Sink Your Teeth Right Through My Bones, Baby

(The icon's picture has nothing to do with the story. I'm using it because my name for it is 'this will end badly', which is surprisingly appropriate.)

The theme this week was "Happiness in a Bottle". I went with the very mordant comedy sketch, which you can see here. I admire how Bill Cosby can be so gentle about something while still portraying it in all its pathos and horror.

This story is a sequel to Only the Skin. It's a little over 2000 words. I hope you enjoy it. :)

(Another brigits_flame link, which I mostly put in for easy access.)

( The wolves were howling again. )

The theme for this round was, "Once More, With Feeling".

I was looking over my older stuff this afternoon, because sometimes I procrastinate that way since it makes me feel vaguely productive, and I came across a story I'd originally written in 1997. I realized while I was reading it that it fit the theme really well--or at least the repetition aspect of 'once more with feeling', which was how I had been planning on interpreting the theme anyway.

I ended up taking out an entire dream/fantasy sequence thing that I was sure worked brilliantly when I was (Christ, how old was I in 1997? twenty-five, yeah. Though come to think of it I'm sure I actually wrote that when I was twenty, because I was at McMaster and not the University of Toronto).

So, I thought the dream sequence thing worked brilliantly when I was twenty, but realized when I was reading it again that it actually comes out of nowhere for an unfortunate WTF? aspect. So I aced it, which might not make the story any more clear or less opaquely subtle (hey, I was young, at university and living in Canada at that point; I doubt my stuff could have been more Canadian unless I was writing autobiographical pieces about a world war).

Anyway, this I suppose is as good a place as any to admit that I've been more-or-less obsessed with (fictional! metaphorical!) drowning since I was twenty, at least. This might actually be the first example of that. As far as I'm concerned the title relates directly to the story, but then again I'm an opaquely subtle Canadian. It might just be confusing as hell.

And here is the obligatory link to brigits_flame.

( It's been dark for hours, she has better things to do. )

So. Um.

Okay, I am horribly embarrassed by this. I mean, it is crack. Crack, I tell you. Crack-in-progress, even. The kind of thing that will make certain people on my FList who know me and my proclivities roll their eyes and smirk knowingly. (Oh, don't even pretend you're not doing it.)

And yet I am still posting it! Masochism, you ask? Well, um, maybe. But really it's because the prompt this week was "Flat", which made me think of this post by villainny, who is just awesome.

Doesn't it look like the poor snowperson was shoved out of an airplane? It does, doesn't it? Go look again.

And that got me thinking of, um, other people things that might fall out of the sky. Yeah. And then this idea kind of grabbed me by the throat and shook me until my teeth rattled. I think they're still rattling. Or that could just be my brain.

Anyway, for those of you who have actually read this far, this is set in my Gills 'verse (scroll down for the fiction entries). Some of the aspects of this might not jibe with the two earlier pieces, but that's because I'm still working out the details.

And now I'll shut up.

Edit: I forgot the link to brigits_flame. Here it is.

( Whoever designed you did a fantastic job )

The theme this week was 'Chaos'. The title comes from a song of the same name by The Tragically Hip, one of the greatest Canadian bands to ever grace my homeland. It also has a lyric I've wanted to use as an epigraph for about four years, but have never ever managed it. This isn't that lyric, because the Universe delights in mocking me. It's a different one.

I realized while I was writing this that I've got characters crying two weeks in a row. I feel another unintended theme coming on. Go, me.

When it starts
To fall apart
It really falls apart
Like boots or hearts
When they start
They really fall apart

(Here is an obligatory link to brigits_flame.)

( Joshua frowned. 'It's not like I fight every time I go out.' )

Since the prompt for this one was, 'It's quiet now', I wasn't thinking about music particularly, until out of the blue I remembered Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot. You can download it if you like, and I hope you will, because it's beautiful and heartbreaking and can still make me cry sometimes, even after nearly thirty years.

Anyway, here's something short and Hallowe'eny. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

( He didn't know what had woken him now, since the apartment was dark and quiet )

The title made me laaaaaugh.... Ah, I am such a goof.

Anyway, the prompt up at brigits_flame this week was "Fuel". What sprung to mind first was Steam by Peter Gabriel (gotta love those 80s graphics).

Give me steam
And how you feel can make it real
Real as anything you've seen

Anyway, I didn't use that.

I wanted to write something with robots--I love robots, hapless, eager-to-please, misunderstood AIs--but after walking on glass for the first lousy 317 words, I realized it just wasn't happening. (One of these days I will actually mange to write a vignette with a robot in it, I swear.) But, to me fuel has always been food, among other things, so I ended up doing something with that.

This is a continuation of my Pape and Danforth storyline. I'm not quite as proud of it as I was of the original, but I do think it's funny.

And here it is. Thank you all, as usual, for reading. :)

( Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm the fucking wind beneath your wings. )

I can't believe I made it this far. Thank you again, everyone. The fact that you like my stuff enough to vote for it has once again made me very, very happy. :D

This was written for the prompt, "Amber". It's a sequel to "Beautiful", and yet another time I surprised myself with what I wrote. I'd been planning to write something about robots.

Inspiration, it seems, is an odd and fickle thing.

I'm also pleased to announce that I'm now 4/4 on guys bleeding. This is the kind of thing that amuses me.

I would like to thank everyone who chooses to read this very much. And once again, I hope you enjoy it.

mermaidbia: this one's for you. And also with much love to my sister, for her rough- and final-draft edits. This would have sucked without her.

(  Yeah, I think it's worse.  )

I made it past round one! I am gleeful! Actually, I am thrilled and amazed and all kinds of wonderful things. I want to thank again everyone who liked my vignette enough to vote for me. I hope people enjoy this one as well.

Nobody dies this time. I promise. But there is a lot of blood.

This round's prompt was "Eternal". And such is my head that the first thing I thought was, 'well, what is eternal?', which instantly made me think of this song and laugh probably more than the pun truly warranted.

It also got me thinking about The Cask of Amontillado ("FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR!"), because of the last line: "For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them", though it turns out I'd misremembered it for nearly thirty years as, "They haven't been disturbed for centuries!", alas. And then I moved on to such things that could be considered eternal, like angels. Hence the really cool icon.

After gakking the really cool icoon, I started thinking about other possible meanings of 'Eternal', and came up with things that don't change. And then I began wondering what the opposite of that would be, and decided that it had to be finite, or mutable. And then I wrote this:

( Only the Skin )