# Literary Maneuvers August 2022: Black Metal (1 Viewer)



## Harper J. Cole (Aug 1, 2022)

*Literary Maneuvers August 2022
Black Metal*​
Introduction
Things get heavy this month, as we challenge you to write a short story based on the theme of "Black Metal".

650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Sunday, 14 August
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2023 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.






Judging

Our judges include* Vranger,* *KatPC* and *SJ Ward.* If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* August 31st,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.


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## S J Ward (Aug 1, 2022)

I'll put myself forward as a judge, if you'll have me!


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## KatPC (Aug 7, 2022)

*忍 (ren/tolerance)*


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## Riptide (Aug 7, 2022)

Saving the World


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## YggNate (Aug 9, 2022)

Sorry, noob question. Where do we submit our entries? Many thanks!


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## Lawless (Aug 9, 2022)

YggNate said:


> Where do we submit our entries?


You can choose from three possibilities:
A) Post your story in this thread.
B) Post your story in the LM Workshop thread (see the link near the top of this page) and a link to it here.
C) Send your story by PM to Harper if you don't want the judges to know that you are the author.

Admins, please move this to the LM Coffee Shop or wherever if necessary.


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 9, 2022)

*An Unforgettable Summer Night*
_by Anon_

Tartu, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
1989

The festival was approaching its end. The headliner, Death Angel from the USA, had just started their second song. Above the distant treetops, the sun was turning reddish.

Raivo's buddies were probably somewhere closer to the stage. Raivo felt he'd had enough fun for one day. He watched the waving sea of sweaty bodies, the bass tones resounding in his ribcage.

"You'd like to be on stage, playing, wouldn't you, Raivo?"
"Not really," he replied absent-mindedly. "Death Angel is not quite my style."
_Wait, what?_ He turned to look at the speaker.
She was about Raivo's age, head at the level of his shoulders, spiky hair, eyes that looked pale green in this light.
"How do you know me?" he asked.
"They should tone down the basses," she said, ignoring his question.
"Yeah, they should." The sound was always crappy at live shows. Raivo hated it, but you had to put up with it to see the good bands. Only few privileged musicians were allowed to release records in this country, and they weren't worth listening to.

He eyed her black leather jacket and its curvature on the front. Something about the girl was inviting and something was forbidding. She didn't say anything and he couldn't think of anything to say. So he looked towards the stage again.

A fan was shouting at a security guard. Soon a fistfight broke out between the two. Raivo watched with horrified awe how the fan succeeded in hitting the guard with at best one punch out of three, while all the latter's blows were dead on target. Before the song ended, the fan felt he'd had enough and left.

The strange girl spoke again. "It's nice to drive early in the morning, isn't it?"
"Um... I guess it is."
"It's no longer dark and there are almost no other cars," she continued pensively. "You have the road all to yourself. You can let yourself go. Feel the freedom."
Raivo flinched as the words brought back a terrible memory. Was it possible that she knew something? He was sure he had never seen her before.

_"No, Raivo! You can't drink. You'll have to drive back to Tartu."
"Screw you! Why me?"
"Because you're sober, stupid!"
Raivo rolled his eyes, surrounded by roaring laughter._

"Were you at the Magnetic Band reunion concert?" the girl asked innocently.
What a question! Magnetic Band, the flagship of Estonian heavy metal, just recently re-legalised – how could he have missed that? They had all been there, his old gang, six blokes squeezed into Tom's car.
It had been late June, just like now, that time of the year when the sun only pretends to go down for a short while. Raivo tried to wish the memory away, but it wouldn't go.

_They attempted to chat up some girls after the show, and somehow the hours just flew by. Finally they drove into the sunrise, Venom playing at top volume and Mart's leg always in the way when Raivo changed gears. Spruces, pines and an occasional little wooden house flew by maybe a little faster than 90 km/h. And then that black car he saw at the last moment when he was cutting a curve...

"Go! Go!" they screamed when Raivo slowed down after the other car skidded off the road and hit a tree. He did as told, his hands shaking long afterwards. He was the only one to see in the rear-view mirror how the unlucky car caught fire._

"Where do you know me from?" Raivo was getting annoyed.
She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes were green no longer. In fact, she had no eyes at all, just empty sockets. "I'm Pille, the girl who burned to death in that black car. I think you and I have a lot to talk about."


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## Louanne Learning (Aug 9, 2022)

*The Alchemist

(647 words)*

They treated alchemists like dirt. Hid them away in the dankest reaches of the castle. Master Walter’s eyes still served but if he knocked over one more candle he would scream. Too much clutter in his laboratory and now this young snipper-snapper—_Desmond_—foisted upon him. Walter wasn’t ready for the graveyard yet.

His joints ached and he sat, hands between his knees, scowling at Desmond occupied with flasks at the workbench. “What are you engaged with over there?” he asked.

Desmond’s eyes widened. “I am acting gaquine on various substances, Master.”

“With heat or cold?”

“Cold.”

“Dampness or dryness?”

“Dryness.”

“Anything to report?”

Desmond hesitated. “I—um—”

“Come, now, what transmutations have you found?”

“I have—uh—_transmuted_—an interesting material.”

“Show me.”

Desmond scampered over, carrying a dish of what resembled black butter. “Three parts gaquine to one part distonium to one part plurium,” he said.

Walter accepted the dish. “Shiny, like metal, a soft metal. But what good is it?”

“I have been feeding it to rats.”

“Rats?”

“They become strong.”

“Strong?”

“Pried the bars and escaped their cages.”

Walter blinked. “What is this nonsense you speak of?”

Desmond seemed to gather up courage, then said, “I have been reading Roger Bacon, Master.”

“Who?”

“He advocates a method of enquiry wherein tests are made and observations—”

“Religious observation?”

“No, um—_experimental observation_—is made, and from the results, conclusions are drawn.”

This would not do. “Now, Desmond, you listen to me. The old ways are the best.”

“I have found—”

“I will not hear it. I was purifying and perfecting before you were a gleam in your father’s eye.”

Desmond slumped and went back to his little corner.

Later, after Desmond had left for the day, Walter availed himself of Desmond’s journal. His jaw hung as he turned the pages, seeing myriad rows and columns filled with numbers. “What lunacy is this?” he whispered to himself.

Just then, a rat scurried past his feet. To Walter’s amazement, it sprang itself into a high jump to hang by the door latch. The rodent pulled the latch, opened the door, dropped to its claws, then exited.

Walter was intrigued. He approached the soft, black metal in the dish and pinched off a morsel and sniffed it. It smelled like henbane. Before he could think better, he put it in his mouth. It melted down his throat. Nothing happened.

Walter went to bed that night thinking about the follies of old men.

He awoke to a strangeness. Nothing hurt. He gripped a heavy table and moved it about as though it was a wisp of fabric. Walter decided right then and there he must get more gaquine, distonium and plurium.

In secret, he started with a pinch a day. He never felt better! This progressed to morning, noon and night. Then he began to hear the thoughts of the rats.

A rat stared at him while he sat in his laboratory chair. “Desmond humiliates you,” the rat thought.

There was no sound, but an internal knowledge gained by Walter’s mind. He nodded, then glared at Desmond sideways. “Undermine me, will he?” Walter whispered to the rat.

“He makes you a public fool.”

“He seeks my position.”

“Then they will discard you.”

Desmond turned from the workbench. “Did you say something, Master?”

“No … How goes it with your rats?”

Desmond sighed. “They return to their cages, and cower, as if too fearful to come out.”

“He plotted against you,” the rat thought. “He knew that you would take the bait.”

A rage of no name gripped Walter. He strode to Desmond, took his head in his hands, and snapped his neck like it was a twig. The body fell and Walter growled like a beast gone mad.

Walter did well in the asylum. He stayed to his cell, and made friends with the rats.


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## YggNate (Aug 11, 2022)

Lawless said:


> You can choose from three possibilities:
> A) Post your story in this thread.
> B) Post your story in the LM Workshop thread (see the link near the top of this page) and a link to it here.
> C) Send your story by PM to Harper if you don't want the judges to know that you are the author.
> ...


Thanks for the help again big L B)

I hope to get something up (probably in this thread) by Sunday

Some good standards being set already, good luck everyone!


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## CyberWar (Aug 13, 2022)

*Black Metal Kitty [648 words]*​
“...so this Gypsy fella pops open his trunk and shows me this here coat. He says: “I’m kinda desperate to get it off of my hands, so I’ll let you have it for just twenty.” Twenty is all I had on me, but I’d be an idiot to pass up a deal like that. So I give him everything in my wallet, and now I have this fancy coat.” 

Ray concludes his recount of purchasing his WWII-era leather motorcyclist greatcoat from a Gypsy by taking a long swig of beer. I’ve heard it probably forty times before. The bathouse of Bech brothers is a well-known hangout spot for all of the town’s metalheads, and I’ve heard Ray Bech recount this story every time a new face appeared there on their Saturday night binges of headbanging, pot-smoking and drunken revelry. Today, however, we are hanging out at my place. With mom being gone for the weekend, taking care of the house is on me, but housekeeping is a very dull business without good company.

“So, is this thing, like, real?” Mosquito, the newest member of our crew to whom Ray’s story was originally intended, questions.

“You bet it is!” Ray is offended at the mere suggestion of his coat being a cheap replica,  “Here, see this?”

The faded Third Reich quality stamp inside the collar that he promptly points at affirms the historicity of what was once likely the motorcycling coat of an SS trooper.

Our conversation is interrupted by a shriek you’d normally expect to hear in a medieval dungeon, like if someone had ice picks stuck in his balls. It is followed by a guttural growl, sounding like something between a rabid grizzly bear and one of those sado-maso porn chicks when they gets pounded in the ass with a baseball bat.

It’s my best friend Kal and his cousin Marcus. Under the combined influence of cheap beer and weed, they seem to have decided to start up their own heavy metal band. Both have made good use of my mom’s theatrical makeup, a relic from when she was my age and participated in her school’s amateur theater. Now sporting a liberal amount of “corpse paint” on their faces, Kal and Marcus appear to be competing for the job of the lead vocalist. They can’t seem to agree on their upcoming band’s music style, though, as Kal’s piercing “kvlt shrieks” contradict Marcus’s “death growls”.

“Whaddya think, Johnny?” Kal asks me and repeats a spine-chilling scream, “Would you want me as the lead vocal, or rather take my talent-less cousin?”

“Fuck you!” Marcus protests, “You’d lose your voice after two songs shrieking like that, while I could death-growl all day long!”

And he emphasizes his point by making a long and intimidating growl before eventually starting to cough and having to freshen up with a beer.

Before I can deliver my verdict, we are all dumbstruck by a truly-terrifying inhuman bawl outside the window. It sounds almost as if Death itself is coming for us all with sirens blaring. It takes me a moment to realize it’s just my cat, who’s apparently in the middle of picking a fight with one of the neighbors’ cats.

“Damn, that sound scared the shit out of me for a sec!” Mosquito remarks.

“That was some real heavy metal shit right there,” Ray agrees, “Hell, you two losers should make Johnny’s kitty your lead vocalist and stick to playing guitars!”
.
More blood-curdling shrieks and bawls outside culminate with a brief scuffle and something hitting the window heavily before scurrying away in haste. Although reluctant to concede defeat to a meager feline, Kal and Marcus too agree that these vocalizations beat their capabilities with ease.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a proper black metal kitty, Johnny!” Marcus laughs, “He even looks the part!”

“There’s your winner,” I chuckle, “Stick to the guitars, lads!”


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 14, 2022)

*Solidaria*
_by Anon_


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## YggNate (Aug 14, 2022)

*Loud Music
(646 words)*

‘So change the name then,’ I told him. ‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘that would defeat the whole purpose. The point of naming it like this is to get people’s attention. We know it works, we’ve done it before.’ The space was quiet. Cool and quiet, smooth concrete cocooning us from the midsummer midday. Our band at the time, _Bloðyarn_, was in between practising and recording an easy second album. It would probably have been more difficult had the first been a real success. As it was, and largely thanks to the “speaking neck” of our lead guitarist’s instrument, that first imprint only did well somewhere below the underground. We believed (and some of us still do) that neopagan and dark folk were going to be the next big thing in mainstream rock. Perhaps it was sacrilege, though. Perhaps we had offended the ancestors with our modern lusts.

‘These punks in some European band, interfering with our operations again, sir.’ The man addressed kept his furrowed gaze on the papers by his keyboard and the screen in front of him, rapidly glancing over his glasses too quickly to make eye contact. ‘What are they doing, Collins, and what do you want me to do about it?’ Collins looked around the wall-mounted photos of former directors of the office, thinking this guy in front of him was the least approachable. ‘Well sir, it seems to be the fortune ferrous. They have elucidium alloy sprinkled up the neck of a guitar, in the resin, sir.’ Captain Harris let his hands freeze over the keys momentarily, looking into a space at the side of his head and slowly beginning to smile slightly. ‘Ah yes, fortune metal, the philosopher’s iron. Why, agent Collins,’ he clasped his fingers over elbows propped on the desk, signalling interest, and twinkled his narrowed eyes, ‘what are they coming up with?’ Collins tightened the grip on his wrist behind him, hoping to stop his body squirming with embarrassment. ‘Well Mister Harris, Captain, sir, they appear to have released an album with, with many song titles on it that correlate exactly to the names of some of the locations in our sensitive security project.’

‘Here, put your hand on mine while I do it.’ I rolled my eyes, but I sort of understood. ‘Come on man, I’m the one singing about this scary stuff. I want to get some feel for what is going on.’ Ambert–often Ambo but never Berty–our lead guitarist, never smiles. But, and especially for a big guy, he never looks really mean either. ‘Listen Paul, I am happy to be sharing this thing with you and the guys, but it’s really had an effect on me man, all this with the strange metal.’ I looked at the neck of the strat, glistening with filings of this mysterious new material. And I respectfully resigned myself to the fact that any good guitarist has an intimate connection with his _materiel_. ‘Quantum strange metal,’ I half corrected him, ‘that stuff is like a magic mirror held up to tomorrow, Ambo. Four tracks on our debut name the scenes of mass shootings, days or weeks before they happened!’

Harris stopped smiling. He moved his keyboard slightly one way, then slightly back again to the same place, for no obvious reason. He sniffed and stretched his neck one way. ‘Has the remote viewing department been informed about this?’ Collins straightened up further, hoping to stress his integrity. ‘No sir, I thought I would come and speak to you about all this first, sir. You see the internet forums are buzzing with the line that these guys are somehow with us.’ The captain pressed his lips together, drawing them in at the same time, like he was stuck for words, which then came suddenly: ‘Have him kidnapped and processed for assignment. He will be our next assassin.’​


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## KeganThompson (Aug 14, 2022)

Mayhem(Content warning-mention of suicide)


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## Selorian (Aug 14, 2022)

Glitch to Black


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## tonsonenotany (Aug 14, 2022)

The Last Council of the Animals


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## Harper J. Cole (Aug 15, 2022)

*Speaking in Tongues*
_by Anon_


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