Welcome to Gaia! ::

3nodding That would be okay with me.

sad

I'm excited to read it! Short or long! biggrin

The cursor...it is MOCKING me!

OH MY LAWD I AM BACK. I don't expect the setting or the character to make sense to you. If you really want to know I can link you to what happened before this. I'm super rusty at writing (as you can see if you read this) and atm, it is almost 4 am so I am not going to edit this. I just needed to write something, you know? idec if it is el sucko.


Deep In Thought

So, after being thoroughly (and deservingly) abused and reprimanded by all of his closest friends, Benji had limped away to the third floor, nursing his hangover, and his pride, while simultaneously using the agony of indignity and kidney decay to distract from the gnawing, blood-freezing terror that was starting to crawl around in his gut. Well, it was might be terror. Either that or he just had alcohol poisoning again.

Actually, come to think of it, it was fairly likely that it was alcohol poisoning again. He thought about all the time he'd felt worse, like the day he'd spent five hours straight throwing up, retching compulsively though there was nothing left for him to vomit, or the time that he'd woken up with an inexplicable fever and had crawled, literally, down into Keith's basement, where he'd curled up on the cold stone and spent an hour talking to a spider that lived in the downstairs sink, waiting for the fever to break so he could go back to sleep. These two memories alone made it easy enough to just write the trembles that were currently wracking his body off as just a typical reaction to the glorious excesses of college life. Because, you know, it was either that or just admit that the apocalypse had actually come and that, in all probability, with the way things were going, he was going to die horribly.

Any minute now.

Alright, any minute now was probably an exaggeration. He had, maybe, at least an hour if he didn't get too close to any windows and stayed behind people he could push into the hungry jaws of any encroaching monsters. However he was, of course, standing alone in a long, nearly empty hall, that was full of enormous, unsealed windows while everybody else in the house scrambled to magick all the doors and windows closed and kind of impenetrable. Benji sighed as he pulled a half-crushed pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his coat.

He was having a bit of a meltdown, really.

Hungover tantrums were kind of Benji's thing, it was normal, but as he dug around in his pockets for a lighter that he couldn't find, he realized that he was, in all sincerity, very close to simply flinging himself out of the window and into the clawing hands of the undead hoards below. It didn't help when he realized that he'd given away his lighter to a girl last night as part of some half-a** drunken plan to get laid while his whole family, unbeknownst at the time to Benji, was probably being brutally slaughtered in the most horrific and painful way imaginable.

Benji put his cigarettes back into his pocket and sat down against the wall, staring blankly out the windows at the impenetrable fog that had crept in last night. What, exactly, did getting eaten alive feel like? He'd tried to imagine it a couple times when he was little and in his phase where he day-dreamed romantically about being devoured by a velociraptor.

For a while he'd run around, putting himself in the position to get bitten by the neighborhood dogs, (even the nice ones who would only chomp on him by accident) and had developed a pretty basic idea of what getting eaten might feel like. Of course, dogs had sharp teeth, and raptors had even sharper, but humans... well, human teeth were pretty blunt.

Benji found himself tonguing the tips of his canines, which, though he was only in his early twenties, were worn down to a fairly non-threatening, flattish tip. He knew, however, that biting his tongue hurt like hell, even when he didn't draw blood, and so being bitten to death must, he concluded, be similar to being stabbed to death with a spoon, or something equally bluntish or non-threatening.

Mostly for lack of anything more constructive to do, Benji pushed up his sleeve and began to nibble on the side of his arm, digging his teeth in until he left little purple indents in his flesh, gauging the pain.

Getting eaten alive by humans, he concluded with no small amount of despair, was going to ******** blow. Defiantly better to kill yourself first.

He straightened up a little, trying to see the ground below out the window, but couldn't quite make his neck stretch that far. He gave up and curled up on the floor, holding his stomach.

What if, he thought, he jumped out the window and only ended up breaking loads of bones? He imagined, quite vividly, having all sorts of fractures punching through his skin, his limbs all over the place, and him in the most unbearable amount of pain humanly possible, only to then be eaten alive on top of all that. The very thought made the soles of his feet begin to p***k with horrified sweat as his whole body started to tickle, unbearably, with a strange sort of pins and needles sensation that seemed to culminate under his fingernails.

Benji groaned as his stomach twisted itself up into some kind of sailor's knot, and he tried to crawl away, pathetically, dragging himself down the hall on his forearms with his wrists bent back and his hands crippled with sensation. His kneecaps had quite suddenly started to feel like they were infested with some kind of horrible, squirming larva, and he realized that he would do well to find out where the ******** the bathroom on this floor was. He was definitely going to be sick again.

Hopefully it wouldn't be another one of those goddamn five-hour ordeals.



Introduction | Love | Light | Dark | Seeking Solace | Break Away | Heaven | Innocence | Drive | Breathe Again | Memory | Insanity | Misfortune | Smile | Silence | Questioning | Blood | Rainbow | Gray | Fortitude | Vacation | Mother Nature | Cat | No Time | Trouble Lurking | Tears | Foreign | Sorrow | Happiness | Under the Rain | Flowers | Night | Expectations | Stars | Hold My Hand | Precious Treasure | Eyes | Abandoned | Dreams | Rated | Teamwork | Standing Still | Dying | Two Roads | Illusion | Family | Creation | Childhood | Stripes | Breaking the Rules | Sport | Deep in Thought | Keeping a Secret | Tower | Waiting | Danger Ahead | Sacrifice | Kick in the Head | No Way Out | Rejection | Fairy Tale | Magic | Do Not Disturb | Multitasking | Horror | Traps | Playing the Melody | Hero | Annoyance | 67% |Obsession | Mischief Managed | I Can't | Are You Challenging Me? | Mirror | Broken Pieces | Test | Drink | Starvation | Words | Pen and Paper | Can You Hear Me? | Heal | Out Cold | Spiral | Seeing Red | Food | Pain | Through the Fire | Triangle | Drowning | All That I Have | Give Up | Last Hope | Advertisement | In the Storm | Safety First | Puzzle | Solitude | Relaxation

This is getting too long, and it'll probably be really un-postable on gaia pretty soon, so I'll just post the beginning. It's enough for the prompt anyway wink

Mirror #75

This is a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Mirror!AU fanfic, taken from episodes #611 (The Last of the Wild Horses) in combination with #1001 (Soultaker).

********

Things on weren't looking too good on the Satellite of Love this week, but if it hadn't been for Crow pointing out that, if the SOL went down, that the Captain wouldn't have anybody to torture anymore. Besides his crew, of course. Naturally, it was in their best interest to keep Pearl and her odd companions alive, but none of them had even the slightest clue how to fix the satellite. They, after all, hadn't built it, and the man that had was long since dead. Crow was brooding.

Tom slunk in, covered in gypsy's lipstick, making awkward little noises of discomfort.

Crow groaned, and gagged and Tom hissed back. "Oh, shut up, Yeoman. Any ideas yet?"

"No," Crow said, obviously still grossed out and determined to make lots of noise about it. "I can't believe that it hasn't fallen out of space yet."

"Things don't fall out of space," Tom said severely.

"Yes they do. They do all the time, idiot."

Tom began to bluster loudly, waving his inoperable little arms around him as he rolled back and forth along the edge of the table. "Idiot? Idiot?"

"Crewman Idiot," Crow said, looking at Servo from the corner of his round little eyes.

"Idiot?"

"Moron, imbecile, red-shirt--"

"Where is your agonizer, Yeoman?!"

Crow tried to look nonchalant. "In my pocket."

Tom dove at Crow, knocking his bubble against Crow's shoulder as he attempted to manipulate his useless little arms into Crow's pocket. "Give it to me! Damn it, Crow, give it to me!"

"Come on!" Crow said. "It's right here! In my pocket, Servo; right here!"

"Boys!"

Crow and Servo froze, and for a moment, nobody spoke.

Then the castle's computer said, hesitantly, "Master?"

"Captain... Joel?" Tom said, turning slowly to face his creator.

Joel gave his bots the ghost of a frown. "Admiral Robinson," he corrected, rather severely, and both of the bots moved back an inch or two, crowding against one another as they stared back at Joel. He looked much the same as he had when he had been their Master, with his hooded eyes and slicked-back hair, parted on the left, but he was just a little less scrawny, and maybe just a little harder around the eyes. That and he didn't have a beard anymore.

Noting the bots' immediate display of fear, Joel's expression softened a touch. "I'm just kidding," he said, falling easily into his unassuming, sleepy charm that always seemed to make people underestimate exactly how clever and cruel the man could actually be. "I'm freelance evil now."
Crow, who was trying to push Servo between Joel and himself said, "Oh?"

"Yep. I did some pyrotechnical stuff out in Australia. Hung out in some kind of thunderdome for a while. Made weapons, fixed cars..."

The bots murmured with general, nervous, approval.

Joel adopted a nostalgic look for a moment, then, sighing and looking at nothing in particular he said, "But, I came back to the Midwest after a while. The Evil Leagues have better benefits in America, I think. Nice global evil access too. Less sand."

*****

Mike Nelson was not in a particularly good mood. Things were going wrong everywhere, and, for ******** sake, he was expected to fix them. It really didn't help that he had next to zero technical or mechanical knowledge, and the goddamn Torgoputer seemed to be malfunctioning right alongside his Satellite. Of course the bots were next to useless, and, even worse, Gypsy's malfunctioning software seemed to be making her sweet. The whole thing was giving him a headache.

In the past, he probably would have just made Forrester, the disgustingly simple-minded, unbreakable fool, do all the repairs... but Mike had destroyed him ages ago. No, it was looking like he was pretty ******** this time.

Maybe the most annoying part was that he hadn't actually given a damn until Crow had pointed out how much effort it would be to collect new test subjects and launch them into space when he couldn't even assemble a standard desktop computer, and how dull it would be not to have any easily accessible torture victims. They were, after all, very deep in the earth, and this whole place, everything, including the Satellite and the premise of the experiments, had been set up long before Mike ever arrived. Sure, he had other directions to go in, Evil-wise, but this job was just too cushy to give up so soon.

Still, if the Satellite fell out of the sky now and crushed a village or something, Mike wouldn't feel any sense of accomplishment at all. It would just be a horrible reminder, not of his capability to inflict horrors and atrocities, but of his incompetence. Of course, this was all Crow's fault for pointing out how disappointing it would be to lose the SOL, the smarmy little b*****d, and Mike was going to agonize the hell out of him for it. If it hadn't been for that one, tiny little suggestion, Mike might have been drinking coffee, anticipating getting to watch the satellite break up as it passed through the atmosphere, feeling smug and pleasant, and very care-free.

Pearl, of course, wasn't completely useless, but she didn't have the technical skill to actually save the satellite from falling out of orbit, and neither did Bobo or Brain Guy. Brain guy, of course, had to be given a lobotomy as soon as Mike had realized the strange little albino was a threat to his rule. That, however, pretty much ruled him out as a worthwhile assistant when it came to extensive ship repairs.
God damn it.

He'd finally found a decent repair manual under a box or two of old VCR cassettes and was on his way back to the main room when he realized that Crow and Servo were talking to somebody.

Somebody was in his castle. Somebody was in Mike's goddamn castle and he was going to set that mother ******** on fire.

Fortunately the loser's back was to Mike, and if he was very, very quiet...

****

"I thought about going into food service for a while," Joel was telling the bots, "but I made so much goddamn money in the outback that I'm really thinking of getting back into mad science." He winked at the bots then, and smiled, which alarmed both of them so much that neither of the bots reacted when Mike leapt quietly out of the corner and flattened Joel against the desk. Joel, his face squished between the table top and Mike's palm, was still smirking.

"Hey Mike," he said, clearly unaffected, even as Mike violently twisted Joel's left arm around, pinning the Gizmocrat's hand between his shoulder blades.

Mike started a bit at his name, and took his hand off of Joel's face. "Joel?" Mike asked, stuttering just slightly in his surprise, his voice a little more strangled than he would have liked.

"Hi," Joel said. "I think you mispronounced Master."

Mike almost choked on his own spit, and as he sputtered and coughed, he tightened his grip around Joel's wrist. Master was something he hadn't heard in a long time, and really hadn't ever wanted to hear again, but now here Joel was, back from where ever the hell he'd been, just waltzing into Mike's castle like he owned the place. Which he ******** didn't. This wasn't Deep 13. "You're not my master anymore," Mike announced with as much venom as he could muster. For good measure, he put his hand back on Joel's face. Mike was boss here.

Joel shifted a little, settling his hips against the edge of the desk, making himself comfortable. The goddamn nerve. Joel took a deep, sleepy breath and said, "Michael, you know, you sound pretty stupid when you act like you're better than me. Really, I'm embarrassed for you."

That was it. Mike lost it. "I've killed men for less," he hissed, but Joel interrupted him before he could say anything further: "Lesser men do--"

"THAT IS IT," Mike shouted, grabbing up a fist full of Joel's hair and then slamming his head back into the desk. "THIS IS MY CASTLE--"

He never got to finish, though, as a crippling shock of pain jolted through his body. Mike stiffened at first, then relaxed, and crumpled to the ground. The bots, who had, until then, been silent, made loud hissing and ooing noises and backed a little further away.

"And this is your agonizer," Joel said, straightening up, rolling his head from side to side, popping his neck with great ceremony. "You were getting hysterical."

It had been a long time since Mike had been agonized. He opened his eyes, realized he was clenching his teeth and looked up. Crow and Tom were staring down at him, not saying anything, just staring, and Mike wanted to kill something. Mostly Joel, though.

"What do you want," Mike hissed, pushing himself back up, onto his knees.

Joel crouched down, balancing on the balls of his feet, so that he and Mike were at eye level again. Joel's face was placid, devoid of any readable expression, and it had always made Mike nervous. He curled his lip into a little snarl, unconsciously. The impassivity of Joel's face had always been one of the things that Mike had hated most about him; he was so difficult to read, to understand, to defend against.

"Just wanted to say hi," Joel said, blinking lazily, "see how things are going with you. See the satellite crash, whatever. I brought potato salad and beer."

Mike narrowed his eyes dramatically, but it was Servo who said, "Hey, what do you know about the satellite crashing?"

Joel glanced up at the bots and said, "I know a lot about it. I designed it. You know that."

"Oh hey, that's right," Crow said slowly. "Figures it would crash eventually."

Joel twisted his mouth into a strange little smile, reached over and, ignoring Crow's flinch, patted the bot on the knee with something close to affection. "Yeah, it does, honey. I built it that way, you know? So we could watch it crash eventually. Like, to have something we could look forward to, to do as a family. You hungry, Mike?"

Mike was still trembling after his short reunion with the agonizer; he'd stopped listening to anybody else talk after Joel had mentioned potato salad. Every goddamn part of his body ached, and he had the distinct impression that his organs may have curdled inside of him. He glanced up when he heard his name, and shook his head.

Joel stood back up, tossing the agonizer into the air and catching it repeatedly, flipping it like a lucky coin. "You got soft, Mikey." Joel sighed, the picture of an unimpressed parent presented with a report card full of C's and B's. "I'm kind of disappointed."

With one hand over his gut, Mike glared up at Joel. It was true; When he'd lived as Joel's assistant for that brief period of hell, he'd developed a sort of tolerance to agony. It wasn't ever that it stopped hurting, it was just that Mike got a lot better at functioning while he was in terrible pain. "When was the last time you were agonized?" he asked bitterly, getting slowly to his feet again.

For the first time, Joel smiled sincerely, and Mike, still bent in double, froze. "Never mind," he mumbled, strange thoughts that he couldn't verify or explain flitting around inside of his head. He didn't want to know if any of them were right. "I don't want to hear you talk anymore."

"Mmm," Joel said. He was just looking sort of dreamy again; the vaguely disturbed look that accompanied his smiles was gone. Mike glared at Joel. Even his compliance was upsetting in its unpredictability. Mike would always find himself winding up for a fight only to be shrugged off once his anger had almost reached a peak, leaving him furious and searching for an outlet-- or, almost worse, when he tried to play Joel's game, to use it against him, Joel had always found a way to break Mike's cool, to just slip a little thorn between the plaits in his armor and wiggle. He never felt like he won with Joel, and so even when it seemed like he did, Mike was always waiting to find out how he'd lost.

Joel just made Mike so ******** anxious. It wasn't, of course, that Mike had ever felt inferior to Joel, it was just that Joel was so goddamn slippery. His mind didn't really work in words, but in possibilities, which meant that he was always thinking of about five different things at once, calculating the way things worked and fit, seeing them in a formulaic but dream-like way. Mike had always been far more direct. He was to the point and thorough, and sometimes uncontrollably honest, which, he knew, was a weakness for a villain aspiring to belong to a League of Evil.

So there they were. He was stronger than Joel, physically, and he was better with words and maybe a little more instinctual and charismatic, all of which were helpful characteristics when he needed funding, but Joel was thoughtful, and he manipulative, and he was observant. And it always seemed, when they would bicker, that Joel would always work his way around anything Mike had to say, albeit a little awkwardly, but almost always effectively. It wouldn't be until later that Mike would know what had gone wrong, and by then Joel would already be playing some new game.

It was enough to drive anybody crazy. It was no wonder Joel had decided to make mental torture in the name of science it into his career, he was just so good at it.

Introduction | Love | Light | Dark | Seeking Solace | Break Away | Heaven | Innocence | Drive | Breathe Again | Memory | Insanity | Misfortune | Smile | Silence | Questioning | Blood | Rainbow | Gray | Fortitude | Vacation | Mother Nature | Cat | No Time | Trouble Lurking | Tears | Foreign | Sorrow | Happiness | Under the Rain | Flowers | Night | Expectations | Stars | Hold My Hand | Precious Treasure | Eyes | Abandoned | Dreams | Rated | Teamwork | Standing Still | Dying | Two Roads | Illusion | Family | Creation | Childhood | Stripes | Breaking the Rules | Sport | Deep in Thought | Keeping a Secret | Tower | Waiting | Danger Ahead | Sacrifice | Kick in the Head | No Way Out | Rejection | Fairy Tale | Magic | Do Not Disturb | Multitasking | Horror | Traps | Playing the Melody | Hero | Annoyance | 67% |Obsession | Mischief Managed | I Can't | Are You Challenging Me? | Mirror | Broken Pieces | Test | Drink | Starvation | Words | Pen and Paper | Can You Hear Me? | Heal | Out Cold | Spiral | Seeing Red | Food | Pain | Through the Fire | Triangle | Drowning | All That I Have | Give Up | Last Hope | Advertisement | In the Storm | Safety First | Puzzle | Solitude | Relaxation