Writing dares, via Chiga and Crystal

[charybdis]

The cold steel of the bulkhead threatened to crush his skull in as they fucked. The thought of pink-grey brains spattered across the dull grey gleam of the unpainted steel seemed inappropriately erotic. Made him think of a docu-vid he'd seen once, on the bugs of ancient Earth, where a green female with wicked forelimbs devoured her mate's head, even as his body writhed in the entomologic equivalent of orgasm.

The image had been huge on the projector, ten or a hundred times life size or something. Transparent green ichor seeped from the stub of the male's neck -- or whatever bugs had.

He tried not to think about it, though if it was one of her thoughts, she would delight in forcing it upon him. Until he became the shuddering male, dribbling slow blood from the stub of his neck as she sank teeth into his already lifeless flesh.

******


Not much for an out-of-work graphic design major to do, except take a job at an upscale restaurant and charm as many tips as possible out of the revoltingly rich. Some days, he'd swear he can feel his art dripping out of his ears, forcing its way out of his brain. His brain now more used to calculating tips and reciting orders than creating. He's taken to critiquing the advertisements on the apartment notice board, trying to get his art to stick around.

The simple design of a text-only flyer filled in and printed fresh off the word processor, clean but utterly unimaginative. The barbecue flyer, a travesty of desktop publishing, with borders and clip art and wildly incompatible fonts all shoved onto a too-small half-sheet, creating the design equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. And the misuse of templates -- clear signs of idiocy -- featuring twisted designs that, while they might once have been balanced and beautiful, have been thrown off by too many words and too much useless detail.

******


His clean, innocent face might have been stolen from the temple on the high street. But his breath advertises the fact that his beatific expression was purchased by the shot, at the bar across the way. Someone should tell him that his hair is hung with crumpled strips of paper, but no one will. Not when he's staggering down the middle of the street, waving like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, gibbering indecipherable phrases of what is either poetry or - gibberish.

He's not ashamed. He's too drunk to be ashamed. Passersby give him a wide berth as he staggers along, in his universe of gibberish dreams, careless and self-contained.

He's dreaming of a gipsy woman, all colorful skirts and shawls, twirling and dancing. She scoops him off the street, easy as though he were a tiny child, and she holds him up to her face. He can see that her eyes are odd-- one yellow and one green. In solemn tones, as though speaking to an infant, she asks if he'd like to know his fortune. Part of him wants to laugh in delight, another part wants to tell her that he has no future.

Fortune, she says, still solemn. Not future.