This is my entry into Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #32! host by @bananafish and all those who help keep this contest a weekly thing.
by @f3nix
The hoverbike lay abandoned on its side, the engine still warm. The fine black dust carried by the incessant wind was a snake that crept in every small recess.
From the top of the dune the Tesseract 19 could be seen with the naked eye. The column pierced the black sea of graphite and challenged the dark crimson sky. The awareness of his distance made him wince. That construction was enormous. That impenetrable artifact, Moloch's sharpest tooth.
Intertwined with dust, the warm wind brought an imperceptible howl: the bark of the monolith, an omen of death.
The man waited, a stiff exoskeleton bent over the black sand. The helmet lay abandoned beside him. Soon the team would have arrived.
"Soon you will arrive too and everything will be accomplished, one way or another."
He thought of her smile, her courage, her strength. "My life, how could I've been so reckless to have you involved in all this?" The tears were already kneading blackened as the memories of their happy normality swept over him.
"I can not let them find me like this". He stared at himself from outside: another tower on a dune, far more uncertain than the one that howled his feral wish.
These and other demons echoed within the chambers of his soul, when his eyes met a green sprout. The man stared that little miracle that, against every odd, was striving to affirm its existence. In the midst of that sea of bottomless despair.
The tear finally found its way lingering and bathed a leaf. The man managed to pull himself together and, now smiling, he put on his helmet.
"This Moloch will tremble, time has come for an awakening."
Mike was on his knees tied to a chair with broken legs. The sand crunched between his teeth as he swallowed any saliva his body mustered up.
The three men who captured Mike entering the city brought him to face Mayor Trajo, a hideous looking man. An acid scar covered his face. It was from a boy who snapped back in chemistry class after he'd gotten tired of being picked on by Trajo for a year straight. The boy was found mutilated inside a local theater weeks later. Parts of the boy's flesh and muscle were cut away and not found at the scene. Service to Moloch began that day.
"We searched him. Found nothing you asked for, Mayor," said one of the three men.
"The dike?" Trajo asked. All eyes in the room avoided his. "We'll deal with that later."
"Welcome home," Trajo said cracking his knuckles. "You stole things. They weren't gifted back to us. Clever of you to cover your tracks with a sandstorm."
Mike's vocal cords itched as he spoke. "They are not yours nor mine to keep. The lands will prosper and grow. The people with it."
Trajo: "What would that do for my business?"
Traje nodded his head to the executioner standing behind Mike. The executioner tightened the ropes around Mike's wrist.
Trajo: "Tell me where you planted the seeds?"
Mike didn't mind the pain by looking deep inside of himself. He reminded himself why he did what he did; why he taught the people the difference between evil speech and speech based in love; why the people needed to see life grow in an area they were told it could not.
Trajo: "When the circulation is cut off too long, the hand turns a blue, white, or black color, depending on how long it's cut off, of course. We're going for black. That means gangrene has developed. Do you have any idea what that will do to your biological system once it's released into your bloodstream?"
Mike: "They're planted in the minds of the people."
Trajo: "About that. People should be allowed to say anything they want, whenever and wherever they want. I don't like it when they say loving things to one another, but it goes with the territory. It is so much easier to destroy than it is to create. So, when you teach them this - the very thing I hold over them - they don't vent their angry, hate-filled feelings freely to one another. When they don't vent freely, it destroys what I've created. That makes my job much harder when they start thinking they don't need me. They begin to see me as a ...," along with a cut-eye stare at Mike and a Merkel-Raute hand gesture, his voice got soft, "a monster. ... That is not good for business."
A flash-bang coming through a vent blinded everyone in the room. Smoke and coughing followed. Mike felt the ropes tying him to the chair snap lose and his arm violently being tugged on after. "Run!" a women's voice, his woman, shouted.
They bolted out the door. She closed it and slammed the locking-mechanism down when they were out.
Trajo is heard banging on the door shouting as they run down the hall and out onto the street, "Bitch! Fucking bitch! Open this fucking door, cuck! How the f..."
| Previous Finish the Story Contest Entries | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Town That Changed | Even the Clouds Smile | The Border | Horro Vacui |
| Black Star | Quitting Life | LER | It Awakens |
| Apocalypse and Pretzels | Metallic Kisses | Curie upvoted The Battle of Bloodneck Valley |
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Tools:
- The Most Dangerous Writing App - This program keeps me from getting to bogged down with what I think is the perfect way. It forces me to keep writing no matter what comes to mind.
- Grammarly - I use this app all the time to catch my mistakes. If I didn't have a spell checker, you would be lost in my world. haha!
- Hemmingway App: Another useful tool to help you make your writing more clear, comprehensive, and easier to understand.
- Steem World: After the @ symbol, enter your name or anyone elses name to see a host of information regarding what is going on with an account.
- Pixabay: Photo that you can use freely in your blog posts.
twenty-four hour short story - You gotta be quick to get this one posted in time. He posts the contest on Sunday (usually) and ends it about 48 hours later. This contest has a 2000 word limit.
Finish the Story Contest - The contest begins on Wednesday (usually) and end 5 days later. This contest will test your write skills with something a little different each week. Pletty of time to write something around the 500 word mark.
Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest! - Coming out roughly every week. If you enjoy card games like Magic, Yugio, and others like it, you might like this game. Write a fictional tale about the card they present in the contest and your entry just might be the one they choose to showcase.
Tell A Story To Me, And Win 5 SBD! Writing Contest - Kind of random when it comes out but don't worry. You will have two weeks to complete your work of art from the given prompt. Have fun!
Haiku - These are coming out every couple days or so. If you stuggle with rhymes, no worries. Haikus don't have to rhyme. All you need to make a haiku is five syllable on the first, seven syllables in the second line, and again back to five syllable for the last line. So easy it makes me think I'm being super product. LOL
Mizu No Oto - Every Image Has Its Haiku Contest - By reading the title, you should be able to guess how this haiku contest works. You're given an image and you write. I've really enjoy this contest because there are people here who've actually gone to classes to learn how to write haiku's; so if you want, you also can learn how to write quality haikus from reading the comments and critiques they and others give.
50-word Challenge - This is an interesting challenge and very challenging to say the least. You only get fifty words to tell a story or a vignettes. Here is a great post that will explain the difference between the two concepts. Good luck, Brave Story Writer!