Fiction Rumble II - Week 26 (Current Champion: Zaphkael)

[Something_Smart]

I've pretty much never written fiction before in my life.

...But this seems like a pretty cool way to start

I am interested.

[Something_Smart]

My story is a colossal trashpile but it should be done by the deadline.

Turns out writing an epistolary short story is way harder than I thought it would be.

[Something_Smart]

I wasn't a huge fan of this prompt... it took me a while to even think of an idea, and I don't really think my idea was that good

I'd suggest for the next prompt to be more general and for the word count to be lower, that should make it easier for more people to get into it.

Spoiler: The World Reversed, 2624 words

March 21, 1947
Dear Caroline,

Welcome to the world. I can hardly believe I am sitting here writing you a letter on the day of your birth, but Lydia insisted. She wants me to keep a record of these years so that one day, I may show them to you. I personally think it’s silly, but oh well. She’s gone through so much these past nine months, it’s the least I can do for her.

Well, you’re crying now. I guess I should stop writing to future you and spent time with the real you, so I will stop now.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


March 29, 1947
Dear Caroline,

I suppose I should tell you about myself. Again, by the time you are old enough to read, you will know all this already, but Lydia insisted I write something, so here I am again. I am proud to say I am the Vice President of the Falls Bank; I was the one to turn the bank from a nearly-bankrupt loan company during the Depression to the financial giant it is today. My genius was to realize that, if interest rates are high enough, loans can be offered to almost everyone, and the profit from the people who pay them back will outweigh the ones who don’t. This may not mean anything to you, but eventually you’ll have a husband who will understand it.
Lydia’s calling me; regretfully, I must go.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


April 10, 1947
Dear Caroline,

My brother Will came to visit us today. He’s your uncle-- but I’m sure you’ll know who he is when you read this. To his credit, he’s excellent with children, although he isn’t married. He played with you all evening. You laughed and laughed.

I may love Will, but I don’t understand him. He refuses to keep a steady job. He bounces around, from one occupation to another, from one poor apartment to another, never making himself a reliable living. He’s asked me for money before, but I’m not a charity. If he wants a loan, he’s more than welcome to come to Falls Bank and apply for one.

And another thing about Will-- he believes in the strangest things. He’s horribly superstitious. He believes in fate, and curses, and he believes there’s no such thing as luck. Most annoying of all, he reads tarot cards constantly. Every time I see him, he tells me, “Look at what my tarot cards said would happen today,” and I tell him, “Why don’t you try to decide what will happen to you, instead of letting the cards do it?” But I know it’s pointless, he’s been like this since he was a child.

On this particular day, he was insistent on doing a tarot reading for me. I had a dinner with some powerful executives, and so I could not stay, but he would not let me leave without reading just a single card. He flipped it over, and it was the Earth or something, except upside down.
“Ooh, that’s not good.” he told me. “The World Reversed means failed plans or unfulfillment. Something’s gonna go badly in the future.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “What will go badly is if you make me late to my dinner.”
As usual, he was off his rocker. The dinner went perfectly, and we closed out the deal we were trying to make-- an agreement with the other major bank in the city to raise interest rates across the board. I felt a little bad for how I treated Will, but honestly, he deserved it. The man doesn’t know what it’s like to actually work for something. That’s why he’s where he is and I’m where I am.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


April 16, 1947
Dear Caroline,

You gave us quite a fright today! I admit, it was my fault, I was supposed to be watching you while Lydia was making dinner, but I became engrossed in the paper. You had so many wonderful toys, and yet you kept staring that the globe we had on the mantle, so I figured I’d take it down and let you play with it. I look away for one minute and you’ve somehow managed to knock it off its stand, sending it rolling upside down into the fire.

Well, fortunately I was quick enough and stopped it before it got there. But I felt bad nonetheless. If things had worked out just a little differently, that globe could have been burnt to cinders. You’re really keeping us on our toes!

Your father,
Ken Barrow


May 12, 1947
Dear Caroline,

Oh, Lydia’s mad at me. I haven’t written you a letter in almost a month! I’ll have to come up with something to tell you.
Today I went to visit Will at his apartment. I protested, telling him I’d rather meet anywhere else in the city than at those tenements, but he insisted. So we met at his rundown, dirty building, in his nasty, cramped apartment, with barely enough room to move around.

He started in on his true purpose for inviting me almost immediately. “Ken, I need your help. I’ve found a great place downtown, and it seems like somewhere I could finally settle down. But I need some money for the down payment, and it’s more than I can scrape together at the moment. Would you please help me out? If I got the money, I could move in next week.”

--I must digress for a moment, Caroline, to tell you something very important about the world. There are people who take, and take, and take, until everyone around them has nothing left. These people never learn to provide for themselves, to produce anything on their own. Do not let you, or anyone around you, be like this. Give a man a fish, and he will ask you for another one tomorrow. Make a man learn to fish for himself, and he’ll never bother you again.

So with that in mind, it’s probably not hard to fathom what my response to Will was.
“No.”
Will’s face fell. “Come on, Ken. I promise I’ll pay it back. Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s not about trust. You could have gone to college and gotten a steady job like me, instead of running off to who knows where doing who knows what. It’s not my responsibility to cover for your mistakes.”
“It wasn’t a mistake. I wasn’t cut out for college-- you saw me in school. I could never have made it through. It’s you acting all high and mighty because you have more money than me and you think you’re better than me. You’re not better than me. You and your stupid high interest loans are the reason that so many people can’t ever get a better life than this.”

Caroline, I’m afraid I shouted something here that’s unfit for the eyes of a young lady such as yourself. I won’t burden you by recounting any more of this fight. After it was over, we sat in silence for almost ten minutes.

To break the silence, he tried to read my tarot cards again. I didn’t have the heart to argue with him anymore, so I let him. When he got to the last one, he flipped the same card he had the last time he visited. “The World Reversed, again.”
“Oh, really,” I replied. “What a funny coincidence.”
But he wasn’t smiling or laughing. “Wrong. There’s no such thing as a coincidence. It’s a sign, Ken.”
“A sign that I need to spend less time listening to crazy talk, maybe.”
“The World is the most powerful card in the deck. When it flips upright, it means everything’s going to go right. When it’s reversed, it means something you’re doing isn’t going to turn out well.”

I got all the way out to my car before realizing I had absentmindedly been clutching the World card which he had handed to me as he was explaining it. I didn’t feel like returning it, and to be honest, he could do without flipping that card and scaring everyone for a change.

An interesting thing happened when I got home. I showed you the tarot card, just as a little game. I know you can’t even see clearly, but to make fun of Will, I decided holding it right-side up and upside down and seeing if you could tell the difference. Well, you could. Whenever I held it right-side up, you cried, and when I turned it upside-down, you started laughing. It was the darndest thing. Anyway, until next time, Caroline.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


May 25, 1947
Dear Caroline,

As I write, I am fighting back tears. I’m not going to be able to write you a long letter, but I need you to know how I feel right now. This hurts even more because in my last letter to you, I talked about visiting Will, but that may have been the last time I ever saw him.
There was a fire in his building last night. It was almost totally destroyed. I went to work, but I could not focus on anything. I sat anxiously awaiting the news about him.
Well, I just found out. He’s not dead, but the doctors have told me it doesn’t look good for him. It seems that the fire escape in his building wasn’t functional. I don’t know what came over me, but I paid all of his bills. If he gets out alive, he won’t owe anything.
And if he dies, I just wasted money. So why doesn’t it feel like a waste?

Your father,
Ken Barrow


May 26, 1947
Dear Caroline,

It’s two AM, and I have yet to sleep a wink. Every time I close my eyes, all I can hear is Will’s voice echoing in my head. “Something you’re doing isn’t going to turn out right.”
Why did this happen to him?
--Well, the obvious reason is that he was still living in that awful apartment.
Why was he still living there?
--Well, because he didn’t get the money to move out in time.
Why didn’t I lend him the money?

Why

didn’t

I lend him the money? He may be a deadbeat, but he is trustworthy, and he wouldn’t go back on his promise. That money isn’t going to do me any good sitting in my bank account, and it might have saved his life.

Well, he might still be alive, but I don’t want to think about that right now. I don’t want to think about anything. I just want to sleep.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


May 28, 1947
Dear Caroline,

I just got done talking to the mechanic. Looks like my car is not going to be a total loss. That’s good, but I don’t really care about it right now.

My memory of today is not good. I have not slept at all in three days. I’ve missed all of my meetings and appointments at work. Instead I worked on setting up a program. A low-interest loan program, with almost instant payout and no jumping through hoops required. I called the newspapers. Before long people from all over were flooding through our doors, full of hope, with a light in their eyes that they had long since thought was extinguished. For over an hour, I sat in our main branch and watched, but with every person who ran happily through our doors with cash in hand, I wished that person could have been Will.

Sure, Will made some mistakes in his life. But is that really the price you should have to pay for a mistake? That can’t possibly be right.

Somehow, when the president of the bank came into the office today, I hadn’t thought about what would happen on his arrival at all. Perhaps I was too tired to think properly.

Caroline, once again I will have to omit some details, on account of sparing your precious eyes from reading the horrible words that were said at this exchange. Suffice to say that he did not take to my new program very well, and I did not treat him with respect befitting a Vice President. The official reason for my termination was “misuse of company resources,” but that wasn’t the real reason. The last thing the president said to me was, “You’ve lost it.”

But on the contrary, I’d like to believe that I found something.

I feel at ease now, as though I’d lost a great burden I didn’t know I had.

Your father,
Ken Barrow


May 31, 1947
Dear Caroline,

I received a phone call from the hospital today. I felt sick to my stomach as I answered. I thought I knew for sure what I was about to hear.

But somehow, whenever you think you know something in this world, it flips upside down on you. They had told me the odds of Will surviving were one in one hundred fifty-six, and yet somehow, he had managed to pull through.

Lydia drove me to the hospital right away. I didn’t waste any time. I needed to talk to him about this.

“Will,” I said, as I burst into his room. “I need to talk to you.”

His smiled weakly when he saw me. “You look terrible.”

“Will, I haven’t slept for almost a week. I feel awful. Every single night I asked myself why I didn’t just lend you the money. This is my fault. I’m sorry. I-”

He cut me off. “It’s not your fault,” he said, shaking his head. “It was in the cards.” He gestured down to my hand.

With a shock, I realized that the tarot card was in my hand. I hadn’t thought about grabbing it, but somehow I had. “Will, I need your help. Everything’s all wrong in my life now. I’ve tried everything. What can I do to make it right again?”

Will reached out and took the card. He held it up to me. “Your world is reversed now, Ken. The World Reversed brings failure and destruction. While you’re governed by the World Reversed, you can’t make it right again.” He handed me back the card.

“Wh... what do I do, then?”

“You need to turn the World upright again. Go on a journey. Leave behind everything that you are, and go seek out something new. The World was once a blessing to you, and it’s become a curse. You need to make it a blessing again.” At that moment, his nurse came in and forced me to leave. I gave him a wave and left, still clutching that wretched card.

Go on a journey? That sounds like utter nonsense. How could that solve the problems that I have?

But then again, what other options do I really have? I renounced my position at the bank, I have used my wealth to help others, and my brother has miraculously survived, and yet I feel no better. So, Caroline, I’ve made my decision.

I’ve called a friend of mine and bought up a boat. It’s furnished with all the latest gadgets and technologies. I’ll let the currents of the ocean take me where they will, and I will cast the World down to the bottom of the sea. I don’t know if that will make things right, but at this point, I choose to have faith. I owe it to Will.

I set out tomorrow. The instant I get back, I will write you another letter and tell you all about my trip. It is time for me to see, once and for all, what Fate has in store for me!

Your loving father,
Ken Barrow

[Something_Smart]

Thank you, lol. I appreciate the comments, and I agree the ending was weak, but let's just say it was better than the ending I'd originally planned. I don't think your prompt was bad, either-- it just didn't really click with the things I wanted to do

I'm hoping we can actually get a decent number of entries this time. I might send out a PM to the people who said they were interested and see how they're feeling. In any event, let's do a very simple prompt and a lower word count to hopefully make it easier for people.

The Prompt:

Somebody gets caught somewhere they're not supposed to be.

1500 words.

(expired on 2019-07-16 17:00:00)

[Something_Smart]

As long as we can understand it without knowing anything about Pathfinder!

[Something_Smart]

Spoiler: Errantparabola

D'awww. Such a cute story I'm not normally a fan of romance stories but I liked how this one abruptly inserts romantic elements in a way that catches both the protagonist and the reader off-guard. (The second person contributes to that effect as well.) Nice job borrowing Irrelephant's universe and taking it somewhere totally different.

Spoiler: VashtaNeurotic

I love the premise of this; it's funny and creative. A couple typos made me have to reread sentences a few times but other than that for all the weirdness the story is actually very easy to follow, and I like the mockery of stereotypical horror tropes. The pun at the end made me cringe so hard

Spoiler: Bins

Holy juxtaposition, Batman. I see the role reversal concept, more could have been done with it for sure if you had more time, but regardless the worldbuilding in both stories is very good and gets your point across very effectively. I can't tell if Peter is going to die; I think he is, but I feel like it would have been better if I knew for sure. Maybe I'm just a bad reader and need to be beaten over the head with stuff. Regardless, the message is very powerful.

Also, I can see where you were coming from with regards to the prompt. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like as long as the story relates to the prompt in some way, just to show that you made some effort to think about how it connects, you're fine. From the right point of view, Bradley was definitely somewhere he was "not supposed to be," and that's a very cool interpretation.

Spoiler: Irrelephant11

Thanks, now I'm afraid to take a shit.

Spoiler: The Winner

Errantparabola wins.

All the stories were great in different ways, but I have to give recognition to the fact that EP took two things I don't usually like reading about (sports and romance) and produced something that made me smile.

Spoiler: Side Note

I know that constructive criticism is an important part of this kind of feedback, and it's definitely something I wanted to hear with my story, but honestly I'm so inexperienced at writing fiction that I don't really feel qualified to tell you guys what you should be doing differently.

I tried to point some things out that occurred to me as a reader, rather than as a writer, but like, writing is hard! So sorry if what I said was not very helpful, because I know that someone who says they love everything is the most useless person to get feedback from.

[Something_Smart]

Spoiler: Righteous Endeavors, 1500 words

Brandon Burke was a giant.

Not a literal giant, mind you. He was only in high school, after all, and barely five foot eight. But to us, he was a giant.

I don’t know how he rose to power. Maybe he inherited his empire from someone else. Maybe he built it from scratch, or tricked someone else into building it for him. Either way, by the time we both had begun eleventh grade, Brandon Burke was in charge of the largest cheating ring our school had ever seen.

His approach was two-fold, and unmatched in its cold efficiency. One, he hired students to serve as “tutors,” ironically named workers who completed homework assignments. And two, he possessed a collection of past tests, and he somehow always knew when a test would be given and what would be on it.

I hated him more than anything at that God-forsaken school. I was a decent student; my strong economics grades had caught Brandon’s eye, and he offered me to be a tutor, but I turned him down. Success should be determined by hard work, not the fattest wallet. I thought about ratting him out to the teachers, but without proof, nothing would have happened. Besides, he had half the football team among his clientele. Hector Razna tried to tattle on him a year earlier and ended up in the hospital with multiple broken bones. Hector insisted that he fell out of a tree, but everyone knew what really happened.

So when I found out my family was going to be moving, my first expression was of relief. I would no longer have to coexist with this monster. I would no longer have to hear teachers praising the work of students who couldn’t tell a dipole from a derivative. Two more weeks to endure, then I’d be gone.

It wasn’t until later that evening that all the puzzle pieces finally clicked.

If I was moving away, all the way across the country actually, not only could I escape Brandon.

I could end him without any chance for retribution.

Not that it would be easy. Two weeks was not a lot of time. But it was worth a try.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourteen days left.

I enlisted my friend Mikey’s help in locating Brandon’s locker. Of course, Brandon had a network of lockers all over the school, but his assigned locker could be tied back to him. Mikey and I traded off following Brandon around. After three days, we finally managed to keep eyes on him for the whole day, but to no avail. Of course, in retrospect, this shouldn’t have surprised me. He couldn’t risk getting seen with something incriminating in his locker; he’d send a lackey to get it instead.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Eleven days left.

While chatting with Hannah Calkins, whose locker was next to mine, it occurred to me that lockers were assigned alphabetically. So to find Brandon’s locker, all I had to do was find someone with a similar name, and... bingo. Dave Burlow, sat in the front at the far right in my Spanish class. I followed Dave to his locker and quickly located Brandon’s.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Ten days left.

I was never a good actor, but I’ve heard that confidence is the key. I strutted right up to Brandon’s locker, spun the dial a couple of times, then called out “Ugh!” and struck my hand against its metal door. I turned around to see a friendly custodian approaching me, asking what was the matter. “My locker’s jammed,” I replied. “It does this a lot. Could you open it please?”

He looked at me for a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to me. Like any moment he’d be grabbing me by the arm and leading me to the principal’s office. I felt anything but confident. It was warm in the school, but the hair on my arms was standing straight up.

But just as suddenly as it had begun, the spell was broken. “Tell me about it. I keep saying they need to replace the damn things, but they never listen,” and I breathed a sigh of relief as he opened the locker.

It was empty.

Okay. Brandon was good. But my time here was not completely wasted. I pulled a pen from my pocket and stuck it in the mechanism, keeping the door unlocked. That would come in handy later.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Seven days left.

I’d wasted a week, and all I had to show for it was a pen stuck in a locker. It was Monday morning now, and Brandon’s “tutors” would be passing back all the assignments they had illegitimately completed over the weekend. Before homeroom, I located the economics tutor, Sam Roscoe, in the library. “Hey, man,” I said to him, “I need your help. I forgot to do the econ homework for today. Can you help me out?”

Sam looked at me, one eyebrow arched. “You know that’s not how Brandon does things. All homework requests need to be put in the day before.”

I let my eyes widen and my fists clench a little. “Please, it’s an emergency. I need an A in economics, or my college chances will be ruined.”

Sam shrugged. “Sorry, but what Brandon says goes.” He picked up his backpack and left.

I looked over to Mikey, who was sitting at the next table over. He held up a blue folder and winked at me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Later that day, I made my way to the study room in the library where Brandon’s tutors sat. Sam was there, looking absolutely miserable. “Hey, man,” he mumbled, resting his chin in his hands. “Sorry I couldn’t help you earlier. If it makes you feel any better, I screwed up even worse than you.”

Before I could say anything, Brandon Burke stormed in, a look of absolute contempt in his eyes. “Sam Roscoe. You lost an entire week’s worth of homeworks? Do you have any idea how much this will cost me?”

Sam stared at his feet and said nothing. “Get out of here, and don’t come back,” continued Brandon. “You’re done.”

After Sam had left, I smiled sheepishly at Brandon. “So, I guess you’re looking for a new economics tutor now?”

Brandon nodded curtly. “You offering?”

“Yeah, man. There’s a big test coming up next week. You’re gonna need someone.”

“All right, you start tomorrow.”

Finally. I was in.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Three days left.

I told Brandon that, in preparation for the exam on Monday, I needed to look through the past tests.

He looked skeptical. “Fine. Tim, take him to the vault, and make sure there’s no funny business.”

I followed Tim to a locker in a remote corner of the school. “Turn around,” he said, leaning to enter the combination. “Remember, Brandon said no funny business.”

As I turned around, my phone slipped and clattered to the ground. I went to pick it up and heard the locker open.

There was the mother lode, in all its glory. Arms crossed, expression inscrutable, Tim watched as I searched absentmindedly, but I already had what I wanted.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

One day left.

This was it.

There was a football game that night, so Brandon’s thugs would all be occupied. I sneaked into the school and located the vault. I entered the combination from the video I had taken from my phone, when Tim thought my back was turned. I grabbed some tests.

All I had to do was put some tests in Brandon’s locker in time for the locker inspection the next day, and he’d be history.

But when I reached it, hands full of papers, the door wouldn’t budge.

“I have to admit, that was a nice move with Sam.”

I froze.

Turning around slowly, I saw the sneering figure of Brandon Burke. “I figured out your stupid plan. You were gonna plant tests in my locker and run crying to the teachers. Pathetic.”

“I don’t think you realize how hard I work.

Hundreds of students count on me every day to get their assignments and test answers. And the money? It doesn’t remotely cover the work I put in. I run this operation under the teachers’ noses and they don’t notice anything.

You got closer than that twerp who tried me last year, I’ll admit. But that just means I’ll have to mess you up even more badly. Go ahead. Walk into the building tomorrow. I promise you won’t be walking out.”

Just then, an unfamiliar voice caught us both off guard. “You sure about that?”

A student I didn’t recognize at first stood holding a phone, a wide smile on his face. “I just emailed that little speech of yours to every administrator in the district.”

Brandon stared at him with dawning horror.

“My name’s Hector Razna. Maybe this time you’ll remember it.”

Then he turned to me. “Probably best for you to be going.”

As I left the school for the last time, I felt an exhilarating rush I had never felt before.

This was the feeling of justice.

[Something_Smart]

Thanks I'm glad the plot didn't feel like it was going too fast for you to keep up with.

The Prompt:

"I never should have taken your advice."

2000 words.

(expired on 2019-08-23 17:00:00)

[Something_Smart]

If Zaph's okay with it I'm fine to give an extension. 3-4 days maybe?

Is anyone else actually planning to write this time?

[Something_Smart]

Okay, I'll give a four-day extension.

(expired on 2019-08-27 17:00:00)

[Something_Smart]

Spoiler: Creature

The lack of quotation marks made the story somewhat hard to follow, and you have a lot of telling rather than showing. However, despite that, you did a good job building up the world and the plot. The timing in particular was very good, devoting enough time to the parts on the surface at the beginning and end to get context for the events but not so much that they took away from what happened underground. There are some times when the phrasing is either confusing or overly blunt, which I assume is probably a language thing, but to me at least it doesn't really take away from the story that much.

Spoiler: popsofctown

Tenses are important It's pretty hard to get into a story that constantly switches from past to present tense and back... I don't know if you're a native speaker but either way that's something that you can improve
Other than that though, the plot was well-executed, if mostly predictable (from the way they were asking him for stuff I was expecting them to kill him intentionally, rather than just leave him to die). For only 647 words you did a good job of establishing setting, characters, conflict, and (ironic) resolution.

Spoiler: The Winner

Creature wins.

Both stories had some grammatical weaknesses, and both worlds were fascinating with great setups for their respective ironic endings, but Creature's world was a little easier to get into, and his plot was a little more nuanced and interesting. Nice job to both of you though!

[Something_Smart]

I had to cut off quite a lot of words because it went way past the word limit.

Oh, that makes sense. I had a similar problem with my last story.

[Something_Smart]

I wonder if going back to having an /in phase would be a good idea, because it would force people to commit publicly to writing something.

[Something_Smart]

Spoiler: Pinball Wizard, 1749 words

Angelo slammed down the phone, causing its beat-up rotary dial to spin back and forth with a muted ringing sound. Sweat glistened off his forehead from the sweltering summer heat. After a brief moment of contemplation, he buried his face in his hands, exclaiming to no one in particular, “It’s hopeless.”

Angelo glanced dismally around his apartment. Save the chair and table he was currently using, all the furniture was stacked up in the corner. Through the door to the kitchen he could see the distinctive rainbow pattern that meant that Kat had returned. But although the furniture was gone, the room was far from empty. Eight pinball machines stood scattered about the room, leaving barely enough space to walk from one side to the other. There were also four in the kitchen, and two in each bedroom.

Sixteen pinball machines. For weeks now they had rested, silent, motionless, while Angelo had unsuccessfully searched for a buyer. Angelo wiped his brow again. The heat was stifling, and the newspapers had said it was only going to get hotter for the next few weeks.

The door swung open and Kat wandered in. Skinny with long blond hair, ratty jeans, and a tie-dye shirt with a peace-sign necklace, she was the antithesis of Angelo’s close-cropped brown hair, shorts, and white tank top revealing powerful muscles. She smiled weakly as she entered. “Still no luck, huh?”

“The last person on my list just called back and said he’d found a different supplier.”

Kat leaned lazily against the doorway. “Sorry, Angie. I know you hate to admit it, but there’s really no two ways about it this time. I was right and you were wrong.”

Angelo clenched his fists. “I told you not to call me that! And besides, I’ll find a way to sell them. The salesman promised that I’d be able to make a huge profit if I was just patient enough. Just give me one more week.”

“One more week?” Kat’s smile disappeared. “Angelo, those stupid things have been clogging up your apartment for almost a month. And because of what? You believed some bullshit a con man told you?”

“He’s not a con man!” Angelo gestured wildly, almost knocking the phone off of the table. His expression softened somewhat as he picked up the phone and put it back. “Multi-level marketing is the next big thing, okay? It’s the way of the future.”

“Pyramid schemes are not the way of the future. That Ponzi guy was doing this stuff forty years ago.”

Angelo let out a deep breath. “All right. Okay. That’s not important right now. What’s important is that I need to get the money back that I spent on these things. I practically cleaned out my savings to afford them.”

“Money, money, money. Everything’s always about money with you, Angie. You know what? That’s what’s keeping you from really finding yourself. You’re too focused on getting rich to really look within yourself and see what’s important. I think you should donate them to charity.”

Angelo rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, don’t start with that hippie bullshit. Sure, feelings are important, but this is twelve thousand dollars. What are you, a commie?”

“Don’t compare me to those monsters! The Soviets use violence and intimidation. I am a pacifist. I don’t believe in harming anybody.”

“Yeah, just like that Liberation Club you were in. Real peaceful.”

Kat flashed an angry glare. “Look, the Liberation Club was a good idea. They’re all about fighting corporate dominance and corrupt politics. It’s not my fault they decided to start killing people to prove their point.”

Angelo arched an eyebrow. “Not your fault, really? Even though you were the one who introduced your brother to the club?”

“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT MY BROTHER!” Kat’s face began to redden, but she placed her hands on her chest and began breathing deeply. The two of them remained in silence, looking at each other across the sea of pinball tables.

At last she spoke again. “Fine. If you want to keep your stupid pinball machines, you can keep your stupid pinball machines.” She slammed the door and walked out.

“Wait--” Angelo got up to chase after her, but was thwarted by the lever of a pinball machine jabbing his shin, causing him to cry out in pain and fall to the ground. By the time he was on his feet again, Kat was nowhere to be seen.

“Shit.” Angelo muttered to himself. “Stupid thing!” He shoved the machine, causing it to lurch precariously and make a dreadful noise. “All right, Angelo, get it together. She’ll come back if you can just get rid of these machines.”

He called the salesman, who laughed and gleefully offered to buy them back from him at one-fifth of the price he had paid, in response to which Angelo angrily hung up. He called local amusement halls, who told him they only bought directly from suppliers for economic reasons. Finally, in desperation, he walked to the corner store down the street and asked the cashier, a nervous-looking young woman of no more than twenty, if she knew anyone who might be interested in buying a bunch of Starrix 64 pinball machines.

She began to reply, “Oh, uh, well I’m not sure if--” Then she paused, and her eyes widened. “Wait. Y-- you said Starrix 64?”

Angelo nodded.

She took a step back. “Didn’t you read today’s paper? Those machines are-- uh...” She trailed off and pointed toward the store’s newspaper rack.

Angelo picked up the paper and began to read.

RECALL-- studies reveal a mechanical flaw in the Starrix 64 pinball machine that can cause it to explode at high enough temperature and humidity.

Starrix Corporation will fully reimburse anyone with an original proof of purchase. Resale machines do not qualify for this.

Angelo let out a low whistle.

The cashier spoke again. “Do you... do you have those?”

“Yeah,” replied Angelo.

“Well, uh, you better get rid of them fast. They’re apparently really dangerous.”

Angelo was still struggling to process what he’d just read. “Okay. Thank you,” he responded absentmindedly as he put the newspaper down and began to walk back to his apartment.

It wasn’t until he reached it that the reality of what he had just found out sunk in. He no longer needed to sell sixteen pinball machines. He needed to sell sixteen

bombs

.

Now who would be interested in buying sixteen bombs?

All at once, the realization hit him like a wave. In the same instant, he knew exactly how he could sell the machines, and exactly what the implications of doing so would be.

At that moment, the summer heat went from uncomfortable to unbearable. He doubled forward, holding onto the backboard of a pinball machine for support. He felt queasy and faint, and his ears began to ring violently.

It took him a minute to realize that the ringing was not his ears, but rather the phone. He stared at it with a sort of loathing, like one would look at a childhood enemy one wished never to see again. He willed it desperately to stop, but it refused, cutting through the stagnant and humid air like a knife through Angelo’s conscience.

At long last, he picked up the phone, knowing with absolute certainty who was calling, but still praying that he was wrong, praying that it would just be a telemarketer, or maybe his landlord or his boss.

But to no avail. At the other end was a voice he knew all too well. “Heeeeeeey, Angelo! Long time no see.” Hearing that voice was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Hi, Mark.” This was none other than Kat’s younger brother. The infamous ringleader of the extremist Liberation Club. Angelo had known him since high school when he had started dating Kat. Mark was a smooth talker with a sociopathic streak. He joined the Liberation Club on Kat’s request and immediately took it from a peace-loving protest group to a violent anarchist army. Neither Angelo nor Kat had spoken to him in over seven years.

Mark continued. “So, I saw your ad in the paper, and I couldn’t help but wonder... are those babies still for sale? Because let me tell you, we would love to get our hands on a few of those. You know, to help out the kids and all that.”

Angelo felt sick to his stomach. But the alternative was even worse. He needed the money, or he’d probably lose his apartment, and subsequently his job. Kat was happy to live off the land, but Angelo didn’t think he could handle it. Besides, she had left him to do what he wanted with them. America’s supposed to be a free country, right? He can do what he wants with his own property, right? If the person he sells it to does something wrong, that’s on their conscience, not his.

“Yeah, Mark, I’ve got ‘em all. Twelve thousand dollars cash for all sixteen.”

“Awesome! You’re the man, Angelo. I can swing by right now with the truck, if you’ve got time.”

“Sure, that will work.” Angelo hung up. The anxiety was completely gone. He’d made his decision. Mark arrived with his truck, and the two men loaded the machines in. After watching Mark drive away, Angelo took a quick trip to the bank, then went back to his apartment and dialed a number on the phone.

“Hey, Kat, it’s me. I’ve got something to tell you...”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One week later, Angelo sat at the table in his living room, which was now returned to normal at last, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee.

Kat entered sleepily from the bedroom and kissed him on the cheek. “Good morning, honey. I just wanted to say again how proud I am of you for donating all of those machines to charity. I guess you’ve turned over a new leaf; you’ve been acting like a completely different man now.”

Angelo nodded absentmindedly. “Yeah I suppose I have.” He stared off into the distance.

Kat nodded. “I wish more people in the world would understand that peace and cooperation are more important than competition and violence.” She turned around and noticed his blank expression. “Angelo, is something wrong?”

Angelo glanced down at the newspaper article he’d been reading.

TRAGEDY-- Arcade Hall Explosion Kills 13. Foul Play Suspected.

After a moment of contemplation, he turned back to Kat and put on a serene smile.

“Nah,” he replied.

[Something_Smart]

Carca, kuribo, pops? Still interested?

I'm fine with an extension if anyone wants one.

[Something_Smart]

No it wasn't Other than the tense issue, I really liked it. (And I don't give false compliments.)

Besides, this isn't about being good, it's about having fun... if you enjoy writing, then write, and if you mess something up, then learn from it and try to improve it next time! \o/

[Something_Smart]

This is a lot of fun despite my dismay for deadlines. I haven't considered creative writing in forever, but this is a really great practice, I'd reckon.

Yeah totally! And while deadlines may suck, they do motivate us to get shit done... I hope you stay with this, I really enjoyed your story

I'll put a prompt up within the next few hours. Need to think of a good one first.

[Something_Smart]

Eleven hours is totally a few, don't know what you're talking about.

The Prompt:

Someone is accused of something they didn't do.

1500 words.

(expired on 2019-10-02 21:00:00)

[Something_Smart]

Spoiler: Creature

I can definitely tell you had to pare this one down to hit the wordcount limit. It had the effect of some of the plot elements seeming kinda random-- for instance, I'd have loved to see some hints beforehand about Alan Howard, or about the skull, and it seems like their entire plan pretty much fell into place without them really having to do much.

Wordcount-limited issues aside, the plot itself is solid, and your writing style definitely helps to keep the reader engaged. Not my favorite story from you, but not by any means a bad one.

Spoiler: student

I'm a sucker for motifs I don't know if Zuck is really a fan of classical music or if you made that up, but either way, it was well executed. It reminds me of how music is used in A Clockwork Orange.

Similar to what I said for Creature, I like plot twists that were hinted at somehow in the story-- ideally so the reader doesn't see them coming but understands it after the fact. I do like that it was emphasized how Zuck won the trial through money and connections despite his very weak evidence, because at the very least that makes it easy to believe that he was actually guilty. A lot of the description here was well done, particularly of how calm he was the whole time and how horrified his office staff was.

Spoiler: kuribo

I like this world. It's a pretty standard dystopian world, but you did a good job of establishing the setting and the conflict, as well as a lot of the background needed to understand it, quickly. I love the character of Chillain, too-- he's a talented and eager kid who got caught up in some mess beyond his control. One thing that confuses me, though, is that he's apparently a "high-ranking member," which doesn't seem to square with the description of him as a unsuspecting newbie being used as a scapegoat.

The ending was actually a little unsatisfying, too. Like I said with the other two, there didn't seem to be any indication that the narrator might betray them, especially a double betrayal such as this-- why would she work for the mercenary Cowboys when she just got rich off of the black market? Satisfying or not, though, the twist was well-executed, and I do like how she asked for his name and gave a plausible excuse for why she wanted it.

Spoiler: The Winner

student wins.

All three stories had a lot of good setup-- Creature's explained the situation, the plan, and details on why it worked; student's established exactly how smug and unconcerned Zuck was; and kuribo's created a world, a likeable victim, and a sense of urgency.

Of the three, though, I think student's best connected the setup to the plot and the resolution. Creature's plot had a lot of moving parts, between Kane somehow escaping and the skull swap bamboozle, it really wasn't possible to know what was going on until it was all over. Kuribo's plot was a backstab from someone who clearly had the means but had no discernible motive, meaning it was neither surprising that she was able to pull it off, nor interesting to finally understand why she did it. Student's also carried a random curveball, but it was better-established by the story-- he was going to divorce her, he had a weird and weak alibi, there was a video that he assumed was doctored, the lie detector, and then the reaction of his staff at the end.

[Something_Smart]

Yeah, Fiction Rumble is awesome!

And I'm definitely in agreement that a story should stand on its own. I didn't really interpret Whisper as an unreliable narrator, even at the end, because she knew exactly what was going on. I think the "usually" and "most" linguistic cues were far too subtle because that can easily just be the style of the narrator (or the author) to avoid absolute statements.

Just out of curiosity, did you have a deeper motive for her in mind, or was it just greed?

Pedit: @kuribo

[Something_Smart]

I'm mostly proud of fitting a big plot within 1500 words and I don't think I struggled a lot with word cuts although I could use a few more words. Prompt was kinda hard and I wanted to write something that wouldn't bore the readers.

Yeah you did a good job of keeping the plot intact. I definitely think with more words you could have set some of the plot elements up better.

Sorry if you disliked the prompt, by the way-- I did a couple of vague ones before but most of the prompts in the previous thread were quite specific and the results were still interesting. I wanted to give a more specific one a try. I think it worked out well.

[Something_Smart]

I personally like the shorter word counts because writing a longer story is a ton of effort (and not just physically coming up with more things to say-- the plot, setting and characters all have to be deeper and more involved). But I suppose maybe we should start setting the word limit higher because anyone who wants to go shorter is free to but it allows people like Creature to make good use of the extra words.

[Something_Smart]

I'm okay with 750, but if other people would like it increased I wouldn't be opposed.

Also the deadlines have usually been 14 days, not 10. I think there weren't enough submissions with the shorter deadlines.

[Something_Smart]

Yeah sorry I didn't participate in this one, was out of town over the weekend and I couldn't come up with any ideas I was satisfied with. All the stories were good, congrats Creature.

[Something_Smart]

I got an idea literally yesterday... if you extended it a few days I might be able to make it.

[Something_Smart]

Don't think this is gonna happen, sorry. Has nothing to do with the deadline, I just didn't end up liking my idea enough and the thought of writing it felt like a chore :/

Inspiration is hard ok.