Web War II

Another 100 word story for Crap Mariner's contest. Check out all the contest entries, they're fun!

"Captain Gecko reporting as ordered!" the middle-age, bedraggled officer said as he reported in. Colonel Layout returned his salute and gave his subordinate a quick glance. After years of Web Wars Gecko was still a solid soldier; frayed around the edges, but still solid.

"Gecko," the colonel started. "This damned campaign has flipped over to quirks mode and reports are the border: just turned red. General staff fears it'll be dotted with holes after the next event loop"

"Gecko, you have a right to know. Franky, we have reports..."

The rest was lost in the scream of a page reload.

smuggery = smugness + buggary

This is a story I wrote for Laurence Simon's 100 Words Story challenge over on OneADayUntiltTheDayIDie.Com. If you write words, you should go over there and do a couple of the challenges.

The only thing that saved ol' Jim Malone was the wet darkness of the city street. Leaning back to avoid the crooked merchant's fist, the old war wound and rot-gut whisky conspired to plant him face-first on the pavement.

All the way down he's looking at the flash of the tommy gun. That's got to be Li-Sheih's boys. "Crap," he thought to himself, "led them right to the old man."

He woke next to an old dead body, the crowd starting to close in; pellets of tea scattered on the sidewalk and the stench of pu-ehr in his nose.

Swizzles Matlow

"Swizzles Matlow" is the name of a British confectionery company. But my friend Beta commented it was the perfect name for a character in a pulp noir novel, so I came up with the following two snippits. Both received a good reaction from my Facebook friends, so you'll probably see more of Swizzles and Nick. The second one started out as a comment to a one line status update a friend of mine made about measuring cups, that's what the measuring cup reference is about. Bonus points if you know where Mary-Allen is.

In Which Swizzles and Nick are Introduced...


She walked into the room with a gait that hung in the air like a broken question mark. "Aren't you going to buy me a drink, Mr. Danger?" she asked.

"Not sure I want to get involved with a dame who can break punctuation marks," I replied. "Besides. wehaven't been introduced. You obviously know my name, but what do they call you at the orthography repair shop?"

Her eyes flashed for a moment and a smile dusted her ruby-red lips as she said "Names? Names aren't important; they never were. But if you need something to need a convenient placeholder for cognitive processing, you can call me Matlow... Swizzles Matlow."

Swizzles and Nick Share a Tender Moment


It was a dark and stormy night as a shadow moved across the half-lit back alleys of the city. Two figures meet on a lonely street-corner. Masked by darkness, the first man's chiseled face is briefly lit by a quick drag from a cheap cigarette, betraying a crooked nose and a two-day old beard. Throwing the butt into the street, he muses about the fragility of life while watching the gutter-water carry the dirty cotton trash into the storm-drain. How like life; carried by barely seen forces towards an ignominious end.

"Do you have the package?" he finally asks, his words slow and deliberate.

"Right here. You have the cash?" the other says in reply. Her soft voice betraying a femininity hidden under an oversized Canada Goose(tm) parka.

"One dollar, ninety-eight Canadian; just as we agreed." he says, reaching for his wallet.

"SLOWLY!" the other demands, her instincts tripped by the sudden move of a hand into a breast pocket.

"Don't panic, Swizzles, I'm just going for my wallet," he says in his calmest voice. "You're my best source, there's no way I'm letting you get hurt." A wallet slowly emerges from behind his overcoat lapel. Flipping through the cash he peels off two one dollar bills. "Here, keep the change," he says, holding out the bills.

"You're a saint, Mr. Danger," she says, "and what do you know about getting hurt."

"Swizzles!" he pleads, a faint note of pain in his voice, "that's not what I meant." He continues, his voice beginning to crack, "And I think we both know about pain." Regaining his composure, his solid persona re-emerges with stern determinism in his voice, "Let's keep it about the transaction."

Opening the package he examines the merchandise. At once he discovers the flaw: "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL HERE!" he yells. Two men he didn't notice before down the street suddenly stiffen and look their way.

"You asked for a measuring cup. I brought you a measuring cup. What's your problem!?" As she speaks the men down the street begin walking in their direction.

He talks fast to try to hurry the transaction. The interlopers down the street are walking slowly and cautiously, but it won't be long 'til they're close enough to make it a bad day for the both of them. "This isn't a cup! It's metric. And it's 250 milliliters. A 'cup' is an imperial measure. It's close to 240 milliliters. I can't use this!"

Swizzles thinks fast and makes a fateful, snap decision. The men now rapidly approaching are clearly part of the Mary-Allen Tong. She knows Old Man Li will be furious he was cut out of the deal. "Here! Take Mine!" she nearly screams as she removes her personal measuring device. "It's a third cup measure I use for rice, textured vegetable protein and other dry goods. It'll get you through 'til we rendezvous again."

Danger grabs at the cup and suddenly he finds himself grabbing her hand. He doesn't want to let go. A tear begins to well up from the corner of his eye, washed away by the cold rain coming off the lake. "Let go, Nick," she says, "you have to let go."

"I was a fool to let you go before," he says, his eyes locked on hers. His eyes, open to her completely, perhaps for the first time, reveal the depth of his love and the pain he endured when they fell away from each other.

"Oh Nicky!" her voice trembles, clipped by a quivering lower lip. "You must let me go."

Her head turns as she pulls her hand away from his. She doesn't look back as she walks out of his life once more.

On the north side of town a private dick drunkenly mumbles the words of old love songs, poisoning himself with cheap liquor just to get to sleep. In the background, the story on the TV news is about two unlucky south-side mob enforcers who wound up dead. Empty Micky's Big Mouth bottles litter the floor of his cheap hotel room and somewhere a woman cries herself to sleep.

Growing Corn

“I don’t want to hear your philosophy if it doesn’t grow corn,” he used to say to me. It was a quote from an old geezer who lived on the reservation up the highway.

There was a perfect place he knew to picnic on Highway 200 behind a stand of trees. We used to go and eat and talk and make out. He knew the owner so it wasn’t trespassing, he said. In the summer it was perfect; it was just warm enough to take some of your clothes off and there was a cold stream to stick your feet in if you got too hot.

We went up just about every day after he graduated; except Sunday. Sunday was for church -- I felt weird going to church in the morning and sneaking off to the woods in the afternoon. Every week I got the lecture about how much God loved me, and while it felt good to make out. Okay, okay, we were making love -- having sex. I don’t like that; just say we were making love. But I know God loves me, but making love felt too... it felt too fundamentally right to be a sin. But back then I was still a little unclear on my personal relationship with Christ. It seemed rude to hurt God’s feelings, but it still felt like it was okay.

So we would be up there just about every day for an afternoon picnic. In the great outdoors with not a stitch of clothing between us; but it still felt safe. No one could  see us but the songbirds. We talked about a lot of things; never about him leaving though. After making love we would lay back and try to see the clouds through the trees, saying which of our friends they looked like.  I didn’t realize clouds could look like baseball players and cheerleaders and debate team captains, but they can. We talked a lot about writers; he said he wanted to go to college and become a writer.

He certainly did read a lot. That’s where he got the corn quote from. Or the quotes about religion. And the quotes about people. He had a lot of quotes handy and memorized some of the Shakespeare sonnets. I read them now and they sound funny; but when someone’s reading them to you...you just don’t know what it’s like ‘til someone does it.

One time I got very angry when he teased me about going to church every Sunday. “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” he said. I told him I didn’t like how he would say things about my church; he didn’t know anyone there. They are all good people and help each other out; just like any religion tells you. Even humanism says it’s a good idea to be nice to each other, or at least that’s what I read.

One time I started talking about how being kind sometimes means confronting people you love; kicking them in the butt, so to speak. But then he cut in with “your philosophy doesn’t grow corn!” and try to splash water on me.

At the end of the summer I had finally gotten through to him. And for a couple weeks we had some really great times. Be patient, all ye sisters with well-read boyfriends; one day you will get a word in edgewise.

The night before he left for the Marines we drove out one last time and lay under the trees. It was starting to get chilly at night, but there were still a few lightning bugs around. They were like little stars hung under the firmament of leaves and branches.

I got a few letters from him when he was in training and a few more when he was overseas. They weren’t regular, but I could kind of tell things were rough. I think he was trying to hold on to anything normal in his life, so I would write him back telling him to stay safe so we could drive back out to our old picnic spot and he could tell me all about writers and philosophy.

There are no secrets in a small town and everyone knew we were going steady. No one asked me to prom ‘cause they knew I would say no. My last quarter in high school, everyone knew I was ready to be gone. When he got back from the Marines, we were going to move to Northfield and give the “young couple in college” thing a try.

It was weird when his father came over to the house. I don’t know what I was thinking he was doing there. His dad was the town dentist; I honestly thought he was coming to scold me for not brushing my teeth after lunch or something. We almost got all the way through it before we both broke down crying. First me, then his dad. He had died from wounds received during a firefight in an area that was supposed to be safe; that’s all I remember.

I used to go out to our spot up on Highway 200 from time to time and scatter wild rice to try to get the songbirds to fly in close. It was always Blue Jays that would take the rice, but I guess that’s okay.

One day I saw a couple of kids up near our old spot and thought it best to give them some distance. I guess our old spot wasn’t as private as I thought.

The next summer I came home from Moorehead and asked his dad to go with me to church.. We sat in the back row while the preacher talked about forgiveness and light in the darkness and everlasting life. I don’t know if I believe in heaven; if there is an after-life, it’s better and different than this one. After the service we hugged and he walked up to look at a painting of Jesus on the cross. He looked at it like he saw something for the first time and slowly walked back out to the car.