Final WA Surivor Challenge
this is the final challenge for WA's Survivor Island. it's a story involving Jason, Tom and Viola (characters created earlier in the game) and five or more neologisms (also created earlier in the game)
please, post a response to this story if you think it is at all good - you can vote for as many of the stories as you like. previous contestants on Survivor Island can vote as well (their votes count for two points). voting concludes Wednesday night, so vote early and vote often. also, if you feel like slinging some critique my way, i'm always interested. thanks
Arachnistic
The compulsion to act in a spider-like fashion, including but not limited to: web-building, all-liquid diets, and the desire to hang by ropes from the corners of the room.
Brackle
A brittle candy made by the cadbury company, recently recalled during a factory salmonella scare.
Frictic
Adj. Abrasive or pointedly curt; imbuing or promoting a sense of tension in conversation. "Henry was awfully frictic this morning -- you'd think I'd asked him to lasso the moon and not take out the trash!"
Piare
N. One in a place (mental or physical) of atonement; a citizen of expiation, from the Latin "piamen" (means of atonement) and the folk etymology of "pariah" (outcast).
Pynasrikie
A type of sedimentary rock found only in New Zealand, said to resemble ‘the sky on fire.’
Sholetre
Function: noun
Etymology: Early Hebrew / Middle French [sh'l (succulent, scrumptious) etoi (you, to you)]
1: term of endearment - specifically used to indicate a light-hearted, somewhat frivolous relationship
Shimmertronic - gearhead slang for body glitter
Silth
N. The minute particles that drift in the air, usually only visible in bright light (i.e. against the sun). So named for their visually silken quality, despite being a form of detritus.
Piare
The silth are through the window, again. I watch their dance with bemusement, content to visualize them as the last barker's cry of a faerie carnival. As the sun continues her unconcerned meander, her fingers travel up my arm and I can feel a tingle of warmth in my gnarled bones. The simple heat serves as remembrance.
I creak to my feet sounding like styrofoam being slowly ground. I don't even remember which of my bones are real and which are synthetic anymore, not that it really matters. This old house is the same way. He's been restitched, resided, and gutted so often I'm not even sure he counts as a house anymore, probably more akin to a way-station for interchangeable plumbing. I shamble toward the bathroom and take care of the only pressing business left to my name. The animal simplicities are all I have: a vast sea of time punctuated by the jetsam of repast, repose and relief.
They all follow me back to my well-padded rocking chair. I've covered every wall and most of the tables with the snaps of my lifetime - all smiling, jubilant faces in their chemical windows. They're interleafed and enmeshed, covering the peasoup wallpaper in arachnistic patterns. They held meaning for me; they hold my gaze. Colin and Stacy coddle my grand-children before the Eiffel Tower; Viola holds one god-child, Scott the other, pointing to faces carved in Dakota stone; Jason glowering on his motorcycle, his shimmertronic friends churling in the background; hundreds of others, each beckoning me into their time. It's been so long for so many of them - inestimably long. Smooth or canyoned, hundreds of faces glow at me while I watch the world vasting on outside. The only sound in my sanctuary is the slight wheedling of my rocking chair as he softly chides me for being maudlin. I ignore him.
She continues her descent and, before turning in, winks me a last few chestfulls of light. The pynaskrie on my mantle refracts the glance and holds her charm a few seconds longer, glinting the room in opals. This last moment of the day holds me. Scott used to call it - something. He would smile and say it, I can see his mouth moving, but the words aren't coming. A last touch of sun felts across my face and I remember. I remember what he used to call it. He's dead now; it doesn't matter what he called it. She dips down beneath the horizon and all that's left is her fleeting gaze on the tallest buildings. Her glance over chrome and glass.
The room cools. The pictures ebb and swallow themselves until they're neon ghasts in the streetlights. He breathes out as his joints cool and I listen to his insulation and timbers ricket. It's too dark. What's the time? It doesn't matter. I glance at the clock, but remember it’s been broken for years - its cracked face holds a touch past four. The rectilinear shapes on his walls are echoes now. They're not helpful anyway, they don't mean anything. They're brackle, candycorn - the last sugar nothings of my life.
A passing tram flashes its lights across my coffee table and emblazons a fleshy face. Before the light passes I remember her dimples and smooth, teak hair. Decades, centuries, millennia ago she was my love - the bonovox of my baby days. She's gone now, probably married or dead or both. She's only a kinesthetic flash: a paper-weight of grief and pleasure. Jason would jeer at me. "Just a chick, bro. A chick when you were 14! Get over her!" His frictic chuckle grinds, but scours out her face. Just another face, another reliquary.
I'm feeling sorry for myself. This is no good. I should eat, make another in a long line of animal necessities - but I don't get up. Viola used to make sure I ate during that long summer I spent with her in India. I was so precious, so willing to yoke the eager needs of the world to my back. She knew better. She knew just as the mountains keep their course, people would keep theirs. Hers was the first funeral I cried at. Bawling like a sick kitten, Scott and Jason hushed me with tissues and hugs. Many since, I've allowed myself the same state, but hers was the first I realized what it meant to erase a number from a phone-list, add the second set of dates to a photo album. Faces on the wall are blackened, so many faces staring up with cosmetically rigid lips, closed and powdered eyes. Where was she buried? The night's settled in. The city has questioned itself into insensibility. Nothing more taxing than questions. I sift for the wheat memories, but my fields are long since winnowed.
The cold miasmas up from the floor-boards, its tendrils embed themselves in my shins. Far outside, constellations shiver in my vision. Jason's stars would chuckle, Stacy’s would dance; the lights in this sky stand cancer bright. It will be morning sometime - some time. Have I slept? I used to find solace in the night, a shawl blotting thoughts behind curtains. Spasms teethe my arm and I upset my blanket. In the ghast-light my skin is a relief map of chasms and stalagmites. A grotesquerie of colours and blotches, too horrid for humanity. Is this really my skin? My wrist? My fingers? They're so old, so decrepit. I turn my arm and the arm before me follows the motion. As it rotates the mottled flesh gives way to fish-belly. A deep blue chord ekes down the center like an eyeless worm nosing through bleached dirt. The worm crawls into the inner pulp of my flesh. I can feel it grinding through my bicep, into my shoulder. Each shudder is the worm eating through my chest. I feel it grist into my heart - its flat teeth grinding at the tissue. I listen to its rhythmic chewing.
Around me, my house groans a bit, shifting his weight on concrete blocks. Perhaps, it’s time. Perhaps, this night will never end. Perhaps, I'll never feel another warm sunrise; my sholetre will never warmly knicker my cheek for remembrance. So many days, so many faces. Perhaps, the night is just a man shifting under his blankets.
But it's just the night - an old man thinking to himself in the night. What worms or hearts I have left are mine own and I should remember that. Scott always told me, "Remember, you are your own". Still not sure what he meant by it, but his voice is mint in my mind. I resettle the blanket and look out the window. The night outside is just cold, it's just night.
As one, the lights in the office building across from the street spring into a blazing frisson. A door opens and I watch the janitor do his rounds. He follows the same laconic path I’ve seen illimitable times before. He spies something on the floor, makes a perfunctory scrub with his mop, then moves on. There are no pictures on the office walls, no chemical faces watching the janitor as he sways his mop to and fro across the burnished tile.
The sun stretches and yawns up over the horizon. He stops and turns, and we both watch her blaze up into the world. She winks at him, and me too, after a bit. I like to think he smiles back at her before returning to his mop.
My chair rocks in time, and I think of the echoes on my walls. They resound through my old house and dance like so many simple, little feet.
you can find Smeddley's entry Here
you can find Blue_Thundering's WA link here and her story here
please, post a response to this story if you think it is at all good - you can vote for as many of the stories as you like. previous contestants on Survivor Island can vote as well (their votes count for two points). voting concludes Wednesday night, so vote early and vote often. also, if you feel like slinging some critique my way, i'm always interested. thanks
Arachnistic
The compulsion to act in a spider-like fashion, including but not limited to: web-building, all-liquid diets, and the desire to hang by ropes from the corners of the room.
Brackle
A brittle candy made by the cadbury company, recently recalled during a factory salmonella scare.
Frictic
Adj. Abrasive or pointedly curt; imbuing or promoting a sense of tension in conversation. "Henry was awfully frictic this morning -- you'd think I'd asked him to lasso the moon and not take out the trash!"
Piare
N. One in a place (mental or physical) of atonement; a citizen of expiation, from the Latin "piamen" (means of atonement) and the folk etymology of "pariah" (outcast).
Pynasrikie
A type of sedimentary rock found only in New Zealand, said to resemble ‘the sky on fire.’
Sholetre
Function: noun
Etymology: Early Hebrew / Middle French [sh'l (succulent, scrumptious) etoi (you, to you)]
1: term of endearment - specifically used to indicate a light-hearted, somewhat frivolous relationship
Shimmertronic - gearhead slang for body glitter
Silth
N. The minute particles that drift in the air, usually only visible in bright light (i.e. against the sun). So named for their visually silken quality, despite being a form of detritus.
Piare
The silth are through the window, again. I watch their dance with bemusement, content to visualize them as the last barker's cry of a faerie carnival. As the sun continues her unconcerned meander, her fingers travel up my arm and I can feel a tingle of warmth in my gnarled bones. The simple heat serves as remembrance.
I creak to my feet sounding like styrofoam being slowly ground. I don't even remember which of my bones are real and which are synthetic anymore, not that it really matters. This old house is the same way. He's been restitched, resided, and gutted so often I'm not even sure he counts as a house anymore, probably more akin to a way-station for interchangeable plumbing. I shamble toward the bathroom and take care of the only pressing business left to my name. The animal simplicities are all I have: a vast sea of time punctuated by the jetsam of repast, repose and relief.
They all follow me back to my well-padded rocking chair. I've covered every wall and most of the tables with the snaps of my lifetime - all smiling, jubilant faces in their chemical windows. They're interleafed and enmeshed, covering the peasoup wallpaper in arachnistic patterns. They held meaning for me; they hold my gaze. Colin and Stacy coddle my grand-children before the Eiffel Tower; Viola holds one god-child, Scott the other, pointing to faces carved in Dakota stone; Jason glowering on his motorcycle, his shimmertronic friends churling in the background; hundreds of others, each beckoning me into their time. It's been so long for so many of them - inestimably long. Smooth or canyoned, hundreds of faces glow at me while I watch the world vasting on outside. The only sound in my sanctuary is the slight wheedling of my rocking chair as he softly chides me for being maudlin. I ignore him.
She continues her descent and, before turning in, winks me a last few chestfulls of light. The pynaskrie on my mantle refracts the glance and holds her charm a few seconds longer, glinting the room in opals. This last moment of the day holds me. Scott used to call it - something. He would smile and say it, I can see his mouth moving, but the words aren't coming. A last touch of sun felts across my face and I remember. I remember what he used to call it. He's dead now; it doesn't matter what he called it. She dips down beneath the horizon and all that's left is her fleeting gaze on the tallest buildings. Her glance over chrome and glass.
The room cools. The pictures ebb and swallow themselves until they're neon ghasts in the streetlights. He breathes out as his joints cool and I listen to his insulation and timbers ricket. It's too dark. What's the time? It doesn't matter. I glance at the clock, but remember it’s been broken for years - its cracked face holds a touch past four. The rectilinear shapes on his walls are echoes now. They're not helpful anyway, they don't mean anything. They're brackle, candycorn - the last sugar nothings of my life.
A passing tram flashes its lights across my coffee table and emblazons a fleshy face. Before the light passes I remember her dimples and smooth, teak hair. Decades, centuries, millennia ago she was my love - the bonovox of my baby days. She's gone now, probably married or dead or both. She's only a kinesthetic flash: a paper-weight of grief and pleasure. Jason would jeer at me. "Just a chick, bro. A chick when you were 14! Get over her!" His frictic chuckle grinds, but scours out her face. Just another face, another reliquary.
I'm feeling sorry for myself. This is no good. I should eat, make another in a long line of animal necessities - but I don't get up. Viola used to make sure I ate during that long summer I spent with her in India. I was so precious, so willing to yoke the eager needs of the world to my back. She knew better. She knew just as the mountains keep their course, people would keep theirs. Hers was the first funeral I cried at. Bawling like a sick kitten, Scott and Jason hushed me with tissues and hugs. Many since, I've allowed myself the same state, but hers was the first I realized what it meant to erase a number from a phone-list, add the second set of dates to a photo album. Faces on the wall are blackened, so many faces staring up with cosmetically rigid lips, closed and powdered eyes. Where was she buried? The night's settled in. The city has questioned itself into insensibility. Nothing more taxing than questions. I sift for the wheat memories, but my fields are long since winnowed.
The cold miasmas up from the floor-boards, its tendrils embed themselves in my shins. Far outside, constellations shiver in my vision. Jason's stars would chuckle, Stacy’s would dance; the lights in this sky stand cancer bright. It will be morning sometime - some time. Have I slept? I used to find solace in the night, a shawl blotting thoughts behind curtains. Spasms teethe my arm and I upset my blanket. In the ghast-light my skin is a relief map of chasms and stalagmites. A grotesquerie of colours and blotches, too horrid for humanity. Is this really my skin? My wrist? My fingers? They're so old, so decrepit. I turn my arm and the arm before me follows the motion. As it rotates the mottled flesh gives way to fish-belly. A deep blue chord ekes down the center like an eyeless worm nosing through bleached dirt. The worm crawls into the inner pulp of my flesh. I can feel it grinding through my bicep, into my shoulder. Each shudder is the worm eating through my chest. I feel it grist into my heart - its flat teeth grinding at the tissue. I listen to its rhythmic chewing.
Around me, my house groans a bit, shifting his weight on concrete blocks. Perhaps, it’s time. Perhaps, this night will never end. Perhaps, I'll never feel another warm sunrise; my sholetre will never warmly knicker my cheek for remembrance. So many days, so many faces. Perhaps, the night is just a man shifting under his blankets.
But it's just the night - an old man thinking to himself in the night. What worms or hearts I have left are mine own and I should remember that. Scott always told me, "Remember, you are your own". Still not sure what he meant by it, but his voice is mint in my mind. I resettle the blanket and look out the window. The night outside is just cold, it's just night.
As one, the lights in the office building across from the street spring into a blazing frisson. A door opens and I watch the janitor do his rounds. He follows the same laconic path I’ve seen illimitable times before. He spies something on the floor, makes a perfunctory scrub with his mop, then moves on. There are no pictures on the office walls, no chemical faces watching the janitor as he sways his mop to and fro across the burnished tile.
The sun stretches and yawns up over the horizon. He stops and turns, and we both watch her blaze up into the world. She winks at him, and me too, after a bit. I like to think he smiles back at her before returning to his mop.
My chair rocks in time, and I think of the echoes on my walls. They resound through my old house and dance like so many simple, little feet.
you can find Smeddley's entry Here
you can find Blue_Thundering's WA link here and her story here