AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Yes, but I dream about you<3

Found some little errors



Should probably be changed to "figured" since the rest of the story is in the past tense



???



On further thought I'm guessing



Your*



eke*



Might just be personal preference, but the "gentle" thing seems a little repetitive here



Just pointing it out

Other than that I enjoyed it. Sorry, I'm not very good at giving story advice outside of basic grammar stuff.

I'll fix those later. Little grammar farts are inevitable when you write at midnight.

NO ONE CARED

ABOUT MY STORY

/wrists


(That was joke haha very funny yes)


And yes I do realize that this reaction is several weeks late, but it's sort of relevant now because I just went back and edited in some small changes I made to it as well as put in the italics I was too lazy to put in earlier. It's right back there at the top of page 24.

I mean, if you guys just thought it was bad you could have told me. I CAN HANDLE CRITICISM.

People only care if you complain about it loudly.

I liked it.

Zink, i really liked your story. At first, it felt like something fantasy related, a little hamlet attacked by a demon.. and then suddenly FUTURISTIC WEAPONRY and it was cooool.





And poor Kevin. He is an hero.

Piece from ficcccccccction writing. Was given two names and a place (Sam, Albert, Hotel) and had ten minutes to write a stoooooooooory.

It was dark, probably about two in the morning. Sam didn't know for sure. He couldn't even remember the last time he had a watch that worked. It was raining hard outside. He'd been sitting on the little balcony outside his room, just watching it rain for at least an hour now. It always made him pensive, when it rained. The sound was so nostalgic. He looked down at his right had. It was inside a disgusting sock covered in layers of grime and flith. If you looked closely, you might have been able to make out two button eyes, a wooly moustache and a little blob of brown that was almost a hat, if you titled your head and squinted enough. Sam knew on some level it was just a sock, but if he managed to let go for long enough, then it was Albert sitting there, talking to him like old time. He looked down at Albert and smiled. "You always used to like the rain Alby." He said with a distant look in his eyes. "Like that one time in basic training when we'd been marching all day in the heat, and it just came outta nowhere." Sam opened a tin of baked beans with his free hand, then started eating, still staring at the rain, The beans were terrible, but he'd developed a taste for them in the service. Anything you got to eat after running for eight hours was delicious. The wind was picking up, but Sam didn't care. As long as he was out here with Albert, he'd make it through anything. "Hey Alby" he mumbled with a mouth full of beans "remember when Sarge bet you a week's rations that you couldn't sleep outside in the rain for the whole night? We were laughing the next day when we had a King's feast, weren't we?" Sam laughed a hollow, forced laugh that sounded like weeping. "It was a shame Sarge didn't make it in the end. He was a good bloke." Same went pale and looked down at Alby. All he saw was a dirty sock. He looked back at the rain, and sat in silence.

spoony, i'd like to read your story but. paragraphs please.

Figured it was short enough for one paragraph BUT IF YOU INSIST


It was dark, probably about two in the morning. Sam didn't know for sure. He couldn't even remember the last time he had a watch that worked. It was raining hard outside. He'd been sitting on the little balcony outside his room, just watching it rain for at least an hour now. It always made him pensive, when it rained. The sound was so nostalgic. He looked down at his right had. It was inside a disgusting sock covered in layers of grime and flith. If you looked closely, you might have been able to make out two button eyes, a wooly moustache and a little blob of brown that was almost a hat, if you titled your head and squinted enough.

Sam knew on some level it was just a sock, but if he managed to let go for long enough, then it was Albert sitting there, talking to him like old time. He looked down at Albert and smiled. "You always used to like the rain Alby." He said with a distant look in his eyes. "Like that one time in basic training when we'd been marching all day in the heat, and it just came outta nowhere."

Sam opened a tin of baked beans with his free hand, then started eating, still staring at the rain, The beans were terrible, but he'd developed a taste for them in the service. Anything you got to eat after running for eight hours was delicious. The wind was picking up, but Sam didn't care. As long as he was out here with Albert, he'd make it through anything.

"Hey Alby" he mumbled with a mouth full of beans "remember when Sarge bet you a week's rations that you couldn't sleep outside in the rain for the whole night? We were laughing the next day when we had a King's feast, weren't we?" Sam laughed a hollow, forced laugh that sounded like weeping. "It was a shame Sarge didn't make it in the end. He was a good bloke." Same went pale and looked down at Alby. All he saw was a dirty sock. He looked back at the rain, and sat in silence.

I liked it, especially the way it sets such a dark atmosphere in so little time. There were a couple little things about it that were sort of off, but you wrote it in ten minutes for class, so whatever.

Yeah, what Chinmaster said. That's pretty good for 10 minutes, and I like the idea.

It's sad.

I loved it.

So I am a total nerd and write stories about Giant Robots.
_________________

James looked over the mountain of scrap he was standing atop. It was mostly plastic junk, but so was everything on this planet.

This planet was officially called Earthfill-3, but he and his team called it Junkworld. Junkworld used to be the dump for a big alien civilization. His job was to dig through the useless junk and find something valuable.

"Hey Jameson," one of his men shouted from across the junk-covered
wasteland. "Your boy found a Key!"

Jameson turned and followed the announcer. A Key was one of the best things to find on Junkworld. Especially if you could find what the key unlocked.

His son Connor was sitting in front of a pile of junk, staring at his hands happily. His face was lit up by the eerie glow of the Key. Jameson grabbed his sons shoulder happily.

"So, you found a Key that responds to you, huh? That's great, Connor! That means somewhere on this planet there's a Mech waiting for you!"

Keys were a complex system. Each Key was very picky, responding only to a very unique personality. Some Keys liked shy people, others activated only for the angry or the funny. In turn, each Key worked for one Mech. Finding a Key that activated for you and the Mecha the Key activated was one in a million.

James was one of the lucky ones, of course. His personal mecha acted as the base for the salvage operation. There were a few others, but James was the biggest. It was as big as a small building, and he and most of his men lived in it.

"I knew I'd find one one day," Connor said. "Someone like me was born to have a mech!"

Connor gripped the crystalline key in his hand tightly. He stood up triumphantly and looked his father in the eye.

"And I'll tell you something else! When I find my mech, it's gonna tower over everything else on this planet! It's gonna be the size of a mountain!"

James humored his son for the moment.

"You sound so sure of yourself; even I'm starting to believe you!"

He was lying through his teeth, of course. The biggest mechs only activated for the biggest jerks. And Connor was no jerk.

Connor stepped to the side, walking around his father. He stepped to the top of a scrap heap, facing directly into the sun.

"When I find it...The first thing I'm gonna do is take out those bastard Bandits. I'm sick of them taking everything we find."

The Bandits were a travelling horde of mecha pilots. They were lazy, greedy, and perverted. Of course, this meant they had some of the biggest mecha on the planet. They stole from small scavenger groups like James's, robbing them of anything valuable they found.

"Then you better find it fast," A scavenger grabbed Connor's shoulders and twisted him around. "Because they're headed this way!"

A monolithic machine was advancing on the scrap pile, casting its massive shadow over them. People were already scrambling to leave.

“Take the scrap!” James shouted to his men. He grabbed Connor and another man. “Come with me! We might be able to delay them in my mech!”

They both nodded and followed him. James climbed into the cockpit, grabbing the alien controls tightly. Connor climbed into a seat on the mecha’s shoulder, manning a makeshift turret. The other man climbed into a turret on the other side. James nodded at them and sent his mecha forward.

He met the Bandit’s head on, causing them to pause and look at him. That was good, the longer they stopped, the longer his men had to get the scrap away.

“Oh look at this, a little bug in our way.”

The Bandit’s leader stood in front of James, mocking him. His mech was titanic and wicked-looking, with a fanged face and spiked shoulders. Its forearms were connected to its shoulders by some kind of thick, glowing cord.

“Back off, Bandit! We’ve worked hard for this; you have no right to take it!”

“Uh, hate to break it to you little guy,” The Bandit’s mech bent over to them. Each of its fangs was the same size as Jameson’s mech. “But on this planet, the biggest robot makes the rules.”

The mech’s titanic fist slammed into them, sending James flying. They flew over the scrap pile, colliding violently with a rocky mountain. James’ mech skidded to a halt, slowed by rock’s scraping across its hull.

“Is everyone alright?” The armor on James’ mech was thick, but with an impact like that, who knows what might have happened.

“I’m fine,” The turret pilot said. “But I think we lost your other arm.”

James looked to the side. There was nothing but a shattered stump where his right arm had been. Connor’s turret was gone.

“Over here, dad,” Connor shouted loudly. The arm he’d been sitting on was stuck in a narrow crevice. “I’m stuck.”

James managed to stand up. He wobbled uneasily without his arm to keep him balanced. He stumbled over to the crevice his arm was stuck in and grabbed its hand. He started pulling, but the arm was stuck pretty well.

“I think we should retreat,” The turret pilot said. “With just one arm there isn’t much we can do.”

“I agree,” Connor said. He was usually the one opposed to retreating. “You can hardly walk with one arm, dad.”

“You’ve got me there,” James replied. The arm was refusing to come out. “As soon as I get my arm out of here.”

A titanic shadow fell over them. One of the Bandit leader’s cronies slammed into the mountainside, crushing rocks beneath his mecha’s giant metal feet. The crack Connor was stuck in opened wide. Too wide.
James lost his grip on the severed arm, sending it tumbling down. The crevice opened wide, expanding into a rocky maw, and consuming the arm. And with the arm, Connor.

James screamed in a mixture of rage and confusion. He ran blindly at the mech that had caused this, seeking nothing other than to destroy it. He blundered every step, thrown off by the shifting mountain, and his own rage.

The mecha pilot laughed at James, mocking his dead son. Did the bandit even know he’d killed someone? If he did know, would he care? Questions boiled in James mind, bubbling, popping. He heard only one answer in his cacophony of rage.

Kill him.

The Bandit hit him, denying him his vengeance. James’ mech rolled down the mountainside, slamming into the ground again and again. It crashed to a halt yards away from the mountains base. James could feel blood on his face, but he didn’t feel any pain from a wound.

The Bandits gathered around his broken mech, forming a wall between him and the mountain. The murderer stayed on the mountainside, laughing hysterically.

The leader with the spiked shoulders crouched down again, baring his giant metal fangs. He laughed wickedly.

“Look at this, guys,” He said, pointing to the armless mech. “It’s like one of those spiders that you rip the legs off one by one.”

He grabbed the mechs remaining limbs, each finger dwarfing the machine in size. He pulled gently, stretching the mech far beyond its limits.

James glared up at the massive face with hate. This Bandit hadn’t killed his son, but he was just as responsible for his death.

The Bandit dropped James. He hit the ground, unable to move his mech. He could feel the ground shaking beneath him.

The Murderer on the mountainside stopped laughing. He looked down at the mountain beneath him. It was crumbling even further, breaking into smaller boulders. He stared at the cracking rock.

“Did I do that?”

The mountain exploded violently beneath him. The Murderer and his mech were ripped to shreds by rocky shrapnel, mixing metal and blood with the expanding cloud of stone and dust.

James looked at the spectacle. Boulders were raining down on the rest of the bandits. The mountain itself was avenging Connor. James laughed a satisfied laugh. The boulders continued to rain down, the Bandit mechs forming a shield around James.

He heard a massive footstep on the other side of him. The Bandit leader was behind him, untouched by the storm of stone.

“Dammit! I kinda liked those guys!”

The other Bandit’s were thouroughly crushed by now. The boulders had stopped falling, leaving behind only a massive cloud of dust. The Bandit Leader growled angrily at James.

“Did you do that, little bastard!?”

“No,” said a familiar voice. “That would be me.”

A massive fist slammed into the Bandit Leader’s chest. A strange mecha, even bigger than the Bandit’s, stretched wide above James’ mech. It was titanic and stout, without the spikes and fangs of the Bandit’s mecha. It looked like a true hero’s mech.

“It may not be mountain-sized,” James’s savior said. “But it’ll do, won’t it Dad?”

If James had been standing, he would have collapsed. But for now, all he did was laugh, every bit of anger gone, replaced with unbridled joy.

“You big bastard,” The Bandit Leader said. It pushed itself off the ground, exposing the massive dent in its chest. “You killed all my men!”

“Well you almost killed me,” Connor shouted back, shaking his mecha’s titanic fist. “So don’t you act all high and mighty!”

“That’s the problem!” The Bandit swung his arms. The cords that connected his shoulders to his forearms swung randomly. “I AM high and mighty!”

The mech stood to its full height, towering over the scrap yard and what remained of the mountain. Connor was not impressed. He took a step forward, placing himself right in front of the Bandit. His mech’s chin scraped the Bandit’s forehead.

“Not as high as me.”

Connor slammed his chin down, sending the Bandit’s head slamming into its shoulders. Its neck compressed and shattered, sending the crushed head tumbling to the ground.

“You bastard! That was my head!”

The Bandit was now very thankful his cockpit wasn’t located in the head. He sat in the mech’s waist and watched the head fall past him.
Connor thrust his chest forward, slamming into the Bandit. The Bandit toppled into the dirt.

It scrambled to pick itself up, hands gripping uselessly at the boulder covered landscape. Connor stepped forward. He slammed one fist into the Bandit’s stomach, and one into its left leg. He raised the mecha’s arms, suspending the Bandit in midair.

“What the hell gives you the right to do this!? This isn’t the way the planet works!”

“I’m the biggest robot now,” Connor said. “I make the rules.”

Connor pulled his hands apart, ripping the Bandit in half. The two halves exploded violently, adding a new layer of shrapnel to the wasteland.
Connor posed his mech triumphantly, standing tall above the crushed mechas. His father cheered him on from inside his own mech. The scavengers in the distance joined James in cheering.

“That’s not the last of them,” Connor said to himself. “There’re always more of these jerks.”

He looked at the horizon. Mountains and piles of scrap stretched out across it in a dark, jagged band. Beyond that, there were sure to be more Bandits.

Connor let go of the mecha’s controls and grabbed his shoulder. That fall into the mountain had messed him up pretty badly. He rolled up his sleeve and looked at the mass of bruises his arm had become. He needed to see a doctor.

He sat the mecha down and leaned it back. Then he crawled out the chutes that lead to the mecha’s entrance. He kicked the hatch open and crawled out into the sunlight. From the mecha’s chin, he looked down at the full expanse of his new machine’s body.

“Well I say bring ‘em on,” He said, filled with confidence.

“We’ll see how they handle Liberation.”

Still trying to do something with the piece I put up on page one. I don't know where it's taking me yet, but I'm eager to find out.


It was not a classy place. It was pretty disgusting, really. Layers of filth and grime clung to every surface like barnacles, and the floors were sticky enough to keep the light-weights from falling down drunk. The only source of light was the flickering overhead lamps, and the dim vision they provided did little past accentuating the silhouettes of the dank tables. The air was heavy with sweat and booze, and the stench almost overpowered some higher brain functions. Almost all of the knuckle-dragging meat heads in the joint were the kind of thugs who skipped the sweeping accusations of who bumped into them and jumped right ahead to the stabbing and the subsequent apathy to the stiffs strewn all around.

None of it mattered to Fynn, because it was all real. The morose silence, the warm swill, the dilapidated architecture – all of it was as plain as the scars on his hands, or the burns on his arms. It was getting harder and harder to find places like this to drink at in the bigger cities. There were fewer establishments every day still serving honest to god booze, and it seemed like the less of them there was around, the swankier the remaining pool became. Drinking all night and then passing out cold on the empty streets was one of the finer parts of life that any man should be entitled to, and the synthesised stuff never had that same effect. It was a sad state of affairs when an honest guy couldn’t even find solace in the arms of a bottle.

Fynn was as honest as the next guy, and usually just as crocked. In a place like this, where the next guy was close to dead and still drinking, he was more of a peculiarity than usual; he’d been sitting in a lonesome corner of the room pushing the same scotch around the table for going on about two hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t down in the dumps, but it wasn’t often he was down so far that a stiff drink couldn’t pull him up. Then again, days like he’d seen recently didn’t come around often either.

She waltzed through the door in the same way she always used to. Her long, powerful legs pushed through the air almost like she was waist deep in water. She was wearing a baggy pair of pants that were attached to her in the same static way moss is attached to stone. Over that she wore a simple black dress, which flowed effortlessly in tune with the rest of her body. Every square inch of her person, each contour, each crevice and fold in her clothes and each visible patch of her skin was plastered with dust and mud. Her skin was littered with old burns, scars and bruises, but the small areas between all of that were smoother and purer than any surface Fynn could name. The corner of her mouth was forever raised in a constant smirk at her surroundings, and usually meant something along the lines of “Yeah, I heard. That’s a lot of orders. I like big orders.”

Without even looking up, Fynn knew who it was within seconds of her entering. She radiated confidence with every fibre of her being, and it rippled out into everything around her. The air slowed down a little, and everybody seemed a bit more cautious, a bit more on their toes, and ran things through their head a few more times than usual before they said or did anything. Fynn had figured she’d start looking for him eventually. He just hoped that maybe he had a little more time. That was a mistake, he realised. If his experience taught him anything, it was that hope was something that happened to other people.

She took the seat opposite him, smirking that timeless smirk. Fynn didn’t dare look into her eyes yet. He was holding himself together on pure willpower now, but if he looked up into those haunting, mirthless eyes he could lose it at any second - mostly because he remembered. Back in the day, one look at her, and you saw the innocent eagerness of somebody who tried their best every single time. He remembered a time when those beautiful eyes looked past all the grease, all the stains, all the mistakes in the world and saw only him, and they both knew nothing else mattered. It was a time close to pop flyin'. Times had moved on. Fynn thought he had, too. He knocked the rest of his gin back in a stiff, jerking motion.“ Drink never used to help you think.” Her voice was grizzled as hell, like somebody sharpening a knife. “It still doesn’t,” he stated coldly, wishing he had another. He knew she was staring right at him. Even after all those years and all those miles, she could still look right through him and see all the thoughts he’d been trying to drown away for so long. She saw the man he was then, as well as the man he was now. Fynn bitterly wondered if there was any difference.“I went through one of the border towns on my way here, Jasper.” She said, dragging her finger around the table. He froze for a second at that. He really should have been prepared for it, but he hadn’t been. “I’m going by Fynn these days, Jules,” he rasped out, finally looking into her eyes. In a matter of seconds she broke away, looking at one of the walls. He was right. She could still see right through him. Nobody should have to see that. She might have blushed, if she was the sort of lady who blushed.

“Interesting,” she said, after a few moments. “Anyway, I was going through one of the border towns, and I ran into Mikey.” She didn’t bother asking him if he remembered Mikey. Fynn didn’t forget very much. “He’s getting by,” she went on, not missing a beat, “he fell in with a church, or at least a cult. He’s only making spit, but they’ve got him a cosy room, and he eats with the rest of them. They’re good people, Jasper. They need folk like him out there.” Her arm stretched across the table like paper falling in the wind and she touched his hand. “Folk like us,” she whispered. Fynn looked down at her hand. He’d spent quite some time trying to drink his way into forgetting that hand, but in that one moment, it all came rushing back like a floodgate had just opened up in his head. The cold nights were always colder when he thought about how warm and gentle her touch was. Her hand itself was tough and scarred like a bad piece of meat, but her stroke, her caress was more comfort than any bottle he’d found so far. Not that he’d stop looking. When the bottom of the bottle stared back up at him, it was just his cold, dead eyes; not somebody else’s.

“You shouldn’t have come out this way,” he choked, taking his hand away. Jules didn’t change her expression, but that wasn’t much help anyway. Fynn only saw her as depressed. “That so,” she sighed, folding her hands in front of her. “Maybe you’re right, Mister Fynn.” The emptiness of those two words cut through him worse than any knife could. She rose slowly from the table, and moved behind him. They stayed there in silence for a long moment, each of them knowing what was next, but neither wanting to start it. Jules coughed. “Well, Mister Fynn, I’ll be in town for some time yet,” she turned her back to his, both of them now facing opposite directions. “If Jasper happens to show up, I’ll be waiting.” She touched his shoulder very briefly before walking away, and that was that.

Fynn threw a handful of coins on the table, and hurried out after her. Everything in his head said he shouldn’t be doing it, but he wasn’t listening to his head. He threw the door open and fell out onto the street, and saw nothing. It was raining again, and if he was a hopeful man, he might have seen a shape moving down the street that looked an awful lot like a woman he used to know. All he saw was the rain. Fynn stood there staring at nothing for a good twenty minutes, just thinking, and feeling.

Two men in crisp uniforms appeared out of the rain, and struggled past Fynn. They were leading a third man along, whose hands were tied behind his back. He didn’t think much of it; this sort of thing happened a lot these days. Then he realised what the third man was wearing. He had a white, double-breasted nehru jacket on and a pair of checked pants. That was the kind of uniform that you either had to be dangerously dense or terrifyingly strong to wear.

“Hey! Wait,” Fynn yelled, running after them. They didn’t even slow down. He had to physically move in front of them before they acknowledged his existence. “What’d this kid do?” The two men looked at him cock-eyed, as if the kid’s outfit wasn’t a dead give-away. “We caught him breakin’ into a new synth-bar down the road. He was knockin the place up. Now get outta my face.” The other man grunted, pushed Fynn out of the way, then the two of them continued dragging the kid down the road. “Hey kid!” he yelled out, “where are you working?” The youngster turned around and shouted out “Barker’s Bistro!” before the three of them disappeared again into the rain. Fynn stood there again, staring off into nothing. “Guess that’s my next stop,” he muttered to himself, before pulling a crumpled, disgusting old cigarette out of a pocket and walking off down the street.