[x]

Mere Technicalities"But I am Khamul!" shouted the spandex-clad athlete, thumping a bony fist on the chipboard table. "I am the fastest rider in my great nation! Why is it that I am not allowed to compete?"

"Well, you see..." the organiser arched his fingers nervously. "We have certain...criteria that athletes must meet in order to compete in this event."

"Oh, really? And what might they be."

"Erm..." the organiser looked the man up and down. "It's...erm..."

"Do you not allow black riders in the Tour de France?"

"Oh no!" The organiser waved his hands frantically. "It's not that! It's not that at all!"

"Then what is it?" the rider barked. "Spit it out, man!

Leopold Runs So SlowArms out like a flying squirrel, Leopold's Sketchers crunched across the gravel. He felt like he was in one of those comic books his older brother, Chris, was always reading, the ones with the girls in bright, skintight costumes, and the men with bulging muscles and red capes. Leo swooped around his driveway, his lips blubbering together to make the noise of a helicopter's propeller, then making the vehicle go down in flames, exploding in a shower of spittle.

"Look at Leo!" Casey from next door exclaimed, pointing to him from the kitchen window. "He can't even catch up with that leaf!" The said leaf skittered along the pavement, Leo trundlin

The SketchHe loses his first kiss in autumn. He's twelve, she's just turned thirteen, and at the time he isn't sure what all the fuss is about but knows how special it is anyway.

She's gorgeous, pale-skin, brown hair, dark eyes always filled with happiness and joy the way he wishes he could be. She doesn't want to be there any more than he does, and they grouse to each other about how they don't need a 'special school.' It's the first time he's worked up the courage to say it.

She carries a book too, just like his sketchbook, but she says it's a diary. It's hung with a little lock on the front and he jokes about it being the key to her heart, a littl

CrawlspaceExploring tiny, dark spaces is an unpleasant, and often inadvisable, thing for a young boy to be
doing. The small door in the corner of your grandmother's spare room, for example, is not only offlimits
but the gaping mouth beyond it is also probably full of tiny scuttling spiders which will drop
onto your head if you move.
None of this is going to prevent your older brother shoving you in there, though, no matter how
you curl your legs and try to kick him in the knees. He is a giant in comparison to you, almost adultsized
already. You're nine but look seven. And he has hold of both of your wrists in one hand. The other
hand is crushed

GameAnd here I am, holding on for dear life
(but since when is my life dear to anyone, anyway?)
while you roll the dice one more time.
"Two," you say, and I sigh in relief because I'm number four. Number two gets dragged on the floor towards you and you kiss her on the forehead
(with a bullet)
and she falls to the ground and the men carry her away to the pit.
A new number two comes forth and she's prettier than the last one. But I look away. There's no point in finding beauty in this.
I actually heard the future being preached sometime before it happened.
"The gods are angry," the old priest said, "they'll turn against us."
And they did, alright, when they gave conscience to our robots and made them overtake humanity, that they enjoy torturing.
I know this is not your fault.
You're probably suffering even more than any of us
(after all, you're the one holding the gun)
but I don't know if I can forgive you.
Yet, I loved you once. It was a pretty and shiny dream. But also a crazy one. I was

Secrets - A Dark Flame StorySome say Gale City is the worst place to live in the whole United States. I've been living here since I was two years old. Considering I'm ten now, I guess that's not a long time, but eight years is usually long enough to get to know a place. Before I was placed in Gale—and I can really remember that far back—I used to live in Chicago. My mom and stepdad and four sisters lived in a two bedroom apartment in the projects. It was clean and we had food to eat. The problem was that dad always needed money to pay for the "junk." Back then, I never understood why anyone would want to buy garbage. I now know that junk doesn't mean trash,

Small GiftsThe cat who lives in my neighborhood brought me another dead lizard.
"It's lovely," I observed, "but you do realize I have no use for that."
"Oh! I didn't know," the cat replied. "It's how we show affection for our humans. If you'd like a dead bird instead, that could be arranged."
"No no, I get what you're doing. It's sweet, really. It's just--"
She paused from grooming herself to look up at me quizzically.
"It's just... I can't do anything with a dead lizard or bird. Except throw it away. Which, by the way, reflects in no way on my appreciation of--"
"Wait," the cat sat up. "You throw them away? I worked my ass off to catch that thing. Least you could do is take a bite." She nudged the small green body with a paw.
"Here's the deal," I began again. "What I really need is money. Barring a miracle, I'll be gone from this place at the end of the month. I'm already behind on the rent."
"But I like you!"

Painting NightsDear Emma,

The truth is I'm not a painter.

The truth is I followed you here from that flower shop on Whitmore Street, two and a half months ago. Please, keep reading.

You actually took my breath away when I glimpsed you holding a bunch of lilies in your slender hands at the flower shop counter. You stunned me. That's never happened to me before. I was watching you turning the bouquet left to right, you seemed in awe of the flowers' beauty. Your eyes, your perfect smile, the way you held yourself. It was not a conscious decision to follow you here. I think I was in a trance. I know how it looks; I know it sounds like a

the strawberry tartOne afternoon I bought a tart for thirty dollars.

Didn't seem like much at the time, just a couple of bills out of my back pocket, for a tart about three-quarters the size of my fist, laden with whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

I popped a strawberry in my mouth and I liked it, so I took another bite. Didn't like the whipped cream so much. Ate the strawberries, the edges of the chocolate pastry, and threw the rest of the tart away.

When I turned around and strolled back home, I felt the sunshine on my face and I thought that this world could do with a little more happiness, this bliss of a bright afternoon, more often.

Then I rounded

Lady of 1876 Ironically, it was my stubbornness which caused me to change my convictions. Though Nathaniel was undoubtedly a kind-hearted young man, he was incurably delusional. He entertained the strangest ideas, and then in his spare time vehemently tried to convince me they were true. People, sentient people, could be built from simple mechanical parts, he insisted.

“All you’d need is a boiler and some clockwork. Just as you’ve got, Adelaide. Just as your inventor must’ve done,” he’d say. I usually ignored these benign ramblings and proceeded with what I was best at, namely repairing clocks and pocket watches. Nat

GambleShe grips the slot machine lever like he grips his gun.

Reverently.

Carefully.

With a whispered prayer.

"One more try," she breathes, "and I'll strike it rich." She stares at the pulsing machine as the shapes begin to spin.

"One more day," he whispers, "I have enough in me for one more day." He lowers the weapon back into the drawer and drives to work.

1. Complicated200 Theme Challenge.

1. Complicated.
----------------

"How complicated can it be?"
So he said, as together we stared at the problem of the moment. Our professor's minute, near-incomprehensible handwriting marched all over the whiteboard, numbers and chemical symbols sprawled across every spare inch in a strange, orderly dance.
"Famous last words," was my muttered reply. With great reluctance, I tore a page out of my notebook and uncapped my pen. Biting on the end of it, I narrowed my eyes at the offending symbols. Carbon, oxygen, another two carbons, hydrogen...the alcohol becomes an aldehyde which becomes a carboxylic acid

Nuclear SnowflakesSpring came, and we danced in the still white of nuclear fallout. Every flake of snow is unique, they said, and we wonder how many crystals were impaled by their neighbor for shining just a bit too brightly. Everybody is unique. Everybody is special. And we hate each other for it.

We pass a group of twelve year old kids licking rations off of their boney fingers and leering at the world. They ask me for my number and I give them the digits for emergency services. They won't know the difference. The glass shards pierced their eyes, and now they can't see.

Six years olds make gang signs with chalk. Once upon a time, my mom used to tell me, ra

What I Wanted/Desire

Grandma is dead. She's dead, and I do not know what I am supposed to feel. Certainly, I should feel sad, right? I should be crushed by grief, and go through all the stages, and have group therapy and cry until I think I'm sane enough to go back to a semblance of living. Or should I be indifferent? I haven't known her that well, her living in Illinois and myself being a ten hour drive away. She was the fragile hug and musty-smelling house for a week and a half in May, after school got out. She was an observer as we cleaned the fish we'd caught in the cow pond down the way, marveling at the sunnies that dwarfed my father's hand.

We Were Angels"Mermaids, sirens, they don't exist," the grizzled old sailor said.

"But you saw what happened," the cabin boy insisted. His dark green eyes were wide and a bit teary; he was only twelve, and it was his first ocean voyage. Seeing a man climb over the rail and lose himself in the waves had shaken the boy up, though what was most disturbing about it was the look of bliss on the man's face as he leapt.

"Charlie was always loopy. He made himself see what he wanted to see and he jumped in after it." The old man shrugged. "We come from the sea, and it calls to us."

"The priest says we come from dust."

"Your priest has never been out of sight of

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   “No, sir.”
   “Not even a firecracker?”
   “No, sir.”
   “So am I to understand that you just saw black skin and fired?”
   It took a few moments for Skeletor to answer. “Yes, sir.”
   Thomas, who had been silent throughout this exchange, shifted a little to the side, to dissociate himself from the killer.
   But the Major smiled. He opened his arms and bear-hugged Skeletor as if he had found a long-lost child. When he was finished he stepped back and said, “You did the right thing, son. You trusted your heart.”
I’m honestly not sure whether to describe AK Dawson’s MiG-23 Broke My Heart as an easy read or a hard one. On the one ha

The Phantom of the StadiumThis had been Chrissie's big chance, she thought. The stadium seated two thousand people—more than ten times bigger than the sort of audience she was used to—and wasn't it possible that one of them might be someone important? Someone in a band? Or maybe even some kind of opera guy. She had always wanted to have a go at opera, which, given her present situation, seemed kind of ironic. Or was it literal? Figurative? She settled for "weird."

"Weird" also summed up the man at the organ quite nicely. His hands flew across the rows of keys, occasionally snapping out to one side or the other, working the stops. A porcelain mask obscured half his fa

The Mucky Angel It was a cold day in late November when the angel first perched atop the tree. It was not like the angels that had come before. Where once little bulbs had flickered, LEDs now beamed their glorious light out into the sky. Where once a ratty cotton garment had swung glumly in the breeze, elegant synthetic fabrics now fluttered joyfully, wreathing the plastic limbs with silken life. And where once flaking paint had stood for features—eyes and nose—a head of polyethylene looked down upon the crowd, outsmiling the children far below. The angel was a marvel, sparkling with fifty colours atop the tree, but most marvellous of all was the sign it he

Goldilocks, by Anna Rose‘Funny,’ said Rose, ‘that
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‘Who?’ I asked.
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HundeminenI don't know words very well, but I think they call the thing "Tank." It is a big fat thing with a long nose and it smells of metal and diesel. Though I don't know words very well, I have come to understand that I must go to Tank and bite the cord on my chest. I must worry it until heavy thing that is mine falls beneath me because this makes Man-With-Hat happy and when Man-With-Hat is happy he feeds me. This is good because I am hungry all the time. If I do not worry the cord and instead come back with the thing that is mine then Man-With-Hat is not happy and he strikes me instead of feeds. This is how I learn to worry the cord and drop the t

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                “Yes.”
                “Thinking about before?”
                “Yes.”
                There was a pause. “And what do you think?”

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I Can Haz Ceasefire?

by *DamonWakes, Oct 13, 2012, 6:59:27 AM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Humor / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

"I'm not sure I fully understand the traditions of this race," said general Zhlag, "but I don't think that's normal."

"You there!" called the commander. "Human. What are you doing?"

"I just want to talk for a minute," he shouted across the blasted field. "Don't shoot!"

"I've read about this," said the general. "Isn't a white flag more traditional?" he shouted to the messenger.

"We're in the middle of a war!" the messenger replied. "Not a lot of white flags handy."

"I suppose practical matters sometimes require one to deviate from tradition, but I've never heard of somebody calling a truce with a cat on a stick."

"Well, like I said. Not a lot of white flags around at the moment."

"It's not even a white cat!"

"Not a lot of white cats, either."

General Zhlag decided not to draw attention to what must already have been an embarrassing matter. "I take it you are speaking on behalf of the Earth people. What is it you wanted to say?" he asked.

"Just one thing," replied the messenger: "Sic him, Mittens!"

The cat launched itself from the pole like a fluffy cannonball, latching onto the general's face.

"Aargh!" yelled the general. "Retreat!!! Retreat!!!"

"I say," said the commander, sipping his space tea. "I don't pretend to be an expert, but I thought it was supposed to be dreadfully unsportsmanlike to use a white flag like that. It might even be a war crime."

"Well," shrugged the messenger, "it's lucky it was just a cat, then, isn't it?"

I Can Haz Ceasefire?by *DamonWakes

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Humor / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

Inspired by a moment in Family Guy when Peter Griffin, during a brief standoff with the US Army, asks his dog Brian: "Can I tie you to a pole and use you as a white flag?"

Despite having posted a journal about the #WritersInk October Write Off, I got distracted and didn't get started until about fifteen minutes before the end.

Whoops. This is the product of the only round I was there for--prompt words Deviate and Race--and somewhat inexplicably has made it into the Shortlist.

See the Shortlist here: [link]

Daily Literature Deviation: January 4th, 2013

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~Doodelay Jan 9, 2013 Student Writer

so dignified

*DamonWakes Jan 12, 2013 Writer

One must always maintain one's composure.

~Doodelay Jan 9, 2013 Student Writer

so dignified

*xlntwtch Jan 5, 2013 Writer

Featured here [link]

*DamonWakes Jan 7, 2013 Writer

Thank you so much!

*xlntwtch Jan 7, 2013 Writer

Seen about a week to ten days, then replaced.
Lit gets moved around a lot in my journal.
Still, I'm glad it was there and look forward to more by you.
Oh--and you're welcome