Snippet Snipity-Snip

[jackofallgeeks]

So this guy, Warren Ellis, is having a 'Fast Fiction Friday' on some blog site he calls 'Die Puny Humans,' or something. At the encouragement of Kirt (xiombarg), I decided to put in one of my pieces. Quite a few of the older pieces I had were 150 words or less, far fewwer than the 200-word limit Warren imposed, but the later ones that I was really pleased with were rather far beyond the mark. When I stumbled onto A World of Darkness, I couldn't make myself pass it up. I still think it's my favorite piece out of my Anthology. But at just-over 400 words, it needed to be trimmed. I don't think it'll actually make it in, but Kirt helped me trim it, and here's what I sent out for F3, including my little biography:

---

Work, damn you!

With a whirr, Samson leaped over another gap between crowded buildings, landing hard. The hydraulics were failing.

He scanned for signatures before running over the roof. The mission had gone horribly wrong; his squadmates were already dead. This guy was worse than those nuts who believed they could fly; this guy didn't believe he couldn't fly.

A pipe grabbed his foot. A loud snap as his shoulder hit. Rainwater trailed down his face as he lay there, gasping up at the sky. Lightning revealed a figure suspended in the air.

It was the Deviant. He hung there, leather boots five feet up. Every so often blue-white energy would spider up his form. Despite the rain, his hair blew dry in the wind.

The Deviant spoke, though his mouth didn't move. A soft sound, but heard over even thunder.

"You and yours have held sway long enough. The Reckoning is upon us, and it is time for a change."

Samson struggled to get to his feet as the Deviant began to chant. A crack of thunder, and the last thing Samson saw was a wind-blown silhouette against a backdrop of purple and grey.

Then everything went white.

---

Andrew Portner is a Senior-level college student working toward a Computer Science degree. He likes techno, red meat, and kittens.

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Not to harp on Phil Dick as a source, but he actually wrote a story (whose name I can't recall at the moment) with a central conceit similar to the Reality Deviant - the main character is a sort of psychologist who works for the police helping track down delusionals whose delusions are so strong they become real (and it's made harder by the fact that most of them don't think there's anything weird about how they see the world - e.g., "what, can't *you* fly?").

Granted, Dick lived in Berkeley in the 60s, (and quite possibly suffered from schizophrenia) so his major themes (aside from, and sometimes combined with, Christianity) are drugs and insanity.

hold the phone.

[nif.livejournal.com]

::in hushed tones of reverent awe:: ...Warren Ellis? THE Warren Ellis? I'm fighting tears of joy here, Andrew. If he does a little comic book called Transmetropolitan I will get down on my knees and wash his feet with my hair. You do not understand. You cannot understand. His is a genius that lesser writers like Shakespeare and Voltaire could never hope to achieve. I would just like to say long live Spider Jerusalem, ciagrettes, and bowel disruptors controlled by murder thoughts.