[Story] Dealer's Choice - A New Writing Project by Gunthug

[Gunthug]

Dealer's Choice (LF Cool Poster to go right here)

 

A community-wide writing collaboration

 

It's simple, guys. I used to host a weekly writing competition, but that takes a lot of effort and coordination. Sadly, I just don't have time. But I still wanna write, and I know there are a lot of you out there who wanna write, too.

 

What are we to do? Sit around and wait for staff to create some writing competitions? Unlikely to come anytime soon, even with a writing enthusiast like Munya now in the seat of power. Plus, even if we got one, it's just one event. When it passes, we're back to nothing.

 

My goal is to start something on a smaller scale. Something small, accessible, and fun. Here's my plan:

 

• People who post on this thread can do 1 of 2 things. They can either post a writing prompt, or they can respond to a prompt already posted with a story of their own.
• Prompts can be about whatever you like - pokemon themed, or not (Let's keep them appropriate, though).
• NOTE: Can't think of a cool story to suggest? A really cool place for prompts is http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/- it's pretty easy to see that this subreddit inspired me to try this out. It's amazing what people are able to come up with given just a sentence or two to start.
• Two or more people can write on the same prompt, that's fine by me. In fact, it might be cool to see the contrast between differing ideas. You can also choose whichever prompt you want, if multiple have been posted. Just quote the prompt you choose when you make your post
• Each prompt will expire after 10 days. This'll keep things fresh, and give our procrastinators (myself included) some incentive to get these things done in a timely manner
• How much should you write? However much you want - unless the person who suggests the prompt is specific in their post. But let's keep these pretty short, that way more people will feel they can contribute and more people will read these

 

I hope this creates a cool outlet for writers here in our community. I plan on critiquing posts for those who want it, and I also plan on writing a hell of a lot for this (as well as contributing prompts). If you have any feedback, feel free to shoot me a PM - I have a lot of ideas swirling around about this, and could always use some extra perspective.

 

 

Well, what are you waiting for? Let's do it!

[Gunthug]

active prompts:

March 20th:

You walk out your front door one morning only to find a swirling blue portal hovering on your front lawn. You call to your wife/husband, but they don't see anything on the lawn at all.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Gunthug

[Gunthug]

One more reserve to post some cool stories people post. It'll be like a gallery of sorts

[Kiliminati]

Really cool idea! I'll definitely participate ^^

[Asakano]

As will I :P

I may not be all that good at it, but writing is fun!

[Inarin]

I-I'd host some Writing competitions, however Prize funding isn't exactly something I can get...

Either way, the premise sounds interesting.

[Gunthug]

Alright alright I'll post the first prompt. I'm at a competition all weekend so I won't be able to work on an entry for a bit, but maybe this'll inspire others to contribute in the meantime.

Prompt: You walk out your front door one morning only to find a swirling blue portal hovering on your front lawn. You call to your wife/husband, but they don't see anything on the lawn at all.

No word limit.

[YagamiNoir]

I feel sad how this is being ignored. 

[Misfire33]

Wish I'd seen this earlier. Oh well. Better late than never, right?

 

Alright alright I'll post the first prompt. I'm at a competition all weekend so I won't be able to work on an entry for a bit, but maybe this'll inspire others to contribute in the meantime.

Prompt: You walk out your front door one morning only to find a swirling blue portal hovering on your front lawn. You call to your wife/husband, but they don't see anything on the lawn at all.

No word limit.

 

Story in spoiler. 

 

[spoiler]

 

A New Decoration in the Yard 

 

 

I should begin this story by telling you a little bit about Frank. Frank is an average man, standing about 5'9” on a good day and sitting about 3'1" on a bad one. He's balding, a little bit more hairy than is commonly desirable, and reads National Geographic. He likes wearing t-shirts, usually of a single, solid colour. He likes his coffee medium, his toast with marmalade, and his bacon burnt to a crisp. He enjoys fixing things, like furniture. The prize in his “things to fix” collection is a black 1970 Mercury Cougar; rusted, not running, and missing a hubcap. Frank spends most of his Sundays working on it. Progress is slow—after all, he's got three kids and a job—but he hopes to have it done before his retirement. Sometimes he sits in it and imagines his so-called “glory days;” back in high school, full of vim and vigor and ill-timed erections and unfocused rebellion. His friend used to have a red one, at least until he drove it into a tree after prom. The friend survived, but the car didn't. Seeing that beautiful chrome mouth wrapped around the oak, leaking fluid and hissing steam like a scorned aunt, really got on Frank's nerves. Somehow, he knows he won't feel right until he balances the cosmic Cougar equation; one wrecked, one fixed. 

 

Frank wears the kind of sunglasses you wear when you're 43 and tired of caring how good you look, because Frank is 43 and realizes he doesn't look good anymore. He complains about politics—never so much as to seem pessimistic—and modern music. He has a collection of Rush vinyls from his youth, the cardboard ripped and faded but the discs still intact. His wife doesn't care for them, much; she's more of an A-ha person. Frank does not like A-ha, but he is too polite to say. Such is the kind of secret you learn to easily keep after 12 years in the mutual ceasefire that is marriage.  

 

Frank's wife, Julie, is not a harpy. She is not the nagging, screaming banshee of a woman that every man is afraid of after 30. Sometimes he thinks she is, but not for very long. She has to take care of the kids, after all, and such a job requires the patience of Buddha. Frank is fine with children; he can talk to them, laugh with them, play with them, and even bond with them if it's a good day. It's the sticky fingers, the schoolwork, the flung balls of wet paper towel that he cannot deal with. Managing the chaotic trifecta (comprising of one tot, one preteen and a 17 year-old) is something that only Julie has the willpower to do; Frank, as far as he's concerned, is perfectly happy dealing with one at a time. 

 

The toddler, Martha, poops a lot. Lance, the teen, is busy being full of resentment and hormones and anti-societal brouhaha. It's the in-between, the middle child, that seems to click with him. He's not a car nut like his dad, but some of the mechanical genes must have passed on; the kid loves, just loves planes. DC-10s, Skymasters, Blackbirds, 747s, you name it--Jeffrey has a model, a poster, or a book of it. Maybe even all three. His sheets are a cloudy pattern, something Frank and Julie find rather cute. He'll outgrow them soon, but for now he's the easy age; old enough to go to the bathroom by himself, yet too young to understand why Lance loves angry punk music and deletes his browsing history regularly. He helps Frank out in the garage, as far as “help” goes when you're talking about a seven year-old; that means a lot of handing the wrong tool and poking engine parts. Still, he's getting better, and Frank's happy to have the company; one day, he thinks, this kid is going to be an aircraft mechanic. Or maybe a pilot, or an air-traffic controller. Whatever it is, Frank knows he won’t be happy unless he’s close to something with wings. 

 

Today is Sunday, July 28th, 2015. The time is 6 am. It's going to be a hot day; the kind of humid, cloying hot that either makes you languid, irritable, or both. It’s too early for the heat to hit, though. Right now it's just perfect--at least it is to Frank, as he sits at the kitchen table eating charred bacon on medium toast with eggs. With coffee, of course. The kids aren't up yet; least of all Lance, who Frank and Julie are reasonably sure went to bed only three hours ago. Julie sits down opposite from him, leaning just as far back as is safe on her well-worn wooden chair and spreading the newspaper out with a fwap.  

 

“They finally found the plane.” she says. 

 

Frank looks up from contemplating the bacon. 

 

“What?” he responds. 

 

Julie sighs internally. She hates repeating herself, but Frank isn't the most observant of people. He means well, though. 

 

“The plane. MH 370. You know, the one that supposedly went down over the ocean.” 

 

Frank nods. “Ah.” 

 

She grabs a strip of bacon, popping it into her mouth and CRUNCHing it. “Yeah, except they didn't find it in the ocean.” She reads a bit further, eyes flicking back and forth like she's following a particularly intense game of table tennis. She's an efficient reader. “They found it in... Canada?” She squints. “That can't be right...” 

 

Frank shrugs and takes a drink of coffee. “Well, it's in the paper, isn't it? They really only tend to lie about celebrities.” 

 

She hrmms. “And they have pictures.” More CSI-like scanning of the page. Frank still wonders how he managed to catch someone as intelligent as her, 12 years later. “Says they didn't find anybody on board except the pilots, which is odd. Maybe the passengers all bailed.” 

 

“Bailed from a jet plane?” Frank asks rhetorically. She shrugs, he gulps down some eggs. “And that still doesn't explain how it ended up halfway across the world from where it disappeared...” 

 

“Not to mention NORAD. Their radar would have caught it, wouldn't it?” 

 

Frank laughs a guffawing belly laugh. “Maybe a moose chewed some wires up there.” 

 

Julie doesn't look particularly impressed. Frank is nonetheless amused by his own attempt at humour. He chuckles and herhers to himself a bit more, quietly. 

 

“The black boxes were all scrambled, somehow, but at the very end the co-pilot yelled out something about a hole.” 

 

“In the fuselage?” Frank asks, wondering what little Jeffrey would make of it. 

 

Julie shakes her head. “No, apparently not. They're still in the preliminary steps of the investigation, but they say that most or maybe all of the damage to the plane happened during the crash.”  

 

“Weird.” he says, ever the insightful one. 

 

“Yeah.” she agrees. Frank eats the last piece of bacon. 

 

“Well,” he says after a brief silence, shoving the rest of the toast in his mouth. “You wanna go out and see the sun before it once again becomes our mortal enemy?” He adds a little bit of comic book villain theatrics at the end, wiggling his fingers like a kid on Halloween trying to impress an elderly woman into giving up more candy. 

 

Julie smiles. “Sure. I could use a slice of peace and quiet before our little monsters wake up.” 

 

Frank nods emphatically, heading for the door. There's no need for sunglasses until the big ol' orb in the sky rises proper, so he leaves them at ease by the toaster. He turns the knob and props the door open for Julie. “Llllladies first.” he says, smiling his best suave stud smile. It might have been a bit skeevy 20 years ago, but all his sleaze has faded with time. Now he's just another polite, middle-aged guy. Julie snickers and accepts, ducking under his arm and stepping down onto the front path of their suburban lawn. Frank is about to follow, when... 

 

Oh. 

 

Oh. 

 

What in the flying fuck is that? He thinks, glad he didn't say it out loud. Sorry, mom, but swearing is warranted. After all, there's a giant blue hole hovering on top of my yard. And my wife is walking directly towards it.  

 

“Uh, Julie?” He asks, suddenly awake. 

 

“Yes?” She turns her head, seemingly unaware of the glowing, pulsating, rough-around-the-edges thing in front of her. She continues to walk... right through it. 

 

“Julie?!” Frank is almost yelling now, and not in a manly way. More of the suddenly squeaky way, like when you see that your dog has opened the refrigerator and is eating the leftover cake. 

 

“What.” Her voice comes from behind the thing, a little peeved.  

 

“You just walked into a… um…” He points. “Don’t you see that?” 

 

“See what?” she asks, walking straight through the thing and back into view. 

 

Frank’s down the step and onto the lawn. “You did it again.” 

 

She just looks at him, worried. Probably for his sanity. 

 

“The glowing blue hole directly in front of you.” 

 

She looks. No reaction. “Maybe you took too many allergy meds, Frank.” she suggests mockingly. 

 

“No, no, I only took three or four.” Or five, he adds mentally. Frank walks towards the hole and stands next to Julie; now that he’s closer, he can see that it’s three-dimensional. A perfect sphere, sitting on top of his flagstone path. It’s a little taller than he is, about six feet every which way. He steps to one side, then the other, inspecting the anomaly for any anomalies. To his wife, he is pacing around nothing. She wonders if sudden-onset Schizophrenia is a thing. Maybe she’ll WebMD it later. 

 

“Frank, there’s nothing there.” 

 

Frank is a little miffed that his wife doesn’t believe him about this (or getting oil changes done at home instead of paying a mechanic $60, but that’s not important right now). He has to prove this thing is here, somehow, and his camera is all the way back inside… 

 

Frank makes a decision. A ballsy decision. A stupid decision. A decision born of a comfortable life; the kind of life that that makes people believe that they’re invincible, if only for a few seconds. Frank steps into the sphere, and his world becomes a swirling miasma of funny colours. Then, it becomes nothing. Julie stares at the spot Frank used to be.  

 

-- 

 

Three weeks later, his face is all over the city. “Missing,” the posters say. “Please call 505-694-7821.” He even gets the classic milk carton mugshot, wearing his faded Giants cap. The police are suspicious of his wife's tearful, shocked story; after all, people don't just disappear into thin air. That doesn't make sense. 

 

-- 

 

Suddenly, the darkness is bright. Very bright. Frank rubs his eyes. Cracks one open, then the other. Slowly, the brightness fades into something a bit more palatable. Blue sky, without a cloud in sight. He’s lying face up, spread-eagled on something warm and hard and dry. He sits up. Looks around. Blinks. This is not his front yard. No, this is not his front yard at all. He briefly hopes that maybe he just fell over and hit his head, and that this is all a cranial impact-induced dream. This fretful aspiration is soon blown away by the soft brush of a lazy wind against his cheek, and the flutter of his one-size-too-large shirt in response. This is real. This is... where, exactly? He does a full 360, hand shielding his eyes. It's a dry plain, stretching as far as he can see. Sparse trees and bushes litter the expanse; the rest is either dirt, or tall, undulating swaths of prairie grass. Frank stands up. Assesses his situation. Wipes his dusty hands on his shorts. They’re khakis, nobody’s going to notice. Hell, nobody’s here to notice. Frank takes a few moments to collect as many of his scattered marbles as he can, picks a random direction, and begins to walk. 

 

He regrets not buying a smartphone. Those things have GPS programs on them now, or so he'd heard.

 

[spoiler][/spoiler][/spoiler]

Edited June 3, 2015 by Misfire33