Contest [Issue 34] Continue the Story... Returns! [Chapter 1]

[benjiblob 99]

Into The Room

by benjiblob

 

“See you tomorrow, Sanderson." Samuel Sanderson is a co-worker of mine who almost always disagrees with me. This was a normal situation for him, but to me, and soon to the whole world, my deeds would mean a lot more.

 

I strolled out of my office with a smug face, taking my sweet time. My work was done for the day, and it was only noon! This is all because I, less than 30 seconds ago, had completed my proof that cheese is an element. Now all I had to do was spread word, and I was (and still am) exceptional at that.

 

Oh, darn. It’s the beginning of my story, and I forgot to introduce myself. How could I have forgotten? Well, my name is William Gobbleshot, and the consensus is I looked like the average guy who’s about 40. But, I just happened to be on my path to becoming the best scientist of the century, and I didn’t even know it.

 

But what I did know was that I needed a nap. The night before, I was awake until 1:30 am while normally, I crash at 11:00. Yeah, I like schedules. If I'm behind schedule, I make up the time whenever I'm off schedule.

 

 I arrived at my mansion on N. Gobbleshot St (named by my father) in my limo at 1:00 pm, performed my usual routine of changing into casual clothes and going for a little jog, and then instead of turning on the ballgame, I recalled my self-promise of a nap. Once I fell asleep I immediately fell into a dream of craziness (at this time I rarely dreamed at all). I dreamed of ghosts and demons and everything I used to fear. But just as fast as it had begun, my dream switched to warfare. I recognized this place as Great Smoky, Norway, just 5 miles away. The war revealed in it had modern equipment, some of it invented this year. I, and all of my ancestors, have moral beliefs against warfare due to our religion.

 

Once again my dream changed-to a vision of me. At least I thought it was me. In this dream, I was at my computer in my office building, on the highest floor, which is my least favorite place in the world. Why? On that floor they have all the typical stuff. But, this floor also contains a room. A room that no one ever opens. Oh, the door’s unlocked, all right, or at least everyone tells everyone else that it is. But some people choose to be foolish and prove this is just a rumor, until they touch the long, shiny, silver, slick handle and back away abruptly. One child, on “take your child to work day” was unfortunately peer-pressured by his brothers into this experience, yelled the moment after he backed away: “Ghosts! Run for your life!” After this there was actually a fire drill and the latter appealed more to everybody’s sense of urgency. The room was supposed to mean bad luck, so since the building was built, no one had unlocked the door.

 

The room number was 911, floor 9, 11th from the elevator. The way we came to conclude that this room would be the “bad luck room” was from a fictional book, by George W. Bush, our leader just 12 years ago. And this story was so bad, I mean bad enough that just thinking about it gave you the creeps. The title of the book was 911, and it had 911 pages

 

So, no one has ever visited that room, and most people avoid even stopping at the 9th floor. I did not know it then, as I figured this out a little later, but that room has been inhabited by, well, stuff.

 

But what I did know for certain was that no one that I worked with knew.

 

Back to my dream now. I stood up to use the bathroom and suddenly felt something that I identified as a rush of cold air. I decided to take my chances and sneak-peek outside my room.

 

All of the doors were closed.

 

No door in my building is ever closed.

 

I really wouldn’t have been so surprised and stunned if I didn’t know that in my dream, it was the middle of the day. So, I decided to instead just leave the office, I willed myself to open the doors. Every last one. All ended up being locked. Except as I approached the last glorious one, I hesitated. I heard a startling metallic sound. The smooth numbers carved into the handle clearly read: 911.

Edited May 20, 2015 by benjiblob

[Helindu_2014 830]

DOGFIGHT WW2

 

Chapter 1- Air Raid Alert.....

 

(1942, The Second World War; RAF Squadron 83 base camp, Greece.)

    

     ‘Pilot Officers of squadron 83!’, the deep voice of the commander reverberated inside the hangar.  ‘Air Raid Alert! Prepare and Patrol 8000ft, 300-325 degrees. The riggers had done their best towards the hurricanes and the pilot officers in charge of the monoplanes rushed into action. Among the 23 pilots, Gregory Hudson, 6’1’’, 20’ too hopped inside the cramped cockpit.

     ‘Take off- Runway clear!’, As the instructions were given, the hurricanes- in single line formation, rose to the blue heavens and dispersed in patrol.

     The Nazis were planning a surprise attack on the hangar, but a spy had leaked the news to Commander Andrews, who took immediate action to defend the last airbase of the RAF in Greece.

     Hudson was keeping a hawk eye on the sky and contemplating on the futility of war. ’How wonderful the skies are!’ he reflected, gazing at the Mediterranean sky. Not much far away, he noticed two German Messerschmitt 110s were charging towards him.

     Switching on the reflector sight, Hudson calibrated the aircraft and sat stiff, experiencing rush of adrenaline and perspiration.

     The 110s were now getting closer. Hudson opened fire. The machine gun pellets zoomed through the propeller and perforated one of the enemy 110’s tail plane. Both the 110s opened fire.

     Deafening gunfire followed. Hudson managed to mow down the enemy he hit initially, but the other 110 was in the hands of an experienced pilot. As Hudson continued fire, a lucky bullet hit the foe and the Messerschmitt reeled forward and downward, patched in red on the windshield. But, that wasn’t the end.

     Reinforcements of the enemy were arriving. Hudson opened fire, but no fire opened from the iron mouth of the machine gun. Having understood that he was out of ammo, Hudson was also aware that he was almost out of fuel, and that squadron 83 base camp was 30 miles due South-South-East. He turned bearing 170 degrees towards base, but the enemies were on the trail, not far.....

Edited May 7, 2015 by Helindu_2014

[S__K 27]

                          

Those Who Wait

 

 

 

 

 

A faint draught from the hills found its way through the wide-flung door as the sun went down. It fluttered the papers on the table, and stirred a cartoon upon the wall with a dry rustling as of wind in corn.

The man who sat at the table turned his face as it were mechanically towards that blessed breath from the snows. His chin was propped on his hand. He seemed to be waiting.

The light failed very quickly, and he presently reached out and drew a reading-lamp towards him. The flame he kindled flickered upward, throwing weird shadows upon his lean, brown face, making the sunken hollows of his eyes look cavernous.

He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his hand.

Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp there hung a pall of thick darkness--a fearful, clinging darkness that seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper that was like wind in corn.

At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of his attitude.

Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.

As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.

Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only partially closed the drawer.

The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly against the darkness.

"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half the way."

He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him--a handsome, straight-limbed young Hercules--tossed down his riding-whip, and looked round for a drink.

"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon some glasses on the table.

"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though. Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What have you got in that drawer?"

Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.

"What do you want to know for?"

His visitor grinned boyishly.

"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"--he was splashing soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke--"first of all--quite ready, I say? It's a grand occasion--here's to the best of good fellows, that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip--hip--hooray!"

His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the door, and closed it.

Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the shoulder.

"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.

Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the arms.

"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink, and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an enormous success--stupendous--greater even than I hoped. It's true, by the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you know. I always told you so."

"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd, detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.

But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed upon the table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.

Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.

"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this infernal heat."

He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.

When he finally looked round again his face cleared.

"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides, I knew you would expect me."

Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The intimacy had been none of his seeking.

They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.

No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward. He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.

But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within--what he certainly had not expected to find--a genius.

It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.

This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.

Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers' part had astonished him far more.

Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him, and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heat came in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a sentimental ditty below his breath.

"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose, you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you can't wait till the winter."

"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny. "I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and everybody--except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser, that we are partners in this deal."

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I hadn't."

"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.

"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"

"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.

Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I won't tell a soul."

"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim twist of the mouth that was not a smile.

"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"

"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."

Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance flashed upwards, and their eyes met.

There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.

"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.

"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow like you--I don't believe it!"

"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."

He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.

"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though it's never safe to assume anything."

"Oh, don't talk like an *****!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that; or if I don't, I've never known you at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.

Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so that his face was in shadow.

"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.

"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."

He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world at his feet.

Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life."

"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism. "That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."

"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you never have."

"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all the best years of my life."

"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."

"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own! Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't--you shan't be melancholy to-night of all nights."

But Conyers stayed his hand.

"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely. It's not my way."

"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.

"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and yet not win my heart's desire."

"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one thing--the one essential--the one woman."

He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with his face in the shadow.

Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.

"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm nearly thirty, but that's a detail."

"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.

"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said before. Who cares for a year more or less?"

"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman is older than you are."

"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly difference does it make?"

"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze of smoke.

"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life. But she gave in at last. I think she realized that it was sheer waste of time to go on."

"What was she waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh Palliser was too engrossed to notice.

He stretched his arms wide with a swift and passionate gesture.

"She was waiting for a scamp," he declared.

"It is maddening to think of--the sweetest woman on earth, Conyers, wasting her spring and her summer over a myth, an illusion. It was an affair of fifteen years ago. The fellow came to grief and disappointed her. She told me all about it on the day she promised to marry me. I believe her heart was nearly broken at the time, but she has got over it--thank Heaven!--at last. Poor Damaris! My Damaris!"

He ceased to speak, and a dull roar of thunder came out of the night like the voice of a giant in anguish.

Hugh began to smoke, still busy with his thoughts.

"Yes," he said presently, "I believe she would actually have waited all her life for the fellow if he had asked it of her. Luckily he didn't go so far as that. He was utterly unworthy of her. I think she sees it now. His father was imprisoned for forgery, and no doubt he was in the know, though it couldn't be brought home to him. He was ruined, of course, and he disappeared, just dropped out, when the crash came. He had been on the verge of proposing to her immediately before. And she would have had him too. She cared."

He sent a cloud of smoke upwards with savage vigour.

"It's damnable to think of her suffering for a worthless brute like that!" he exclaimed. "She had such faith in him too. Year after year she was expecting him to go back to her, and she kept me at arm's length, till at last she came to see that both our lives were being sacrificed to a miserable dream. Well, it's my innings now, anyway. And we are going to be superbly happy to make up for it."

Again he flung out his arms with a wide gesture, and again out of the night there came a long roll of thunder that was like the menace of a tortured thing. A flicker of lightning gleamed through the open door for a moment, and Conyers' dark face was made visible. He had ceased to smoke, and was staring with fixed, inscrutable eyes into the darkness. He did not flinch from the lightning; it was as if he did not see it.

"What would she do, I wonder, if the prodigal returned," he said quietly. "Would she be glad--or sorry?"

"He never will," returned Hugh quickly. "He never can--after fifteen years. Think of it! Besides--she wouldn't have him if he did."

"Women are proverbially faithful," remarked Conyers cynically.

"She will stick to me now," Hugh returned with confidence. "The other fellow is probably dead. In any case, he has no shadow of a right over her. He never even asked her to wait for him."

"Possibly he thought that she would wait without being asked," said Conyers, still cynical.

"Well, she has ceased to care for him now," asserted Hugh. "She told me so herself."

The man opposite shifted his position ever so slightly. "And you are satisfied with that?" he said.

"Of course I am. Why not?" There was almost a challenge in Hugh's voice.

"And if he came back?" persisted the other. "You would still be satisfied?"

Hugh sprang to his feet with a movement of fierce impatience. "I believe I should shoot him!" he said vindictively. He looked like a splendid wild animal suddenly awakened. "I tell you, Conyers," he declared passionately, "I could kill him with my hands if he came between us now."

Conyers, his chin on his hand, looked him up and down as though appraising his strength.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright and spoke--spoke briefly, sternly, harshly, as a man speaks in the presence of his enemy. At the same instant a frightful crash of thunder swept the words away as though they had never been uttered.

In the absolute pandemonium of sound that followed, Hugh Palliser, with a face gone suddenly white, went over to his friend and stood behind him, his hands upon his shoulders.

But Conyers sat quite motionless, staring forth at the leaping lightning, rigid, sphinx-like. He did not seem aware of the man behind him, till, as the uproar began to subside, Hugh bent and spoke.

"Do you know, old chap, I'm scared!" he said, with a faint, shamed laugh. "I feel as if there were devils abroad. Speak to me, will you, and tell me I'm a fool!"

"You are," said Conyers, without turning.

"That lightning is too much for my nerves," said Hugh uneasily. "It's almost red. What was it you said just now? I couldn't hear a word."

"It doesn't matter," said Conyers.

"But what was it? I want to know."

The gleam in the fixed eyes leaped to sudden terrible flame, shone hotly for a few seconds, then died utterly away. "I don't remember," said Conyers quietly. "It couldn't have been anything of importance. Have a drink! You will have to be getting back as soon as this is over."

Hugh helped himself with a hand that was not altogether steady. There had come a lull in the tempest. The cartoon on the wall was fluttering like a caged thing. He glanced at it, then looked at it closely. It was a reproduction of Dore's picture of Satan falling from heaven.

"It isn't meant for you surely!" he said.

Conyers laughed and got to his feet. "It isn't much like me, is it?"

Hugh looked at him uncertainly. "I never noticed it before. It might have been you years ago."

"Ah, perhaps," said Conyers. "Why don't you drink? I thought you were going to give me a toast."

Hugh's mood changed magically. He raised his glass high. "Here's to your eternal welfare, dear fellow! I drink to your heart's desire."

Conyers waited till Hugh had drained his glass before he lifted his own.

Then, "I drink to the one woman," he said, and emptied it at a draught.

* * * * *

The storm was over, and a horse's feet clattered away into the darkness, mingling rhythmically with a cheery tenor voice.

In the room with the open door a man's figure stood for a long while motionless.

When he moved at length it was to open the locked drawer of the writing-table. His right hand felt within it, closed upon something that lay there; and then he paused.

Several minutes crawled away.

From afar there came the long rumble of thunder. But it was not this that he heard as he stood wrestling with the fiercest temptation he had ever known.

Stiffly at last he stooped, peered into the drawer, finally closed it with an unfaltering hand. The struggle was over.

"For your sake, Damaris!" he said aloud, and he spoke without cynicism. "I should know how to wait by now--even for death--which is all I have to wait for."

And with that he pulled the fluttering paper from the wall, crushed it in his hand, and went out heavily into the night.

[IVIr.Blue 865]

                          

Those Who Wait

 

 

 

 

 

A faint draught from the hills found its way through the wide-flung door as the sun went down. It fluttered the papers on the table, and stirred a cartoon upon the wall with a dry rustling as of wind in corn.

The man who sat at the table turned his face as it were mechanically towards that blessed breath from the snows. His chin was propped on his hand. He seemed to be waiting.

The light failed very quickly, and he presently reached out and drew a reading-lamp towards him. The flame he kindled flickered upward, throwing weird shadows upon his lean, brown face, making the sunken hollows of his eyes look cavernous.

He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his hand.

Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp there hung a pall of thick darkness--a fearful, clinging darkness that seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper that was like wind in corn.

At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of his attitude.

Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.

As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.

Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only partially closed the drawer.

The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly against the darkness.

"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half the way."

He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him--a handsome, straight-limbed young Hercules--tossed down his riding-whip, and looked round for a drink.

"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon some glasses on the table.

"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though. Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What have you got in that drawer?"

Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.

"What do you want to know for?"

His visitor grinned boyishly.

"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"--he was splashing soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke--"first of all--quite ready, I say? It's a grand occasion--here's to the best of good fellows, that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip--hip--hooray!"

His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the door, and closed it.

Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the shoulder.

"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.

Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the arms.

"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink, and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an enormous success--stupendous--greater even than I hoped. It's true, by the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you know. I always told you so."

"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd, detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.

But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed upon the table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.

Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.

"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this infernal heat."

He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.

When he finally looked round again his face cleared.

"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides, I knew you would expect me."

Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The intimacy had been none of his seeking.

They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.

No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward. He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.

But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within--what he certainly had not expected to find--a genius.

It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.

This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.

Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers' part had astonished him far more.

Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him, and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heat came in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a sentimental ditty below his breath.

"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose, you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you can't wait till the winter."

"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny. "I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and everybody--except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser, that we are partners in this deal."

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I hadn't."

"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.

"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"

"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.

Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I won't tell a soul."

"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim twist of the mouth that was not a smile.

"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"

"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."

Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance flashed upwards, and their eyes met.

There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.

"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.

"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow like you--I don't believe it!"

"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."

He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.

"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though it's never safe to assume anything."

"Oh, don't talk like an *****!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that; or if I don't, I've never known you at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.

Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so that his face was in shadow.

"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.

"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."

He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world at his feet.

Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life."

"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism. "That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."

"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you never have."

"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all the best years of my life."

"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."

"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own! Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't--you shan't be melancholy to-night of all nights."

But Conyers stayed his hand.

"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely. It's not my way."

"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.

"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and yet not win my heart's desire."

"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one thing--the one essential--the one woman."

He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with his face in the shadow.

Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.

"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm nearly thirty, but that's a detail."

"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.

"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said before. Who cares for a year more or less?"

"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman is older than you are."

"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly difference does it make?"

"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze of smoke.

"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life. But she gave in at last. I think she realized that it was sheer waste of time to go on."

"What was she waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh Palliser was too engrossed to notice.

He stretched his arms wide with a swift and passionate gesture.

"She was waiting for a scamp," he declared.

"It is maddening to think of--the sweetest woman on earth, Conyers, wasting her spring and her summer over a myth, an illusion. It was an affair of fifteen years ago. The fellow came to grief and disappointed her. She told me all about it on the day she promised to marry me. I believe her heart was nearly broken at the time, but she has got over it--thank Heaven!--at last. Poor Damaris! My Damaris!"

He ceased to speak, and a dull roar of thunder came out of the night like the voice of a giant in anguish.

Hugh began to smoke, still busy with his thoughts.

"Yes," he said presently, "I believe she would actually have waited all her life for the fellow if he had asked it of her. Luckily he didn't go so far as that. He was utterly unworthy of her. I think she sees it now. His father was imprisoned for forgery, and no doubt he was in the know, though it couldn't be brought home to him. He was ruined, of course, and he disappeared, just dropped out, when the crash came. He had been on the verge of proposing to her immediately before. And she would have had him too. She cared."

He sent a cloud of smoke upwards with savage vigour.

"It's damnable to think of her suffering for a worthless brute like that!" he exclaimed. "She had such faith in him too. Year after year she was expecting him to go back to her, and she kept me at arm's length, till at last she came to see that both our lives were being sacrificed to a miserable dream. Well, it's my innings now, anyway. And we are going to be superbly happy to make up for it."

Again he flung out his arms with a wide gesture, and again out of the night there came a long roll of thunder that was like the menace of a tortured thing. A flicker of lightning gleamed through the open door for a moment, and Conyers' dark face was made visible. He had ceased to smoke, and was staring with fixed, inscrutable eyes into the darkness. He did not flinch from the lightning; it was as if he did not see it.

"What would she do, I wonder, if the prodigal returned," he said quietly. "Would she be glad--or sorry?"

"He never will," returned Hugh quickly. "He never can--after fifteen years. Think of it! Besides--she wouldn't have him if he did."

"Women are proverbially faithful," remarked Conyers cynically.

"She will stick to me now," Hugh returned with confidence. "The other fellow is probably dead. In any case, he has no shadow of a right over her. He never even asked her to wait for him."

"Possibly he thought that she would wait without being asked," said Conyers, still cynical.

"Well, she has ceased to care for him now," asserted Hugh. "She told me so herself."

The man opposite shifted his position ever so slightly. "And you are satisfied with that?" he said.

"Of course I am. Why not?" There was almost a challenge in Hugh's voice.

"And if he came back?" persisted the other. "You would still be satisfied?"

Hugh sprang to his feet with a movement of fierce impatience. "I believe I should shoot him!" he said vindictively. He looked like a splendid wild animal suddenly awakened. "I tell you, Conyers," he declared passionately, "I could kill him with my hands if he came between us now."

Conyers, his chin on his hand, looked him up and down as though appraising his strength.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright and spoke--spoke briefly, sternly, harshly, as a man speaks in the presence of his enemy. At the same instant a frightful crash of thunder swept the words away as though they had never been uttered.

In the absolute pandemonium of sound that followed, Hugh Palliser, with a face gone suddenly white, went over to his friend and stood behind him, his hands upon his shoulders.

But Conyers sat quite motionless, staring forth at the leaping lightning, rigid, sphinx-like. He did not seem aware of the man behind him, till, as the uproar began to subside, Hugh bent and spoke.

"Do you know, old chap, I'm scared!" he said, with a faint, shamed laugh. "I feel as if there were devils abroad. Speak to me, will you, and tell me I'm a fool!"

"You are," said Conyers, without turning.

"That lightning is too much for my nerves," said Hugh uneasily. "It's almost red. What was it you said just now? I couldn't hear a word."

"It doesn't matter," said Conyers.

"But what was it? I want to know."

The gleam in the fixed eyes leaped to sudden terrible flame, shone hotly for a few seconds, then died utterly away. "I don't remember," said Conyers quietly. "It couldn't have been anything of importance. Have a drink! You will have to be getting back as soon as this is over."

Hugh helped himself with a hand that was not altogether steady. There had come a lull in the tempest. The cartoon on the wall was fluttering like a caged thing. He glanced at it, then looked at it closely. It was a reproduction of Dore's picture of Satan falling from heaven.

"It isn't meant for you surely!" he said.

Conyers laughed and got to his feet. "It isn't much like me, is it?"

Hugh looked at him uncertainly. "I never noticed it before. It might have been you years ago."

"Ah, perhaps," said Conyers. "Why don't you drink? I thought you were going to give me a toast."

Hugh's mood changed magically. He raised his glass high. "Here's to your eternal welfare, dear fellow! I drink to your heart's desire."

Conyers waited till Hugh had drained his glass before he lifted his own.

Then, "I drink to the one woman," he said, and emptied it at a draught.

* * * * *

The storm was over, and a horse's feet clattered away into the darkness, mingling rhythmically with a cheery tenor voice.

In the room with the open door a man's figure stood for a long while motionless.

When he moved at length it was to open the locked drawer of the writing-table. His right hand felt within it, closed upon something that lay there; and then he paused.

Several minutes crawled away.

From afar there came the long rumble of thunder. But it was not this that he heard as he stood wrestling with the fiercest temptation he had ever known.

Stiffly at last he stooped, peered into the drawer, finally closed it with an unfaltering hand. The struggle was over.

"For your sake, Damaris!" he said aloud, and he spoke without cynicism. "I should know how to wait by now--even for death--which is all I have to wait for."

And with that he pulled the fluttering paper from the wall, crushed it in his hand, and went out heavily into the night.

the word limit it 500 and this 1 seems to be more than 2000 words -_-

[Jboymark53 508]

the word limit it 500 and this 1 seems to be more than 2000 words -_-

It's 3,652, I have a word counter on Microsoft Word. 

[1stsuperwhitedragon 408]

It's 3,652, I have a word counter on Microsoft Word.

 

that's too long

[Jboymark53 508]

that's too long

I didn't write it!

[1stsuperwhitedragon 408]

I didn't write it!

I know that so that's why I said it was too long and I notix that you replied in my game in the Forum Games

[celroti 133]

Death of the Dawn

[Related to earthquake in Nepal]

 

Near Kathmandu,NEPAL

 

"Hey buddy, pass the the ball" said Sam "Sure take it" replied Hiro. "Hey will you let us play" chorused there other 2 friends Jack and Robby. "Sure" said Sam their leader. They all were playing in a lonely field where no one was around, all of them were middle class people.Suddenly they felt something in the ground "Did u feel something"? asked Hiro. "Yes, something on the field" replied Robby.All of a sudden all the neighborhood around them came out from there homes and houses and said "A earthquake run , run". "That's nothing so small earthquake don't be afraid" said the kids. Then slowly it increased the 4 friends were alarmed and said "Run , run". Then something fell on them and they were unconscious. Jack woke up first his hand and his cheeks were bleeding continuously. He couldn't move then he felt that the big metallic thing was moving when he turned he saw two of his friends he asked "Where in Robby? And are you ok? Your bleeding more than me"."Robby is no more, he shall never come back never" said Sam with a heavy heart.What not again. They felt another earthquake.But luckily it didn't last long.Some how with effort they pulled out the metallic thing and saved Jack. "You think we will live"? asked Hiro."I don't know but we can try" said Sam.He took out the torn stumper ball and cried a little."Are our parents alive"? asked Hiro in disgrace.They all looked into each other and Sam said "nothing can be done we have to go on our own ways only on our own"."Dont say like that how dare you, don't you love your mom and dad" asked Hiro. "Truth is truth and we have to accept it". said Jack with a really very heavy heart."Then lets go" said Hiro. "Where"? asked Sam with curiosity. "Our home"Replied Hiro. "I cant walk, the metallic thing I was in pierced my cheek". Then suddenly they saw a man coming from shadows and then.... 

 

Word count:

336 words

that resemble some part of mine

[celroti 133]

Thinking a lot about it soon coming

     Reserved

[Helindu_2014 830]

The following story is made by me . No character is original but fictional.  I hope you will like it..!!

.

                                              The real Mother

      Once upon a in Auraland there lived a 'King Christopher'  with big heart. He used to respect every person of his kingdom and village. He believed in truth and love.

     Once two women came in kingdom of King Christoper each claming that a certain baby was her's. They quarrelled a long. Since King was known for his wisdom and everyone expected a speedy settling of dispute, he had to make a quick decision. As both women were convincing with their answers King was  a bit confused.

       The King thought for a moment or two. then he prdered one soldier to take up his sword and cut the baby into two..!! 

       "Give half to each women." he said.

        One of the women shrieken in anguish.

          "No, no King Please don't harm the child. Let her have the baby safe and sound"

         King Christoper looked at her. He saw the real pain and anguish in her eyes. Yes, she was the real mother. She could not bear her child to be cut into two. The wise King gave the baby to the Real Mother and punished the other for telling a lie.

.

Moral: A real mother can't see her child in pain.!!

.

.

Hope you liked my story..!!!

 

An original copy of the famous tale " The Caucasian Chalk circle" LOL , as if we are fools

[Daniel898 327]

Rampage

Chapter 1

    I blink my eyes open, my thoughts unclear. I examine what happened around me. My skin was scorched as if I slept in embers, my clothes were soaked with blood, but surprisingly, I didn’t feel atrocious; I didn’t feel like I evolved into a zombie and became one of the failed scenes of The Walking Dead. The area around me regarded like someone heaved highly explosive chicken wings around. Instantaneously, my vision blurred and I found myself in an untenanted room. I collapsed on the floor, fighting for my breath.

 

    “We will come.” A deep voice said. I was so agitated. Honestly, there was no possible way that I could be more perplexed. Before I could say anything that could cause me to sound like an simpleton, my vision cleared. I overheard a noise that sounded like the buzzing of a helicopter. Did help come? I got happily greeted like this:

    “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” A girl shrieked at maximum volume. What the heck was going on? I first wake up in the middle of some unsystematic field, after that, I get a mysterious message from, probably, a murderous serial killer, and then, I get yelled at an unknown girl. Wow, I wouldn’t be surprised if I died because my brain exploded of an overdose of ‘weird’.  

    “Seriously, can you address me on what is happening first? I really don’t like swords pointed at my throat that could critically damage my respiratory system.” I replied with such spunk that could possibly get me a free trip to Deathland.

     She sighed, “follow me into the helicopter.” Before you accuse me of being simpleminded and trotting into a stranger’s helicopter that could have dynamite chicken booby traps, there wasn’t any superior choices. “Tell me everything that happened.”

     At least she didn’t sound like she wanted to kill me anymore, so that was an improvement. I told her everything that happened, including the odd message from some unidentified serial killer. When I finished, the girl didn’t seem pleased.

     “That’s not good, that’s not good at all.” She responded, shaking her head. “The story that you just told me would relate to what they told me. The boundaries between life and death are collapsing, and you have been spoken to by someone, something in the underworld. You-you’re the one.”

     I am absolutely stunned by this, I mouth hangs open, but no sound comes out. I struggle to breathe. Everything happened at blistering speeds, for once, I conjecture that I have evidently burned enough calories for a year.

     “What’s your name?” She asks.

     I stared at her blankly. Of course I knew what my name was, but it just didn’t sound right to me anymore. I hesitate. “Dylan Porter” I finally say.

 

     She gasped and stared at the floor of the helicopter, “No, you-you don’t understand, but I’ve thought about this every since I saw you, but now comes the truth... you’re my brother.”

    

Edited May 18, 2015 by Daniel898

[archer177 27]

An original copy of the famous tale " The Caucasian Chalk circle" LOL , as if we are fools

NOt true, it is slightly edited from the ORIGINAL STORY of King Solomon in the Bible!!!!!!!!!!!

[1stsuperwhitedragon 408]

NOt true, it is slightly edited from the ORIGINAL STORY of King Solomon in the Bible!!!!!!!!!!!

yh, so that's why I said earlier that it's from the Bible but it has been told in different versions with different people but the same situation

[rothro3 50]

                                         

                                     The Last Assault

 

        "All hands on deck, the Iron Clover approaching on starboard", Admiral Fuldruch bellows, "Trim the sails and load the canons."      

        Wiping water from my eyes, I catch a glimpse of the pearl grey sides of our sleek opponent, masts erect and Jolly Roger fully blown out by the blusterous wind, illuminated by the fleeting flashes of lightning. Captained by the abusive pirate Hundril, the Clover has been a terror for any port in the southern oceans.  A sharp whistle and a resounding splash announces the onset of cannon fire, though most shots fall miserably short due to range. Together, me and my shipmate Gestro load a weighty nine pounder, while the torrential rain pours downs.  As the ships close together for battle, I  listen for the order.

       "Fire!"

       One by one the deck guns fire. Crashing into the Iron Clover's hull and savagely ripping apart barnacle covered timber, Retribution's cannons punch multiple holes in our opponent's keel. As Gestro and I frantically reload our long nine, retaliation from the Clover strikes. Crewman go flying overboard as Clover's tens and sixes strike us midships. Razor thin wood flies everywhere as a cannonball splinters Retribution's main mast. Heeling backwards, the stately mast plummets directly onto the stern cabin, smashing the woodwork and glass, although fortunately it misses the tiller. The sudden uneven distribution of weight lifts the bow clean out of the roaring waves. Nimble as he is, Gestro overbalances and falls to the rain-spattered deck.  Luckily, I grab some overhead rigging, swaying as the ship rolls back and forth over the waves.  Lightning flashes.  Thunder roars.  Hanging by one hand, I manage to snag Gestro's jerkin to prevent him from tumbling down the slanted deck.  From my elevated position in the forward rigging, I espy a dark blotch on the cloud-shrouded horizon as lightning flashes momentarily.

       "Land ho!" I scream, attempting to be heard over the roaring blasts of the cannons. Fortunately, Admiral Fuldruch manages to hear.  As the next strike occurs, he sees the island. 

       "That will be our destination, Ruby isle, the last remaining pirate fort in the southern oceans. Hoist the sails and make for the isle", He says, swinging the tiller toward port. "We can outrun the Clover, damaged as she is."

       From my elevated position in the bows, I can see that Retribution is outpacing the bulkier Iron Clover, headed smoothly for the misty isle ahead. As we near the island, another pirate ship, the Waverunner, owned by the ravenous corsair Auldo, appears out of mist.  One flash is emitted from its starboard side.  The deck violently explodes beneath us, shattering the keel and splitting Retribution in two. I fall toward the billowing waves and heaving waters of the southern seas, into the icy, unknown depths, still clutching gestro's jerkin in my shaking hand.

Edited May 17, 2015 by rothro3

[hagekobing 4]

Reserved.

[Helindu_2014 830]

The only solider left!!

 

 

 

Once upon a time there was a solider in the army of a rich and a powerful king the king was so selfish that he treated his soliders courtiers as dogs.Many people were not happy with him and many of his courtiers rebelled and made his own empire but he got defeated. The solider was in love with a daughter of a king and he wanted to marry her. But he knew that the king won't let him marry because the solider was a poor person. Many emperors and princes wanted to marry the daughter . And they could even fight for her. One day the solider asked the king for marraige with his daughter he became so angry and fired him. The solider became sad and led an army againest the king after fierce fighting the king got defeated and begged for his life but the solider showed mercy and forgave him. The king agreed for the marriage and they got married and they happily lived after...................

lol ....... fairy tale

[ksa_enus 248]

 

The Haunting at Midnight

 

The old man walked gingerly down the dim lighted back alley official known as Keegan Street. Once bustling commercial area of Porterville, the old street was now in start of decay and long forgotten by most people living in the area. he walked silently,  head down, much like any other man in his late 80's

But argus McKane was not like other men.  that's for sure

 

McKane stopped at an old grey door with peeling paint and fumbled for his keys.  Argus had lived at 105 Keegan street for longer than he could remember and could walk the area almost blindfolded. Which was good given his failing eye sigh and feeble condition.

 

(Seconds Chapter Will Be Introduces Once The 3rd Contedt Is Open)

 

[Shard-01 0]

Arrival

 

The roar of the massive turbines keeping the hovering fortress airborne was deafening, but Jake only heard it as a muffled moan through the metal walls of his tank. This was his first day of battle. He had graduated top of his class from the academy, but none of his training prepared him for the horror and agony of waiting. Waiting to be ejected from the hanger docks. Waiting to fall out of the airborne fortress to the battlefield below. Waiting to land and be ripped apart by gunfire moments later. Waiting. Sweat was building up under his heavy uniform, and his hands were shaking. He looked forward at the grey metal walls augmented by the green control panel. Jake hated being in a tank.

"Still," Jake joked over the intercom. "It could be worse. Stan has claustrophobia." Jake heard a few nervous chuckles from his fellow tankmen, as well as a pitiful groan from Stan. Humor. That was how Jake coped with fear. Jake looked down and began checking his tank's systems in an attempt to divert his mind from the impending battle.

 

"Intercom is functional. Nitro supplies are stocked." He went over the checklist in his mind. "Ammo is loaded. Weapons systems are—"

A loud hiss interrupted his thoughts. Jake knew that "hiss" was the hydraulic floors opening out from under the tanks. The hissing stopped. Jake braced himself. But nothing happened. Jake tentatively released his grip on his chair, wondering why his tank wasn't falling. Then his head was jerked back and the Tank hurtled downwards. Jake's stomach lurched, and head banged on the back of the seat. Jake's hands turned white as he clenched the arms of his chair.

 

Just when he thought that fall couldn't get any worse, an explosion sounded terrifyingly close to his tank. The anti-air cannons were trying to destroy the tanks before they even landed. A distorted scream pierced the intercom and followed by the sound of metal being ripped apart. Shrapnel pelted the side of Jake's tank.

 

"Tank six is down," the commander informed in an impassive voice.

 

"Tank six," Jake thought. That's Stan. Suddenly he had a pang of guilt for teasing his fellow tankman.

 

Jake sat silently, listening to the air howl and the shells erupt. He heard a tank explode nearby

 

"Tank 17 is down."

 

Moments later another tank was torn apart.

 

"Tank 3 is down."

 

"It's only a matter of time," Jake thought. "Before I'm the one that's down."

 

Then his head snapped forward and the tank shuddered around him. He heard gunfire echo outside, smothering the screams of fallen soldiers. He had arrived.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Shard-01

[celroti 133]

 

not going to win sure just sharing my experience 

word counts 373

Rise of the Fall

(April 25, Saturday 2015

Related to Earthquake in Nepal.)

 

The only man in the city.Expectorates into the face of time.Sees everything falling.Realises the catastrophe

showed hauteur the best.

 

  "I,the self-claimed strongest person,will liquidate this disease."

  "Guerrilla war is ON."

 "winding a watch neither changes time nor the fate."

 "Reckoning the past makes you fall.Weakens you.Stabs you to death."

  

My visits create a juxtaposition of gossamer and the corpulent...

       Few hours ago,it was the crowdiest shop.Now the shop has fallen,nothing more than a silent library.

       Few hours ago,it was the cleanest road.Now the road has fallen,nothing more than a bloodshed bath tube.

      Few hours ago,I was far from my parents.Now I've fallen,I'm very far from them and cant reach even if I try.

But the war is still on.

 

 "I kneel down in front of you, disease.I;m suffocated."

 "A day of bizzare! A day of conflagration!"

"The strongest thing,imagination.The sweetest thing,turning it into reality."

"Striving for never-to-be-achieved makes you fall.Goes in vain.Depicts you Archilles' Heel."

 

Dark clouds over the sky.Dark clouds over the mind.

   There's an acumen thirst in my eyes to see a life, in my ears to hear a voice and in my tongue to speak to someone.My body parts have fallen.

But the war is still on.

 

An inner voice speaks,"Fall infinite times if you can.But don't forget to rise up every time."

 

Now the sun rises.Now my dead soul rises.Swimming against the waves of disaster.Changing never-to-be into still-to-be.

  "I'll battle till there's a drop of blood in my body."

 "Remember!Guerilla war is ON."

 "A drop in ocean is nothing but the same drop in a leaf is a diamond that sparkles when sun rays fall."

"Keeping the faith of better future makes you sturdy.Invigorates you.Rises you."

The war is till on.

 

My journey to defeat the disaster,My journey to turn self-claimed strongest person into a real life protagonist is ON. I'm travelling with a goal to bring balm of Gilead in my city.Every fallen parts rises up.Inspires me.

   The war is to be continued...

[kedar2 28]

It's 3,652, I have a word counter on Microsoft Word. 

he has much interest in writing i think

[Pathfinder 1,690]

Those Who Wait

 

 

 

 

 

A faint draught from the hills found its way through the wide-flung door as the sun went down. It fluttered the papers on the table, and stirred a cartoon upon the wall with a dry rustling as of wind in corn.

The man who sat at the table turned his face as it were mechanically towards that blessed breath from the snows. His chin was propped on his hand. He seemed to be waiting.

The light failed very quickly, and he presently reached out and drew a reading-lamp towards him. The flame he kindled flickered upward, throwing weird shadows upon his lean, brown face, making the sunken hollows of his eyes look cavernous.

He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his hand.

Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp there hung a pall of thick darkness--a fearful, clinging darkness that seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper that was like wind in corn.

At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of his attitude.

Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.

As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.

Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only partially closed the drawer.

The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly against the darkness.

"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half the way."

He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him--a handsome, straight-limbed young Hercules--tossed down his riding-whip, and looked round for a drink.

"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon some glasses on the table.

"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though. Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What have you got in that drawer?"

Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.

"What do you want to know for?"

His visitor grinned boyishly.

"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"--he was splashing soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke--"first of all--quite ready, I say? It's a grand occasion--here's to the best of good fellows, that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip--hip--hooray!"

His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the door, and closed it.

Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the shoulder.

"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.

Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the arms.

"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink, and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an enormous success--stupendous--greater even than I hoped. It's true, by the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you know. I always told you so."

"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd, detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.

But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed upon the table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.

Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.

"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this infernal heat."

He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.

When he finally looked round again his face cleared.

"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides, I knew you would expect me."

Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The intimacy had been none of his seeking.

They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.

No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward. He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.

But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within--what he certainly had not expected to find--a genius.

It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.

This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.

Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers' part had astonished him far more.

Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him, and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heat came in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a sentimental ditty below his breath.

"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose, you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you can't wait till the winter."

"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny. "I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and everybody--except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser, that we are partners in this deal."

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I hadn't."

"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.

"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"

"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.

Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I won't tell a soul."

"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim twist of the mouth that was not a smile.

"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"

"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."

Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance flashed upwards, and their eyes met.

There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.

"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.

"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow like you--I don't believe it!"

"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."

He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.

"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though it's never safe to assume anything."

"Oh, don't talk like an *****!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that; or if I don't, I've never known you at all."

"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.

Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so that his face was in shadow.

"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.

"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."

He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world at his feet.

Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life."

"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism. "That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."

"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you never have."

"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all the best years of my life."

"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."

"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own! Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't--you shan't be melancholy to-night of all nights."

But Conyers stayed his hand.

"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely. It's not my way."

"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.

"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and yet not win my heart's desire."

"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one thing--the one essential--the one woman."

He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with his face in the shadow.

Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.

"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm nearly thirty, but that's a detail."

"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.

"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said before. Who cares for a year more or less?"

"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman is older than you are."

"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly difference does it make?"

"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze of smoke.

"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life. But she gave in at last. I think she realized that it was sheer waste of time to go on."

"What was she waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh Palliser was too engrossed to notice.

He stretched his arms wide with a swift and passionate gesture.

"She was waiting for a scamp," he declared.

"It is maddening to think of--the sweetest woman on earth, Conyers, wasting her spring and her summer over a myth, an illusion. It was an affair of fifteen years ago. The fellow came to grief and disappointed her. She told me all about it on the day she promised to marry me. I believe her heart was nearly broken at the time, but she has got over it--thank Heaven!--at last. Poor Damaris! My Damaris!"

He ceased to speak, and a dull roar of thunder came out of the night like the voice of a giant in anguish.

Hugh began to smoke, still busy with his thoughts.

"Yes," he said presently, "I believe she would actually have waited all her life for the fellow if he had asked it of her. Luckily he didn't go so far as that. He was utterly unworthy of her. I think she sees it now. His father was imprisoned for forgery, and no doubt he was in the know, though it couldn't be brought home to him. He was ruined, of course, and he disappeared, just dropped out, when the crash came. He had been on the verge of proposing to her immediately before. And she would have had him too. She cared."

He sent a cloud of smoke upwards with savage vigour.

"It's damnable to think of her suffering for a worthless brute like that!" he exclaimed. "She had such faith in him too. Year after year she was expecting him to go back to her, and she kept me at arm's length, till at last she came to see that both our lives were being sacrificed to a miserable dream. Well, it's my innings now, anyway. And we are going to be superbly happy to make up for it."

Again he flung out his arms with a wide gesture, and again out of the night there came a long roll of thunder that was like the menace of a tortured thing. A flicker of lightning gleamed through the open door for a moment, and Conyers' dark face was made visible. He had ceased to smoke, and was staring with fixed, inscrutable eyes into the darkness. He did not flinch from the lightning; it was as if he did not see it.

"What would she do, I wonder, if the prodigal returned," he said quietly. "Would she be glad--or sorry?"

"He never will," returned Hugh quickly. "He never can--after fifteen years. Think of it! Besides--she wouldn't have him if he did."

"Women are proverbially faithful," remarked Conyers cynically.

"She will stick to me now," Hugh returned with confidence. "The other fellow is probably dead. In any case, he has no shadow of a right over her. He never even asked her to wait for him."

"Possibly he thought that she would wait without being asked," said Conyers, still cynical.

"Well, she has ceased to care for him now," asserted Hugh. "She told me so herself."

The man opposite shifted his position ever so slightly. "And you are satisfied with that?" he said.

"Of course I am. Why not?" There was almost a challenge in Hugh's voice.

"And if he came back?" persisted the other. "You would still be satisfied?"

Hugh sprang to his feet with a movement of fierce impatience. "I believe I should shoot him!" he said vindictively. He looked like a splendid wild animal suddenly awakened. "I tell you, Conyers," he declared passionately, "I could kill him with my hands if he came between us now."

Conyers, his chin on his hand, looked him up and down as though appraising his strength.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright and spoke--spoke briefly, sternly, harshly, as a man speaks in the presence of his enemy. At the same instant a frightful crash of thunder swept the words away as though they had never been uttered.

In the absolute pandemonium of sound that followed, Hugh Palliser, with a face gone suddenly white, went over to his friend and stood behind him, his hands upon his shoulders.

But Conyers sat quite motionless, staring forth at the leaping lightning, rigid, sphinx-like. He did not seem aware of the man behind him, till, as the uproar began to subside, Hugh bent and spoke.

"Do you know, old chap, I'm scared!" he said, with a faint, shamed laugh. "I feel as if there were devils abroad. Speak to me, will you, and tell me I'm a fool!"

"You are," said Conyers, without turning.

"That lightning is too much for my nerves," said Hugh uneasily. "It's almost red. What was it you said just now? I couldn't hear a word."

"It doesn't matter," said Conyers.

"But what was it? I want to know."

The gleam in the fixed eyes leaped to sudden terrible flame, shone hotly for a few seconds, then died utterly away. "I don't remember," said Conyers quietly. "It couldn't have been anything of importance. Have a drink! You will have to be getting back as soon as this is over."

Hugh helped himself with a hand that was not altogether steady. There had come a lull in the tempest. The cartoon on the wall was fluttering like a caged thing. He glanced at it, then looked at it closely. It was a reproduction of Dore's picture of Satan falling from heaven.

"It isn't meant for you surely!" he said.

Conyers laughed and got to his feet. "It isn't much like me, is it?"

Hugh looked at him uncertainly. "I never noticed it before. It might have been you years ago."

"Ah, perhaps," said Conyers. "Why don't you drink? I thought you were going to give me a toast."

Hugh's mood changed magically. He raised his glass high. "Here's to your eternal welfare, dear fellow! I drink to your heart's desire."

Conyers waited till Hugh had drained his glass before he lifted his own.

Then, "I drink to the one woman," he said, and emptied it at a draught.

* * * * *

The storm was over, and a horse's feet clattered away into the darkness, mingling rhythmically with a cheery tenor voice.

In the room with the open door a man's figure stood for a long while motionless.

When he moved at length it was to open the locked drawer of the writing-table. His right hand felt within it, closed upon something that lay there; and then he paused.

Several minutes crawled away.

From afar there came the long rumble of thunder. But it was not this that he heard as he stood wrestling with the fiercest temptation he had ever known.

Stiffly at last he stooped, peered into the drawer, finally closed it with an unfaltering hand. The struggle was over.

"For your sake, Damaris!" he said aloud, and he spoke without cynicism. "I should know how to wait by now--even for death--which is all I have to wait for."

And with that he pulled the fluttering paper from the wall, crushed it in his hand, and went out heavily into the night.

This is too long, and moreover it is plagiarised. I advise you edit your entry.

 

http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/vitaliy/Ethel%20M%20Dell5

 

It's unfair for other entrants, dont do it again!

Edited May 11, 2015 by Pathfinder

[1stsuperwhitedragon 408]

This is too long, and moreover it is plagiarised. I advise you edit your entry.

 

http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/vitaliy/Ethel%20M%20Dell5

 

It's unfair for other entrants, dont do it again!

yh and Ididn't want to read the rest

[thesuperbos 0]

Reserved

[1stsuperwhitedragon 408]

GL everyone!!