Wee blurb from write_away's Mod Smackdown
Challenge and voting.
She didn't want to talk about the thin white scar under the right side of her rib cage. "Surgery," she'd said when he asked. Wrinkled her nose. "Don't like to think about it much." But something had been put inside her, something with an energy source. He would have pushed the issue harder if he didn't want to admit to a wild night years back in a modshop implanting rice-sized magnets into his fourth fingers. They tingled his nerves with vibrations in the presence of electromagnetic fields--like the one above her scar.
His answer came when he stumbled across an online article about terrorists, psychotics, and the standby deadman's switches they used to demolish themselves and others. Pictures of flesh pulp misted onto walls accompanied the words "often installed under the ribcage, so as to be less noticeable in cursory body inspections." A shockwave of nausea had him retching in the bathroom for half an hour, after which he mechanically cleared his browser cache. What would she do if she realized he knew? That night, he ran his hand up and down her side, the comforting touch of her warm skin broken by the buzz of the bomb underneath. He couldn't decide which sensation to believe.
Her quirks morphed into malignancies. Her fear of flying? Avoidance of weapons scanners in airports. Her refusal to marry him? Avoidance of scanners in courthouses. But would he marry her now? He didn't even know the trigger for her switch. On days he came home after her, she still cooked dinner, as if life was the same. He'd bury his nose into her hair and wrap his arms around her, his finger prickling over her secret heart of explosives, the silence between them filled with the sizzling of meat in the pan.
Likes: concept, certain phrases
Dislikes: rushed development in the 500 word limit which substitutes melodrama for characterization and feels a bit disconnected in places, esp. with regards to time-sense.
She didn't want to talk about the thin white scar under the right side of her rib cage. "Surgery," she'd said when he asked. Wrinkled her nose. "Don't like to think about it much." But something had been put inside her, something with an energy source. He would have pushed the issue harder if he didn't want to admit to a wild night years back in a modshop implanting rice-sized magnets into his fourth fingers. They tingled his nerves with vibrations in the presence of electromagnetic fields--like the one above her scar.
His answer came when he stumbled across an online article about terrorists, psychotics, and the standby deadman's switches they used to demolish themselves and others. Pictures of flesh pulp misted onto walls accompanied the words "often installed under the ribcage, so as to be less noticeable in cursory body inspections." A shockwave of nausea had him retching in the bathroom for half an hour, after which he mechanically cleared his browser cache. What would she do if she realized he knew? That night, he ran his hand up and down her side, the comforting touch of her warm skin broken by the buzz of the bomb underneath. He couldn't decide which sensation to believe.
Her quirks morphed into malignancies. Her fear of flying? Avoidance of weapons scanners in airports. Her refusal to marry him? Avoidance of scanners in courthouses. But would he marry her now? He didn't even know the trigger for her switch. On days he came home after her, she still cooked dinner, as if life was the same. He'd bury his nose into her hair and wrap his arms around her, his finger prickling over her secret heart of explosives, the silence between them filled with the sizzling of meat in the pan.
Likes: concept, certain phrases
Dislikes: rushed development in the 500 word limit which substitutes melodrama for characterization and feels a bit disconnected in places, esp. with regards to time-sense.