Downing Station

It’s been far too long since I’ve participated in a 500 Club writing prompt. The writing’s clunky, and story is, well… I’ll let you decide. I’m presenting it as I wrote it. Only a spell check was used. I need to get back into the flow of writing daily, and these prompts are always a great source for getting things going.

Downing Station

In an ideal world, Rollie would’ve flung rockets into space. This wasn’t an ideal world. Far from it. Instead he sat at his terminal and watched the sky, his monitor a window to his expanse of sky.

No one else watched the same sector. It was his, and his alone.

He pushed his dark-rimmed glasses back up his nose and exhales a sigh of extreme boredom. The number to the side of the screen as blinked the same number for over an hour now: 17-0.

He thought about the change in technology since he’d started work here. Joysticks and keyboards. Then a track pad replaced the joystick. Soon touch screens replaced those. Track screens begat touch screens. Despite the monitor being able to “know” where Rollie was looking, they still required him to hit a button to launch. That was until the next batch of software eliminated false launches. Now all he had to do was look at the screen.

Rollie was sure they didn’t even need someone to man the launchers anymore. It was the perfect deterrent.

A soft, unassuming beep brought his attention back to the screen. A black dot enter the bottom-left portion of his sector followed by a white pluming contrail. As he stared at the object, the screen zoomed in on the head of the plume. A solo jumper. Looked like a converted 2052 model. He could see a vibration in the left wing that could have been a fatal flaw if he made it to the stratosphere.

A red box blinked and locked in on the jumper. A bright red line shot through his screen, intersected the 2052, and Rollie watched as flaming debris rained down and off his screen. The number changed.

18-0.

“Nice work Rollie.” The disembodied voice responded. He gave his expected thanks.

“We the people thank you even in our misguided attempts.”

Misguided indeed.

He should be flinging his fellow man far from the hell hole of a rock. Help them reach the out stretches of space. Not pull their leash.

Every citizen is required to yearly operate the Downing Station. A yearly reminder of what will happen if they try to leave.

How is the planet to get better if we all just leave it? We need to clean up our own messes. It would be irresponsible to spread our bad habits. We must change before we can expand.

The mantra of the Planetary CEO burns in his ears like the brand on his hand.

He chose to work here on a daily basis for several reasons. Selflessly he thought it might reduce the amount of other needing to be subjugated to this. Selfishly, he hoped it would show him away to get around it. The only insights he got were from the system upgrades. Unfortunately, the upgrades showed only the holes that were just patched. As hard as he tried, he could find the loop-hole, bug, or work-around before the system did and corrected.

A soft, unassuming beep brought his attention back to the screen.

Fifty-Three

What’s this? I haven’t posted in months, and now I have TWO in the same day? Yep.

I haven’t played in the 500 Club in far too long. The last set of prompts really got the wheels turning. So not only did I participate, I incorporated both prompts. So here it is:

Fifty-Three

Sam opened the paper to the classified, something he hasn’t done in years, and nearly dropped his coffee when he read,

Sam

If you can read this, please help! There’s no time to waste. You know where to find us.

Passive

This week at the Parking Lot Confessional we had a guest blogger, Dex Raven, gives us our prompts for the 500 Club. He had some great ones, let me tell you. I attempted to do both, but admittedly, I don’t think I accomplished #2. I used the song Passive by A Perfect Circle. Enjoy…

Passive

My breath still came heavy even though the melee had ended. Skirmishes could still be heard at the fringes of copse, but here at the center all were still, looking down on the body of King Hallow.

A young Blood Mage gropes the body, pressing his grimy hair to the king’s chest and moving his hands from wrist to gold-collared neck.

My voice is strained between clenched teeth.

“Tell me he lives.”

“Dead as dead can be,” the Blood Mage tells me, a smile peeling off his broken teeth.

No.

My knuckles pop. The blade in my hand trembles under my grip. I just can’t believe him, ever the optimistic one.

“Raise him,” I commanded.

The mage’s smile faltered.

“But, sire,” he stammered. “He’s dead. His lands are yours. There no need—”

“Question my command again and I’ll have your tongue.”

Leaning over him here, cold and catatonic, I caught a brief reflection of what he could and might have been. It was his right, his ability.

To become my perfect enemy.

I landed a boot in the King’s side.

“Wake up! Face me!”

I turned on the Mage.

“I want him up! I want him to die a thousand deaths by MY hand, not falling from a startled beast!”

He fell back on his hands, avoiding the tip of my blade. Only when he nods did I back off. The pouch tied to his hip shook in his grip. Leaves and crystals dropped to the blood-soaked grass, but he manages to pull out a vile of brackish liquid.

He pulled the stopper and poured it into the king’s mouth. The mage tilted the king’s head back and worked at his throat and none too gentle at that.

This was not how it was supposed to end. For years Hallow reigned at the edge of the canyon’s cliffs, endlessly denying my right to trade with the sea merchants’ just beyond. His way of knowing just before my men would attempt a night crossing, caused me night after night plotting. Were his spies that good?

I think not. This man, this King knew the moves I would make and countered each and every one of them. And that was why I had no doubt that he would be at the opposite side of this copse waiting for my men as we planned out final attempted at what was rightfully ours.

“Maybe he’s better off this way,” someone says.

I didn’t catch who, or they would’ve ended their last breath with that statement. However, the thought lingers in my head. Maybe it was better this way.

Maybe…

I don’t remember moving, but I’ve knocked the Blood Mage to the ground. Whether I used my fist or my sword, I know not or care.

“Go ahead and play dead! I know that you can hear me! Go ahead and play dead!”

I picked the lifeless body up and threw it back down to the mud. The slope of the ground was enough to cause the body to roll as it landed.

“Why can’t you turn and face me?” I yell at the dead king.

All was silent then. Even the crows held their caws.

I turned from my men, the wounded, and the dead.

“You fucking disappoint me.”

Passive by S. C. Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sour Zombies

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get a 500 Club post up. Here’s a little something I call:

Sour Zombies

by S. C. Green

When no one was looking, I tore a page out of his book. Not just any page. The last page.

I know it was childish. How could it not be? What harm did it do me that he had the book first? Did it really bother me that he’s been flaunting it whenever the chance arises? Or, that he even offered to let me read it when he was done?

Yes. What part?

All of it, dammit.

I’m writing this now for future prosperity. Connie is a lout no matter what other people think of him. He even has people believing it doesn’t bother him that he has a girl’s name. I see right through it.

He’s just plain mean.

Do you even know why he has the book first? The book of all books? He wouldn’t have known about Zombie Armageddon 2, if he wasn’t over-hearing me talking to Ricky, Jonas, and Bill. I might have been loud, but how could you not get excited over a plague of zombies hungry to devour the first plague of zombies that infected the entire world in the first Zombie Armageddon.

These books are gold. I tell you, this author has the Midas touch. I think his name starts with an H. It definitely after the Gaiman titles, but before the Jordan’s at the bookstore. There ain’t any authors of note with a name starting with I, so it has to be an H name.

And that’s where he screwed me. I planned to read it just like I read the first one. I spend the weekend at the store reading it. I’m careful not to bend the spine, but if it happens, it happens.

Turns out he goes to the store and buys it before I can read it. I asked if the store will get another copy, but they said the only way to get that title is to special order it.

If I wanted to buy it, I would’ve used Amazons.

And don’t let that faux good nature of his full you. Sure, he’ll let me borrow the book when he’s done, but I’m on to him. I’ve seen his text books from class. They’re all marked up with notes in the margins and multiple colors of highlighter throughout. When he gives me the book it’ll be full of notes and annotations that’ll take away all the fun and suspense. He’ll probably even tell me how it ends as he’s giving me the book.

Well now he can’t. He won’t know how the book ends. He might even happily give me the book thinking it’ll get me, too, missing the end.

I hope I can keep from laughing in his face as he hands it to me. Maybe I’ll laugh and not tell him why. Let him sit in suspense for a while, and then tell him how the book ends when I’m done with it.

But the thing I want to remember from here to eternity is—

[Last page missing]

Sour Zombies by S. C. Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

500 Club: The Meta-Hoovesit

Today I posted the writing prompts for the 500 Club over at The Parking Lot confessional. If you want to play along, click here for this week’s prompts.

I’m going with the first prompt, The Metamorphosis. Here I go:

Henry slapped at alarm clock. He missed, knocking it off the night stand on onto the floor. The insistent buzz-buzz-buzz sounded just as annoying half under the bed as it did next to his ear.

He kicked his legs free from the sheets and thumped them to the ground. The clock was just out of reach, but he managed to hit the snooze.

Silence.

Henry thought about burrowing in the covers again. He shuffled his legs and thumped his feet.

Thumped.

His eyes shot open and peered down at his feet. Not feet. Hooves. Hard, shiny black hooves. He lifted up the leg of his pajamas to thick brown matted fur.

“Damn it. Not today.”

Standing up proved to be a challenge. He fell back in bed twice before catching his balance long enough to make it to his bathroom. The first step onto the tiled bathroom floor went fine. The second sent Henry flat on his ass.

He scrambled to his feet –no, hooves– making a horrible racket. Three attempts and four chipped tiles later, and he was back in room.

“Is everything okay in there?” his mom yelled from the other side of his door. She rattled the doorknob, and Henry couldn’t be more thankful for locking it the night before on a whim.

“I’m fine mom.”

“What was all that noise?”

“Um… Just saw a roach, ma. It almost got away, but I got it.”

He hoped his lie worked. His mom was deathly afraid of bugs. If there was a chance of her see one by coming in here, she’ll avoid his room till she can get an exterminator over.

“Good that you got it,” she said slowly. “Try to keep it down. Your sister’s still sleeping. I’ll be down stairs if you need me.”

No doubt calling the extermination, he thought. “Alright mom.”

He looked around the floor. He found a roll of duct tape half under a mountain of semi-dirty laundry.  The real no-longer-wearable dirty laundry he kept next to his door. He unrolled a strip and wrapped his hoof, sticky side out. Once he got in place, he taped the other hoof and attempted the bathroom again. He really needed to go.

He took a tentative step on the tile. Then another. Shhhhlliiick-clunk shhhhlliick-clunk of his taped hooves did the trick. He lifted up the toilet lid, and the alarm clock went off.

He raced over to the night stand only to remember it fell off. He knocked a little further under the bed, but he finally got it.

Laying on the floor, he looked down at his hoofed feet all wrapped in duct tape and chunks of carpet.

I was going to be another one of those days.

The Meta-Hoovesit by S. C. Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Where’s My…

This week’s 500 Club is up over at The Parking Lot Confessional. Check out the prompts and play along. Here’s what I came up with:

Durand stood at the edge of the drive, his eyes vacant. He felt in his pockets, sure he was forgetting something. He had his maps, compass and handkerchief. He switched his mug of coffee from one hand to the other careful not to spill any from the wedge missing in the lip. His other pockets held the extra gears, bands of rubber, and patch glue.

It all seemed to be there. If he wasted any for time, he’d be late to the field again. Master Podger swore it’d be Durand’s hide blowing from the flag pole the next time he was late. But if he forgot something, the rest of the Appies would flog him when the Podge wasn’t looking. And the Podge always finds a reason not to look.

Durand scratched his head underneath the crushed bowler hat. The hat wasn’t much, but it was his father’s and without proper head-gear, it would be better than going bare-haired.

His hand slid down wiping sweat across his cheek and froze. He shot back up under his bowler and down.

His goggles.

He bolted back up the drive. How could he have forgotten his goggles? An Appie without his goggle was as good a blind at anything faster than a sprint. He could all but hear the other Appies now, “Where’s your gog’s Dur? Durrrrr… I don’t know.”

Coffee sloshed from the wedged crack in his mug as slowed at the front door. He rummaged through the gears and band for the key to his house. Okay, a shack really. But the shack had a door that not only shut tight; it had a lock as well. A lock that had a single key that he had lost between here and the end of the drive.

He ran back down the drive hunched over scanning at the gravel leaving a trail of coffee in his wake. Durand circled the drive once and ended at the door. There in the keyhole of the door the tarnished little key stared at him with a mocking glint from the morning sun.

Inside he put his mug down now little more than half full to better run around in search of his goggles. He knocked aged leather-bound books off the chair and cushions off the desk. He wrapped the model dirigible with his knuckles not because he thought the goggles were there, but because he liked to set it swaying whenever he got close. He left the dishes in the sink, the pillow in the tub, and the mending kit on the table. He leaned against the iron stove still a bit warm from this morning oats.

There.

Across the room hanging from the bent nail in the wall. His goggles. His cracked brown leather, tied strap, wonderfully smudged goggles.

A loud crack came from the clock by the door. His father couldn’t afford metal for bells. So Durand had to make do rigging the clock’s gears to crank the tension on the hammer and every twelve hours (or so) releasing it to smack the wall.

“Cogs damn it!”

He grabbed the goggles and rushed out the door. He remembered the key before tearing down the drive and off to the fields.

Before Durand could even see the other Appies lined up awaiting the Podge’s approval, in his mind he saw his chipped mug of coffee growing cold still on the table.

This work by S. C. Green is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License

500 Club: Bad Habit

Things have been slow around here. Life tends to take up much of my time. I’m doing my best to correct this, but change takes time (unless it’s forced upon you). I don’t have much in the way of news, so instead I’m going to participate in the 500 Club. If you don’t know what that is, please check out The Parking Lot Confessional for details. Then head to your own blog to play along.

One For Another

Barry looked down at the string of spit connecting his lip to the butt of his pen. The strand sagged and trembled before severing in two, one half sticking to his chin, the other to the mangle end of his pen.

This has got to stop, he told himself.

He stared at the misshapen writing implement and tried to will it back to the form it once was. The black tip with protruding metal point showed no signs of wear. Why should it? He’d only took the pen from its box this morning.  It would be another month before the ink would even be half used. Following up the gray shaft, the letters of the logo spelled out Pape– before the words were lost to teeth marks. That’s where it started to lose its shape.

The soft plastic bumped and creased in ever-changing patterns all the way to the butt. Barry thought there used to be a cap on the end, but unable to identify anything remotely similar has come to one of two decisions. Either he mashed it into the plastic of the rest of the pen, or…

He gulped as stomach gave itself an Indian rope burn.

He threw the mangled eye sore into the trash and quickly crumpled an old memo to toss on top. His own personal pen graveyard.

He needed to quit this. He ditch his cancer sticks almost six months ago now. It didn’t seem fair to have to deal with another disgusting habit. At least with a cigarette between his lips didn’t send the women running. Just last week Mary from two cubicles down asked to borrow some corrective tape. She looked up and snatched her hand back. The sneer on her face as she said, “Nevermind”  had me baffled until he pulled the saliva-soaked stump from his mouth. Barry didn’t even know when he did it now.

He pulled open his desk drawer to get another pen. He was down to his last three. He knew he had to break down and buy his own supply. Susan had questioned his last request for more pens.

“It seems like it wasn’t too long ago I gave you a bow,” she said casually. Barry knew better. She was on to his habit. That’s why he raided the supply closet last Thursday while she took a long lunch with her fiancé. Even with that extra bit of plastic to get him through, he knew it would be too soon to request more.

Pens aren’t as expensive as smoking. That’s what he told himself. Then he countered with, “But if I had to support my own habit, why not choose one that I actually liked. The taste of tobacco is so much more preferable to ink. Any day.”

Mary passed by and stared at him aghast. Great, he thought, now they all think I talk to myself.

A transfer was looking better to Barry everyday. Maybe they would have better pens.

There you go. Let me know what you think. This was all free-write. I only indulged in a spell check. Leave a comment or better yet, play along so I can see what you come up with.

[UPDATE]

I tried to ignore the glaring POV slip, really I did. After being called on it though, I had to edit it. I promise, no more edits after this.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

500 Club: Close At Hand

I’m joining the 500 Club over at The Parking Lot Confessional. Click here to find out how you can play along, too! Here goes…

“You just don’t drink another man’s water.”

Chase threw the empty water bottle across the warehouse. Well, as far as an empty water bottle will be thrown anyway. This was the third time this week he’s came back to his desk to find the water he’s been craving from working his ass off all morning drained.

“Really,” he yelled into the empty warehouse. “Who does that shit.”

Well enough was enough. He’d been toying with the notion of booby traps, but up to this point kept it to mental exercises. Now it’s playtime. He looked around for what he could use. Once he spotted the airbag, the corners of his mouth crept back to his ears. He grabbed some empty boxes and set to work.

Nobody would miss the airbag. It had been removed from a car unexploded and was scheduled to be scrapped. Part of Chase’s job was to detonate any airbags.  Once the airbags were expended, they were no longer considered hazardous materials. It was one of the few perks of his lowly position.

After an hour of set up, he snapped the measuring tape closed and admired his work. He hid the airbag inside of an empty cardboard box. There were so many boxes in here that no one should think anything of it. Just another box.

And that’s just what Chase wanted.

Inside that brown unsuspecting box sat the airbag waiting for a small trickle of electricity to set it off.  Chase threaded two wires from the airbag through the bottom of the box. One lead to a small car battery and the other to a piece of cardboard. He had folded the cardboard in half and placed a bottle of water on top. When the bottle was removed, the cardboard would spring up connecting the wire taped to it to a wire held up by a stand fashioned from a paperclip.

He covered all of the wires with invoices and padded envelopes. No way it looked suspicious. A little messy, sure, but anyone who knew Chase might actually think this was tidy for him. He pulled the tape measure out again, double-checking the distance between the water and the airbag box. This had to be perfect. If the box sat too close, there was the potential to break someone’s hand. Not that Chase would care at this point. The bastard did steal his water. However it wasn’t worth losing his job over.

No, he wanted the box just close enough to startle or give the slightest possible nudge to send water spattering over the offender. Chase unscrewed the cap and lightly placed it on top of the bottle. The trap was set.

It took another hour before he heard footsteps head in his direction. Chase sped to a stack of tires and crouched behind them. Earlier he convinced himself it would be better to stay completely hidden, but once he heard the footsteps stop in front of his desk, his will broke. He needed to see the perpetrator.

His eyes widened as he saw his boss reach for the bottle. He felt something drop in his gut. He saw himself in slow motion running, reaching for the bottle, the entire way yelling “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…”

By some miracle he reached the bottle first. Though his boss looked stunned at Chase’s outburst, he had no time to react as the lifted bottle set the charge and exploded the airbag.

Chase’s measurements were off. He wasn’t sure what broke his hand, the concussion of the airbag or the resulting fist slamming into his bosses face. He stood there cradling his hand and stare at his boss sprawled out on the warehouse floor.

All done. The only editing I did was spell check before publishing. Since this was for fun, there was no point to do more. Man that was fun!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License