# December 2014 - LM - Glass Eye



## Fin (Dec 2, 2014)

Click here for the workshop thread

*LITERARY MANEUVERS*​*Glass Eye​*


The winner will receive a badge pinned to their profile and given a month’s access to FoWF where you’ll have access to hidden forums and use of the chat room.


Have the prompt included in some way into your story.


*The judges for this round are:*

*Folcro*; *kilroy214*; *thepancreas11*; *Bruno Spatola*


*Rules*


*All forum rules apply.* The LM competition is considered a creative area of the forum. If your story contains inappropriate language or content, do _not_ forget add a disclaimer or it could result in disciplinary actions taken. Click *here* for the full list of rules and guidelines of the forum.
*No Poetry!* Nothing against you poets out there, but this isn’t a place for your poems. Head on over to the poetry challenges for good competition over there. Some of us fiction people wouldn’t be able to understand your work! Click *here* for the poetry challenges.
*No posts that are not entries into the competition are allowed.* If you have any questions, concerns, or wish to take part in discussion please head over to the *LM Coffee Shop. *We’ll be glad to take care of your needs over there.
*Editing your entry after posting isn’t allowed.* You’ll be given a ten minute grace period, but after that your story may not be scored.
*Only one entry per member.*
*No liking entries until the scores go up.*
*The word limit is 650 words not including the title.* If you go over - Your story will not be counted. Microsoft Word and Google Drive are the standard for checking this. If you feel it’s incorrect, send it to the host of the competition and we’ll check it for you and add our approval upon acceptance.




*There are a few ways to post your entry:*


If you aren't too concerned about your first rights, then you can simply post your entry here in this thread.
You can opt to have your entry posted in the *LM Workshop Thread* which is a special thread just for LM entries. You would put your story there if you wish to protect your first rights, in case you wish to have the story published one day. Note: If you do post it in the workshop thread, you must post a link to it here in this thread otherwise your story may not be counted.
You may post your story anonymously. To do so, send your story to the host of the competition. If you wish to have us post it in the workshop thread then say so. Your name will be revealed upon the release of the score.

Everyone is welcome to participate. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score.

*This competition will close on:*

Monday, the 15th of December at 11:59 PM, GMT time.
Click here for the current time.


*Good luck, everyone.*​


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## Awanita (Dec 2, 2014)

The Glass Eye

The old man laid in the hospital bed, his breathing had become shallower than the days before. He stared at the glass eye on the night table that seemed to stare back at him. The old man remembered the very day some seventy two years ago when that glass eye became part of him. Ha he laughed to himself part of me he thought, it’s just an old glass eye that been a pain in my ass most of my life. 

All of a sudden the lights in the room began to dim and the glass eye started to light up as if it was coming to life. It glowed as it glared at the old man. It was as if the glass, was talking to his mind. The old man continued to look at the glass eye as upon the wall the glass eye projected a vision the old man hadn’t seen in seventy two years. There he was in the hospital bed at the age of twelve as the doctor told him that he would never see out of his left eye again, but this new glass eye would take its place. The doctor placed the glass eye in the left socket; then handed him a mirror. The boy looked at his new eye and other than a little brighter blue seemed pretty normal. 

Then the eye shot another vision on the wall the old man was thirteen at this time and he was walking through the meadow hand in hand with a pretty little red headed girl. Oh how the old man’s right eye started to tear up, he remembered it was her, his first love and first kiss. How could a glass eye have those memories of the old man after all it was just a glass eye? 
The glass eye beamed another vision on the wall. It was late he stood in the dim porch light looking down at his hand as she takes his senior ring off and places it in his hand. He turns and walks away hiding his heart ache. But how could this be it was only a glass eye, did it somehow go through that same first break up.

Again the glass eye beamed another vision on the wall. This time was a more pleasant memory the old man was twenty and stood beside the prettiest young blonde, green eye woman that would stand by him for over sixty years. It seemed that the glass eye was going faster; the old man’s life was speeding up. The glass eye beamed the birth of all his six children. 

It also took the old man back to the cemetery to relive the death of his father. Was this what everyone calls the judgment day as your life is played back? The glass eye showed him his good and bad in life. Each and every scrapes and cries of his children as the eye sped up the old man began to age and he and his wife began to slow down as her hair lost its blonde and silver took its place. As his body started to put on a little more weight and his muscle tone faded.

Faster and faster the eye played the visions of the old man’s life; then came the one that hurt the most. The glass eye played the loss of his wife of over sixty years, which he remembered as if it was yesterday.

The old man became engulfed in the visions until his heart began to beat faster. He felt coldness and at the same time warmness come over him. Then the glass flashed one more beam of light, it simply read it is time to rest now. Close your eye and sleep the glass eye will watch over you. With a smile and one last breath the old man passed.


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## rockoo315 (Dec 2, 2014)

Sometimes when Big Mike and I sat together in silence, I would listen to his heavy laboured breathing.  Honestly, it sounded like a soul was trying to escape, like it was suffocating under his massive weight.  During reruns of Happy Days, I would hear this disgusting recurring event.  Standing in line at a burrito joint, I would hear this again, always killing my appetite.  And Big Mike would always end up with my burrito as well.  “What a fat ass,” I would think to myself.

Tonight was no different.  After a long week at a job I absolutely loathed, I unwillingly accepted his invitation to hang out.  I would’ve went home and wallowed in self pity.  Hell, I would’ve self medicated with Jack Daniels and expired Vicodin.  But it was close to Christmas and both of usually hung out together to pretend we weren’t horribly alone.  At 8 pm on a Friday night, we should’ve been out meeting suitable companions.  For Big Mike, his first girlfriend.  And me, my inevitable second ex-wife.  

His apartment was pristine and well kept for a change.  The floors were vacuumed and mopped, and I instinctively picked up the scent of pinesol.  This pungent smell instantly took me back to my Army basic training days.  Even 15 years later, the smell still produces flashbacks of Drill Sergeants demanding a pristine barracks bay.  Usually Big Mike was not reliable in cleaning his apartment, though.  One week it would smell of stale pizza, marijuana, and cheap hookers.  The next week it would be ready for a real estate open house.  It was like playing Blackjack; I never knew what I would get.

Both of us were sitting on his couch.  Outdated from the 70’s, the couch was porno red, comfortable, had a weird smell, and I didn’t dare look underneath the cushions.  The television was playing reruns of Reno 911, which I didn’t mind.  The windows and thin walls let in the sounds from the busy street below.  The random gunshots and screaming cats didn’t phase us at all.  

After a few minutes, something caught my eye.  In a jar on top of Big Mike’s fridge was an eye.  

“Wait,” I said out loud.  “Big Mike, is that a glass eye,” I asked him, displaying a purely dumbfounded look whilst pointing at the jar.

“Yep,” Big Mike said with absolute indifference.  You know, like it was somehow normal to have glass eyes lying around.

A few awkward seconds elapsed before I had to ask the inevitable.

“Why do you have a glass eye, Big Mike,” I said.

“Don’t you recognise it,” he replied.

I was so thrown by off the nonchalant attitude of Big Mike that I didn’t know how to respond.  Why did he ask if I recognised it?  Should I be familiar with a glass eye, especially one that’s in a glass jar?

“No, Mike, I am not familiar with a lifeless eye placed so elegantly on top of your temple of stored food.  Please enlighten me why I should know this glass eye,” I said.

“Your ex-wife,” he started to say, but I had to stop him there.

“Come on, dude.  We just got back from Norway to escape the thoughts of my ex-wife.  Why would you bring her up, now, of all times, especially with Christmas right around the corner,” I asked.

“I’m sorry.  I thought you recognised it and were just joking around,” Big Mike said.  “Anyways,” he continued, with no regard to what I just said, “remember when we first met her?  She was with her smoking hot sister who you initially wanted to hook up with.  But remember why you didn’t, though?”

The flashback to that night instantly registered in my mind.  

“Big Mike, no!!!  What the hell?  Don’t tell me...can it be,” I screamed.

“Yep, it's the sister’s glass eye.”  Big Mike grinned.


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## godofwine (Dec 3, 2014)

The Agency - By Godofwine (647 Words - Strong language)


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## Terry D (Dec 3, 2014)

http://www.writingforums.com/thread...Eye-Workshop?p=1800625&viewfull=1#post1800625


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## Deleted member 56686 (Dec 3, 2014)

*Agent in a trap
*

“Do you have any last words Mr. Green?”

Sam Green of the FBI glared at his captor as he lay in his death trap struggling to escape from what looked like a giant mouse trap. “You won’t get away with this, Gluberg,” Sam said with a sneer.

Sam was sent by his superiors to prevent the diabolical Gluberg from his evil plans to take over the Pentagon with his new and improved death ray. Gluberg, however, proved to have the upper hand, catching the unsuspecting agent in an elaborate trap. Now Sam was secure in the giant contraption waiting for the bar holding the hammer to spring, thus sealing his fate.

Gluberg looked at the helpless agent through his glass eye. “In just five minutes the catch controlling the holding bar will release the hammer, and within an instant, your head will be smashed into guacamole.” The bald-headed monster then let out a maniacal laugh as he prepared to take his leave. “I must depart now Mr. Green. Sweet Dreams.” Gluberg dropped a capsule, and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Sam was desperately left to his own devices. He was a clever agent who had been through similar death traps, always able to escape in the nick of time. Sam was confident that this would be no exception. As with other villains, Gluberg never thought to search Sam’s underwear. This is where Sam kept an emergency kit where he kept certain gadgets to assist in dire situations such as this. The agent looked at the clock on the wall. He had less than five minutes to escape.

Sam was able to get his hands inside his underwear, and found his utility pouch. The crafty agent was able to retrieve his trusty pocket knife to cut the binds. He began to slice into the binds carefully with his fingers. Within seconds, it was obvious that the binds were too strong for the super sharp knife. Sam had to dig into his underwear to find another device that would untie him. He looked at the clock. There were three minutes left.

Sam retrieved a mini-blowtorch from his emergency kit. This had to work. He was able to set the flame, and aim it on the binds. The flames couldn’t penetrate the steely rope either. It did give the agent a pretty solid first degree burn, however. He dropped the blowtorch, and took another glance at the clock. Two minutes left.

Sam still felt confident he could escape from this dastardly trap as he again reached for his emergency kit. This time he retrieved a special substance that could melt steel without hurting his hands. This had to be successful. Sam went to work, and somehow was able to pour the substance on the steel binds with his fingers. Within seconds smoke emerged from the steely binds. Sam took another look at the clock. Still ninety seconds left. Sam patiently waited for the liquid to work. He took another look at…..

Snap!


Gluberg returned to the scene of the crime with his cat Little Frisky. He looked at the mess that was once agent Sam Green. “I forgot to tell you Mr. Green. The clock was exactly one minute and twenty-two seconds too fast.” Gluberg took out his glass eye, and let out another maniacal laugh as he gloated over the splattered brains of Sam Green. “Goodbye, Mr. Green. Now the Pentagon is mine.”


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## Plasticweld (Dec 3, 2014)

*A Foreign Place*

A Foreign Place
 by Bob Brown

I was jolted back to reality, back from the place where anything is possible.

I felt the warm touch of her hand. The pale skin, blue veins and wrinkles did not detract from the love of that touch.  My mother’s voice brought me back, back into the reality of the moment.  My fantasy world interrupted, I looked up from the screen of my lap top. 

“I called your name twice, you just sat there glued to that thing, like you didn’t even hear me.”

My mother did not understand.  She is old.  She is simple. Having only recently been exposed to the modern world, after living a very simple life with only the basics.  A cell phone or the micro wave oven still astonish her.  She lived the life of a hermit, up in the mountains far from civilization, more out of stubbornness than practicality.  She is not a hillbilly or backwards but very bright.  She gave up on society and became a recluse almost 40 years ago when my dad passed away.  She turned her back on everything and just never looked back.

It has been tough on both of us, the week I collected my first social security check she moved in with me.  No longer capable of taking care of herself, she ended up with me.  At sixty five I live with my mother; my friends seem to find no shortage of humor in this.

“You spend a lot of time watching that little TV.” She said

“It’s a computer Ma, it connects me with the world.” 

I see the wheels of her mind turning, her blue eyes flicker as she tries to digest this. I try to be polite when explaining technology to her, at times it is very frustrating explaining even the simplest things to her.

“Ma, it connects me to the rest of the world through the internet.”

Seeing no change in her expression, I realize this might not be as easy to explain as I had thought.

“It’s like going to the library, I have access to all sorts of books and information.”

She sits down beside me and I tilt the lap top, so she can see the screen better.

“Look Ma, I can go to Google Maps and show you a satellite photo of my house even find your old cabin in the woods.”

Mom perks up, “I really would like to see my old place one more time?” 

We spend some time going over the maps, I can see she is warming up to the new technology.  I go over and log into Facebook.

“You see this Ma, here are all of my friends, they write down what they’re doing, share photos and maybe their thoughts.” 

I clicked through some of my friend’s home pages, clicked on their photo albums and read some of their posts to her.

She pushed back, shook her head, “I don’t know… I feel like a voyeur, a Peeping Tom, sneaking into their lives and looking at their photos. I can’t believe they share all those personal thoughts for everyone to read. Don’t they have any modesty?” 

“This is just one part of it… not all of my friends do this.  I have other friends that only write back and forth with each other, they share stories and ideas.”

I click on to the WritingForums.com site and show her some of the forums and we read some stories together; I can tell she is more comfortable with this part of the internet. 

“This is better.” She said, “I don’t feel like I am spying on them.”

I point to the little glass eye at the top of the screen of the lap top.

“You see this…that is a camera.”

She quickly turns the lap top away from her. 

“I don’t want to be on TV, my hair is a mess.”


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## Sleepwriter (Dec 4, 2014)

The Storm


  Five years ago, I was out riding my dirt bike in the desert, when the clouds began to darken and the lightning strikes charged the air, causing the hair on my arms to stand up. I was miles from my truck, but I knew I needed to get out of there fast.  I pushed my bike to it’s limit.  The lightning crashed down around me.  The wind was whipping around so fast that it turned the sand into millions of tiny little bullets that dug into my skin.  Each blinding streak of light was followed closely by an explosive BOOM that caused my heart to skip a beat. My face shield was fogging up from the extreme temperature change.  The storm consumed the blue sky, turning it to inky blackness. 

 On my bike I was the tallest object around and since I couldn’t make it back to my truck in time,  I decided my best bet was to get off my bike and lie in the sand.  The heavy rain had turned the sand into a wet, grainy mess.  As I jumped from my bike, I sunk into the sand a couple inches.  I was scared.  I had never seen a storm this bad before.  KaBoom! KaBoom! KaBoom!  The lightning was punching holes in the ground all around me. It was coming so fast that my eyes didn’t have time to recover between each strike.  I could feel all the hair on my body stand on end and a sinking feeling growing in my belly, that feeling you get right before a bully punches you in the face.   My body went tense, as a billion volts of electricity slammed into me.  My brain went into preservation mode and shut down, so I wouldn’t remember how much pain I was in as every nerve ending in my body screamed in agony. 

 I can’t tell you what happened for the next twenty four hours, because I don’t know.  I can only tell you that when I came to, the sky was blue and I was alive.  My body ached, but it seemed to be intact, so I did a systems check.  I moved my arms and legs and shifted my body on the sand. All seemed good.  I pushed myself up off the ground. The sand had coated my clothes.  As I dusted myself off, through the fog of my brain going through its hard reset, I noticed my left eye felt odd, kind of damp and kind of cold. I put my hand over my right eye and I could see out of the left.  I needed to take a look at it, but the closest mirror was at the truck.  

 I hopped on my bike and carefully made my way there.  I let my bike fall to the ground as I pulled up to the back of my truck. I walked to the driver side mirror, from a distance my face looked normal, but I did not want to step up and look into my eyes.  I was afraid of what I might see.   I told myself it would be okay.  I checked my right eye first.  It was pretty red on the edges but my iris was still the same shit brown.  I closed my left eye and focused on it, what could make it feel soo cold? I took a deep breath and opened it.  A chill ran down my spine.  A solid black eyeball looked back at me.   I looked at my right eye and then my left again. I felt the need to touch it. My hand was shaking as I moved it closer to my face.  I was transfixed to the mirror as my finger moved across the smooth surface of the cold black orb that had replaced my eye.  It felt like glass. It gleamed like glass.  I pulled my knife from my boot and jabbed the blade into it causing the glass eye to shatter.


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## EmmaSohan (Dec 8, 2014)

*Staying Sane*

STAYING SANE
by Emma Sohan

I hold up my bowling ball. No one from my high school church group is really watching, they're all talking. I just stand there. Kevin yells at me to bowl. I keep standing there.

Pretty soon, everyone notices I'm not moving. Then, in very slow motion, I step back. Then I slowly step forward, speeding up, swing my ball, and....

hold on to my bowling ball and throw something else. A small round object goes rolling, clunking, down the bowling alley. No one knows what it is; no one knows what's happening. I point forward with my foot up in the air in the back, like a pointing dog. Performance art. The object bounces of the pins, falls into a gutter, and is swept up.

I turn around.


Most of the girls scream. My glass eye is gone, so they're looking at an empty eye socket. I poke my finger into my empty eye socket, and some guy throws up. There's chaos. There's mayhem. Everyone in the bowling alley is running over to see what's happening. And totally freaking out. Parents are trying to stop their children from seeing me -- God forbid their children should see a defective human being.

My glass eye returns to me via the ball return machine. I pick it up, wipe it off on my shirt, and put it back in my eye. I get more screams. It's not really glass, it's this incredibly tough acrylic. It looks real until people notice it doesn't move. Then it's hideous.

I calmly walk back to my seat. People make a big space for me; no one sits next to me or talks to me for the rest of the night except Samuel.

Me: "Did you get the video?"

Samuel: "Yeah. This was your best prank ever."

I smile. "Did you like the screaming?"

Samuel: "Fantastic. I'll go edit it now and send you a copy. This is hot."

Me: "Thanks."

Samuel: "You're my idol. I wanted to laugh so bad my stomach hurt."

On the internet, I'm known as the Glass Eye Prankster. This should get at least 200K visitors and put me close to a million for total visits.


I stop and stand next to a girl my age sitting in Starbucks. "Can you keep an eye on my book?"

She smiles at me. I'm not ugly, and I'm being nice. "Sure," she says, then goes back to reading.

I put a book down on her table. Just so she understands, "Keep an eye on this book. This is the eye." Then I put my eye on the book. She jumps up in fright, tries to calm down, looks to me for comfort...and gets none. She screams when she sees my eye socket. Samuel gets the video. It'll be short but funny.

I talk her and calm her down. I explain what I do and why I do it. She understands. She's cool with it. She's nice, we have a good conversation, but... she doesn't give me her phone number when I ask. God forbid she should start to like me. Samuel comes over and we talk about how to edit the video.

I'm getting a lot of copycats -- guys with prosthetics doing pranks, trying to be as famous as me. It's all cool, that just makes me king of a genre.


I poke myself in the eye with a plastic fork. The Subway cashier's face goes blank, like he's in shock. His mouth is hanging wide open. That'll make a nice visual. Then he figures it out and starts laughing his butt off. "Glass eye?"

"Yeah."

"You are one sick dude."

I am. I get no dates. I can't do sports. My life sucks. I live for the day when I get a bionic eye better than anyone's real eye. Until then, I just gotta laugh about it.


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## InkwellMachine (Dec 9, 2014)

*"Hard to pick which one they eat the most" (647 words--sexual themes--some language)*

The question surprised me when it came out of my mouth. It was intrusive--the sort of thing you want to stay away from on a first date. Although thinking back on it, I guess it wasn't really a date. It was the qualifier for a date. The test run.

It didn't seem to surprise her, though. She only kept looking into her coffee. I thought the side of her mouth quirked up, though if it did it was the sort of exasperated smile you don't really want people to give you. Courtesy more than anything. Has a way of reducing you, putting you back into the shoes of a kid who doesn't really get the way the world turns yet.

She licked her lips, putting the shine back on the purple gloss. For while she kept staring, thinking perhaps about what she wanted--or didn't want--to tell me. Then, finally, she opened her mouth. She hesitated for a moment before saying, "Yeah, you know. It was stupid. Most of the big shit is."

I nodded. I thought I should tell her it wasn't stupid or that she shouldn't feel bad if it was, but I'm slow. I didn't catch my queue. So I nodded, feigning that cool indifference that I've heard some men can pull off. I'm not sure if I was even in the right context for that, having asked the question to begin with, but that's the way it went. I nodded, and eventually she continued on her own.

"I mean, you want to have a good story for something like that, right? You want the big scars to mean something? But..." She shrugged. "Just isn't the way things go. I'm not saying I'm ashamed or anything, just... you know. Sometimes I like to come up with stories. Like, better stories. Ones that are more fun to talk about."

I think that was when I gave up on any pretense of _making moves_. Here she was, clearly on the verge of something delicate, and all I wanted was for the conversation to move along. That's all I knew about dating. I knew I was supposed to be sociable and that I was supposed to get to know the person whose coffee I was paying for. Beyond that it was all mechanical. _Go through the motions. Acquaint yourself. Be personable. She'll like you eventually._

She looked very vulnerable to me then, and I became aware of how un-gallant my attentions had been until that point. "It's just a thing that happened, right? Things happen. Nothing to be ashamed about." A stroke of genius. I felt the color rising into my cheeks.

She smiled. This time it was genuine. "I guess they do. Have you heard of Marilyn Manson?"

I nodded and, in my best whispering Manson impression, I sang perhaps the only lyric of his that I knew: _"The beautiful people, the beautiful people._"

She laughed, a light breath through her nose. "Okay. So I don't know if you've heard about it, but there was a rumor for a while that he and his girlfriend or his wife... someone. I don't know. A girl he was intimate with. They wanted to try skull-fucking." I tried not to wince as the pieces came together in my head. She seemed to notice the non-expression and shrugged. "My ex-husband was a real Manson freak. You probably know the type. He wore white face-paint to WalMart sometimes... and..."

She trailed off, suddenly looking very much like this was something she didn't want to talk about any more. I didn't try to coax her into it. I was in a place that I didn't belong and that she didn't want to be. 

So I changed the subject to something lighter--something safer to talk about on a not-a-first-date--and I tried to stop stealing glances at her left eye, just brighter than the other.


_*


(Title quoted from the song The Beautiful People, by Marilyn Manson)*_


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## InnerFlame00 (Dec 10, 2014)

http://www.writingforums.com/thread...Eye-Workshop?p=1803396&viewfull=1#post1803396


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## midnightpoet (Dec 12, 2014)

http://www.writingforums.com/thread...Eye-Workshop?p=1803915&viewfull=1#post1803915


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## Ibb (Dec 15, 2014)

*Ghosts / 650*

The first time Rufus became aware of it he mistook its arrival for one of those passing oddities that occurs happenchance, once in a lifetime, the sort which is thought about later and eventually admitted to being no more than a trickery of the mind. He blinked it away, as his mother would confide to her family while on her deathbed of her onetime shooing away a ghost whilst she walked home alone some evening, loathing the cold hairs raised off the back of her neck. ‘Shoo’ she’d tell it, angered by its lingering; she’d never before met a ghost but that night had felt one’s presence and could not be swayed to let it follow her home. ‘Shoo and get,’ she’d holler, yelling underneath the streetlamps, ‘Get off to someone else’s shoulder, I got no room for you on mine.’ He had nodded, listening to her, thinking her mad, holding Timothy’s hand and allowing his boy to pepper his mother with questions she showed no chagrin—rather, joy—to answer: where the ghost’d come from, what’d it want, was she scared? ‘No, hun,’ she’d said. The machines around her whirring, clicking, like the last rhythms of a heartbeat coming to rest. ‘You just got to let it know you ain’t afraid.’

Timothy shed his tears quietly the afternoon they lowered Rufus’ mother into the soil. Rufus held his hand, enjoying the soft warmth of it, experiencing the mild vertigo that is felt when one rushes himself, only briefly, into that foreseeable future wherein the scene he stands observing rests not the observed, but the observer replaced; the people changed, the words altered, but all the sights remaining. He watched himself lowered into the grave; beyond him, implanted within the crowd—Timothy: an older, vaguely delineated adult, holding the hand of his own child, a specter Rufus couldn’t imagine while holding the father’s hand, just a boy, beside him. Rufus regarded his son—a spot of darkness blossomed in the center of Timothy’s head and loomed upwards at him like an eyeball peering out from God knew what. Rufus blinked—the spot vanished. Shovelfuls of earth rained crashing onto the coffin.

                Years later, as he lie in bed, a shadow rose up before him, occupying the space where his wife had slept. Gone before Timothy could know her, she existed for him only through the stories Rufus had shared, and it was inevitable that much of what she became in them she’d become in Rufus’ memories as well, hungered for so often, the nourishment of his son’s soul as well his own, that who she was had been forgotten, and what she’d become concreted forever. The shadow, a weight within darkness, bore her shape. Rufus stared, uncertain whether it was fiction or solid ground. He turned on the light. 

                A single black spot loomed before him. It appeared not to rest on top of the fabric, but above it, hovering as though elevated inches off the sheets. He shifted his gaze—the black center followed. Anticipating the door, he saw instead a depthless circle, burrowed into the wood, one which, if he stood and met it, would swallow his arm to the elbow—maybe further. He blinked. The spot remained. Panic did not seize him. Leaving the door, he faced the window—the center travelled its distance sooner than he escaped it, thrusting its imprint onto the curtains, still as snow, unaware of this visitor clung to them like an insect. Cold at the back of his neck; something watched him, veiled not inside, but behind the center of his taken sight.      

                He closed his eyes, sitting up full in the bed. 

                “I’m not afraid,” he whispered. 

                A running off his flesh, breaking water. Light resplendent and bold. His mother’s voice. His wife’s, too. Timmy, I love you. Be strong.

 Rufus opened his eyes, and beheld a land of ghosts.


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## Pluralized (Dec 15, 2014)

*Obelisk* - 650w

Among the housing towers and concrete office buildings, there stood right in the center of the city a black heart whose throbbing commanded a myriad of souls. 


“Can you see them? Are they ready for harvest?” The voice gurgled out and reverberated in the space chamber.


The obelisk seemed to devour all light. Once a year, nearly two million people would gather around it, humming and crying, would sing praises to an unseen deity as they walked in slow circles. They would rub the inlaid stones at its corners, rumored not to be of earth. They wouldn’t look at one another, wouldn’t speak, but focus on the obelisk. They would come from far away, and most of them planned their lives around the pilgrimage.

The chanting supplicants would collapse, quiver for a moment, then all would rest still and silent. Others would keep moving, climbing over and shoving through, but the throng would become stuck and the pressure would crush many into broken, bloody pulps. Their heads would pop like ripe melons. They would self-destruct as a unit. Their faith, and the obelisk's cornerstones, would prove stronger than their fear. As the scriptures promised, luxurious heavenly rewards would await. If they could only get their hands on the stones, rub them in sequence and utter the prescribed verse. 

Each cycle, a Leader would be appointed to try and keep the crowd alive. 
When it came time for Jeru's assignment, he was given—in addition to the gun—a keycard and passcode for the entrance to the obelisk. 

“I need to get in there before the crowds arrive,” he told his father Nazar. “I have dreamed of this day.”

“Be careful, son. You know not the gravity of your assignment.” Nazar hugged his son.

“Father, I am going to leave now. Pray to the planets for me, and keep quiet when the harvesters come. For they will have nothing to gather, if I can help it.” 

All was silent except for the prayer call through the street-speakers. Jeru hurried to the obelisk and approached it slowly. He realized he was holding his breath. With an exhale, he swiped the card and waited for the doors to open. He was sucked through, and didn’t remember the doors opening at all. Inside was lit with red, and the silence caused his head to throb. 

“Approach.” A voice came from the bowels of the building, but also from deep within Jeru’s mind. He walked slowly forward, feeling the cold metal of the machine gun in his right hand. 

The purple light grew brighter as he moved farther into the building, and at what he assumed was the center of the lowest floor, there pulsed a brighter light. As he got closer, it took shape and appeared to be mostly spheric, but having a cleft in the center like a brain. 

“Jeru,” the voice whispered. “Heavy responsibility has been laid upon your shoulders. In a short time, the crowds will gather, and your assignment will begin. Have you ever killed another person?” The voice issued from the center of the black-purple, brain-like jellyfish.

His voice wouldn’t come. “Y-yes,” he hoarsely whispered. “But never intentionally.”

“We ask that you keep in mind the great responsibility you hold, but remember that as the crowds harm themselves, we all lose. We need them to worship, but need for you to keep the crowd from destroying itself. If that means killing a few people, you must do what it takes.”

Jeru backed away, mumbling. His orders from the harvesters kicked in. “I am sorry to do this,” he said, and raised the machine gun. It bucked in his hand as he fired into the brain’s mass, breaking its glass enclosure. The black-purple light faded. The mass oozed out onto the floor. Outside, Jeru could hear the chants starting. He threw down the rifle and rushed out to join them.


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