#futdrabble

[futsin]

Drabble: burnt umber

The impact of that iron fist knocked the wind right out of me, making a joke of my kevlar vest and the years at the gym building my abs. My knees buckled instinctively and I dropped to the dirt, unable to keep from breathing in the swirling dust blowing around us. The wind was picking up and the storm was getting closer. The mean bastard who’d done this to me laughed and I heard the distortion of his false larnyx made of silicon. Blood filled my ears and tears swelled in my eyes, letting me know I’d emotionally lost this bout as much as my body had.

How did he move so damn fast? It was as if his feet skated in a blinding light across the uneven rocks of the ridge, like maglev technology on the damn ground, and he was on me before I even had the clasp of my holster off. Bastard. Damn bastard. Now he was walking back, crunching steps that shook his exo-suit, giving me the indignity of mercy. He’d won and he wanted me to know it before he killed me.

The storm gave a mighty thunderclap and the dust swirled in the sunset, surrounding us entirely. I hated this planet and did not intend on dying here. If the outlaw wanted to give me mercy, I thought I might as well make him regret that decision. With what the fellas on the station like to call gusto.

[futsin]

Drabble: explode

The shrill voice of the barista tears across the tiled floors and jumbles in the rafters above the cafe’s seating area, like a .22 bullet through a mobster’s noggin. It rips my head and my ears cry. Getting tenser, I think. The tightness of my coat and the symbols of pain seared into my flesh continue to burn, as I feel the darkness inviting itself into our world. I’m no longer a person, but a throbbing organ of flesh that waits for its purpose to be fulfilled. But my last gaze is to the room and the lives I’m about to end.

First the old geezers to my right, thick accents from parts unknown and laden with New York English, their jovial concert of voices from old friendship reunited. The hissing lisp of rich white women to the left and behind, judgmental garbage coming out of their Botox treated faces and the jangle of jewelry on their hands. Clicking of college students on their computers, some interns talking with them about what the future holds. A future they won’t see.

I can hear over it all, the clattering plates and silverware, the shrill voice calls out an order, and my coat tightens from the vacuum of the sigils in my body sucking in air. The darkness’s will can no longer be denied.

My body explodes, like a bomber, in first a tight clap of flesh and cloth, before I’m turned inside out and the gruesome splatter of my guts cover the floor, and blood soaks everyone. There’s shock, first, that my dying brain can hear. And my soul merged with my master can know the fear and horror that comes in a long series of screams, as the beast is released from the Other Side. It uses my flesh for weapons, bones sticking out of intestines as makeshift flails, slashing into the victims. The old geezers are ripped apart by what’s left of my arms clawing them. The women get flayed alive. And the college students are sucked in by my lungs, suffocating their cries for help.

The only one left is the shrill barista, screaming. But she’ll be consumed soon, too. No one escapes. Not when someone explodes.

[futsin]

Drabble: the saber

On the edge of a rim lay a series of ten asteroids cobbled together by some rich Imperial kid with too much money and too much pull, who then turned the collection into a mini solar system. After a few years, the ship whose tractor beams were keeping them suddenly died and the threads were broken, sending the planetoids off into the distance. One landed on a collision course with a moon made of stone and impacted in an explosion which in turn offset the orbit of the moon around its own parent planet. The planet isn’t the point, rather what the meaning of impact unsetting the moon, and specifically what it revealed.

A small deposit of khyber laid in the crater, a vein that one day a desperate and maniacal man snatched. He mined it till it was just enough to forge a light saber, the first one made in the system since before Order 66. When he first activated it, however, it was pointed the wrong way and put a hole in his head. That’s how the tale of the curse began.

[futsin]

Drabble: ashenfall

Once again, the behemoth stomped across the landscape that no longer resembled rolling hills of green. Fierce heat poured from its stomach as it breathed might gulps of coal and bone that were fed through chutes that encircled the head of the beast. Its stone body shifted in tectonic rumbles with each step, shuffling its occupants in the rhythm that had swaddled them since birth. The feeders gave thanks to the almighty living world they existed in, happy to see it return to its circuit around the world, to consume and to burn that which had not yet been purified by the grace of combustion consumption.

Felken watched his mother’s body stripped of the flesh and tended to the remains she left behind, sending them to the feeding tubes for the livestock. She had passed peacefully from the smoke of calling, that killed silently in the night, and beckoned the feeders to sacrifice. They gave their lowly flesh to feed the machine that had birthed them from its hot core, recycled into it so it may grow their children and grandchildren.

This was the fate of things in the world after and would be until the end, the nearing end. Felken’s heart beat in steady rhythm as he spun the wheel of the splitter, its ironwork blades and the thick hooks making work of the woman who had raised him. He attempted to find peace in the matter at hand and in the ritual, but he could not shake the sickly taste in his mind. This was not how things, were they truly? Yet the wheel turned and his mother died fully, not just from the deathly gas that had been pumped into their room, but from will of the almighty behemoth.

It was a will that Felken questioned for the first time in his life.

[futsin]

Drabble/Horror Prompt: Doors Into?

Prompt from @castlerook

When the door slammed again, Ellen did not scream. She had given up after the fifth night, where bloody footprints led to the door, the knob twisted, and the oak had been swung a hard left and nearly broke the hinges. It had become routine each night, near 12 o’clock, that the door would shut and she would be locked inside. The footprints were black now, as if the blood from whatever specter had locked her in this house had started to turn. As if the ghost had some semblance of corporeal physicality and still rotted even in its undead after-life. There was no use screaming anymore, her brain could hear the slam echoing in memory, and it sounded as if the ghost screamed for her instead.

At first, she waited for daybreak and then go for the front door, only to find it also had been locked. Not shut and locked in the same fashion as her bedroom door, but as if the hinges and latch had fused to create a continuous block, the hole gone and the walls of the house contiguous. The windows had become stained by something, the glass thickened and the frame’s edges conjoining as the doors had. More rooms would be lost as the days progressed and she wondered that night if it was even possible to leave the house. Locked in, with her phone no longer allowed outside access. She hadn’t even gotten the internet installed in the house yet. In a future world of technology, Ellen was lost in a tomb of old wood and brick and concrete. Trapped with something inside along with her, whose intentions were unclear and seemed to thicken the air with a chill stagnant air.

As she had done the past few nights, she remained in her bed, under the covers. Two weeks by her count, now. The food she had stolen away into the room after the third night was growing scarce. Bits of crumpets were left and the jar of almond butter was empty. The box of bottled water would last maybe another night. She was too afraid, even when the cloudy skies bore through the musty windows, to seriously consider another run to the kitchen. The last time, she had felt something grabbing her and slowing her steps. She heard whispering in her ear and the sound of something far worse in the distance. The words were, “You can’t leave.” Over and over, a broken scratchy record of a spirit’s last words. Better to not move at all than to try and prove an aggressive spirit right or wrong, Ellen thought.

She wondered if it had been the woman who lived in this house, that the realtor had been so cagey about. Her dad had read up on the place when Ellen was first looking into it and wanted to make sure his little girl settled into some place safe, with no “history of evil” to it. When he found out about the elderly woman, a mother of three who took her life with a twelve-gauge, he immediately demanded Ellen bring it up to the realtor, see if the rites had been done to purify the old creaking place. The realtor dodged the question, brushing it off as superstition but saying some protections were installed by the last tenant. Ellen thought it’d be good enough for her father. On that night, the 13th so far, she clutched the blankets tighter and counted in her mind the steps it would take to get a glass of water the next morning, she wondered if it would have ever mattered. And then she waited.

The morning never came. The alarm on her nightstand went off as always, 7:35am, and there was no dawn light. She munched on a crumpet piece, waited for the sun to rise. Two hours and nothing; yet the clock still ticked onward. She pulled the duvet off and looked at her floor. The wet footprints had faded into the hardwood floors as they always did. As soon as the soles of her feet felt the cold surface beneath, she heard the whisper in her ear, but new words came forth and younger. “It’s stronger now.” She stopped and released an automatic vocal response. “What?” She clapped a hand on her mouth, terrified the ghost was now inside the room with her and intended harm. But what came was a feminine softness. “I can’t stop it anymore. I’m so sorry.” Ellen couldn’t control the shaking, fatigue and hunger having already laid waste to her body. She slowly pulled her fingers away from her lips and asked, “What is it?” And the voice responded, “Something I died trying to stop.” It was closer now and Ellen felt arms embracing her, pressure visible on her flesh.

“Don’t open the door,” the voice whispered quieter than before. Ellen stared at the barrier that had kept her trapped in the room for almost two weeks. A new understanding at the dread she felt in its proximity dawned and in the silence of the room, she could practically hear her hairs standing on end. In the dim light from the lamp in the corner of the room, the door seemed to shift in abject directions. Distortion of matter and space is what she thought it looked-no, felt like. As if things were tearing into the world, that the door was no longer able to bar entry into this room, into this world. At that realization, Ellen reached up and felt for the ghost’s arms around her and held tight. She silently thanked the woman who had tried to keep the beast at bay. And then watched through half-shut eyes when the door tore apart and the beast between worlds bore itself into our world.

[futsin]

Drabble: Incomplete Ballad

Tinn strained hard, clenching his teeth, feeling the bite of the ropes in his hands. He pulled as best he could, the fibers starting to crackle. No, he thought, it was going to break. He would lose the barrel, lose the gems inside, and they would be scattered below for grubby little goblins to find and covet. Then he’d be broke, in further debt to Zarkand, and would have to go running to the next country over. Wait, he was already wanted in that country, too. He’d have to go to the next country after that. Curses. The barrel was stuffed to the gills, to the point that any bit of moonlight that poured through the caverns caused it to shine and give off a kaleidoscope across the cave walls. With another heave, Tinn was able to pull the barrel higher and it caught one of these moonbeams, shining in his face. He winced, shut his eyes, pulled harder. No snags, aye, maybe there as luck still left in this adventure. A few more feet. Almost there. The shine went away, good sign. He was about to be out of debt and into the happy times. It was the cry that made Tinn open his eyes. A screech that was too damned joyful. He gasped and across the chasm, on the opposite side and just a few feet higher than he, were two goblins. One a pale blue and the other a fierce red. The blue one had made the sound, for its eyes were twinkling with the inner magic all goblins seemed to have in these mountains, and looking straight at the barrel he was lifting up. The red goblin as looking directly into Tinn’s gaze. Oh, great, he thought, perfect ending to this damn tale. He could almost hear the ballad that troublesome bard would tell, about how Tinn was dragged under and made a good splat on the rocks, each and every single one, in Tchai’s Cave. Was it worth it? He had to think fast. The blue one was almost ready to jump on the barrel. The red one licked its lips. Well, at least his corpse wouldn’t be wasted. Realizing that he’d better learn the dialect of whatever country was two over from the Yarghun Mountains and get himself some summer clothing to replace the coats he’d stocked up on, Tinn made a snap decision. The barrel was released, the rope cutting at his gloves and whipping his legs as it went down. Gravel spat up from behind him with the speed. And he heard the breaking of the barrel below, the chimes of the gems and jewels collapsing and striking each other in a cacophonous dance. Tinn sighed relief. The goblins turned their heads down and leaped into the chasm, climbing its rough walls with clawed hands and feet. It would have been majestic if it weren’t for their monster wing-wangs flapping everywhere as the did so. They disappeared and screeched happily at the glorious treasures they could now amass at the expense of Tinn’s labor and his two weeks spent in this pit of cold and coarseness. Collecting what tools he still had on him, he checked to make sure there as still enough rope to climb out the way he’d come in. Part of him wondered if an alternative route wouldn’t be a bad idea, but that would lead him to the Saltfrost Lake, which, sure, eventually hit a hot spring. From freezing to death to roasting into Tinn soup… the ballad of the gems wold have been a better fate. With pack ready and slung over his shoulder, Tinn adjusted his leather Kobold-hide cap and trekked back towards the entrance to Tchai’s Cave, poorer than he entered, hungrier than he’d ever been, and about ready to be a wanted man the rest of his life.

[futsin]

Drabble: Held

The sheet on the couch gets tangled as we shuffle closer. It feels odd, being almost on top of you, leaning, but there's a pull in how you ball fists on my shirt, drawing me closer. I wrap my arms around you, feeling the lavender sweater you're wearing tickle the skin on my forearms, and your long hair tangles in mine, colors blending together. I hear your breath close, primal, and mine is just the same. Something raw and physical, but not sexual. It's so warm. Soothing. Can't remember how we got here. We were watching tv together, unable to sleep. You had wanted me to stay or maybe you're in my place, but it feels good here. I love you. And I tell you, pulling a little sigh from your body. "I'm so tired," you say, and it's true, we're exhausted, from a long day so far away ago that I can't remember anymore if it was one long afternoon or many rolled into one. We both call for sleep but as nothing else has worked, here we are, snuggling right like cats, the floral print sheet wrapping around us awkwardly and my shoes still on and your belt digging into my belly, and it's so... "I love this," I say. "Why?" You ask. "Almost every night when I go to bed, I want to roll over and hold you, just like this." You laugh a little, exasperated maybe. You're so much more tired and beyond drained than me. But when we just let our bodies hold on, embracing, tender and free of shame... It starts to beckon me, too. The fatigue becomes a blanket over me and us both. Slowly we roll, bit by bit, until it's more snug and comfy on the couch, and our heads aren't going to rest terribly. I can still hear the tv blaring colors and cartoons at us just before my breath slows and I drift. And in my dreams, I hear you say I love you.

[futsin]

BluePrint Drabble: y0ung_31i_dr34m5

The sun wandered further towards some other place past the horizon, illuminating another part of the world and abandoning the city Eli resided in and leaving him to the night that could kill or consume him. He watched it go, though it was a mirage amongst garbage. The screens at Xavi's monitor shop were another commercialism nightmare, packed with advertising and shows that were secret advertising, but in the middle of it - there was a camera's view of the upper city. And once every sunny day, you could see the sun that was practically invisible in Gutter Town, a glimpse of a life no one there could have. Eli planned his weeks in summer around it, but in autumn he got rare glimpses like this one. It made the clouds into a wonderful array of colors that felt somehow more legitimate than the dyes and pixels that populated the alleys of Gutter Town. Eli thought he could tell the difference. He felt somewhere above the the worlds of cables, scaffoldings, and concrete splashed in paint.... Somewhere there was reality. Real meatspace, not just the version he existed in. It was the dream of something more, a place that most in the gutter didn't believe in anymore, and his mother had chided him immensely for such fancy. At last the glimmering dot was past Kyrietech Tower and night had come to the world above as well as the world below. The environment lights on the buildings, powered by ReDynamics, changed their hue and brightness, and speakers chimed to indicate that the night had begun. Eli stared at the feed on the monitor for a little longer... then threw his hood back over his face and walked away. He reached under the hoodie's collar and felt for a glowing blue button, hitting it with his thumb and sending the illuminated visor down over his face. It looked ridiculous, people said, but Eli knew better. It was cool, hiding his face with a glowing mask only he could see through, made of a mesh that reflected light from an LED fixture above his forehead. He was a real cyberpunk, with a dream of a better tomorrow and the skills to take down somebody big. He ignored the snickering shop keepers that he passed by in their cart units on Water Ave. They didn't understand the biz like he did and tonight was his biggest yet. Dominic DieHard would pay him big bucks for a hack that would rip apart Gutter Town's branch of WellsFarg and then he'd finally get an in with one of the major groups, freelance no more and he'd never have to go back home to the druggie mom that made him want memory erasure more than anything. Yeah, Eli thought, I'm gonna get free. Tonight. He passed the threshold into Pinky, the best club for getting your teeth knocked in by either the bouncer or the drinks. That same bouncer gave Eli a smirk at his glowing visage of aqua-blue, like he was just another script kiddie. Before Eli could process that expression, he heard Dominic across the room shout, "Yo, Meatsy! You're late!" Eli crossed over at the sound of his code name, not his choice but it made sense, and greeted the man with glinting teeth and wearing the most insanely colored faux-snakeskin jacket with purple base and a sheen that reflected way too many clashing colors under the lights in the club. He took Eli's hand with his own prosthetic one, a decent replica of a ReDynamics T-48, and shook vigorously. "You ready to start some shit, boy?" Eli felt for the thumb stick in his pocket. Yeah, he was ready. Dominic led him back to the restrooms and making sure no non-regulars were around, popped the secret door for the "back room" open. Eli ducked his head when he passed under the sliding door, as if the vertical lock would give and it'd crush him suddenly. Dominic chuckled. The back room was the sort of thing that could either be for storage, torture, or planning. Today, it looked like all three. The left wall had stacks of boxes, likely empty, with labels for other countries and QR codes that Eli recognized as shipping destinations. The back wall had blood and a crimson baseball bat leaning against it. The center had a table, three decks, and two more guys that Eli recognized from around town. Dominic crossed to the circular table of plastic-painted-granite and sat at the last available table. Eli avoided a few splatters of blood on the far right wall and settled into a nook in the shadows, letting his blue glow linger. One of the other two guys snickered at him, but Dominic slapped his arm with the T-48 hand, getting a groan and the guy to shut up. "All right, we here," Dominic said. "Mr. Meatsy has our stuff and he ready. You good on the coordinations, Mr. Selfie?" Eli stifled laughter as Mr. Selfie was obviously the name of the big guy who hadn't snickered, but who had the vain appearance of a pop star, skin either painted daily or dyed permanently in homage to some movie or cultural icon from the 21st century. He looked ridiculous. But the big guy with the painted face, Mr. Selfie, nodded and baritoned, "Yeh. We ready." Dominic DieHard turned to the snickering idiot. "How bout chu, Mr. Snickers?" And Eli grit his teeth to resist laughing then. But Mr. Snickers frowned at his new name. "Man, that's fucking cold." Dominic glared, as if to press the initial question. Snickers frowned. "I'm good." Dominic grabbed the first deck, a sleek purple-lined black rectangular thing with built in keyboard and holoscreen. When he flicked it on, the thing started shimmering and the purple was a light that shifted colors. Chameleon shades again. He pulled the data jack out of it, extending the cable to his neck and plugging it in through the slot in his custom jacket and into the port in his flesh. Snickers pulled his deck, which mimicked the appearance of the spaceship Dover, and repeated the power-on and data jacking gesture, placing his jack into the port on his chest. Selfie was last, and when he had his port on his arm slotted, he looked up at Eli. "Coming, Meatsy?" And so Eli pulled the thumb stick from his pocket and walked to the table, extending it to Selfie, when Dominic stopped him and grabbed his hand, prying it open and placing a opal-shaped thing. Rubberized and dark gray, with two covered needles and a USBX port on the outer side. "Plans changed. We need you in the drop. I'll lead you in, but you gotta run the script yourself. On the inside." Eli nearly shook with panic but kept his cool. He hadn't done it before, and somehow he figured Dominic knew this. It was that moment of heightened senses that he realized the smell of blood was recent. They'd killed the guy who was supposed to run the script, whatever stupid nickname he'd been given, and now it was down to him. They didn't want the risk. And from the look in the glazing violet eyes of Dominic DieHard, a man you did not screw, it was, "do it or we'll make you," and so Eli took the divepod, and the cable that Dominic gave him. "Chair?" Eli asked. Snickers once more snickered. "You on the floor, unless you want the wet one." It was a harder decision than he thought, but he sat down on the floor with the extended cable, plugging it into the pod and then his thumb stick into that. He pulled the plastic off the needles, able to practically smell the metal and sedatives on them that would help send his body into the dreamlike state between waking and dream, and guide him to piggyback into cyberspace. It was now or never. And as never likely meant his body scrapped for organic parts in some fucked up part of town, he figured now. Eli popped the pod behind his head and slammed it into his neck, sending him collapsing to the floor. But his mind found a new world and a dream far bigger than the primal desire to see the sunlight.