Post by Lex on Mar 20, 2007 5:24:41 GMT -5
Hmmm... I'm not gunna say anything, 'cept that the story has been classed 'pretty good' before.
And what do you think of torture? Do you prefer it to brief, climatic...? Don’t pretend that you can’t hear me... fine... don’t answer. I like, personal preference, to hear every scream. Taste every tear. Feel the blade tickle the organs beneath the skin.
Blank does too. Don't you Blank?
*
Dreams; perilous, dirty. A writhing monster clawing, and clawing, scraping, killing.
Blank violently pulled himself into a sitting position, and mopped his sweating forehead with a palm. Slowly, he turned, letting his feet fall to the floor. Easing off the bed he yawned, and took a few steps forwards.
The floorboards creaked, moaning even under his weight. One gave way, splintering and collapsing into the network of pipes beneath. Blank steadied himself, pulled the foot out, and walked into his bathroom.
Damp grew in wide stains across the ceiling, reaching down the walls and peeling back the thin layer of wallpaper. A tap twisted, and a steady trickle of brown water dribbled out, hitting the basin with a noisy splash. Blank rubbed his head, working at the headache whilst the basin filled.
The mirror on the wall was dirty, he ran his hand threw the water then wiped at it, smudging the muck sufficiently for him to see his own face. Pale complexion, sharp features, bones protruding everywhere. His brown eyes stared back, and remained so, until gradually the crap settled and all was indistinguishable.
He leant forward and dipped his face in the water, remaining submerged so that he could wipe the grime from his face and hair. After a minute of furious rubbing, Blank felt clean enough. He wiped his face with dirt stained towel, which he cast into a corner, and went to search for clothes.
His thoughts collected as he searched the three small rooms that made up his flat for a shirt. Vague, indistinct, he remembered a dream that he had had. Blank Solar had experienced a horror, a being of massive will.
A warp entity.
He found a shirt trapped in the door of the fridge, ripped. He tore it out, and opened the freezer to search for food. Repulsed by the quantity of maggots on the plates he shut it with a slam. Blank's right hand fumbled with an activation rune on the dull matte grey work surface of his kitchen side, and he flicked on a light.
It hesitated for a moment, and then turned off.
“Feth-”
Violent coughing started and he bent double, trying to regain himself whilst blood splattered the floor. A second later it stopped, and he straightened, feeling his spine crack as it stretched.
There was a scream and Blank span to face the hole in the floor. The light flickered again and he watched a hand claw through the gap, tearing rents in the floorboards. Darkness returned, and he took a step forwards. The creak of the floor silenced the hand, and in the dark Blank thought he saw it withdraw.
He didn’t want to know.
Shivering he pulled on a dirty pair of military boots, cursing as he slipped on the second; where his foot encountered glass. He emptied the footwear, checking it thoroughly with the flat of his hand.
Empty.
He spotted an amasec bottle on the side and grabbed it, sliding it into the half torn pocket on the front of his jacket. With a hiss the front door opened and his only friend coughed impatiently.
Blank hurried over, apologising for not calling on Ratch first. He took one last look at the hole.
The rents had vanished. Ratch looked nervous.
“You hear that scream a minute ago?”
Blank Solar nodded, pulling his door shut; it door only opened, it didn’t close without violent guidance. It was a safety hazard considering the number of murders and thefts that went on. Blank keyed in the lock code into an old keypad.
Ratch noticed the shape in Blank’s pocket and Blank handed it to him, and then followed the slightly bulkier man down the corridor. Ratch checked his chronometer and swore.
“We’ll have to be quick, Mecha will skin us if we’re late.”
They sped up, Blank having to jog to keep up with Ratch’s fast pace. Ratch pushed open the door at the corridor’s end, and they were hit by a blast of warm, stale, recycled air. Ratch stubbed his toe on the metal and swore, Blank cuffed him;
“Feth to your toe, we really need to get going.”
They descended the metal flight that descended the side of the building, ignoring the worrying complaints of the iron as the rust began to take its toll on the structural capacity.
A sprint got them across the street, and then it was ten minutes free running down dingy back alleys. They arrived a minute early at Mecha’s factory, and Ratch hurried through the front door.
Blank slipped on an oil spill on the road and hit the floor hard. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to go, then sat up. He opened his eyes and leapt back as a decaying hand swiped a centimetre from his face.
He blinked and it was gone.
He hurried into Mecha’s workshop quickly, his head looking back over his shoulder every other step. The door pushed open and he stumbled in.
Mecha pulled on his favourite grimace.
“You’re late Blank.”
Blank nodded, muttering his apologies.
Mecha was a five and a half foot tall blob with attitude. People sometimes describe fat rolls as ‘spare tyres’, his tyres would have been from an aircraft. His repulsive form was worsened by the thin grey tank top he wore, where fat flapped at the arm pits and lines of sweat traced the folds of his chest and his obscene fat breasts poked through.
The smell didn’t do him any favours. Neither did the smile, rimmed with tombstone teeth that were the size and shape of small spoon ends. Blank didn’t try to argue his case; he had hoped that the huge oil streak down his chest would have been enough.
“Latelessness results in sackingness. That engage?”
It didn't matter if it made no sense, Mecha was usualy a pretty nice guy.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Mecha turned back to his workbench, and sat on the solid block of iron he had brought as a chair. Blank sighed and scurried off to his work station; third row, first bench. He sat down, returning the smile of Ratch’s.
Ratch sat on the next bench. It was fair to say this was the only perk the whole factory floor offered Blank. He settled into the dent he had carved into the seat after eight years of working in this one area amd bent over the pile of parts he had been given. He read through this week’s assignment. Mecha owned one of the many bionic factories in low town Gonza, where bionics was made on request for the various mines that covered this planet’s surface.
Let’s just say they made the low grade ones.
Blank almost flinched at the ridiculously unrealistic instructions that Mecha had given him, but he was experienced enough to work out what needed doing without this scrawl. They wanted a cyclopean bar eye, a band to go across the face and be connected with simple circuitry to the brain.
It was slightly easier than doing two eyes separately, and it was faster to make. Blank breathed a sigh of relief, remembering with a slight feel of nausea the troubles of his last assignment. Then he bent low over the items he had been given, and started sorting through them, working out how he would most effectively finish.
The factory was empty apart from Blank, Ratch and Mecha. The ten rows of a dozen benches were all littered with half finished projects. The back five rows were dedicated to the bulky parts; arms, legs, and torsos, with the occasional replacement organ. After that you had the sensory rows; balance, sight, sound and pressure. The final three rows were for packaging, and implanting.
Blank started work ten minutes after the implantation rows were abandoned. Despite missing the actual surgery, he still had to put up with the drying blood, the forgotten shards of skin…
“Blank, are you concentrating?”
“Sorry Mecha!”
Bank bent lower over the objects, now sorted, and began wiring the core components together. There was a little tinkle as the end of a wire bounced across his desk and he turned, and received a wink from Ratch, who had unplugged the bottle of weak amasec.
Ratch took a deep swig, then spat, retching the liquid onto the floor. He stood, knocking his bench over. Blank flinched as he remembered his friend’s sudden mood swings. Characteristic of teens their age he supposed.
“Luke warm piss! What the hell Blank?”
He threw the bottle to the floor, and made to lunge at Blank. He slipped on the spilt liquid and careered to one side, falling onto the row behind. He screamed as a dozen tiny wires stabbed into his face, puncturing his eye and cutting bleeding orifice’s I his cheek.
He tried to writhe, but Blank was on his feet and holding him still. For a second Ratch lashed out, catching Blank with a fist then relaxing, moaning in pain. Blank slowly pulled him to his feet, and rested him on his own bench.
Ratch had slammed into a circuit board, and the edges were making a mess of him whilst the unchecked wires were gouging in. Blank slowly eased it away, and looked around for Mecha, who turned out to be wobbling down with a medkit.
Blank helped wrap a bandage around his friends face, and took him to the door where a Hospitalier sister was waiting to take him away.
They were more efficient than most realised.
Mecha stood beside him, watching the sister guide Ratch away between the tall corrugated factories. Blank turned to go back in, and caught sight of a figure perched on one of the roofs. He continued the spin into a three-sixty, but upon second glance the figure had gone. Blank hurried back inside, letting Mecha close the door.
He walked slowly down to his workspace, and began picking up the objects knocked to the floor. Cringing he found an ear, but realised it was too far decayed to have been Ratch’s.
Which wasn't really a good thing.
Mecha trundled down and stood beside him, helping him with some of the mess.
“Cheers Mech.”
Mecha stood back, ironically no longer helping now that Blank had thanked him.
“Blank, keep that brain in your head and you’ll go far. Ratch won’t be back for a while with that, but his work isn’t particularly high on the ‘to do’ list. You’re ahead with your work, and you look a little pale... you can have today and tomorrow off.”
Blank smiled weakly, wiping the blood sodden sleeves on the cloth towel beside his bench. He turned to scoot off, but Mecha stopped him with a podgy hand.
“One thing, could you deliver this? Hand it to the lady who lives in the apartment opposite yours.”
“Okay sir.”
Mecha slapped him.
“None of that ‘sir’ crap, now go.”
Blank sprinted off, his mind a mess of emotion. He was happy at being free, but miserable at having Ratch messed up. The amasec was actually urine? That didn’t make sense; Blank had only bought it a few days before from a trader.
A trader who had given him an unexpected discount.
Blank’s fury got him to his own door, and he was half way through unlocking it before he remembered the brown parcel in his hand. It was light, wrapped untidily in brown paper and adhesive banding.
Blank turned on the spot and rapped on the neighbour’s door. The door hissed open, and he stepped in, looking around in the darkness for the lady he was supposed to deliver to.
He walked further in, his head leading the way around the wall and looking into the kitchen. If screaming was possible, he would have done so, but as the hand clamped around his mouth he was silenced.
The form rammed him against the wall, and Blank swiped at it with his hands. The package hit the floor and it lunged, punching a fist into Blank’s chest. The blow kept going, and Blank managed to gurgle as it entered his body.
Suddenly it was gone.
Blank looked down at his chest, and was shocked to find it unaffected, the shirt no more ragged than before. He was slightly more shocked by the woman standing in the doorway, a burn across her face and over one eye.
“What are you doing in here?”
Blank mumbled something about a package and the lady spotted it on the floor. He darted past her and finished keying in the code to his home. He threw himself in and hit the activation rune for the lights.
For the first time in a year, they came on perfectly, and gleamed off the words etched in blood on the wall. Blank read aloud.
“I was close that time.”
* * *
Shall I write more?
Shadows
And what do you think of torture? Do you prefer it to brief, climatic...? Don’t pretend that you can’t hear me... fine... don’t answer. I like, personal preference, to hear every scream. Taste every tear. Feel the blade tickle the organs beneath the skin.
Blank does too. Don't you Blank?
*
Dreams; perilous, dirty. A writhing monster clawing, and clawing, scraping, killing.
Blank violently pulled himself into a sitting position, and mopped his sweating forehead with a palm. Slowly, he turned, letting his feet fall to the floor. Easing off the bed he yawned, and took a few steps forwards.
The floorboards creaked, moaning even under his weight. One gave way, splintering and collapsing into the network of pipes beneath. Blank steadied himself, pulled the foot out, and walked into his bathroom.
Damp grew in wide stains across the ceiling, reaching down the walls and peeling back the thin layer of wallpaper. A tap twisted, and a steady trickle of brown water dribbled out, hitting the basin with a noisy splash. Blank rubbed his head, working at the headache whilst the basin filled.
The mirror on the wall was dirty, he ran his hand threw the water then wiped at it, smudging the muck sufficiently for him to see his own face. Pale complexion, sharp features, bones protruding everywhere. His brown eyes stared back, and remained so, until gradually the crap settled and all was indistinguishable.
He leant forward and dipped his face in the water, remaining submerged so that he could wipe the grime from his face and hair. After a minute of furious rubbing, Blank felt clean enough. He wiped his face with dirt stained towel, which he cast into a corner, and went to search for clothes.
His thoughts collected as he searched the three small rooms that made up his flat for a shirt. Vague, indistinct, he remembered a dream that he had had. Blank Solar had experienced a horror, a being of massive will.
A warp entity.
He found a shirt trapped in the door of the fridge, ripped. He tore it out, and opened the freezer to search for food. Repulsed by the quantity of maggots on the plates he shut it with a slam. Blank's right hand fumbled with an activation rune on the dull matte grey work surface of his kitchen side, and he flicked on a light.
It hesitated for a moment, and then turned off.
“Feth-”
Violent coughing started and he bent double, trying to regain himself whilst blood splattered the floor. A second later it stopped, and he straightened, feeling his spine crack as it stretched.
There was a scream and Blank span to face the hole in the floor. The light flickered again and he watched a hand claw through the gap, tearing rents in the floorboards. Darkness returned, and he took a step forwards. The creak of the floor silenced the hand, and in the dark Blank thought he saw it withdraw.
He didn’t want to know.
Shivering he pulled on a dirty pair of military boots, cursing as he slipped on the second; where his foot encountered glass. He emptied the footwear, checking it thoroughly with the flat of his hand.
Empty.
He spotted an amasec bottle on the side and grabbed it, sliding it into the half torn pocket on the front of his jacket. With a hiss the front door opened and his only friend coughed impatiently.
Blank hurried over, apologising for not calling on Ratch first. He took one last look at the hole.
The rents had vanished. Ratch looked nervous.
“You hear that scream a minute ago?”
Blank Solar nodded, pulling his door shut; it door only opened, it didn’t close without violent guidance. It was a safety hazard considering the number of murders and thefts that went on. Blank keyed in the lock code into an old keypad.
Ratch noticed the shape in Blank’s pocket and Blank handed it to him, and then followed the slightly bulkier man down the corridor. Ratch checked his chronometer and swore.
“We’ll have to be quick, Mecha will skin us if we’re late.”
They sped up, Blank having to jog to keep up with Ratch’s fast pace. Ratch pushed open the door at the corridor’s end, and they were hit by a blast of warm, stale, recycled air. Ratch stubbed his toe on the metal and swore, Blank cuffed him;
“Feth to your toe, we really need to get going.”
They descended the metal flight that descended the side of the building, ignoring the worrying complaints of the iron as the rust began to take its toll on the structural capacity.
A sprint got them across the street, and then it was ten minutes free running down dingy back alleys. They arrived a minute early at Mecha’s factory, and Ratch hurried through the front door.
Blank slipped on an oil spill on the road and hit the floor hard. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to go, then sat up. He opened his eyes and leapt back as a decaying hand swiped a centimetre from his face.
He blinked and it was gone.
He hurried into Mecha’s workshop quickly, his head looking back over his shoulder every other step. The door pushed open and he stumbled in.
Mecha pulled on his favourite grimace.
“You’re late Blank.”
Blank nodded, muttering his apologies.
Mecha was a five and a half foot tall blob with attitude. People sometimes describe fat rolls as ‘spare tyres’, his tyres would have been from an aircraft. His repulsive form was worsened by the thin grey tank top he wore, where fat flapped at the arm pits and lines of sweat traced the folds of his chest and his obscene fat breasts poked through.
The smell didn’t do him any favours. Neither did the smile, rimmed with tombstone teeth that were the size and shape of small spoon ends. Blank didn’t try to argue his case; he had hoped that the huge oil streak down his chest would have been enough.
“Latelessness results in sackingness. That engage?”
It didn't matter if it made no sense, Mecha was usualy a pretty nice guy.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Mecha turned back to his workbench, and sat on the solid block of iron he had brought as a chair. Blank sighed and scurried off to his work station; third row, first bench. He sat down, returning the smile of Ratch’s.
Ratch sat on the next bench. It was fair to say this was the only perk the whole factory floor offered Blank. He settled into the dent he had carved into the seat after eight years of working in this one area amd bent over the pile of parts he had been given. He read through this week’s assignment. Mecha owned one of the many bionic factories in low town Gonza, where bionics was made on request for the various mines that covered this planet’s surface.
Let’s just say they made the low grade ones.
Blank almost flinched at the ridiculously unrealistic instructions that Mecha had given him, but he was experienced enough to work out what needed doing without this scrawl. They wanted a cyclopean bar eye, a band to go across the face and be connected with simple circuitry to the brain.
It was slightly easier than doing two eyes separately, and it was faster to make. Blank breathed a sigh of relief, remembering with a slight feel of nausea the troubles of his last assignment. Then he bent low over the items he had been given, and started sorting through them, working out how he would most effectively finish.
The factory was empty apart from Blank, Ratch and Mecha. The ten rows of a dozen benches were all littered with half finished projects. The back five rows were dedicated to the bulky parts; arms, legs, and torsos, with the occasional replacement organ. After that you had the sensory rows; balance, sight, sound and pressure. The final three rows were for packaging, and implanting.
Blank started work ten minutes after the implantation rows were abandoned. Despite missing the actual surgery, he still had to put up with the drying blood, the forgotten shards of skin…
“Blank, are you concentrating?”
“Sorry Mecha!”
Bank bent lower over the objects, now sorted, and began wiring the core components together. There was a little tinkle as the end of a wire bounced across his desk and he turned, and received a wink from Ratch, who had unplugged the bottle of weak amasec.
Ratch took a deep swig, then spat, retching the liquid onto the floor. He stood, knocking his bench over. Blank flinched as he remembered his friend’s sudden mood swings. Characteristic of teens their age he supposed.
“Luke warm piss! What the hell Blank?”
He threw the bottle to the floor, and made to lunge at Blank. He slipped on the spilt liquid and careered to one side, falling onto the row behind. He screamed as a dozen tiny wires stabbed into his face, puncturing his eye and cutting bleeding orifice’s I his cheek.
He tried to writhe, but Blank was on his feet and holding him still. For a second Ratch lashed out, catching Blank with a fist then relaxing, moaning in pain. Blank slowly pulled him to his feet, and rested him on his own bench.
Ratch had slammed into a circuit board, and the edges were making a mess of him whilst the unchecked wires were gouging in. Blank slowly eased it away, and looked around for Mecha, who turned out to be wobbling down with a medkit.
Blank helped wrap a bandage around his friends face, and took him to the door where a Hospitalier sister was waiting to take him away.
They were more efficient than most realised.
Mecha stood beside him, watching the sister guide Ratch away between the tall corrugated factories. Blank turned to go back in, and caught sight of a figure perched on one of the roofs. He continued the spin into a three-sixty, but upon second glance the figure had gone. Blank hurried back inside, letting Mecha close the door.
He walked slowly down to his workspace, and began picking up the objects knocked to the floor. Cringing he found an ear, but realised it was too far decayed to have been Ratch’s.
Which wasn't really a good thing.
Mecha trundled down and stood beside him, helping him with some of the mess.
“Cheers Mech.”
Mecha stood back, ironically no longer helping now that Blank had thanked him.
“Blank, keep that brain in your head and you’ll go far. Ratch won’t be back for a while with that, but his work isn’t particularly high on the ‘to do’ list. You’re ahead with your work, and you look a little pale... you can have today and tomorrow off.”
Blank smiled weakly, wiping the blood sodden sleeves on the cloth towel beside his bench. He turned to scoot off, but Mecha stopped him with a podgy hand.
“One thing, could you deliver this? Hand it to the lady who lives in the apartment opposite yours.”
“Okay sir.”
Mecha slapped him.
“None of that ‘sir’ crap, now go.”
Blank sprinted off, his mind a mess of emotion. He was happy at being free, but miserable at having Ratch messed up. The amasec was actually urine? That didn’t make sense; Blank had only bought it a few days before from a trader.
A trader who had given him an unexpected discount.
Blank’s fury got him to his own door, and he was half way through unlocking it before he remembered the brown parcel in his hand. It was light, wrapped untidily in brown paper and adhesive banding.
Blank turned on the spot and rapped on the neighbour’s door. The door hissed open, and he stepped in, looking around in the darkness for the lady he was supposed to deliver to.
He walked further in, his head leading the way around the wall and looking into the kitchen. If screaming was possible, he would have done so, but as the hand clamped around his mouth he was silenced.
The form rammed him against the wall, and Blank swiped at it with his hands. The package hit the floor and it lunged, punching a fist into Blank’s chest. The blow kept going, and Blank managed to gurgle as it entered his body.
Suddenly it was gone.
Blank looked down at his chest, and was shocked to find it unaffected, the shirt no more ragged than before. He was slightly more shocked by the woman standing in the doorway, a burn across her face and over one eye.
“What are you doing in here?”
Blank mumbled something about a package and the lady spotted it on the floor. He darted past her and finished keying in the code to his home. He threw himself in and hit the activation rune for the lights.
For the first time in a year, they came on perfectly, and gleamed off the words etched in blood on the wall. Blank read aloud.
“I was close that time.”
* * *
Shall I write more?
