Progressive Boink

[Andy]

The smell was different most nights, and tonight was no exception. Their mother boils potatoes, and bakes chicken with spices. The children play games while the smell fills the house and beyond. Meanwhile their Dad works on the new sprinkler system of his own design and the kids run through the random spurts of water that shoot up with the neighbor kids while he fiddles with it.
It is the happiest they will ever be. And it is lasting.

[Kristen]

The old guy kept on falling; steadily through the clouds ... Knowing with dead certainty that he couldn't miss the ground.

What good would panicking do him?

For ages he had imagined himself standing on rickety structures, desperately clinging to what was left to reach. The air he commanded to get out of the way gave him a cheery massage, blew his enormous moustache this way and that.

Since he was delivered to this windy grave by constant anxiety, there was only one thing left to do.

He opted for plunging with a manic grin instead.

[Justin]

how many pots did you smoke before you wrote that!!!

(real good, dude. yours and jon's are my favorite two so far)

[erica]

Hope is what separates the living from the walking dead.

A pedestrian bridge connects two hospitals a few stories above Lothrop Street. I watch beds being wheeled through, with people looking half machine, needles in arms. With liquids on a drip, doctors can count on indifference to sign the consent forms. The automatic sliding doors on either side of the bridge always stay open, but I swear they inch in on me as I squeeze past. I hold my breath and pick up my pace. I could stay on that bridge forever. The height never scares me. No, I’m not afraid of falling, I’m afraid of being crushed.

[Jon]

*This is not based on a true story; rather, it is a true story.

There was a Kentucky Derby party today.

A knock on the door.

"Y'all's cat's Simon, right?"

"Yeah."

"He was just hit by a car."

I walk with my friend and his wife to the scene. He's dead.

She sobbed and walked home with her husband. I cradled him in a towel and picked him up. It's not grisly. It looks like he's sleeping.

I rest him in the front yard. He looks at me and meows. I hunch over him for ten minutes, pleading. He doesn't speak again.

I don't tell her.

[Andy]

aw man thats incredible

[First-Tiger]

Geez, I don't think it's possible to follow that one. Intense.

I'll post a story anyhow. I suck at writing touching personal episodes, so I usually just stick to goofy hyperbolic sci-fi, like this:

***

Some say it really was a doomsday cult that wrote the book, but that's probably just hindsight. It was more likely the bored scribblings of some anonymous European postmodernist. Either way, it's impossible to deny that it was hidden intentionally.

“The Antimatter Scroll.” Apparently an attempt to capture the exact opposite of our perception of reality. Painstakingly bound with golden thread, stained by the blood of its author.

Some fool read but a single sentence before he noticed the sky had disappeared, swallowed by an unimaginably dense, still inkstain:

Man has numbered the stars, which harbor no secrets from him.

[Daniel]

100 words is for a gay


"Blood Day"

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He was awoken by the howling of the night wolf. He was not in a bed; he was in an alley and the walls were drenched in darkness. Forlornly he looked left: nothingness. Sullenly he looked right: a moon so dead it reminded him of himself. But he was not dead. He was Blood Dog.

His head was full of thunder, but who was throwing the lightning? Only one man could have done this. The ever-elusive Black Boot. It was time Blood Dog put his foot down. Onto Black Boot's throat.

Blood Dog had a bullet and a gun and together they were dangerous waiting to happen. Together with Blood Dog's thirst for blood they were a dead Black Boot waiting to happen. One thing was for sure, Black Boot was sure to come untied when Blood Dog found him unawares.

---

Blood Dog climbed a brick wall and punched a body guard in the face and then threw him off the building. As he heard a pronounced thud he thought to himself, "Let the game's begin, and never underestimate the heart of the champion." He was going for the gold, but in his eyes, gold was red. Red blood.

He heard something wicked come his way, so he did a back flip and kicked at the same time. He could have been in the Olympics but they don't give Gold or Copper medals for being cold hearted murder machines. Or for killing a man with just one finely placed elbow to the head, like he just did to another body guard.

Blood Dog was playing these villains like a blood soaked piano in the key of Death minor. Things were about to get interesting.

---

He kicked in a door and caught Black Boot unawares. "Excuse me, but would you happen to know the time?" jokes Blood Dog. "Nevermind, I found my watch and it's time for you to die."

Black Boot just laughed and threw a karate star at Blood Dog but Blood Dog caught it with his teeth and spit it to the ground. "Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe if it was deep fried."

By this time Black Boot was fuming into anger. They became face to face and exchanged salutations. Bad salutations.

"You think your real tough don't you, freak."
"Your're just a weasle waiting to happen."

Blood Dog had had time to have enough of this. He leaned back and delivered a vicious head butt to Black Boot. Black Boot said, "Now let the games begin."

This stopped Blood Dog square into his tracks. Where had he heard that before? That is when it struck him like a ton of heavy bricks. He had to kill Black Boot then and there. But before he could do that he was caught unawares and kicked hard in his leg.

It hurt so bad that he fell.

Black Boot stood above him like a dark sunset over a wicked ocean. Blood Dog knew it was time he monsooned so he put his one bullet into his gun and pointed it square at Black Boot's eyes.

"I'm going to shoot you dead."

"Go ahead."

And then he went ahead but then a cloud of smoke engulfed the room and Black Boot was gone like quicksilver.

"This happens every time. I need a faster gun."

[Justin]

aaahahahahahah

thats some rony danza shit right there.

[Spoodles]

He wonders what the back of his wheelchair looks like. It worries him that he might never know. He wakes up every morning and she rolls it toward him. At night she picks him up by the armpits and lays him in bed, and when he looks up, the chair has been backed into the corner. As he goes to sleep, all he can see is that chair's horrifying grin.

He's seen the backs of other wheelchairs--usually when he loses at the Special Olympics. Still, he'd like to see the back of his own, just to make sure it's actually there.

[Logan]

lol at daniels.

spoodles, your story aint bad at all. pretty neat.

[Andy]

Randal's entire life was art. The pursuit of creating something true. Something that took everyone in a room and put them on the same frequency of the collective unconscious.

He had spent every penny to make it happen, but it happened. He created a piece that stood out and made his quarry gasp in awe.

He shared his show with some other locals but he didn't care. He set up his work next to a peer, and watched the awed faces.

His peer's work was bought. His was not. The peer opened a studio and produced work that is now shown in textbooks everywhere.

Randal took his masterwork home, and placed it in a corner overlooking his table. It's beauty stared down at him, but it did not lament. Randal never created again. He had reached perfection. He had reached truth that halted anyone who walked in the room. He succeded.

[Bismark]

The bright sun shined down as I circled the area, cutting down everything that lay below me. Everything that could was leaving or already gone; anything to avoid becoming part of the destruction left in my wake. Nothing personal, just following orders. No hatred, no emotion at all in my actions. I’d finish up and have a beer. My victims lay in pieces beneath me.

My passes tightened. It was almost over. Life, growth, progress, cut down in an instant. Did they feel it? Could they understand what was happening? Doesn’t matter, I guess. It wouldn’t change anything. Things had to be kept under control.

I cut the engine. The smell of the oil hung in the air with the fresh silence. I took a small notepad out of my back pocket. The only item on the list not crossed out is “mow the lawn.”

I drew a line through it.

[Daniel]

A Deck of Jokers


Officer Bullet stood in the rain, smoking a cigarette strong and slow, the way a horse runs. There was an electricity in the air and he was ready to throw the switch and light this town up like it was full of firecrackers. A black cat walked like a slinky across the street. "Look out pussy cat, some serious business is about to hit the fan." Little did he know just how correct his assessment of this situation was.

---

Across town, in a totally empty wearhouse, Yurlegh Vladimere was taunting Senator Thomas. "You're going to see very bad things," said Yurlegh. "I'm going to make you swallow knifes. Call it Acid Indigestion." The Senator screamed into pain.

---

Bullet's phone rang. A shiver ran into his spine. Bullet answered it. It was the government. "Bullet. Senator Thomas has been kidnapped. We suspect terrorism."

"You suspect utterly and indispensibly wrong. You just shut your dirty mouth. I know who is the perp. I'll bring back the Senator. Dead or alive."

---

"So you want to shut down my drug ring. You want to put me into a jail cell. You make me laugh." Yurlegh laughed like a maniac. "I want to break your leg, Senator. The difference between you and me is that I am powerful and get what I want." Yurlegh strapped on his brass knuckles and began punching the Senator's legs as if they had just called him a freak. Suddenly: A Snap. The Senator's leg was broken. The Senator yelled as blood dripped from his nose and also his mouth.

---

Bullet kicked a hole through the wearhouse door. He poked his head in. "Heeeeere's Bullet!" Things were definitely about to become interesting. He ran full speed like a cat and karate punched Yurlegh in his jaw. Yurlegh fell to the ground like a potatoe. Bullet put his foot on his throat and turned it to mashed potatos. Yurlegh tried to yell but the only sound to escape was emptyness.

"I see that you broke the Senator's leg. Now, I get to break your leg, Yurlegh." The last sound Yurlegh heard in his life was the cracking of his leg bone because then Bullet shot his head.

[Logan]

lol, the ending was some straight up stagger lee shit

[Duzzy Funlop]

I would buy a book of this stuff.

[James]

Six hundred years of culture, breeding, and established kingship had collapsed in one fell stroke. He had set the fire that had marked the end of the monarchy by destroying the entire royal family. History would know him as a liberator. He watched the masses gather before the castle, which was burning behind him as a backdrop to his greatest hour. With a grand flourish he slammed the doors to the balcony open and stepped out, ready to name himself and accept his adulations as their savior and hero.

As he took his first step, the balcony broke and collapsed.

[James]

soda didn't you say you were going to do one of these, and i quote, "FO SHO"

it is past tomorrow soda