Slubka’s voice was level as the solid line of her eyebrows. “You are armed. I am not. You therefore presume that I will obey you.” Her breath smoked in the frigid air. “You would not so presume if you had attended carefully during our previous conversations. As I have told you, my personal safety is not my primary concern. Your personal safety..” one corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile—“is not even on the list. If you point your weapon at me; or take one step toward the door; or wait seventy seconds before dropping your weapon and rescinding your demands; I will lean back harder on this window. You are aware of the certain consequences.”
She pressed her elbow against the blackened pane. Bugnok hoped he was only imagining that the glass squealed with strain and through the thinning barrier, horribly distinct, came the eager sucking sound that almost drowned out the screaming below. “You wouldn’t do that.” Bugnok gasped.
Slubka was good at making people hear and see things that were not exactly there, or not there yet. It was the only useful skill she had learned from her nine-year apprecticeship with Grokh. It had taken her only three days to master. It had almost been worth the price Grokh charged her. But even if it hadn’t come close to being worthwhile she would have had no recourse. The mindwarping masters of the Dovagrulkht had long since ceased even pretending to abide by the Psulgthusk treaty. Slow to nonexistent law enforcement was one benefit of life on a used-up mining planet near the fringe of the universe. Of course, if law enforcement had been more consistent the planet would not have been used up so quickly. But back then the Ruling Council had good reasons for looking the other way.
“Oh, but I would.” she said.
--Joanna
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8 comments:
AHA - the brutally awful "As I told you" ranks down there in as the ultimate backstory trap.
And this:
"Slubka was good at making people hear and see things that were not exactly there, or not there yet."
is so meaningless and philosophically awful. I'm mailing it to all my metaphysical friends.
An excellent example of how to derail your story! And then there's that jarring return to the action at the end, just when I'd totally lost track of what was going on in the first place. Good job.
Unfortunately, this exercise was really easy for me because this is how stories tend to take shape in my mind The basic storyline is unfolding itself, and then a detail intrigues me and I wonder how it came to be that way, and it just keeps spilling back from there. This is good in that it gives me a fairly rich sense of my characters and their world, but bad in that I have to cut about half of what I write, besides writing less than half of what I think.
Yes. The dreaded third paragraph of lost the threadness.
Without that, this is almost too good though. You trying to sneak in good writing? ;-)
Damn, Joanna. This is really good!
I even enjoyed the back-story. (And please don't be mad, but...I'd have read on!)
AH but Joanna, once you know what this is, you can go back and edit it out. Make it a mission, a quest -- I'm going to find my fault of too much detail. You know what it looks likes and You know how to find it.
You get the feeling the third paragraphi is going through Slubka's head in real time. As I read it, I imagined them staring at each other for 25 seconds or so without speaking, all the while horribly aware of the time. Made it funnier to me, it did.
Thanks for the comments!
Dave, that sentence is awful in various ways, but not quite meaningless; I think there's be a large difference between inducing hallucinations and slightly skewing the appearance of reality.
Thanks, Robin. I wrote this as a spoof but am beginning to see an actual story in it. If anything comes of it I'll post the better beginning here.
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