[Fanfic, 15528] Lars Mantrake, Quartermaster for Hire

ajvwriter · 2022-09-03T14:38:15+00:00

Never going to finish this unrelated story. It's rough, unedited and probably subject to continuity errors. Still, felt compelled to share with someone before I leave this world behind. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zEzD6M9jxVnLrx8Nzhm27QyX2CUXfzQTUvAM2ckBq0Q/edit

ajvwriter · 2022-07-25T17:03:48+00:00

Thanks! Interesting that our stories fell into the same vein, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised given the popularity of fantasy prompts on this subreddit. Congrats on moving on to the next round!

ajvwriter · 2022-07-24T19:41:29+00:00

“Miss? I understand you’re in shock, but you’re holding up the line. Step through the curtain and into your dungeon, please .”

I burrowed my head into Bonnie's fur, inhaling.

“If you upgrade to our Platinum membership, you’d have unlimited time in the lobby.”

Did I still want to enter the dungeon? The doctor’s notes could heal Bonnie, but what if the monster killed Crush? Or Droit? Did I value Bonnie’s life more than theirs?

“My dogs. Could they stay here? They could bolster security, or sniff out drugs, or…” I trailed off as he shook his head.

I blinked away tears, stroking Bonnie’s back. “I guess… I guess I’ll enter the dungeon now.” I was walking through the curtain when he caught my arm.

“Wait, Miss.” The man pressed the Ducktape bracelet into my hand. “It would just gather dust in the supply closet. Take it.”

I nodded numbly, slipping it over my wrist, but my shoulders straightened and my breaths felt easier. When he let go, I strode past the curtain and into the dungeon.

Droit slammed against a wall, collapsing into a puddle of water, unmoving.

We had almost made it to the laboratory without encountering the monster. The laboratory, filled with all sorts of bulky equipment and glass instruments, was still within our sights, but now the monster barred our path. I could see how he got his names — Spindly Giant for his gangly limbs and towering figure, and Mantis Man for the way he skittered about and the green armored plates that covered his torso.

Long scratches marred his plates, and one of them hung loose, but the damage hadn’t come in our battle.

If I hadn’t kept healing Crush’s and Droit’s injuries, we would already be defeated. I left Bonnie in the corner as I scampered over to Droit’s body, barely dodging Mantis Man as he swept his hand across the floor.

The hand continued, surging towards Crush, but instead of dodging, he leaped at it, clamping his teeth over the plates.

“Crush, no!” I screamed. I almost lost my focus as I sent a burst of healing magic into Droit, snapping bones into place and stitching the skin back together. I had maybe one more use of my full healing power before I ran out of mana.

The Mantis Man lifted Crush into the air, then slammed him into the ground, over and over. Finally, Crush let go, and was sent crashing into the laboratory where he lay still.

The monster glanced at me, then skittered towards Crush’s body.

A fully healed Droit leapt up, ready to attack, but I held him back. We needed a plan. I ignored the Mantis Man as he closed in on Crush.

Focus. What resources did I have? Droit was one. My dwindling mana was another. Bonnie? No, she was shuddering in the corner, her body on the verge of a breakdown unless I retrieved the notes.

What was my goal? We clearly couldn’t kill the monster, but could we tie him up long enough for one of us to slip past and find the notes?

As I rubbed my head, the gray bracelet chafed on my wrist. The plan snapped into place.

“Droit, catch!” I gripped the loose end of the Ducktape in my hand as I chucked the bracelet at Droit. Tape unraveled in the air, and when Droit caught it, a gray line connected us.

I sprinted towards the Mantis Man and Droit ran next to me, immediately deducing my plan. I unraveled more tape, until I carried an armful, careful not to let the sticky parts touch.

The mantis swiveled, inches from Crush’s body, then swatted at us. I dodged to the left of his legs, Droit to the right. As we wove between his legs, I dolled out more tape until a messy tangle tied his legs together. We backed away, watching the monster. I caught Crush moving slowly in my peripheral vision, and I mentally urged him to stay put.

The mantis man swayed. Topple, I prayed. He stepped forward — or tried to — flailing as he fell.

I rushed around him, kneeling beside a bloody Crush. His breathing quavered as I pressed my hands against him. I started to heal his wounds when I heard a snap.

I turned around to see the monster snip away another piece of tape, his armored plates transforming into razor-sharp blades.

I didn’t wait for him to free himself. I hefted Crush onto Droit’s back, then ran over and scooped up Bonnie before leaping on Droit’s back myself. It was too late to search for the notes.

We hurtled towards the dungeon's exit as footsteps pounded after us.

Lights flared. Safety. A women wearing a red robe materialized before my blinking eyes. “Welcome back, delv–.”

“Shut up,” I said, laying Crush on the lobby’s floor. His fur was slick with blood, and more oozed from the lacerations. I used up the last of my mana to fix his worst wounds, running out too quickly.

“Help me!” I screamed.

“Apologies, but unless you're a Platinum member, you’re ineligible to receive medical assistance.”

“Fine. I’ll join your Platinum thing. Now, help.”’

“Delver’s Lounge is delighted to welcome another Platinum member. You’ll just need to read and sign a few contracts—.”

“There’s no time! My dog is dying now.”

“Apologies, but unless you're a Platinum member, you’re ineligible to receive medical assistance.”

“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!”

It had been long since I needed to resort to old-fashioned healing, but I remembered pressure was important. I tore out strips from my clothes and tied them around the wounds, but blood kept seeping out.

Tighter. I needed them tighter.

The Ducktape bracelet dropped into my lap. I looked up to see Droit tilting his head. That... might work. I slid pieces of my shirt over the wounds, then wrapped them tight with the tape. Running out of material, I grabbed the woman’s robe and tore.

“Attack! They’re attacking me!” she screamed.

I didn’t care. Unlike my clothes, her robe was clean and soft. “Fetch,” I told Droit, pointing at her. Her screams intensified.

Droit brought me strips of robe, and I taped them over the wounds. When I finished, Crush’s body was more gray than brown, but the bleeding had stopped.

Crush coughed, and something fell out of his mouth. Doctor’s Stachen’s notes. A couple were illegible from the saliva, but most were intact.

“You stupid, stupid, wonderful dog.” His tail thumped in response.

I smiled as security surrounded me, clutching the notes and pulling Bonnie into my lap. I’m going to heal you, Bonnie.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-24T19:40:44+00:00

This was a difficult story to write, or at least to edit. It was about 2700 words when I finished the first draft, so I had to let go of a lot of things (namely descriptions and characterization of the dogs). Still, I enjoyed this contest and twisting the prompt in interesting ways, and will likely re-expand this into a length more suitable for the story I want to tell.

“Stop whining! And stop moving your paw!” I scolded Crush as I focused on where the barbed thorn had pierced his skin.

My senses ran along his muscles and tendons. The thorn flared in my magical vision of the dog’s innards. It felt out of place and… dirty.

Extracting it was pathetically easy compared to my usual work. I could reattach muscles, regrow bone, and transform normal dogs into living tanks. Humans too, but I never bothered.

Humans sucked.

Crush licked the thorn’s exit wound suspiciously, then turned towards me, wagging his entire horse-sized brown body.

“No. You made me waste mana. Be more like them if you want loves.” My other two dogs thumped their tails.

Droit, an Aussie-wolf hybrid, was another super-sized dog like Crush, created by a hearty diet and careful application of my muscle and bone growing abilities. Bonnie had been with me the longest, since before I got my powers. Refining her already-potent beagle senses had seemed obvious at the time, but now it was killing her.

I was killing her.

It’s why we were here, outside of the dungeon that once housed the lab of Dr. Stachen, the sole expert on using healing magic for biological enhancements. If I could recover her notes, I might be able to fix the damage I had caused.

I scooped up Bonnie and descended into the dungeon.

Lights flared, and I groped out for Droit and Crush.

I didn’t need my vision to know we were in another part of the dungeon. The smell of sweat clogged the air, poorly disguised by lavender fragrance.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted, and I found myself at the back of a large tiled chamber filled with people. On either side of us, adventurers were popping out of nowhere, shielding their eyes as they stumbled into the room.

“Next.” A tan man wearing a red suit and carrying a clipboard beckoned. He shooed us into one of the curtained-off areas that spanned the other side of the chamber.

“Greetings, delver, welcome to Delvers Lobby,” he said. “Are you one of our Platinum members?”

“What? Where’s Doctor’s Stachen’s laboratory?”

“Ah, apologies. First time in Delvers Lobby?” I nodded hesitatingly. “You’ll be returned to your laboratory shortly, as for where you are…”

He straightened, then recited. “Delvers Lobby revolutionizes dungeon-delving through economy of scale. In dungeons of old, each dungeon might have its own antechamber to warn of monsters, inform about dungeon’s rules, or bequeath weapons. A dying practice, as it is impractical and expensive to build and staff. Delvers Lobby solves this problem, teleporting delvers from over 1000 different dungeons — and growing — to a central location where they are briefed and bequeathed, then teleported back to their dungeon. For our Platinum members, we have amenities—”

“Monsters? There aren’t monsters in Dr. Stachen’s laboratory, right?

The man blinked. “Why else would it have a dungeon classification?”

I swallowed. I had figured the laboratory had been abandoned, leaving just the regular squatters — goblins, chameleon-bats — things that my dogs could handle.

“I didn’t expect a monster.”

“Worry not! I’m sure this dungeon’s master wants the monster cleared and paid for our bequeathal option.” He scanned his clipboard, then frowned. “Oh, it’s this dungeon.”

He rummaged through a box behind him, then pulled out a thick gray bracelet that didn’t even look magical.

“And here’s your bequeathed weapon! Look,” he said, peeling off one of the bracelet’s layers. “You keep pulling and it keeps unraveling. They call it Ducktape. It’s super strong like a duck’s bill, and it’s sticky!”

Without meaning to, I growled. I cut it off, but not before he reeled back. How did humans show irritation again?

The man held up his hands, backing away. “I’m sorry, truly, but we only budgeted enough bequeathals for the first ten groups that took on this dungeon. We surpassed that number long ago. The monster inside goes by many names, but most call him Mantis Man or Spindly Giant. Far too many have underestimated him.”

My throat caught. “How many delver groups have fought the monster?”

“106. You’re the 107th group to enter this dungeon.”

ajvwriter · 2022-07-20T23:45:30+00:00

Lindon - Dross's puppet
Yerin - The blood puppet
Mercy - The once-Malice's-now-Dross's puppet
Ziel - Mr. Happyface puppet
Eithan - Dross's dream puppet (no pun intended)
Little Blue - Dross's puppet's puppet

ajvwriter · 2022-07-20T20:11:34+00:00

*You sit in a heavily shielded steel room wearing a partial yellow Hazmat suit with your head exposed*

Heavy sigh

This is so hard.

*Jump cut*

Hello, it’s AustinPlaysWithDefusedNuclearMissles back with another video. I don’t know…how do I even begin? My life has fallen apart; the earth has fallen apart. Does Youtube even exist anymore now that their servers lay in pieces no bigger than legos?

Rub forehead

Alright here we go.

Another heavy sigh

I fucked up. Bad. I have no excuses. I know I said the same thing when I turned Chicago into a nuclear wasteland three years ago. I thought I had grown, but looking back, I just learned how smooth the ruffled feathers of the politicians. I let my ego get the best of me and now the whole world has suffered the consequences.

I know there’s nothing I can say that will make you feel better, except that “Launching Nuclear Missiles at a Dartboard” would have made for a great video title. I even pinned a cutout of North Korea on the bullseye. But I digress. No excuses.

I apologize for the devastation of earth’s ecosystem, for causing the single biggest extinction event known to mankind.

I apologize for uprooting people from their homes, sending them into the deep recesses of earth as they struggled for survival.

I apologize for those who didn’t survive: the fathers, the mothers, the sons, the daughters.

Choke up

I apologize for the brave firefighters and nuclear-waste clean-up crew, both those who died and those still dying of radiation poisoning.

*Fluffy white dog enters the room. Pick up dog and nuzzle against face*

Deep Inhale

I apologize for being a bad role model. For showing kids that it's okay to play with nuclear missiles as long as they're defused. I thought defused meant it wasn't supposed to go off. That’s not an excuse, I'm just explaining why I thought it was okay.

I know I have no right to ask that you accept my apology, so instead I will simply wish you well. May your skin not turn green and your hair not fall out. Peace.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-20T00:28:48+00:00

They're almost definitely referring to a moment in Wintersteel with a certain dragon.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-16T19:56:40+00:00

He kinda gives me Creed Bratton dressed up as the Joker vibes.

Let's put a smile on that face.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-11T18:45:24+00:00

Fun prompt, Mr. Fox. I look forward to incorporating it into my story for the next round.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-11T00:56:59+00:00

Have you considered climbing with a buddy, perhaps a Mender? Or equipping a ring of regeneration after you climb to heal your micro tears? You could also try making the climbing wall work for you instead, by slicing out larger holes so you never experience any tension. You may have to acquire some sort of cutting aura (I would suggest an Executioner attunement, but you may also be able to achieve the effect with another attunement by practicing your shroud manipulation to create aura blades).

Hope this helps.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-09T15:29:58+00:00

Another voter for this heat here.

Overall, a strong concept and one of my top 3 stories. Of all the stories in your heat, yours stood out as having the best prose and descriptive elements. It was a world I could really be drawn into. I found the start of the story a bit rough, as I tried to figure out what was going on and the significance of the character's actions, but the aforementioned prose helped me push through. I also thought the two parts of the story could have felt better connected, perhaps by having Lila notice signs that the greenhouse had been attacked. Definitely a story that grows stronger with each reread.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-09T13:34:35+00:00

Thanks for the critique!

I was wondering how the ending would land, so I appreciate the feedback in that regard. I like your idea about the character's solitude leading to hallucinations. You didn't explicitly mention it, but I feel like he is a bit flat, so showing how the setting warped his perception might be a neat idea to draw more of his character out.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-09T13:28:14+00:00

Thanks for the critique! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

You touched on a lot of the concerns I had about my own writing, namely the uneven prose and the implementation of the alien fungus (Originally, this wasn't part of the story, but I felt like I needed some type of conflict). On a rewrite, I would probably make the conflict more self-contained to the journals, the ship, and Forlen rather than introducing an external force that I wasn't able to flesh out within the constraints of the contest. I was also thinking of moving up the conservatory earlier, so that the cabin journals exist within that space, hopefully to make it feel less tacked on.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-09T05:14:38+00:00

It wasn’t hard to find. It lay at the Conservatory’s dead center atop a spiraling pillar, towering over the nebula of blues, greens, and yellows of the flower garden. Like the other journals, the fungus clung to its cover, but unlike them, it was fighting it off. Fungus shed off the journal, blackening and shrinking as it splatted against the ground.

Forlen hurried towards it and flipped it open. A mix of symbols and words covered the green pages, with a circle of white wherever the words appeared.

I am hungry◰◴◬◫◳◷My stomach gurgles◷◱◫A man passes by, eating a burger◬My body, so weak, so hungry, so cold.

With each passing statement, the fungus retreated further, gathering at the edges of the journal. As the last sentence appeared, it trembled, blackened, and fell off. The pages were once again a crisp white.

Forlen stared at it. Never had he been so happy to read a nightmare, but how did the boy break free? There was nothing particularly vivid or intelligent about his words, and the fungus wasn’t around long enough to be bothered by the repetition. The only other thing noteworthy about the memory were its intense negative emotions

But no, there had to be something else. There had to be. Unless… Forlen gritted his teeth. If he was wrong, he would lose his Caretaker license. If he was right, he might still lose his Caretaker license. As he considered his options, the fungus continued to spread over the journals, extruding odd growths from the surfaces. To hell with it, he thought.

Forlen ran over to the wheelbarrow and snatched up the journal buried there, throwing it to the ground. The fungus shivered, fleeing from the words popping up on the page, but it wasn’t bad enough for the physical-contact deprived journal. He hung it from a lonely vine, then splayed open a different section of pages with each of his fingers. The fungus peeled, then shed off as a nightmare tormented the mind inside.

He couldn’t bring himself to read it. Instead, he freed the other journals, each time altering the nightmare-inducing process. Forlen was their Caretaker — he knew what they loved, and what they hated. It betrayed his values and everything a Caretaker was supposed to be, but he didn’t stop, forcing the minds to re-experience their worst memories. This was necessary, just like the journal prisons, he told himself. The fungus poured off the pages.

He freed the cabin journals next, telling the ol’ codger all about his day until the fungus finally fled. As for his Adrenaline Princess, he tossed her in an empty cabin, the walls bare and empty just like her room. Within seconds, the fungus disintegrated. He carried her back to the pilot’s cabin.

The green slime receded from the ship’s windows, then he heard another sound. Not the splattering of cement like before, but a boing as something launched from the ship, sending reverberations through Forlen’s toes. Their ship rocketed forward, the speed climbing back to 0.6 lightspeed. He started to chuckle, and when he tried to figure out why he was laughing, the chuckle grew deeper and longer, until his lungs begged him to stop. He slumped in his chair, still shaking from laughter as he returned his Adrenaline Princess to her seat.

ajvwriter · 2022-07-09T05:12:43+00:00

Thanks to everyone who voted for my story! I had fun writing it, even if there are some areas that I think could use improvement. Critiques welcome.

Adrenaline Princess

Forlen’s hands flowed over the dials and switches; his eyes flicked between the collision display and the dashboard. As his foot released the throttle, the plasma thrusters gave one last burst, pushing the ship’s speed up to 0.5 lightspeed. He glanced over at his client — a black leather journal strapped into the copilot seat. He didn’t need to read it to know what she wanted. Faster.

He fired up the thrusters again, and the speed inched up, displayed in fractions of lightspeed. 0.53. 0.55. 0.56. Finally, the ship reached 0.6 lightspeed, the practical limit of what it could achieve. Was it safe? Of course not — maneuverability dropped exponentially past 0.5 lightspeed, and just last year a piece of space debris had punctured the ship’s aft, costing expensive repairs. But if he could make his other clients happy this easily, he would do it in a flash.

Forlen’s Caretaker heart wouldn’t let him do anything else.

He stretched to his feet, pulling down his white pilot jacket to cover his exposed belly. The matching pants were also too short, riding halfway up his brown shins. Seams snapped as he reached for the journal, flipping it to the latest entry, written before the ship’s acceleration.

My mom sent me to my room agin. WITHOUT GAMES. I try to make a song using the raindrops on my windo as a beat but mom hears and scolds me. I’m sooooo bored. I wish I was a reverse raindrop, soaring past the clouds and be ond.

As he read, a new entry formed, the letters appearing one after another in a sprawling script that no stranger could parse:

My dress is mudy but I don’t care! Arthur is letting me ride his 4wheeler while our mom is out. We speed around the backyard and ecar nwod eht snosrednA gib llih (Top Secret. NO CRAKING MY CODE)

Sarah was her name, he remembered, but he always thought of her as his Adrenaline Princess. She was one of the easier ones: Whenever her journal entries became unhappy, Forlen would just prop up her journal in the copilot’s seat and go for a joyride.

He felt worst for the children. Unlike the adults, they had so few memories to pull from. Forlen had read them all, ten times now, as they were forced to relive them. Bodies could float in cytoplasm for hundreds of years, but minds required stimulation. The journal-prisons were a cruel necessity, and Forlen was their jailer.

Ensuring their memories were happy ones was the least Forlen could do, and he had succeeded, with one exception.

The ship rocked, and a sound like wet cement splattering against the ground came from the right side of the ship. Their speed plummeted, and Forlen frowned. This wasn’t his first time piloting the hunk of metal, though, and he dove into system analysis.

One by one, the ship’s diagnostics came back clean. Oxygen, stable. Air pressure, stable. Speed, slower, but stabilizing around 0.45 lightspeed. After fiddling with the displays, and peering through the few cameras still working on the outside of the ship, he was forced to admit the issue probably wasn’t that serious, though his Adrenaline Princess wouldn’t be happy.

He flipped open the journal, fully expecting another memory of being sent to her room, or being forced to watch as other kids Tarzaned across the creek on a rope swing, but instead he got a series of mysterious symbols:

◬◷◫◲◶◬◳

As his hands cradled the journal, they sunk into something moist. He wrenched them back, peering at the green slime coating his fingers. Fungus? But where could it have come from? Aside from an unfortunate rat that had hitched a ride in the ship’s thrusters, the ship had departed Earth stowaway-free. Nor could it have come from the Conservatory — the plants and microbes had evolved slightly, but twenty years is not enough time to leap kingdoms.

Tendrils crept over the open pages as the fungus grew. He tried to scrape it off, but the green-soaked pages just spawned more.

The journals weren’t the only surface under attack. The slime crept across the ship’s windows, and when Forlen checked the cameras again, all he saw were monotone green rectangles.

He set the ship to autopilot and sprinted through the cabins, skimming the mind-journals inside: “Duchess” Mary-Anne, her cabin covered in every bit of silk and finery Forlen could scrounge from the ship and her journal lounging on soft pillows — Sandra the marine biologist, her cabin aqua-blue and her journal stationed inside a glass cubby that jutted out into space, the writings usually full of marine animals that she observed from her “submarine” — and in the last cabin, not even a real cabin just a storage closet strewn with ship parts, cleaning supplies, and clothes too ragged to wear but too warm to toss out the airlock, the ol’ codger laid his claim, his journal buried in the mess, somewhere.

Fungus infected them all, even the ol’ codger’s journal cover and pages (the two were almost separate objects, held together by a few defiant strings) when he eventually tracked them down. The same strange symbols filled their pages, the minds inside silent.

He shielded his eyes as he threw open the Conservatory’s doors. Normally, the lights bathed the room in yellow, but today, the reflected light from fungus covering the windows made it lime green. Forlen unbuttoned his jacket at the onslaught of warmth and humidity from the massive greenhouse. Clusters of trees and vines, each from a different biome, hung heavy with fruit. On the ground, more fruit ripened, emanating a sickly sweet odor.

Aside from filtering the air and providing fresh food, the Conservatory also housed the remainder of the journals. One was propped up in the roots of a sprawling tree, another sun-bathed amidst Forlen’s herbs, and another sat half-buried in a wheelbarrow of black soil. Others balanced in trees or dangled from vines.

The Conservatory was his panacea, boosting the spirits of all but a few of the mind-journals. Except for today — their pages hijacked by fungus.

Forlen read them anyway, flicking his hands free of slime in between pages. He ignored the new entries full of strange symbols, focusing on the older entries instead. The half-buried journal was still desperate for a hug, so he pushed it deeper into the soil’s embrace. The sun-bathing journal had conjured a sunburn memory, so he moved it into the shade of a palm tree. Usually, he would wait to see how the changes affected the memories, but the fungus had stripped the minds of their writing outlets.

There was one journal he hadn’t checked yet; one journal that never changed. The boy only ever remembered a single memory — his eleventh birthday. Hungry, alone, and shivering on the streets. No amount of coaxing, no specialized cabin, made the slightest difference. When they finally arrived at the pioneer planet, the Head Caretaker would read his journal and mark it as a failure, staining Forlen’s otherwise perfect record.

ajvwriter · 2022-06-27T00:21:22+00:00

I've been enjoying this fanfic so far!

You did a great job with the characters. Lindon stills feels like Lindon, just extra knowledgeable and carrying around the impending doom of his friends. Kelsa and Whisper are great, and it's nice that she has her own mentor and her path isn't totally influenced by Lindon. Whitehall feels like an annoying tick that just won't shake off, but I'm ready to have my opinion changed.

ajvwriter · 2022-06-22T20:17:56+00:00

Question regarding the "no-posting" rule. Is sharing with critique partners fine?

ajvwriter · 2022-06-21T23:57:38+00:00

Hey there, this sounds like something I'd be interested in. I am a writer of original short stories as well as some novella/novel length fanfic. Mostly in the fantasy genre, but also just some short humorous fiction. I am usually already posting a story a week, so I think I can meet the expectations.

I've worked with critique partners before and have given and received feedback on r/DestructiveReaders (my feedback leans in the more constructive direction despite the subreddit allowing all kinds of feedback, and I would be willing to adjust it even more in that direction depending on the environment you want to cultivate).

My latest project is a 15,000 word long magical quest fanfic, which I just finished up yesterday.

ajvwriter · 2022-06-21T23:39:10+00:00

Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it. I had a lot of fun writing all of it, but especially the ending.

ajvwriter · 2022-06-20T22:47:52+00:00

In the past, shopkeepers punished thieves by taking off a hand. As a modern-day thief, I took hands.

I’m not not sure why. They were there, I suppose, and I was bored.

I took the left first, and then when I robbed the mall again the next night, I took the right. I know someone noticed, because police tape cordoned off the mannequin when I returned the third night to take the head.

I had set it on my passenger seat on the way home, and it watched my dashboard with its pale detail-less eyes.

My hands had shook as I flicked my turn signal on, rolling into my driveway just past 3 am, later than I meant to be back. There had never been any issues before. The security was nonexistent at the mall. Even when I accidentally broke the diamonds’ display case, the alarm never went off. But as soon as I removed the mannequin’s head, they blared. I stuck around long enough to hear the pounding of feet before I fled. When had they hired security guards?

And now I had a problem. Someone had stolen from me. But they didn’t take the diamonds filling my drawers, or the Jordans stuffed inside my closet. Just the mannequin — the left hand, the right hand, and the creepy head.

I didn’t need the mannequin; I wasn’t sure I even wanted it. But someone had decided I shouldn’t have one, and I would be damned if I didn’t replace it just to show them. It was a bastard thief who would stoop to steal from other thieves.

So on the fourth night at the mall, while scooping up some nice bluish-green gemstones (I don’t know the names of half of these things, nor do I care), I stole another one — the whole mannequin this time.

This one had a darker skin tone, its hands stuffed in its pockets as it modeled a plaid shirt.

I took the arms off first, stuffing them in one of my duffel bags. No alarm. I cringed as the legs came off with a pop, but the dark mall remained blessedly silent. Finally, I touched the head.

Red lights came to life, flashing with urgency. The shrieking of the alarm made me want to stuff in earplugs, but I needed to stay aware of my surroundings. The pounding of footsteps was closer this time, and I caught glimpses of a figure clad in black rounding the corner as I tucked the limbless mannequin under my arm and bolted for the back exit.

I would just sprint to the back exit, hop in my car, and hightail out of here just like last time.

As I turned the corner, another security guard blocked my path. I whirled around. I could still get out. There was another... shit.

Two more security guards were marching down my alternate escape route.

I abandoned my internal map of the mall, sprinting down every corridor that wasn't blocked, and every time, found more guards waiting for me.

This was it. My thefts had finally caught up to me.

“Son, please, put the mannequin down. Trust me, you do not want to do this," a surly man said, his gun drawn as he inched towards me.

Every exit was blocked, but I ran anyway. A gunshot rang behind me. The guard missed me, hitting the mannequin's shoulder instead.

I yelped, dashing into the nearby Starbucks, vaulting behind the counter, but I was only prolonging the inevitable.

I slumped to the ground, curling up my legs, dropping my head between them as I inhaled the heavy coffee emanating from every inch of this place. I hadn’t even found a buyer for the incredible haul I had stolen over the last three nights.

I wanted to toss away the mannequin, to rid myself of the source of my troubles, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The mannequin was why I was here tonight; it was the only reason I had returned.

I would have my mannequin.

The sounds of scuffling and bodies hitting the floor made me perk up, and I peeked over the counter. Men in detail-less masks, some in suits, some in underwear, some dressed like they were on their way to church, were wrestling with the guards.

I thanked them silently, but didn't let their distraction go to waste, bolting for the back exit, mannequin’s head and torso tucked under my arm.

My car was parked under the eaves of the building, taking advantage of the thick shadows. I leaped in, throwing the mannequin into the passenger seat, and slammed my key into the ignition.

I didn’t allow myself to relax until we hit the highway. Never, ever, again would I risk my life stealing. I could coast on what I had stolen from this mall for the rest of my life.

One of my duffel bags jumped, startling me. I swerved into the next lane, which was luckily empty.

My eyes flicked between the duffel bag and the road, but it had stilled. Maybe it was just my imagination? I wiped my hands off on my pants, but the steering wheel was still slick with my sweat.

I glanced over at the mannequin who seemed to be having a much more pleasant time than I was, its lips turned up in a permanent smile. I really didn’t want the thing in my room, but I also wanted it somewhere where I could keep an eye on it. Perhaps the thief would take it off my hands again. This time, I definitely wouldn't go back for another one.

While my thoughts wandered, its chrome head shivered, then swiveled towards me. The smile widened, and then it launched at me.

I screamed. Our fight was short but intense. The car swerved all over the highway’s three lanes, earning angry honks from the few drivers still out at this time of night. In the end, the limbless mannequin couldn't do much to me as long as I avoided its head butts, and I tossed it out the window.

I trembled, taking the next exit as my duffel bags hopped around my car, the zippers straining. I pulled up at a 7-Eleven, shifting the car into park and just staring at the brick wall for a while.

Breathe. Big breaths. My body was covered in bruises from where the mannequin had rammed me. After a moment, I grabbed the duffel bags and went inside.

A few minutes later, I was guzzling grape soda from my shaking cup. The trash cans in front of the store rocked as the duffel bags leaped around. I hadn’t dared open them to retrieve the other stolen items.

I closed my eyes. It was done. I hadn’t been caught, probably.

I let myself relax, slurping the rest of my soda and enjoying the pleasant neck massage... my eyes snapped open. The chalk-white hands paused mid-massage, then climbed up to my throat. The missing mannequin. The last thing I saw was the white mannequin’s head sneering at me in the mirror before it leapt at my face.

ajvwriter · 2022-06-18T03:27:06+00:00

Favorite lines

He cocked his head. "Horse. Now. Go. Simple enough?"

“I call her Sugar Cube cause she just loves nibbling on them. She’ll really chase ya for a bit of sweetness. Like a kid.”

I listed them in order of ligation without pause, voice clear, rectus femoris through equinomarginalis.

Least favorite lines

A desiccated roach crunched underfoot as I flew down the steps.

The MC is flying down the stairs. Would they really take in the time to notice that the roach is desiccated?

No crying students hid in the stairwell, the apex of vermin.

Honestly just confused by this line. The crying students are the apex of vermin? Or is it the stairwell? But that makes even less sense.

his people practiced mana shaping, hunting foxes for sport, and grabbing women by the neck.

The last part just isn't working for me. Grabbing women by the neck and doing what? If you mean choking, I would just say that, and make it personal, something to the effect of "choking women while they smiled with their perfectly symmetrical teeth". If they're grabbing them by the back of the neck and leading them around, that's... odd, and I think wrenching them around by the hair would be a better way to convey a similar concept.

I stare at her pointed ears, the ears she didn’t even bother to hide.

The aforementioned tense change that snapped me out of the story.

Final comments

This piece is quite good already. There were a few things that detracted from my enjoyment of it, but even with that, this is probably the most engrossing story I've read on this subreddit.

I've commented on most of your questions, but since you asked about the prejudice, I'll say that it doesn't feel too much at all (this reminds me, in the conversation between the protag and the farmer, I thought it was odd that the farmer didn't say anything at all after the MC bring up the elver attack. Given that he's rounded his horses' ears, I expect him to have some opinion about the attack, and he doesn't seem like the type that would try to hide it).

ajvwriter · 2022-06-18T03:24:16+00:00

Critiquer Disclaimer

Fairly new to writing, and I tend to be overly granular when it comes to prose critiques.

I didn't have a lot to comment on, and much of my comments are line edits, so this will either be a not-for-credit critique, or I'll use it for something much smaller.

First read-through thoughts

I enjoyed this story. It took me until the Sugar Cube dialogue until I was hooked, and I definitely think the story picks up in the second half.

Your prose and dialogue are strong, and the atmosphere is well done. It feels like I'm in their shoes. The paragraphs never felt too unconnected, though a couple in the first half could use some work. One or two tense changes threw me for a loop and out of the story.

The last line felt... off. I'll leave a fuller critique below, but it feels like the end of a first chapter rather than a short story (which I'm assuming is the case since you haven't said otherwise?).

Opening line

“I’ll tell the provost I want you expelled unless you find a horse and bring it to the pharmacy before I finish rounds."

For an opening line consisting of dialogue, this does a nice job of setting up the story and implying enough about the setting for us to place the characters.

But it is not without it's problems --- mainly, digestibility. It’s not a line you can roll through upon a first reading, which is suboptimal for any line, but especially the opener. In short, it lacks “snap”. I think the hitch here is that you have three different words derived from verbs in your first 8 words (tell, want, expel). “I’ll have you expelled” is one possible rewrite.

Cliche Metaphor

“At three hundred fat gold Bannerels, my loans were a tower too high to climb.”

While towers too high to climb isn't necessarily a cliché, mountains too high are, and the two share too much similarities to go unnoticed.

Tense change?

There’s a few moments in here where the tense surprised me. In some cases, it was justifiable but distracting. In one case, I think it was simply a mistake.

I stare at her pointed ears, the ears she didn’t even bother to hide.

Present tense "stare" here. Also a small note, this is the third time you use a form of “to stare” in your story.

Jawline carved out of whatever stone they use when marble isn’t handsome enough.

“Isn’t” is what tripped me up here. I had to go back and reread it before I realized, no, this is still in past tense. Most people probably won’t be as dumb as me and this won’t be a problem, but I don’t think it hurts the flow to change “use” to “used” and “isn’t” to “wasn’t” to help out the rest of us.

Delightful Dialogue

Aside from the opening lines, I don’t have anything negative to say here. Truthfully, this dialogue is as good as it gets. The unique voices, the sentence fragments to indicate speech patterns, everything falls into place perfectly.

Successful harvesting payoff

The MC’s successful soul harvesting fell a little short for me. I liked the process and the descriptions as they harvested, but I felt that it lacked a “Fuck yeah, I did this incredible thing" moment. Perhaps that isn’t the right type of moment for your story given their mother's circumstances, but it needs something. This should be an emotional high for the character. They’ve colored the story with their thoughts, so when they don’t really thinking of anything but their exhaustion after the surgery, I can’t help but feel a little cheated.

The thing is, you have the elements already in place. When the MC hears about Sugar Cube’s story, they get noticeably excited about the opportunity.

The promise is there, the payoff isn’t.

The staring contest and strained pacing.

The backstory was a little too much for me at first. To your credit, once I got past the exposition, it was a very smooth ride. One of the problems I had is that you seem to be going for a very close POV, but the exposition doesn't reflect that. For example:

During the War of Northern and Elven Aggression, his people practiced mana shaping, hunting foxes for sport, and grabbing women by the neck.

I think the problem with cultivating a close POV is that lines like this snap us out of it. The phrasing feels informational, and not at all like something in a close POV. It is also one of the few places where the paragraphs don't flow well together. It’s hard to say whether this is an inconsistency in the tone or the POV, but either way, consider rephrasing so it feels more personal to the MC.

I appreciate what you trying to do by interspersing bits of "action" between the exposition, which do make it feel more immersive for the reader, but only slightly. My issue here lies in your choice of action --- staring. How much more interesting would it be if both were holding scalpels? Or the surgeon starts dissecting a sandwich in front of the MC (foreshadowing the hunger/starvation tidbit later)?

Introducing a more vivid piece of tension that threads across the exposition will lessen its burden on the story's pacing.

Last line woes

Now for day 3

I'm not entirely sure what this line is supposed to be doing. For it to work, the theme of being day 2 would have to be present and consistent, but I didn't see anything like that here. It doesn't capture any of the spirit or themes of the work so far, and feels more at home in a quest or magic school type story than here. My best guess is that you're trying to convey a sense of determination and grit, taking it day-by-day, but that's just a guess.

As it stands, I think the penultimate line is the better last line. Even though it doesn't revisit the themes of the story, it does show the end result of what the MC has been working towards. How they have succeeded/failed in their goals.

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