Part 1
EoC pushes the cart. You are strapped to the cart. The ball gag is strapped to your mouth.
"MMMM", you say, in a conversational tone.
"Yes, yes," he replies, "But your paperwork was not in order."
"Mmmm?"
"Well, there's not much to be done for it now," he says, as he wrestles the cart up the church steps, "In you go." He tips the cart foward, and you are upright, facing into the church.
Oh, and you are also facing LMNO, who smiles at you. It's a smile that has perhaps too much good cheer.
"Ho ho ho!" He says, "What have we got here? Another miscreant, perhaps? Another wretched soul that just couldn't quite manage the social compact?"
"Mmm MMM Mmmm."
"Well, yes, of course you have an excuse. Everyone has one of those." He gets behind the cart and starts pushing you though the nave. "You know, a few decades ago, I knew a guy like you."
"Mmm?"
"Didn't end well, I'm afraid. He tripped on the curb and got sucked up through the bristles of a street-sweeping truck. Clearly a case of God's will. But anyway, he always said he was just trying to have a good time. He kept trying to explain himself...Which never works, and is of course why you are wearing a gag."
"MMM mmm Mmm?"
"You'll find out. I'd hate to ruin the surprise."
He wheels you through into the apse, and sets the cart upright again. You watch as he gets a crowbar and starts prying at the flagstones. He levers a large one up, exposing a narrow staircase.
"mmmm?"
"No, there's no Nessies down there. They're extinct, you may recall, if they ever existed at all." He walks back behind the cart, and lever it forward. "Grit your teeth."
He shoves the cart down the stairs. There is very little clearance...So little, in fact, that the cart doesn't flip over, as you bounce your way down.
You emerge in a low-ceilinged crypt. A tunnel slopes downward on the other side of the room. A slender woman with long, straight hair walks into your field of view.
"Another dumbass, eh? This is worse than San Antonio, anymore."
"Mmmm."
"You knew the risks when you took the job. Hang on, I'm gonna have a drink." She picks up a bag, and reaches into it. Her hand emerges, holding a chem-light. "What the fuck is this?" She asks, then leans past you toward the stairs. "WHERE'S THE BOOZE, LMNO? DO I LOOK LIKE THE KIND OF GAL WHO DRINKS CHEM-LIGHT JUICE?"
There is muffled laughter from up the stairs behind you.
"Oh," she says, "I'm gonna whup on that boy. But first..." She pushes the cart into the sloped tunnel.
You begin to accelerate, as the cart rolls down the strangely cobweb-free tunnel. Ahead of you, you can see a pinpoint of light, which begins to grow as you draw near. You are going fast now, frighteningly fast, but you know you deserve this for your crimes. For your inability to follow simple regulations. For your big, fat, stupid mouth that you somehow never used to tell a bastard WHAT.
The light is blinding now, and you shoot out of the tunnel and into daylight. You are rolling down a road, and slowing down as the wheels make a grinding noise on the blacktop. You settle to a stop.
A blond lady walks up and loosens the straps binding you to the cart.
"Keep the gag in," she says, "Nobody wants to hear it."
She helps you up, and you look around. It's very bright outside, cruelly hot, and the street signs say "4th Avenue" and "Speedway".
She smiles at you. It isn't a nice smile.
"Welcome home," she says.
Aw. I always get a warm, tingling feeling in my pance when you include me in a story. It's sweet.
Lucky you. I got strapped into a fucking wheelchair with a ballgag :eek:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 30, 2015, 07:45:26 PM
Aw. I always get a warm, tingling feeling in my pance when you include me in a story. It's sweet.
I have a very vivid mental picture of you while I wrote that.
:mittens:
Climate change. Pollution. War. The oceans turning to acid. Resurgent fundamentalism. All the myriad and horrible signs of our times...
...That don't apply to Tucson. We are outside of the universe, but we aren't looking in. No, we have our eyes peeled, while we scurry down the back alleys and into the shadows that give us at least the illusion of concealment. You don't get caught out in the open here; at least not twice.
Nobody knows how it started, or exactly when. There were scattered reports from horrified bystanders. Something with curly hair and a nose ring, some said. Other said it was a skinny guy with a Jew-fro. Others said both. All accounts agreed, however, with the horrific events. Limbs scattered all over the place, horrible screams, and some lady yelling "DADDY, I WANT A PONY!"
City hall denied everything at first. They said it was just meth heads or cannibal street urchins...But then something ate the mayor in his own limosine. The state was contacted and...Well, the line of tanks and APCs in Reid Park, with the clouds of flies circling the hatches? That tells you how well that worked out.
The radio stations continued broadcasting for a while, mostly tearful preachers bawling into the microphone. The television only showed the opening credits to Three's Company on infinite repeat. Logging onto the internet was impossible; smartphones just started hissing out a static-y voice that said things like "WE GOT ALL YOUR FRIENDS. WE GOT ALL YOUR FAMILY. SANCTU DEUS SANTORUM."
Those who were just paranoid enough hid for days. Weeks. When we came out looking for food, everyone else was gone. No bodies or anything...Just weird grafitti saying things like "UNPLUG THE WORLD" and "THEY COME THROUGH THE POWERLINES".
My friend Ben said it was the end times, the rapture...And he used to be an atheist. But he was torn to pieces by feral dogs last week. Lucky bastard at least died clean.
I'm writing all this down in case this IS just a local event. Listen to me. Listen to me. LISTEN. TO. ME. When you hear a guy singing some weird "Goodbye, This is the End" song, or a woman's voice telling you WHAT, run. Just run. Don't look, and for God's sake, don't turn on anything powered by alternating current. And as soon as you can, get out of Tucson. There's nothing here for you. It's like Silent Hill up in this bitch.
TUCSON IS A DEAD CITY.
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-UPIzoERYsrA/UKZ8yQhOVVI/AAAAAAAAAog/SjDPMI1yAI0/w454-h143-no/12%2B-%2B1)
:lulz: Hot diggity!
All that solar energy, and they're still running on fossil fuels? They should have known that was gonna catch up to them eventually. Electricity is only for the worthy.
Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on January 30, 2015, 08:32:03 PM
:lulz: Hot diggity!
All that solar energy, and they're still running on fossil fuels? They should have known that was gonna catch up to them eventually. Electricity is only for the worthy.
On the plus side, The City is now perfect. For me.
Plenty of exercise, fresh air, personally fulfilling. It's a good job.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on January 30, 2015, 08:44:56 PM
Plenty of exercise, fresh air, personally fulfilling. It's a good job.
:lulz:
Whoa. :eek: That gave me the strangest sensation in my middle-parts.
A lot of the visual that conjured up in my head was almost a bit TV static like. Like a heat shimmer slightly pixelated. That was great!
I was picturing something like a zombie apocalypse, only more terrifying for not having the level of familiarity with whats going on that one has with zombies. Zombies are predictable; they write books on how to survive them. this, I dunno what this is but its fucking terrific. Great job!
"It's the ideal deterrent!"
The man was a tactitard, I decided. New enough to the city to be enamored of the freedom to haul around hardware - but not QUITE getting how to apply it yet.
"I mean WHO gets in the face of a guy with a flamethrower?"
He was only wearing half the asbestos he needed, and in the wrong places. Still, sweat ran down his imitation "high andtight haircut, and through the inevitable soul patch on its way into his brand name "operator tunic" and trousers. I don't think I even need to mention the boots, other than the fact they were meltable.
I chose my words carfeully.
"Somone's going to cap your fuel tank for fun, Matt. I'm going to stand somewhere else now. Good luck."
He turned the SPECIAL shade of pale and began blubbering about his situational awareness and (civilian) training. I focused on walking outside the inevitable flaming doom radius. Some people just don't have the temperment for HE or flame weapons. Some people don't stop to think sometimes. Sure the city runs loose and vicious, but folks get hung up on the idea that it THINKS.
Fact: it does no such thing. Sure, there can be premeditation. Most malice is the off the cuff deranged humor sort though. Try to explain the mores of classical music to an R+B crowd. That's about where reason ranks around here. Lucky I figured that out when I did. The smiling bastard who wheeled me in here strapped to a victorian era wheelchair caught up with me at a local watering hole and told me I might make 6 months here thinking like that.
Then he asked why I wasn't armed.
I could have kicked him in the teeth. I had blisters to horrible to tell from the single stack 9 riding next to my balls, and I'd never eat REAL spice again to make sure my emergency cigar tube 20 gauge zip gun didn't get dislodged. I told him the heavy hardware was in the Jeep - If I needed to quick draw anti-materiel capability I was dead anyways, so why worry about it.
More smiles, and a round of bourbons.
My senses returned half the night later on the dance floor. Somehow I was dancing with two people. One had a remarkably sharp trilby on and winked at me knowingly. The other looked the adopted child of Ms. Frizzle and Kali.
"Keep dancing white boy." She said with a smile - and a razor pressed to my inner thigh. Yup - I'd met these two before.
"ALways pick a good jukebox bar." Sharp Hat said. "I've hardly ever seen the AWFUL happen while the Black Keys are on.
I almost offfered to sharpen that - but thought better of it.
I came to in a heep of saddle blankets next to some scrub pine.
"GRab your shit Cossack - New Prussia need you!"
Yup, one of those days.....
:lulz: That was an amazing addition.
:eek: :)
WOW! You guys really know how to jam.
Niiiice.
:lulz: the fucking zip gun
Richter is the pin-puller. He pulls the pins. He isn't responsible for anything after that, so you'd best step lively when he hands it to you and asks you to sign on the line. Accountability uber alles, he says, and he has a point. So just sign for the fucking thing. You have 3-7 seconds to accomplish this simple task, and that of making it go 20 meters away from you. 5 meters will probably do, but you will at that point be out of warranty.
This is a family tradition. Richter's grandfather pulled the ordnance arming pins at 20,000 feet, back in '44. After that, the ordnance was the Germans' problem. The Germans are very brave and thorough people, but they do not think fast in situations like that; It did not end well.
Needs more tomorrow.
YUSSSS
yes
Nigel exists for the children. She entertains them. She does magic acts on special occasions, like "saw the man in half", except that she doesn't use a trick box. There's screaming and blood, but sure as hell, than man is in two pieces. Nothing up her sleeves, folks. It's the power of illusion.
She teaches children about the wonders of nature. The inherent beauty of the bullet ant. The poetry in motion of the guinea worm. Some parents complain, but she files them in with the creationists and other science-deniers. That filing cabinet is getting kinda gross, because they cannot shut up and they cannot explain. You can see where the first and second example tie in with each other.
She encourages exercise in the nation's youth. Sometimes she drops them off in the green lane when the tram is due. Run, kiddies, run! The lucky children who are selected for this special treat learn a great deal about natural selection. You could almost say it becomes a religion for them.
So this is why the children of Portland have a thousand-yard stare. They are simply engrossed in all the wonders that they have been shown and to which they have been subjected.
Leln curates several books on Nigel at the less-well known library. This poses several unique challenges. Mainly, she has to keep the hordes of disaffected wannabes OFF the book (Since reading about Nigel and forming a poor imitation is much safer than asking Nigel how to be Nigel in person)
Reading Nigel's name with too much interest tends to summon her, and there is inevitable splatter.
Nigel designed the dispatch program for Providence and southeaster Massachusetts EMS. This should explain a few things.
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz: