Short Story Contest III [ENTRY THREAD]

[Sulkdodds]

Welcome, finally, to Hl2.net short story contest #3.

The Rules
- Entries must be under 2000 words long.
- Entries should be in prose form, though abberations are acceptable.
- Entries must be originally created for the Short Story Contest (tm)
- Contestants may write about anything they wish as long as it conforms to the stated topic.
- Closing date is midnight 21st September.
- NO discussion in this thread, only entries.
Discussion thread here.

The Topic

The subject this time around is: 'Iceberg Theory'.

I will refer you to the wisdom of Mr. Hemingway:

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

In other words, the goal is to implicate as much as possible while stating as little as possible. We will be attempting a truly phenomenal ratio of explicit to implicit. Entries are to subtly impart profound information to the reader without actually describing it openly; think, for example, of Hemingway's short story, Hills Like White Elephants, in which the central topic of abortion is never once mentioned - or indeed think of the Half-Life series, in which much of the 'plot' is actually submerged beneath the narrative, and must be uncovered by an attentive reader. Your maxim should be to communicate a lot by saying a little.

Note, however, that this topic is distinct from the earlier challenge of "alienation". A lot of people took that one as 'confuse the reader' or 'keep the reader guessing'. That isn't your purpose this time. The best stories will not be those that are most secretive, but those that actually do manage to give information to the reader, with as skillful a minimalism and as tight an economy as the author can manage.

Finally, there will be no minimum word limit. It's perfectly possible to fulfil the topic with only a sentence, such as this famous one from good old Ernest: For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

Good luck!

Resources:
- Wikipedia: Iceberg Theory
- Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants
- Explanative wiki page on the story
- Another very short story

 

[JossiRossi]

"How many grenades do we have left?" the soldier asked.
"Five grenades, but only four pins," the other replied.

 

[ríomhaire]

Different Times

"You couldn't look more beautiful," he said.
"You don't have to..."
"But it's true. I can't believe that - you know. It's all...it's just so sudden."
"Not this again."
"You don't-"
"Stop."
"But-"
"Stop."
"Please Ma-"
"Just stop. For f

uck sake, just stop."
"You're just so young."
"You've never been a hypocrit, don't start now."
"It's different times."
"We've had this disscussion already."
"Don't feel pressured into it."
"'Into it'? I'm being pressured out of it! This is what I want. This is what I want for my life. Just leave me to make my own decisions for once."
"I'm sorry. Please don't cry. You'll ruin the make-up."
"I'm not crying; I'm just nervous."
"That's only natural."
He gripped her hand firmly and they sat in silence.
...
"Alright," he said, "we've got to got to get in our places. I'll be behind you the whole time out there."
"I know."

 

[lefty]

Her eyes darted out the viewscreen, to the control panel, and back again.
"Stop. Stop the experiment!" She didn't bother looking behind him, she knew who was yelling, still giving out orders. She didn't have to listen, she knew she had it under control.
"Kill the power! Do it now!" the voice cracked with an apprehension she didn't think was possible from the old man. Slowly, she swivelled in her chair to face him. He was sweating, breathing quickly. His face had a look of anger, but his eyes pleaded.
She turned back around, and again looked out of the narrow slit allowing them to view the scene below. She gripped the lever meant to halt all major functions of the machinery, but hesitated.

 

[Slug Advisor]

My cup is half empty.

 

[lame-o]

He sits in the dark but so that a few beams of light illuminate his face. He's inside a glass jar that was painted black on the outside, and the paint is cracking from old age. He knows this because there are new lines of light coming in where there weren't before. Maybe it would chip, he thinks, then looks up into the air holes letting in little beams of light. He feels the breathing of a dog on his neck, and turns to see its shining black eyes reflect what little light there is in the jar. "I don't want anything," he says and pushes the dog away so that he can't see it anymore. The dog leaves him alone, but he can hear it sigh eternally.

A few years pass before he sees the dog again, and this time he finds it clawing at the bottom of the jar. He looks at it solemnly and finds it kind of funny, but it doesn't matter. More cracks have appeared in the paint, but he doesn't care anymore. When he was young he wanted to make the paint chip away so that he could see what was outside, and he thought that if he tapped on the glass enough it would do something, anything, but he didn't know what. So he tapped on the glass for nearly a year before he saw the first cracks, which gave him hope, and he tapped on the glass for ten more years before he decided to stop, seeing no real progress but only more cracks. Now, he watches the dog clawing at the glass below it, in the dark. Its shining black eyes reflect the small streaks of light from the cracks in the paint.

 

[theotherguy]

A lonely two-lane road to nowhere cuts through an empty desert. An old man stands to the side, arm outstretched in patient agony. He had passed along this road many times before, when he was a young man and had somewhere to go. Now his car is dead, and his legs are tired.

Many young men pass by in fast cars. One passes. Two pass. Ten pass. Still, the old man waits.

Then a young man in a Jeep who looks strangely familiar pulls off the road a little too fast into the desert, and rolls down his window. The old man crouches low. The dust flies. The young man's heart races as the tires thump and rattle.

But before the young man can accost him, the old man is gone.

 

[kineaesth]

So he was fifteen when this happened.
And he'd got his first job. He was very proud. At a supermarket. He took the subway there every day. Made his money. Drowned out the feeling he was missing something in his life, something vital, with the routine. Not arduous. Merely constant.
Getting off the train.
He stepped down, looked to his left. A youth, not twenty years old, was getting onto the train at the next door. Round face. Bright eyes. Long blonde hair.
'PAPA!'
But the doors shut and the train whisked away, dust eddying in it's wake.
He stood there, a dissonance, a longing, welling inside him.

At home again.
As usual.
'Mum? What were my first words?'
'Papa. I'm not sure why, your father was away on business.'

So he remembers. A round, smiling face. Maybe five years old. Blonde hair, bright eyes.

Looking down at him.

 

[Sheepo]

A group of teenagers talk and laugh loudly in the middle of a school cafateria. One of them tosses an empty milk carton at a tall blonde boy at the center of the group. The blonde boy laughs and makes a nonsensical rant in a strange voice, amusing those around him.

As the attention shifts elsewhere the blonde boy becomes bored and looks around the large room. His eyes linger on a girl quietly smiling to her friends three tables away, then he looks away. The girl glances at him for a moment, then at an empty seat at his overcrowded table.

As the group begins preparing to leave, one of them notices an akward boy sitting at a table by himself. "Someone should go and talk to him!" someone said, laughing.

"Hell, I'll do it" the blonde boy agrees. The blonde boy quickly makes his way over to the strange boys empty table and sat a seat away from him. The boy looks up, eyes wide. "Hello there! How are you doing?" the blonde boy exclaims in his booming voice.

The strange boy makes an odd noise, "Hrrum..." and quickly gets up and rushes away. The group laughs loudly, some wiping tears from their eyes. The blonde boy frowns. The girl heads to her next class.

 

[Jintor]

He remembers thinking that this was going to be easy.

He remembers hearing the stuttering roar of the engines.

He remembers feeling from the waist down.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Before reading: I'm not a believer in quotation marks or common literary form. I'm also not a believer in censorship or restraint. You've been warned.

The old man's hat lay barely above his crooked nose. Falling into an indulgent sleep he snozzled and growled before the lazy town. Henry walked past, barely noticing and humming a lover's tune. Returning to work after the best two hours of his life. His fuc**itall mentality, he decided, would ally with him this afternoon.

Turning his jacket into the rack and flaunting his sexuality to the storefront, he rested his elbows on the countertop and ran his fingers compulsively through his hairline. ahaha! Jesus Christ almighty – I've found the secret to this place. The old man whipped through the shabby door and growled for a pack of cowboy killers. I've got places to go, Junior, I've got things to see, Junior. I've got women to beat Junior. I've got dying to do, Junior. Henry shoved the cigarettes in his face, down his throat and through his old, pathetic, fragile heart. The old man died and left the store. It's five o'clock and Jenny is probably still napping. Still feeling it. Probably still in ecstasy. Still kneeling, still living with me inside her. Two more hours. It wouldn't take long, maybe she'd visit. Who cares? The day pushed forward and Henry was humbled by mothers and fathers and sickly children seeking tootsie rolls.

Jenny reeled, he was sleazy. She cared. She meticulously filed her nails and worshiped her cuticles. Staring into the mirror she saw a whore, a beauty queen and eventually a saint, mother and politician. It was time for another day of getting ****ed hard by that asshole at the gas station. She prepared her makeup, cellphone, bag, keys and vagina and removed herself from the enslavement of her one room unto the enslavement of her man. Steps into the old Volvo and drives to pickup Henry.

Henry, henry, henry. Selfish f***er. Abused and abhorrent. Twenties and forgiven. Not quite old enough to be guilty as a sinner but not young enough to be excused as a jackal. Combed-once hair, greasy despite a morning shower. His roommate remarked that morning about his bloodshot eyes – the f*g**t, he thought. What a f*g**t. Rummaging through his belongings, his old torn apart clothing and his work shirts and finally his lighter. Bye.

Jenny drove circles around the gas station. For the love of god, stop. She pulls in front of the Seven-Eleven, picks up Henry and again they f**k. Right there in front of the gas station. They die in each others' arms, and live!

Henry was done with his job, he quit after he spent the night inside Jenny. He also decided he wouldn't call her ever again.

Alone at his home, with his social security cheques and cigarette butts he smoked his troubles until the next day. Another day, another job. He always found another job.

Weeks had passed before Henry discovered one. Sales again. f**k it, I'll take it. An old shitshack used CD/DVD place only two blocks for his apartment. Again he met a girl – Trish was sweet and soft spoken, beautiful lips and sullen cheeks. He had to have her. He scheduled the day so that he could be with her, thought about her in passing – on the road – in his bed and all over his walls. He had to have her.

And he did have her. He had her again and again – in his apartment, in her apartment, in the storage room at work. Even behind work in the alley. Trish felt she loved him, he even felt he loved her – she was gorgeous, after all. Sweet too. Henry, who frequented saltry whores and ditsy waitresses. Perhaps he'd figured it out, perhaps the answer was Trish. Perhaps he was done.

 

[Dekstar]

They heard them from blocks away, sometimes. Riots rarely broke out anymore because it just wasn't safe.
No electricity; that was the first to go. Then the water. Luckily these last few days have been torrential, so we can still drink.

"We're waiting," our leader said. His voice was a whisper. It was late, and some of us were sleeping for the first time in a while.
"I know, but we can't stay here forever," I replied.

Someone clicked. Bone against bone, one of their joints echoed through the dusty loft. We jumped at the noise, on edge as always. You couldn't be too careful.
One of our men was looking out the window. From the loft compartment on the third floor, you could see the entire block--maybe more. Despite it being the dead of night, the streets were not empty.
One of us had a pistol under her pillow, cocked and loaded. The rest of us had our weapons neatly stacked against a wall, picking up some moonlight and reflecting it like a mirror back into the room.
"It's only a matter of time, we weren't exactly quiet."
"We can't leave quite yet, they still haven--"
Our leader was interrupted by a single, low voice coming from outside the house, which echoed soon after with tens, if not hundreds more similar monotonic rumblings.
"Oh, shit."
Decaying bone against bone signaled to the survivors. They were running.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Soldiers flanked the old man across the courtyard, their boots in clicked perfect time, and as they neared the portcullis their breastplates wheeled to catch the morning light and they made a valley with their pikes. The old man moved on doggedly under the dark bars that had fallen across the dry white stone.

A screw was waiting at the gate. He raised his fist; the pikes thundered twice on the stone, and the soldiers' clipped roar rocketed around the high walls. The old man staggered; he covered his ears, and bowed his head as in remembrance. The screw came forward but the old man waved him back and peered upwards, bent cruelly over his stick. Laboriously and without hurry he pulled opened his letter, showed it to the screw, who shouted into a little hole in the wall. The old man stood by and the wind blew his beard.

Great wheels turned with a grinding. The portcullis shivered upwards. Something came out of the darkness blinking.

It was the young man, and the guards walked warily by him, and hesitated to let him go.

The young man shuffled forward. The old man's hand opened and let the stick fall. They embraced.

*

The two supported each other in silence, until finally the old man led the young man to a red-painted wooden door.

'This house is yours?' said the young man.

The old man did not reply, but instead pushed his way through a drift of rust-coloured leaves which clogged the entrance. He hauled open the door, which, banging open, shook more dead leaves from the gutter above.

Inside, the old man clanged in a back room, while the younger looked around the bare parched walls, savoured the cold grey light through the little window. The old man came back with the ancient bottle that they both remembered. It was placed upon the table and two shots were poured and taken.

Then they both sat down, gazing at nothing. There was no fire, and neither unwrapped themselves.

'It's nice,' said the young man.

The old man said nothing.

'The house.' The young man gestured around.

'Is it?'

The young man nodded. 'So, he said slowly, 'you've been well?'

'Well enough,' the old man smiled thinly. 'Better than you, I imagine.'

'But good?'

'Yes, good.'

'Are you happy?'

The old man frowned. 'I'm alright.'

'And the others?'

'The others?'

'In the cause...'

The old man interrupted. 'We don't speak.'

'Ah.'

They drank. After a while, the young man looked up brightly. 'You must have so many things to tell me.'

'Hm.'

'About - well, it's been a long time.'

'Twenty years.'

'I suppose a lot has happened!'

'Nothing worth telling.'

'But surely something.'

The old man shrugged.

'Who is king now?' asked the young man eagerly.

'Oh, the son, of course.'

The young man quietened. 'Yes,' he murmured, 'of course.'

They drank. Neither spoke for a while, although the old man saw fit to unbutton his coat. As he did, he revealed a red sash around his waist, which seemed all the brighter for his The young man leaned across the table, a sudden excited spark in his eyes.

'You still wear it!' he said.

'I still do.'

'Then they let you now?' The young man's eyes shone.

'They don't care.'

The young man looked on for a moment. 'I had hoped...' he said, and then stopped.

A gust of wind blew leaves against the window. They drank.

The old man coughed and cleared his throat awkwardly. 'It's good to see you,' he said, eventually, and meaning it. 'I remember - '

'We were really something, eh?'

The old man's face crumpled, a smile. 'We were.'

'Me and you.'

'Aye, you and me.'

'What a time to be alive.'

'Yes.'

'You haven't changed a bit!'

'You have.'

Their eyes met. The young man tried to smile, his forehead creasing. 'I suppose now I have a beard to truly rival yours.'

The old man closed his eyes. The young man laughed once, then looked down.

Minutes passed.

Finally, slowly, without looking up, the young man spoke again.

'It didn't work, did it?' he said.

The old man did not open his eyes. 'No.'

'I suspect that it was never really going to work.'

The old man could not bring himself to say anything.

Silence fell as the two men stayed there before the empty fireplace, gazing at nothing, both stooped in their coats together, the old man and the young man - although, in truth, he was not young anymore.