Post by Bee on Apr 20, 2009 18:29:57 GMT -5
So Bee got the crazy idea to fill out a prompt table with my SoD characters. She's even doing them in order. So here is the first batch of Bee drabbles. Warnings for mood whiplash caused by heavy angst and extreme crack. <3
001. Disease
Recreational drinking had turned into a lifestyle when the spawn were born, no so much from choice as necessity. She couldn’t bear listening to them. Their cries—for food, for hugs, to clean up messes, just to babble baby gibberish at her—had filled her with suffocating, powerless panic. She looked at them and felt sick. Minh loved the kids (only had two, the fucking lucky bitch), but Minh was useless.
Vishne never stopped crying.
Venka never stopped screaming.
Helena always wanted to be held.
Eir always had to be stopped from injuring the others.
Iphis burbled happily and snuggled pink-frocked dollies and Mnem thought he might be retarded.
Ira, too, with his rolling eyes and his peculiar marking. Something off about him. Two brain-damaged babies.
Perseus just stared, with his horrible, horrible eyes and his slimy wings, and Mnem always had to look away because if she didn’t she might smother him to death.
So she uncorked the wine and had a glass or five. She felt simultaneously meaner and more amicable. The children didn’t seem like a multi-headed monster, shattering freedom and peace and joy with its piercing wails. They were just squalling infants, little lives over which she had immeasurable power. She shoved bottles in their mouths. She bathed them, fed them, and tolerated them to the best of her ability.
Eventually, Shinrai took three of them away. It wasn’t enough. He should have taken them all. She could have killed him for his thoughtlessness. (A woman would have known.)
When he goes, she breaks out the vodka. It’s a disease, but it’s a pleasant one, all things considered.
002. Bathroom
For a little while he gets nervous in bathrooms, like something (a Helena or a Hadyn) is hiding in the tub, or under the counter, or under the towels cabinets. Waiting to spring. So he gets in and out quickly, tugging Clara along like a painted and pig-tailed doll (“You’re fourteen, Iphis, and that doll is fucking creepy, get rid of it already!”) is a talisman against harm.
He’d told them to stop—and they had, eventually, but not nearly soon enough. He’d have given Hadyn whatever he wanted (and hadn’t he?) but getting his sister involved made him feel like there were bugs crawling under his skin.
He’d apparently not communicated his feelings well enough. He should have been more forceful or something, not cried about it like a (little poofy nancy boygirl) baby. Hadyn was a randy teenage boy, after all. They forgot themselves. Iphis is sure that in a short time he’ll have the patience for long baths. Maybe in a couple years he won’t think about it at all. He can already feel his brain taking that rotten little cake of a memory, cramming it with sugary filling, and putting on the first coat of happy pink icing.
He still sighs in relief when his paws stop touching cold white tile and meet worn carpet.
003. Delirious
Madness is a rainbow through a kaleidoscope, a twisting writhing mass of colors, vibrant and alive; a flash of bright crimson fur as it collides with rippled cerulean; the burnt amber of a glass bottle as it flies through the air; pink tongues exposed to yell at an unfaithful lover. The street is a canvas she’s throwing paint on, haphazardly, like a toddler finger-painting. It’s an ugly scene but the colors are beautiful.
“Yer a walkin’ disaster area, kid,” Iskra says, a touch of something Thalia’s familiar with but can’t easily identify sparking in her normally calm and impassive voice. Thalia just stares at the unfolding chaos and wonders what it is about her that makes the universe go wonky around her. Reality seems to touch her and then skitter off like it’s just realized it has to wash its hair or something and won’t be able to hang out with her after all.
Maybe she is a walking disaster area.
She takes a moment to be very, very thankful that she has people who don’t mind living in a madhouse.
004. Autumn
Autumn in Capital City is nothing like the Gardens, and for a few moments Mnem is seized by something that might be wistful melancholy, even though she looks back on most of her childhood memories (when she looks on them at all) with a sneer.
Nostalgia has a smell, soft honeysuckle and wet decomposition, like flowers over a fresh grave, and she thinks it’s foul.
Mnem slams the window shut against the chill capitol air and closes the door on memory. Autumn is the season of death for a reason.
005. River
Helena dreams about drowning with almost alarming frequency. She blames it on Aiolos throwing her into that river as a child. But the dreams aren’t unpleasant. She’s weightless but cocooned in a soothing, cool embrace, and she doesn’t struggle for the surface when the oxygen is squeezed out of her.
She always wakes up right before she dies, and feels refreshed, with energy like a runner’s high. For the morning, at least, she likes herself, and believes that others could like her too.
She puts the tea on with a happy hum. It’s going to be a good day.
006. Sunset
There was a time when he might have composed several volumes of verse on the sunset sky, and they all would have been terrible. Now, though, Vishne doesn’t try to contrive a way to pair carmine and dream in a rhyme scheme, or make some metaphor out of the setting sun and the death of his soul, or do anything much at all, really.
He just rolls dough, watches the buildings devour the sun, and thinks about renaming the raspberry and orange tart Sunset Surprise before berating himself.
007. Relief
When Jin steps back for a moment, mentally, he’s a little weirded out by how terribly promiscuous he’s become since his arrival at the capitol. Back in the Glacier his opportunities for sex had been extremely slim, and other than his sister once trying to drunkenly force herself on him (she’d been easy to shove away and, when she became sober, they both agreed that it had been a hallucination caused by eating poisoned snow), his number of sexual experiences totaled exactly one.
Now he was fucking everyone. It wasn’t like he started talking to people intending to get them into bed. It just sort of happened. Girl at the grocery outlet who said he had the silkiest hair she’d ever seen? Fucked her. Anonymous horny asshole who bought him a drink? Fucked him. Married couple looking to add a little excitement to their lives? Fucked them both. Everyone he met. Fucked ‘em.
It had to be genetics, of course. Look at his mother. Woman had a dozen offspring, boinked anything that moved and a few things that didn’t (Light bless her generous soul), and talked about sex as casually as most people discussed how their day had been.
He heaved a small sigh of relief that at least he wasn’t that slutty.
Yet.
008. Silence
No need for words, ever. Difficult to get them out. No one trusted enough to hear. But silence isn’t a lack. It’s animate. Ravenous. It pulls in everything around it and devours it.
One day Beraht will eat the Bog alive, that thriving, throbbing, treacherous organism. It will dissolve in his mouth. Roll on his tongue. Disappear, swallowed.
There is something out there worse than Raiders. A hungry, aching abyss.
Quiet.
009. Night
The sight of it makes Phaedra want to vomit. Oh, it’s all wrong! She wonders how so many people could be so perfectly wretched. A great evil is being perpetrated city-wide, the kind of heinous crime that would never happen in Esterberry, and she feels duty-bound to correct it.
Because this kind of appalling foolishness simply Will Not Do, and when things Will Not Do, she Undoes them. When night falls, she grabs her necessary tools and shoves them into a tiny backpack. She crawls out of the window of her small apartment and onto the roof, and then leaps majestically from building to building as only a sugar glider can, a graceful, determined silhouette against the pale moon.
She soon arrives at the sight of the first atrocity. She tears into her backpack for her weapon. White paint, and a tiny brush held in her tiny paws.
GREAT SALES!!! FRESH BANANA’S, APPLE’S AND ORANGE’S!!!
She mercilessly annihilates the apostrophes. Then she pauses. Do the extra exclamation marks deserve to die? Yes, she decides. Coupled with the grating uniform capitalization, they make the entire sign entirely uncouth. She reduces six to two.
Then, she scribbles a note. Her handwriting is perfect (teachers had always awed over her penmanship).
Dear sir or madam, I hardly think it conducive to successful business to present such awful signs to potential customers. I have taken the liberty of removing your apostrophes; you do not need them to pluralize, and I doubt the produce possesses anything. If it does, you have failed to note it. Additionally, I must chide you on your superfluous exclamation marks. One shall suffice. None is preferable. Your loyal partner in making the world a better place, P.
Triumph courses through her veins. She hopes the shopkeeper will learn his lesson. She turns with a flourish and disappears into the night.
This sort of evil never sleeps, and she must vanquish it.
010. Cry
Venka pokes him. Vishne flinches away.
Venka shoves him. Vishne shrieks a little and toddles sideways.
Venka shoves harder. Vishne stumbles into a puddle of mud and smacks his head against a rock.
Venka giggles. Vishne bursts into tears.
“Come on, you baby,” she says, hauling him to his feet. “You know I love you or something.”
He sniffles and nods. He loves her too.
___
Thus concludeth your first round of torture. >3
001. Disease
Recreational drinking had turned into a lifestyle when the spawn were born, no so much from choice as necessity. She couldn’t bear listening to them. Their cries—for food, for hugs, to clean up messes, just to babble baby gibberish at her—had filled her with suffocating, powerless panic. She looked at them and felt sick. Minh loved the kids (only had two, the fucking lucky bitch), but Minh was useless.
Vishne never stopped crying.
Venka never stopped screaming.
Helena always wanted to be held.
Eir always had to be stopped from injuring the others.
Iphis burbled happily and snuggled pink-frocked dollies and Mnem thought he might be retarded.
Ira, too, with his rolling eyes and his peculiar marking. Something off about him. Two brain-damaged babies.
Perseus just stared, with his horrible, horrible eyes and his slimy wings, and Mnem always had to look away because if she didn’t she might smother him to death.
So she uncorked the wine and had a glass or five. She felt simultaneously meaner and more amicable. The children didn’t seem like a multi-headed monster, shattering freedom and peace and joy with its piercing wails. They were just squalling infants, little lives over which she had immeasurable power. She shoved bottles in their mouths. She bathed them, fed them, and tolerated them to the best of her ability.
Eventually, Shinrai took three of them away. It wasn’t enough. He should have taken them all. She could have killed him for his thoughtlessness. (A woman would have known.)
When he goes, she breaks out the vodka. It’s a disease, but it’s a pleasant one, all things considered.
002. Bathroom
For a little while he gets nervous in bathrooms, like something (a Helena or a Hadyn) is hiding in the tub, or under the counter, or under the towels cabinets. Waiting to spring. So he gets in and out quickly, tugging Clara along like a painted and pig-tailed doll (“You’re fourteen, Iphis, and that doll is fucking creepy, get rid of it already!”) is a talisman against harm.
He’d told them to stop—and they had, eventually, but not nearly soon enough. He’d have given Hadyn whatever he wanted (and hadn’t he?) but getting his sister involved made him feel like there were bugs crawling under his skin.
He’d apparently not communicated his feelings well enough. He should have been more forceful or something, not cried about it like a (little poofy nancy boygirl) baby. Hadyn was a randy teenage boy, after all. They forgot themselves. Iphis is sure that in a short time he’ll have the patience for long baths. Maybe in a couple years he won’t think about it at all. He can already feel his brain taking that rotten little cake of a memory, cramming it with sugary filling, and putting on the first coat of happy pink icing.
He still sighs in relief when his paws stop touching cold white tile and meet worn carpet.
003. Delirious
Madness is a rainbow through a kaleidoscope, a twisting writhing mass of colors, vibrant and alive; a flash of bright crimson fur as it collides with rippled cerulean; the burnt amber of a glass bottle as it flies through the air; pink tongues exposed to yell at an unfaithful lover. The street is a canvas she’s throwing paint on, haphazardly, like a toddler finger-painting. It’s an ugly scene but the colors are beautiful.
“Yer a walkin’ disaster area, kid,” Iskra says, a touch of something Thalia’s familiar with but can’t easily identify sparking in her normally calm and impassive voice. Thalia just stares at the unfolding chaos and wonders what it is about her that makes the universe go wonky around her. Reality seems to touch her and then skitter off like it’s just realized it has to wash its hair or something and won’t be able to hang out with her after all.
Maybe she is a walking disaster area.
She takes a moment to be very, very thankful that she has people who don’t mind living in a madhouse.
004. Autumn
Autumn in Capital City is nothing like the Gardens, and for a few moments Mnem is seized by something that might be wistful melancholy, even though she looks back on most of her childhood memories (when she looks on them at all) with a sneer.
Nostalgia has a smell, soft honeysuckle and wet decomposition, like flowers over a fresh grave, and she thinks it’s foul.
Mnem slams the window shut against the chill capitol air and closes the door on memory. Autumn is the season of death for a reason.
005. River
Helena dreams about drowning with almost alarming frequency. She blames it on Aiolos throwing her into that river as a child. But the dreams aren’t unpleasant. She’s weightless but cocooned in a soothing, cool embrace, and she doesn’t struggle for the surface when the oxygen is squeezed out of her.
She always wakes up right before she dies, and feels refreshed, with energy like a runner’s high. For the morning, at least, she likes herself, and believes that others could like her too.
She puts the tea on with a happy hum. It’s going to be a good day.
006. Sunset
There was a time when he might have composed several volumes of verse on the sunset sky, and they all would have been terrible. Now, though, Vishne doesn’t try to contrive a way to pair carmine and dream in a rhyme scheme, or make some metaphor out of the setting sun and the death of his soul, or do anything much at all, really.
He just rolls dough, watches the buildings devour the sun, and thinks about renaming the raspberry and orange tart Sunset Surprise before berating himself.
007. Relief
When Jin steps back for a moment, mentally, he’s a little weirded out by how terribly promiscuous he’s become since his arrival at the capitol. Back in the Glacier his opportunities for sex had been extremely slim, and other than his sister once trying to drunkenly force herself on him (she’d been easy to shove away and, when she became sober, they both agreed that it had been a hallucination caused by eating poisoned snow), his number of sexual experiences totaled exactly one.
Now he was fucking everyone. It wasn’t like he started talking to people intending to get them into bed. It just sort of happened. Girl at the grocery outlet who said he had the silkiest hair she’d ever seen? Fucked her. Anonymous horny asshole who bought him a drink? Fucked him. Married couple looking to add a little excitement to their lives? Fucked them both. Everyone he met. Fucked ‘em.
It had to be genetics, of course. Look at his mother. Woman had a dozen offspring, boinked anything that moved and a few things that didn’t (Light bless her generous soul), and talked about sex as casually as most people discussed how their day had been.
He heaved a small sigh of relief that at least he wasn’t that slutty.
Yet.
008. Silence
No need for words, ever. Difficult to get them out. No one trusted enough to hear. But silence isn’t a lack. It’s animate. Ravenous. It pulls in everything around it and devours it.
One day Beraht will eat the Bog alive, that thriving, throbbing, treacherous organism. It will dissolve in his mouth. Roll on his tongue. Disappear, swallowed.
There is something out there worse than Raiders. A hungry, aching abyss.
Quiet.
009. Night
The sight of it makes Phaedra want to vomit. Oh, it’s all wrong! She wonders how so many people could be so perfectly wretched. A great evil is being perpetrated city-wide, the kind of heinous crime that would never happen in Esterberry, and she feels duty-bound to correct it.
Because this kind of appalling foolishness simply Will Not Do, and when things Will Not Do, she Undoes them. When night falls, she grabs her necessary tools and shoves them into a tiny backpack. She crawls out of the window of her small apartment and onto the roof, and then leaps majestically from building to building as only a sugar glider can, a graceful, determined silhouette against the pale moon.
She soon arrives at the sight of the first atrocity. She tears into her backpack for her weapon. White paint, and a tiny brush held in her tiny paws.
GREAT SALES!!! FRESH BANANA’S, APPLE’S AND ORANGE’S!!!
She mercilessly annihilates the apostrophes. Then she pauses. Do the extra exclamation marks deserve to die? Yes, she decides. Coupled with the grating uniform capitalization, they make the entire sign entirely uncouth. She reduces six to two.
Then, she scribbles a note. Her handwriting is perfect (teachers had always awed over her penmanship).
Dear sir or madam, I hardly think it conducive to successful business to present such awful signs to potential customers. I have taken the liberty of removing your apostrophes; you do not need them to pluralize, and I doubt the produce possesses anything. If it does, you have failed to note it. Additionally, I must chide you on your superfluous exclamation marks. One shall suffice. None is preferable. Your loyal partner in making the world a better place, P.
Triumph courses through her veins. She hopes the shopkeeper will learn his lesson. She turns with a flourish and disappears into the night.
This sort of evil never sleeps, and she must vanquish it.
010. Cry
Venka pokes him. Vishne flinches away.
Venka shoves him. Vishne shrieks a little and toddles sideways.
Venka shoves harder. Vishne stumbles into a puddle of mud and smacks his head against a rock.
Venka giggles. Vishne bursts into tears.
“Come on, you baby,” she says, hauling him to his feet. “You know I love you or something.”
He sniffles and nods. He loves her too.
___
Thus concludeth your first round of torture. >3
