1 - Song of the Tempest - (Injin v Taed)

[Kaez]

Song of the Tempest - (Injin v Taed)
Constraint: The following must be the beginning to your story, verbatim:

"We need to get out!"

The rain poured in great curtains of dancing light. Opaque and flooded in darkness and thunder were any familiar sights. Storefronts were boarded. Streetlights were suffocated. All life was muzzled, swallowed by the water or fled to sanctuary. The blurred outlines of doors and houses and sidewalks were all filtered through a great madness of water and shadow. Twisting, falling, in countless, infinite drops. Endless, endless walls of storm turned the streets to an unsolvable maze.

"What?" Shouts were tempered by the unbearable volume of the crackling clouds and the rain -- everywhere, on everything, pounding, resonating. Drumming, drumming the end of the world.

"It's coming! The Storm! We have to get out! Come on!"

It felt too late. It was here. It was already here, don't you see? The Storm. They were right.

"Fuck!"

"What?"

"FUCK!"

[Injin]

"We need to get out!"

The rain poured in great curtains of dancing light. Opaque and flooded in darkness and thunder were any familiar sights. Storefronts were boarded. Streetlights were suffocated. All life was muzzled, swallowed by the water or fled to sanctuary. The blurred outlines of doors and houses and sidewalks were all filtered through a great madness of water and shadow. Twisting, falling, in countless, infinite drops. Endless, endless walls of storm turned the streets to an unsolvable maze.

"What?" Shouts were tempered by the unbearable volume of the crackling clouds and the rain -- everywhere, on everything, pounding, resonating. Drumming, drumming the end of the world.

"It's coming! The Storm! We have to get out! Come on!"

It felt too late. It was here. It was already here, don't you see? The Storm. They were right.

"Fuck!"

"What?"

"FUCK!"

“I’D RATHER NOT FUCKING DO THAT AT THE MOMENT, WHAT DOES DUCKING HAVE ANYTHING TO DO W-“

And just like that, a hand reached out to him and grabbed him, yanking him indoors.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be young and outside during this storm young man?” the old shopkeeper said to the man who had foolishly decided to go outside today of all days, “Especially during a Career Storm. I’d think your parents would’ve told you to stay inside when the Job Cyclone comes into town”

Confused, he knew that the Storm was already here, but THAT storm? Surely it wasn’t already June…oh god it was June.

No wonder he’d seen the other people who had gotten diplomas earlier in the month flee for the highlands. They simply were not ready. Hell, he wasn’t ready either, but his mother had insisted he go to the store to get some m- waitaminute.

She was always keen on him getting a job, even when he could not afford to use his time in that manner. She’d always hint that if he got a job and stuck on it, instead of graduating from high school, he’d be a lot wealthier than kids who managed to escape to the College of the Seven Truths, who had to pay an arm and a leg, mostly scavenged from hobos, in order to pay for their continued education.

Even adults could be dragged into the storm, with the horrors unleashed by the magics of it. No matter what, if you were around the age 18 or older, if you were caught in the storm, you’d be forced into a career by some mad god who decided that in order to determine your career in life, at least until you were caught in the storm…again.

Most of that was rumor, but it was notoriously difficult to change career paths once the storm chose for you. The storm that determined the livelihood and survival of every man, woman, and small man-child was here and there was little he could do about it. In the meantime, however, the dire warnings of the person outside…were they alright?

“Don’t bother worrying about him” the old shopkeeper chided, “that man gets hit by the storm every year and comes back the same profession. Town crier, he is. Of course the storm apparently has a sense of humor” they added, grabbing a large board and finishing up the covers of this side of the window. The wall of wood that covered what used to be a functional window seemed sturdy enough, perhaps due to year of practice. Or overzealous wood-packing, who knew with this person he’d never met.

And thanks to this person, he’d escaped the wrath of the storm. Or at least he was pretty sure he had. He still felt kind of wet, and although no hand of the storm had yanked him into the unknown, instead this kind shopkeeper had saved his life. Maybe soon he could go to school at the College of the Seven Truths.

Looking around the shop, he continued to focus on taking it in. After all, he was surely going to have to stay here for a while, right? Especially with all of the windows and doors boarded up. Thank the god of safety for the shopkeeper getting him inside before the storm got to the fever pitch that it was guaranteed to get to.

“What’s your name, kid?” the shopkeeper asked, as if genuinely curious for the first time in their elderly life. The old man, who at first when he’d come in seemed angry…well, it didn’t SEEM like that anymore…? Weird.

“Darrel Woods, sir. My family lives in the woods by the town. We’ve avoided the storm for years but given that the woods are filled with loggers now as the town expands…well, I guess that’s why my mother sent me into town. Maybe she wants a different life for me? But she’ll have to wait” he said, looking at the old man questioningly.

“Darrel? Kid. You need to learn not to spout out so damned much when you speak. Gotta keep it on the necessary shit or you won’t get any job with that mouth” the shopkeeper said, perhaps proud by the look on his face. The old man rocked a little back and forth and he lifted his cane and patted his shoulder, “I think you’re missing something quite important kid” he said, shaking his head.

Looking back at the owner of the establishment, he patted his person, finding everything soggy but mostly in order, “What are you talking about? Everything’s on me that’s supposed to be on me. My shopping list is soggy yet legible, my wallet’s still there, and my-“and before he could finish, Darrel was smacked across the face with a rather gnarled cane. A bit hollower than it looked; Darrel felt the cane as if it was a pipe slowly caressing his face. But also punching it. His face kinda felt a bit pummeled, but he was still alive, right?

“Darrel, you idiot. Look around you. See anything that doesn’t seem to be right?” the shopkeeper said, looking somewhat disappointed by Darrel’s insistence to open his mouth. “The windows. The door. There’s no hole in the floor. Add it up, smartass” the elderly gentleman said harshly.

What could the shopkeeper mean by all of that? Old Man Jenkins or whatever the fuck he was calling himself opened the door for him and let him in. After that, while he was distracted by the wetness of the storm the old shopkeeper had boarded up the door and then once he was no longer distracted, began to go for the windows. It was simple logic.

“I don’t see anything wrong here, sir, I think everything’s fine!” Darrel said, proud of himself as he realized that nothing could possibly be wrong. The old man was simply tricking him into thinking he was stupid because he was proud of himself. And stinky. Oh, also old. That had to be it.

The sweet caress of grandfather Cane-to-the-face soon awoke him from his youthful delirium, “No you dimwit. I. DID NOT. BRING YOU IN HERE” the old shopkeeper said, absolutely red in the face now, his posture bent and his cane clutched to the point where it looked like it would crack under the pressure.

Oh no. Oh No. OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

No, no, he couldn’t be a shopkeeper, all he knew how to do was cut down trees and smoke mushrooms that grew around stumps! As Darrel panicked, the old man simply left him to his devices and walked into the stock room. Hopefully there’d be a pickled brain in there to help Darrel with his lack of apparent intelligence. It was going to be a long shitty day for them both, it seemed…

A little while later, after the old shopkeeper had thought about suicide as a way to escape Darrel’s stupidity at least twice (Not that he’d actually mess up his shop doing that), he came out to see that Darrel had decided to apparently go through the fruit section.

Darrel turned to the old man, his mouth full of red hot blood oranges that were superheated by the fact that Darrel had apparently used fire to do so. By which was obviously meant that the whole back of the store was on fire.

Eyes wide, the old man looked to Darrel and shook his head, rushing forward and grabbing a bucket, which he flung at the fire. Almost instantly, it seemed, the conflagration went out, the liquid in the bucket expended as a result therein. Turning to Darrel, he asked, “What were you thinking starting a fire in my store during the gods cursed storm? Are you stupid?”

“Extremely, apparently” Darrel said, more than aware of what had been going on inside of the decrepit yet apparently agile old man’s head. “I’ve been called stupid before…but what I did was simply step on the bellows, it hit a lit candle, and the fucking wall was on fire. Not my god threshing fault.” He said, grabbing his left arm with his right arm and his right arm with his left. “I’m also incredibly clumsy, so why did the God of Stupid Choices decide to put me here?” he asked, blinking several times as if moisture threatened to return to his face.

“Fuck if I know kid. All I know is that the backroom is now your bedroom and you can move your shit in when you finish lollygagging all summer. So get fucking used to it, you idiotic son of a bitch. Seriously, she sent you out in the middle of the storm? She IS a bitch” the owner of the establishment said, shaking his head as he sighed. The storm was letting up so the sun would be out again. The kid could go home. Grabbing a few mangos, he tossed them willy-nilly at the kid, one of them landing in Darrel’s hand, another on his shoulder, and a third on his head. “Go home. Seriously” he said, prying out the boards at the door. It seemed the rain was gone.

It was over.

Darrel turned to the old man and looked to him, head cocked to the side as the mango rolled down his face into his outstretched hand, “…What’s your name old man?”

“Darrel Williams. Fucking welcome to Darrel’s One Stop Shop. Now go home before I change my mind about letting you live here, idiot” he said, shaking his head. Kids these days…

Leaving, Darrel looked back, only for a moment, before stomping through the streets of the town, heading up the road to the woods. Kids these days indeed, leaving without saying good bye…well, the kid would be back. Before Ol’ Darrel died, hopefully.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

"We need to get out!"

The rain poured in great curtains of dancing light. Opaque and flooded in darkness and thunder were any familiar sights. Storefronts were boarded. Streetlights were suffocated. All life was muzzled, swallowed by the water or fled to sanctuary. The blurred outlines of doors and houses and sidewalks were all filtered through a great madness of water and shadow. Twisting, falling, in countless, infinite drops. Endless, endless walls of storm turned the streets to an unsolvable maze.

"What?" Shouts were tempered by the unbearable volume of the crackling clouds and the rain -- everywhere, on everything, pounding, resonating. Drumming, drumming the end of the world.

"It's coming! The Storm! We have to get out! Come on!"

It felt too late. It was here. It was already here, don't you see? The Storm. They were right.

"Fuck!"

"What?"

"FUCK!"

A hand whistled through the air, open-palmed, parting The Storm's miasma like a torch thrust into darkness, and connected with a meaty smack. Philip staggered to his knees under the blow, and a bell-toll ringing in his ears shook his nightmares apart like broken glass. Robert stood over him like a brooding black knight, eyes aflame, clad in armour plates of hammered shadow. But even as Philip watched, the dark image receded, and he was left looking only at his brother in sodden jacket and cargo pants. The anger in his eyes was mingled with fear and concern.

"Jesus Christ, Phil, you need to get a hold of yourself. Are you all right?" he held out his hand to help him up.

Philip shook his head and grabbed the proffered limb, hauling himself to his feet. That feeling of dreadful, purposeful malevolence that had suffused the storm a moment ago was washing out of him with each new sheet of pouring rain, and he was left only with the more mundane concerns of an approaching category 3 hurricane.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. I needed that."

Behind Robert, several young men in various assortments of all-weather gear had stopped to watch, distracted and unsettled by Philip's display. Farther back still, in watery soft focus lit by the refracted yellow glow of steady sodium lamps, fuzzy silhouettes passed sandbags hand to hand, and hammered two-by-fours across rattling windows. Robert glanced over his shoulder, then took Philip's arm and began leading him bodily away from the workforce. He shouted backwards as he went.

"Seen enough? Get back to work! Ida won't wait for street theatre."

They sheltered in the lee of Donaldson's Grocery, already locked down tight and shelves stripped bare. Robert turned to face Philip and took him by the shoulders, brow still furrowed. Philip tried to meet Rob's gaze but failed, and lowered his eyes instead. His body slumped, limply sodden, seeming like a scrap of wet cloth hanging from the two pins of his brother's firm yet compassionate grip.

"Look Phil, I know it's hard, but you ... you really need to keep it together, okay? I can't have you breaking down right now. People die in storms like this."

Philip rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

"I know Rob, believe me I do. It's just that the storm is ... it's so ... there's so much of it, yeah? Filling up the whole sky like that? It got in my head and there just wasn't room for anything else for a while. I'm really sorry."

Rob let one hand drop and shook his head sadly.

"That ... that sounds rough, man. If we just had your pills ... of course it would be the damn pharmacy that would wind up basically underwater. Look, maybe it would be better if you headed back to the school. We've got things handled pretty good out here right now. You can go help out where there isn't ... isn't so much sky. Okay?"

Philip looked out into the street where a few of the other men were still glancing in his direction. He nodded.

"Yeah, that sounds smart."

"You need a hand getting back there, or ...?"

"Nah, nah I got it. It's not far and I'm feeling better. I can hoof it down Main Street on my own.

Rob nodded, and glanced back towards the mounting earthworks.

"Cool. Go fast, okay? I gotta get back. Be safe out there little bro."

"You too," Philip replied, and hitched his collar up before ducking back out into the driving rain.

As he moved down the empty road, Philip couldn't help but notice how gaunt his hometown looked. Every extraneous protuberance, every flange and flap, had been stripped out or battened down by the emergency crews, or else been ripped away by the mounting wind. The hollow-eyed buildings had been pared down to bulimic skeletons; desiccated corpses mummified in curtains of water.

He tried to keep his eyes on the ground as he felt shivering waves of malediction stir around the corners of his sight. The downpour drummed an irresistible tattoo against mailboxes, pavement, and shingled roofs, demanding his attention with the weird mathematics and cryptography buried in its rhythm. The wind stirred up primal spectres and unquiet ghosts along with the flurries of leaves and rubbish, and he felt the weight of displaced air compressing his eyes and sinuses and inner ear.

Philip took a few short breaths and hurried forward, pointedly ignoring the churning cauldron of The Storm above him. Before long he was shuffling quickly past the chainlink fence that fronted William Howard Taft secondary school, although it thrummed in the rising gale like a live wire.

He fairly jogged up the short concrete walkway, and pulled hard on one of the solid metal doors. He heaved furiously against the wind and the pyramid of chattering gremlins that sought to hold it closed, then tumbled forward into the softly lit gymnasium. His skin prickled with cold sweat underneath the rain, but he felt he had locked the worst of it outside with the storm.

The school had lost power hours ago when a tree fell and pancaked its transformer, but it was still one of the driest and sturdiest large buildings in town, so it had steadily accreted a ramshackle tent village lit by gas lanterns and portable 3200 Kelvin LEDs. The gym was windowless, and built from thick insulated cinderblock walls, and you could barely hear the howling wind from inside. Some kids half wrapped up in sleeping bags were playing a card game heavy on slapping and shouting, but other than that the scene was fairly subdued; muffled by blankets, high ceilings, and apprehension.

Philip stepped gratefully into the room and began stripping off his wet clothes to hang alongside a portable heater, where they quickly began to steam merrily. He caught a few odd looks, but for the most part people were too caught up in their own concerns to worry about an unmedicated mental case in damp long underwear.

He selected from a donated rack of fluffy robes and sweaters and helped himself to fresh coffee from a stainless steel samovar, then moved to a secluded alcove and sat to sip in peace. As he reclined amidst the sudden unexpected comfort, he wondered after the various burrows and warrens that extended into the earth beneath the tents and blanket forts. He could see no cooking flames from where he was, so surely the savory smells in the air must have been drawn up from those womblike depths through hidden chimneys. He worried briefly at the possibility of flood, but then remembered that the Underfolk built tight and sturdy, and even The Storm would find no purchase against their fortifications.

A gaggle of laughing children clattered past, disrupting Philip's chain of thought. The map of Undertown's tuberous branches, so clear in his mind, began to contract and wither like muscle tissue in rigor mortis, until only the plasticized hardwood of the gymnasium floor remained.

A pair of moms camped down in the wool and flannel nest next to Philip's, their images separated into cubist snippets by the patchwork blanket dividing wall. They were chatting and gossiping idly, and for the most part Philip was content to filter them out, until a few overheard keywords pinged a node of his attention.

"I just hope some junkie doesn't take advantage of the confusion," one of the women was saying. "We're locked up tight, but all those drugs just sitting there with the police so busy must be like a damn treasure trove for them. "

"I didn't even know you had any drugs at the store," the other woman replied.

"We only just got licensed. Mostly cough syrup and nose spray right now, but we hired a nice boy right out of pharmacy college to run the prescription side of things."

Philip scrambled upright and nearly spilled the remains of his coffee in the process. He became momentarily tangled in the hanging blankets, and was forced to hop and pirouette until he freed himself, and came to a stumbling stop above the two woman, who looked at him with alarm.

"Excuse me," he stammered. "I'm sorry to intrude. But what store are you talking about? It's not the pharmacy on 3rd Street, is it?

"I'm not a junkie!" he added, after a moment of awkward silence.

The woman looked at him suspiciously, but for whatever reason Philip seemed to pass whatever mental litmus test she had established for rooting out addicts, and she answered him a moment later.

"No, it's Anderson General, out by the highway. We've been doing very well and we're expanding."

"That's ... ah ... you wouldn't happen to know if you carry olanzapine, would you?"

The woman's eyes narrowed.

"That's not for sex, is it?"

Philip shook his head vigorously.

"Well," she said. "In that case then yes, I think I have seen that one around. Little purple box. Mind, we're not open now, with the storm and all ..."

But Philip was only barely listening. An image had flashed into brilliant clarity in his head, or rather a pair of images. An exercise in superposition took place, a small white tablet sharing space with a gleaming golden grail, existing first as one, then the other, then both at once. Looking down at the woman, he could see with surprise that she had never been a middle-aged mother, but was actually far older, and wore only the carved wooden mask of relative youth. Her second eyes twinkled gimlet bright with accumulated wisdom, and her second mouth described an epic quest even as the mask spoke of road closures and security gates.

With a nod of silent understanding, Philip turned and went to don his regalia where they hung by the portable heater, now almost dry. He braced himself by the exit, for he knew The Storm would be truly terrible if he gave it a second chance to claim him. Already he could sense the empty hunger of it; a pinhole rupture in the sky torn wide into ragged void by its own sucking gravity. But with the image of the grail still in mind he knew that he had to try. Only with such a talisman could the town hope to survive this night.

He threw the doors wide and stepped bravely forward into the dark and stormy night. His silhouette moved away down the cracked concrete causeway, and was swallowed in short order by the relentless rain.

[ASGetty ((Zovo))]

This was another tough match but for different reason that the other pairing. With Dragon and Silver I had a hard time because the pieces were so similar. With these it was tough because they were so different.

Injin, I don't have a lot to say about this other than "Wha?"
Like Taed mentioned, I really liked the ideas behind it, but the story itself didn't do much for me. It was... I'm not sure what the word I'm looking for is. Incoherent; that's the word. It's like nothing really came together. It was rough from the start; the passage you were given was all about "getting out of here" and your character was immediately taken -into- a place. Then there was a -really- distracting issue with your adverbs that I had a hard time getting past; you kept referring to your old man in the plural (or neuter singular). I fact you were so consistent with it that I expected some manner of twist where it turned out the shopkeeper was maybe more than one person, or asexual non-human or something, and that never really delivered.

Also this:
"Oh no. Oh No. OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

Don't ever do this. It's farcical. It's impossible to take seriously. In fact, in my opinion, any time you're using the text format for emphasis (ie: using all caps to indicate yelling, or extending out words as per the above) you're doing something wrong. It doesn't work. All this aside, though, the thing which dragged your piece down the most was that halfway through I knew where it was going; but I had to continue to navigate this maze of thought-vomit to confirm it.

I'm sorry, reading through that, that's a rough first round review, but it's honest. The career storm is a really fun whimsical idea and I think there's a lot there to be worked with, I just wish you'd spent a little more time tying everything up into a nice package rather than just sprinting to your conclusion.

Taed, my first thought upon finishing is, this is a great beginning to a story I'd like to read. There's no conflict, there's no resolution. There's a world here that you're building and I'm intrigued by it and I'm intrigued by your character and his perception of his world; I think it would be a really interesting point of view to explore as a reader; but it's simply unfinished. In the future, be careful with your dialogue. It got to feeling more like exposition than actual words people would say to one another and that tripped me up. Things like: "That ... that sounds rough, man. If we just had your pills ... of course it would be the damn pharmacy that would wind up basically underwater."

I'm assuming both these guys know why they don't have his medication. There's other ways to let the reader know aside from spelling it out. And I think that's probably my biggest criticism... Aside from the fact that it's not done.

Ultimately, I'm going to give this round to Taed. You imagery and descriptions, the world you hinted at, all of it was really cool and I think I'd like to see more of it. But know that if Injin's had just been more cohesive he'd have taken the round because his was at least had a beginning, middle and end.

Taed takes round One.