LJ Idol Exhibit B

I finished at #7 this season, my best yet!

( Original Fiction and Non-Fiction entriesCollapse )

My own favorites among these are marked with '**'. For the original fiction, that tends to be either drama or crack, because I'm extreme like that. :D

Cross-Your-Heart Promises
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week fifteen | 994 words
It's Super Seekrit (Note: trigger warnings for implied sexual abuse.)

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I'm Susie Barrett, and I live in Schuyler, Virginia. It's a nice enough town. Everyone says it's full of decent, honest people, and that matters more than anything.

I don't really know if it's true, though. There are things I am not allowed to tell other people, and that doesn't seem very honest:

- My Uncle Bobby is in prison, up in Ohio.

- Mama doesn't really like Mrs. Waterton, she just pretends.

- Lila McKenzie's Daddy is a bad, bad man.

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If you liked this story, Idol community members can vote for it and other fine entries here.

People Skills
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week fourteen | 1890 words
Not a f*cking people person (This is an intersection with the amazing lrig_rorrim, whose entry is here. Mine should be read first).

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Zlork hated Mondays.

Even though his own planet's equivalent came around every six days instead of seven, Earth Mondays were worse. First, Zlork had to stuff himself into the subway (All Ybblex citizens are ambassadors of our planet, and must set a good example). No matter how tightly he wrapped his tentacles around himself, someone invariably stepped on them. Then, once he arrived at the Office Of Human/Alien Relations, he had to wedge himself into the too-small chair inside his dreadful cubicle (All Humalia employees are required to use approved, standard office furniture) and begin doing battle with the onslaught of paperwork, procedures, and his utterly aggravating coworkers.

The woman at the next desk made him want to devour his entire workstation. She talked endlessly, all day long, about nothing. He soon learned that keeping an eyestalk pointed her way and randomly bobbing it from time to time was better than enduring regular interruptions of, "Zlork. Zlork, are you listening? Hellooo? So anyway, what I was saying was…"

Today, his desk's holo-vid unit started up as soon as he sat down:

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Well, the voting for this round is not at all what I expected, and nobody's happy about it. If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with other offerings here. Pay attention, though—this round has an ugly twist. :(

Digging Up The Past
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week thirteen | 1373 words
Grave

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"This is the stupidest thing you've ever gotten us into."

I slogged behind Marcy, boots squelching in the muck while I tried to stay close enough to see the path ahead in the arc cast by her lantern.

"Oh, please," Marcy said, turning to glare at me and nearly clocking me with the bag she was carrying. "Whose idea was that godawful road trip in June?"

"That trip would have been fine if you'd remembered to put gas in the car." This was where Marcy and I always stumbled. The intersection of one person's plan versus the other's execution left a gray area that often ambushed us. I'd created the route and schedule for our visit to the Smoky Mountains national park, but only Marcy owned a car. Was it so wrong to think she'd pay attention to the state of the damn thing?

"This is for your project, Linda-Loo. Your Senior Thesis proposal is due in a week."

"Stop calling me that. And a week is plenty of time…" Though even if it wasn't, did anyone really think the answers lay in some dead psychologist's final resting place? "What do you expect to get out of him, anyway?" I asked. "Tortured moaning? Wisdom from the world beyond? 'Hello, ladies. Still dead. Thanks for stopping by!'"

"Will you shut up! What if he hears you?"

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If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it here. There are only 10 entries this week, so I encourage you to read them all!

Travelin' Man
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week twelve | 1520 words
Where Am I?

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I wake up under a doorway in the middle of an alley. It's nighttime and it's raining, and this doesn't look like a terribly safe place to be.

Time to run.

I bolt up and head for the nearest cross-street, stopping short to peer around the corner. The street looks better—less run-down and deserted—but all the writing on the signs is in Cyrillic. Oh, boy…

Let me just say for the record that teleportation is not all it's cracked up to be. You might think it would be great for sneaking into movies without paying, but you have to be careful. Subtle. Is the movie theater dark? Will there be witnesses to your sudden manifestation? Or, say you want to dash over to Paris. If it's just for the day, great! But you can't take any luggage with you—only the things you're wearing will make it. How much fun is a trip where you spend half of it shopping for the things most people just pack in their suitcases?

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If you liked this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

Like Jewels In The Night
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week eleven, 2 | 1173 words
In The Bag

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To say that Edgar Broussard was a thief would have been to say that Einstein was a scientist. Both were oversimplifications of a more elegant truth.

Broussard stole the unstealable, and not for the reasons of wealth or notoriety but because he coveted and because he could. He would have been buried under his own acquisitions had they been ordinary things like jewels or art, but Broussard was interested in none of those things.

Broussard was a stealer of dreams.

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If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

Hired Wand
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week eleven, 1 | 870 words
One Hit Wonder

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Zelgard the Wizard was a powerful magician, quite arguably the best of his time. He could conjure, he could transform, he could weave spells of forgetting or even misremembrance, but most of all… he could smite. His target might be someone he'd never even met, someone half a world away, and he could still inflict doom or disaster with a single wave of his wand. This put him very much in demand.

It was also rather troubling.

"The King bids you come to court immediately," a messenger might announce. The King was a vindictive, ill-tempered man, and the notion of reason was utterly foreign to him.

"My enemies in West Antera rise up against me," the King would say. "You must destroy them."

"Might I instead remove their armaments, or make their natures less warlike?" Zelgard would inquire.

The King's answer was invariably the same: "Death."

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If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

Unforgettable
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week ten | 1301 words
All That Jazz (an intersection with lrig_rorrim, whose story on 'Beneath the surface' can be found here.)

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The Excelsior was not the fanciest or best-known venue in Harlem, but it had history and a certain ambience. Many of the great artists had played there, and Billings Bodry's chance finally came his second year of touring with the New Notes Quartet. He was the group's front man, and they'd made a big enough name for themselves that doors were opening to places he'd long dreamed of playing.

The group arrived by train just after noon on Friday, and took their suitcases and equipment over to the Luxe Hotel. They'd been offered rehearsal time at the Excelsior, and headed over there after lunch.

The men set up onstage: Slats Wilson on drums, Lincoln Harris on string bass, Bernard Doucet at the piano, and Billings with his array of saxophones. ( Read more...Collapse )



If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

Thinking Outside The Box
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week nine | 1107 words
Ordinary Wear and Tear

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Yeah, I'm a tool, I don't deny it. So sue me. But hey, I'm sure as hell not the only one.

Life can get stressful. My place is small, and it's dark and crowded in here. Can't pretend it doesn't get to me from time to time. There's a bunch of us in this jam, each trying to find a little room to breathe. The damn hammer takes up half the box and weighs more than any four of us put together. Heavy guys belong at the bottom, Bub—show a little consideration! But no, he just falls in wherever he wants, poking and shoving us with his giant mutant head. Guy's got an attitude, that's for sure. He's not the strangest thing in here, though—a compass joined us a couple of years back. Man, I have no idea what anybody would want with one of those, but it's not for me to decide.

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If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

Empty Spaces
LJ Idol Exhibit B | week eight, 2 | 790 words
When I Was Young (a story set in the S.A.T.E.D. universe)

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Jimmy asked me about Daddy again today. I still don't know what to say.

Jimmy thinks I must know a whole lot about Daddy, since I was two when he disappeared and Jimmy wasn't even born yet. But you can't remember stuff from when you were two, unless it's your favorite toy or something. I think Daddy maybe had a deep voice and was kind of tall like Uncle Pete. I remember being sad when he didn't come home, and feeling kind of scared. Then Jimmy was born, and I guess the Remaking started then too. A lot of people didn't come home after that, and nobody talks about why. It's like they've forgotten.

Maybe Ma doesn't remember Daddy either. I asked her once if she thought he was dead, and she looked like she was going to cry so I never asked again. All we have is a few pictures, like "John and Charlie" with me riding on his shoulders, or one of him and Ma getting married. I don’t know how pictures work—they're from Before. We have one of Jimmy as a baby, but that's about it. Pictures were taken by machines, so maybe they're not allowed anymore. I don't really understand why machines are bad, except what they tell us in school. I'm not supposed to ask about them, even where they all went. We still have a few machines left in our houses and our town, but Ma says those are the important ones. Who decides what's important? Maybe I'd rather have pictures instead of a refrigerator.

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If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.