Fortnightly Writing Competition: VULNERABLE, CLOSED

[Mandle]

The theme for this round is "Vulnerable" and whatever that means to you and however you wish to include the theme in your own story.

I chose this because I had a flash of inspiration for a story of my own that starts with a young single mother taking her baby outside her apartment in her arms, fumbling to lock the door behind her, and then turning around to see a surprised team of hitmen poised ready to break down the door of one of her neighbors. And the first thing she says is "Please, don't hurt my baby!".

I will probably write this story, not as an actual entry but just because it won't leave me alone until I do.

I will also pretty up this intro a bit with the rules etc. but for now the contest is open!

[Sinitrena]

I will also pretty up this intro a bit with the rules etc. but for now the contest is open!

While you're at it, will you also correct the topic title to a more appropriate deadline? Or did you intentionally ignore the fortnightly part of 'Fortnightly Writing Competition'? 

Other than that, I actually like this introduction, short and to the point. And your story idea sounds interesting.

[Mandle]

I will also pretty up this intro a bit with the rules etc. but for now the contest is open!

did you intentionally ignore the fortnightly part of 'Fortnightly Writing Competition'? 

Yes, I did that just hoping to not be caught. And I would gotten away with it too, if if hadn't been for you pesk...

Naw, I just did one less math than most people would.

Cheers for spotting that.

[Mandle]

By the way... the contest rules are just the same as ever with voting etc. I hope nobody was waiting around just in case I said "An extra rule is that there must be a talking banana in the story."

[Baron]

I am most vulnerable at voting time.... 

[Sinitrena]

I'm most vulnerable at deadline time.  For some reason, I'm almost dead then. (In other words, I might need a slight extension. I'll try to finish in time but my main charcter walkes a bit slowly through her story.)

[Mandle]

Extension until the 25th

[EjectedStar]

Ingress

Jay hated the wetness that followed a rainstorm.  The rain he didn’t mind, it could be exciting, or even relaxing, listening to the pitter-patter outside your window on a lazy afternoon. But the part afterward, where the air was the thick with humidity and puddles lined the street, he hated. Jay contemplated this as he shook his leg and the sneaker that had just found one of those such puddles, instantly soaking the entirety of his left sock.

He sighed and readjusted the small wooden crate in his arms, which held a random assortment of vegetables from his mother’s hobbyist garden. One of his footsteps squelched along the asphalt road that had been blocked off for the weekly farmer’s market, the air heavy from recent rainstorm earlier that morning. The only good thing about after-rain was the smell, especially in the small, quiet town of Rexford, stirring up the dirt and plants, leaving a slightly sweet pungent smell lingering in the air.

With an over exaggerated grunt, he set the crate down at his mother’s stall and waved back behind himself, “That’s the last of ‘em. Say,” he said with mock pondering “how much am I getting paid for this again?”

His mother turned to face him and placed her hands on her hips. She eyed him, but didn’t look particularly intimidating while wearing a bright yellow apron adorned with purple polka dots. “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe the continuation of a roof over your head? Tuition assistance? All the food you shovel into your bottomless stomach. All those video-“

Jay stopped listening as she ticked off items on her fingers. He wasn’t serious, and neither was she, but it was a ritual that they did occasionally whenever he was feeling sassy. “Right,” he said, moving to the other side of the stall and beginning to unload the vegetables into their assigned spots, “I’ll just shut up and look pretty.”

“See? I knew all that college learnin’ would sink into that noggin eventually. Such a smart boy.”

He rolled his eyes, but only because his back was still turned away from her.  He finished sorting out the vegetables and took his customary spot behind the wooden table that served as their check-out counter, a pad of paper and small lock box ready for a standard day of farmer's market bliss. The morning proceeded normally, selling off the late-year crops that his mother had tended to the last couple of months. The usual suspects came and went, mostly older couples needing something to do on the weekend, righteously supporting their neighbors instead of the big-box supermarket only a fifteen minute trip by the nearby interstate.

Jay perked up as he caught sight of a girl his age meandering through the stalls nearby. She was raven-haired, cut into a tight bob, soft features and a cute upturned nose. Absolutely adorable. Jay didn't see many early twenty-somethings at 9 am on a Saturday morning perusing through a farmer's market of a town where the median age had to be somewhere around 45. He tried not to stare too hard as she wandered nearer to their stall. She stopped momentarily as she drew her gaze across the radishes and spinach in front of him. Their eyes met for a few seconds, her eyes shone light blue, the color of the sky recovering from a morning shower that left the ground so annoyingly damp.

A faltering smile crossed Jay's lips and then she was gone, making her way down through the assortment of stalls that lined the street. He could feel his cheeks flush and knew it was silly to be embarrassed over simply smiling at a girl, but she was cute and he wasn't the greatest with the ladies. Thoughts of her lingered while he tried to help the next customer, Mr. Allen, with his question about 'what the hell is kale?'

After a very stimulating conversation that culminated in: ‘so it’s just fancy cabbage?’ Jay leaned his forearms on the counter, let his eyes glaze over, and stared at the browsing AARP members. There was a shout from somewhere down the road and he raised an eyebrow. Probably just someone upset over an overpriced wooden knick-knack down at old man Jenkins’s stall. More shouts came from that direction and he leaned back from his resting position. Sometimes these folks got so bent out of shape over the littlest of things. The commotion was coming his way, a mass of people moving down the street in a hurried and frightened fashion.

“What the fuck?” slipped out from Jay’s mouth and he heard his mother tsk in a well-practiced habit. All manner of people were now hustling down the street, their bags and groceries jostling against their bodies as they frantically ran. Then he saw the young woman from earlier appear out of the crowd, she was facing backwards, toward the unknown threat. An explosion rocked out across her chest, sending a puff of acrid smoke into the air and tossing her back and onto the asphalt.

Before Jay knew what he was doing, he was out and over the table, running to the young woman’s aid. As he ran, he realized how stupid he was being, what with gunfire or whatever explosion had went off threatening his well-being, but he was already on the way and with a mental shrug he knelt at her side. Her trendy, short leather jacket was in tatters, burned through and still smoking softly. He could see she had been burned, her hair singed and her cheek a bright red. An earpiece was clearly visible in her ear, her swept back hair revealing its presence.

She groaned and he placed a hand against her shoulder.

“Hey, you okay? What the hell was that?” Jay asked, his voice shaky from all the excitement.

Her lips parted to answer, but another explosion ripped its way through the air from down the street. Jay turned his head and could barely comprehend. The air itself had ripped itself apart 40 feet from where he knelt, glowing tattered strands opened what could only be a described as a ragged hole in space, it rose from the concrete and thirty feet into the air. There in the middle of the street, Jay could see through the rip and out onto an alien landscape: barren, dusty red hills and a night sky littered with stars. The surging mass of monsters charging up toward the portal was just icing on the cake.

The woman tried to stand, grabbing onto Jay’s shoulder to pull herself up, but as she bent to rise, pain flooded through her features. With her eyes wide, she coughed, spasmed in pain and fell back to the street.

“Close it,” she gasped between racking coughs.

“What? I don’t even know-“ he began to say, before she lifted a hand and held out a glowing sphere about the size of a baseball.

Sometimes Jay hated human psychology, he didn’t want the weird glowing sphere, but when someone offers you something, your lizard brain automatically reaches out and takes it. There he was, kneeling over a possibly dying stranger holding some strange glowing something, thousands of monsters bearing down on him, and a mission to ‘close it’, whatever that meant. Typical Saturday morning shenanigans.

The woman had already moved on from addressing him and had her hand pressed up against the side of her ear, activating the earpiece within. “Tier six,” she mumbled, her eyes closed and breath soft, “I repeat, it is a tier six threat.”

Jay stood; the sphere held in his hand down by his waist and looked toward the rift in the middle of the street. He could see the monsters clearer now as they approached, now only seconds away from reaching the portal. They were bipedal and rippled with muscle, beige, dusky skin and tiny pin pricks of black where the eyes should be. The rest of their heads were made up of one massive, slathering mouth full of serrated teeth jutting off in all directions. They ran in long strides up the dusty red hill, their muscled arms beating through the air.

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m heading toward those things.” Jay said, shaking his head.

The girl coughed, which now sounded a lot wetter and raspier than before. “If you want your town, and possibly the entire western seaboard flooded with those monsters, then go ahead, run… but it won’t do you much good.”

Fear was pulsating through Jay. He wanted to help, wanted to dash up to that weird ass rip in the air and close it all down, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to play the hero and try to save the day by himself. Plus, by the time he got there, they’d already be through and gnawing on what remained of his corpse.

Almost in answer to his thoughts, and interrupting a rather vivid image of his arm being blended away with those maws of unending teeth, a screech of a vehicle further up the street echoed out from behind him. Jay twisted and took in this new development.

A blocky, matte black van squealed to a stop in the middle of the road, puffs of smoke wisping away from its tires. The side door was slung open without ceremony and within stood a shapely woman with long blonde hair and a hulking man of dark complexion, his head and face covered in bushy black curls. Between them sat a massive Gatling gun. Now, Jay had never seen a Gatling gun in person, but as the black man situated himself behind the massive gun and the six mean looking barrels began to spin up, he knew it was time to get the fuck out of the way.

He dove to the street, his arms instinctively covering his head, even though it wouldn’t be of any use in the hail of bullets that was about to follow. The gun exploded, or, as seconds passed, it continued to explode as bullets spat angrily out from its spinning barrels. Jay could hear the bullets pass through the air, whizzing only feet above his head, even over the loud extended ‘brrrrt’ noise that emanated from the beast.

Jay lifted his head and peered at the portal, now streaming with monsters as they jammed together and slammed through. They were being shredded as the swarm of buzzing bullets smashed into their frontlines; sprays of red mist splattered the surging monsters that pushed from behind those in the front, chunks and body parts raining down.

The woman sighed in relief and Jay saw her relax her head back from looking down the length of her body toward the rift. “Not all Entities are susceptible to kinetic energy attacks, if not, we’d be so dead right now.”

“W-what?” Jay sputtered out, a look of confusion plastered against his face.

“Just go!” she coughed weakly, “this is the only chance you’ll get.”

The Gatling gun went silent and Jay took it as his cue to follow her advice. He stood and took off in a dash toward the portal. Every inch of his being screamed at him to turn, take a detour out through some stalls and escape from this nightmare. But if the woman was correct, they’d soon be overwhelmed and the monsters would swarm through the hole, there weren’t enough bullets in that spinning death machine to hold back the hordes that still pushed forward.

He ran toward the gore that littered the street, and even though the frontline of monsters had been decimated, a new surge of the creatures began to press forward once again. A muffled shout of a gruff, deep voice from somewhere behind him prompted him to dive to the ground and a flurry of bullets met the monsters at the portal.

Seconds passed and as soon as the Gatling quieted Jay was up again, running full tilt toward what looked like hell. His foot splashed in another puddle and a quiet anger surged inside him, even a demon invasion couldn’t stop the rain from making his day just that little bit worse. But, of course, it wasn’t rain water he realized as he flicked his eyes down momentarily and saw that he had just stepped into a puddle of red gore. Nausea rose from the pit of his stomach, but another shout prompted him to dive down again, and he smashed into the ground as the bullets spun up once again.

He was up once again as the world quieted and now was only feet from the portal. At this point he came to the sinking realization that he didn’t even know how to use the sphere that was clutched in a death grip in his hand. Luckily, the thing almost leapt out of his hand as he lifted it up toward the portal and it shone into life. The portal started knitting itself back together. The glowing ripped edges of space began to throw out tethers of luminous string to their brethren across from them, and the space between the two ripped sides began to close together.

Unfortunately for Jay, the closing portal did nothing to deter the monsters beyond and they continued to stream forward through the hole. He turned and ran. Then promptly dropped to the ground for the umpteenth time as he saw the Gatling gun spin to life. Now that he was so close to the portal he could hear bullets whizzing into their targets, and the sickening thunks of gore falling to the ground.

His ankle exploded in pain and he rolled onto his back, kicking down at his attacker in surprise. A half shredded monster that was lying on the ground had speared its claws through his leg and began dragging him back into the hell world beyond the portal. Jay screamed and kicked with his free leg, slamming his sneaker down on top of its bald skull, but his attacks didn’t have any perceivable affect and the creature continued to drag him backwards across the red stained asphalt.

Jay continued to kick and scream as he was dragged. The rough surface of the road beneath him suddenly turned soft, as red sand and dark sky filled his vision. There were monsters all around him, closing in, their jagged mouths gnashing open and closed in anticipation.  With a quick jolt, an opposing force began to pull him back toward the portal as he felt hands clamp around his wrists.

Glancing up, all he could see was thousands of strands across the ripped space, the portal almost fully closed, obscuring his view back into his own world. With the last ounce of his strength, he pulled with his arms, and pushed with his legs and he felt the grip on his ankle loosen. As soon as the monster lost its grip he was through the hole, his vision going white as he passed through the strands that were pulling the ragged edges closed.

-------------

“Holy shit, he’s still alive,” a soft voice picked its way through the dark fog that made up his consciousness.

“Never seen anyone go through what was essentially a fully sealed portal like that,” a gruff voice replied. “And by the way,” the voice said saltily,” my arms are fine.”

Jay groaned as he swam back to reality, his head buzzing in pain and confusion. After a few minutes he was able to creak open an eyelid. He found himself bumping along the inside of the black van; the two individuals who had operated the Gatling gun sat on a bench against the far side away from him. He tilted his head and could see the woman who had been lying on the street, now lying next to him, her eyes closed and her chest bandaged in clean, white strips.

The blonde woman leaned over him and her hair brushed at his face, “Hey kid, you ain’t, like, mentally scrambled or nothin’ like that, right?”

Jay coughed and tried to sit up, but his head flared in pain and he thought better of the idea, “I don’t think so,” he managed to croak.

“Quick,” the large man said, nudging the blonde woman out of the way and looming his frame into Jay’s field of vision, “Yankees or Red Sox?”

“Uh,” Jay mumbled, confused and not being much of a baseball fan said, “Yankees?”

The man rolled his eyes in disgust and sat back, “Yup, his brain might as well be scrambled eggs at this point, better leave him here on the side of the highway, there ain’t no coming back from that.”

“W-what?” Jay said confused.

A cough came from beside him and Jay leaned his head over so see the woman now had her eyes open. Still cute, though a little singed and worse for wear. “Don’t mind Garret,” she said, her voice soft, “he’s had that same affliction for years.”

The big man only laughed at her jab.

“So… “ Jay said, propping himself up on his elbows and sitting up slightly, his head only mostly screaming in pain, “who are you people?”

“Ah, that’s kind of a long story,” the blonde woman said, looking over at her companions for reassurance, “but after what you did today, I think you’re due for an explanation. Which,” she tittered her head back and forth, “that’s a lot more than people usually get.”

Spoiler

Been kicking around an idea for a new novel, and since the 'vulnerable' tag corresponded with how I imagined the first scene, I present to you a rough draft of the first chapter!  A little different from my normal writing style, but eh, we'll see!

[close]

[Sinitrena]

Part 1 of 2

How to Build a Reputation

She had walked through the house. She had locked the doors and the windows, she had extinguished the candles, she had made sure that everything was in its place. She was getting slow. It got later and later every day that she finished her work.

Now she walked up the steep steps to the servants’ quarters under the roof. She suppressed another cough, and another. It had gotten worse in the last couple of days, the coughing and the pain in her chest with every breath. But she could not be sick, she could not afford to be sick. Her master would send her away.

With every suppressed cough, the urge became stronger, with every step her chest felt smaller. When she finally reached the landing in the attic, away from the ears of her master and mistress, she doubled over and pressed her hands against the wall. The coughs came in short-winded gasps, then in a fit that took the last of her breath away. Light-headed and weak, she let herself sink onto the stairs and waited for the fog to clear from her mind.

While she sat there, new coughing fits shook her body again and again. She knew she had to get up, she knew she had to get to bed, before she fell asleep on the landing or sat there the whole night, but her arms were heavy and her legs numb and the world spun around her. When she moved her hand from her mouth now, there was blood on her palm among the phlegm.

She sighed and rubbed her throat and chest until the next coughing fit had passed, then, she slowly got back onto her feet. She staggered, two steps forward, one back, one forward, two back. She grabbed the open door to the servants’ quarters and held onto the knob. The door swung towards her, not holding her in her precarious situation. It swung over the steps of the stairs and her foot slipped from the landing. She stumbled down into the steep and narrow staircase. Holding onto the door, she didn’t fall backwards, but she lost her balance and banged against the wooden steps with her old knee, then slid further down.

In shock and pain, she screamed. She couldn’t stop herself, even though in the back of her mind she knew that her master would hear her and scold her.

She slid over the sharp edges of the stairs until she banged her head against the wall of the next landing. She lay there a while, while pretty little flecks of colour danced in front of her closed eyes.

“Sjenne! How dare you make such a ruckus!” he screamed and she had to blink a couple of times to understand who was talking to her. It should have been clear, but in that moment, for her it was not.

“You woke the whole house with your carelessness!” her master, Lord Fintoim, berated her with his hands on his hips. “How dare you break this vase!”

Vase? It stood on a cupboard at the back of the landing and was never used. Now it lay next to her in shards and dust.

“I’m… I’m sorry, sir.” she stammered and couldn’t stopped the cough that followed the words. She bend over and just managed to hold her hands in front of her mouth before the phlegm was retched out of her lungs.

“I’ve had it about with you!” the master said and looked at the bloody slime with disgust. “Your work gets worse and worse every day, you creep through the house later and later like a thief and now this. What’s this, are you sick? You didn’t say anything? I don’t want a sick girl in my house with my wife and my children!”

“Master, I…” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She knew that he would react like that when he found out. She knew he would send her away, she knew it was his right by law and my tradition.

He grabbed her by her thin arm and dragged her to her feet. Her bruised legs could hardly carry her as he shoved her up the steps and into the room she shared with two other servants. The two younger women stared at her with fear in their eyes.

*

Her chest hurt and her head spun and her bag with the three dresses and the little knick-knacks she owned was too heavy. The bun in her hair had caught most of the impact, but the next morning there was a bump at the back of her head. Blood she had coughed out of her lungs stuck to the fabric of her dress over her chest and one of the seams was ripped and the left side of her skirt hung deeper than the rest.

Sjenne felt dirty. She had disappointed her master, she had been turned out onto the streets and she had nowhere to go. She never had a family of her own, she had served the same family for nearly forty years and now she was nothing but another disgraced servant girl on the streets.

Tired, in the middle of the night, she found a tavern in the better part of town where she had lived nearly all her life. Here, the river flowed through the city and the nobles and merchants had their homes. And as such the room she rented for the night and then more nights to come was expensive. She had little but she was sure she would find new work soon enough.

Coughing into her shaking hands, she took her needles from her bag and started to repair her dress as the candle on the little table slowly burned down and her eyes hurt in the flimsy light and from the tears she couldn’t keep away.

Her old master, the young master’s father, would not have turned her away like that, but it was the young master’s decision and it was his right. She had no reason to complain, she told herself over and over again. She had failed, she had not served him to his complete satisfaction, and what else was there for her to do and what else to take pride in?

*

The money ran out. After days and then two or three weeks, there was nothing left of her meagre savings. With no reference and too old to pretend she was looking for her first position, she soon had to leave the little room behind.

She stumbled through the streets, not really sure where to go. Her bad leg, the one that always became thick in the summer heat, dragged behind her and her usually so tidy and strict hair hung down the side of her face in unkempt strands.

After a while, when the pain in her stomach became stronger than the pain from her still bruised head and the pain in her chest from the cough, she sank to the ground in just any corner of one of the smaller market places.

Even now, even as her purse was empty and she cursed herself for spending her money once on little clay figurines of the gods she now had to drag around the city in her bag, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the upper part of the city. Here she knew every corner and every fountain, here she knew the best fabric merchant and the best butcher’s shop, here the world was normal. Down by the harbour, where the sailors drank and the workers had their small huts, she would have felt as if she had stepped into a different world. Her dress, in pristine condition as always, as was just proper, would have stood out like a thief in the temple of the Seeing One, God of Law and Justice.

She leaned against a back wall of this temple now and pressed her hands against her stomach to make it feel fuller and closed her eyes for a moment, until her cough jerked her from her thoughts. Red phlegm landed on the white and beige stones that created an intricate pattern on the ground here. They were clean, like all parts of the upper city and with shame in every movement Sjenne wiped her blood from the stones.

She felt like everyone was staring at her. Here, nobody sat on the ground. People were too busy, they bought the wares from the merchants or they sold their goods, the guards patrolled through the streets, the city’s servants swept the tiles on the ground.

She couldn’t help but watch them all because for now she couldn’t bring herself yet to ask for money or a piece of bread. Her dress clung to her crossed legs and formed something like a bowl, but she didn’t want people to throw coins into it yet. When her cough didn’t force her hands to her mouth, when she didn’t turn away from the crowd to shield her face in shame, she pressed her long sinewy fingers into her stomach where it convulsed on its emptiness.

Next to her, there were apples on a market stand. On the opposite wall was a butcher’s shop. There, by the fountain stood a brazier where someone roasted chestnuts and sold them for a coin. Everywhere, food, food and more food. Wherever she looked, someone sold something to eat or gnawed on a juicy chicken leg. Here a market crier called out the freshness of his fruit, there a dog snatched a discarded bone from the ground before it could be swept away.

Her fingers dug into her own flesh, drilling into the stomach that cramped and grumbled. Tears started to fill her eyes. She had never hungered before and she was so angry with herself. It was her own fault, she told herself again and again, and if she didn’t find a new position soon…

She had looked. She had not been lucky.

And now, only the gods could help. Digging in her bag, she pulled the little clay figurines out and sat them on the ground. Whether to pray to them or sell them for a copper or two, she did not know. But the rhythmic bowing of her upper body, that so many of the worshippers of the Seeing One used to show their respect to the god of gods and the main god of the country, distracted Sjenne from the pain in her stomach and it made her feel less out of place on the corner of the street. Why shouldn’t she pray where destiny left her, why shouldn’t she honour the Seeing One behind his own temple?

With her eyes closed and the cough suppressed for the prayer, minutes went by, then hours. People passed her and they looked at her, some strangely, some with pity, but at least she didn’t see them. From time to time, she felt a weak dragging on her dress and when she finally opened her eyes again, she saw some coins in the folds of her skirt.

*

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. No roof sheltered her that night and the food she bought made the pain worse, not better. It didn’t fill her, it only reminded her again and again that little was often just not enough.

She must have slept, for she woke up again when the merchants returned and the sun tickled her nose. She rubbed her eyes, then felt the dried blood on her cheek where she had spit it out in her sleep.

The apples were back and with a jerk her stomach awoke as well. It grumbled at her, it demanded that she fill it. It would have been easy. The market stand was right there, the merchant was not. He was at his cart, he had his back to her. It would have been easy.

But the Seeing One sees, she reminded herself, and the servant obeys. A servant obeys her master and a servant obeys the law. And the law had send her to the street and the law stopped her hands. And the law was the law and the law was right.

She had never questioned this. She didn’t question it now either.

And when the coins in her skirt were not enough for a dry piece of bread at midday and a purse was forgotten on another market stand and no-one was looking, she didn’t question it then either. She just moaned and sank to the ground on the steps of the fountain and placed her figurines around her again.

When she looked up again, the lost purse was gone again. The owner must have noticed it missing. No matter how longingly she looked in its direction, there was nothing there now but a market stand and she scolded herself for even thinking about the money that was not hers.

“A nice little purse sad on the stand,” a voice next to her said, “Do you happen to know wherever it went?”

It dragged her thoughts immediately to the present, then send them back in time to the million times she had said this children’s rhyme when the young master was still a child, and her mind completed the line: Did a thief slip it into his hand?

“I hope not!” she said, answering the unspoken part, then turned towards the speaker.

Sjenne didn’t know him. She had never seen him before. A young man leaned against the masoned side of the fountain with his elbow on the wall, looking over the market place and watching the comings and goings of the people.

“Why not?” he said with a laugh, letting a coin dance over the back of his hand.

Sjenne knew full well that he did not expect an honest answer, or any answer at all, but she couldn’t help put scolding him as she would have scolded any child in her care. “Because stealing is wrong.”

“Such a simple answer.” he mocked. “Tell me, is it right or wrong to send someone out of their home of forty years because they broke a vase and coughed up some blood?”

Sjenne’s heart skipped a beat. “How…?” Her hand shot towards the figurine of the Seeing One, God of Law and Justice, and she pressed it to her chest as if it could protect her. “It is the law!” she said outraged.

The boy, for to her old eyes the young man was still a boy, shook his head. “Laws can be wrong.” He said with calm conviction.

She could only shake her head at the stupidity of the youth. “The law is the law. And because it is the law it must be right.”

“A law that makes you hunger and weak, how can it be right?” The coin seemed to almost jump away from the back of his hand and into the folds of her skirt.

Sjenne picked it up and held it out to the boy. “I do not steal. And I do not take stolen money. I do not break the law. The god wills it, the god has made it so.”

“Your god, not mine. What’s so bad about taking a purse if the owner has two? What’s so bad about taking a coin that may save you your life?”

“Stop tempting me! Who are you even? Why are you talking to me?” she almost shrieked but her words petered out in dry gasps and then escaped between coughs in a hoarse wheezing.

The mocking grin disappeared from the young man’s lips and he squatted down next to her and rubbed her back until the coughing fit had passed and she could look at him again through the tears in her eyes.

“My name is Lomin. Lomin Tribent.” he said silently and stabilised her weak body against his arms. “And as you have guessed already, I’m a thief. And I’m not just a thief, I’m a priest. And unlike the servants of the Seeing One, my God does not leave the weak on their own.” Something old crept into his eyes and his brow furrowed. His words seemed distant, like he was quoting an ancient text, and yet as gentle as if he was talking to a young child and not an old woman. “When the law, your god’s law, spits the people out onto the streets, my god welcomes them with open arms. He protects those the law does not protect. He protects the poor and the weak, those that cannot protect themselves by following the law. Those that need to break it, those that die if they don’t. Those that cannot break it themselves any-more. You might not be a thief, but you should be one, because the law betrayed you. Because the god of justice is not just. You followed him all your life, I assume, and you served your master faithfully, and now he can’t be bothered to help and protect you? And thus, I’ll protect you. For the god works through his priests and his priests work in his name.”

His hand stroked her shoulder but as soon as the coughing fit had passed and her breath had returned, she shrugged him off. “I do not want the help of a thief! And I do not want the money you stole!”

Lomin removed his hand and sat back on his heels. His other hand closed around the coin in her hand. “That coin, that lost purse on the market place, it belonged to your former master once. For forty years of service, don’t you think he owes you something? Lord Fintoim is rich, he has servants, a house, a family, land, gold, ships… Part of it should belong to you, don’t you think?”

She tried to shake off his hand, but his grip was stronger than her weak old fingers. “No. He paid me my wages, I have nothing else to ask of him.”

The young man sighed and looked away from her. His eyes wandered over the little market place and the ordered chaos that held every market place in its grip. “The Majsha festival is a strange thing to celebrate, isn’t it?”

Sjenne followed his look, confused by the sudden change in topic. But it was obvious what had prompted his thoughts. The activity in the square was different than the day before, more hectic. She had forgotten that the festival was soon, but now she saw the activity all festivals created beforehand: the floor tiles that were being polished, the merchants cleaning their carts and the shop owners their stores, the decorations hanging from the flagpoles, the ribbons tied to the balustrade at the river, the additional stands around the corner in front of the temple of the Seeing One.

“We celebrate that the Seeing One found and punished the thief who stole his human bride, Majsha. Of course, my order tells a different story. For us, the thief loved the princess and protected her from a jealous god. It seems no god ever bother to ask Majsha if she loved the Seeing One or Kodorn, the thief.”

“As you won’t bother to ask me what I want?” she noted with no small amount of sarcasm.

“I don’t need to ask. You’d rather die than break the law. Luckily, I’m not bound to such notions of honour, and I’d rather see you live, if you care about my help or not. The Majsha festival is almost perfect to rob a house, you know? Servants and lordship are out of the house, and when they return they are drunk. And your Lord Fintoim, he’s a bit of an asshole, isn’t he? And he really should take care of you. How about his lordships bed to sleep in? His wife’s coat for the winter? The silver statue of the Seeing One to replace your clay one here?”

Sjenne just shook her head and turned away. “I don’t want anything stolen. Nothing, you hear me? Nothing!”

Staring at the old stubborn woman for a while, Lomin sighed, then stood up. “Begging won’t give you enough to survive, you know?” He sighed again. “Gods, you don’t even beg. You just sit and pray to a god who doesn’t care about you. You believe in a law that offers you nothing, you…” There was a slight amount of anger in his voice, and when he realized it, he fell silent and turned away. “I think I’ll rob Lord Fintoim blind nonetheless. Just because,” he said under his breath as he walked away.

*

Sjenne sat there a while and watched the thief disappear in the crowd. For a moment, she wanted to call after him, but whether to agree and take his money or to talk him out of his plan, she did not know. She still held the coin he had tossed at her. And now she looked at it. It was not copper or even silver, it was a gold coin, more than she had earned in a month when she was still employed, more than she had ever owned at any point in her life.

She shook, for once not from a coughing fit or from the pain in her stomach. Her fingers cramped, then let go of the gold and it clinked on the white stones. The coin rolled away from her for a moment, then bounced against the figurine of the Seeing One. As if the god rejected it, the coin started to roll in the opposite direction, until it got caught in the crack between two of the floor tiles. There it turned in circles, then lay flat on the ground, the crossed swords, the symbol of the Seeing One looking up to the sky.

Sjenne wanted to leave it there, she wanted to stand up and get away from this gold, this tempting and forbidden gold, but her fingers jerked around her cramping stomach, then towards the coin on the ground.

When the money had returned to her hands, she chided the thief with a bitter smile, even though he could not hear her: “What servant has a golden coin? What merchant would take gold from an old woman like me?”

Tears started to well in her eyes, not from the pain. They just rolled down her face in a silent prayer she agreed would not be answered. What god could possibly care about her? What god could possibly even see her? - The Seeing One sees all, and he would know if she kept stolen gold. And he would take it from her as penance for her faults.

She stood up and gathered the clay figurines back into her bag. The temple of the Seeing One wasn’t far and at the offering shrine she would be alone to get rid of the money.

But when she stood before the statue of the Seeing One, she had to remind herself again that he sees all and when the coin disappeared in the slit in his hands, new tears welled up in her eyes.

*

The guard house was next to the temple of the Seeing One, so that the guards might pray to their god every day. There were other, smaller guard houses in the rest of the city, especially in the harbour district where more men were often needed, but this was the main one.

When Sjenne left the temple, she looked again and again for the young man who had so unceremoniously disappeared into the crowd. He was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t change the strange prickling on her back or the faster beat of her heart. But this was the right thing to do, this was the lawful way and her prayer in the temple had told her so. Of course she knew that it were her own thoughts and her own conviction, but surely those came from the gods once.

Coughing loudly, she stepped to the little window in the wall of the guard house where people could talk to the guards. She would have preferred to talk inside, but that was not the proper way.

“Sir?” Sjenne said nervously to get the attention of the man who sat there at a desk and let a coin roll over its top. “Excuse me, sir?”

The guard looked up bored, then straightened to something close to attention when he saw the clothes of the old woman that identified her as a servant in one of the more affluent houses.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I… This is going to sound really strange,” she said and looked around for the supposed thief and priest one more time.

“Heard a lot of strange things in me life,” the man said with a grin.

“I’m sure you have, but this… Let me… Let me introduce myself first.” A cough interrupted her and she had to turn away again so that the phlegm didn’t land on his desk. “I’m Sjenne, I am… I was a servant in Lord Fintoim’s house until…, well until a few weeks ago.”

The guard nodded, only slightly interested.

“And, there’s no beating around the bush, I lost my position.”

“That is strange indeed!”

Sjenne furrowed her brow. She did not appreciate the humour, but she pressed on, “And now someone came to me and offered to rob Lord Fintoim’s house for me!”

That got the guards attention. He sat up straight and stared at the old woman, but Sjenne wasn’t done.

“He said his name was Lomin, Lomin Tribent and he, believe it or not, he said he is a priest of the Silent One!”

“Come again?”

“Yes, a priest, a priest of the Silent One!”

“He told you he’s a priest and he told you his name? A priest? Of a forbidden order?” The guard, thinking about these two facts, deflated back into a more relaxed position. He shook his head. Either the old woman in front of him was insane or the person she had talked to. “Sure. That’s a nice story. Did he also happen to tell you when he plans to do this?”

Sjenne thought for a moment. “During the Majsha festival, I think.”

“Sure.” the guard said again. “Anything else you have to add?”

Sjenne stared at the man, then shook her head and suppressed another cough. It got difficult to stand. Her head felt wobbly and her legs weak and her stomach still contracted every few seconds on its emptiness. She shook her head again and turned away.

Already walking away from the guard who was clearly not interested in what she was saying, she repeated one more time: “Lomin Tribent, he is going to rob Lord Fintoim, I am sure.”

*

[Sinitrena]

Part 2 of 2

Sjenne couldn’t help herself. When the sun slowly peeked over the horizon and tinted the world red on the morning after the festival, she followed the straight streets to her old home.

As she walked in the direction of her former master’s house, rumour walked in the opposite one. It walked slowly and sluggishly through the addled minds of still drunk people just ending their festivities in the morning and over the not yet awake lips of servants who had to get up and serve their masters no matter how late they came home the night before. It walked in whispers and hushed tones and in the heavy booths of the guards overtaking Sjenne.

She could not believe her ears. Light-headed and weak, she could not believe her eyes either as she stood on the opposite side of the river in a crowd that slowly formed and stared at the front porch of Lord Fintoim’s mansion. There, on the clean street between the front door and the river bank, where some benches were placed for the noble men and women of the neighbourhood, where thin trees in large white pots lined the footpath next to the river and the steps up to the house, no cart could pass by this morning.

Her heavy back slid from her shoulders and clattered to the ground. Clay figurines shattered under her shoes as she stumbled back from the view on the other river bank.

She recognized the furniture, she recognized its placement. The bed, her master’s bed, it stood to the left and the lady’s cabinet to its right. The upholstered chair Lady Fintoim sat in every morning stood in front of it.

That morning, she sat not in it and the master did not lay in the bed. The sheets were folded on the mattress, the carpet was placed right in the middle of all the furniture, right there in the middle of the street. The silver chandelier that should have hung over it all lay instead on the carpet, the candles she had so often lighted and changed still half burned from the day before.

The whole room was set out there just as it should have been, just missing its roof and its place in the world. It all seemed to have been placed perfectly but Sjenne knew better. She had seen this room every day for forty years and she knew that the silver candelabra were missing from the night-stand as was the little silver statue of the Seeing One and the nacre powder dose was not on the cabinet, the mirror with its silver and gold was gone, the embroidered dress that should have hung over the back of the chair was not there either, nor were the pearl earrings and diamond necklace.

Sjenne rubbed her eyes and stumbled forward, closer to the river and the balustrade there, through the crowd of people that whispered to each other and did not dare go to the bridge just a street corner away that would have brought them even closer, not sure of the strange apparition would still be there when they turned away. Sjenne definitely doubted it would be.

She leaned on the balustrade and strained her eyes to look over to the house and the door where the servants stood huddled together. Lord Fintoim was nowhere to be seen. But now, closer, Sjenne saw something else. Where the valuables had been, on the night-stand and the cabinet, on the chair and the bed, it seemed like someone had scratched something into the wood.

Sjenne could not make it out, except for shadows where none should be. But the words travelled to her nonetheless, through the mouths of the other spectators.

Someone wrote something on the furniture.

Scratched into it with a knife or a …

A prayer to a god…

A name, there’s a name written down…

“What?” Sjenne asked the person next to her, “What’s written there?”

“Don’t know,” a washerwoman answered, “Something about the Silent One?”

“The Silent One works through his priests, actually,” a voice she recognized immediately whispered in her other ear as her bag dropped down next to her with its heavy weight. “And his priest, Lomin Tribent, works in his name.”

The young thief leaned on the balustrade just like Sjenne and watched the scene on the other side of the river. He seemed completely relaxed.

Sjenne stared at him for a moment while the words slowly sank in. There were so many questions running through her mind that the sheer amount made her mute for the time being. “You… you scratched your name in Lord Fintoim’s furniture?” she finally whispered, though in all honesty she wanted to scream. “Why?”

Lomin turned fully to her and he shrugged. “For the same reason I told it to you. For the same reason I gave you gold I knew you couldn’t use and would not if you could, and that I knew you would give to the Seeing One â€" where a guardhouse just happens to be. For the same reason I lead you there and let you speak to the guards, let you tell them of me and my plan. - Well, part of the plan.”

“Why?” Sjenne asked again, breathless and light-headed. There was no coughing for now, as if her mind could not process the insanity of the situation and her illness at the same time.

“Why do you think? A priest of a forbidden order, an order that hadn’t had a priest in this city for decades? To get my name out there. And thanks to you, the guards will scream it through the city, scream it through the city that this was not just some spontaneous thing I did, but that they were forewarned and couldn’t stop me. Of course, that’s not true, not entirely, because they didn’t believe you, but that hardly matters when you’re trying to build a legend of yourself.”

“You used me!”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you feel no shame at all, do you?”

“Why should I?” Lomin started to walk away with a shrug, then he hesitated and turned back to the older woman. “No, that’s not true. I do feel shame. Because the offer was genuine and you didn’t take me up on it and you will not now. Priests of the Silent One are supposed to help those that should steal but don’t, as well. I wish I could help you in a way you approve of, but I don’t think I can. And that means you will die. You will starve or your cough will kill you, I don’t know.” Lomin picked up the bag she had left behind before and he had discarded next to her. He offered it to her and she took it without thinking. “There’s money here, copper and silver, not gold. There’s also the statue of the Seeing One of Lord Fintoim’s to replace the clay one that broke. I still don’t know why someone would ever pray to… No, sorry, I won’t judge your way, even though I know that you do indeed judge me. You won’t see me again. Good luck, and may the gods protect you, those you pray to and those you don’t.”

With these words, the mass of people closed around the thief and shielded him from her view.

Slowly, Sjenne’s arm, holding the now even heavier bag, sank down to the ground. It took a moment for the shock to wash away and for the confusion to turn to conviction. But when it did, she knew what she had to do.

Clutching her bag to her chest, she pushed through the crowd that got bigger and bigger and more excited with every passing moment as the early morning stragglers and servants were complemented by the first merchants opening their stores and the farmers bringing their wares to the markets.

Sjenne called out to the guards on the other side of the bank, but her words, gasping and breathless, did not carry over the chatter of the people. She made her way to the pedestrian bridge instead as cough after cough took the last bit of her breath away. More than once, she had to lean against the wall of a house or the balustrade at the river, more than once people had to step out of the way of her blood. They looked at her with disgust, but she made it over the bridge and back towards her master’s house and the strange display the thief had set up there.

“Guards! Guards!” she called again to a group that just stood there huddled together and unsure what they were supposed to do. There was no pickpocket to chase and no brawlers to wrestle away from each other and their higher-ups were the ones to talk to the master of the house, not them. They were supposed to keep the people away from the furniture, but the strange calm of confusion still lay over the chaos and created a natural barrier in a half-circle around the room. Prayers were uttered here and there, for an event that most could not attribute to a man’s work.

When she had reached the guards and gasped out her story to them and pointed towards the balustrade where she had stood just minutes before, the thief, Lomin Tribent, was, of course, long gone. But her voice, even weak, was loud enough now to get the attention of the people around her and the name of the thief washed over the whole city in less than a day.

When Sjenne walked away from her former home now, her bag weighed heavy on her shoulders with indecision.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry this took me so long to write (Thanks for the extension, btw). I can’t even say way. But in hindsight, I don’t think Sjenne is the best point-of-view character for this story. Unfortunately, it was too late when I realized this. I might to a complete re-write at some point, but for now, that’s the story you get.

As I just entered a different story about Lomin for the last FWC, you are probably aware that there are a number of stories set in this world. Here they are, in chronological but not writing and probably not best reading order:

The Naming of Names
The Square of Flowers
Wavedancer
How to Build a Reputation (you just read that one)
Little Dove
A Future that would never be
Truth!
The friendly, social, honest man


I usually don’t like writing two stories in the same world for consecutive contests, but once Lomin comes to my mind, he tends to stay for a bit and take over.

[Baron]

Venerable & Vulnerable on the Volga

   Well, it wasn't my normal kind of gig.  Normally I'd just show up virtually via satellite link, do my thing in 3D avatar form, and be back to gaming and online flame wars before you could say Larry Laffer three times fast.  But this convention demanded a personal touch, and if I have one soft spot it's my ego. 

   Wait, that's not actually true.  Can we redo the intro?  No?  All in one take?  But....?  Cutbacks?  That's unfortunate.

   OK, so I should explain that my one soft spot is actually my only spot.  For I am a disembodied brain.  Now, obviously the good folks here at the Institute for Historical Neural Tissue Preservation taking my testimony know all the ins and outs of brainaxonomy (look it up), but I want my story heard by a wider public. 

   My name is Ross Kevin Dragonheart.  Yes, that Ross Kevin Dragonheart.  The oldest human consciousness on Earth.  I was born in the Before Times, of which your culture has virtually no knowledge.  But suffice it to say I was a big time game programmer, scientist, author, athlete, entrepreneur, adventurer and womanizer back in my time.  Now I make my living by reminiscing about the good old days on the speaking circuit.  Yeah, I know at my age I should probably retire, but somehow Alibaba survived the online retailer wars of the mid-22nd century and I have a mild addiction to Hello Kitty artifacts.

   So to the present: I was a guest of honour at the 6021 Meta Gaming Conference when...  what's that?  Oh, we have time for the whole back-story?  Just a quick synopsis?  All righty then!

   So the whole oldest human consciousness thing.  It all began when I was born in the late 20th century- what?  Just the pertinent facts?  Not even how I won the name Dragonheart by defeating the flying tyrannosaurus invasion that you strangely have no record of in this time period?  Fine....

   So I lived in this place called “Japan” that used to exist off the coast of Ultra Mongolia and at the height of my fame and handsomeness was struck down by an improperly cut piece of fugu.  But fortunately a paperwork mix-up had my brain donated to science and, after 3000 years as part of the internationally funded How-Jello-Might-Be-Used-to-Preserve-Weird-Stuff experiment I found my consciousness revived by the the Institute for Historical Neural Tissue Preservation (or IHN-TiP for short).  My brain was hooked up to the virtual realm and I spent the next 1000 years helping your historians reconstruct the events of the lost Before Times, bilking high-ball functions for outrageous speaking fees, and catching up on about 4000 years of human gaming progress.

   So now you know what I'm about.  Disembodied brain and A-list celebrity.  So then this conference opportunity comes up: the aforementioned 6021 Meta Gaming Conference.  Did I mention I was a big-deal in gaming back in the 21st century?  Ever hear of  a little game called Monkey Island?  Kings Quest?  Skyrim?  All me!  Anyway, I was gung-ho to “attend” (I'm making quote marks in the air with my non-existent fingers), but then the whole VR-Coof thing hit and all the world's computers needed to go into lock-down isolation and the only way to host the conference was by... yeah, actually getting together in the realz. 

   So I've done this kinda thing before, from time to time.  You know, for photo shoots or birthday parties, where it's important to be seen.  I mean, anyone can claim to be the oldest human consciousness on the virtual realm, but there's a certain cachet in hanging out with the actual floating brain of Ross Kevin Dragonheart.  My handlers load me up into a 30 squeeter aquarium tank with this spider-robot base and off I go to work the crowd.  For these shindigs they graft eyes back onto my optical nerves so that people have something to look at other than my dangly brainstem (I go for the disposable ones from Eye-Corp, as I find the reusable ones chafe after a few days of staring without eyelids). 

   Fast forward to the conference: apparently my spider-robot didn't clear quarantine regs and I have to handbag it.  Yeah, it's about as degrading as it sounds.  I basically look like a packaged tenderloin with a handle.  Oh, they don't sell tenderloin since the veg-tatorship of the 4th millenium?  OK, so imagine a plastic sack where there's just enough room for a bit of oxy-fluid and a human brain, only with two protrusions for my eye-grafts to sit in.  There's also a primitive electronic speaker attached which is wired into the language centre of my brain, but it makes me sound like Stephen Hawking.  Yeah, that Stephen Hawking, the one I collaborated with back when I was a leading scientist of black holes.  No, I can't remember any of our theoretical advancements â€" god, I can't even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.  Well, yeah, ok, I always have brain growth hormone-infused Fruit-Loop dust, but it's just a figure of speech.  I mean, you tell me the details of one of your nineteen doctoral theses four thousand years after the fact and then we'll see who draws a blank.

   So anyway, I'm in this handbag at the conference being carried around by Chimeg.  Yeah, that Chimeg, the famous Ultra-Mongolian model.  She's waving me around like a fashion accessory, and our adoring public is lapping it up.  Sometimes my plastic eye-tubes stray indecently towards her spandex-painted body, but honestly I don't have a lot of control over the g-forces exerted on my thin plastic sack.  All's I got to say is lacking eyelids is an advantage in some situations!

   But then there's trouble.  Chimeg breaks a stilleto heel and is temporarily out of commission.  I get passed unceremoniously to Daryl, the conference building janitor who looks the part.  In the year 6021 robots take care of most of these sorts of drudgery tasks, but I'm told even robots have a soul now and hence they hired Daryl to give them human company.  Except given all the cool jobs in the future like mermaid wrangler and jet-pack delivery guy you can imagine the calibre of human that the job conference centre janitor generates.  Let's just say that Daryl is a bit on the slow side, and he smells something awful (even through the plastic membrane of the handbag, and despite the fact that I don't have an olfactory organ to stimulate the relevant disgust centres in my brain!).  He starts with waving me around like he's a sexy man on the catwalk, but then starts wheezing at all the effort and puts me down on his cleaning cart.  I'm precariously balanced on a stack of neatly folded cleaning rags between the garbage bag and the slop bucket.  I have to think low-centre of gravity thoughts to keep from tipping this way or that.  Fortunately I was a champion acrobat at the Cirque du Soleil in the Before Times â€" yes, THAT Cirque du Soleil!  So I was able to fall back on my rusty instincts to keep from being totally humiliated.

   But then there's an earthquake.  I mean, yeah, there's earthquakes all the time now since all that atmospheric warming of my time ended up in the heat-sink of the Earth's crust and reignited hyper plate-tectonics.  All modern construction is built with self-correcting counterweights at the top and hydraulic limbo bots at the base to automatically counter the slightest movement, but apparently this conference was being held in an ancient Transylvanian castle for marketing purposes.  I've heard since that the entire castle has been tilted to as much as a 15 degree incline in the past, but happily the most recent earthquake had set the structure back to level (which really helps as a conferencing venue!).  But now after the shaking the structure was re-tilted to about five degrees off-level and Daryl's cart starts rolling of its own accord.

   My acrobatic skills can only take me so far without an actual body to implement them, so I scream for help like a little school monkey.  Only my primitive speaker broadcasts my screams as the deadpan calmness of Stephen Hawking (yes, THAT Stephen Hawking!) and I receive nothing but admiration and polite applause at my coolness under adversity.  I guess sometimes it just doesn't pay to be a rugged adventurer hero from a distant age.  Like that time when I tried to impress that pretty news anchorwoman cyborg with the story of how I was the first human ever to climb Mount Everest (yes, THAT Mount Everest!), only to discover that it had become Fount Everest in the great geysering of 3692 and is now a children's play-structure.

   So the cleaning supplies cart rolls off the conference floor and down a hallway and then hits a flight of stairs.  And you have to appreciate that these are castle stairs, so I'm spiralling downwards towards dungeon spikes or god knows what.  I try to grab a tapestry on the wall to brake my descent but, yeah, I don't actually have any appendages.  The only way I can use my brain to stop the cart is to literally fling myself under its wheels.  But oh wait, I can't fling myself either.  I am literally a passive witness to my own impending doom.

   The cart careens out of the spiralling stairwell and onto a side passage that leads to a ruined parapet.  And now I'm flying off the wall and off the edge of a cliff!  I don't know how much you know about the bounciness of hermetically sealed oxy-fluid sacks, but let me tell you the research is not encouraging.  But then â€" I kid you not! - I am snatched out of the air by a flying tyrannosaur (damn you science, why must you repeat your follies over and over?!?).  Instead of going out in a spectacular splat of rock art I am now destined to feed a hungry brood of T-rex chicks.  You know, I've had nightmares about going out this way....  Have you ever seen a disembodied brain shit itself?  It's not a pretty picture.  I am dreading the pain of being torn lobe from lobe, but I think one of the T-rex's talons has pierced my parietal lobe and permanently severed my ability to feel any sensation at all.

   But then, if you can believe it, the flying T-rex experiences a heart attack mid-air.  Apparently the exertion required to lift six tonnes of carnivore by little humming bird wings is still one step beyond science.  So now I'm falling back to rocks â€" damn it fate, make up your mind!  But another earthquake tilts the castle into the way, and I land in an ancient chimney.  I'm leaking oxy-fluid all over the place like a toddler with a really disgusting ice cream cone as I carom back and forth through flues and ducts.  And then, splash!  I land in the toilet of the conference centre staff bathroom.

   Ewwwwwwwww!  Stephen Hawking's voice does not do justice to my sentiment!  Toilet water is leaking into the bag through the hole pierced by the T-rex talon!  One eye stares up at the broken vent cover through which I crashed, while the other stares into the horrifyingly unsanitary abyss below.  My cerebral membrane crawls at the thought of all the bacteria swirling inside my plastic sack.  In all my years of unending consciousness I don't think I've ever felt more vulnerable than at that exact moment.

   You know, there comes a time when everyone hits rock bottom.  For me I thought it was when I was dating Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears at the same time.  But after all these years it appeared as if I had actually achieved a new low.  Except what's this?  My old buddy Daryl the janitor has arrived to rescue me!  But Daryl, no, don't turn around!  Don't undo your belt!  Don't â€" oh my god!  Where are my eyelids when I really need them!  I'm really not interested in this kind of black-hole research!  Nooooo!  Noooooooooooooo!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

   Well, I don't want to go into the full details of my extraction, but suffice it to say that it involved a plunger, then a plumbing wrench, and then a disturbing amount of Jigga-Lube.  My therapist tells me that I can unsear the images burnt into my mind with meditation, time, and a unfaltering regimen of mind-altering drugs, but me I'm not so sure.  Some things cannot be unseen, and some traumas cannot be unfelt.  All's I can say is that if I am conscious for another four thousand years I will never forget the nauseous feeling of utter helplessness as I stared unblinkingly into a torment 1000 times more ghastly than death itself.
   

[Mandle]

Whoopsie-Doodle! Sorry guys. I will open the voting later on today.

[Baron]

We are vulnerable to voting delays! 

[Mandle]

Yup, I'm an idiot...

So everyone send me a bunch of ten points split between your favorite entries via PM... oh damn I'm drunk... Shit, that is how it works right? God,I suck.

Split 10pts between:

ã,ªï½ˆgã,Œã,ï½"now i have hit the broken key on my keyboard that does this stupid shit...

Sinetrena for How to build a reputation

Baron for Venerable & Vulnerable on the Volga

Ejected Star for Ingress

Split 10pts between these excellent people! Well, read their stories first as I will when I recover and then PM me the ぽã,,ã€,ã€,ã€,おｆうｃｋi did it again

[Sinitrena]

EjectedStar: This went from 0 to 100 in the span of a paragraph! Interesting enough, I found the everyday "boring" beginning far more interesting than the action-packed second part. That's partly my bias against action scenes, which stems from the fact that they hardly ever move the plot along. Their beginning and their end do, but the action part usually doesn't. Here, it was pretty clear that Jay would get the portal closed, that it would be close and that he would end up with the (paramilitary or whatever they are) group that is there to save the day. Actually, I'm so strongly reminded of all kinds of "everyday person meets special secret society and joins" stories, that I wouldn't be particularly interested in keeping on reading. But that is when looking at this story in the context of your note, let's look at it as a short story. In a short story, a different kind of ending to the "standard" we ended up here would have been possible, making the action scene slightly more exciting. But from a writing point of view, it really doesn't feel all that thrilling. I'm sure you're aware that a very easy writing tip is to use short sentences in scenes that are fast, to get the reader to read faster and to get the feeling of out-of-breath across. That's not the case here, we get a lot of descriptions and overall the same neutral tone as for the first part of the story. It's still a fun little ride you took us on, though.
Some small things: Radish is in season all year round but aparently best around April, spinach is in season in March to June, kale in September - all according to google (I don't know anything about stuff like that). You might want to check that everything people sell at this farmer's market are in season at the same time.
"He rolled his eyes, but only because his back was still turned away from her. " - If his back is turned away from her, wouldn't his front be turned towards her, therefore making it easy to see him roll his eyes? Or am I applying too much logic to a figure of speech?
AARP -  Google tells me it's the American Association of Retired Persons, and I don't know how well-known this abbriviation is in the US, but for my German brain it meant absolutely nothing. Don't use abbreviations unless you're absolutely certain people will understand you.
Overall, I would have like to be surprised by any part of the action scene and I would have liked to get to know Jay better and longer before the story shifted so much. But I do like Jay as a character and his interactions with his mom (which makes it a bit annoying that he didn't think a single time about her during the attack!). I personally wouldn't be interested in where I think this story is headed.

Baron: That story felt so Baron, so very typical for your writing.  It also feels like you rushed it and wrote it in the last couple of hours before the deadline, though I can't point my finger on why I thought this. The plot is - I was about to say all over the place, but actually, that's not the plot. The plot itself is very simple - a helpless brain's misfortune in a slapstick manner. But until we reach this part... There's so much detail here, so much backstory, so much unreliable narrator that all just doesn't matter for the story you actually tell. The whoe time reading, I wasn't sure which parts were important, what I had to remember - and the actual answer is, nothing. Not a single bit of the back-story was important, which means it was padding.
In 4000 years time, women still wear high-heels, seriously? The fashion will not have moved on one bit? Do you know how many women have back problems because of these stupid things (no matter how good they might look)? I think it's more likely they'll be outlawed at some point in the future as responsible for too many health problems. 
I can't really think of much else to say about this story. It's a slapstick scene without much substance, sorry.

EjectedStar wins for me, but to be honest, I liked your other entries in previous rounds far better.

[Mandle]

Well I only have one voting PM so far. If no others come in before the deadline I will extend the voting for a few days.

[Baron]

Voted!  I liked both of my competitor's entries a lot, so my votes were pretty evenly split.

@ EjectedStar:  Not to be contrary, but I don't think your target market minds rehashing old action movie cliches.  I thought it was a great sequence.  Yeah, there was maybe a bit too much action description (did Jay really need to duck that many times before getting to the portal?), but it was punctuated with interesting if random observations that made the whole piece seem alive and gripping.  I particularly liked the running theme of Jay's dislike of after-rain (setting the scene, describing the girl's eyes, stepping in the alien monster gore).  I'm not really much of a novel reader myself, but I definitely know people who would be interested in reading a whole book like this.

@ Sinitrena: Like Lomin, I find Sjenne a frustrating character and thus hard to root for.  But I don't think it ruins the story: it's just that I think the real crux of your story, Sjenne's character development, occurs right after the end of your written piece.  She walked away, the bag weighing on her shoulders with indecision?!?  That's a Baron ending!  I liked the succinct philosophical arguments put forth from both Lomin's and Sjenne's perspectives, and the back-ground world and plot were both engaging and well-written.  If only you hadn't stopped the story right in the middle I think it could be truly great. 

I myself am guilty as charged of mashing together a last-minute submission.  I had actually written 4 pages of repulsive slop about a chipmunk trapped in some bird-netting before I came to my senses and wrote a proper silly story.    

[Sinitrena]

@ Sinitrena: Like Lomin, I find Sjenne a frustrating character and thus hard to root for.

You have no idea how frustrating she was to write! (And you're not necessarily supposed to root for her.)

[Mandle]

Voted extended until September 3rd

[EjectedStar]

My votes have been cast!  Sorry everyone, haven't found time to write out impressions, I'm back to work after paternity leave and the hospital is p-p-p-packed, so I've been pretty busy as of late.

I enjoyed the stories though!