BET YOU CAN’T do this writing prompt. Take the 10 random words below and, in the comments, crush writer’s block by creating a cohesive, creative short story tying all of them together! And remember: after (if) you finish, highlight your words and click the bold button to make them stand out and help you determine if you forgot any words. (If you’ve missed previous writing prompts, we BET YOU CAN’T do those, either.)
- Coke
- Glacier
- Cesspool
- Womanizer
- Rancid
- Paycheck
- Imposter
- Tablet
- Just an illusion
- Shield
NOTE: Don’t copy and paste from MS Word. Use a program like notepad that removes formatting or just type in the comment field itself. Also, finish your submission, THEN bold the words. Thanks.
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The iceberg that fell off of the glacier, looked like it was floating in a cesspool, and not even a hit of coke could shield him from the rancid smell.
This was just an illusion created on the tablet computer, with 3D and olfactory capabilities, the womanizer received in lieu of a paycheck, from his new boss.
It turns out the stern looking male boss, is really an imposter, a witch hired by some ex-girlfriends/wives to provide payback.
Let this be a lesson to all men, you never know how or when retaliation will occur for your transgressions, so be careful.
Steve, I love where you took this. I was wondering how people would work in “glacier” today. Good job man.
Dear whatever your name was,
I’m a womanizer.
I treat women like paychecks, depositing and withdrawing them with rancid indiscretion.
I’m an imposter, a charmer, a counterfeit with disarming eyes, memorized opening lines, and a tablet of victim’s numbers hanging next to a mirror I hate looking into.
My life is just an illusion of a mirage of a cesspool of a meaningless existence.
Coke, conquests, and cuties like you fill the glacier of a void in my soul. They are my shield from my own corroded conscious.
Sorry sweetie, but this is who I am,
Sincerely,
Charlatane
we may be writing about the same person
Same type of person for sure.
This reminds me of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
Nice.
OMG! I think you’re channelling my ex-husband lol
I wonder how many people will notice the subtle twist I used with the last word of “Charlatane” as opposed to “Charlatan”
I noticed!
So I “got” ya huh!
Yep. Sweet twist, Shane.
Yeesh, for my lady’s sake, I hope Charlatane wasn’t hanging out in a Washington bar when she wrote that.
SHE WAS!!
ROFL—I hate threaded comments (sorry) because in my email I can never tell who someone’s commenting to, but I knew that one was for me.
My poor lady!
We’re trying to look into that. It’s our subscribe t comments plug-in not cooperating with the threading plug-in I believe.
Ha, we wrote about a similar guy!
Except mine is a woman!
Here I go again, the continuing saga of the yet unnamed:
Swallowing the vanilla wafer he wondered about what she’d really meant when she’d asked, “Would I lie to you?”
Maybe, he thought, what he felt for her was just an illusion. In many ways he knew he was a rancid imposter, a womanizer, always shielding himself from the cesspool of emotions he sensed lay just under the surface of his self-imposed glacier-like persona.
Washing down an aspirin tablet with a coke hoping it would smash his headache, he picked up his paycheck knowing buying her dinner was inevitable.
Love how descriptive this short piece is.
“self-imposed glacier-like persona” and “smash his headache” stuck out the most to me.
thanks for noticing; I was pleased when those phrases fell out of my fingers
Excellent, Anne! Think it might be my favorite entry from you so far.
Just an Illusion
Looking around the cesspool of his house, I sucked in a ragged breath of disgust. The urge to shield my eyes from the landscape of debris was overwhelming. But hey, this was a paycheck that I couldn’t miss. And the womanizer living here wasn’t going to get away again. I looked down at my spiral tablet, making some notes. Picking my way across a sea of garbage, clothing and gods know what else, I was hit by a rancid stench from the kitchen doorway. A peek inside revealed takeout boxes, filthy dishes and the residue of a coke binge on the black marble counter. I followed the dark, narrow hallway to a back room, and there he was. Slumped against the wall, his glacier eyes locked on the ceiling, his mouth slack, his body lifeless. He’d been dead for at least three days, I guessed from the looks of him. It always got me—how seeing a dead body made you feel like an imposter in your own. I looked away, sighed and moved back outside to call my boss. At least I’d still get paid. That was something.
Another great descriptive piece.
“his glacier eyes locked on the ceiling” was the money line for me.
trying something different….
As a glacier to the valley, you formed my soul and being.
My love for you was forever carved on the stone tablet of eternity.
But you’re just an illusion.
An imposter who broke through the shield that protects my heart.
A rancid pile of excrement
That seeks innocence to drag it into the cesspool of your life
I’ll give you half my paycheck
it’s totally worth it
Better a womanizer
than a coke whore.
I usually don’t go for poetry, but I liked this one.
thank you sir. It was more of a time restraint concern than actually wanting to write poetry. But I’ve read it a few times now. I laugh each time.
Better a womanizer
than a coke whore.
Truer words were never spoken.
Eric,
THANK YOU for a fantastic laugh today. That was great.
“A rancid pile of excrement” and “coke whore” did it!
Thanks Victoria and Shane.
Awesome last line!
Another home run from you, Eric! Great job.
She walked through the dark bar, the click-clack of stilettos punctuating every sexy drop of a hip bone. She hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time.
It had been one week since so found an imposter in her marital bed. The scum-bag womanizer she was married to was now as good as dead to her. She’d spent the last week crying, in her dowdy little house-wife get up, her mother had taken the children for a few weeks so she could ‘figure things out’.
It was this morning when she woke up things suddenly became clear. She hated the dowdy little house wife, the doting little ‘ask no questions’ front she’d convinced herself was really her. It was just an illusion, a shield she’d used to get her through the day to day living a lie. Who said a woman had to be married to have a house and children. Who said your average mother of two can’t also be anything she damn well wanted to, it wasn’t carved into a stone tablet in some museum.
At 10am she decided it was time to end the lies and go through her husband’s desk draw. Hotel bookings, restaurant bills, the cesspool of deceit was growing by the minute. She read as much as she could stomach, until the rancid taste of bile rising in her throat stopped her. If he could spend that much money on some 19 year old whore he owed her a few gifts.
She went down to the bank. His paycheck had just cleared into their joint account, it was enough to put a small diamond glacier on her finger, to replace the wedding ring she had now discarded, and to buy her a killer new outfit to celebrate in. And here she was, she’d forgotten how hot she could look. More than hot, every guy in that room was hypnotized by that stiletto tap. She walked to the bar, instantly getting the barman’s attention, “Bacardi and coke” she said with a confident smile, now she had their attention what would she do with them…
Lily, my fav line:
“the click-clack of stilettos punctuating every sexy drop of a hip bone” and
“now she had their attention what would she do with them”
Can’t wait to see what she does WITH them.
…well that depends on whether you screen submissions for adult content PMSL!
adult content accepted!
ha ha sex scenes are taxing enough when i’m doing them for new novel, don’t make me attempt them on here as well! lol
Awww come one….
His paycheck, big as a glacier, was the invisible shield of an imposter, just an illusion of who the rancid womanizer really was, back there snorting coke off the tablet, slowly dying alone in his own, impoverished cesspool.
Patrick coming through big with the short form today! Excellent, tight writing, sir.
I had about 3 minutes to think about this today unfortunately. I figured one sentence would be different and a good challenge. thanks again -
Amazing, really Patrick. I’d love to squeeze mine into a single sentence, but I’ve not yet managed the task. Great job.
Patrick, this is one of the best super-short submissions yet. I love “slowly dying alone in his own, impoverished cesspool.” Very evocative!
It’s remarkable, the lengths you go to, when you’re trying to shield yourself from the truth. But you can’t do it forever. Sooner or later, you have to come to terms with your mistakes.
That generous, attentive, thoughtful one-in-a-million guy. It was just an illusion. The lying, two-faced, egotistical imposter was nothing but a womanizer.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
No, I’m not bitter. I’m not angry. I’m completely cool about it. I am a glacier.
If I were angry, I might do something. I might spend my entire paycheck to hire someone to quietly dump that rancid excuse for human life in a cesspool. I might buy an entire case of Coke and pour it over his car on the hottest day of the year. I might carve the words, “No Staying Power” into a stone tablet and have it mounted (heh) on his front door.
But I won’t do any of that. I’ll have lunch with his mother instead.
That poor, unsuspected Mo-Fo doesn’t know what’s about to hit him does he!
“I’ll have lunch with his mother instead.” Classic! Very nice write. Had me laughing out loud Stacey.
Any day I can make someone laugh is a good day indeed.
You made me laugh too Stacey. Thanks!
Sipping at her bacardi and coke, she tried to compose herself. He had just been another loser to add to her rancid cesspool of failed relationships. A womanizer, an imposter pretending he cared about her when all along he was using her. He’d told her that he was committed to her and her alone. That those nights when he hadn’t answered his phone, he had been in meetings, working late. Ha. The only thing he was working on was getting a few extra dates with as many women as possible! The life he had made her believe in was just an illusion. She had been hurt too many times to let this happen again. She vowed to put up a shield to protect herself. Instead of being warm and open she would cold as a glacier. It was the only way.
With a sigh, she decided that the only way to make herself feel better would be to spend the rest of her paycheck in the bar, drowning her sorrows.
Welcome to the CCC, IMiss. Good to have you here. Thanks for the great contribution.
“rancid cesspool of failed relationships” was the line for me.
Send me your 10th word and I’ll add it.
He would have liked her to believe that he was as sweet and gentle as those cute polar bears that sit on the side of a glacier and sip their bottle of coke with kind eyes and happy smiles. But like polar bears in real life, he was cold, and would rip your heart and guts out without a second thought. His breath was rancid, as though his cesspool of a conscience was leaking down into his mouth. He was a serial womanizer, using his good looks as a shield which would protect him from the wariness that most woman would have upon meeting him had he been as unattractive as his soul.
The profile he created for the online dating service portrayed him as a successful attorney, but he was an imposter who lived from paycheck to paycheck. Everything was just an illusion , from his cheap knock-off Armani suit and fancy sportscar which he had taken from his last victim, to the fact that he was absolutely worthless without that little blue tablet. If this new girl was lucky, she would manage to see through the facade before too much damage was done.
Margaret, I think his last victim is having lunch with his mother.
ha ha , Stacy…great tie-in.
Margaret, that was awesome. Great way to compare that man to a polar bear. Very nicely done. You had fun with this didn’t you?
Hey, Shane….FUN is my middle name!!
No it’s not, it’s Rose or Rosa, depending…
Good write, Ma. It was even better today than it was when you called me on the phone to recite it yesterday!
Maybe I’m just a distracted womanizer living paycheck to paycheck, or maybe it’s just an illusion caused by the tablets and the Coke, but I could’ve sworn that rancid cesspool out there on the lawn was a fresh water glacier shaped like a Roman shield. The imposter!
Jaced, making me laugh, one short submission at a time. You’re the man!
Seriously impressive, each and every time.
This was bullshit.
Evan glanced at his watch again – 2:42 – a minute since the last time he’d twisted his wrist to look. The well dressed man eight customers in front handed two Benjamins across the counter to the smiling clerk with giant almond colored eyes.
“She’s going to love them,” the woman said.
“She always does.” The man smiled then opened his arms in an empty cradle. The clerk gently set the bundle of wrapped roses inside, then counted his change, thirty some odd dollars, into his hands.
The man dropped all of the change and most of the bills into his pocket, save for the folded twenty he slipped into a glass jar that was already wallpapered with green from the inside. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said.
“Tell your lovely wife we said hi.”
“I will,” he agreed.
“And we better see you in here before Mother’s Day!”
“I promise,” he said, then gave a polite wave and turned toward the door.
The man smiled at Evan as he passed, but the forty minutes in line had nearly bleached his ability to fake it. Evan could barely nod. What an asshole, sitting there making nice with the clerk as though time didn’t matter, while the line moved at glacier pace and people spilled out the door behind him.
Evan was normally a skilled impostor, smiling at all the right times and always wearing the perfect expression from the few dozen he kept just a flinch or two away.
Both weapon and shield, Evan’s insincerity was the most consistent thing in his life.
The line inched forward and another idiot grabbed their overpriced flowers, dropped an unnecessarily large tip into the jar, then grinned like a fool as they headed for the door. You had to be truly stupid, Evan thought, to be smiling after paying over a hundred bucks for a bunch of flowers. At least a bottle of wine held its price the following Monday.
Roses the day after Valentine’s were ash after a fire.
Evan almost felt sorry for people who couldn’t see the world for what it was; just an illusion, filled with empty people, empty promises and empty fucking dreams. Most people did the zombie merengue, aimlessly marching through their lives, rarely looking up, above, around or below. Most people went through their entire lives too timid to take what was theirs. They worked jobs they hated for bosses they despised, waiting until the sun got swallowed so they could finally pour a glass, take a shot, or pop a tablet – whatever it took to help them fall into the temporary solace of another six hours sleep.
Slam the snooze button. Rinse and repeat.
Fuck that.
Evan took another step toward the counter, managing a half smile at the cretin walking away with a single rose, holding it in front of his eyes like he’d never seen a flower before. The only thing stupider than paying a three digit total for a dozen roses and not realizing you were getting hosed was standing in line for an hour to buy a single stem. The moron probably made minimum wage.
The brown eyed girl behind the counter laughed at something that Evan couldn’t hear. It was a weak little twitter of a laugh, timid and hollow. He knew the laugh, saturated in fear, vented from someone too afraid to step up and demand what belonged to them.
He’d be damned if anybody found him on his deathbed bemoaning the shit he did not do. The world was a carnival with a cesspool creeping in on all sides. It was up to each person to find the rides and avoid the swill. If you weren’t willing to take what was rightfully yours from life, then you didn’t have the right to say piss or shit about a thing. Evan took what he did because hell if he would leave what could be his for someone too stupid to appreciate it. Sure, people might call him a womanizer, but he’d never been with a single woman who didn’t know exactly what she was doing.
A chance to be seen, a need to belong, or hell a neat line of coke, no one had ever spread their legs for charity.
In a way, it made the whores a lot more appetizing. At least they were honest about what they did. There was no artifice in that transaction. You could play it straight and say exactly what you meant without them looking back at you like you had rancid in your eye. An evening with Margaux may cost twice the average paycheck, but it was worth every penny.
The final imbecile grabbed his flowers, grinning, and Evan stepped to the counter.
“May I help you Sir?” the brown eyed girl smiled.
“Yes, of course,” Evan smiled, “I’d love two dozen of whatever rose makes your heart beat a little faster.” Her big eyes looked darker against the sudden blush in her cheeks. “Is there such a rose?” Evan held her gaze.
“I’d recommend the Black Magic, sir,” she said. “The red’s so dark it’s like velvet and the head is as big as my eight year old nephew’s fist.”
“Sounds perfect. Two dozen Black Magics, please.” Evan slid two hundred dollar bills across the counter, then flashed a smile he knew she’d think about later.
She wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to a pigtailed girl in an apron. “Some lady is really lucky,” her brown eyes seemed to get bigger. Evan spread his lips again, showing two rows of perfect teeth. “Oh those,” he waved a hand at the three hundred dollars worth of roses being carried to the front of the store. “Those are for my mom. She’s always alone on Valentine’s and it makes me feel sad.” Evan waited for her to wilt, then added, “I know how she feels. With my job I’ve been alone every Valentine’s Day for the last five years.”
“I know how you feel,” the woman said. “I’m always stuck here for the holiday, I watch romance leave the store every minute or so while I’m stuck here until it’s time to go home alone.”
Evan took his bundle of roses and handed her three bills with a quiet whisper to keep the change. He turned toward the door. Then, almost as an afterthought, turned back toward the girl, her big eyes still bolted on him. “You know, my mom turns in pretty early. I don’t suppose you’d like to maybe grab a cup of coffee?”
“”I’d love it,” she said, scribbling furiously on a card and handing it across the counter.
Evan looked down, then said, “Great, Cecilia, I’ll see you at 9:00.”
They both smiled. Evan’s was almost genuine.
She looked even more promising than last year’s.
Holy crap. That’s awesome, Sean.
Evan has some plans for Cecilia doesn’t he! Nice indeed!
Feels like this date could have a creepy ending, depending which way you decided to go with it.
Gee, Sean, you would think you had worked in a flower shop for Valentine’s Day a few times, huh? Black magic roses, indeed…..have some in my cooler as we speak. I understand you might avoid flower shop duty this year if you get lucky! great job…..creepy guy.
Nope, I’m totally free this year.
I love this… I had black magic roses in my wedding bouquet, that guy is seriously creepy though.
Did you really? That’s awesome. I grew up in a flower shop and worked there for a dozen years as an adult. Black Magics are one of my faves and the first rose I ever sold to my wife when she was a customer.
Hey, Chuck Palahniuk, nice to see you here… Awesome story, I was almost afraid of what Evan was going to do when he got to the front of the line. Scary stuff.
The first rule of CCC, Fight Club creator references are MOST welcome!
Thanks, man. I think that’s the best compliment I’ve had all day. Appreciate it.
Stacey, Shane and Karetha: Thanks guys! I appreciate the compliments, and yeah, the date promises a pretty creepy evening.
Sean,
There are so many great snippets here I can’t count them all. My faves: “forty minutes in line had nearly bleached his ability to fake it”; “the zombie merengue”; “the final imbecile grabbed his flowers.”
Valentine’s Day, upside-down. Whoa.
I can’t take credit for this one. I wasn’t feeling the creativity this evening but I was able to get Trey, my husband, to give it a go.
He was a womanizer, a rancid imposter festering in a cesspool of cold remorse that was once a glacier of confidence. His life was just an illusion now. When he lost his paycheck, he lost his shield. Now his comfort consists of his tablet- conquests tallied, martinis logged, lines of coke memorialized. It was all he had left.
Mr. Kool Aid is in the house! Thanks for doing the challenge Mr. K.
“When he lost his paycheck, he lost his shield” is the money line! Great job. Please give it a go from now on sir.
I like the “cesspool of cold remorse.” Never would have put those words together before…like it!
I continued my self-imposed exile, wallowing in the cesspool of self-pity. My cell phone rang. I looked, saw Sonya’s name, sighed and let voicemail pick it up.
“Christina, I know you are hanging out in that rancid dump feeling sorry for yourself. Call me.”
I heard the mail drop through the slot. Maybe it was worth getting up to see if my last paycheck had arrived. Instead it was a letter from Cecily.
“Hey, Sistina. Sonya told me she and the womanizer moved to New York. It sounds like their apartment is just an illusion of success. Jaiden told me Clyde is an impostor, deceived everyone at Goldman Sachs. You need to shield her from that asshole.”
Right. I took a sip of my warm coke and swallowed some random tablet I found in my stash. Would this glacier of pain in my heart ever thaw?
Thank you Loran for bringing me into this little world you created.
“Would this glacier of pain in my heart ever thaw?” Now that’s good stuff there.
The characters are starting to take on a life of their own!
Picture the scene:
A woman and man are screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. The woman has thrown the man’s tablet PC across the room and it has broken into thousands of pieces.
“Womanizer! Imposter! Rancid piece of human flesh! You belong in a cesspool!”
“Look who’s talking! Your warmth is just an illusion! Compared to you, a glacier would be a furnace!”
“All you ever wanted was my paycheck!”
“Throw down your shield and look at reality. You couldn’t pay me to be with you!”
“I’ll buy you a Coke.”
“A Coke?”
“Yeah, a Coke.”
“Well, ok.”
The woman and man embrace and they walk out the door, presumably in search of said Coke.
Cue announcer’s voice…”Coke, it changes everything.”
Karetha,
You’re the 3rd person to make me laugh out loud today. Fantastic write.
“Compared to you, a glacier would be a furnace!” That’s going in the swipe file.
That would make a great Superbowl Ad!
That WOULD make a great Superbowl ad!
If you don’t agree Britney Spears’ Womanizer video is hot and sexy, go watch it again now.
If nakedness causes a glacier of rancidness in your mouth, don’t watch it. You might want to shield your Coke from spilling over the sensual images, too.
Scores of teenagers (and older voyeurs like you) are not merely downloading the song from iTunes and watching the video on a computer or tablet like I implored you to do above; but their and your actions are just an illusion for a larger paycheck sent to Britney for royalties.
Can you imagine the cesspool of money she and her music company receives?
Disclosure: I am not an imposter for her brand manager.
Opps, you did it again, Ari. Another bad-ass post!
Thanks buddy.
He hit us baby one more time.
(This might be an abuse of the whole “short” story idea…)
Brett was getting impatient with Mark’s habits.
As he waited on the couch sipping the remnants of a lukewarm Coke and watching the tail end of some cop drama, he imagined the blaze of confusion his roommate would bring with him as he swept into the cramped apartment (which was now a cesspool of rancid food garbage and odd smells, thanks to this newcomer — an unwelcome imposter compared to his old friend who had went away for medical school. Damn Craigslist). This man was a pig and a womanizer. He’d let the heating bill become so overdue the company shut it off — the room was somehow below freezing at all times.
Frustrated, Brett slammed the empty cup onto the unfinished coffee table, and his fingertips ached from the force and the cup’s chill. He was now watching a documentary, staring at what might have been penguins, or maybe small shrubs far off in the blizzard. He’d wanted to become an Antarctic biologist, studying life on the southern glaciers. He’d almost had it, too, but a health problem had drowned everything in red tape. The laptop on his lap made a clicking sound, and he glanced at it, just realizing it was there. Something on the screen resembling a map. The connection was dead, how could it be showing anything?
The documentary had a new angle now — a crashed plane was somewhere in the picture. Also, someone had died, though as he thought about it, none of it was showing on the TV screen. How long had he been sitting here?
Underneath everything, Brett was nothing but a ruin. Plans had failed and he had kept going like nothing was wrong, people had tried to give him a hand and he had refused. He has even run out of food due to some rushed calculation. Even though he resented his frat-brainwashed roommate, he secretly coveted Mark’s existence, living paycheck to paycheck with no real direction. He’d love to relax into warm bliss, forgetting his responsibilities and failures, just letting ignorance shield him from everything. This dead com link to his basecamp had done most of that for him at this point, there was no way he was getting back now. He continued to stare at the far-off shrubs. Or maybe they were penguins. Whatever they were, they were probably just an illusion, like his small, filthy apartment, his bullheaded roommate, and the empty soda cup floating in front of him. The battered Tablet PC was definitely nearing the end of its electronic life, and once it blinked out, the camp six miles away would be another figment of his failing mind.
Medical school. He should have just done that.
Again, fantastic imagery Peter. Great write.
ps. Make it as long as you want man. Our database has some storage space left.
Don’t worry about length at all. My last one broke 1,200 words.
Dr. Steven Davidson was an archeologist surrounded by college coeds. He enjoyed his work most days but today was not one of them. “Womanizer” by Britney Spears wafted in the background from one of the portable radios a student had brought with her. How he wished the batteries would die and kill that rancid music. Dr. Davidson was not a fan of pop music.
He continued to work in his little 3 foot square grid, brushing gently dust and dirt away from the strange stone that he had just recently uncovered. Sweat dripped down his brow as he focused on his work. His paycheck dictated that he also mentor to the students but today he just wasn’t feeling it. Today he delegated them to different grids for digging or sifting delicately through the debris that had been meticulously removed from the dig site.
They were working a recently discovered area in a glacier basin where no previous sign of civilization had been discovered. Many said he was an imposter but he hoped to prove them wrong. This strange stone could be the key. When his trowel first clanked noisily against the rock, he thought it was just an illusion; nothing special, just a rock that looked like it might be a tablet. It was in an area that could have been the cesspool of the civilization; a literal dumping ground of human waste, for both bodily functions and everyday trash, but he could still feel the excitement of discovery.
He worked for hours but only a little of the stone had been uncovered. He sat back on his heels and sipped his Coke gazing at the stone but not really seeing it. One of the students stopped to look at what Dr. Davidson had been so focused on. “Huh,” the student grunted, “looks like some kind of shield.” Dr. Davidson snapped out of his reverie and looked down at the stone with new perspective. “I think you’re right, John. This could be it!” Dr. Davidson may have discovered the key to his career.
That’s awesome Kool Aid. I used to work with a girl that had an archeology major. Very bright. She coded websites with me but talked excavating excursions up so much I wanted to go myself. Great write.
Thank you. I was trying to come up with something a little different. Honestly, I struggled with this set of words moreso than the last few. Looking forward to #14
Funny thing about these words. Sometimes after I choose them, then look at them to see what type of range they present, I say to myself that this will be easy, or this will be hard. I guess you never know whit these things, and that’s what’s so cool.
Rancid earth, irrepressible heat. Overground panic, underground oblivion. Hard to believe just feet below this land of numberless glaciers lay voluminous caverns bewitched by a civilisation in perpetual strife.
To the people of SubTerranea, the roofs of these hidden lairs were their shield. But they knew their protector was also their prisoner. The ceilings of these caves were impenetrable, as hard as diamond. Safety below was an imposter, the sweet oxygen upon which they depended cloaked in limited supply.
How they were there was never fully understood. As homosapiens had evolved from simians, these tiny people originated from molluscs. They were blind, and always had been; the futility of sight was the only thing clear about living in perpetual blackness.
And so they dug, as their ancestors had done, using whatever implement they could find. In silence they toiled. It was a feat of grotesque desperation leading to no greater paycheck than a small pocket of air. As the flint thinned to a brittle point against the walls of coke, the denizens of SubTerranea would call on their overgrown, gnarled fingernails to scratch out a tortuous chorus.
What reward for such suffering? Only the tiniest extension of life. And it wasn’t life as conventional perception would decree – the intoxicating span of time we advanced mortals possess and overindulge upon. For them, the citizens of SubTerranea, life was just an illusion, a cesspool of misery.
As the line marched towards its tail on the existential circle, most would find a cure for their inconsequential end. Some would find temporary respite in fighting, often delivering a destructive blow to another of the wretched creatures to end for one an era of scarcely being. For the woman, final days locked in a ritual dance compounding moaning and misery before the harbinger of pyres announced their ravishing demise. For man, the role of womanizer, an interruptor to the whirling dervishes, to provide temporary sanctuary for both sexes from their impending doom.
SubTerranea, where life was but a sugared tablet of arsenic. Above ground, not a sound. Each race oblivious to the other’s existence, yet united in the wretchedness of their ultimate destiny.
Simply amazing!!! If anybody needs to understand what love and respect of writing is, I’ll send them to this submission. Wow!
This one blows me out of the water with the thrill of imagination and wonder!
The sting had gone badly. He pressed his back to the cold bricks of the alleyway wall, clinging to the cesspool of shadows that would hide him. He slid down the alley a bit more, but only managed to bang his head on a windowsill that stuck out like a tablet. The dumpster nearby smelled rancid.
“My paycheck isn’t big enough for this shit,” James muttered.
The hostage he’d dragged with him as a human shield gave a muffled response from behind James’ hand.
James rolled his eyes. “Shut up. This is your fault, you know. Dressing up like me… what were you thinking? I should leave you on a glacier in Nunavut with just a Coke can to piss in,” he hissed in the imposter‘s ear.
The hostage struggled slightly then fell silent, eyes wide and watching the streets.
He watched too, and it wasn’t long before he could hear footsteps. They sounded close – very close – but that was just an illusion of echoes. Soon… soon he’d be able to make a break for it. He’d push the body in front of him, knock the hunter down and run for his life.
Not a very prestigious escape for a womanizer like him. But then again, every dog had its day. This was his.
James. I love the journey you are taking us all on with this character of yours. He just keeps on giving….MORE PLEASE!
In the rear area lay a coke bottle on it’s side, but today, in the heat of battle, it’s spilled contents go unnoticed as would a glacier if it fell from the sky. For today may be the most momentous battle ever fought in the ageless annals of warfare. This war, as wars before, is being fought by men with souls of iron and hearts of cold steel, men that would live a life of a thousand deaths just to fight again. These are warriors, real warriors, not imposters that fight for paychecks, or drunkards, or womanizers that fight for human pleasures. These are born warriors with imagery handed down from father to son of horrid battles fought in cesspools of broken bodies, spent metal, dirt stained blood and the stinging scent of rancid black powder. This battle will be fought without contemplating tomorrow’s nearness.
Nevertheless, rays of light pierce the broken panes of time in an attic window where cob webs dance a soulful dance. Here, the warriors lay impatiently bivouacked, each wrapped in shields of old newspapers, then locked away in a dust covered toy chest. Listen, as names, written on a roll call tablet recall the count of broken souls and of those missing in action.
Was the battle just an illusion or was it real in the mind of a six year old?
Another submission where the love of writing clearly shows through. Now I’m off to find MY toy soldiers.
Joe had been trekking alone for the past three months in the wastelands of Alaska. He was not mindful of the isolation or the extreme temperatures, he was just glad to be free of the cesspool he had called his life; his days as a womaniser, drug addict and gambler. Every paycheck had ended up in the coffers of the bookie, or the dealer who fed his habit with coke – he had tried every tablet he could lay his hands on.
He felt a bit of an imposter really, leaving his world behind: his wife, his kids, everything. He had thought that he was happy in the rat race but now realised that, actually, it was all just an illusion.
As he tramped through the snow, he sensed a rancid smell and lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun which looked like a fireball in the sky, but without the heat.
He was horrified to see a dead young seal pup lying motionless on the glacier in a pool of blood, which reminded him of the cruelty of nature.
The gruesome scene seemed to bring him to his senses and he thought of his young family and began to retrace his steps – his life may not have been perfect but this path was not to be his salvation.
Carole. Welcome to the CCC. Please everyone welcome Carole to the awesome.
Great write. I really felt this one, and I loved the ending.
PS. We love getting new people to join the challenges from “across the pond” as they say.
Carole, I like this story. The subtle beginning of redemption at the end is a nice twist. That poor pup!
“I’m such an asshole magnet,” I thought to myself, swirling my straw aimlessly around my Coke, “Just another womanizer to add to the cesspool of failed relationships that is my life.” I wonder how many tablets of Ativan it would take for me to forget this past year. He told me he made a huge paycheck and we would travel the world, from the palm trees to the glaciers, but he turned out to be just another imposter. The whole thing was just an illusion for my benefit and once again I was taken and dragged through another rancid messy affair. What this last man in my life failed to tell me was that the big paycheck was split between his 4 wives and families in different cities.
“Hey, am I late?” I look up, shielding my eyes from the sunlight streaming in the coffeeshop window. This bodacious young hunk of a man that the dating service sent over tossed his coat over the empty chair across from me. I swear the sunlight accented his features so he looked like an angel, complete with halo and I was stunned into silence. I scanned his young firm body hungrily, completely forgetting the past 12 months… until my eyes came to rest on the wedding ring… and then I just reversed the scanning procedure to his wonderful form again.
“No, not at all,” I reply, “not at all. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
Oh man. What a twist at the end. The vibe I get from reading this is you had fun with this submission.
“I just reversed the scanning procedure…” Great line.
“Even as a child, I was painfully shy. Tall, quiet, and always looking for the impossible—a way to shield myself from the world. I’ve been called a glacier and worse by men who mistake my fear for a superiority complex. My coolness has attracted a cesspool of men to my side over the years. Someone always wanting to break me… while inside my iceberg I was completely molten, hoping this love was not just an illusion, but the real thing.
A series of womanizers, rancid abusers, and spineless imposters made their way through my life until the day I wrote that book. The press picked it up as if I’d written a new tablet, the 10 Commandments for Men, rather than just a memoir of violence and thwarted desires. Senator Jones read it and recommended it to someone at the White House, and here I am on the task force to combat domestic violence.
When I saw my first paycheck from the U.S. government I had to pinch myself. A scared little girl from Chicago? I’m more in love now with embracing women in pain than with worrying why love is so screwed up for me. Who cares if I ever figure it out?”
The diet Coke shook in my hand, making the ice cubes rattle uncertainly as I concentrated on my reflection in the mirror of the bar. As always, I felt exposed simply by opening my mouth, but telling this story had been done so many times that it was no longer mine. It wasn’t the story, but the fact of being near another human, that had me trembling.
My companion’s hand reached to steady mine on the glass. The smell of orange blossoms and musk rose from her braceleted wrist.
“You’ll figure it out one day,” she said with a small, gentle smile. “Ice doesn’t last long in Washington.”
Kelly. That was hot enough to melt ice! They should make a drink called “Diet Man.” If a woman’s drinking it in a bar, the womanizers, abusers, and spineless imposters would know to not even try it.
Diet Man? LOL. I see it as hot, red, and full of vodka—a warning and a knockout all at once.
Oh, the aroma of the rancid cesspool assaulted my senses! It was just an illusion I know, but still… Quickly I slugged down a tablet of aspirin with a sip of Coke. “Jowls, you old womanizer. You’ll get your paycheck Friday with the rest of us. Get over it! Look, we’ve got work to do. Let’s climb over that ice shield to the glacier and track down that imposter.”
“This is the end of the line, Johnny,” she said as she pulled me from the trunk of her vanilla sedan. I hit the ground with a sticky thwack. Song stood over me in a skinny glacier blue pantsuit and silver steel toe roach killers.
“Shane Arthur!” I spat. I was in the shallows of a cesspool of broken characters. “What the name of…?” Her boot came down hard on my head driving it into the filth.
“I guess I will be earning my paycheck this week,” she said stepping forward. I lifted my elbows to shield my face and she swung her steel toe into my ribs, rolling me over in the rancid spillage.
“I will tell Velvet that you were an imposter, a cokehead and a womanizer. And of course, she will believe me. She always does.”
I looked up at her through bleary eyes and for the first time saw her for who she really was. Everything else was just an illusion.
She pulled a micro-tablet from her breast pocket.
Her chrome quill glimmered in the translucent blue rays of the sun.
Love, love, love it!
Brett wondered how he got involved in this world. He was pretty sure those who called San Diego, America’s Finest City, had not strolled through this neighborhood.
This wasn’t the home of high-priced coke dealers. Their clientele was up the coast, closer to where Brett worked as a homicide detective. It had been a long time since he had been to this part of San Diego, where cops were about as welcomed as a ship-bound glacier off the coast of Alaska.
He had the Birdcage Bandit to thank for his tour of this sad, cesspool life the city had thrown away. The serial killer had terrorized the north beach community of Encinitas for over a year now. There had been 12 women murdered – their bodies dumped on the beaches of Encinitas, like left-over trash from the Over-the-Line tournament.
The media, with all their irreverence, coined the Birdcage nickname. Derived from the discovery of a birdcage ornament left with each victim, Brett seethed at its dehumanizing mockery.
The case had earned Brett the 15 minutes of fame he never wanted, much to the delight of the killer. The media christened him Maverick, from a paparazzi shot of Brett riding a horse. He didn’t know what he hated more, the incessant hounding of the media or the taunting notes the killer left at the crime scenes. It was the latest note that led Brett to this part of town.
Dear Detective Maverick:
I find it so entertaining to see how famous you have become. You should thank me, you know. Before me, you were a nobody – a worthless hack of a detective with all the appeal of an aging, balding womanizer. You are such a loser!
I am growing weary of our game. There is simply no challenge anymore. So, I’m upping my stakes. Take yourself south from the ocean shores. Travel to the rancid side of life, where the toxic is laid to rest. You know it, don’t you, Detective Maverick – the place where you can see the concrete underbelly of broken dreams, where many leap from their pathetic lives. Go to the place, sliced by 5 and forgotten by most. There you will find the answer. But, hurry. I will not be so generous again.
“Barrio Logan,” was what popped into Brett’s mind. He’d bet his meager paycheck on it.
Interstate 5 cuts off the industrial and low-income community that is a couple of miles from downtown San Diego. All the clues were there. Barrio Logan became a dumping site for toxic waste in the early 1990s, and the Coronado Bay Bridge split the community in two. More than a few suicide jumpers took their final dive off that bridge.
“But, why here? Is he playing us again?”
Brett vowed it would end today. He would expose the killer as the imposter he was. The killer’s tablet-sized notes of arrogance were really just an illusion. He was not the cunning, invincible portrait of evil. His overconfidence would blind him to his certain fate. It would end now, or Brett would abandon his shield for good.
@Cathy: Excellent! Nuff said!
“It’s just an illusion,” muttered Sam, scribbling rabidly on his tablet.
Tina attempted to shield her eyes, trying to see what he was sketching. “Which one, ice bitch with the glacier hair, or skeezy cesspool strung out on coke, or the womanizer staring at my tits?”
Sam huffed a cross between a chuckle and a sigh of exasperation. “None of the above. The rancid-looking beggar over there; he’s an imposter. I saw him walking into a high-rise last week. I think it’s a scam, and I’m going to bust his ass.”
His girlfriend snorted. “Whatever gets you that paycheck, hoss.”
Would I? What a question! A flurry of responses blew through my mind like a blizzard.
The uniform is a mask. I looked right through him: an imposter, like every other rancid womanizer in this cesspool.
The paycheck is just an illusion, a shield from poor reality.
No matter, life’s glacier erases the tablet.
Where is this going? Take a deep breath. Hold it. Maybe he didn’t mean it that way. Exhale. Wait. Count to ten. Breathe. Calm.
I replied, “No, I don’t want fries with that, but give me a large Coke to go.”
@Steven: I don’t think I’ve ever read another CCC submission that took such an unexpected curve at the end. Super neat stuff.