built black man, a bit younger than the other, were genially conversing.
“So,” said the upbeat old man, “d’ye hear who all is coming to Harrisonborough’s island?”
“I can’t say I have,” said the other, with an air of inquisitiveness.
“All sorts of folk. Entertainers, authors, politicians. What kind of shareholders’ meeting is this?” the old man said.
The other smirked and lit a cigar. “You don’t say? Seems we’re in for an interesting time.”
At this, an entrance to the airship opened and out stepped the captain, to the roaring applause of the gathered crowd. When the applause died down, he cupped his hands around his mouth and began to call out.
“All passengers! The Merry Alice is now boarding!”
***
“My name is Albert Wallace,” said the old man, removing his hand from Beatrice’s shoulder. “Two of our company are investigating the captains cabin right now.” He also motioned to a corner of the room where a woman, previously unseen by Beatrice, was huddled. “Catherine preferred to stay out here, and I thought I should stay out here with her. Considering the circumstances, I don’t believe being alone is wise.” Catherine gave a weak nod. Beatrice was silent.
A few moments passed and the cabin door was thrown open. A frustrated-looking woman stormed out followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man.
“Erika Eklund and Silas Jenkins,” Albert mumbled to Beatrice, indicating the two who had just entered.
“I see she’s finally woken up,” Erika said brusquely. “Glad you could join us,” she continued, turning to face Albert and only giving a slight glance in Catherine’s direction. “We barely found anything,” she said.
“We’d have found more if she’d have shut up,” said Silas with a glare. “We spent the entire time arguing about if we should investigate the body.” Erika pursed her lips.
“If you want to put your hands all over a fresh corpse, go right ahead,” she said. “But not with me in there.” She stormed off into the hallway. Albert jumped and frantically ran off in her direction.
“Erika, wait!” he shouted after her. “It’s dangerous to go alone!” Only Beatrice, Silas, and Catherine remained.
“What I wonder is why she’d elect to go in there if she was so afraid of a dead body.” Silas said, thinking aloud, “Not that I blame her, but why go investigate if you don’t want the body touched?” Neither Catherine nor Beatrice responded, and no one spoke for a while afterwards.
“Are you going back in?” Beatrice asked Silas, finally breaking the silence.
“Give me a bit; I’m still reeling from the smell,” Silas said. A few seconds of more silence passed. He sighed and headed to the door. Beatrice started to go with him, but he waved her off.
“We shouldn’t leave Catherine alone. Either the killer’s still around and she’d be in danger, or she is the killer and we need to keep an eye on her.” He said. “Stay back. I’ll go in alone.” Catherine mumbled something and lifted up her head. Beatrice knelt beside her.
“What was that?” Beatrice asked softly.
“I’ll go with you,” Catherine said quietly. She stood up and gave a wan smile. “It’s scarier being alone out here than with others in there, I suppose.” Catherine steeled herself, and seeing this Beatrice did likewise, and they all entered the cabin.
You had a plan. You had a home, a job, a couple of friends. Enough for life to make sense from one day to another. And then the company closes. You're two months behind on rent, and your friends don't come over anymore because they can't stand seeing you like this. You go to sleep scared and wake up covered in sweat. You wonder how long you can take the stress.
You had a choice. You could stand firm. Get your life together, day by day, until life's worth living again. Or you could take the subway down to 60th Street on a Thursday night, wait until the station closes at midnight, duck into the tunnels when no one's looking, crawl until you find a hatch in the floor, lower yourself down the ladder. You could get a meeting with Mr. Sulfur.
No one called Mr. Sulfur that to his face, and people saw his face often. Every day, he appears at the subway station at 40th, in a crisp black suit and a strange, smoky aroma. He orders coffee at the nearest Starbucks, seats himself at an occupied table and talks. He talks with businessmen, students, workers on break. He talks with that faint smell of rotten eggs lingering on him. One way or another, he convinces them to tell him their troubles, their worries, their secret fears. And then he excuse himself, leaving a plain-looking business card: Luke A. Finney; Look for the hatch at 60th; Problems Solved.
You find yourself in a fairly nice office, given the location. All the usual trappings of a private practice: cushy chairs, fake potted plants, the works. You find Mr. Sulfur behind a mahogany desk, tossing a stress ball in the air or idly toying with a Newton's cradle. You explain to him exactly what was wrong in your life, in as much detail as possible; he takes notes in a dark red notebook. In the end, he would agree to help you. You shake on it. That's the last thing that you remember.
You wake up. You're out on the outskirts of town, in a thicket of trees. Head aches a bit, and your hand's bandaged, and something's stained your shirt. You pull yourself out and find your car on the side of a nearby road, gas tank half-empty. You drive back into town, in a daze.
You finally get back home, toss your clothes in the wash and take a shower. Computer says you've been gone for about a night. When you get out of the shower, you charge your phone and check your messages. One's from a company, telling you that you qualify for a job you never applied for. The other's from an old friend, offering to help you pay your rent. You breathe freely now, for the first time in ages.
Few weeks later, there's an accident on the road. An axle's snapped, a tire's popped and you buy another subway token. This time, you wake up in a closet. More stains, and a cut on your arm. You kick your way out of the closet. You're in an abandoned house in the bad part of town. You stumble out to the curb and find your car, completely refurbished, a pair of fuzzy dice on the mirror.
You head to work the next day and realize you've been out for a week. You tell everyone that you were sick. After a few hours of lying through your teeth, you actually do feel sick. You go to the break room and grab some food. Radio's set to the news: wildfires increasing, a missing person report, war in another country. You switch it to the local jazz station. Try and relax a bit.
Your mother calls. Turns out the lump had metasized and she's not sure how much longer she has. Token. Tunnel. Hatch. You talk a bit before you get started. Mr. Sulfur refuses to explain his methods. His business, his rules. You don't have a choice, you think. You never had a choice, you think.
This time, you wake up in an alley. The usual cut, stains less dry than usual. You try not to run this time. Stay for a while, dig around, check the corners. You find a door with a broken lock, open it, peek in. Another abandoned house. Stains on the floor, same as on your shirt. Blood, you think. You wonder why it took you so long to to find that word. You follow the trail into the house, find another door, open it. You find a plastic bag, big, stained, reeking something awful. You run.
You get to your car, out on the curb again. You realize that you haven't used the trunk since the woods. You pry it open. A machete, a sledgehammer, a corkscrew, wrapped in stained plastic. A few more plastic bags. You dump the stuff in the alley and drive.
The next day, you don't show up to work. This makes it two weeks absence. Someone goes by your house to check on you. You're not there. Your car's not there.
You are still driving. You never stopped driving. Heading south on the interstate. Don't know when you're going to stop.
The car radio stops the music to report another missing person. You turn it off.
I liked it a lot. Compellingly written, strong concept, all that stuff.
Pretty obvious what was going on, but I feel like that made your story work a bit better. Maybe change the guy's name to something less Satan-y, though? Having him basically be named "Lucifer" comes off as more of a joke than need be, although to be fair I feel like having it be incredibly obvious as a spot of dark humor might work.
Ronald Cherrycoke Katje Borgesius Mike Fallopian Pig Bodine Tantivy Mucker-Maffick Herbert Stencil Milton Gloaming Oedipa Maas Nick De Profundus Richard Nixon
I liked it a lot. Compellingly written, strong concept, all that stuff.
Pretty obvious what was going on, but I feel like that made your story work a bit better. Maybe change the guy's name to something less Satan-y, though? Having him basically be named "Lucifer" comes off as more of a joke than need be, although to be fair I feel like having it be incredibly obvious as a spot of dark humor might work.
I kind of liked making it obvious.
Hmm.
There was an underlying metaphor running on this. The unnamed protagonist's increasing reliance on the shifty subway guy was supposed to have a secondary metaphor of addiction. Having to deal with a shifty guy, spending the next few days in a haze, and needing that to deal with stuff that goes wrong
Of course, that metaphor would work better if the protagonist kept going to Mr. Sulfur despite everything instead of running.
My plan is to get a reasonably large buffer of this kind of stuff and then start doing it regularly on a blog or something but have some stuff to fall back on. Here's a not-GoogleDocs version for you though:
There is a flower, known by the southern elves as the Ylverdale. Save for one quality, it is a beautiful sight to behold, blooming in a brilliant shade of violet that shimmers when the sunlight hits it, and would make a wonderful adornment to any bouquet or corsage, were it not for its one peculiar property. The ylverdale has never lain upon a maiden’s ear nor has it been offered as a token of love, as it has only been known to bloom from one location. Ylverdale is its proper name, but it is more commonly known as corpseweed.
***
Thris was a kappha, the round-eared race standing between the dwarfs and the elves in stature, generally occupying the land between the mountain range in the mainland’s center and the great bay on the far north. The kappha were an isolated race; their communities, while by no means humble, remained somewhat insular and all but the most cosmopolitan of kappha cities remained mostly untouched by elvish or dwarfish imperials. For this reason, the kappha had acquired a certain mystique to the short-round-eared and tall-tapered-eared races. Depictions of kappha varied greatly; from powerful diviners able to see years into the future and peer into the minds of others with the ease of peering into their own, to being primitive savages scarcely more intelligent than apes.
Latyai, the elvish landlord of the plantation where Thris worked, subscribed to the latter belief. He was unusually short for an elf, and stood shorter than most of the kappha he owned. Mostly unconsciously, then, he had taken to wearing high-heeled boots and only interacting with his slaves from the safety of his manor’s many balconies and conspicuously high porches and decks. As this usually placed him quite a distance from his workers, Latyai’s slaves were mostly strangers to the burn of the lash and intimately familiar to the sting of a sling’s stone. Latyai’s voice had also become strained and cracked as a result of this constant distance, and rarely spoke at a volume lesser than a scream or greater than a whisper.
Latyai was by no means a romantic, but was quite fond of power, and as such felt it suitable to take a wife, and was initially quite pleased with the prospect of children. So he had taken Olpheldi, a maiden a decade his junior, and within two years of their marriage fathered two girls: Absilla and Yvoldi. Latyai’s long held fantasy of having complete control over the development of two people was quickly quelled when faced with the simple logistics of actually raising two children, so faced with this problem Latyai instead retreated to the much more manageable fantasy of subjugating and controlling a group of fully-grown people and left his progeny to the care of his wife.
Thris was well-accustomed to a life of being owned, but never stayed with one owner for too long. This, she did not find terribly bothersome. Until coming to the Latyai ranch, all of her owners were elves and dwarfs on the very cusp of death, and she felt no sorrow at their passing. And as Thris was almost universally a newcomer, her owners rarely had time to make arrangements regarding her in their wills. While many kappha would become bound to family and friends and as such loathe the thought of moving, Thris formed no such bonds and so never felt dread at the idea of an owner’s demise.
Thris was brought into the Latyai ranch on the day of Absilla’s third birthday, and was quite irked to see that Latyai, while by no means young, was also several decades away from death.
“So this is the one I’ll be staying with,” she thought to herself, bading farewell to her previously transient lifestyle. Thris quickly settled into a small, obscure corner of the shack she was assigned to and went to great lengths to avoid the shack’s other six occupants, a feeling of willful apathy that the other slaves quickly grew to reciprocate.
Six years passed, and with neither the hope of a different setting nor any friends to rely on Thris became bitter, hardnosed, and nearly mute. The work she was given generally involved pulling weeds and often took her near the Latyai’s manor. As a result, she was a frequent subject of Latyai’s wrath and welts and bruises from his flung stones frequently adorned her back. One night, she was struck so many times that when night fell and she retired to her shack, she could barely lie down, as doing so would send searing flashes of pain every time the rough-spun rope hammock touched one of her sores. So she merely sat on the ground near her hammock, and for once began to listen in on the conversation of the other kappha.
The seven others were huddled in a circle around a small firepit dug into the shack’s dirt floor. One, a stout male with a fresh bruise on his lip, likely a result of Latyai’s sling, was apparently leading the conversation.
“Tho,” he said, with some difficulty “I heard the mathter talking today.”
Thris chuckled at the sound of the man’s voice, but suppressed it rather quickly. She was not so heartless as to laugh at such an injury.
“He thays to his daughter, the firtht time I heard him thpeak to her, that he feedth folkth from over a hundred mileth away.” A slave to his left, a slim, gangly woman, contorted her face.
“Hogwash. They’d need a hundred plantations and ten thousand slaves to feed that many people.” Another spoke up.
“Where does all of this go, then?”
“We mothtly feed the next town over.” said the kappha with the bruised lip.
“Do they know where the food comes from?” said Thris. The others stared at her for a moment, as if she was a dog that had suddenly shown that it could talk. After a brief silence, the one with the bruised lip spoke up.
“I’d prethume tho.”
“Then why do they eat it? Surely they know of how cruel Latyai is,” Thris said.
“Potatoeth are potatoeth, I gueth,” he said. “And I don’t thuppothe anyone careth where they come from jutht ath long ath they get fed.”
Thris was silent. She turned away from the others and tried once more to sleep.
like making fun of someone's accent or speech impediment
standard English isn't phonetic, even if you're speaking in a privileged dialect like Received Pronunciation pr General American, so rendering someone else's speech as phonetic ususally looks like you're taking the piss
i should add that in this instance it doesn't come off that way, since it's not really a speech impediment when it's just the result of a minor injury
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
VALIDATE ME.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
hence the misconstrued nonreference.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Katje Borgesius
Mike Fallopian
Pig Bodine
Tantivy Mucker-Maffick
Herbert Stencil
Milton Gloaming
Oedipa Maas
Nick De Profundus
Richard Nixon
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I feel like dragons will be involved at some point.
Keep up the good work is all I have to say, maybe the writers on here who are actual writers will have more input.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
phonetic rendering of speech tends to annoy me... feels elitist 9 times out of 10
standard English isn't phonetic, even if you're speaking in a privileged dialect like Received Pronunciation pr General American, so rendering someone else's speech as phonetic ususally looks like you're taking the piss
i should add that in this instance it doesn't come off that way, since it's not really a speech impediment when it's just the result of a minor injury
so like i said, personal preference