No way this ends bloodless

Exercises and experiments in writing

[oppressyrself-blog]

Nearly Three Years for me, producing this baby. Come fuck with us tomorrow night! (at Black Bear Lodge)

[falsejim]

There are stories about threes and circuses but I don’t know there’s one about rings? Actually I think mine has a ring hidden in it, between all the dick jokes.

[falsejim]

Quacking good time

One time Rob (my brother) and I were at a science fair in Queens. I think we just wanted to say we had been to Queens, and we heard they had bitchin paella. Anyway. One of the displays is a lady who wrote a bit of code which detects cussing as you type it and converts it, in real time, to say "quack." So the classic song would go, "shut your quacking face uncle quacker." I don't think she had a good pun name, so for the same of a story, let's call it "watch your ducking language." Rob calls me over to show me the set up. A terminal with the code is linked to a projector, and whatever you type is up for all to see. The crowd is mostly good American high school students and their parents. "So I can just cuss out the whole room through this?" "It's very comprehensive," says the duck censor. "And all they'll see is quacks." I've got some experience with product development, and I know how important stress-testing can be, so I dial things straight to fourteen-year-olds-in-the-rowing-sheds eleven. I type fast, so it's a matter of seconds before the prudish duck programmer yanks the keyboard from me. She pounds the delete key, but for those brief seconds, everyone in the hall is told to; "you cuntrags wouldn't know a quack from a quack of they blew a load your queefing cunt-quack arse." "I really didn't prepare for that kind of profanity," says the quack controller. "And I guess it needs to account for different spellings of ass." And I turn red and mumble an apology and scurry away to Rob, who is beside himself laughing and I mutter something about "not calibrated for Australian." He's laughing, he says, because he just did exactly the same thing. "But without as much colour. "I stuck with the classics. I might be a cunt, but at least I'm not a quacking cunt." And the paella was quack.

[falsejim]

Slouched toward death as so many do

The last woman on earth watched the sky change colour. The sun was dying.

By the time it swelled the others had left, gone to Andromeda, or beyond, for all anyone knew. Those who remained stepped off the physical plane watched as the last woman made her home ready for the arrival of the sun.

[falsejim]

Everyone woke up with thingy, you know

“Who am I?” the woman gripped the man’s tie as she sank to the sidewalk.

“Who am I?” he said to the empty sky, letting her slip to the paved ground.

“Who am I?” begged the police officer, passing in his squad car. He peddled the accelerator hard and careened into a McDonalds, which exploded.

[falsejim]

She wants the dinosaur foot in hand

“The foot of the Megaladon-” the captain said.

“Egad, it’s gone missing? We lost an enormous foot?”

The captain blinked, “No, Officer Kitten, I…”

“What a jape, I shall find the missing foot!” Officer Kitten bounded from his chair. Some fluff blew by the door. “A clue!”

“This police-kitten program may be a mistake.”

[falsejim]

Correct medical terminology can sometimes seem insensitive

“Dan,” Therese said. She rubbed her temples. “Dan, Dan, Dan…”

“What are you doing?”

“Sticking your new name in my brain. Hey, you know your…”

The silence got uncomfortable.

“Ambiguous genitalia?”

“Is that term cool?”

Dan shrugged.

“It sounds cool. Like, ‘here be dragons’.”

Dan didn’t speak to her the rest of the day.

[falsejim]

The good choice or the right choice

“Take the pill,” said the woman with the gun, “or the bullet. But choose soon. Else I shall make your choice for you.”

Shannon drew a shuddering breath. She picked up the capsule, placed it on her tongue and swallowed.

The woman dropped her gun and cackled.

“I licked that! You ate my spit, euugggghh!”

[falsejim]

Know where the bodies will be buried

The lieutenant squeezed the bridge of her nose. “We can’t make an arrest. She hasn’t broken any laws. Not yet.”

Yvonne shook her head. “Has she made a threat?”

“No, it’s got to be specific.” The lieutenant waved at the statement. “’One day I’m gonna kill every motherfucker’ doesn’t count.”

[falsejim]

Some secrets just will not stay buried

There was a knock.

Hold it together, Celeste thought. Nobody knows you killed them.

She arranged her hair, checked her nails for blood, and opened the door.

There was nobody on the step.

Another knock.

Celeste turned around.

It was coming from the cellar door.

[falsejim]

And by morning we could be free

"Do you think they ever hit one of the buildings?"

Ana put down the cheese knife and looked out across the town. "Who did?"

"With the guns, I mean. When they fired the guns."

"I do not think they have been fired," Ana said. She looked down at the old artillery, plugged and spiked but still standing sentinel along the fortress walls. Children ran between them while their father asked them, not for the first time, to come down off the grassy slope. "We would have learned about it. There would be a memorial or something."

Therese sipped some beer. "It is a good place for the guns, though. You can see all the way across the water that way, to the mountains out there..."

"Do you think someone will invade?"

Therese giggled and threw a bottle cap at Ana. "And if they do?"

"Why we will fight them off." Ana took up the bottle cap from the picnic blanket and thought of throwing it back. "Hundreds would die but we would be safe behind our walls."

It was, they agreed, a bad day for an invasion, anyway.

[falsejim]

Sacred blood oath

The lady from upstairs swore an oath on the sword of her ancestors to kill everyone responsible for buses not turning up.

I've got nothing planned for the weekend, I thought I'd tag along, make some notes, maybe compose a song to immortalize her. You keen? Help me find my pants and let's go.

[falsejim]

do you think I can lift

this thing

above my head?

[falsejim]

disappearing from public

damage, and loss

suffering

and armadillos

can take years to begin to develop

  One of the big questions

declined so dramatically

  One possibility is that

detectives

often too short

can use much smaller

results much faster.

  Collecting more samples from

around the world

quite slowly

just one piece of the

puzzle. These techniques can

answer other questions like

the armadillos

or if the animals had their own

to begin with

        (Original piece here)

[falsejim]

the necessarily mean part

history, the idea of a

fiction and some rare

recent years

one among

The string

we ended up in

homogeneous

small—small enough

small and even, with only random

clusters and dark

results of the

audience.

killed his previous ideas,

singing the praises of

a "failed theory."

a tiny fraction of a second

from one point to another.

doesn't need to explain

doesn't need to explain

The problem

on a three-dimensional fabric

perpetually spawning

in order to create

the entire output

expanding fast enough

there is no possible way to ever reach anything

deal with any consequences

any oddities

another vexing question:

If these had the wrong values,

you must be doing something wrong.

you have to deal with the fact

we're all doing

with the best

we have.

Original text here

[falsejim]

Stories using the first line prompts I gave my class (part 2)

I knew I was in trouble when I was covered in cranberry sauce. With my hands tied there was little I could do to stop her and, as part of the arrangement, I was gagged. There was nothing to do but lay back and think of England. When she finished she cleaned her mouth out and grinned at me, her face marked with splotches of conserve. She removed the bit and bridle and said, well? What did you think? Because I thought it was a touch weird at first but I got into it. Yes I noticed, I said. I rather enjoyed that improvisation with the walking stick at the end. Though I still think chocolate is the traditional choice.

[falsejim]

Stories using the first line prompts I gave my class

It was past midnight when the flaming tiger passed me. Damn, I said. Miriam looked up from her work. Hm? I nodded to the tiger, which was racing toward the slot machines. People fled from it, and it became a place of calm in the chaos which raged on the casino's floor. Pretty fucked up, Miriam said. She went back to working the safe. Who sets a tiger on fire? That wasn't part of the plan. The smell of burning fur crept through the security cage and made me hold my nose. As heists go, I said, this has been one long fuckup.

[falsejim]

Changing room

Is it really the best time to do this? Sirens wailed nearby. An ambulance tore past the end of the alley. It’s flashing lights threw shadows about the damp brick walls. Kaitlyn shrank against the dumpster. It took her a moment to adjust to the dim light from the neon signs in the street. Someone will see us, she said. Rick grunted. His whole body trembled and he clenched his teeth. His shoulders broke free of the oily brown scales. Flakes glittered like snowflakes as they sloughed off him. They fluttered and fell into his discarded clothes. This isn't easy, he said. His voice was like a wet cloth worked across stone. It's not something I'm choosing to do. Kaitlyn was about to apologise when Rick loosed a long moan and his arms came free of his old skin. Rough brown patches had stuck to his hands but the skin underneath was slick, bright blue with black striations. A car passed and the headlights gave a moment of rolling brightness. Kaitlyn's boyfriend was the colour of the sky.