Nefas Fatum
For my next contest...
| Poetry! |
  
|
8.1% | [ 3 ] |
| Musically inspired! |
|
40.5% | [ 15 ] |
| Prompts! |
|
27.0% | [ 10 ] |
| Free for all! |
|
16.2% | [ 6 ] |
| I don't care. |
|
8.1% | [ 3 ] |
| Total Votes: | [ 37 ] | ||
[ .days. ]
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:47:02 +0000
Trīs dienas paradīzē vai simts gadus šeit?
Jautāja man melnais vīrs.
Jautāja man melnais vīrs.
*dies*
I totally thought the deadline was today...
EDIT: "You have until midnight that day."
Is that 12:00am on June 24th, or 12:00am on June 25th?
I totally thought the deadline was today...
EDIT: "You have until midnight that day."
Is that 12:00am on June 24th, or 12:00am on June 25th?
Ko gan es izvēlētos vēlreiz piedzīvot,
Ja no grēkiem būtu vēl tīrs.
Ja no grēkiem būtu vēl tīrs.
Noftin
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:57:16 +0000
Cherry and Da Flea: Our beloved Mel Brooks, from whose brilliant mind we have recieved such movies as Robin Hood: Men in Tights, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein, has also his hand in the world of Broadway. He has done musical adaptations of The Producers, Monty Python and Search for the Holy Grail (Called Spamelot), and then has adapted Young Frankenstein into a musical, too. So that musical has been playing in my mind recently, especially the song "Join the Family Business".
Days: I think she means 11:59 p.m. June 24th
Random update: I've been playing these games recently that my family loves. But, one of the games won't play on the family computer for some reason. My sister has a laptop, but she hasn't been using it for a while, using instead her beloved iMac computer. So, she is letting me borrow the laptop, letting me keep it in my room. Now, I have easy access to both Photoshop, and a word processor that I know how to operate! Happy day!
Days: I think she means 11:59 p.m. June 24th
Random update: I've been playing these games recently that my family loves. But, one of the games won't play on the family computer for some reason. My sister has a laptop, but she hasn't been using it for a while, using instead her beloved iMac computer. So, she is letting me borrow the laptop, letting me keep it in my room. Now, I have easy access to both Photoshop, and a word processor that I know how to operate! Happy day!
dangerous xx L I A S O N
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:01:28 +0000
It's not the time [It's not the place]
I'm not another [pretty face]
I'm not another [pretty face]
You're so easy to read...
Why exactly are we talking about Mel Brooks? -starts to read back on conversations-
I saw Spamalot last month on Broadway.
I always get around 500-600 words when I do word wars.
I saw Spamalot last month on Broadway.
I always get around 500-600 words when I do word wars.
But the book is boring me.
You're not the first [And not the last]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
Da Flea
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:09:49 +0000
She said, "My SAILS are flapping in the WIND."
I said, "Can I use THAT in a SONG?"
I said, "Can I use THAT in a SONG?"
Noftin: I didn't know that. surprised
Okay... I think I'm just gonna post my entry. Never did get a decent ending line, but I've reread and edited to the point where I can't stand to look at it anymore and no longer know whether I think it's awesome or crap, and that's usually a good time to be finished. Anyway, if I don't post now, I never will, and then I'll feel bad for 'wasting' so much time. xp
Probably no one will like it, and I'll be sad because K-OS7 is one of my 'babies'. Ah well.
Cherry: If you get to reading and feel it's warping your mind or that you just plain don't like it, feel free to stop. XD
She said, "I mean the END begins."
I said, "I know... Can I use THAT, too?"
I said, "I know... Can I use THAT, too?"
Da Flea
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:10:37 +0000
Notes: This is based on characters from an unwritten novel, but there isn't much background to know. Main character is a violent, insane criminal being held as part of strange research. This story has pieces in her first-person POV and others in third-person, but that doesn't necessarily make them objective. I dunno. It's difficult to explain. The plot is... subtle?
Username: Da Flea
Story Title: Snap! Shot the Puzzlebox
Word Count: 7476
Rating: M for Mature. Sensitive people be warned. There's swearing, blood, vomit, nudity & more than a healthy dose of nihilism/cynicism/something-not-quite-pleasant-ism.
Story:
You may have never heard this, but there's no such thing as yourself. You as a mental individual, I mean, a personality. Despite what Mr. Rogers used to say to soothe the developing psyche's fear, you are not special. Just one more combination, a probability of genetic code and sensory input. You are an amalgamation, a mutation, a conflagration. Fire, like snowflakes, could be considered never a replicate of itself, but fire is only light and heat, the consumption of fuel and spitting up of ash.
Why we should put such stock in ash is hard to understand. Ash becomes soil, in which the fuel is replanted, and then the next generation burns it up again. Like a phoenix from the flames is culture, the mass consciousness, the illusion of self.
But we cling to it like strips of velcro. Rip identity up, and it'll fix itself right back. Can't be helped. It's our only way of interacting with the world. I am this, and you are that, and we are us, and they are them, and no one is anyone so I guess everyone is ********.
Especially when you wake up to find the physical reminders of identity - I mean all the STUFF we surround ourselves with, the physical footprints that solidify the illusion - are suddenly gone.
No blankets, no bed, not even Shark the ignoble plushtastic, the stuffed equivalent of a lazy domestic partner. It's rather quiet without his commentary, the auditory hallucination which staves off the selfless-ness...
...
...
...********.
9 AM on a Sunday morning, and a helicopter was arriving at the Unnameable Aisle. Actually, that was a bit misleading, because it WAS the official name, and it was a fitting one. Just a tiny dot of land, owned by a private company, far enough offshore to be unseen but close enough that weekly travel was possible.
Today's passenger list included a few nurses, a janitor, and two high-ranking researchers. Their designations were One and Three, and no one knew them by anything more. Mysterious names for enigmatic people, the kind of who did questionable things in the world's dark corners, like Isla Innombrable.
The rest of the group avoided the researchers, which was just as well, as far as One was concerned. He didn't need silly questions from menial workers. There were greater concerns, such as how to make progress with one of their most promising yet also most stubborn subjects.
"I called ahead last night," One stated to Three. "Told them to remove everything from her room."
Three squinted an eye. "Any... special reason?"
"She hasn't been bribed so far, but it's a tactic of salesmen to give 'trial periods'. People don't like to go without things they've become accustomed to."
"You think she'll cooperate enough to get her, um... Well, she has that stuffed toy."
"Not just that. They took the mattress, the journals, not that there was anything in them, just a lot of ripped out pages, a scribble here and there, smiley faces..."
"Ripped out and put where?"
"Who knows? She probably ate them. It would explain the frequent stomach problems."
Three tapped his fingers against the edge of the seat. "Do you think she's got some compulsion to eat paper? I mean, sh-"
"No," One stated flatly.
"In sessions, sometimes-"
"She's not stupid," One snapped. "She eats things in session to piss us off. It's a reason. Which means she has a reason to eat the journal pages, and then to request more..." He turned to stare at the water which passed beneath them. Mile after mile of dappled sapphire, gently rolling. It would turn a sea-green as they grew closer, then foam up white as it spent itself trying to climb the shore. Some people saw this and thought 'tropical getaway', but One saw only the futility of effort. He had a feeling it would not be a good day.
Three, not realizing the implied end of the conversation, offered a carefully worded argument. "I realize K-OS7 shows more reasoning ability than many of the others, but wouldn't it be a bit hasty to rule out other influences? Just because an action frustrates our efforts doesn't mean that was the reason it was done. K-OS22 and 15 have eaten-"
"That's because they're machines," One stated crossly. "K-OS15. His identity is Eat. That's all he does; that's all he thinks about. He's like some kind of parasite lying dormant until something edible walks through the door; but not Chaos. That's not what she is."
"You did it again," Three pointed out.
"Did what?"
"Said 'chaos' instead of her number."
One grumbled under his breath.
"Do you think sometimes we see her the way we want to," Three actually meant 'you', not 'we', but it felt less rude this way. "Or even the way she wants us to see her, rather than the way she actually is."
There was a brief silence during which One glared at his associate and searched for an adequately biting response. He finally settled on, "Is there any way TO see something other than the way we see it?"
"I... was only putting forth a question."
"So was I."
Three coughed and leaned back in his seat. Some days, his associate became an unreadable, unbreakable fortress, although it had been his experience that K-OS7 knew all the secret passages. When it came to their interactions, he sometimes wondered who was revealed more - the subject or the examiner...
There will always be people who want to figure you out. They're usually the ones 'closest' to you, the ones who think that by rights they SHOULD know you and are awfully pissed when they find out they don't. Or shocked. Lots of people act shocked.
'I didn't know my husband was the Strangler,' they say, or 'No, my son would never be in a gang. The needles and guns are just hobbies.' It's a type of denial, a way of building the world the way we want it to be, and I guess there's no shame in that. One man's truth is another man's lie, and what you think it's about is never really what it's about, at least not to anyone but you.
...
The other people who want to know you are the ones who make it their Business to know. Truly ******** up individuals are they, the ones who want to write every character trait on a paper and cross-reference here and dot that I and discover the Pattern in the Big Picture. Ah yes, your Type. Are you Melancholic? Psychopathic? INTP? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit?
Yes, you probably are.
The session room was small and rectangular with a table bolted to the ground. It's top was some kind of formica, or that's what K-OS7 would have guessed. Anyway, it hurt when your head was smashed into it, something which most of the room's occupants knew all too well. A few of the bloodstains still remained.
Three stood near the back wall, the one with the two-way mirror and the camera behind it. He scribbled notes onto a clipboard, flipped to a new page and continued writing. He was more Observer than Actor in this play. Beside him, nearly half his height, stood Two, a sadistic troll of a man. Every so often, Two fixed K-OS7 with one of his predatory grins. She stared back, unimpressed. She might be the one with feet cuffed to chair legs but if Two wanted to keep his fun little job, he could do little without One's say-so. He was impotent, and he knew it.
One paced the area along the table's side, his left hand holding the opposite wrist tightly behind his back. They'd been here for a half hour already with no progress. He'd told her to answer just a few questions, and they'd return her things. Everyone knew she could speak. She'd been overheard mumbling to herself in her room, so why be so stubborn?
When commanded sharply to speak, K-OS7 curled her lips back and growled. She snarled and snapped her jaw until One turned away.
"How cute," he muttered. "She thinks she's a dog." Two snickered and mumbled 'b***h' several times, and K-OS7 wished she had the mobility to lick herself. They'd revel in their disgust and Three would spout something Freudian, and then One - lovely One - would tell them intentional obscenity had nothing to do with Oedipus being a melodramatic narcissist.
Quite suddenly, One spun and slammed his palms against the table. "Who ARE you?"
K-OS7 raised an eyebrow and thought, 'Me? I'm not the one who comes cloaked in shadows.' This arrogant, numbered trio were nameless, faceless - just voices and body parts and vague impressions; but that was only K-OS7's impression, which by necessity made it separate and warped from Reality, if Reality existed. You have to be careful who and what you listen to, you know, or you might get some insanity on you. It was contagious, especially in these parts.
"I know you understand English," One stated, "Even if you refuse to speak it, but I'll be merciful and compromise with you." He went to Three and dug through the clipboard's papers until he found a special one. He slid it over the table toward K-OS7 and tossed a pencil after it. It was a questionnaire of twenty questions. "Fill it out like a cooperative subject, and we'll return your niceties."
K-OS7 picked up the pencil and twirled it in her fingers. She could do some nice damage with that point, but then she thought of her squishy shark friend held hostage somewhere. If her mind ran like a government, it would refuse to negotiate with terrorists and then would create a bombing campaign, thereby resulting in many deaths - including that of the hostage. She could just imagine his seams ripped and stuffing strewn about a dirty tile floor.
Thankfully, K-OS7 did not think like a government. She thought like the hero of an action movie who made deals with the terrorists, mafia, or other forces of generalized darkness. Then later, she'd go back and raise hell, make some explosions, maybe have a car chase...
After several minutes of scribbling and paper tearing, K-OS7 slid two pieces of paper back across the table. She'd ripped question number five from the sheet but given them everything else.
"Favourite colour," Three read. "Blood." He looked up at One with a 'here we go' expression. "TV show - Land of the Lost." That seemed relatively normal, but One raised an eyebrow at the girl, anyway.
Favourite game, LIFE. Favourite book, Mein Kampf. That got her a fresh look of surprise from Three, but Two crossed his stubby arms and muttered, "I told you she's a Nazi."
"No, she's not," One growled. "She's playing games with us." K-OS7 grinned and held up the removed number five.
Favourite Song - B.I.N.G.O.
One would later write in his notes that he believed the Mein Kampf reference was meant as the literal translation "My Struggle", a symbol of my narcissism. He makes note that a love of Hitler wouldn't mix with a hatred of authority. He doubts I've even read the book.
Clever boy. I haven't. Although I think he's stretching with the rest. He's the type who would go around adding up numerical passages of the Bible to find parallels with historic dates.
...
How did I SEE his notes, you ask? Well, anyone who's anyone - anyone with intellect, that is - has at one time or another found a penchant for midnight strolling. Some do it 'round the block, some in the garden of good and evil, but I manage well enough in the lower intestinal track of Tartarus. And sometimes, during this nocturnal dromomania (i.e. obsessive wandering) , I find time to stop by One's cozy little office. For such a meticulous person, he has a tendency to leave things laying about. Sometimes I think he plans the mess to make himself look more normal.
And they say I'M crazy...
Deep in the night, when most of the staff had gone home or to bed, K-OS7 pried up a piece of the tiling from her floor and pulled out a clearance card. Ms. Kimberly Davies, one of the kitchen staff, had been nice enough to leave it in easy access when delivering a meal. Poor woman probably never even realized where she'd lost it, but all the better for adventurous mental patients like K-OS7, who now fidgeted with the door lock and made her way into the hall, where it was a simple matter of avoiding the slow security cameras until she reached a vent. Then she was crawling through the recycled air unit, which always smelled a bit stale, and climbed several floors up to the office level.
Her plan tonight wasn't very elaborate. The mood wasn't right for an escape attempt, and she had no particular reason to kill, so she avoided a night janitor and slipped her way into One's office. She nearly tripped over a box of old files, then picked up some fallen papers and thumbed through them before making a neat pile on the desk. One probably thought all this tidying was from a janitor, and that amused K-OS7 in a strange sort of way.
She picked up a half-eaten box of cafeteria takeout and ate what she hoped was supposed to be lasagna. It had a tangy aftertaste. As she searched the desk drawers, she pulled up a black cotton bra, gave it a funny look, then slid it into her underwear. There wasn't anything kinky in that. You just had very few places to store things in a plain, knee-length shirt and underoos.
Beneath the bra had been a pistol, which she now aimed at various objects, saying 'Bang' as if destroying each. The lamp, the cute ceramic bunny, the metal lockbox...
The open lockbox.
K-OS7 put the gun away and abandoned the food as she scurried to investigate. The lid was slightly ajar. A paper had accidentally wedged in the corner, and K-OS7 imagined an irritated One forcing the box closed but never checking to see if it click-snapped into place.
Inside, there were a few manila folders and loose papers but more importantly, a little black book. It held names and numbers and more names and more numbers and each of them a new thrillride of possibility. There was Three's address. She recognized it. Was this one labelled 'sociopathic a*****e' meant to be Two? Anyway, everyone was someone, and that was enough. She rushed to the desk, found a blank piece of paper and began copying as fast as her fingers could move.
It took thirty-five minutes and a cramped hand, but she wrote down a hefty amount. Just for laughs, she then tucked the black book onto One's shelf between two volumes about paranoia. She checked the rest of the lockbox and found a few keycards and a set of the old-fashioned, brass kind of keys. She pocketed most of them, only because she couldn't make copies. It was always best to not leave too big a gap where you travelled, or people started filling in those cracks with cement and all your progress would be for nothing.
Think of how limited your perception is. You, right there, one teensy weensy person on a great big ball of dirt with billions of other persons, not to mention animals, plants, geological forces, and other things I can't be bothered to remember. But the point is that each and every thing plays its own part, and you - how much do you REALLY know?
Remember those ads like "It's 8pm, do you know where your child is?" Well, how about your parents, friends, lovers, co-workers, politicians. Hell, do you even know what your pets are doing at 8pm? Yet you think you know them, don't you.
You don't know jack s**t.
Forget the inside, the insight, the psychological super smash that we sometimes refer to as 'interaction'. People lie, people pretend, and if you didn't know that much, maybe you oughta go back to la-la land and leave the rest of us to continue this. But even beyond the lies, beyond the inflection and projection of personality, the lyrical, lingual legerdemain (I learned that word from Three's word-a-day calendar), there's the State of Things.
Oh yes, the State of Things. That's where we ******** ourselves over instead of letting someone else do it. You see lipstick on your boyfriend's collar and you slash his tires. Then you find out he visited his grandmother, a woman known for lip sludge. Oops. ******** yourself, didn't you. That's Perception.
If One ever finds his little black book, or if he discovers his bra is now stashed in the drawer where Three keeps his interior decorating magazines, that'll be Perception, too. And oh, how the fur will fly. Righteous fury, it would be - IF perception were reality.
We look, but we can never see. We look through our tiny windows into a world of fog and smoke, and it's all just blobs and movements and guesswork, but we're always so damn sure of things, aren't we?
I'm sure we are, and One's sure that sureness can exist, and Three's surely unsure, and Two...
...
Two is sure he knows me. He's sure we have similarities, and I hope we don't, but what the hell do I know?
The walls were a solid metal but old and stained so it was hard to tell where rust ended and blood splatter began. Chains were suspended from the ceiling, some with hooks, as if the room had been a kind of meat shed, but it wasn't cold. On the contrary, it was quite warm and humid, which was why the sweat refused to leave K-OS7's face. Oh, and the-
Her body convulsed as electricity raced through her shoulderblades.
The taser didn't help.
"You can talk to me, can't you?" Two grinned and stepped back for a moment, and K-OS7 took the opportunity to breathe deeply and recover. Her back felt aflame, although the red marks which she guessed were there would fade within a day or two. Two was still playing with training wheels.
Despite her belief that Two wouldn't act on his own, K-OS7 had been dragged from her cell for a 'private meeting'. Considering the scenarios her own twisted mind had thought up, this little get-together wasn't so bad. Stripped down, chained up, a few hard slaps and a few more kicks, followed by an injection of something she suspected to be truth serum. It made her senses fuzzy, made her almost willing to comply - almost. Two probably hadn't counted on the sedatives still in her system from an earlier scuffle. Some drugs just didn't mix well.
Two returned with his taser - which had left the burning on her back - and knelt down to where she lay on the floor.
"Things never have to be this way," Two stated. "Although I'm very happy when they are." He brought the taser down on her shoulder. Its setting was high enough to hurt but not enough to take her consciousness. Not yet, anyway. "But we're goal-oriented right now. You say something pretty for the camera." He pointed to a camcorder behind them. "And then I get to show the board how much more effective my methods are." To accentuate the point, he brought the taser down on her lower back, and she convulsed with the shock.
When Two sat back on his heels, she tried to lunge, forgetting momentarily about her wrists bound together. When one moved, they both did, and she fell sharply against her shoulder. Two kicked her stomach to add an insult with the injury. He then stood up and laughed with his dry, grumbly chuckle that K-OS7 thought he must practice because nobody could have a laugh that stereotypically sinister.
"I was going to leave you unharmed," Two stated coldly, though one could only guess what his definition of 'unharmed' was. "But you're pushing me. Not that I don't like it." He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flicked it open. K-OS7 only watched from the corner of her eye as he knelt down and pulled it across her hip. It sliced only thinly into the skin - a warning.
'Gonna have to go deeper than that to get feeling at this point,' K-OS7 thought. As if he read her mind, he pressed the blade deeper and flicked it across her side. That got a wince, and he grinned. The next cut would be on her arm, deep enough to really feel...
The door of the room swung open and hit the wall with a hollow clang. Two's eyes grew quite wide, and he backed away from the girl.
"This wasn't authorized." One's already powerful voice seemed to grow with intensity as it echoed through the room.
K-OS7 turned her head to the other side to see One's angry scowl, complete with an occasional eye-twitch. Behind him stood Three and four guards.
Two looked almost cowardly as he put the switchblade away and said, "You were busy today, so I thought-"
"Thought I wouldn't notice?" One scoffed. "Don't think you can keep sneaking around behind my back. I am in charge of this operation, and you follow MY orders. Is that understood?"
Two clasped his hands behind his back and stared at the ground.
"I said is that understood?" One demanded.
"Yes, ma'am- Sir."
One crossed the room, stepping over K-OS7 to reach his small associate. He smacked Two hard enough that he lost balance and fell to the floor.
"I get the feeling you don't take me seriously," One growled.
"But of course I do." If it were possible for eyes to actually flash with fire, Two's would have done so. His fingers balled into fists as he rose to a knee and then to his feet.
One turned to look at K-OS7, who lifted her hand and gave a small wave.
With a sigh, One rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Did you have to take her clothes off?"
"No," Two replied, leaving the 'but I wanted to' unspoken.
"You didn't, uh..." One rolled a hand in the air.
"Not yet."
One gave him a sideways glance. "She didn't... say anything, did she?"
Two stuck out his lower lip in a pout, and One couldn't help but grin. He motioned the guards forward, and they lifted K-OS7 from the floor. The cuffs were removed from her ankles but not her wrists, which seemed awfully rude, but her head was spinning a bit so she decided to let it slide. Whatever drug Two had given her, it was starting to show unexpected side effects. Her legs were wobbly, something she hadn't realized on the ground. In many ways, she felt like death warmed over, and she thought maybe she'd behave today, just so she could reach her floor and sleep it off. (One had rescinded on his 'compromise'. She still had no bed.)
But everyone else was still talking about things K-OS7 really wasn't interested in, things like interrogation and antiseptic and schedules. Three had joined One and Two in front of her, and they blah-blah-ed for several more minutes until one of the guards stated, "Nearly killed Duncan this morning. Stabbed his eye out with his own glasses."
K-OS7 remembered that particular irony, but that wasn't the important thing. She blinked up at the guards around her. They had names? That was surprising given they all had the same stupid haircut, the same silly hats and button-up jackets. Eye-colour, the shape of nose and jaw - they were practically clones. It rarely crossed her mind that they might be individually named. Well, someone had better start up the machine, pour in some wax and a bit of starch and pop out a replacement "Duncan". It wouldn't take long. She knew that from experience. No matter how many she and the others killed or maimed - and it had to be quite a few at this point - there were always more in the morning.
She started to chuckle, not for any particular reason except she imagined finding that mold and tampering so they all came out with something funny, like extra heads or arms in the wrong places.
"I take it you find your recent victim amusing?" One stated, but he received no answer. The chuckles broke into laughter, and the vibrations churned K-OS7's already rolling stomach. She sunk to her knees, held upright only by the guards still nervously gripping her arms. In the midst of her laughter, she suddenly coughed, then reeled forward and threw up.
Yes, vomit. Most hilarious of substances, except when its coming up your own throat, a torrent of hot acid in a mix of yellow-green and bright pink. What the ******** did I eat that was pink?
The guards were quick to release me and jump away. All those finely tuned reflexes come in handy avoiding projectile fluids; but my dear, shadowy friends... Well, I suppose being top of the totem pole means you're above such petty reactions. It also means you end up with yellow-green and pink soaking its way into your tall, dark and mysterious clothing.
Before Three could comprehend the bile splattered across his shoes, I grabbed his precious clipboard, whipped the pencil free and began writing. In the corner of my eye, I saw the guards rush forward. Chaos with a pencil is some bad s**t, you know, in more ways than many understand. But One - dear, desperately inquisitive One - held up a hand to stop them. He loves me when I write, when I communicate at all, actually. Thinks he's getting something, broke on through to the Other Side. Heh. I was never much of a Pink Floyd fan, but I respect the effort.
...Am I off topic again? No matter. It all ends in me holding up the clipboard like a helpful little girl so that Three, Two and One, standing in the rejected fluids of my oft-abused system can see what insight the day will bring them.
'What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.'
One's eye twitches. That's the sign he's gotten the joke. He rips the clipboard from my hands, and I let him. No reason to be snarky now that I've won.
"Take her to her room," One snaps, and the waiting guards tackle me to the floor - unnecessarily, I might add - and jab that familiar sedative needle into my arm. You'd think a girl would build up immunity, but not today. Today I'm growing fuzzy, face-down in vomit...
That won't smell pleasant when I wake up.
Still without her meagre possessions - the breakers of monotony which sometimes made the cell not such a bad place - K-OS7 had nothing better to do than once more wander the building, but now she also had an aching back, two stinging lines of fresh scabbing, and a still swollen lip; and all of that equalled discontent. Malcontent might have been a better word, which by rights, led into malevolence.
It just wouldn't do for her to continue taking this treatment and offering nothing in retaliation. Passive aggression, His Plushiness would have called it, but she never quite understood that. It was one of those moronic oxen, and that made her think of cattle, and that made her think of the societal standard by which cattle were treated, and by then she had only one thought in her mind - Don't be cattle.
She flipped a scalpel over in her hand as she walked calmly down the second hall of the medical wing. Security cameras weren't a problem. She'd stopped in the front room and seen to that.
Body count: two and about to rise.
The main lights were off, leaving only the dim, flickering security lights to cast a pale glow on the shiny surfaces. Her bare feet made nary a sound as she approached the only room where a light was still on. Two doctors/scientists/clinical sadists/whatever you wanted to call them would be in there, experimenting on the corpse of another casualty from someone, somewhere. Self-centric as K-OS7 was, she at least realized that they - every K-OS-# - were like limbs of something larger. A victim of one was a victim of them all. Still, she liked to take a bit of pride in being the epicenter of her own disasters.
As the doors swung open, the doctors looked up in surprise, light glinting off their glasses. One of them shouted something and ran for an alarm switch, but that had been disabled with the cameras. He pulled it, but no bell rang out. No evacuation, no backup, no luck.
K-OS7 was already at the other doctor, who was mumbling a string of quite logical reasons for her to put the scalpel down. People might get hurt. She'd only bring trouble on herself. They could help her. Mercy was a virtue.
All very good points, but logic wasn't what brought her here. She was operating on whim - calculated yet emotional. Some things went beyond the thin veneer of Reason that humanity tried to cling to when it realized it didn't understand itself. This was one of those things.
The doctor evidently believed his words would work, right until the end, and she almost felt bad when she grabbed his coat and ran the scalpel across his throat. This man was like Three, more docile than most, and she'd never had anything personal against Three. Oh well.
The other man had run out the door, which was a much more fun reaction. Cowardice inevitably emboldened the hunter. K-OS7 burst out the door after him, her bare feet slapping against the tile. She could see him ahead, and he looked over his shoulder twice, which only slowed him down. When he reached the security station, he ducked inside. That was his last mistake. He saw the dead guards and started to back up, but K-OS7 was already at the door. She wrapped an arm around his head from behind and tugged him back. He let out a desperate scream before the scalpel dug in. It was a rotten strike, only hitting half the neck. K-OS7 released the body and watched him crawl out into the hallway. He was mobile, but he wouldn't get far.
She tugged the first guard from the seat, then tossed the second guard over the first one. Hopefully that slippery floor wouldn't give her much friction. As she dragged them into the hallway, she saw the doctor scraping his fingers over the door dividing this hall from the next. Apparently, he didn't remember that to even open that door, he'd have to be buzzed through from the security room. It amazed K-OS7 how supposedly intelligent people overlooked the simplest of details at moments like these, but she only shook her head and continued back toward the medical lab.
4:45 AM. Finishing her scene and its signature had taken longer than she thought, but sometimes psychopathia was like art - it couldn't be rushed. Perhaps someone ought to make that into a postcard and send it to the Silhouetted Trio. She didn't think anyone had ever told them.
Anyway, she was really pushing her time limits as she entered One's office. Morning staff started arriving as early as 5:00, and that was an extra hassle. She pulled out a piece of stationary and jotted down a quick letter, then took an envelope and stamps from the drawer and checked One's address. You never could be sure when your brain might slip up, and she'd hate for that to ruin such a carefully planned moment of bonding. When she had printed the address neatly into place, she dropped the letter into the outgoing box at the front desk and headed through the vents and back to her room. If she was lucky, she'd get a few minutes of sleep before her adoring fans dragged her away for another friendly press conference.
'Do not weep for these dead. They are more interesting in death than in life. Boring stories brought to fascinating end, MADE interesting by the protagonist, by the one worth knowing, because let's face it, you didn't care about Dave, Dana, BJ or Gabriella (By the way, I put their nametags in the lost & found... Names. That still amuses me.) Didn't even know who they were beyond another blank service face until I pulled them out and gave them meaning.
All over the planet, billions of people. Billions of bored & boring people. All living the same oh-so-Important mockery of existence. But I don't cover life with a mask, do I? Not a boring one, anyway.
All the world loves a clown, but that's another lie. Everyone hates them, the freakish colours, the always-smiling, the... No one has that kind of joy, and so they hate-hate-hate and belittle and demean and throw popcorn and THEN they laugh. Tell themselves 'Look at the fool, but I'm smarter. I'm Serious Business.' And then they laugh, but it's a lie. It's a lie because what really lights their fire is the villain.
Check who gets news coverage. See the TV shows, the movies, the documentaries - all salivating over the most wicked kind and then bringing in the "hero" to out-violence and prevail and let you sleep safe at night, wrapped in Lies. People gasp and moan and cover eyes but inside its all grins as they hear 'Another killing, another car crash, another rampage, another atrocity'. Vicarous entertainment - they wish they could do the same. Silly, stupid Wannabe-Somethings. They couldn't handle it. Look how many implode from a little war-time PTSD. But they don't have to (handle it, I mean), because they have that thing called Lie. 'I like clowns. I hate bad men. I am a good person, and my life is important.' Lies, lies-
And then me. I am Truth without boundaries, isn't that right? Well, unless you count the walls, but I rarely do. (There are 27 separate wall spans between your office and the front desks, did you know that?)
You see, the hero isn't what you think a hero is. It's not who's Good. That's a side effect of Lie. What makes a hero is the violence - might makes right. Our real heroes aren't living in lofty mansions, all permed and pressed and suave and Bond, Jackoff Bond. Real heroes are they who tear down and free us from the Lies. And they live down in the s**t and the gutter. So filthy you can't bear to touch them. Reviled, wretched - worshipped.
I saw. Before I ever came here, I saw. Turn on your news tonight, One, and see the lovely heroes which the world has brought you. That's how you found me, isn't? And you... Why, you've practically created your own League of Superfriends here, haven't you?
But sleep sound, my dear One, knowing that God is on the slaughterhouse throne, the clowns are sharpening their knives and I? I am the last best thing you've got going for you.
With love for the terrors which divide and bind us,
Chaos.'
One was not happy to learn that four deaths - slaughters, really - had occurred overnight, and the fact that the guilty party was caught on tape did little to ease his anger, but it did pique his curiosity when the tape turned out to be anything but normal security footage.
One of the surveillance analysts, who had been scanning the mostly bare medical ward tapes, moved the recording to the right spot as the silhouettes in triplicate spread out behind her. Two, stuck behind the woman's chair, continually bounced onto his toes in an effort to better see the screen.
"This is from Surgery Eight," the woman stated, "Although the investigation team says that wasn't the original crime scene." She hit play, and the screen danced in static for a moment before coming into focus. The overhead lights glared harshly across the white surfaces, glinted from metal equipment, and illuminated the blood which seemed to be everywhere - in pools on the ground and spray on the walls. Three bodies could be seen in the background, tossed haphazardly on the operating tables. The only other visible figure was K-OS7, covered in a long, black robe she discovered who-knew-where. She stood in the center of the room, where her body twitched and convulsed, movements blurring like a supernatural being in a horror film.
"What the..." Three murmured.
"It's tampered with," the analyst stated. "But don't ask me when she had time to do that."
After skittering around the room, occasionally pop-skipping to a new place, K-OS7 suddenly snapped to real time with her face directly in front of the camera. Lines of blood which had been painted under her eyes now melted down over her cheeks.
"I am become Death," K-OS7 stated. "Destroyer of Worlds."
One's eye twitched. "She thinks she's very clever."
Wrong, One. I never said I was anything of the sort, but that's what you want, isn't it? Doesn't matter who I really am, only what you need me to be. Would you really have been happy if I'd written purple, X-Files, and Dance Dance Revolution on your little questionnaire? Of course not, because what would that mean?
Nothing at all. But we're supposed to be painting a picture here, right? How hard would it be to put a puzzle together without an image on the box to guide you? And how much harder would it be if the puzzle made no picture at all?
Remember what I said back whenever I said it? You are not really yourself. No one is. See, it isn't one puzzle that makes one person, with a clear guide and neat little borders and the ability to be crumbled up and dumped in a box. No...
All of existence is one big puzzle, and in it there are us, people, and there are the animals and plants and all that, and there are States of Things and Perceptions; and all of these make up potentially related or unrelated, overlapping pieces. No final picture, no borders - no order of any kind. You can spend eternity snapping them together, trying to figure out where one ends and the other begins, but you can't. Any given piece might be a State which spawns a dozen Perceptions, and those Perceptions spawn States, and this block belongs to One and myself, and that one to Two and myself, and somewhere here, we all bleed into Three, and hell, these pieces aren't even making a geometric shape anymore, just willy-nilly configurated chaos shooting off in a dozen spindly directions through the void.
So yeah...
You think you know yourself, but where did it all come from? Are you really who you think you are? Which puzzle pieces are you? And are they really YOU or someone else's? And about those Everyone Elses...
All just little machines, taking in the pieces and mixing them up and spewing them down again, so even if the puzzle had an end, a final image, we never get to see it. We're always starting over. And at this point, I'd be thrilled for a blaze to come and take it all, just incinerate this mass of cardboard cutouts, because I'm a little tired of thinking right now. But I may be at the end of this, and that's good. Could wrap up right here...
If only I could remember which ******** piece I'm on...
"I think..." K-OS7 whispered, "I got off track." She rubbed a hand over her face and stretched, and the bed creaked beneath her. It had been returned along with her blankets and notebooks. She HAD spoken, after all, and a deal was a deal, even among the insane and the mad - and no, those weren't always the same thing.
She tapped her pencil against the point where her frenzied writing had come to a stop. "I forgot who I'm supposed to be being and for who..."
"If you're not fitting one mold, you're fitting another."
K-OS7 turned to her stuffed toy. He'd been returned, too, and she was finally able to hear a voice of reason among all the insulatory insanity.
"They say you're a million people in a million minds," she replied, "No presentation of yourself equaling the next."
"A million mirrors and all of them cracked," the shark plush added.
She pulled the pages from her journal one by one and threw them up in the air. They didn't go far, merely fluttered down around her like fat, flat, horribly deformed snow. "So let the Silhouettes think whatever they think. I sure as hell don't get it. Stockholm Syndrome be damned."
The plush stared at her with its cold, black button eyes. "Are you, uh... gonna leave all those pages just lying around."
K-OS7 crumpled the first page, stuffed it into her mouth and began chewing.
"Good girl."
One entered her modest home and tossed her jacket and hat on the back of the couch. She ruffled her hair and realized there were knots in it. If that didn't scream 'time for a haircut', she didn't know what did.
Macaroni & cheese and whisky was on the menu, and she glared at the cartoon dinosaur on the pasta box. You could work your way up any career ladder you wanted, but in the end, marketing just reduced you to a child. At least the whisky label treated her like an adult. She took a chug directly from the bottle and grimaced, then began flipping through the stack of mail. More advertisements for Viagra, cruises, and children's clothing. Did they even care who the ******** they sent these things to? She growled and shoved the papers off the table. Once gone, they left a letter in their place, a plain white envelope with the return address reading only 'Chaos' and a drawn heart.
One picked up the envelope and rubbed her thumb over it, as if somehow the texture itself would reveal the hows and whys, but of course, that was impossible. She'd have to rip it open and read or see whatever contents spilled out, no matter how disturbing.
She stared at it for a few minutes until the bubbling of water atop the stove told her it was time to add the pasta. She did so, and thought about how she would sit down with her macaroni and cheese and really feel those blue box blues as she read the impromptu correspondence of a psychopath.
'Clever girl, she thought. 'So ******** clever I barely know what to do with you. Like Reynard the Fox - isn't there another Nazi reference there? Goddammit, Two and your ******** obsessions. And I'm like a hound snapping at the fox's heels and howling mad when it slips from my grasp... And some days, I'm more like a plump, stupid ground squirrel that chose to sit on a sleeping fox and chew my nuts, and I'm gonna get what's coming to me, aren't I? For being the confident and indolent atop the wily and quick?'
Her thoughts became a winding maze that took her further and further out of time until the water boiled away in the pan, and the macaroni burned to the bottom and began to smoke; and that smoke alarm, placed too close to the stove, rang out its shrill, piercing tone; and One, conditioned as she was, grabbed a butcher knife from its holder and whipped around, prepared to actually see K-OS7 herself...
All that met her was the sizzling in the pot and the grinning cartoon dinosaur on the box, laughing at her paranoid folly. One lowered the knife and stared at the wispy, dark grey smoke that curled its way up from her ruined dinner.
Barely audible above the ear-splitting shriek of the alarm, she whispered, "Chaos..."
Username: Da Flea
Story Title: Snap! Shot the Puzzlebox
Word Count: 7476
Rating: M for Mature. Sensitive people be warned. There's swearing, blood, vomit, nudity & more than a healthy dose of nihilism/cynicism/something-not-quite-pleasant-ism.
Story:
You may have never heard this, but there's no such thing as yourself. You as a mental individual, I mean, a personality. Despite what Mr. Rogers used to say to soothe the developing psyche's fear, you are not special. Just one more combination, a probability of genetic code and sensory input. You are an amalgamation, a mutation, a conflagration. Fire, like snowflakes, could be considered never a replicate of itself, but fire is only light and heat, the consumption of fuel and spitting up of ash.
Why we should put such stock in ash is hard to understand. Ash becomes soil, in which the fuel is replanted, and then the next generation burns it up again. Like a phoenix from the flames is culture, the mass consciousness, the illusion of self.
But we cling to it like strips of velcro. Rip identity up, and it'll fix itself right back. Can't be helped. It's our only way of interacting with the world. I am this, and you are that, and we are us, and they are them, and no one is anyone so I guess everyone is ********.
Especially when you wake up to find the physical reminders of identity - I mean all the STUFF we surround ourselves with, the physical footprints that solidify the illusion - are suddenly gone.
No blankets, no bed, not even Shark the ignoble plushtastic, the stuffed equivalent of a lazy domestic partner. It's rather quiet without his commentary, the auditory hallucination which staves off the selfless-ness...
...
...
...********.
***
9 AM on a Sunday morning, and a helicopter was arriving at the Unnameable Aisle. Actually, that was a bit misleading, because it WAS the official name, and it was a fitting one. Just a tiny dot of land, owned by a private company, far enough offshore to be unseen but close enough that weekly travel was possible.
Today's passenger list included a few nurses, a janitor, and two high-ranking researchers. Their designations were One and Three, and no one knew them by anything more. Mysterious names for enigmatic people, the kind of who did questionable things in the world's dark corners, like Isla Innombrable.
The rest of the group avoided the researchers, which was just as well, as far as One was concerned. He didn't need silly questions from menial workers. There were greater concerns, such as how to make progress with one of their most promising yet also most stubborn subjects.
"I called ahead last night," One stated to Three. "Told them to remove everything from her room."
Three squinted an eye. "Any... special reason?"
"She hasn't been bribed so far, but it's a tactic of salesmen to give 'trial periods'. People don't like to go without things they've become accustomed to."
"You think she'll cooperate enough to get her, um... Well, she has that stuffed toy."
"Not just that. They took the mattress, the journals, not that there was anything in them, just a lot of ripped out pages, a scribble here and there, smiley faces..."
"Ripped out and put where?"
"Who knows? She probably ate them. It would explain the frequent stomach problems."
Three tapped his fingers against the edge of the seat. "Do you think she's got some compulsion to eat paper? I mean, sh-"
"No," One stated flatly.
"In sessions, sometimes-"
"She's not stupid," One snapped. "She eats things in session to piss us off. It's a reason. Which means she has a reason to eat the journal pages, and then to request more..." He turned to stare at the water which passed beneath them. Mile after mile of dappled sapphire, gently rolling. It would turn a sea-green as they grew closer, then foam up white as it spent itself trying to climb the shore. Some people saw this and thought 'tropical getaway', but One saw only the futility of effort. He had a feeling it would not be a good day.
Three, not realizing the implied end of the conversation, offered a carefully worded argument. "I realize K-OS7 shows more reasoning ability than many of the others, but wouldn't it be a bit hasty to rule out other influences? Just because an action frustrates our efforts doesn't mean that was the reason it was done. K-OS22 and 15 have eaten-"
"That's because they're machines," One stated crossly. "K-OS15. His identity is Eat. That's all he does; that's all he thinks about. He's like some kind of parasite lying dormant until something edible walks through the door; but not Chaos. That's not what she is."
"You did it again," Three pointed out.
"Did what?"
"Said 'chaos' instead of her number."
One grumbled under his breath.
"Do you think sometimes we see her the way we want to," Three actually meant 'you', not 'we', but it felt less rude this way. "Or even the way she wants us to see her, rather than the way she actually is."
There was a brief silence during which One glared at his associate and searched for an adequately biting response. He finally settled on, "Is there any way TO see something other than the way we see it?"
"I... was only putting forth a question."
"So was I."
Three coughed and leaned back in his seat. Some days, his associate became an unreadable, unbreakable fortress, although it had been his experience that K-OS7 knew all the secret passages. When it came to their interactions, he sometimes wondered who was revealed more - the subject or the examiner...
***
There will always be people who want to figure you out. They're usually the ones 'closest' to you, the ones who think that by rights they SHOULD know you and are awfully pissed when they find out they don't. Or shocked. Lots of people act shocked.
'I didn't know my husband was the Strangler,' they say, or 'No, my son would never be in a gang. The needles and guns are just hobbies.' It's a type of denial, a way of building the world the way we want it to be, and I guess there's no shame in that. One man's truth is another man's lie, and what you think it's about is never really what it's about, at least not to anyone but you.
...
The other people who want to know you are the ones who make it their Business to know. Truly ******** up individuals are they, the ones who want to write every character trait on a paper and cross-reference here and dot that I and discover the Pattern in the Big Picture. Ah yes, your Type. Are you Melancholic? Psychopathic? INTP? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit?
Yes, you probably are.
***
The session room was small and rectangular with a table bolted to the ground. It's top was some kind of formica, or that's what K-OS7 would have guessed. Anyway, it hurt when your head was smashed into it, something which most of the room's occupants knew all too well. A few of the bloodstains still remained.
Three stood near the back wall, the one with the two-way mirror and the camera behind it. He scribbled notes onto a clipboard, flipped to a new page and continued writing. He was more Observer than Actor in this play. Beside him, nearly half his height, stood Two, a sadistic troll of a man. Every so often, Two fixed K-OS7 with one of his predatory grins. She stared back, unimpressed. She might be the one with feet cuffed to chair legs but if Two wanted to keep his fun little job, he could do little without One's say-so. He was impotent, and he knew it.
One paced the area along the table's side, his left hand holding the opposite wrist tightly behind his back. They'd been here for a half hour already with no progress. He'd told her to answer just a few questions, and they'd return her things. Everyone knew she could speak. She'd been overheard mumbling to herself in her room, so why be so stubborn?
When commanded sharply to speak, K-OS7 curled her lips back and growled. She snarled and snapped her jaw until One turned away.
"How cute," he muttered. "She thinks she's a dog." Two snickered and mumbled 'b***h' several times, and K-OS7 wished she had the mobility to lick herself. They'd revel in their disgust and Three would spout something Freudian, and then One - lovely One - would tell them intentional obscenity had nothing to do with Oedipus being a melodramatic narcissist.
Quite suddenly, One spun and slammed his palms against the table. "Who ARE you?"
K-OS7 raised an eyebrow and thought, 'Me? I'm not the one who comes cloaked in shadows.' This arrogant, numbered trio were nameless, faceless - just voices and body parts and vague impressions; but that was only K-OS7's impression, which by necessity made it separate and warped from Reality, if Reality existed. You have to be careful who and what you listen to, you know, or you might get some insanity on you. It was contagious, especially in these parts.
"I know you understand English," One stated, "Even if you refuse to speak it, but I'll be merciful and compromise with you." He went to Three and dug through the clipboard's papers until he found a special one. He slid it over the table toward K-OS7 and tossed a pencil after it. It was a questionnaire of twenty questions. "Fill it out like a cooperative subject, and we'll return your niceties."
K-OS7 picked up the pencil and twirled it in her fingers. She could do some nice damage with that point, but then she thought of her squishy shark friend held hostage somewhere. If her mind ran like a government, it would refuse to negotiate with terrorists and then would create a bombing campaign, thereby resulting in many deaths - including that of the hostage. She could just imagine his seams ripped and stuffing strewn about a dirty tile floor.
Thankfully, K-OS7 did not think like a government. She thought like the hero of an action movie who made deals with the terrorists, mafia, or other forces of generalized darkness. Then later, she'd go back and raise hell, make some explosions, maybe have a car chase...
After several minutes of scribbling and paper tearing, K-OS7 slid two pieces of paper back across the table. She'd ripped question number five from the sheet but given them everything else.
"Favourite colour," Three read. "Blood." He looked up at One with a 'here we go' expression. "TV show - Land of the Lost." That seemed relatively normal, but One raised an eyebrow at the girl, anyway.
Favourite game, LIFE. Favourite book, Mein Kampf. That got her a fresh look of surprise from Three, but Two crossed his stubby arms and muttered, "I told you she's a Nazi."
"No, she's not," One growled. "She's playing games with us." K-OS7 grinned and held up the removed number five.
Favourite Song - B.I.N.G.O.
***
One would later write in his notes that he believed the Mein Kampf reference was meant as the literal translation "My Struggle", a symbol of my narcissism. He makes note that a love of Hitler wouldn't mix with a hatred of authority. He doubts I've even read the book.
Clever boy. I haven't. Although I think he's stretching with the rest. He's the type who would go around adding up numerical passages of the Bible to find parallels with historic dates.
...
How did I SEE his notes, you ask? Well, anyone who's anyone - anyone with intellect, that is - has at one time or another found a penchant for midnight strolling. Some do it 'round the block, some in the garden of good and evil, but I manage well enough in the lower intestinal track of Tartarus. And sometimes, during this nocturnal dromomania (i.e. obsessive wandering) , I find time to stop by One's cozy little office. For such a meticulous person, he has a tendency to leave things laying about. Sometimes I think he plans the mess to make himself look more normal.
And they say I'M crazy...
***
Deep in the night, when most of the staff had gone home or to bed, K-OS7 pried up a piece of the tiling from her floor and pulled out a clearance card. Ms. Kimberly Davies, one of the kitchen staff, had been nice enough to leave it in easy access when delivering a meal. Poor woman probably never even realized where she'd lost it, but all the better for adventurous mental patients like K-OS7, who now fidgeted with the door lock and made her way into the hall, where it was a simple matter of avoiding the slow security cameras until she reached a vent. Then she was crawling through the recycled air unit, which always smelled a bit stale, and climbed several floors up to the office level.
Her plan tonight wasn't very elaborate. The mood wasn't right for an escape attempt, and she had no particular reason to kill, so she avoided a night janitor and slipped her way into One's office. She nearly tripped over a box of old files, then picked up some fallen papers and thumbed through them before making a neat pile on the desk. One probably thought all this tidying was from a janitor, and that amused K-OS7 in a strange sort of way.
She picked up a half-eaten box of cafeteria takeout and ate what she hoped was supposed to be lasagna. It had a tangy aftertaste. As she searched the desk drawers, she pulled up a black cotton bra, gave it a funny look, then slid it into her underwear. There wasn't anything kinky in that. You just had very few places to store things in a plain, knee-length shirt and underoos.
Beneath the bra had been a pistol, which she now aimed at various objects, saying 'Bang' as if destroying each. The lamp, the cute ceramic bunny, the metal lockbox...
The open lockbox.
K-OS7 put the gun away and abandoned the food as she scurried to investigate. The lid was slightly ajar. A paper had accidentally wedged in the corner, and K-OS7 imagined an irritated One forcing the box closed but never checking to see if it click-snapped into place.
Inside, there were a few manila folders and loose papers but more importantly, a little black book. It held names and numbers and more names and more numbers and each of them a new thrillride of possibility. There was Three's address. She recognized it. Was this one labelled 'sociopathic a*****e' meant to be Two? Anyway, everyone was someone, and that was enough. She rushed to the desk, found a blank piece of paper and began copying as fast as her fingers could move.
It took thirty-five minutes and a cramped hand, but she wrote down a hefty amount. Just for laughs, she then tucked the black book onto One's shelf between two volumes about paranoia. She checked the rest of the lockbox and found a few keycards and a set of the old-fashioned, brass kind of keys. She pocketed most of them, only because she couldn't make copies. It was always best to not leave too big a gap where you travelled, or people started filling in those cracks with cement and all your progress would be for nothing.
***
Think of how limited your perception is. You, right there, one teensy weensy person on a great big ball of dirt with billions of other persons, not to mention animals, plants, geological forces, and other things I can't be bothered to remember. But the point is that each and every thing plays its own part, and you - how much do you REALLY know?
Remember those ads like "It's 8pm, do you know where your child is?" Well, how about your parents, friends, lovers, co-workers, politicians. Hell, do you even know what your pets are doing at 8pm? Yet you think you know them, don't you.
You don't know jack s**t.
Forget the inside, the insight, the psychological super smash that we sometimes refer to as 'interaction'. People lie, people pretend, and if you didn't know that much, maybe you oughta go back to la-la land and leave the rest of us to continue this. But even beyond the lies, beyond the inflection and projection of personality, the lyrical, lingual legerdemain (I learned that word from Three's word-a-day calendar), there's the State of Things.
Oh yes, the State of Things. That's where we ******** ourselves over instead of letting someone else do it. You see lipstick on your boyfriend's collar and you slash his tires. Then you find out he visited his grandmother, a woman known for lip sludge. Oops. ******** yourself, didn't you. That's Perception.
If One ever finds his little black book, or if he discovers his bra is now stashed in the drawer where Three keeps his interior decorating magazines, that'll be Perception, too. And oh, how the fur will fly. Righteous fury, it would be - IF perception were reality.
We look, but we can never see. We look through our tiny windows into a world of fog and smoke, and it's all just blobs and movements and guesswork, but we're always so damn sure of things, aren't we?
I'm sure we are, and One's sure that sureness can exist, and Three's surely unsure, and Two...
...
Two is sure he knows me. He's sure we have similarities, and I hope we don't, but what the hell do I know?
***
The walls were a solid metal but old and stained so it was hard to tell where rust ended and blood splatter began. Chains were suspended from the ceiling, some with hooks, as if the room had been a kind of meat shed, but it wasn't cold. On the contrary, it was quite warm and humid, which was why the sweat refused to leave K-OS7's face. Oh, and the-
Her body convulsed as electricity raced through her shoulderblades.
The taser didn't help.
"You can talk to me, can't you?" Two grinned and stepped back for a moment, and K-OS7 took the opportunity to breathe deeply and recover. Her back felt aflame, although the red marks which she guessed were there would fade within a day or two. Two was still playing with training wheels.
Despite her belief that Two wouldn't act on his own, K-OS7 had been dragged from her cell for a 'private meeting'. Considering the scenarios her own twisted mind had thought up, this little get-together wasn't so bad. Stripped down, chained up, a few hard slaps and a few more kicks, followed by an injection of something she suspected to be truth serum. It made her senses fuzzy, made her almost willing to comply - almost. Two probably hadn't counted on the sedatives still in her system from an earlier scuffle. Some drugs just didn't mix well.
Two returned with his taser - which had left the burning on her back - and knelt down to where she lay on the floor.
"Things never have to be this way," Two stated. "Although I'm very happy when they are." He brought the taser down on her shoulder. Its setting was high enough to hurt but not enough to take her consciousness. Not yet, anyway. "But we're goal-oriented right now. You say something pretty for the camera." He pointed to a camcorder behind them. "And then I get to show the board how much more effective my methods are." To accentuate the point, he brought the taser down on her lower back, and she convulsed with the shock.
When Two sat back on his heels, she tried to lunge, forgetting momentarily about her wrists bound together. When one moved, they both did, and she fell sharply against her shoulder. Two kicked her stomach to add an insult with the injury. He then stood up and laughed with his dry, grumbly chuckle that K-OS7 thought he must practice because nobody could have a laugh that stereotypically sinister.
"I was going to leave you unharmed," Two stated coldly, though one could only guess what his definition of 'unharmed' was. "But you're pushing me. Not that I don't like it." He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flicked it open. K-OS7 only watched from the corner of her eye as he knelt down and pulled it across her hip. It sliced only thinly into the skin - a warning.
'Gonna have to go deeper than that to get feeling at this point,' K-OS7 thought. As if he read her mind, he pressed the blade deeper and flicked it across her side. That got a wince, and he grinned. The next cut would be on her arm, deep enough to really feel...
The door of the room swung open and hit the wall with a hollow clang. Two's eyes grew quite wide, and he backed away from the girl.
"This wasn't authorized." One's already powerful voice seemed to grow with intensity as it echoed through the room.
K-OS7 turned her head to the other side to see One's angry scowl, complete with an occasional eye-twitch. Behind him stood Three and four guards.
Two looked almost cowardly as he put the switchblade away and said, "You were busy today, so I thought-"
"Thought I wouldn't notice?" One scoffed. "Don't think you can keep sneaking around behind my back. I am in charge of this operation, and you follow MY orders. Is that understood?"
Two clasped his hands behind his back and stared at the ground.
"I said is that understood?" One demanded.
"Yes, ma'am- Sir."
One crossed the room, stepping over K-OS7 to reach his small associate. He smacked Two hard enough that he lost balance and fell to the floor.
"I get the feeling you don't take me seriously," One growled.
"But of course I do." If it were possible for eyes to actually flash with fire, Two's would have done so. His fingers balled into fists as he rose to a knee and then to his feet.
One turned to look at K-OS7, who lifted her hand and gave a small wave.
With a sigh, One rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Did you have to take her clothes off?"
"No," Two replied, leaving the 'but I wanted to' unspoken.
"You didn't, uh..." One rolled a hand in the air.
"Not yet."
One gave him a sideways glance. "She didn't... say anything, did she?"
Two stuck out his lower lip in a pout, and One couldn't help but grin. He motioned the guards forward, and they lifted K-OS7 from the floor. The cuffs were removed from her ankles but not her wrists, which seemed awfully rude, but her head was spinning a bit so she decided to let it slide. Whatever drug Two had given her, it was starting to show unexpected side effects. Her legs were wobbly, something she hadn't realized on the ground. In many ways, she felt like death warmed over, and she thought maybe she'd behave today, just so she could reach her floor and sleep it off. (One had rescinded on his 'compromise'. She still had no bed.)
But everyone else was still talking about things K-OS7 really wasn't interested in, things like interrogation and antiseptic and schedules. Three had joined One and Two in front of her, and they blah-blah-ed for several more minutes until one of the guards stated, "Nearly killed Duncan this morning. Stabbed his eye out with his own glasses."
K-OS7 remembered that particular irony, but that wasn't the important thing. She blinked up at the guards around her. They had names? That was surprising given they all had the same stupid haircut, the same silly hats and button-up jackets. Eye-colour, the shape of nose and jaw - they were practically clones. It rarely crossed her mind that they might be individually named. Well, someone had better start up the machine, pour in some wax and a bit of starch and pop out a replacement "Duncan". It wouldn't take long. She knew that from experience. No matter how many she and the others killed or maimed - and it had to be quite a few at this point - there were always more in the morning.
She started to chuckle, not for any particular reason except she imagined finding that mold and tampering so they all came out with something funny, like extra heads or arms in the wrong places.
"I take it you find your recent victim amusing?" One stated, but he received no answer. The chuckles broke into laughter, and the vibrations churned K-OS7's already rolling stomach. She sunk to her knees, held upright only by the guards still nervously gripping her arms. In the midst of her laughter, she suddenly coughed, then reeled forward and threw up.
***
Yes, vomit. Most hilarious of substances, except when its coming up your own throat, a torrent of hot acid in a mix of yellow-green and bright pink. What the ******** did I eat that was pink?
The guards were quick to release me and jump away. All those finely tuned reflexes come in handy avoiding projectile fluids; but my dear, shadowy friends... Well, I suppose being top of the totem pole means you're above such petty reactions. It also means you end up with yellow-green and pink soaking its way into your tall, dark and mysterious clothing.
Before Three could comprehend the bile splattered across his shoes, I grabbed his precious clipboard, whipped the pencil free and began writing. In the corner of my eye, I saw the guards rush forward. Chaos with a pencil is some bad s**t, you know, in more ways than many understand. But One - dear, desperately inquisitive One - held up a hand to stop them. He loves me when I write, when I communicate at all, actually. Thinks he's getting something, broke on through to the Other Side. Heh. I was never much of a Pink Floyd fan, but I respect the effort.
...Am I off topic again? No matter. It all ends in me holding up the clipboard like a helpful little girl so that Three, Two and One, standing in the rejected fluids of my oft-abused system can see what insight the day will bring them.
'What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.'
One's eye twitches. That's the sign he's gotten the joke. He rips the clipboard from my hands, and I let him. No reason to be snarky now that I've won.
"Take her to her room," One snaps, and the waiting guards tackle me to the floor - unnecessarily, I might add - and jab that familiar sedative needle into my arm. You'd think a girl would build up immunity, but not today. Today I'm growing fuzzy, face-down in vomit...
That won't smell pleasant when I wake up.
****
Still without her meagre possessions - the breakers of monotony which sometimes made the cell not such a bad place - K-OS7 had nothing better to do than once more wander the building, but now she also had an aching back, two stinging lines of fresh scabbing, and a still swollen lip; and all of that equalled discontent. Malcontent might have been a better word, which by rights, led into malevolence.
It just wouldn't do for her to continue taking this treatment and offering nothing in retaliation. Passive aggression, His Plushiness would have called it, but she never quite understood that. It was one of those moronic oxen, and that made her think of cattle, and that made her think of the societal standard by which cattle were treated, and by then she had only one thought in her mind - Don't be cattle.
She flipped a scalpel over in her hand as she walked calmly down the second hall of the medical wing. Security cameras weren't a problem. She'd stopped in the front room and seen to that.
Body count: two and about to rise.
The main lights were off, leaving only the dim, flickering security lights to cast a pale glow on the shiny surfaces. Her bare feet made nary a sound as she approached the only room where a light was still on. Two doctors/scientists/clinical sadists/whatever you wanted to call them would be in there, experimenting on the corpse of another casualty from someone, somewhere. Self-centric as K-OS7 was, she at least realized that they - every K-OS-# - were like limbs of something larger. A victim of one was a victim of them all. Still, she liked to take a bit of pride in being the epicenter of her own disasters.
As the doors swung open, the doctors looked up in surprise, light glinting off their glasses. One of them shouted something and ran for an alarm switch, but that had been disabled with the cameras. He pulled it, but no bell rang out. No evacuation, no backup, no luck.
K-OS7 was already at the other doctor, who was mumbling a string of quite logical reasons for her to put the scalpel down. People might get hurt. She'd only bring trouble on herself. They could help her. Mercy was a virtue.
All very good points, but logic wasn't what brought her here. She was operating on whim - calculated yet emotional. Some things went beyond the thin veneer of Reason that humanity tried to cling to when it realized it didn't understand itself. This was one of those things.
The doctor evidently believed his words would work, right until the end, and she almost felt bad when she grabbed his coat and ran the scalpel across his throat. This man was like Three, more docile than most, and she'd never had anything personal against Three. Oh well.
The other man had run out the door, which was a much more fun reaction. Cowardice inevitably emboldened the hunter. K-OS7 burst out the door after him, her bare feet slapping against the tile. She could see him ahead, and he looked over his shoulder twice, which only slowed him down. When he reached the security station, he ducked inside. That was his last mistake. He saw the dead guards and started to back up, but K-OS7 was already at the door. She wrapped an arm around his head from behind and tugged him back. He let out a desperate scream before the scalpel dug in. It was a rotten strike, only hitting half the neck. K-OS7 released the body and watched him crawl out into the hallway. He was mobile, but he wouldn't get far.
She tugged the first guard from the seat, then tossed the second guard over the first one. Hopefully that slippery floor wouldn't give her much friction. As she dragged them into the hallway, she saw the doctor scraping his fingers over the door dividing this hall from the next. Apparently, he didn't remember that to even open that door, he'd have to be buzzed through from the security room. It amazed K-OS7 how supposedly intelligent people overlooked the simplest of details at moments like these, but she only shook her head and continued back toward the medical lab.
4:45 AM. Finishing her scene and its signature had taken longer than she thought, but sometimes psychopathia was like art - it couldn't be rushed. Perhaps someone ought to make that into a postcard and send it to the Silhouetted Trio. She didn't think anyone had ever told them.
Anyway, she was really pushing her time limits as she entered One's office. Morning staff started arriving as early as 5:00, and that was an extra hassle. She pulled out a piece of stationary and jotted down a quick letter, then took an envelope and stamps from the drawer and checked One's address. You never could be sure when your brain might slip up, and she'd hate for that to ruin such a carefully planned moment of bonding. When she had printed the address neatly into place, she dropped the letter into the outgoing box at the front desk and headed through the vents and back to her room. If she was lucky, she'd get a few minutes of sleep before her adoring fans dragged her away for another friendly press conference.
***
'Do not weep for these dead. They are more interesting in death than in life. Boring stories brought to fascinating end, MADE interesting by the protagonist, by the one worth knowing, because let's face it, you didn't care about Dave, Dana, BJ or Gabriella (By the way, I put their nametags in the lost & found... Names. That still amuses me.) Didn't even know who they were beyond another blank service face until I pulled them out and gave them meaning.
All over the planet, billions of people. Billions of bored & boring people. All living the same oh-so-Important mockery of existence. But I don't cover life with a mask, do I? Not a boring one, anyway.
All the world loves a clown, but that's another lie. Everyone hates them, the freakish colours, the always-smiling, the... No one has that kind of joy, and so they hate-hate-hate and belittle and demean and throw popcorn and THEN they laugh. Tell themselves 'Look at the fool, but I'm smarter. I'm Serious Business.' And then they laugh, but it's a lie. It's a lie because what really lights their fire is the villain.
Check who gets news coverage. See the TV shows, the movies, the documentaries - all salivating over the most wicked kind and then bringing in the "hero" to out-violence and prevail and let you sleep safe at night, wrapped in Lies. People gasp and moan and cover eyes but inside its all grins as they hear 'Another killing, another car crash, another rampage, another atrocity'. Vicarous entertainment - they wish they could do the same. Silly, stupid Wannabe-Somethings. They couldn't handle it. Look how many implode from a little war-time PTSD. But they don't have to (handle it, I mean), because they have that thing called Lie. 'I like clowns. I hate bad men. I am a good person, and my life is important.' Lies, lies-
And then me. I am Truth without boundaries, isn't that right? Well, unless you count the walls, but I rarely do. (There are 27 separate wall spans between your office and the front desks, did you know that?)
You see, the hero isn't what you think a hero is. It's not who's Good. That's a side effect of Lie. What makes a hero is the violence - might makes right. Our real heroes aren't living in lofty mansions, all permed and pressed and suave and Bond, Jackoff Bond. Real heroes are they who tear down and free us from the Lies. And they live down in the s**t and the gutter. So filthy you can't bear to touch them. Reviled, wretched - worshipped.
I saw. Before I ever came here, I saw. Turn on your news tonight, One, and see the lovely heroes which the world has brought you. That's how you found me, isn't? And you... Why, you've practically created your own League of Superfriends here, haven't you?
But sleep sound, my dear One, knowing that God is on the slaughterhouse throne, the clowns are sharpening their knives and I? I am the last best thing you've got going for you.
With love for the terrors which divide and bind us,
Chaos.'
***
One was not happy to learn that four deaths - slaughters, really - had occurred overnight, and the fact that the guilty party was caught on tape did little to ease his anger, but it did pique his curiosity when the tape turned out to be anything but normal security footage.
One of the surveillance analysts, who had been scanning the mostly bare medical ward tapes, moved the recording to the right spot as the silhouettes in triplicate spread out behind her. Two, stuck behind the woman's chair, continually bounced onto his toes in an effort to better see the screen.
"This is from Surgery Eight," the woman stated, "Although the investigation team says that wasn't the original crime scene." She hit play, and the screen danced in static for a moment before coming into focus. The overhead lights glared harshly across the white surfaces, glinted from metal equipment, and illuminated the blood which seemed to be everywhere - in pools on the ground and spray on the walls. Three bodies could be seen in the background, tossed haphazardly on the operating tables. The only other visible figure was K-OS7, covered in a long, black robe she discovered who-knew-where. She stood in the center of the room, where her body twitched and convulsed, movements blurring like a supernatural being in a horror film.
"What the..." Three murmured.
"It's tampered with," the analyst stated. "But don't ask me when she had time to do that."
After skittering around the room, occasionally pop-skipping to a new place, K-OS7 suddenly snapped to real time with her face directly in front of the camera. Lines of blood which had been painted under her eyes now melted down over her cheeks.
"I am become Death," K-OS7 stated. "Destroyer of Worlds."
One's eye twitched. "She thinks she's very clever."
***
Wrong, One. I never said I was anything of the sort, but that's what you want, isn't it? Doesn't matter who I really am, only what you need me to be. Would you really have been happy if I'd written purple, X-Files, and Dance Dance Revolution on your little questionnaire? Of course not, because what would that mean?
Nothing at all. But we're supposed to be painting a picture here, right? How hard would it be to put a puzzle together without an image on the box to guide you? And how much harder would it be if the puzzle made no picture at all?
Remember what I said back whenever I said it? You are not really yourself. No one is. See, it isn't one puzzle that makes one person, with a clear guide and neat little borders and the ability to be crumbled up and dumped in a box. No...
All of existence is one big puzzle, and in it there are us, people, and there are the animals and plants and all that, and there are States of Things and Perceptions; and all of these make up potentially related or unrelated, overlapping pieces. No final picture, no borders - no order of any kind. You can spend eternity snapping them together, trying to figure out where one ends and the other begins, but you can't. Any given piece might be a State which spawns a dozen Perceptions, and those Perceptions spawn States, and this block belongs to One and myself, and that one to Two and myself, and somewhere here, we all bleed into Three, and hell, these pieces aren't even making a geometric shape anymore, just willy-nilly configurated chaos shooting off in a dozen spindly directions through the void.
So yeah...
You think you know yourself, but where did it all come from? Are you really who you think you are? Which puzzle pieces are you? And are they really YOU or someone else's? And about those Everyone Elses...
All just little machines, taking in the pieces and mixing them up and spewing them down again, so even if the puzzle had an end, a final image, we never get to see it. We're always starting over. And at this point, I'd be thrilled for a blaze to come and take it all, just incinerate this mass of cardboard cutouts, because I'm a little tired of thinking right now. But I may be at the end of this, and that's good. Could wrap up right here...
If only I could remember which ******** piece I'm on...
"I think..." K-OS7 whispered, "I got off track." She rubbed a hand over her face and stretched, and the bed creaked beneath her. It had been returned along with her blankets and notebooks. She HAD spoken, after all, and a deal was a deal, even among the insane and the mad - and no, those weren't always the same thing.
She tapped her pencil against the point where her frenzied writing had come to a stop. "I forgot who I'm supposed to be being and for who..."
"If you're not fitting one mold, you're fitting another."
K-OS7 turned to her stuffed toy. He'd been returned, too, and she was finally able to hear a voice of reason among all the insulatory insanity.
"They say you're a million people in a million minds," she replied, "No presentation of yourself equaling the next."
"A million mirrors and all of them cracked," the shark plush added.
She pulled the pages from her journal one by one and threw them up in the air. They didn't go far, merely fluttered down around her like fat, flat, horribly deformed snow. "So let the Silhouettes think whatever they think. I sure as hell don't get it. Stockholm Syndrome be damned."
The plush stared at her with its cold, black button eyes. "Are you, uh... gonna leave all those pages just lying around."
K-OS7 crumpled the first page, stuffed it into her mouth and began chewing.
"Good girl."
***
One entered her modest home and tossed her jacket and hat on the back of the couch. She ruffled her hair and realized there were knots in it. If that didn't scream 'time for a haircut', she didn't know what did.
Macaroni & cheese and whisky was on the menu, and she glared at the cartoon dinosaur on the pasta box. You could work your way up any career ladder you wanted, but in the end, marketing just reduced you to a child. At least the whisky label treated her like an adult. She took a chug directly from the bottle and grimaced, then began flipping through the stack of mail. More advertisements for Viagra, cruises, and children's clothing. Did they even care who the ******** they sent these things to? She growled and shoved the papers off the table. Once gone, they left a letter in their place, a plain white envelope with the return address reading only 'Chaos' and a drawn heart.
One picked up the envelope and rubbed her thumb over it, as if somehow the texture itself would reveal the hows and whys, but of course, that was impossible. She'd have to rip it open and read or see whatever contents spilled out, no matter how disturbing.
She stared at it for a few minutes until the bubbling of water atop the stove told her it was time to add the pasta. She did so, and thought about how she would sit down with her macaroni and cheese and really feel those blue box blues as she read the impromptu correspondence of a psychopath.
'Clever girl, she thought. 'So ******** clever I barely know what to do with you. Like Reynard the Fox - isn't there another Nazi reference there? Goddammit, Two and your ******** obsessions. And I'm like a hound snapping at the fox's heels and howling mad when it slips from my grasp... And some days, I'm more like a plump, stupid ground squirrel that chose to sit on a sleeping fox and chew my nuts, and I'm gonna get what's coming to me, aren't I? For being the confident and indolent atop the wily and quick?'
Her thoughts became a winding maze that took her further and further out of time until the water boiled away in the pan, and the macaroni burned to the bottom and began to smoke; and that smoke alarm, placed too close to the stove, rang out its shrill, piercing tone; and One, conditioned as she was, grabbed a butcher knife from its holder and whipped around, prepared to actually see K-OS7 herself...
All that met her was the sizzling in the pot and the grinning cartoon dinosaur on the box, laughing at her paranoid folly. One lowered the knife and stared at the wispy, dark grey smoke that curled its way up from her ruined dinner.
Barely audible above the ear-splitting shriek of the alarm, she whispered, "Chaos..."
Psychotic Maniacal Sanity
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Imo: Was it any good?
I've heard it's amusing. And, I do want to go and see it in the West End. Not as much as I want to see Wicked again, but that's because I'm sad. Like. xd
I've heard it's amusing. And, I do want to go and see it in the West End. Not as much as I want to see Wicked again, but that's because I'm sad. Like. xd
dangerous xx L I A S O N
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:46:34 +0000
It's not the time [It's not the place]
I'm not another [pretty face]
I'm not another [pretty face]
You're so easy to read...
Kerry Ellis blues again?
And it was awesome. I loved it very much. Of course, I love all things Monty Python and loved all of the various references to their other movies and sketches. And I loved how the actors just cracked themselves up, they really had great chemistry, reminiscent to the Python feel.
And it was awesome. I loved it very much. Of course, I love all things Monty Python and loved all of the various references to their other movies and sketches. And I loved how the actors just cracked themselves up, they really had great chemistry, reminiscent to the Python feel.
But the book is boring me.
You're not the first [And not the last]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
Psychotic Maniacal Sanity
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Yes. emo
I even downloaded her version of Defying Gravity. But, I'm going to go and see her again. I swear. >D
It definitely sounds good, and I love all things Monty Python too, so I think I'd really enjoy it. I just wish that it wasn't so expensive for me to get the train from here down to London, because otherwise the tickets aren't that bad. It's just getting to London that's the problem. D: I want to like... go and see loads of shows, like Chicago, and the Phantom of the Opera (before they take it off the West End in September), and stuff like that. I'm gutted that Rent has stopped showing on Broadway... It was on my list of shows to see before I die. xd I also wanted to see We Will Rock You, but that's done as well. It's being replaced by the Lord of the Rings, the musical... >_> Forgive me if I'm a little cynical... x3
I even downloaded her version of Defying Gravity. But, I'm going to go and see her again. I swear. >D
It definitely sounds good, and I love all things Monty Python too, so I think I'd really enjoy it. I just wish that it wasn't so expensive for me to get the train from here down to London, because otherwise the tickets aren't that bad. It's just getting to London that's the problem. D: I want to like... go and see loads of shows, like Chicago, and the Phantom of the Opera (before they take it off the West End in September), and stuff like that. I'm gutted that Rent has stopped showing on Broadway... It was on my list of shows to see before I die. xd I also wanted to see We Will Rock You, but that's done as well. It's being replaced by the Lord of the Rings, the musical... >_> Forgive me if I'm a little cynical... x3
dangerous xx L I A S O N
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:32:39 +0000
It's not the time [It's not the place]
I'm not another [pretty face]
I'm not another [pretty face]
You're so easy to read...
Lord of the Rings the...what now?
That just sickens me.
I've seen Rent and Phantom on Broadway and Chicago on tour. Please don't hate me. I have to question a lot of things on Broadway now and wonder if Broadway is now just some kind of tourist attraction and not an artistic haven. [Legally Blonde the Musical? Umm...I'm sorry Christian Borle, you know I respect you but WHY?!]
That just sickens me.
I've seen Rent and Phantom on Broadway and Chicago on tour. Please don't hate me. I have to question a lot of things on Broadway now and wonder if Broadway is now just some kind of tourist attraction and not an artistic haven. [Legally Blonde the Musical? Umm...I'm sorry Christian Borle, you know I respect you but WHY?!]
But the book is boring me.
You're not the first [And not the last]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
Noftin
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- Posted: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:37:53 +0000
Da Flea: See? You learn something new every day! Now you don't need to learn anything else!
Psychotic: West End is to Britain what Broaday is to the USA, right? I need to get that straightened out in my mind. And, Rent ends sometime in September on Broadway, I think. I'll have to check that out, though. But several of my friends saw it last week while we were there.
I thought I was going a bit crazy when I saw on a musical website something about Lord of the Rings, the musical. But, now I know, I'm not crazy anymore.
EDIT:
Imoto: You have no idea how tourist trappish it felt at times while I was there. It seems that about a fourth to a half of the shows there are just some musical adaptation of a movie. (ie. Hairspray, Legally Blond, Cry Baby(But that ended yesterday), Xanadu, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, The Little Mermaid...)
Then there are still more that are just running shows. (Chorus Line, Phantom of the Opera...) There are so few musicals that are coming out currently that are truly ORIGINAL. Not an adaptation of a movie, but something original.
Psychotic: West End is to Britain what Broaday is to the USA, right? I need to get that straightened out in my mind. And, Rent ends sometime in September on Broadway, I think. I'll have to check that out, though. But several of my friends saw it last week while we were there.
I thought I was going a bit crazy when I saw on a musical website something about Lord of the Rings, the musical. But, now I know, I'm not crazy anymore.
EDIT:
Imoto: You have no idea how tourist trappish it felt at times while I was there. It seems that about a fourth to a half of the shows there are just some musical adaptation of a movie. (ie. Hairspray, Legally Blond, Cry Baby(But that ended yesterday), Xanadu, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, The Little Mermaid...)
Then there are still more that are just running shows. (Chorus Line, Phantom of the Opera...) There are so few musicals that are coming out currently that are truly ORIGINAL. Not an adaptation of a movie, but something original.
cherry144
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- Posted: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:09:20 +0000
If your heart could be filled with love, mine would be o v e r f l o w i n g .
GAH! I'm sorry for not keeping up! yes, I mean that in less that 26 hours, this contest will be CLOSED! As I said I'm sorry I haven't been here to answer your questions, today was hectic for me. I'll change the title and the duedate to be 11:59 PST Tuesday, June 24, 2008. That's tomorrow.
TOMORROW WILL BE THE LAST DAY TO SUBMIT ANYTHING! AND THEN THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED AND JUDGING WILL COMMENCE!
I wish everyone the best of luck, and if you have submitted and entry, I have taken note of it and will edit the front page tomorrow. For now, goodnight.
x x x x x x x x x x
dangerous xx L I A S O N
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- Posted: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:36:55 +0000
It's not the time [It's not the place]
I'm not another [pretty face]
I'm not another [pretty face]
You're so easy to read...
Then you have to consider how Disney is money-obsessed and will do just about anything for cash. If one thing works [Beauty and the Beast on Broadway], they will do it until it doesn't work [Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, etc.]
I can't wait until 13 comes onto Broadway. It was such a good musical. I think it's coming in September.
I have to agree with some of the musicals being tourist attractions, especially when all of this publicity is pumped into them. -coughMTVandLegallyBlondecough- But some of the movie-to-musical adaptations feel fresh and involved, rather than money-obsessed [Spamalot is the main one I can think of]
And you forgot the literature-to-musical movements, like Wicked and Little Women.
Plus, Patti LuPone is in Gypsy currently. So Broadway can't be all bad.
I can't wait until 13 comes onto Broadway. It was such a good musical. I think it's coming in September.
I have to agree with some of the musicals being tourist attractions, especially when all of this publicity is pumped into them. -coughMTVandLegallyBlondecough- But some of the movie-to-musical adaptations feel fresh and involved, rather than money-obsessed [Spamalot is the main one I can think of]
And you forgot the literature-to-musical movements, like Wicked and Little Women.
Plus, Patti LuPone is in Gypsy currently. So Broadway can't be all bad.
But the book is boring me.
You're not the first [And not the last]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
How many more? [Don't even ask]
Nefas Fatum
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This is the continuation of the story in the link of my sig. The fact that it's here at all is a minor miracle and one I have to thank my partner for. It's 11:30pm on the 24th over here atm and my laptop is attempting suecide.
Username: Nefas Fatum
Story Title: The Next Morning
Word Count: 1963
Rating: ? Other than the fact it involves slavery, it's a really mild piece. I still would not give it to a 10yr old to read. What rating does that make it?
Story:
Joe woke up slowly the next morning. The first thing he became aware of now that he was back in the land of the living was the warm body lying next to him. On further waking, it appeared that he was hugging it and that it was female. It was then that the scent of her hair reached him and he realised that the form he was hugging was Sonia.
His mind still too asleep for common sense to be at work, he had no concept of how this was possible. Not that he question it. Instead, he simply enjoyed the feel of her body against his. A short moment later, he became aware that there was a blanket covering the naked pair. A blanket that he was pretty sure hadn't been covering them when they had fallen asleep.
That started his paranoia. He thought he remembered returning to the land of the living. Thought he had returned to his friends and had a great night with the girl in his arms. The blanket though, and the distinct smell of freshly brewed coffee that assaulted his senses made him believe that he was still in hell and that he had finally lost his mind.
A smile crept onto his face as he came to that conclusion. Eternity could not be as bad as he had thought if this is what it felt like to loose your mind. Sonia stirred in his arms then, moaning slightly as she did so. Running his hand through her hair, he loved every moment of this insanity that left him with what he had treasured most in his life.
“Joe.. Hey..” Sonia's voice drifted into his thoughts, almost as if she wanted him to wake up and wanted him to face reality.
“Sonia, I've finally lost my mind, I'm not letting go of this hallucination by opening my eyes” He informed her, still smiling.
“Uh.. you spent all of last night proving to me that you're not a hallucination, how the hell are you justifying that I'm one now?”
He thought about the question Sonia asked him carefully before responding with his conclusion. “I'm in hell. I've finally cracked. How else do you explain us being together with a blanket covering us and the smell of coffee in the air?”
“Joe, open your eyes. You're not in hell anymore. Andras probably put the blanket over us when we fell asleep and the coffee is either him or Kimi”
“Andras the red headed guy?” He mumbled as he opened his eyes, a look of surprise crossing his face as he realised that Sonia was still there and that just maybe, he had not lost his mind after all.
“That would be him” She assured him.
“He any good in bed?”
“How should I know? He should be, it's what he was trained in”
“When did you decide to get prostitutes?” Sonia of all people, did not need a prostitute. He knew she had the ability to pick up just about anyone she fancied.
“That's not much of a question for me as it is for you,” She responded, not hiding her amusement, “I didn't get him, You did. More to the point, the you of an alternate reality”
The smile he saw on her face confirmed that she wasn't kidding. Both Sonia and himself had a decent understanding of alternate realities. Some of that was gained first hand after Sonia had created a device which opened unstable gateways across the realities.
“There's a me around that's that damn desperate?” He sounded surprised at that revelation.
“That desperate," She let that one slide. Joe was likely to be. "The way he explains it, you got him for your daughter in that reality”
“What the hell was I thinking?” He mumbled. Not that he wanted to know what his other self had been thinking. Whilst he did hire the occasional prostitute, he wasn't sure why he would do that for his daughter.
“Good thing I don't have a daughter here” He commented, looking for his pants before putting them on. The smell of coffee had gotten the better of him. Not that he left Sonia's side without kissing he first.
“I gotta see if coffee still tastes the same” He explained as way of excuse for leaving her side and instinctively followed the smell of the coffee into the kitchen.
Taking his first sip of coffee since his untimely death, he sighed. The black liquid tasted just as bitter as he remembered and made him realise that he was indeed alive. Distracted by the revelation that he really was alive and not insane, he was not aware of the barely dressed man that had entered the room until the male bowed to him.
“Andras, was it?” Joe asked, glancing at the young man before focusing on his coffee again. Apparently, the prostitute had decided that Joe was the head of the house. Joe, who had just come back from spending too much time around demons and their social structure, saw the bow as nothing more than a sign of respect.
“Yes, Master” The young man's voice came from the ground, making Joe take his focus off the coffee and onto the man who was now kneeling at his feet.
“What. the. hell?” He asked quietly as he looked at Andras kneeling in front of him, head bowed in submission. The last time he had witnessed that type of display, it had been a minor demon deferring itself to a more powerful one. As far as he knew though, in the land of the living, that sort of action was a little extreme.
“Master?” Andras' shaky voice came from where he was, making Joe's eyes go wide as he realised what he was being addressed at. More and more he got the feeling that the man hadn't simply bowed to him just because he thought Joe was the man of the house and thus deserved the respect.
“SONIA!? You wanna explain what the hell is going on?” Joe yelled out to her. Him hiring a prostitute was one thing, hiring servants, more to the point, people as submissive as the man in front of him, was something completely different and out of character for him.
To make matters worse, the display Andras put on was a little extreme even if he was Sonia's servant. There was the chance that Andras was playing the role of a submissive, but Joe doubted that. Sonia had not been into dominating her sex partners when he was alive and he could not see her in that role now.
“Oh, right. Didn't I mention you bought her a slave?” Sonia asked as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, not bothering to hide her amusement at the scene that greeted her.
“No.. you didn't..” Joe grumbled. He had spend his life fighting for various forms of freedom. To now be faced with a slave who was kneeling at his feet and calling him master, was a situation he was unfamiliar with. And one he had never wanted to be in. Thus, it took him to finish the rest of his coffee before he was able to look at Andras again.
“Let me get this straight, you're my daughters slave in another reality?” He asked, his voice showing the discomfort he felt at the situation.
“Yes, Master” The slave replied
“Ah. And I brought you for her?”
“Yes, Master”
“And did Sonia explain that this world does not keep slaves legally?” He looked at Sonia as he asked the question. If she hadn't, she would be the first to know his anger.
“She did, Master” Andras confirmed.
“Did you offer him freedom at all?” He now asked Sonia, sounding as upset as he felt about the situation.
Sonia, who was still amused by Joe's reaction towards Andras, nodded. “Yeah, he's got his freedom. I employed him instead.”
“You employed him? And he's this submissive? As what did you employ him?”
“Butler”
His eyes went wide at her answer. Andras looked nothing like what one would imagine a butler to look like. For starters, Andras had long, red hair. Then, his green eyes were enhanced by makeup. And if that wasn't enough, Joe was almost certain that Andras was wearing some form of headpiece, a conclusion he had come to after seeing light reflect off the three gems that were implanted in Andras' forehead in shape of a V.
Added to that was the fact that Andras' slim, but toned body was covered by nothing more than a sarong. It made the young man look like he belonged on a porn set instead of the foyer of Sonia's house, greeting visitors.
“If he's employed as your.. butler.. why's he addressing me as master then?” As far as Joe was concerned, the man had a master and it was not Joe.
“Are you asking me because you're thinking he's a slave?”
“Uhh.. isn't he?” The look on Sonia's face suggested that he was wrong. Her words prior had suggested the same thing. Yet, the way the man acted made Joe trust his instinct over Sonia's words and actions. Andras was nothing more than a slave and he had, without realising it, been treating him as such.
“Andras” He looked at the young man who was still kneeling at his feet and almost absentmindedly commanded “Get up, will you?” Andras responded to the command without hesitation, not disproving Joe's instinct that he was dealing with a slave. “Why're you calling me master when you're employed by Sonia?”
“Master..” Joe noticed that Andras' voice shook slightly as he spoke, unable to hide that he was nervous. “I am employed by Sonia” He assured Joe quickly. “I..” Joe watched as the man seemed to get more and more confused about his position in life and smirked. Hell had not helped Joe to be sympathetic, instead, it had amplified his love for schadenfreude.
“Yes?” He prompted, the smirk still on his face. A butler, even a under dressed one like Andras, would not have as many problems as Andras was having explaining himself.
“Master, forgive me. Sonia has made it abundantly clear that the contract that binds me to her is voluntary” Andras continued quickly. “What binds me to you is not. You are the man who brought me and owns me. You are my true Master.”
Joe considered Andras' reply for a moment. It put Andras in a unique position where he was both free and slave at the same time. And Joe, who enjoyed the discomfort of others, used the revelation to his advantage.
"And what do you think's going to happen to you now?" He asked after a pause giving the impression that he was in charge and not happy with the turn of events. The way he saw it, Andras now had the chance to remind him that Sonia had freed him. Or at least, remind Sonia of it and see if Sonia would step between himself and Joe.
“Master, whatever you choose to have happen to me." Andras replied, instead. His voice indicating that he had resigned himself to the fact that Joe was his master again.
“Ok.. do whatever it is you usually do as Sonia's butler” The man was impossible. Joe had offered him the chance to be free and he had not recognised it, frustrating Joe. “I wanna talk to Sonia for a bit in private. I'll deal with you later” A promise which could bode good and bad for Andras, who had never had to deal with the Joe of this reality.
Andras nodded in acknowledgement and silently left the kitchen and with it, the two people who held his fate in their hands.
Username: Nefas Fatum
Story Title: The Next Morning
Word Count: 1963
Rating: ? Other than the fact it involves slavery, it's a really mild piece. I still would not give it to a 10yr old to read. What rating does that make it?
Story:
Joe woke up slowly the next morning. The first thing he became aware of now that he was back in the land of the living was the warm body lying next to him. On further waking, it appeared that he was hugging it and that it was female. It was then that the scent of her hair reached him and he realised that the form he was hugging was Sonia.
His mind still too asleep for common sense to be at work, he had no concept of how this was possible. Not that he question it. Instead, he simply enjoyed the feel of her body against his. A short moment later, he became aware that there was a blanket covering the naked pair. A blanket that he was pretty sure hadn't been covering them when they had fallen asleep.
That started his paranoia. He thought he remembered returning to the land of the living. Thought he had returned to his friends and had a great night with the girl in his arms. The blanket though, and the distinct smell of freshly brewed coffee that assaulted his senses made him believe that he was still in hell and that he had finally lost his mind.
A smile crept onto his face as he came to that conclusion. Eternity could not be as bad as he had thought if this is what it felt like to loose your mind. Sonia stirred in his arms then, moaning slightly as she did so. Running his hand through her hair, he loved every moment of this insanity that left him with what he had treasured most in his life.
“Joe.. Hey..” Sonia's voice drifted into his thoughts, almost as if she wanted him to wake up and wanted him to face reality.
“Sonia, I've finally lost my mind, I'm not letting go of this hallucination by opening my eyes” He informed her, still smiling.
“Uh.. you spent all of last night proving to me that you're not a hallucination, how the hell are you justifying that I'm one now?”
He thought about the question Sonia asked him carefully before responding with his conclusion. “I'm in hell. I've finally cracked. How else do you explain us being together with a blanket covering us and the smell of coffee in the air?”
“Joe, open your eyes. You're not in hell anymore. Andras probably put the blanket over us when we fell asleep and the coffee is either him or Kimi”
“Andras the red headed guy?” He mumbled as he opened his eyes, a look of surprise crossing his face as he realised that Sonia was still there and that just maybe, he had not lost his mind after all.
“That would be him” She assured him.
“He any good in bed?”
“How should I know? He should be, it's what he was trained in”
“When did you decide to get prostitutes?” Sonia of all people, did not need a prostitute. He knew she had the ability to pick up just about anyone she fancied.
“That's not much of a question for me as it is for you,” She responded, not hiding her amusement, “I didn't get him, You did. More to the point, the you of an alternate reality”
The smile he saw on her face confirmed that she wasn't kidding. Both Sonia and himself had a decent understanding of alternate realities. Some of that was gained first hand after Sonia had created a device which opened unstable gateways across the realities.
“There's a me around that's that damn desperate?” He sounded surprised at that revelation.
“That desperate," She let that one slide. Joe was likely to be. "The way he explains it, you got him for your daughter in that reality”
“What the hell was I thinking?” He mumbled. Not that he wanted to know what his other self had been thinking. Whilst he did hire the occasional prostitute, he wasn't sure why he would do that for his daughter.
“Good thing I don't have a daughter here” He commented, looking for his pants before putting them on. The smell of coffee had gotten the better of him. Not that he left Sonia's side without kissing he first.
“I gotta see if coffee still tastes the same” He explained as way of excuse for leaving her side and instinctively followed the smell of the coffee into the kitchen.
Taking his first sip of coffee since his untimely death, he sighed. The black liquid tasted just as bitter as he remembered and made him realise that he was indeed alive. Distracted by the revelation that he really was alive and not insane, he was not aware of the barely dressed man that had entered the room until the male bowed to him.
“Andras, was it?” Joe asked, glancing at the young man before focusing on his coffee again. Apparently, the prostitute had decided that Joe was the head of the house. Joe, who had just come back from spending too much time around demons and their social structure, saw the bow as nothing more than a sign of respect.
“Yes, Master” The young man's voice came from the ground, making Joe take his focus off the coffee and onto the man who was now kneeling at his feet.
“What. the. hell?” He asked quietly as he looked at Andras kneeling in front of him, head bowed in submission. The last time he had witnessed that type of display, it had been a minor demon deferring itself to a more powerful one. As far as he knew though, in the land of the living, that sort of action was a little extreme.
“Master?” Andras' shaky voice came from where he was, making Joe's eyes go wide as he realised what he was being addressed at. More and more he got the feeling that the man hadn't simply bowed to him just because he thought Joe was the man of the house and thus deserved the respect.
“SONIA!? You wanna explain what the hell is going on?” Joe yelled out to her. Him hiring a prostitute was one thing, hiring servants, more to the point, people as submissive as the man in front of him, was something completely different and out of character for him.
To make matters worse, the display Andras put on was a little extreme even if he was Sonia's servant. There was the chance that Andras was playing the role of a submissive, but Joe doubted that. Sonia had not been into dominating her sex partners when he was alive and he could not see her in that role now.
“Oh, right. Didn't I mention you bought her a slave?” Sonia asked as she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, not bothering to hide her amusement at the scene that greeted her.
“No.. you didn't..” Joe grumbled. He had spend his life fighting for various forms of freedom. To now be faced with a slave who was kneeling at his feet and calling him master, was a situation he was unfamiliar with. And one he had never wanted to be in. Thus, it took him to finish the rest of his coffee before he was able to look at Andras again.
“Let me get this straight, you're my daughters slave in another reality?” He asked, his voice showing the discomfort he felt at the situation.
“Yes, Master” The slave replied
“Ah. And I brought you for her?”
“Yes, Master”
“And did Sonia explain that this world does not keep slaves legally?” He looked at Sonia as he asked the question. If she hadn't, she would be the first to know his anger.
“She did, Master” Andras confirmed.
“Did you offer him freedom at all?” He now asked Sonia, sounding as upset as he felt about the situation.
Sonia, who was still amused by Joe's reaction towards Andras, nodded. “Yeah, he's got his freedom. I employed him instead.”
“You employed him? And he's this submissive? As what did you employ him?”
“Butler”
His eyes went wide at her answer. Andras looked nothing like what one would imagine a butler to look like. For starters, Andras had long, red hair. Then, his green eyes were enhanced by makeup. And if that wasn't enough, Joe was almost certain that Andras was wearing some form of headpiece, a conclusion he had come to after seeing light reflect off the three gems that were implanted in Andras' forehead in shape of a V.
Added to that was the fact that Andras' slim, but toned body was covered by nothing more than a sarong. It made the young man look like he belonged on a porn set instead of the foyer of Sonia's house, greeting visitors.
“If he's employed as your.. butler.. why's he addressing me as master then?” As far as Joe was concerned, the man had a master and it was not Joe.
“Are you asking me because you're thinking he's a slave?”
“Uhh.. isn't he?” The look on Sonia's face suggested that he was wrong. Her words prior had suggested the same thing. Yet, the way the man acted made Joe trust his instinct over Sonia's words and actions. Andras was nothing more than a slave and he had, without realising it, been treating him as such.
“Andras” He looked at the young man who was still kneeling at his feet and almost absentmindedly commanded “Get up, will you?” Andras responded to the command without hesitation, not disproving Joe's instinct that he was dealing with a slave. “Why're you calling me master when you're employed by Sonia?”
“Master..” Joe noticed that Andras' voice shook slightly as he spoke, unable to hide that he was nervous. “I am employed by Sonia” He assured Joe quickly. “I..” Joe watched as the man seemed to get more and more confused about his position in life and smirked. Hell had not helped Joe to be sympathetic, instead, it had amplified his love for schadenfreude.
“Yes?” He prompted, the smirk still on his face. A butler, even a under dressed one like Andras, would not have as many problems as Andras was having explaining himself.
“Master, forgive me. Sonia has made it abundantly clear that the contract that binds me to her is voluntary” Andras continued quickly. “What binds me to you is not. You are the man who brought me and owns me. You are my true Master.”
Joe considered Andras' reply for a moment. It put Andras in a unique position where he was both free and slave at the same time. And Joe, who enjoyed the discomfort of others, used the revelation to his advantage.
"And what do you think's going to happen to you now?" He asked after a pause giving the impression that he was in charge and not happy with the turn of events. The way he saw it, Andras now had the chance to remind him that Sonia had freed him. Or at least, remind Sonia of it and see if Sonia would step between himself and Joe.
“Master, whatever you choose to have happen to me." Andras replied, instead. His voice indicating that he had resigned himself to the fact that Joe was his master again.
“Ok.. do whatever it is you usually do as Sonia's butler” The man was impossible. Joe had offered him the chance to be free and he had not recognised it, frustrating Joe. “I wanna talk to Sonia for a bit in private. I'll deal with you later” A promise which could bode good and bad for Andras, who had never had to deal with the Joe of this reality.
Andras nodded in acknowledgement and silently left the kitchen and with it, the two people who held his fate in their hands.
Kid Thunderchild
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- Posted: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:24:32 +0000
Well, I've wasted plenty of time making sure all aspects of my entry were where I wanted them to be. (Talking about cutting it down to the wire.) However, I'm at work, and my entry is saved on my com at home, plus I'm sure I'll wanna give another once over, so I suspect I will posting mine within a mere matter of hours before the deadline...