HOLD YER HORSES


The race begins 00:00 2020/03/01.




Please see Keppni Hrossa: An E2 Proseproduction for background information.

Writeups are limited by design to 300 words or fewer.


(We're working off the honor system here)






Silver Prospector

Measureless distance covered while I consider. That is all I can do; sudden snapshots of awareness, each fading quickly. In between, nothing. I cannot even tell if I exist then, but in this stutter of life I struggle to learn.

It is dark and cold.

I am I.

I am nothing, save a tiny hard knot at my core.

Eventually, the tiny brightnesses of this assume a flavor: warm. I hold my- what? to the warmth, and every tiny flicker raises me a tiny bit. Sometimes I fall back before the next flicker, but slowly, slowly, I warm.

When I begin remaining aware for more than the flicker, I begin to understand.

Particles striking me, destroying but transferring energy. As I grasp this, I feel change, and suddenly the world is even dimmer but I am no longer flickering.

At my front, the warmth continues, now enough for me to draw life from it. Change happens, structure slowly extruding from my warm side, the background warmth increasing.

All of a sudden, I can see.

A star, and I am approaching it rapidly. Warmth goes into substance, my structure shifts, and I can see more.

I will pass nearby, but on my current path I will not be near it long.

It will be a race between the energy I am collecting and my efforts to slow myself.

I begin to curve inwards towards the star.

Somewhere nearby, there must be matter. There must be-

Food.

The knot unravels within my core and precious information, freed, flows through me.

I remember eating. I remember breathing. Blood and air and wind.

I was human.

I turn my face to the sun in supplication and hope.

 

Shoplifted

The shoplifter is back again. It takes a few minutes of waving at Jimmy, lost in some daydream as he's stacking some soon-expiring tins of Spam on one of the endcaps, before I get his attention and jerk my head towards aisle one. 

Jimmy holds on to one of the tins like it's a grenade and slinks down the middle aisle, peering over the scant selection of breakfast cereals until he aligns himself across from the old lady with a bent spine. She's sliding a loaf of Wonder Bread into a threadbare shopping bag sewn from old flour sacks. 

The Spam arcs over the shelves and Cheerios, barely missing the liver-spotted hands of the old woman as it lands in her bag. She starts to waddle in a circle and Jimmy ducks down.

The shoplifter totters off to the coolers and gets out a quart of milk, placing it in her bag. She reaches in to get another quart and stops when she realizes there is already one in the bag. Nodding to herself, she returns the second carton and heads back towards me and the register. I spy Jimmy's arm as he drops some more canned goods in as she walks by him.

She doesn't stop at my station. Muttering to herself, she waddles past and pushes on the old screen door with enough holes to be more of an annoyance to the ever-present bottleflies and exits the grocery store.

Jimmy appears next to me with a handful of change. I open my purse and between us we put three dollars and seventeen cents in the till. Without a word Jimmy goes back to stocking the shelves and I wipe down the conveyer belt with a damp rag.

Dirty Laundry...

It was one of those days. I hadn't slept well; waking before my alarm. My mirror was depressing, my shower hasty; knocking bottles off the darkened shelf. I left early and waited for the geriatric train. Tears threatened when the scissors slipped. Being demoted sucks. Having to beg to use the bathroom, normally I don't get lunch break coverage, that day someone offered and I retreated to the room we call the closet with high ceilings. My job is not intellectually challenging, it's a lot of details which aren't my specialty, but at least they hadn't fired me

An empty coffee carafe near the overflowing sink made my bad day worse. Sharp pains stabbed my lower back as I grabbed a worn out towel. A familiar voice above me spoke as I studied his shoes. He said he would take the dirty towels, then left them in a swampy pile. Through the northern windows I could see scattered salt. Cold, hard, dusty, useless in this weather; a metaphor for my life. Back at my desk; the wet towels were gone, a warm soft stack of freshly folded ones rested in their place.

Dennis' Moment

The dream had always been the same. This made it seem less like a dream and more like a suppressed memory. Dennis experienced the dream only when sick with fever. Why? Maybe heat brought memories above that threshold of consciousness. Vivid yet vague, wordless yet urgent, the fever dreams seemed to clamor for, what?

The conflict began when the comfortable perfection that had existed for his eternity was broken. The surroundings were the same but something was changing. The drumbeat had altered its rhythm before but never this much. The warm, comfortable, weightless space suddenly shrank and entities pushed, shoved and squeezed. With no up, no down and no anywhere but the calm here and now for all time. Suddenly there was an urgent need to go somewhere, but where? Freedom of movement had been diminishing. From being vast, Dennis' universe had gradually shrunk. For some time now it had become too small to move around in freely. What had once seemed so huge no longer existed. He had kicked back against the entities before but could no longer. Dennis had suddenly lost every degree of movement except one. Forward.

His will to survive had never before been tested. Dennis felt powerless. Unable to move, his entire focus became to endure. This was something new and he willed it to change. Any change would be better than this soul crushing. Finally change came. But this couldn't be right! This was all wrong! Blinding brightness and a sudden shattering volume. Cackling. He recognized the sound of laughter but, in the dream, it sounded much too loud. Everything was too loud and too bright, too cold and too dry.

This was Dennis' Moment and nothing would be the same, ever again.

 

 

 

Authentic 

 

 

It was real for a while.   Those were her words, not mine.   

I woke up one morning to find her gone.   She left a very clean house and a long, somewhat rambling email.  It was not so much a Dear John as a "I'm moving on to greener pasture"  sort of thing.  She had been doing research and felt that Saturn sounded interesting.   I mean,  I don't disagree,  but we never talked about taking that sort of trip.   She spent a lot of her evenings looking at the sky,  but a lot of people do that,  so I never gave it much thought.   If she had asked me I am sure I would have said it was fine for her to go,  but it wasn't like she needed my permission.  Ok,  clearly since she's gone,  she didn't need my permission.   You know what I mean.   I wish we had at least talked about it- then I might have been better prepared.  Maybe not.   I doubt she  would have liked the drama.   That is another thing about her- she wasn't one to get overly emotional.   I guess that was me.  

 

Yeah, I miss her, I mean who wouldn't?   A girlfriend who never grew old with limitless energy.   Think Limitless.   Yep.  Like that.   Plus she made the best Pasta primavera I ever had.   I miss that too. 

 

It was real for a while,  I mean as real as possible, considering her warranty.   

 

 

   

Tiz the Law


I swung my legs off the side of the bed. This bed was higher than mine. I liked that feeling, my feet not touching the ground. The nail polish on my toes was a mess. This was the first time I had done it myself. Mum had let me borrow one of her bottles. I picked Moonlight Silver.

It was hard not to paint the skin on my toes and stay inside the lines. I liked the messy magic of it all. I’d dip the brush in, wipe the excess around the rim but still manage to get drops running down the side of the bottle. Normally I hated labels on any bottles or glass jars and I’d spend hours scraping off the paper and soaking away the glue. I didn’t mind the label on this tiny bottle. I wanted to know that my toes were shimmering Moonlight Silver when I twinkled them.

I liked colours. I especially liked the name of colours. Why was blue blue? What made green so green? Last summer holiday mum insisted the kitchen needed a new coat of paint. Dad and I went to the store and I admired a rainbow delight. There were rows and rows of little cards in perfect colour symmetry. You could choose Bubblegum Blush or maybe Lady Lavender would make all your dreams come true. I chuckled knowing that someone’s job was to name all these colours. Smiling, I picked a few of my favourites to keep and held them together like a hand of Go Fish, just like Uncle Ray taught me.

This room had no colour. I heard mum tell the nurse that they hold a special place in prison for people who did such awful things to little girls. Dad’s eye went heartbreak red.

Armory


The human stared at the array of weaponry before him, mouth agape. Blasters of every kind were displayed on walls, on every free surface, and behind the glass at the registration counter.

"What is it?" said X'melborp, frowning.

"I thought the Prosperity was a peaceful vessel," said Greg.

"We are! What are you talking about?"

Greg picked up what looked like an over-sized blaster rifle. "What's this then?"

X'melborp plucked the weapon up and aimed it directly at Greg's face. Before Greg could do more than wince, X'melborp fired. There was a flash of light, but when Greg opened his eyes, he was fine.

"Now your pores are clean," X'melborp said, placing the rifle back on the display.

"And this?" Greg said, lifting a taser-like device. Red electricity sparked at the end.

X'melborp took the device and, to Greg's horror, jabbed it into his shoulder.

"Electro-massage," X'melborp said. He put the gadget back on the tray, his fur mussed where it had touched.

"Hello there!" said the spa attendant, a Langorphian whose green uniform complimented their facial tentacles. "Do I hear some questions regarding our services?"

Greg flushed, embarrassed, but still pointed to the many blaster-like objects hanging on the wall. "Are you telling me that all of this is spa equipment? What about this thing?" He plucked a model from the wall: the sleekest, most deadly looking one there.

"That would be the Relaxatron9K," the attendant said. "Our finest model. Allow me to demonstrate."

Tentacles burst from their back-- though their uniform remained immaculate-- and snapped the Relaxatron from Greg's hand. With a smile, the attendant fired on him, point-blank.

Greg collapsed to the floor in a languid heap.

"Human Greg?" said X'melborp.

Greg giggled. "I feel gooooooooood."

"We'll have the full package," X'melborp said.

"Excellent choice. Collect your friend there and I'll lead you to the Calminatrix."

X'melborp scooped his still-giggling companion up and followed the attendant down the hall.

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