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[Little]

Almost forgot this thread existed!  Don't worry, this story is a lot smaller than the other ones.

A Quick Smoke
By Little

I cupped my little stick of death, shielding it from the wind and rain as I lit it's head on fire. I could almost imagine a little cigarette head with an expression of terror on it's face as I drew in the first cloud of smoke and exhaled it into the night. I was standing outside the Crow Bar, a horrendously named yet comfortable place to have a drink or two and sit down with friends. Unfortunately, the man I was with wasn't my friend, and he wasn't alone.

My enemy was wearing a nice  suit and a rather nice hat that looked like a fedora, his two thugs wearing dark suits and sunglasses even in the depressing gloom, 'legally obtained' police batons outlined against the thugs clothes. I was in the bucket for a hundred grand, and I was out of time. Sadly, I knew exactly what 'good ol' boy' Fred and his oafs were going to do, and it really wasn't going to be pretty. I had burned the money in the numerous casinos that dotted the slums and seedy districts below the river, and I wasn't exactly careful about what I smoked, injected, or snorted these days either.

I'm pretty sure they had already whacked Mary. She hadn't come home last night, and I sure as hell wasn't a friend of the Ferreria family. I used to have Dewey behind me to back me up, but Dewey was dead, killed in a drive-by three days ago. Dewey had been a fairly major drug dealer with a lot of people to back him up, but once you deal on Ferreria turf, you're a marked man.

Fred turned to me, looking at my cigarette in disgust. We were both getting wet in the gloomy night, and he gave a tired smile as he said, "Justin, my good man. You haven't paid us back the loan, and we've heard quite a few rumors about your recent actions. Do you have the money?"

I shook my head, my black hair becoming slick with rainwater, and Fred sighed. He made a little gesture to his thugs, and they promptly pulled out their batons. I promptly reached into the right pocket of my motorcycle jacket and pulled out a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum, the last purchase I had made.

The thugs halted for a single instant, and then I started to pull the trigger. I cheerfully puffed on my cigrette as the shots screamed out, watching the thugs crumple as the fourth shell clinked onto the wet pavement. Fred's expression was one of utter shock as I sifted my aim and fired a round between his eyes. The back of his head blew out with a revolting noise. I depressed the clip release, slid out the clip, and jammed in a new one. I turned to look at the bar, the patrons looking at me with expressions of horror. I pocketed the .44 and begun to walk away, getting soaked to the skin but not caring. After walking for roughly half an hour, I arrived at the downtown bus depot. I quickly bought a ticket for the next bus and hopped onto the metal behemoth twelve minutes later, joining the legion of sleepy passengers. I didn't know where I was going, but that was fine by me.

[Labs]

   I really enjoy your style. It's nice to see someone else with a talent for writing.

[Little]

Thank you Labs! It'd be cool to see more of your stuff, too!

Killing For A Job
By Little

What I do is easy. During the day, I sit in a cubicle and stare out the window, my hands almost typing the numbers by themselves. Once you do anything for a long enough peroid, it becomes habit. Like, another habit I've picked up is always having three pairs of little foam ear plugs on my person. You never know when you're gonna need those cheerful little orange or yellow wads to keep your ears from ringing. You pick up handy tricks in both my lines of work. For example, with my accounting job, a useful trick I've picked up is how to make a coffee machine actually produce coffee that tastes okay, rather than the weak excuse for coffee it normally spits out. You just use filtered water, and the taste actually increases in quality. A useful trick I've learned in my other job is that one should always have a pack of styrofoam pellets tucked away in the closet, because combining the pellets with gasoline creates a lovely paste. I find nine pellets per a cup of gasoline works very well in making the paste, which has a number of fun and exciting uses.

What I really like about my second job is that I only get paid in cash. It's never a check in the mail, or money deposited in the bank. I’ll just come home a few days after a job and there will be a wad or two of cash. It's a wonderful sense of freedom, knowing the thick stack of fifties and twenties is mine to keep and do whatever with. I could go out and buy drugs, or gun, or booze, but I don't. I tuck it away like a squirrel, hiding my money in the walls. Forty or fifty grand just sits behind the plaster, accruing a nice collection of dust bunnies as electrical wiring and puffs of pink insulation simply stay inert around them.
My life has gotten more complicated recently, however. I met a really nice girl at work, and I asked her out six months ago. Her name is Rachel Green, and we’re at the point where my good buddy Jake elbows me in the ribs and says with a wink, "Am I gonna be your best man?" whenever I get into his car. I really like her, and she really likes me, but I have no damn clue how I'm going to explain the money when she finds it. I feel guilt whenever I tell her 'I'm going out with the guys', or I tell her 'I have too much work to do to go out tonight', or the classic 'I've been feeling a little ill and I'll make it up to you'. She's bound to figure it out eventually, it isn't like she's not already suspicious. She sure as hell isn't stupid, and she's gonna catch on quick.

I'm gonna do one last hit. I've had good times, like the time we nailed the city council member as he walked out of a brothel. Me and Jake couldn't stop laughing about the stupid look on his drunk face for weeks. I've had my failures as well, like when I failed to waste the guy who nailed Fred. I tracked him down to a car-wash in Capital, and the bastard throws car polish into my eyes, then pulls out a pistol and fires a shot into my shoulder as he runs for it. Jake failed to hit him, the shot going high. We got reamed on that one, being screamed at Carlos Ferreria himself. I still count myself lucky I made it out with both my kneecaps intact. A final job won't kill me, so I'm gonna do it. If Rachel and I ever have a kid, I'll put it into his or her college account to make up for it.
After work, I merely went down into company parking. My car was gone, but it didn't bother me. It would be parked outside my apartment building, safe and sound for when I get back. Parked in it's place was Jake's sleek Hummer. Christ only knows how he afforded to even pay gas on the thing. I walked across the boiling asphalt that was heated by the falling sun to the black Hummer, climbing in the passenger side. The odd thing I always notice about Jake is that he doesn't look like he belongs in a hummer. He's thirty-six, which makes him eight years older than I am. He just wears jeans and a t-shirt, the wear and tear of his clothes being simply awful. Holes in the shirts from sparks, holes in the jeans from either wear or close bullets, but a cheerful optimism and a happy smile that makes you think he's in the wrong line of work. As I take off my tie and button down my shirt, he grins and pulls a beautiful looking Mossberg 590 from the backseat, the wood stock on the combat shotgun gleaming. He says, "Use it wisely, now. Recoil on this baby is something else, so aim low."

I merely nod as I clip my seatbelt in, the strap tightening as I stuff in one pair of earplugs. Ten minutes later, I've read the little folder Jake had on the dash. The target today is Marcus Baradwell, a local reporter who's running a report on a few local gangs and 'families', and they aren't too happy about it from the looks of it. He's having an early dinner at an outdoor cafe, so he's easy pickings. I doubt he knows the danger he's in. A few quick minutes later, we're rolling down the street at a steady pace. Mr. Baradwell does have protection from what I can pick out, one measly bodyguard sitting at the table with him, the person across from him also in the folder. It was John Elder, the editor of Baradwell's work, and I'd get five hundred bucks as a little bonus if I wasted him too, according to the folder. Editors of slander are as guilty as the person who writes the piece, after all.

As we roll by the little restaurant, I lean out the window and depress the trigger twice. The whole upper half of Marcus Baradwell simply disappears in a red haze of bone and organs. I shift my aim to the left and pull the trigger again, the helpful spread mechanics of the shotgun allowing the single shot to successfully kill Mr. Elder and the bodyguard in one echoing blast. The Hummer quickly speed away, the smile never vanishing from Jake's face, a grin appearing on my own. Nothing quite gives you an adrenaline rush like killing someone.

That night, I head out to dinner with Rachel. I'm thinking of proposing, really. I think she'd say yes, I have the resources, and we both madly love eachother. It might be a little soon, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. That was Mr. Ferreria's motto, and it fit pretty well in my life too. I drive out in my nice little car, she driving out in hers. I'm wearing nice suit and she's wearing a nice dress. We both smile to eachother as we link arms and go inside. We get seated quickly, the waiter smiling at the nice couple we are when we request a bottle of the house red. An entree and a main course later, we've had pleasant conversation, plenty of laughs, and have had a fantastic time. As the waiter comes to give us the bill, I subtly signal him to give us a minute, and then I drop to one knee. I quickly pull out the little black box and pull open the lid, revealing a gleaming diamond ring. I'm not even thinking of what I did to get the ring. As I say, "Will you marry me?", a man in a brown suit and a deadly smile on his face comes into the establishment. He rudely elbows the waiter out of the way and draws up his FN P90, the compact gun small but deadly. He takes aim as she responds, "Yes. I love you so much, James. Marriage will be great."
The last thing I see before a three round burst suddenly drains me of the ability to kneel on one knee is her beautiful smile, her shining radiance, her eternal love. The second burst hits me as I fall, and suddenly everything begins to drain of colour and fade...

[Awayfarer]

Did a bit of work on your third story. I've been pretty busy myself between writing a couple of things, looking up lit. journals to submit to and taking the final class I need for my bachelor's degree. 

The room was dim, and all Aahil Bari could see was dim shapes.

Find a synonym for one instance of “dim”.

He was terrified, and he felt dizzy. He was certain he had been drugged with something. God, he had been so stupid! A passport problem was obviously a setup in retrospect, but he had fallen for it like an ignorant fool. He opened his mouth and let out a long, tired, sigh.

“He opened his mouth” is a superfluous action. We can assume that if he has sighed, he must have opened his mouth.

He had been taken to Custom, and had been sat down in a room across from two stern-looking Customs Officers.

You have an opportunity to flesh out your character here. What does he look like? How does he feel while he is being brought to the office? A nervous habit or two would really bring him to life.

Then one had said, “It’s him.” And he had been smashed on the head with something. Then he had woken up in the trunk of a car, and they thudded across a pot-hole riddled road, each hole slamming Aahil against the hard metal of the trunk.

I’d change the beginning of that second sentence. Two sentences which begin with “then” feels a bit repetitive. Note that frequent use of “and then” can make your prose sound like a list of events. For example, “Then we drove downtown. Then we got out of the car. Then we went into the donut shop.”

There’s a bit of an issue with character knowledge. You’ve started off limiting your perspective to what Aahil can see/hear. Stuck in a car trunk, he doesn’t have any way of knowing what the road looks like. A dirt road can be just as bumpy.

When light had come at long last, he only saw the daylight for a moment before being stabbed in the forearm by a syringe.

“light” and “daylight” are really describing the same thing. This would flow better as “When daylight came at long last, it was only for a moment…” (etc)

Really keep a close eye on what you describe. As stated, this sentence could be taken to mean that a syringe stabbed Aahil in the arm with something. All you need to do there is replace the “by” with “with”.

Now he was sitting in a shitty little room with light filtering across the cracked, grimy, floor from under a battered door.

Alright, Good use of detail. Ironically I get a nice clear picture of the dark and dingy room. 

He was bound tight against something hard, most likely a chair, but moving his head made him feel terribly light-headed.

Ah. This is what I was talking about earlier with the trunk/road. He can’t see the thing he’s tied to, so he doesn’t know what it is. That is, this is a good example of how to use his perspective.

The wisps of greying hair at the back of his head felt heavy, probably matted with his blood from the head injury.

Probably sticky too, I’d imagine. I might find a different word than “wisps”. That word has connotations of lightness that contradict the word “heavy”.

Aahil sighed again, idly beginning to wonder what they were going to do to him.

This is a little too far removed from the first sigh, temporally and spatially, for it to be “again”. That is to say that while the first sigh happened on the same page, too much has happened to this character for there to really be a link with such a minor action. You can just edit out the “again” here and it’ll be fine.

Torture seemed likely, and he felt even more tired when he realised hours of agonizing punishment was ahead of him. The last time he had been tortured, he had been in much better shape for it, too. This time, it might send his heart teetering into oblivion.

Need a “that” between “realized” and “hours”.

Take a second look at the last sentence in this passage. Would torture really send his heart “teetering into oblivion”? What might somebody in that position think, literally, of the results of their torture? Try and find a description there that is somewhat closer to ordinary speech.

Twenty years ago, he had even managed to keep his mouth shut while the revolutionaries shocked him with their damning probes, now he would burst into tears and spill his nation’s most treasured secrets at the sight of those small metal teeth.

When you say “damning” probes, did you just mean “damn” or “damned”? I wasn’t clear on whether the word was paired with “probe” to indicate a particular type of instrument, or if it was just the stray curse word of a frustrated and terrified man.

What is his nation? This feels like an important detail. It doesn't even have to be a real nation but I think it would flesh out this character a bit if we had more info.

Abruptly, the door was thrown open, slamming against the wall.

I’d just chop this down to “The door slammed against the wall.” The other stuff just gives the same info. If a door slams against the wall we can tell that the event was abrupt.

...more to follow eventually...

[Little]

In a slightly different pacing

The Robespierre
By Little

The Robespierres are a race that evolved on the planet Krzos. The world was a lush and teeming place, covered by great oceans and forests. The Robespierre evolved from a species of fish, but quickly they were quick to forsake their aquatic heritage and adapted to a life of prowling on the ground for fruit and then swinging back up into the trees with their long back arms. The standard arms positioned lower on their bodies were used for scooping up fruits and berries that lay on the ground. As their focus shifted downwards to the ground, they began to make warbling cries to indicate to other Robespierres that food had been found, the cry heeding any fellow Robespierre to come join in the feast. Robespierres also became shorter as their focus on foraging increased, and their backs were bent over in the relentless shuffle to pick up food, the longer arms growing longer still as an escape route on lower branches of small trees. Their senses also rearranged themselves over many generations, with their ears placed on their backs and their eyes onto their stomachs. Another curious result of their behaviour was that having two eyes became simply inefficient, so the Robespierre adapted again, having one dinner-plate sized eye instead of two small ones, using their eye for seeing food, their ears for detecting their predators, and their long arms from escaping into the trees. As the ecosystem flourished around them, predators began to pick up on the distinctive feeding call and would wait in the shadows as the Robespierres gathered to eat before attacking. As a result, the cries that rent through the sky ceased and Robespierre’s developed a completely silent mode of communication: they communicated with their eyes.  As this odd system began to grow more intricate and detailed, Robespierres could coordinate movements, locations, and crude plans over flashes of colours.
___

If their cycles had gone uninterrupted, the Robespierre may just be an archaeological footnote of some other species, but alien intervention prevented them from that dreary fate. An alien species planted a Monolith on Krzos, and a small pack of Robespierres stumbled upon it while looking for food. One gentle touch with their standard arms and the Robespierre achieved crude intelligence. The pack grew slowly, the usage of tools allowing the inferior Robespierre to survive. Eventually the Robespierre developed into tribes and eventually cities, carving out a civilization based around the Monolith, the Monolith releasing information that would push society forward to the Robespierres on a bi-centurial basis. The Robespierres had mastered farming along the shores of the Cromwell River and had a complicated culture with its own art, and a layered political system when the first crack in Robespierre society occurred.

The Robespierre were in the Bronze Age at this point.

The Robespierre government was ruled by a council that had the power to veto any decisions the elected assembly made, and the council was bitterly divided over one issue: who should own the Monolith? Two religions had sprung up around it, the differences inconsequential but significant enough to the devout so that the sides harboured deep resentment towards eachother. As tensions built over which faction would end up possessing the centre of Robespierre society. As the council members bickered, the priests insulted their opposing numbers, and over half of Robespierre society gathered spears and crude swords. The two religious factions met on the steps of the Monolith Monument, and the taunts and jeers began as the two sides stood apart. After a few short moments of escalation, the two sides clashed, the clang of metal hitting metal and the revolting sound of metal piercing organs. As the fight reached its bloody crescendo, a swirl of colours suddenly blasted out of the top of the Monolith, the amazing display dazzling the Robespierres into stopping their fight as they looked up and saw the intricacies of their language telling them a message, only this wasn’t one of the planned dates. The Robespierres looked up to see the message, forgotten weapons dropping to the ground from their idle hands.

The message simply said, ~“ War will be the death of your civilization. Murder will be the death of your civilization. Conflict will be the death of your civilization. Peace is the only true way...”~

When the final hue faded from the sky, the Monolith abruptly fell into a seemingly infinite number of black dots. As the Robespierres merely stared at the large pile of what looked like black dust, ancient neural-networks were activating in the pile, setting up plans and instructions. The black pile began to shift into a whirring cloud, and all the Robespierres took a step back as it rapidly expanded along the tiled steps of the Monument. The cloud grew exponentially in the span of a few seconds, enveloping the Monument completely. The Robespierres merely stood still in shock, many weeping and thinking the world was ending because of their petty struggles. When the cloud abruptly shrunk back into a massive pile, the Robespierres all knelt down and praised the memory of the Monolith for having the wisdom to spare them and they vowed they would not tread down the path of war ever again. The black pile reconstructed itself into the Monolith with that whirring noise, and the two former armies ran off to tell others of the message.
___

Civilization continued on a more peaceful course. Different nations developed, cities prospered, culture flourished. The capital city of Tok was divided between nations, the country of Momaw gladly allowing the city to be split up to allow other nations access to the Monolith, which was still the center of society. Competition between nations and individuals still existed, but on an entire new battlefield:  economies. Economic warfare had become the vent of anger, the medieval society of the Robespierre masters of economic manipulation, many merchants bankrupting whole countries to destroy other guilds composed of rivals. The global economy was unstable, but governments cracked down on the instability, forcing merchants to enter guilds and play the game with their own money and resources, as well as forcing them to provide safety nets for where their operations were based. The measures worked, and soon the economy was thriving against a background of guilds rising into wealth and plunging into poverty. The backbone of Robespierre society was set, and technology advanced as nations worked together to push forward.
___

The Renaissance of the Robespierre was the invention of banking, which acted like strongholds in their wars. To bankrupt a guild now, rivals would have to infiltrate via accounts and deposit massive sums and then wait. As the unsuspecting bank spent the money, more accounts would be opened. When the bank finished using the cash and fell back on the cash made from loans, the mole accounts would all withdraw, forcing the bank to close due to debt. The art of economic warfare only grew more sophisticated as the Robespierre exited the Renaissance, and the next big leap in science would only push the complexity further. The Robespierre Industrial Revolution neatly coincided with the invention of electricity. Electricity caused the hasty invention of the telegraph, which meant as long as you were near a telegraph station; communication with nearly anyone could be almost instant. Society and the economy leaped forward, the technique of interchangeable parts leading to a massive rise in the economy. Robespierre society began to shift, gathering around their workplaces in small communities while guilds only grew, often bringing whole supply and production lines under their control. Guilds that went through the struggle of acquiring a whole production chain often underwent an internal   revolution, the guild leader being deposed in favour of a leading council. Guilds that controlled production chains also had to manage every faucet of the line, from the health of the community that gathered around the workplace and the local bank to the shipping of raw materials. These guilds often underwent the transformation into corporations, responsible for maintaining the local economy and providing a safety net to the local inhabitants while taking guilds into their folds. The telegraph also lead to the invention of instant banking, with account balances and figures transferred quicker than many could even begin to comprehend. After the vast economic struggle for supremacy, the largest corporations were the only ones standing, with the smaller guilds and corporations merely absorbed into their infrastructure.

The government quickly took action, separating the corporations from stability as they did with the guilds. Even though society clustered around their workplaces and banks, the sway of religion was still incredibly strong, with the Monolith receiving well over three billion pilgrims on its steps annually. Religion and government had been separated, so the government could make the best decisions for the people it ruled and the church could make the best decisions for the people who followed it. Poverty was virtually non-existent, the corporations always needing more workers to fill out their ranks. The government taxed the corporations; giving back the benefits to society while making corporations give the communities they upheld a safety net if they fell.
 The differences between nations began to blur. Nations unified by trade joined together and eventually only a few superpowers remained, all on good terms and focussed on maintaining economic stability and providing the best life for their citizens. The few remaining blank spots on maps began to disappear as steamships were invented, the voyages government sponsored but free reign given to corporations over the newly discovered lands as long as they adhered to the laws restricting them.

As nations joined together, corporations grew apart. The invention of the assembly line at the end of the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new age of productivity, only driving up the intensity of the competition between economic behemoths. The invention of the light bulb allowed factories to open two shifts when they had enough workers, only ramping up production. Any resource rich areas were quickly tapped for raw materials, causing governments to institute environmental protection laws that forced corporations to renew and revitalise land that had been used to harvest materials. The Robespierre entered a second Golden Age, with the population booming, technology advancing quickly, and the bottom line always growing bigger. The Robespierres lived in their tight-knit communes, driving a short distance to work in their new vehicles, grew their own food, and were happy as could be, apart from the occasional flood or hurricane.
___

Robespierre civilization could only go up. The invention of the computer by a government-run think tank led to drastic increases in Robespierre understanding of math and physics, the first solid application of the computer being a crude missile launch six months later. The missile rose through the sky and twisted sideways, the crude engine failing as it veered sideways and increased in speed. The rocket promptly died completely, the engine exploding, and it shot down towards the ground, blowing apart as it smashed into a lake. Improvements to rockets were made using upgraded computers, a whole government taskforce tasked with making a better computer and a separate task force to make a better rocket. Robespierre government had found itself a challenge it could apply to: sending a rocket into space, and it cheerfully did so two years and twelve launches later. The first Robespierre astronaut would come later, but the foundation had been set.

The corporations did note the invention of the computer, but deemed it uninteresting at the time. The failed missile launch was amusing to the general population, but most didn’t find it newsworthy. Technology ploughed forward, corporations and guilds continued to rise and fall, but now something bigger had been set in motion. Within three decades, computers had been streamlined and shrunk, development costs plummeting as new materials and methods were devised to create them. Every so often, the Robespierres would stop on the street as a missile rose into the sky, and they’d watch as it plunged back down into the testing zone. The public usually regarded these events with a laugh and a shake of the head before continuing on their way, until one day, the rocket didn’t come back down. The first Robespierre satellite had been launched, and it contained a colour and written history of the Robespierre, the launch a major victory for the government. On the edge of the test zone, the whole Rocket Research Institute was cheering and their eyes were all a thick shade of green, their joy evident. Later that year, the Omega Corporation picked up the designs for a home computer and began manufacturing, pushing the first home computer on the market. Within two months, the cheap computer had broken nearly every sales record in Robespierre history, a feat that put the newly-merged Omega Corporation at the top of the economic food chain.

Within that decade, the first Robespierre was put into space and safely returned, gliding along the Cromwell River before slamming into Luther Lake. The Cloud, a system used to link computers together without cables was pioneered and released by Omega Corp, and competition brought down the price and size of computers drastically. In the following years, it was not an uncommon sight to see businessmen and factory workers sitting side by side on the steps of The Monolith, one managing stocks electronically while the other flashed moods to friends through a webcam.  A small asteroid belt was discovered inside the solar system, and corporations banded together under the flag of profit. As the government colonised the two moons, the Omega Corporation joined with Flight Inc to form Star Limited, the world leader in everything from computers to asteroids, as the advertisements sang. A small automated mining fleet was sent out asteroid Beta 3, and after large deposits of iron and gold were found, the rush to the stars began like a gold rush. Mining colonies set up, research colonies set up, and still more clamoured to be sent off on rockets. New technology flooded in from government think tanks and corporations alike, everything from vast shields to protect colonies from asteroid impacts to mining lasers that could slash through an asteroid’s cold rocky crust like a corporation slashing through a start-up.
It was around the time work on the first FTL engine began and the last nooks and crannies of the solar system were being mapped, a Robespierre Colony Director with minor political ambitions proposed an interesting idea to the government:  ‘What would happen if there were other beings out there, and they weren’t friendly? They’d murder us.’

The government was genuinely disturbed by the notion, but they conceded that if there were other races out there, they might do more than peacefully trade. This lead to a massive undertaking by the Robespierre government, and for the first time in six thousand years, they were building weapons and defences.  Massive shield generators were built and positioned in major cities; banks of missiles crammed with explosives were buried underground ready to be fired at a moment’s notice, and the population of Krzos was drilled in what to do in the event of an attack. Many corporations purchased weapons for use on their colonies, not wanting to be caught with their guard down, and satellites bristling with sensors were set up at the edges of the solar system. As the first FTL drive was completed, tested and perfected with the intensity of a corporation over account balances, and mounted onto a ship, all preparations for defence were completed. The ship was prepared, a staff and crew selected and trained, and the final sensors mounted. Over one billion Robespierres showed up or watched the launch of the ship, at first screaming up like a regular rocket and as it broke the atmosphere, it began to blur as it disappeared into the darkness of space...

One of the sensors on the edge of the system detected a brief blip as it screamed past the icy ball, and the captain smiled as the ship ventured into unknown space, their home planet far behind them.