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Week 573 (December 11-24) Stories Topic: Joyless and Festive
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Thanks Maria. Happy writing!
Wow probably wasn't the best idea to have this contest end right before Christmas.Posting is still open!
Going to give this one more week then will put up new contests/polls. Happy writing!
In the words of Mighty Mouse, "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!"AUTHOR: Garrison Kelly
TITLE: Black Tar Kiss, Prologue
GENRE: Monster Horror
WORD COUNT: 1,572
RATING: PG for language
Living in Sweetwater was like going to a Five Finger Death Punch concert every day for the rest of my life, but there was no heavy metal and no mosh pit, just beer cans, Trump signs, shotgun shells, and idiots who put those things there in the first place. Not a lot of opportunities for a kid like me. Like any small rural town, it was a whole lot of nothing for miles and miles and miles. Maybe some grass here and there, maybe a few cow pies to make my nostrils bleed, and that was about it. My 18th birthday, joyless and festive as it was bound to be, was only a month away, but my father gave me the best gift I could ever ask for and it wasn’t even on my list: a reason to leave him and this god-awful town behind.
There I was walking down that lonely road with a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt on my back, some blue jeans on my ass, and my whole life packed into a garbage bag slung over my shoulder. I didn’t even bother bringing a suitcase, not that we could afford such fancy things. Just a trash bag for a piece of white trash. How appropriate. I had a gorgon death stare on my face the entire time I was walking. I wasn’t even the least bit concerned about the sores on my feet or the achiness in my legs. Something else of mine was hurting a hell of a lot more than that: my broken spirit.
My mom left us when I wasn’t even old enough to be in the double digits. Too much drinking, too many drugs, and neither me nor my father wanted to deal with her anymore, so she up and left. You’d think that’d be the end of the drama, but my relationship with my dad wasn’t much better. He was a yeller, that’s for sure. I probably would be too if I married a woman like that. Or it could have been a generational thing. Either way, when he yelled at me for the slightest inconvenience, I drifted apart from him. To his credit, he never slapped me or spanked me with a belt like other fathers in my town would have done to their kids. But I guess that’s where the Five Finger Death Punch analogy comes into play: lots of screaming, lots of noise, and lots of BS. I’m surprised my ears didn’t bleed like faucets after one of his fits of rage.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, I never wanted to see him again, but he sure wanted to see me another time or two. In fact, he was so desperate for a verbal sparring partner that I heard his truck engine gurgling and burping not too far from where I was walking. I’d know that truck anywhere. Didn’t smell great either. For a guy who fixes cars for a living, he didn’t have much time for his own truck. Definitely needed a tune-up. I probably would have had to beg him to tune it up before one of us died from lung cancer. That truck engine got louder and louder, but I just kept walking. As far as I was concerned, the engine and his voice were every bit as obnoxious as each other.
Wasn’t nearly as bad as that horn was, though. He blasted it a few times to try to jolt me out of my pissed off stupor. I didn’t budge at all. Kept walking. He blasted it some more like he was in a jazz band, or maybe Five Finger Death Punch got themselves a saxophone player. I still didn’t turn around to face him. Then he called my name in a way I’ve heard many times before. “Elijah! Get your ass back here!” He honked again. “Elijah! Move it! Come on, buddy, let’s go!” I didn’t give two damns and just kept walking. He honked one more time. “Elijah! Get your ass in the car, now!”
“Yeah, Dogmeat, get your ass in the car! He didn’t say which one, though.” And there he was, parked in a silver corvette off the side of the road, which had like a dozen key scratches on it, probably to reduce its value and make it easier to buy. Or it was stolen from the rich folk in Bull Rope, I’ll never know. That would be White Snake sitting in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t an actual member of the hair metal band, but he did have that long black hair, sunglasses, and leather jacket that would make you believe otherwise. The closest he ever got to playing an instrument was beating rival incel gangsters like a drum, as you could see from the redness on his knuckles.
Riding shotgun with him was Scar Tissue. With that spiky haircut, milk bottle skin, and 70’s porn star moustache, you wouldn’t believe this guy was Latino. But if he had been anything other than milky white, White Snake would have booted his ass a long time ago. I guess he just liked having a guy around who could translate Spanish for him and occasionally curse at other gangsters in his native tongue. It was pretty damn entertaining watching him rundown some poor bastard with words I wouldn’t know if my C+ in Espanol classes was anything to go by. I knew a few words, but I could never hold a full conversation. His English was topnotch, though, so I wasn’t worried about it.
“Dogmeat? That’s what you want to be called now? Dogmeat? What are you, stupid?” Fair question coming from my dad, but I was in no mood to entertain the thought of getting in his truck.
“Yeah, you’re clearly daddy of the year calling him Elijah. That 2,000-year-old fantasy novel ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on, my guy. And that church you go to every Sunday would be better off as a Mickey D’s. The food’s about as fake as the stories in that god awful book.” White Snake wasn’t one to hold back and I already loved him for it. Naturally, I started gravitating toward the corvette with a million scratches on it.
But of course, this conversation wouldn’t be complete if my dad didn’t honk the ear-piercing horn one more time. “Elijah, if you get into that goddamn car, you’re making the biggest mistake of your life, son! You think these high school dropouts care about you? You think these losers are your friends? You’re better than this, damn it!”
I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him with some sad ass eyes, like I was about to see the light. But then again, people who stare at the eclipse with no shades on see the light and look what happened to them. “Sorry, Dad.” I told him. “Your mouth got you into trouble for the last time. Goodbye, old man.”
To the Beethoven-like symphony of my dad honking his horn and cursing at the top of his lungs despite being a good Christian boy, I ignored all of it, and got in the backseat of the corvette. I threw my trash bag of this and that onto the adjacent seat and gave him one last sad-ass look before White Snake and Scar Tissue hooted and hollered in excitement. White Snake stepped on the acceleration and those screeching tires were more heavenly on my ears than my screeching dad’s voice. Off we go into the night without a second thought. Why would I need a second thought? It was the easiest decision of my life walking away from Sweetwater.
For the next three months, one of which my 18th birthday passed without a hitch, I would be a full-fledged member of Black Tar Kiss, an incel gang who fought other incel gangs for the rarest resource of all: the love of some chick with a huge…huge…HUGE…Twitch following. And if she or any other Stacy didn’t want to give us that love, we would take it with both hands, which didn’t sound like a figure of speech to me at that point. It all sounded so exciting even though the first three months was basically a trial period to see if me and Scar Tissue were good enough. Mostly grunt work and white-collar stuff, some wheeling and dealing, and maybe some training in an abandoned building that was great for squatting, both the homestead and gym rat kind.
But after that three month grace period, the three of us were on our way for the biggest battle of our lives: a fracas with Me Encanta Femicidio at Battleground Park. The real excitement was about to begin. But if I’m keeping it a hundred with you all, any excitement I felt during that grace period was starting to feel like homesickness. Yeah, my dad was the only stable environment I’ve ever been a part of. Yeah, he was louder than a heavy metal band who tried WAY too hard to suck up to the troops while using a brass knuckle microphone. But when he told me that joining Black Tar Kiss would be the biggest mistake of my life…he wasn’t joking. If looking at beer cans and Trump signs on the side of a Sweetwater road was enough to make me miserable, hanging around with White Snake was a hell of a lot worse…
Thank you for extending the deadline, C.J.! My story should be coming in a bit. Editing it lol
Title: Of Light and the Sea
Word Count: 594
Tuesday sells chestnuts. His foggy breath mixes with the smoke coming off of the day’s stock roasting under him. People on the street rush to and fro on this regular busy day.
He awfully misses his daughter. Picturing her by her fountain, dressed purposefully to blend in with her companion, he sees her chatting with the passersby who’ve come to know her. The next day she would wear green and match her companion the fountain again, which had turned teal from the cyan it was only yesterday, thanks to her nightly repaintings - always meticulous enough not to stain the water. The next morning she’d laugh with the few who notice, and smile - radiant as the sun, blinding, like the sunshine reflecting off of that water…
Tuesday’s own eyes burn.
Saya never disagrees when they say her job is pointless. The pennies she manages to collect never go to her, after all. They are the government’s property. Her salary is more a stipend than a normal earning. Yet she keeps on living, and by herself somehow. Bravely independent -
‘Starving,’ her mother says.
‘Dreaming,’ the girl replies.
Tuesday wonders what the taste of dreams feels like. It has been so long since. Afternoons in class as a schoolboy . . .
His first customer of the day arrives. It’s a split second of a transaction, the man leaving with a sour face and a hasty stuffing in the pocket after a brief glance of his chestnut; a glow on one of the tiny curves on the front.
Tuesday sells chastenings; reminders from the state to do your job properly. The glows usually tell the story - as does the shape. Tuesday has been doing this long enough to work out a vague idea. Something about a woman. Or too much time with family? Wait, slacking? That’s all he could glimpse from the tiny bulbous front.
Unlike his daughter, he does get a relatively reasonable compensation: a generous ten percent from what he makes.
His daughter, daughter. Saya, the light of his life, his joy. Whoever knows where she is?
***
The first thing the daughter knows is the lack of movement. It’s like being stuck in a molasses. She can feel friction, and as she wills her limbs to move, there is the tingling that’s followed by stirring . . . and then nothing.
This feeling is alien. Never in her life has her body failed her. She has climbed hills and run across vast, endless lands since childhood.
But this - it’s like she’s trapped in another’s body. In this molasses, she can hardly breathe.
***
Dusk, a midnight blue sky - what an ill-suiting name. It is only late evening. Hardly midnight.
Pixies gather on a raft, lighting up the strangely calm waves and ripples like fireflies. Maybe the sea is calm because of them. The lighting creatures are heading to the town. Meanwhile, the town fairies, though dwarvish but considerably bigger than the other lighters, take cover under big hats in alleyways to assimilate with the darkness. Then they slowly make their way to the port, the meeting point.
It’s the annual festival, this time beginning in the settlement they’re headed towards. The lighting creatures are to look for a light - a real, breathing one; not of fireflies or wings.
As the pixies cut through the gathering dark, the crickets fall silent. Tonight, even the babies will keep their wails, and the adults will have their backs turned away.
It is time for the mission of good. It is time for the Light Hunting.
[tbc] - part 1 of the story that's so not ending. I'm tryinggg to get it down
Garrison wrote: "In the words of Mighty Mouse, "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!"AUTHOR: Garrison Kelly
TITLE: Black Tar Kiss, Prologue
GENRE: Monster Horror
WORD COUNT: 1,572
RATING: PG for language
Living in Sw..."
Garrison, your writing's always been strong and impactful, but this piece especially hits different. Elijah's inner voice is so sassy - and delivered with that deadpan, it was fun! I was cheering for him all the way.
Did not expect that ending. Will we get to read chapter 1, too? 👀
Thank you so much for the feedback, Maria! It's my first time in a long time doing first-person narration, so I'm glad Elijah comes across in a way you like it. And yes, there will be a chapter 1 somewhere down the line. :)
Will hopefully get to this soon. Life and its situations keep getting in the way, lol!
Please post directly into the topic and not a link. Please don’t use a story previously used in this group.
Note: Only one submission per person is allowed.
Your story should be between 250 and 3,500 words long.
Remember that a short story is not merely a scene. It needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This week’s topic is: Joyless and Festive
The rules are pretty loose. You could write a story about anything that has to do with the subject/photo but it must relate to the topic somehow.
Most of all have fun!