Zrazor - This is for you

[Trinity Heckroth]

1. Write a pure dialog story. Use nothing but dialogs to advance the story.

2. Use this plot: roomates have not paid the phone bill.

3. Write a story with an evangelist as the main character and a memo as the key object set in a ghost town.

4. Write from the point of view of a knife inside a thief's pocket.

No particular order, no real due date. But do the topics justice. <3!

***EDIT***

Just to be clear, these are four different topics not just one with four parts.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Trinity Heckroth

[RazorFox]

Posting this because Trinity asked me too even though it's not on the topic list. Have fun.

I am a valet. I wake up in the morning, groggy and hung over. I stumble dizzily into the bathroom and stare at myself, unkempt, unshaven, and squinty-eyed in the dimly-lit mirror. And as I stare at myself, I see my lips moving and hear myself cursing God for his cruelty to me and my pathetic excuse for a life. I would love to end that life, but I have my job, and my job is all I have, you see. I hastily and clumsily dress myself, making extra sure, apparently, to button my shirt up wrong. On my way out the door,I take a shot of Southern Comfort with some lime juice dribbled into it before getting into my car and driving to the upscale restaurant of which I am an employee. My car depresses me. It's a 1993 Ford Tempo, you see. There's a lot of play in the wheel and the accelerator is sticky. Yet every day, I am paid $7.50 an hour to drive and park imported sports cars, fancy SUVs, stuff like that. Cars I will never be able to afford, status symbols that truly distinguish one class of people from another. I will never be able to afford any such thing. After arriving at work, I clock in, take a moment to sneak around the back by the dumpster and take a hit from my chillum hitter, one that's colored like like a cigarette on the outside. This calms me down, as it does on any given day. It's the only thing that does.

I walk over to my post, my eyes bleary and bloodshot as the lunch crowd begins to roll in slowly. Today's first order of business, a spotless BMW Z-3 Roadster, the owner some midlife crisis-having bald motherfucker with a really obnoxious-looking widow's peak and greying sideburns. He's one of these assholes that needs to show off so people won't feel sorry for him for being fucking 48 and dead inside, and he tosses me his keys instead of handing them to me like a normal goddamn human being. I'm in no mood for this shit so I just lazily fumble for them as they clatter onto the sidewalk. He tilts his head a bit and gives me the kind of eye that says "I know you're fucked up, and I swear to God if you do anything to my erectile dysfunction-compensator, I'm gonna come out here and yell a lot like I'm going to beat your ass but I don't because I know I'm fucking old and you could kick my ass and I know full well that if you do, I could ruin you financially because I have so much money and you're a poor motherfucker but I am literally that big of a pussy." Then he turns around and walks inside.

So I huff down in the front seat of this precision German-engineered piece of artificial validation. I look around at the interior, all of it perfectly familiar to me, as I've parked a lot of these in the six years I've worked here. The Z-3 is pretty much your standard I-have-a-condo-in-South-Florida-near-the-Gulf-and-a-boat-down-there-that-I-take-out-twice-a-yearmobile. I slide the key into the ignition and push VERY GENTLY on the accelerator, since these things tend to jolt a bit. I take the car out, put it in a spot, get out, go back to the post and put the keys into the toolbox we keep keys in. Repeat process for about four hours, take a break to smoke a cigarette and a couple pinch hits and eat extra food from the kitchen for lunch. This is pretty the highlight of my day. This is a five-star restaurant we're talking about so the food is pretty amazing. Problem is you get used to it quick and it starts becoming bland, which sort of ruins anything else you eat. With the munchies though, everything is the best thing you ever ate.

So I go back out to the post, full and satisfied, but still about as thrilled as a nun in a gay bar. Lunch crowd has cleared out by now and I end up standing on the sidewalk for an hour. Have you ever stood in one spot for a solid hour? Go try it sometime. It's a fucking trip. I can't even describe it right now so I'm gonna just skip ahead, even though there's nothing worth reading about there, just more driving and shit until my shift ends and I go home. I don't know if you were expecting some kind of conflict or plot to this. I could tell you about the time I got carjacked in the parking lot of all goddamn places. I could tell you about the time I dented Alanis Morissette's Audi TT. I could tell you about the time I had to park a car with a baby in the back on a hot day and called the police and they took it away from the parents. But I won't. Those were extraordinary days, few, far and between, and this is the story of an average, normal, uneventful day in my life as a valet. Sorry.

Shift is over. I get into the shittiest car I've driven all day, my busted-ass Ford Tempo, and I drive back to my modest little studio apartment with its paper thin walls and recurring ant problem. I flop down on my futon and flip on the TV and smoke a joint while I watch Adult Swim. It's about the most decently entertaining part of my day. I used to have a 360 but I had to sell that to make rent about eight months ago so now I just watch TV. So I sit there and giggle at Master Shake and for a moment, life seems almost good. Eventually, my stoned ass realizes that it's 2:30 in the morning and I should go to bed. As per usual, I realize that the same boring, wretched unfulfilling shit awaits me tomorrow. I unfold the futon, which doubles as my bed, and lie down on it. Slowly I drift off. I dream very little, playing out a brief scenario where I'm flying past a skyscraper my grandmother is jumping off of, a somewhat longer scenario that seems to be just a montage of dogs I've met in my life, and another brief scenario where I'm flying past a skyscraper and the dogs are jumping off of it one-by-one. Morning comes too quickly and I awaken groggy again even though I'm getting enough sleep, barely able to remember what I'd just been dreaming about, having only the faintest hunch that it was something confusing. But I have to go to work now, fuck everything.

I am a valet.

[Trinity Heckroth]

Fucking hart. <3.

[RazorFox]

Fucking hart. <3.

SWEET DELICIOUS PATHOS ~<3 \o/

[Agares Tretiak]

<Will insert # 3 here some time soon>

[Scientific Waffle]

Love it.

[RazorFox]

Agares, I'll probably do and post a #3 of my own eventually, but you go ahead since that sort of thing really isn't my forte. For now, combining #1 and #2:

"Dude...Dude...HEY. JEFF."

"Huh?"

"Jeff. Dude, get the fuck off the fucking Sega and pick up the phone and listen to it."

"What?"

"Jeff, pick up the fucking phone."

"...Okay...uh...what?"

"Dude, there's no dial tone. It's fucked up or something."

"Well like...shit did we pay the bill?"

"The bill...fuck that was due? Why didn't I see it?

"Ummm...Oh shit dude, like, Rick said he was gonna get it."

"God, RICK! Fuck, oh my GOD this is so bad, I'm supposed to call Kim at work and tell her I'm--Jeff, put the fucking bowl down, this is serious."

"Dude, there's like, a payphone down the street, just put on some pants and go do it from there."

"Duuuude, I don't think you get it, we don't have a phone. I don't think you quite like, grasp the gravity of this shit duuuuuuude."

"Man, you ain't gotta be all like, sarcastic and shit, I get it."

"Yeah well where the fuck is Rick and how am I supposed to get ahold of him when we don't have a fucking phone?"

"Man, I don't know, dude. I think he's like, at work...Where you goin?"

"Gonna go find Rick and beat his ass."

"Okay dude."

To be continued...

[Agares Tretiak]

"Brother" Johnathan Zion, of the Zion Revival Church of the Lord's New Good Word Assembly, looked down at his feet and retrieved the expended children's Valentine's card and read it carefully, as snow and fog filled the air around him in the courtyard of the abandoned school.

Twixt

YeLloE SaND

ANd LOsT CrOSSes

StARt the JOURNEY

WHeRE YOU bEgAN

The once famous televangelist phenomena scratched his stubbly chin.

The last thing he recalled was hitching a ride with a truck driver, late at night, through Pennsylvania. He glanced at the sky, which was a slate of blank clouds, with no definable features. The fog got thicker as the snow lightened up. Suddenly, the temperature dropped considerably, and sirens, air raid sirens, began to wail in a maddened cacophony of noise. The sky dimmed considerably, and coming through the chilling fog came icy rain.

The sirens stopped, and it was pitch black all around Johnathan.

He felt a pressure on his shoulder, with gradual heat radiating from that point. He looked down and turned, startled by the touch. A faint, reddish glow filled his vision, and his eyes sought the source of the glow through the incredibly thick fog. A vague outline of a human shape loomed, glowing faintly in the distance, just beyond the range of recognition. It approached him, arms long and almost dragging on the ground, as a strangled, wheezing voice hissed with a gloating tone "Are you not a praying man, Brother Zion?"

The sirens began again as the man ran blindly.

[Trinity Heckroth]

How vey... silent hill-esque.

[Agares Tretiak]

DID SOMEONE SAY RAPE?

[Kryo Recreant]

My attempt at #4... be kind. ;~;

So I'm sat here cold and alone; shivering with anticipation in the cloying, atramentous darkness. There's a flicker of warmth nearby but it's nowhere near enough to make a difference to what I am right now, that is, a dull sliver of cold against what most would put to you as the 'warmth of the Season'. Sums up my life perfectly, that does. Christmas Eve and while most will be getting ready to get pissed out of their faces and bollocks up the carving of a turkey, prompting billowing gales of laughter from the obligatory flight of cherubim children... fat faced little wanksplats, the lot of 'em, never a more undeserving, ungrateful bunch of little shits have I had the misfortune to come across... but that's not the point I was trying to make, strayed off a bit there. While most will be preparing to do that whole carving the roast malarkey that's so popular on December the twenty-fifth of every year, I'm out here with Jack Frost nipping me all over, out to spoil it for some clumsy bugger that's left a window open just a smidgen, or one of those couples with 2.4 children, a people carrier and a 4x4 out front, BMW or Merc parked next to it; big, new build house, all that kind of shit. You know the ones, former DINKYs that just couldn't hold off on popping their crotchfruit into the world; the 'good life'. Not a frigging shred like mine. If what I've got can even be called a life, anyway. I just exist more than anything, rarely engage with anything else. Some would complain about depression or that they feel hollow, but this gnarled pathway Our Lady Fate has so graciously thrown down for me keeps me... sharp.

Heh, sorry, couldn't resist that little burst of wit. Oh me, oh my, what a pity my hidden talents are squandered so recklessly. No time to think of that now, though, we're on the move. I'm sure there are streetlights around here somewhere, but I'm still shrouded in this all-pervading black. Nothing to see here, in any sense. Best I stay hidden.

Now there's one thing I hate about double glazed uPVC windows. It's not the double-bolted locking systems they employ, nor is it that tacky, plasticky look they give to, say, even the most lovingly restored Georgian red-brick mansion. No, it's that resounding, percussive 'crack' they make when they're successfully jemmied open. In the dead of night that fucker rings out like a twenty-one gun salute, and I'm quite naturally at odds with your firearms and whatnot. A bit excessive, if you ask me, not a man's weapon by any stretch. The pursuit of marksmanship is just a lifetime's study in cowardice; your average mélee enthusiast has just the right amount of skill and usually charm enough to back it up, especially those with an affinity for the blade. There's many a cocky sod gets ahead of himself with us and by Heck, does he regret it afterwards. If he lives through it, of course, but I'm rambling again and missing out on what's happening. I'll press on.

So we're through the window, now, but the scenery hasn't changed. Still the impenetrable veil but the air here has a different quality. I can hear it. You have to, when you spend so much time in the dark as I, you have to listen out for these subtle changes; taste the air, feel it, hear every bloody movement or lack thereof. Can't risk getting caught TOO soon, it dampens the pleasure of a successful infiltration. I'm aware of my movements, can feel myself being inexorably drawn forward at a snail's pace, not risking that one creaky floorboard to wake dear old mummy and daddy, or the pack of ravenous screaming brats who'll be deprived of their overpriced, electronic shite by the morrow.

I feel a slight drop, ungraceful. Thud, thud.

Buggery.

That had better be passed off as jolly old Saint Nick making his rounds. No, there it goes; the telltale squeak of bedsprings, the quasi-asthmatic wheeze of the secret smoker or terminally unfit. The drawn out, thumping scrape of something heavy and solid being grasped in a sweaty, shaking palm, by the one so enraged that somebody else dare encroach upon the territory leased from the bank that he so laughably calls 'home'. And so he descends the stairs, our valiant defender, trying to mask his approach with a soft pair of slippers; clapped out old things, getting replaced tomorrow, no doubt, wrapped in bits of brightly coloured dead tree and emblazoned with sickeningly sweet messages of childhood dependency and wide-eyed adoration. All that pocket money saved up for nothing.

Skrrrrrp. The dragging of a textile heel across the carpet; the lament of the loosened slipper, and my cue to make a grand entrance to this sorry saga and close the curtain for good on this poor bastard. With a keenness that came through my nature, I was freed from my tenebrous roost with a minimum of effort, suddenly bathed in light. A malicious silvery glint was reflected from my countenance and cast back upon the tree, and the presents laid beneath; those were the target of my partner, not me, the thought abandoned, cast aside like so many brussels sprouts upon the clattering festive plates that would soon be stacked up around the world, as I was once again plunged into more stygian surroundings.

Oh, but the warmth was exquisite.

I left with the rushing of vital air, still bathed in the warmth of cruor as it dripped lewdly from my tip. Howling a melancholy of bloodlust during my moment in the faded, though garish light, the last thing reflected in the sanguinary visage I now bore was Daddykin's expression of stark realisation that not only Christmas, but his existence from herein, was cancelled. A job well done, I would think, were it not for the shaking hands returning me to my crepuscule, as though afraid of me because of what they had made me do.

The thief hurried on, gathering up boxes and making his fleetfooted escape, before he could be caught for his crime.

I, the knife, had given the family the most important gift they could ever have hoped for; a lesson in the fragile nature of existence.

Merry Christmas.

Edited March 13, 2010 by Kryo Recreant

[Trinity Heckroth]

Awesome kryo. Awesome.

[Kryo Recreant]

Awesome kryo. Awesome.

<3 but I just had to fix a typo, haha. Glad you enjoyed; read it with the most 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels' style cockney accent you can muster up in your head.

[RazorFox]

<3 but I just had to fix a typo, haha. Glad you enjoyed; read it with the most 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels' style cockney accent you can muster up in your head.

I kind of imagined it being read by Johnny Rotten circa his days with the Pistols.

[Trinity Heckroth]

So a chapter in my book I'm reading was written entirely like number 1. Was awesome.

[Vegna Fouroux]

#2

Weimar stumbled blindly into the apartment. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck." He muttered, pacing the room, his voice getting progressively higher with each expletive. There was simply no way out, he couldn't pay it. Weimar glanced around the room, his recent painting of the walls to black,red and yellow hadn't managed to get the graffiti of the previous owner off the walls "KaISUR WAZ EREE" still proudly emblazoned the ceiling. From the adjoining room Bavaria came out groaning, beer bottle in hand and lederhosen all in a knot, ignoring Weimar he opened the fridge door, grasping for the beverages that wasn't there. After several minutes of wishing the beer into existence unsucessfully, Bavaria turned his bloodshot eyes on Weimar; a slim, affable chap Weimar stuck out like a sore thumb in the apartment. The vacancy that led to his arrival had originally been after Kaiser departed the room he shared with Berlin. Berlin was now in jail, thus rendering the entire room to Weimar. Naturally this caused resentment among the other two tenants, who shared a room but a binding tight lease kept Weimar in his own room. He had of course offered the room to Bavaria, but Prussia, the other remaining occupant, stict on upholding the law insisted Weimar take the room.

None of them actually owned the apartment, which they affectionately referred to as DAS REICH they rented it from 2 boorish individuals by the name of France and Britain. Over the years this unsuitable arrangement had led to all manner of fights and disputes and in the most recent conflict the water, heat and electricity had been cut off and all those bills had been channelled into the phone bill. The price per minute had increased a billion times their previous level. Britain and France insisted they pay this within exceedingly harsh deadlines. Finally Weimar's cash reserves which he had brought with him to start a new life, had dried up. It was this present predicament the occupants found themselves in this morning.

Weimar turned to Bavaria, smiling weakly "How's Prussia?" Drunkenly Bavaria sworded the air with his arm before speaking, using grand gestures "IST STIL A LITTLE PIST MEIN FRAULEIN OVAR HIS MANHOOD BEING GIVE TO POLAND." Poland, a baliff for Britain and France had come by and exacted what Prussia couldn't pay from his much prized lederhosen and Men's Health magazines. Prussia had been brooding ever since.

Examining his own worry, Bavaria's self-destruction and Prussia's downward spiral; Weimar then decided enough was enough. "I'm going to see "them" upstairs." "Bavaria sobered up a little, his eyes suddenly lucid. "Mein...Gott" he stammered. "Heidi Klum." Weimar affirmed.

Striding up the stairs in the dingy Section Eur of "World Apartments" Weimar when he came to the landlord office knocked on France's door first. From inside he could smell cheese and quaint accordion music. "Entrez Mon Amis." said a voice from within. Sporting his Beret, France looked every inch the conqueror. "Bonjour Weimar, Ca me ferait tres plaisir de te voir!" He said with all the graces of of the casually arrogant.

Weimar wasted no time. "Look froggie, I can't the phone bill, turn the f**king heat back on and gimme back my bro!!" Since Weimar couldn't afford the down payment when he moved in, France had a taken his little brother, Rhineland as collateral, he was said to have become an excellent juggler in France's Circus Troupe."

France fixed his eyes on Weimar, raising his eyebrows gradually and tensing his forehead over a period of 5 dramatic minutes. Weimar knew what was coming next

"Vell you see mes petits cheris I have occupied your bathruum." France strode around the apartment "Now unless you want to sheeet in your beds you must pay la rent.

Prussia could be heard from inside the other room "He's taken the Saarland too? NOOO"

The situation continued for several months like this, at one stage they received money from an Uncle Weimar had called Sam but that had dried up in a few months, leaving them crippled again and with no place to defecate. One day something very strange happened however. The doorbell rang and Weimar, now an alcoholic, rose of his mattress on the floor to answer it. A small man with the most intelligent eyes and ridiculous moustache Weimar had ever seen stood in front of him. Moving past Weimar, the man briskly walked into the apartment cursing its condition, and yelling threats, he glared at Weimar "Est ist going to be some changes."

I should make this a book "German History for Minors 1918-1932"

[Tiridates Mikadze]

I should make this a book "German History for Minors 1918-1932"

If you do not, I shall strike you until you do.