Robynettely

I actually had the idea for this story the evening before the challenge came out. We were standing around after karate class talking about how I broke Mike's nose (this was like two or three years ago, and I was the third person to break it in about two months, so I don't feel that guilty; it was getting pretty weak) and how it's never going to heal now, and it will just get longer and longer, that bit that's never going to reattach, and he'll be able to swing it and hit people like a third arm... anyway. "Have you been taking your meds?" Simone asked. If she was calling, she was probably at home, bored. "Yes," he lied. He could feel the skin stretching on his nose, the cartilage pushing outward and, like a faun growing antlers, he wanted to rub the stretched flesh. "You aren't, are you?" Simone said. She sounded like she was pacing, probably tidying up her condo. "Yeah, I am," said Jack. The meds were between him and his ...

Yay, another challenge! You can find it here . Considering one of my known writing issues is all those scenes where my characters sit around eating, this is right up my alley. The bread was obviously poisoned. Kendra was the only one who ate the 12-grain. The child ate wonderbread, or the local grocery store's equivalent brand, because she was ten. The old woman ate that cheap white stuff too, because her gums couldn't tolerate the lumpy bits. So they had to buy two kinds of bread every time they went to the store, and often the bread went stale before it was gone, because who wants a sandwich every day. So the old woman knew Kendra was the only one who ate the 12-grain bread, and she infested it with whatever mould made the medieval people go mad, that infested their grain silos and made them hallucinate religious experiences and eventually sicken and die. The old woman knew Kendra would pick off the green bits, leaving tendrils of poison still deep in the bread to be eaten, g...

It's been weeks and weeks (at least four weeks) since last I did one of these challenges . I'm fighting the idiot self-imposed conviction that everything I write has to have a supernatural or fantastic or SF element. That's just stupid. “The name of this place is pretty offensive,” the woman said as I set her beer on the bar. "Not my fault," I said. "It was named that when I got here." "Still, you're making light of people's suffering." She might have been 43 (just a guess), with long hair in a ponytail, still mostly blonde. She wore paint-spattered jeans and a tee-shirt. "They're all dead. And I think it's more a statement about our cleaning staff. Lanes should be clean." The man who came in and made a bee-line to her would have been two or three years older, fit like a runner and suited like a lawyer. His hairline was receding. He wore a wedding ring. A bowling alley must have seemed like a good place to meet; neithe...

The challenge is here . This is something I had lying around that I wrote originally in March 2009. Maybe I'll post the whole 650-word version tomorrow. The bouncy ball was bisphenol-b. When the princess accidentally tossed it into a well, it sank to the bottom. A frog croaked, "I'll fetch it for you, for a kiss." "Okay," the princess said. "Kiss, then ball," the frog said. Their lips touched. The frog grew and the green localized to tights and a jacket; obviously a prince. The princess forgot about the ball. They didn't live happily ever after. As a frog, the prince had absorbed a lot of pseudo-estrogens. His vestigial third leg gave the princess the willies, and his sperm count was insufficient to provide heirs, anyway.

The challenge : a hundred-word story about bullies, and only the weekend to write it. They're all posted over on terribleminds.com, but to be complete about things, I've put it here too. “You should make something for the bake sale,” Janelle said. “It’s a good cause.” Their daughters were on the soon to be torn down playscape. It looked safe enough to Clarissa. “I’m not much of a baker,” she said. Money was a little tight this week. “Heather looks grubby today,” Janelle said. “Didn’t Children’s Aid visit you once?” “When her father was still around,” Clarissa said. Things were better now. “Maybe I can make some squares.” There might be brownie ingredients in the cupboard? Underneath the playscape Heather threw a handful of sand. Caitlin ran, bawling, to her mother.

This challenge was different -- Chuck Wendig is doing a worldbuilding exercise. The entries are all in the comments, but I thought for completism, I'd post mine here, too. The world was once terraformed. Aliens had seeded it With algae spores. These spores grew on all the wet things, killed some of them, and converted others. It was a very painful process. Creatures walked around, bodies half-covered in algae, going mad from pain. The algae spores are a modified version of filamentous green algae, which does conjugal reproduction (trading DNA with other species). The algae takes the sulfur out of the SO2 atmosphere, leaving the free oxygen that the original lifeforms are allergic to. The algae is still out there. Occasionally there’s an outbreak. Non-natives are particularly vulnerable.

Another Chuck Wendig challenge; the rules are here . I'd written this story to see if I could do something small in the world of my urban fantasy, without it having all that annoying stuff I see in some short story collections that contain those. I had to cut it considerably to fit it in the space. It would be neat to put this aside and then try editing it "straight", and see how it comes out. I had not realized my vampires were so racist. Mary Alice went out to give Sephora a hug. “Thank god you’re here. Avril is the dumbest thing ever.” “I know, honey,” said Sephora. Without a mirror she freshened her black eyeliner and cranberry lip gloss. Sephora would have flown commercial from Iceland now that Candelmas was past. She dragged a huge trunk behind her through PATH, Toronto's 10 KM of underground walkway and mall. “I can’t believe she’s going to be second,” Unlike the other vampires, Mary Alice was small and had a tiny voice to go with her pixie-sized body. “If Goat...

The challenge is here . Go there! Read the other stories! Mine is about a plant my mother is growing. Kitchens in the Cookie Factory Lofts were small, so Kimberley didn't have to walk far to show Mitch the ginger they had left in the cupboard. "Look at it," Kimberley said. "I wonder if you can eat the shoots." Four branches, hard like bamboo, grew off the corners of the wizened 3-inch root. "It's not a burger," Mitch said. He was working from home on the dining room table. The loft didn't really have an office. "Maybe I'll plant it," said Kimberley. She used ground ginger instead, and dinner was sub-standard that evening. Mitch knew enough not to say anything. After dinner, Kimberley took a flowerpot off the windowsill, and threw out the dead poinsettia it had held. She dug a hole and nestled the ginger root in with coffee grounds and potato peels. She watered the whole mess and set it beside the spindly avocados and garlic scapes...

The challenge (100 words max, and the story has to contain three of five words provided) is here . I found this one particularly tough, I don't know why. Another vamp swung down from the ivy covering Bishop's tomb. I threw my weight at her like I'd learned in self-defense class. It was the wrong move. I was within arm's reach now. She easily dodged my fists. Her fingers wrapped around my throat. She tilted it sideways to press her teeth, her vampire enzymes, into my jugular. A berserker rage came onto me. I kneed her in the groin. I elbowed her jaw. She fell. My shoe heel made a passable stake. Because of the hands around my neck. Last life, that must have been how I died.

Because "The Alchemist's Daughter" was taken, repeatedly. The challenge was here (it was a picture, you should go look). I'm clearly influenced by the book I'm reading about prohibition right now. We burned the still with lots of people around. This way, it would be a story in itself, how it went up in a bonfire with all the eight families watching. On a hill above town, we'd spent the day making the pyre, and benches, and racks for casks, and torches to lead the way up. Will's family showed up before the sun was properly down. None of them had even started drinking. They were here to drink ours, to keep their own for emergencies. "What are you going to do, after?" I asked, handing him a mason jar with one of my father's exotic blends. They were brewed with rituals and herbs or animal bones, and I sometimes wondered how much he kept track of which family got what. I'd hoped he'd leave Will's family out of the experiments, so they ...

The challenge, and the other stories, can be found here . If you know where I got the idea for this story, remember, it's just a story. I'm told she's really very nice. She wore hot pants, a midriff-bearing sweater, and ankle warmers, so we ignored her technique, put her with the beginners, and snickered behind our hands. Weeks later when she asked where to get a uniform, we wondered if those were the only work-out clothes she had. But she came to the next class in her new gi, and wore a black belt and gloves. She fought all the black belts, and won the dojo, without even glancing at the green and brown belts. While she was fighting, we poisoned her water bottle.

Back after a couple weeks off, with another challenge (read the other entries here ). I'd meant to write about Lord Simcoe, who named lots of places in Ontario. But driving back from our holiday, in the very edge of the former Hurricane Irene, we saw the weirdest clouds... Thanks to Ed for research help. "I wouldn't even know what to call those," Amelia said to her trusty plane. Much like the Eskimos and snow, she had something like 56 different words for clouds. Nothing from stratus to cumulonimbus quite described these log-shaped formations scudding below the smooth silver overcast. "Multiple layers of cumulus," the Electra said. Her navigator, Fred Noonan, couldn't hear, because in 1937 no one used intra-cockpit voice-activated communications systems. As they had entered this strange region of sky, they had dropped altitude -- 6500 feet, 6000, 5500, and now they were at 2000 feet with no place to land. Fuel was a concern. Going up, through t...

For this challenge, once again I tapped into my twin personal themes of squirrels and taxidermy. Also, I'd had a dream with a girl named Ginevra in it, then I'd read this story, so the name was popping in and out of my consciousness. “How can you say you don’t like Billy Joel?” Carl said, for about the thirtieth time. Really, he’d said it about that many times. This morning, at the Fryeburg Flea market, he had found a Billy Joel retrospective four-CD set in mint condition. They were on the third disk now, and he’d said it after every song. “I just don’t,” Ginevra shouted. She was driving, and she’d always heard the rule was, the driver chose the tunes. Except maybe not so much in this case, since she had to drive the whole way from Maine back to Montreal, because Carl had no driver’s license. “But he’s so talented,” Carl said. “Not my thing, I guess,” Ginevra said. Carl had already accused her of having no taste, of being jealous of Billy Joel’s success, and of lying and actual...

The challenge is here . This is not the story I thought I was writing; I thought I was writing about an eating disorder. Gerard was taking a shortcut home from school when the unicorn found him. When he saw it off in the distance, he thought it was a white rock, and threw a stone at it. He missed, and the white thing kept moving towards him. He thought then that it was an awfully clean albino deer. As the creature got closer, Gerard could see it was mighty small for a deer. Instead of antlers it had a horn. Its tail was long and skinny, with a brush on the end. Gerard picked up another stone and bounced it in his hand, but the unicorn looked at him with its outsized black eyes. "Go away," he said, and raised his arm. It blinked at him, eyelashes as long as fingers. "No, get," Gerard said. It lowered its horn as if to run him through, or maybe pay homage. Gerard threw the rock, and the little unicorn, not even billy goat size, jumped in the air like a startled cartoo...

The challenge is here . The title comes from a heading in a book that's open at the top of my staircase. Sorry about the appalling science. It was a beautiful June day. The walk up from Pinkham notch was easier than it should have been. Chuck kept looking up. If India or China had found a way to stop the end times ahead, he wouldn't know; news wasn't getting through. "Big change coming," said the man he'd caught up to on the hill. The man's pack looked nearly empty. Might as well eat beef jerky sticks and Mars bars when the end is a few hours away. "Going up for a better view?" said Chuck. He'd abandoned not just pots and pans, but the concept of eating. He'd fasted before for longer than humanity had left. He'd trained at the same time, even. He wore everything he had: swords, knives, armour. "Just thought I'd climb up." The man was far too old to be hiking. But if his knees gave out, he wouldn't be going down the m...

The challenge is here (it's to write a 1000-word story about the picture you can see -- do click). The title is from the socks I'm knitting -- pattern is Naiad, colourway is Slayer. I was leaving the theatre by the back door after the show when a man loomed out of the shadows. It was late, it was dark, and no one else was around. Any normal person would have been startled. But this man didn't expect any of that. "There's a breach in the sewer that used to be Taddle Creek." He was huge and yet hunched, with a voice like walking on gravel. "Where?" I said, grabbing the door so it wouldn't lock shut behind me. My weapons were still inside. "Annex," said the man. He smelled like road salt, even though it was July. "Bathurst, near Dupont." "Right," I said. Those streams want to be free. "I'll find it." I don't know who these people are, or how they know where to find me. My theory is they're bridge t...

The challenge is here : 1000 word limit, has to take place on the 4th of July. Chuck said it was probably not suited to FSF, so of course I had to prove him wrong. Dina had plugged X-15 in overnight, so he wasn't there to help her get out of bed. She had to rely on her replacement hips and knees, for a change. As she washed up, she asked herself how she would ever get her full mobility back if she didn't have to use it occasionally. You'd think a physiotherapy program would be applied to the X-15 so he'd gradually hold back the help until she asked. Or something. Maybe that's what the Anti-Robot League were talking about, when they had their radical meetings and went on the radio and the like, talking about humanity's over-reliance on robots. "We're not against help," they would say. "We just want to keep our ability to think and act for ourselves." Dina wouldn't have minded doing that some other day. It had been mildly liberating to ...

This week's challenge was here . I just noticed that I was at exactly 1000 words (MSWord says), so I guess I'll stop. In Which LittleWatchGirl Plans her Obsolescence so She Can Retire TrainMaster (catch phrase: "Keeps the trains running on time!") couldn't have sent FutureMan over to me to explain how the campaign was supposed to work because I was the best person to explain it. In fact I felt like I was the weak link. When your superpower is about office meetings, you can't be expected to be good with weapons. They had chosen mine for me thinking I'd be good with springs and winding. Perhaps TrainMaster had heard that I'd asked SteamBoss who would be going on this campaign. SteamBoss (catch phrase: "Black belches bad; white belches good!") had said "What do you mean?" I'd said, "Is anyone I hate going?" SteamBoss couldn't see my eyes. Wearing goggles all the time protects your secret identity. My superhero name is...

The challenge was here . My sister had read the “dollheads” challenge and asked what happened next, so when I was thinking about robots (and I hate robots) I wanted to find a way to make one in Bucklepunk world. A familiar would have warned her before the man was in sight of the house. He'd come up the streambed, hopping one stone to the next, balancing in an imaginary duel. She didn't recognize him, but his fancy dress said he was official. Abigail and her daughter Susannah had hidden in the burnt-out shell of their house, made not a sound as he wandered through the yard, poked at the garden, the foundation, the pottery shed, the wires she'd run to the mill to siphon power from the waterwheel. After a tense hour he left, back the way he'd come, towards the mill. "We need a familiar," said Abigail. "It would give us away," said Susannah. "Not if no one recognizes what it is," said Abigail. Always the familiar gave witches away. It followed ...

The challenge was here . I found most of the stuff at the prompt’s link pretty horrible, like really women-hating even. And I only got to the end of the As before I found my title. This story may be offensive to some--triggering, maybe. But it’s the story I wrote. It was Greer’s idea. He phoned me up. "Dude, we're going to have a rape gang down in La Salle Park." Rape gangs hadn't really come up in grade 8 sex ed. Maybe Greer knew, because it came up in the grade 10 version. "You going to come by and pick me up?" I said. "Nah, it's getting late," said Greer. "It's getting late. Meet us there at 2." I threw a bottle of water, three apples, and three granola bars into my backpack, along with my cell. Greer never eats the apples I bring, but I packed one for him anyway, just to be polite. I figured Johnny would be coming with us too. We met at the edge of La Salle park. If Buffalo is the armpit of America, then it’s not a very sweaty...