DuoCenti

Innocent Phrases

2009-10-23T16:10:00.001-07:00

Amanda stood at the water cooler, filling up her mug for the fourth time that morning. She smiled and waved when Amit walked in.

"Hey, how's it going? You look a little sad."

"Eh; I'm alive." Amit shrugged.

Then stopped.

Everyone looked at Count Strahd, who moments ago had been trying to get the vending machine to accept a crumpled dollar bill. Now he stood, livid, glaring at Amit.

"That's it! I'm sick of this discrimination crap!" Strahd's pale finger shook with rage, clawed nails pointing straight at Amit's forehead.

"Hey, man, I'm sorry... I didn't mean it like that."

"Whatever, man! I don't need to take this anymore! 'Hey guys, let's all go outside, it's nice and sunny.' 'Hey guys, there's extra garlic bread in the kitchen.'" Strahd's tirade was strange to watch, his shouts not accompanied by the heavy breathing you'd normally associate with them. "I'm going to HR!"

The Mushroom Fairies

2008-08-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

Peck the mushroom fairy stared in horror at the chunk of his house he held in his hand. He hadn't meant to tear it off; it just happened. He was about to throw it away in disgust, when he remembered what other animals did to the mushroom houses. Tentatively, he took a bite.

Then another.

"My house is delicious!"

*

Peck picked up the piece of bark with the day's news and tried to act surprised at the headline: MUSHROOM CANNIBAL CONTINUES TO TERRORIZE.

"Terrible, isn't it?" Fung, Peck's neighbor, shook his head in disgust. "It says they think it's one of our own… these mushrooms are part of our souls, everyone knows that! What a monster!"

*

Peck's eyes, glazed with fear and pain, glared at the drop before him. He and his bound hands dangled from a spider thread below a pine branch.

"Just tell us why, Peck!" The lynch mob was yelling angrily, but the magistrate's voice carried.

Peck spat out his wings, which had been torn off and stuffed into his mouth.

"We're delicious!"

The last thing the crowd heard was his mad giggles as he followed his wings into the darkness.

Bonus: Glimpses and Moments

2008-08-05T09:37:00.001-07:00

“There’s hard bargains, and then there’s this Captain…”

“I could lose my life taking you to Heartford, friend. Besides…” the captain, secure in his safety with four burly members of his crew arranged behind him, leaned forward as if to confide in Nate, “I’m sure that the noble gold in your purse would barely miss this amount.”

So that was it. Nate sighed, he hadn’t thought it was obvious. The wyrm had been very surreptitious, but he guessed it showed anyway.

“Fine.”

“Fine. You pay my price, and I won’t ask what a Dragon Tamer wants with the Tinker academy.”

Nate sighed, nodded, and wandered back into the depths of the Etherium mine. The walls glowed a faint blue from raw Etherium poking through the surface, and gave a soft glow to this otherwise hard place.

Now they had transportation, the only remaining trick was going to be surviving the mine’s inhabitants until tomorrow when they’d depart. Normally he’d be more confident about that, but as he rounded the corner to where Kaylee and the wyrm were supposed to be waiting he found another problem.

“Greetings Nate.” The wyrm gave Nate a sheepish smile, and was noticeably alone.

Supermarket

2008-08-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

The MegaMart seemed like an ideal place to hole up when the inevitable* zombie apocalypse started. Few exits, plenty of supplies… given that most modern buildings were not created with defense of the undead in mind, they didn't think it was going to get any better.

Two weeks later, Carl sat in the dark with a clothespin over his nose in the middle of the canned aisle. When the produce began to rot, they'd retreated to the deli. When the meat spoiled and the bread mould was starting to look sentient, they tried the cash registers. When the smell of rotting undead and the sound of slavering zombies became unbearable, the canned aisle was their last hope.

"Alright… more olive oil anyone?"

"Ugh… it's not sitting well with that can of hot chocolate I ate."

"Why can't we have more canned fruit?"

"Look, you don't know how long we'll be here… we need to conserve the nutritional stuff."

"Next time the world ends, we go to a twinky factory…"

"Agreed."

---------
*Edit: Obviously it is the "inevitable" zombie apocalypse... what was I thinking?

The Song

2008-07-31T22:50:00.000-07:00

Cyan lounged naked in front of the open window. She knew that many of the occupants of the neighbouring highrise had telescopes trained on her apartment for just this reason, but at 2am with a cool night breeze blowing she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Her cell phone, lying forgotten on the kitchen counter behind her, started to jump. It played the first three bars of Fur Elise. Cyan was up and running on the first note, and was launching herself into a frantic dive when it exploded. Most of the contents of her apartment went flaming into the night, smashing the window on their way by.

In the settling dust of the aftermath, Cyan stood up calmly and coughed. She brushed the blood from several scrapes that flying tile left on her arms and chest, and glanced down at the shattered screen of her cell, which was conveniently lying by her feet.

Burned into the plastic was the name ‘Tom’.

“So. That’s how he wants to play it.”

Going Green

2008-07-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

The protestors on TV stood in a solid row in front of the Great Ohio Wind Farm. It stretched for 1700 square miles, powering most of the Eastern seaboard; 3000 people were not even visible from a distance. Their signs had slogans like "Save the Birds!" "Go Green, Use Oil" and "Seagulls are Your Friends Too!".

"So tell us, why are you taking on Big Wind now?" Trying desperately to keep her hair from blowing, the reporter held out the mic to the protestor.

"We're just here to tell companies like Greenco that we're not going to take their shenanigans anymore!" The protestor pumped her fist in the air. Over the noise of the wind, the chorus of 'yeah!'s was barely audible. "They can't just destroy the planet like this anymore… Ohio used to be useful farmland, and a major corridor for migratory birds of all types. Now it's a Wind Wasteland, torn up to support this wind farm which kills over a thousand birds an hour!"

"Horrible…"

"Besides, I'm sick of all these frogs rooting through my garbage and clogging my driveway! I say: bring back oil and deal with this amphibian problem!"

Bonus: Glimpses and Moments

2008-07-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

The Etherium mine loomed ahead of them. A separate island from the one on which they travelled, its surface was stripped to the bare rock. Golden chains tethered it to smaller chunks of floating rock, which seemed to be holding the larger mass up.

“What?” Kaylee had no idea what to make of it.

“It’s an Etherium mine. It used to be a floating island like this one, but they declared it a mine and began stripping the Etherium out of it.”

“Umm… what’s Etherium?”

“It’s life for clockwork. It powers our horses, the airships… and we think it’s why these islands don’t sink into the haze. That’s why they need the floaters to keep the mine from disappearing.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway…” Nate didn’t ask why she had no idea about the basic stuff of Tinkering, but had been given a map and invitation to Heartford. “Stick close to me… most of the miners are desperate men, but we should be able to rent an airship here that can take us to Heartford.”

“Why can’t we take a commercial one?”

“The nobles would have the head of any legitimate captain who even flew near Heartford…”

Offices and Operating Systems

2008-07-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

Cypher finished reading through his O&O handbook, to make sure he was right about the rule, then grinned and set it down in front of him.

"With my +1 to coding, I finish my work an hour ahead of time! And with my Meritocracy feat, that means my level 7 Software Engineer gets to go home today!"

"Very good." The game master smiled, but it wasn't a kind smile. He had his own Offices and Operating Systems book out and was leafing through it. "As you leave your office, you see your boss coming."

"Crap!" Cypher looked around at the others at the table. "You guys have to help me! Frost, you're in HR."

"Sorry Cy… the forms you need take five business turns to file."

"Too late. Your boss arrives and," the GM rolled some dice, "assigns you another 5 hours worth of work."

"Reflex save!"

"Oh, I'm sorry Cy. And it looks like you're officially Burned Out. I guess it's time to start putting points into your Resume skill…"

The Cleaner

2008-07-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

"Taking a life is easy." To demonstrate, Carl drove the screwdriver through Nathan's spine. Carl didn't know why Nathan was supposed to die, and he didn't really care.

"Getting away with it? That's the hard part."

Carl laughed to himself and shoved the corpse with his foot, rolling it onto its back. Nathan's eyes, bruised and bloodied from days of rough treatment before Carl got there, looked up… almost relieved? Carl didn't really care.

Instead, he went to his toolkit to get a sledgehammer. "There are all these details… dental records? Fingerprints? And for scum like you, I would bet they've even got your DNA." He rifled through viles of acid and explosives before finding what he needed.

“You see, if they don’t even know who you are? It’s very hard to connect the two of us.”

"But don't worry." Carl grinned, hefting the sledgehammer and considering the amount of force he'd need to make Nathan's dental records useless. "They don't call me The Cleaner because I'm good at dusting. Although..." Carl swung the hammer up. "I do keep a clean house." And then down.

Wibbly Press Interview

2008-07-26T12:21:00.003-07:00

Grace over at Wibbly Press is doing interviews with web-serial authors, and I got to participate! I love her work, so this is a great honour for me!

http://wibblypress.net/?p=250

Nothing Friday

2008-07-24T22:35:00.002-07:00

Going hiking in the mountains, so nothing Friday. Expect a Monday double feature :)

Nobles

2008-07-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

“You went in the house!?” Lord Birkley made a disgusted face at the puddle on the floor. Even from several feet away it was obvious what happened there. “That’s what the servants do!”

“I… I… I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it!” Prince Einhorn hung his head, trying his best to look contrite.

“Clearly.” Birkley sniffed derisively and walked away, waiting for the servants to come and see what happened so they could clean it up.

“Babies! Chow!” The female servant’s voice broke through Einhorn’s shame, and caused both of the nobles to wag their tails furiously. Completely forgetting the prince’s behavior they burst into a sprint, racing each other to the food bowls.

Bonus: Glimpses

2008-07-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Nate poked listlessly at the fire, pretending to tend to it while he watched Kaylee out of the corner of his eye. Yesterday she was a helpless girl with a mysterious past and an impossible quest. Today? Well, ‘mysterious’ might more accurately be called ‘dangerous’ now.

He was also trying hard not to look at the fresh graves nearby. Despite his protests that noble soldiers deserved what they got, she’d forced a stop to bury the dead.

“Well, girly, you’re just full of surprises.” Nate’s wyrm, not entirely happy, came back after oiling and turning off the horses.

“I’d think you would be grateful.” Kaylee looked up from the fire with fierce eyes. “I saved you.”

“That may be… but the way you saved us? Kashing!” The wyrm made a slicing motion across his throat. “That even scared me.”

“I don’t see that it changes anything.”

“No… no, you’re right, you still know where my mate is… but why do you need us?”

Kaylee shrugged, looking back at the fire and watching Nate’s stick poke it. “I’m not sure… just a feeling I guess.”

“Girly…” The wyrm sighed expansively, “… I suppose for now that’s enough. For now.”

Colours

2008-07-21T15:29:00.001-07:00

Vicious grey pierced.

Slick red fountained. Spread. Covered grey, spoiled white. Dripped. Turned to black.

White paused. Waivered. Twisted. Fell.

Painter fled, before flashing blue arrived.

Love in This Club

2008-07-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Boy meets girl. Boy smiles, girl giggles. Boy flashes the expensive Rolex on his wrist, girl swoons. Boy asks girl to dance.

Later, as the lights are dimming and boy is holding girl in his arms, stroking her hair and kissing the tip of her ear while they watch the passerby, boy asks whether girl would like to come home with him. Girl smiles and looks up, a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her lips.

"Why don't we just make love right here?"

Boy's eyes open in surprise, and he looks around at the room. It's getting late and people are starting to leave, but it's still pretty crowded. He feels his testicles retreat a little at the thought.

"…"

"Ah, I thought not… you bluster and pose, but you don't really know what you want." Girl laughs, shrugs boy's arm off, and disappears into the semi-darkness of the club.

Boy stares into the music, wondering if he just missed something magical or dodged a bullet.

Trench Warfare

2008-07-16T10:25:00.001-07:00

Trench warfare was hardest on the elves. Their fair skin and delicate bone structure did not lend itself well to lying for days in the mud with basically nothing to eat. The orcs on the other hand, not being afraid to eat shrapnel or fallen enemies, flourished. In the last days of the war, it was widely believed that the orcs were main driving force that kept both sides going.

"A coordinated advance here, here and here might just put enough pressure on them to break through…"

"Yes, sir… that might work." Skyler gave the general a worried look. "But…"

"But nothing, it will work. We can take their first line of trenches, at least."

"But the treaty… it's been signed, and the cease fire is next week."

"And?"

"It just… you know… it seems like a huge waste, to throw their lives away like this for a simple ten yards."

The general turned lavender eyes on Skyler. Unlike the troops, elven officers tended to flourish on the intellectual challenge of strategy… still, these eyes felt… hollow somehow.

"What the Hell do you think we've been doing for the past three years?"

Bonus: Glimpses

2008-07-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Noble soldiers?" Nate held up his hand, signaling Kaylee to stop before they entered the square. Everywhere else bodies were burnt or skeletons: long dead. These were fresh.

"What?" Kaylee poked her head around Nate's broad shoulders in time to see pieces of brass shifting and moving at the other end of the square.

"It's a trap!" Nate spun, moving faster than she'd ever seen him. He gracefully dodged around Kaylee, then grabbed her hand and pulled her down the scorched cobbles. "Run!"

Kaylee ran.

"What's this? My great protector frightened?"

Nate didn't respond, sparing only a sarcastic look before raising his voice.
"Wyrm! Turn on the horses! We need to be gone! Now!"

Behind, the sounds of clockwork feet meeting cobbles were getting closer. Nate might be a fast runner, but magic and ingenuity were faster. Kaylee calculated the distance they had left, then how close the clockwork were. They wouldn't make it.

"No!"

Kaylee spun, wrenching her hand from Nate's hard enough that he stopped too. He turned around in time to see her throw three whisper thin discs at the clockworks. The air hummed with their passage. The clockwork soldiers fell to the ground in lifeless heaps

The Murloc's Family

2008-07-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

Mrgurlargl smiled and pulled the blanket up on little Armgrgl's sleeping body. Today was Armgrgl's first successful hunt, and the whole family had been up celebrating. It was just a tiny albacore, but still, it meant that their littlest member was growing up and it was a time for joy.

This late in the evening, Mrgurlargl was the only one still awake. The others were curled around the campfire, full of wine and food and sleeping soundly. He couldn't sleep, though, he was too proud, too excited to sleep.

"Die murloc filth!" Loldude247's assault was swift. His sword sang death even as his shouts roused the sleeping family.

Armgrgl was the first, his small spine split by the glittering blade. Mrgurlargl caught the second blow on the side of his head. Dazed, snarling in pain, his claws found flesh and he knew sweet revenge for a moment. With his eye glazed with blood, he didn't see the fireball until it was too late and his burnt skin started peeling from his body.

For a painful stretch of time, the only sound that came from the camp was the hacking and sawing of bone.

"How u doin?"

"One's [small murloc head]. Need 3 more [murloc head]s. lol. Green quests r so eazee."

Barking at Children

2008-07-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

Charlie stood his ground, knee deep in the grass of the dog park, watching the miniature schnauzer bark at him. The yelps and whoofs echoed around and over him, barely causing him to blink in surprise. Just over four years old, Charlie was surprisingly brave in the face of such a loud little dog.

"Hey! No barking! Come here, you… come on, be quiet." The dog's owner ran over after voice commands stopped working. Smiling sheepishly at Charlie, she picked the little dog up. Undaunted, the schnauzer continued to bark.

"I'm sorry." The schnauzer's owner smiled at Charlie's mom, who was watching the commotion with wide eyes. "He's just got a big mouth. Mostly he barks at children." The owner smiled and leaned in lowered her voice conspiratorially, making it nearly impossible to hear over the dog. "My theory is he thinks they have no soul."

Charlie's mom just smiled, and watched as the owner dragged the dog away from Charlie. As they walked away, she smoothed her long sleeves down over arms covered in freshly healed burns.

Conference Hall

2008-07-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Taylor was finding it harder and harder to stay awake during the presentation. He knew he should… knew he must… but somehow he couldn't quite find the will. Between the droning presenter, the uncomfortably warm air and the haze creeping in along the edges of his mind, he felt his head dipping farther every time.

A vague smile came over him as he finally just surrendered: let the warm embrace of sleep surround and cover him. With the darkness came the dreams. Dreams of monsters… creatures and things rampaging through the conference hall, tearing apart tables and people, scattering limbs and cutlery with the same abandon.

The screaming woke him up.

"No!" Taylor shook his head… he hadn't fallen asleep, had he? He couldn't have… he was better than that.

The nightmare beast currently destroying the stage proved him otherwise. Shaking his head, he started screaming too and bolted from the room, pretending like he was just another frightened member of the crowd.

On the dropping of balls

2008-07-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

So I just realized that for the past few weeks I haven't been categorizing my Glimpses posts correctly, leading people to possibly think I'm not updating regularly. Oops!

Also, I'm finding a number of bugs in the layout I'm using... which is sad :( I like the layout, but may have to get rid of it.

Bonus: Glimpses

2008-07-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

They found the village two days down the road after leaving the city. It would, at one time, have been the first sign of civilization for miles. Now, though, it was a collection of smouldering ruins and bloated corpses. Kaylee made a face and turned away, trying hard not to look at it.

“What did this?”

“Automatons, probably.” Nate spurred his bronze horse into the middle of the mess, shaking his head. “They’re getting bolder.”

“Clockworks? But I thought… you know… they were just machines?”

“Yes, most clockworks are just machines.” Nate looked up from the wreckage, surprise written on his face that Kaylee didn’t know this. “Automatons were created by the oldest of the Master Tinkers… and claim they were given minds, souls, will.’
“But, we… I mean the nobles refused to acknowledge it. We kept treating them like slaves, and now it’s come to this.”

“Oh.” Kaylee heaved a sigh, settling for just closing her eyes as they wended their way between shattered buildings. “So they’re… evil now?”

“I guess. Mostly they’re just desperate and out of options.”

Kaylee nodded. When the other two weren’t looking, she nervously wrung her gloved hands.

Monday Double Feature

2008-07-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

So I missed Friday on account of it being July 4th and all... so there's 2 for Monday! Yay!

Bath

2008-07-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

The white noise of water pouring into a bathtub filled up the bathroom. Frank was humming to himself, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, with two fingers dangling lazily in the water. The temperature was just right… not too hot, but so close that you might not be able to tell the difference.

Satisfied that the bath was going well, he shook the water off his fingers and went back to popping bullets into the clip. This was a really great money saving technique, but the waste of time? Frank’s humming was occasionally mixed with a mutter or a swear, expressing his displeasure to the world and the clip in particular.

“Is it done yet?” The voice from the other room was followed by Sarah’s appearance.
Frank shrugged and switched the water off. He tried to keep the grimace off his face when she stepped in, the blood and dirt caking her skin immediately turning the water a disturbing swirl of pink and brown.

“I’ll draw your bath and load your gun, but that’s it Sarah. I can’t keep doing this…”

“Fine.”

“I mean, it’s just… wait, fine?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” He’d been hoping for more of a fight.

Funny Words

2008-07-06T22:39:00.001-07:00

“Do you know what's a funny word?"

"No, but I have a feeling you're going to tell me." Charles' feet dangled over the concrete edge into the darkness. Smoke from his cigarette curled lazily, dangling up into the dark overhead.

"Cistern."

"Cistern's a funny word…?"

"Sure, I mean, it sounds a little like sister, but it doesn't really have anything at all to do with a sister, does it?"

"No, it doesn't… what are you trying to do?"

"What?"

"This making conversation… are you trying to be friends, or make me like you or something?" Charles turned a smoke-covered glare at the man sitting beside him. Like Charles, the man dangled over the edge of the concrete, staring at the pillar of darkness. Unlike Charles, it was the man's torso that dangled, currently only supported by Charles' hand on his belt.

"What? No, I'd never dream of it. I mean, you know, maybe we could get to know each other… have some beers at a ball game or something?"

"I don't drink with dead men." Charles gave a shrug. It was kind of a policy he had.

Then he let go.