(3 - Bravo) Reffy v. Jordoom

[Kaez]

Comedy. While the other group is stuck with the scary stuff, I'm pretty sure for at least a few of you, that's just about the scariest word with which I could have begun this paragraph. There's nothing else like it. It stands in a field of its own, tricky, fickle, easy to fail at and devilishly tricky to master. Laughter, though – whether dark or absurd, clever or slapstick – is one of the most powerful responses that language can generate. The joy and sheer fun brought on by comedy attaches the reader to the story they're reading, inclines them toward the author, and urges them to read on.

Worldbuilding can sometimes seem rather serious. Let's do something about that.

Since this particular genre restriction is particularly out of your elements, I'm leaving the contents and style of the stories entirely up to you. No further restrictions whatsoever.

[Jenny (Reffy)]

London had never seen anything like it; no, not at all. There were people of all ages; slim, tall, fat, and small; each one of them broken in a million different ways. All of them stuck in an endless loop of day to day: the lady who’d lost her family, the child lost and alone, and the druggie who couldn’t find his fix. There were so many collected together in this city like a refuse dump of humanity of flesh and bone. Yet London couldn’t help but wonder, as he peered from his small hobbit-like hole, if he could fix them all. If he took the broken things, added some jazz and some glue, to make then anew.

He left the window, allowing the people outside to continue to trudge, through mud and slush in their mindless fudge. They were the absent, the gone, and the never coming back. He’d have to do a lot and he didn’t know if he’d ever find the time to fix them all.

He traipsed over to a table that he had built, each leg a different style from metal to cardboard, and all of the above. There he’d laid some plans for inspection; each list, table, and blue-print all leaning towards the same thing. He’d take the broken people and make them in to something new. It was the only sensible thing to do!

With financial help from the Waxen King, and under the nose of Tick-Tock and his men, he’d set up a new fast food chain. The merchants would all use stalls built by his hands, selling burgers and hot dogs to the public. Each human, “The absent” mind you as they’d never have a clue, would yield as least enough meat to last a few days, depending on how quickly the sales took off. The Mad City would be in balance and over-population would cease. All of his problems would go away.

Then and only then, once this was all sorted and the fast-food empire set up, London felt he could lie down in his bed and let his head to rest for he’d have done his duty as the only Womble here. Gone would be the days of his silly little frown. His ears would perk up again and his eyes could shine. The pounding feeling would dissipate. He could get back to making things that meant something once more and ignore the silly people outside, those with broken hearts and shattered minds.

That night the lone Womble set about building the stalls. From up on the hill, far above his abode, his charming voice could be heard, amongst the clattering and clanking of a busy Womble a-making:

Underground, overground, wombling free
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we

---

Waxen coin was pouring in, flesh treats were slipping out, and The Mad City loved the taste. London’s fast-food chain was a success. He would take the next person on his list in the dead of night, leaving behind the bones and clothes and all the disgusting bits like bladder and spleen. The list of targets, which he wrote, had no discernible code or pattern from which to trace or draw a line. It was some of this and a little of that a bit like a chef sprinkling herbs in to a stew. London would take long-timers, new arrivals, The Mad City inhabitants, and outsiders; so long as they were broken they were open game.

Tick-Tock’s men knew of the murders. They were investigating the deaths but nobody came close. It was the perfect crime. Nobody knew why there were just clothes and slush. Nobody thought to ask a Womble because they simply didn’t exist. Nobody saw London coming or going or dithering about.

Demand grew and business continued, until London had to stop slaughtering on the streets and create a stock-pile. Then he fashioned cages out of rolled newspaper and cello-tape and made more plans. If he rolled the newspaper tightly and it had lots of layers then it was near impossible to cut. If he expanded the north end of his burrow and added another room with hooks and a table. The butchering continued but in the privacy of his tunnels while he hummed:

Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind

Day by day the happy Womble would cut, dice, and slice at the white-hog meat. The screams would climb as the meat roared itself hoarse. The earth above the slaughter house, his little burrow beneath the park, soaked up the sound. The floor beneath his fluffy feet churned crimson and his white fur now a curious pink. He wore an apron to protect his waist-coat and scarf. He’d package the food and ship it, all with a smile and a little whistle, and the money earned would be re-invested fixing more people.

---

Weeks later and the orders still poured in. People wanted something new in the stew, they needed cheap, faster, and meatier. The Womble, poor London, had whimpered and whined. He'd tried to find a new apprentice and entrepreneur but Tick-Tock’s men drew ever nearer.

The risk was too great and now the meat in cages knew their fate. The people knew and he wanted out. Nobody wanted this job not even the lone Womble. This was not his destiny. He'd just wanted quiet like the beautiful park's of Wimbledon. The parks where you could hear birds sing and children playing. To go back and start again – away from the pain. For a cozy burrow and a big cup of tea.

In the end he gave up and let himself be found. He showed the cops his killing ground, blood, mud, and the killing tools. It was his confession and he wore his own crime like a heart on his sleeve. He pleaded insanity and in return he earned his peace at the end of a guillotine. The Paper Boys snapped up the story and exaggerated it more to make it gory. Now the people knew the secret ingredient in the tasty burgers and buns and those who had lost some one could grieve the gone.

The moral is this, as those in The Mad City learned, never trust the meat from a vendor on the street.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Reffy:

Um. This round was comedy, not horror, right? Yikes.

The idea of a murderous womble is pretty hilarious. The actual story wasn't all that funny, it could have benefited a lot from the odd joke or witty detail, but the premise alone is great. I do think that the motivation to start murdering people seemed a little flimsy, and it was all a little too neat. London had a really easy time kidnapping and butchering dozens or hundreds of people, and then eventually he just turned himself in and it all wrapped up. Especially in the so-called "Mad" City, I think it would have been cool to see some weirdness beyond a perfectly-executed Sweeny Todd operation. What kind of wrenches were thrown into the works by the presence of other fantastical creatures? How might London have thrown off the police; could he have employed his mechanical expertise or the city's own reconfiguration in some way?

I will say that you may have been a little justified in your worries when I took over the judging from Kaez. As much as I like the idea of the Mad City well enough, I'm not really sold on the execution yet. It all seems a little ... loose. I'm a guy who likes some rules in my fictional universe. I treat both reading and writing about complex worlds as something of a puzzle; I like discovering all the little bits, and how they fit together. I like some logic, even when it's weird and twisted logic. For all that this is, obviously, the Mad City, and it's supposed to be dreamlike and mysterious, I still think it could benefit from some boundaries, or at least from a driving theme or impetus of sorts. Right now it's still not very clear what the city actually is, or how it's distinct from dreams/reality/fiction/mortality. Are the beings there zombies like you intimated, or are they rational actors? What are its layers; the character in your first round entry was waking up, but not into our world, so did she drop into some deeper level of madness, or ...? I don't know. I feel like you're shooting for tantalizing vagueness, and instead your product just doesn't have a lot of meat on its bones. And again, this is partly because of my preferences, but, I mean, I like Neal Gaiman, and his stuff is plenty dreamy and vague. Vagueness is good, but you still need some hooks on the surface so that people know what they're missing. Referencing entities like Tick-Tock is a good start, but the ground floor stuff might be more important: what's the City all about? Is it dreams or insanity or nursery rhymes or what?


Winner: Reffy