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the sons of flint and pitchthe sons of flint and pitch

remember me
as i want to be remembered--
fallen down with the knee-tide
over my forelock, drowned in little water,
but mostly as a man
not afraid to die:

remember me my children
if you have ever remembered
wave or
tenor, if your voices have sung for me though you did not know
you sang for me:

remember, we struck a spark!
for such brittle foolish longing is not
what wets our torches or deadens our wood
but show me a good man, raise him up high on a pedestal,

and I will show you
something worth burning out for.
Notes on nightCupped hands could hold
a moth's night,
a moon waning somewhere between
middle and index.

In fear,
the dust,
the cuddling craters,
the end,
would become the flight.
ZipperIt happened again, so
  like a zipper, I put myself back together.
I was cold, sleeveless.
  The sky was sliding off my back,
  like a heavy down coat.

My sleeves came off again.
Leaves slipped off the arms of trees
like Band-Aids that had lost their stick.

-

Snow churned its hair in the wind.
Snow perched
in my hair, stretching its wings.
Then a cloud of snow was leaving my chimney.

Winter it was ice all over.

-

It happened again, so I put myself back together.

The moon nearly shattered my window, wind was so strong.
The moon a photograph.
The moon a falling leaf.
The moon curled up in snow.

We zip it up, and turn
Sophie's Misfortune"Will you run away with me?"

"Yes."

I hadn't expected him to say yes.

-

We were far from home before I had the courage to ask why.

"Why not?"

"Haven't you anything back there?"

"Yes. But I want something more."

-

We mostly lived in an old trapper's hut in the woods. I swept it every day but I could never get the floor clean. There was blood on the bedroom wall. I think the trapper killed something here. I hope it was an animal.

-

I meet an old woman among the trees one day. She is dressed in ragged brown with a brilliant gold locket around her neck. She says she can read my palm. I am skeptical. She takes it anyway.

"Your name is
Triple SatTriple Sat: Three Tables in Three Acts

   Triple Sat (Verb): A restaurant term where a host/hostess seats three tables consecutively to one server. The server, while still smiling politely, runs around frantically trying to be in three places at once. It's not pretty, the guests feel like they received bad service, and usually said host/hostess gets cursed at behind his or her back for the rest of the night. This also comes in other forms such as "double sat", a frustrating but manageable situation, and "quad sat", which means find a manager for help A.S.A.P. and cross fingers the host/hostess loses his or her job.
 
SkinVerden looked out of the window and sighed. It was a summer's day, complete with fresh grass, singing birds and rainbows. It was a good day, a perfect day; or it would be if the weather was real, and the window for that matter. It was just an illusion, a curtain, if he pushed it aside, it would only reveal the damp wall behind it. He grimaced; it had taken him almost a year to make all the windows on request of the King who was catering to the whims of the Higher Ups. The snobs who couldn't stand the fact that they were surround by grey brick and the green slime that seemed to trickle down from the ceiling. Not that there was anything good to
The RunLet me tell you of the tailor run.

The wind and seas are coming down from a rage.
Turmoil is everywhere and this shoreline, which I love like a poem, memorised, is a discourteous place. The air crackles statically on my hair and skin. I could be on a faraway planet. It smells of Cambrian times. Seabirds wheel high like tiny fighter jets, miniscule SR-71s, then, flay themselves through the sea's skin. The booming swell comes and goes, as I stand in a lost memory, echoes of a low incendiary growl. While I rig my 12 foot "big" with the 3 ounce spinner, the atmospheric frenzy relays itself to the baitfish. Whitebait. They are coiling and roili
Barbaric TreatmentThe noontide sun gleamed off Hrothgar the Northman’s rippling thews, and his shaggy mane of golden hair shone. The cheap tunic he wore could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his frame as he stood astride the path through the narrow pass he had made his own.

Voices reached his ears; ears that, although attuned to the clash and clangor of battle, had never been deafened by the clatter and bustle of what men called civilization and so remained alert to the slightest threat: the padded footfall of the wolf, or the quiet hiss of a blade drawn from its sheath. But these were careless voices, chattering and laughing, heedless of the peril
Quietly by the SinkQuietly by the sink she sang,
a knotted ribbon of apron ties
nested in the small of her back
with tendrils of long dark hair.
By itself this was an aria,
a duet of sky and sea,
a song performed in a dark universe
too frail for such light.
The Great WallWhen papers ask me where I'm from, I write "Seattle," because they don't want to know the real answer. When people ask me where I'm from, I say "downtown," and they take a good look at me and take that to mean "Chinatown."

My parents run one of the zillion dim sum restaurants here. They're what the white kids at school call "fresh off the boat." Most of the people here are. They don't speak English at home, and they try not to at work. They don't watch anything on American TV; they read the local Chinese paper and watch the one Asian channel, pausing to turn off the TV in disgust whenever one of the five daily Korean soap operas comes on. On
hey boy your tight electric...hey boy your tight electric shoulders do
not suit you- tailor-suited just to fly
like dust for dust we are and we Will too
watch church films Saturday and you and i
might laugh at inquisitions-
                                  THAT will be
like dust in mouths and copper trophies love
is this too bold although you'll never see
the Kalamazoo of dreams and morning
                                                dove?
my boy are you quite well your shoulders tense
forget about the lights of failure dear
dear boy forget for me-
                           such times i sense
we never touched as purely sharply near
my boy as then w
By the HighwayThe trees were all dead. No leaves, bare fingers stretched towards the sky in a twisted sort of prayer. The houses below them had no prayer – not even one coming from a tree – that could save them. They were ramshackle, they were peeling paint and broken pipes. They were forgotten glass shards embedded in a crying toddler's foot, or cold wind blasting its way through a broken window. They were everything that a house should not be, hazardous and inhospitable and ugly.
They spared the families embarrassment, though, the houses. They were all the same, the same despair, the same inescapable, cavernous appearance. They were nothing to
Tale's Passing Alex put her hands in her pants pockets, leaned against the wall, and watched people do a somber shuffle into the room. Some sat at the benches near the room's front where lay the casket surrounded by pictures of her father, and others stood in uneasy social clusters, wanting, perhaps, to make regular conversations but sensing the casual attitude inappropriate. The clock above her chimed the hour's half mark and there were already seventy people crowded into the little room. As Alex looked around, she realized she knew only Dale, Brian, and Brian's wife Elaine; it was they who worked most closely with her father. That so many other people wo
The last bar in the MojaveClouds arrive at the pace
of oxen, stopping to drink
at the misshapen TV dish

picking up NASA signals.
The petrified cactus
near a humming Wurlitzer

says nothing. Lost travellers
stare at it by the bar,
hoping it might show them

the way, the bubbles in their
beer muttering

I want to go home
I want to go home
I want to go home

not noticing the clouds glowing
like lightbulbs with their electricity
and the entire desert moving
closer, ready to circle like moths.
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July 5, 2010
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Again, written during some fireworks. The handwriting is freshly translated from its original unintelligible-ness.

Written for the Flash Fiction Month Day 4 challenge. I'm not too happy with this, and really don't have much experience with sci-fi beyond what I read in books. Any constructive critique is encouraged. Word count is 554.

:icondonotuseplz::iconmyartplz:

Copyright © Larken Rye

Please do not copy, edit, or reproduce this work in any shape or form. This work is not for use by anyone outside those have obtained my express permission.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2010-11-23
FFM4--Challenge by ~WocketPocket99 details the challenges humans face with developments in technology, exploring their reactions to the unexpected and the way some people seem to have no limits to what they do. ( Featured by !GwenavhyeurAnastasia )
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:icongwendolyn12:
`Gwendolyn12 Nov 25, 2010  Professional Traditional Artist
absolutely incredible work!
Reply
:iconemma00:
Mood: Wow! ~emma00 Nov 25, 2010
creepy good :P
Reply
:iconsuper-moses:
~Super-Moses Nov 23, 2010  Student Digital Artist
Gave me chills! Oh my gosh. That is without a doubt the most shocking and unexpected ending I have ever read to a short story. Absolutely love it!
Reply
:iconartistic-dribbles:
!Artistic-dribbles Nov 23, 2010
Great visuals, sounds like the beginning of a fantastic story.
Reply
:iconjust-something-else:
~Just-Something-Else Nov 23, 2010  Hobbyist Photographer
When I say character limitations I mean the word limit that the contest has constricted you to.

Not limitation on the character's personality xD

Sorry about that.
Reply
:iconwocketpocket99:
~WocketPocket99 Nov 24, 2010   Writer
I understood that. Thank you for the clarification, though. :)
Reply
:iconjust-something-else:
~Just-Something-Else Nov 23, 2010  Hobbyist Photographer
Plot wise this piece has potential.

Done well the gruesome images and the plot twist in the yet paint a very morbid picture.

However, one of the important aspects of science fiction is that everything must have a logical flow and I don't really feel it here.

I realize you have character limitations but I don't understand why the character Jack is even there considering his employer at least understood what this man was selling.

If Jack was a character from the past, this would make sense. But seeing that he's a being that inhabits the same "earth" the mad scientist does, this type of machine-animal science shouldn't be a huge shocker.

Literary wise the sentences are very detached and Jack seems to pull at his hair so much that I'm surprised he has any left. You rely on what the characters say a lot as opposed to make the descriptions of the animals into...descriptions.

The entire concept though, of a scientist going so insane as to use his wife and daughter in experiments is a little overused in my books. Though I read a lot of science fiction.

Good attempt though, especially with the character limitations!

I'd highly recommend you go back and iron out the loose ends though. Especially since the purpose for this piece in the contest entry has been fulfilled.
Reply
:iconwocketpocket99:
~WocketPocket99 Nov 24, 2010   Writer
Thank you for the feedback. It's very much appreciated.

I could argue against your argument for logical flow, but this is neither the time nor the place for it. If you didn't feel it, though, it's because I was just getting used to the whole "Flash Fiction" thing, not because I intended it to be that way. I'm working on that.

If it makes any difference, I never thought of the man as selling anything. I just pictured some blurry boss figure stating something like "go see what he's up to," or something similar to that. On top of that, the scientist creates creatures that are very much beyond the norm. These are my thoughts behind it, by the way, not a defense. You have a huge point there, with the time-place issue.

Once again, I didn't see it as you did (though I can certainly see how someone could see it that way). I haven't read a lot of the later sci-fi; I prefer Zelazny, Asprin, and Heinlein to the more modern "apocalyptic" science fiction. Oh, well.

I've got this piece in my "Considerations" list, for an after-NaNo-burnout project. As of yet, your comment has been the most helpful in deciding what needs rewriting, and I thank you for that.

Gee. I'm not used to getting much in the way of constructive criticism here. If I sound a bit awkward, or if I appear to be defending myself more than simply explaining my thoughts, please feel free to tell me, because this is not intentional. You have very strong points, all of which will be addressed when I revisit this piece.

Once again, thank you,
Larken Rye
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:iconmetal-goddess:
~Metal-Goddess Nov 23, 2010  Hobbyist Photographer
love it :clap:
Reply
:iconbroken-clock-work:
~broken-clock-work Nov 23, 2010  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
this is wonderful. it holds morbid hints and i couldn't help but laugh at the guys cheeriness - yet was truly a tad bit creeped at the idea of what he'd done. but that's exactly the effect that i wanted to get out of it. this a great, well written piece that i wish i could read more off. congratulations.
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