steampunk project (project #2).

Our Sci-Fi project has officially ended and we have all been pleased with what we have come up with. As our next project, we have decided to do a Short-Story in the genre of Steampunk. Steampunk is classified as ANY genre with the added ingredient of industrial presence. For example, the movie Wild Wild West is a Western in the genre of Steampunk. Our project will be single space 12 font up to five pages long, and we will not share our exact stories with each other in order to secure originality. Who knows? We may get a fantasy, alternate history, and western from tyhe three of us but all in the genre of Steampunk. So! Have fun and check back from us. We will be posting our stories as soon as Nick gets back from Chicago, so it'll be a few weeks. Keep checking back though! Thanks! -Adam

multiply.

The clouded skies reflected upon the aviators swerved like a gelatin in the tinted glass, and the leather glove tightened around Dimitri’s hand as his fingers curled around the handlebar. Gravel and dust from the New Mexico desert blemished the empty freeway and traveled along with the force of the storm’s wind. Dimitri studied the long straightforward road from behind his aviators. His short black hair tousled with the rushing breezes; his brown jacket waved as well, and as the Harley ’94 peaked 120 mph the storm began to pick up momentum.
A gust of cool wind from South of the desert had begun to travel towards Dimitri, picking up grains of dirt and pollen, and neared closer and closer until it struck a significant blow. Dimitri struggled with the motorcycle. He clenched the handlebars amid his gloved hands, and maneuvered the vehicle back on path. With careful thought, he anticipated more impact from the storm’s wind, and was more cautious to the handling of his drive.
He turned his head to the right where most of the dark clouds had formatted. The motorcycle’s engine continued to purr as it journeyed passed more and more road, but suddenly the noise began to rupture. Brief moments of failure began to interrupt the consistent engine.
“Perfect.” Dimitri shifted his head back towards the road, and glanced over at the gauges in the dash. Nothing of alert was being noticed by the car.
Then, the stalling began to take its course. The pauses took longer; the engine made effort to continue the steady path, but to no prevail. Gently the vehicle began to decelerate, and the orange indicator on the speedometer declined. 120...110...105…
“Thanks, Grandpa,” Dimitri said to himself, “you sure have a way with bikes.”
Dimitri pulled to the right shoulder of the long deserted road, and coiled his fingers upon the brakes. The rugged black motorcycle came to an easy halt, and Dimitri mounted off.
“Least it’s rainin’,” he looked up at the gray sky. Raindrops landed on his tinted lenses. As he wiped his aviators clean, Dimitri ambled to the item compartment on the back of the motorcycle. He unlocked the tiny stainless steel box–sprinkled with rain–and opened the compartment. Inside, spare pistol bullets, an August issue of Maxim, a folded miniature atlas, and a picture displaying a young girl with black hair was placed.
He took the tiny picture and gazed at it. A nostalgic wind gusted through the desert highway now, yet it remains a mystery what emotion was felt behind Dimitri's aviators. Soon enough, the storm’s rain began to land on the photo, and, as a cue, Dimitri pocketed the picture, picked up the tiny atlas, and unfolded it.
“Come on, little map,” whispered Dimitri; a violent bolt of lightning crackled in the background, “find me a Texaco.”
As he searched down the highway lines in the map, the rain began to fall harder. A sudden urgency filled the atmosphere, and the raindrops grew heavy. They parachuted down from the skies on Dimitri, falling and picking up speed. They began to freeze and crystallize in the sky. Hail. Suddenly, Dimitri was bombarded by a fleet of descending ice. He used the atlas to shield his head from the plaguing hail, but another torrential gust swept it away. The atlas now traveled through the air, manipulated by the behemoth winds, and was sent zig-zagging across the emptiness and dull dirt of the desert land.
Dimitri, realizing that the atlas was his only aid of direction, chased after the escaping map. His leather shoes imprinted the ground with the pattern on the soles. Shocks of pain from the hail hindered his balance, and Dimitri fell to the hard, damp ground, but stumbled back quickly to his feet. In pursuit–and in pain–he was cautious of what occupied the floor to prevent tripping again. Then, a cataclysmic, intimating boom that ravaged all noise with such amplitude bewildered Dimitri, and he fell once more. This time, leaving the atlas to lose itself amongst the wind.
Dimitri's energy was almost completely gone. It took effort to raise his face from the rough desert dirt. Veins in his neck pulsated as he raised his head, and he began to scan the clouded sky–with great difficulty due to the hail–for the map. Through his aviators, he frantically searched for his atlas, but aborted when his eyes constricted to the sight of the marvelous blue glow. A thick, jurassic, glowing obelisk of blue light fell from parted gray clouds seeming to land a few miles in front of Dimitri.
That must have been what caused the boom, Dimitri thought. The hail seemed to have calmed now, and the storm seemed less violent since the glowing rod surged from the sky. Nothing was left but the silence of awe and wonder.
As he laid there, galvanized by the unearthly marvel, aggression was evoked in the winds once more. This time with a more vicious strength. The winds began to pillage the once-tousled hair, and ransack the brown jacket. Then, the unscrupulous force physically began to violently drag Dimitri towards the beam. He skidded across the rough ground trampling dead cacti and empty carcasses. The bare skin behind his clothes were scraping against the irregular surface of the desert; pieces of skin dislodged and left open, painful, bleeding wounds.
He was being pushed closer and closer to the obscuring beam. Every now and then, he would skid on the heels of his shoes in an attempt to brace himself from the forcing motion with no use. Dimitri was closing in on the root of the beam. The aviators helped him see through the bright mystic azure glow, and as he was so close to the mysterious gargantuan light that he could almost touch it the wind halted, and he plummeted to a stop.
Once again, he stumbled back on to his feet, and was just arms-length away to the radiance. Curious to how the light must feel, Dimitri raised his finger and neared it towards the light.
“I would not touch that,” a booming voice commanded from behind Dimitri.
He turned in fright, focusing his eyes through the lenses, and searched for the voice.
“Where are you?” Dimitri yelled towards the emptiness.
“Behind you,” the voice sounded closer to Dimitri’s ear now.
Dimitri turned again quickly, and came face-to-face with a blue-eyed man.
“Who are you!” Dimitri shouted.
“There is no need for exclamations,” the man said, calmly, “I promise you. We–”
“We?” Dimitri interrupted as he gathered his breathe. “There’s more of you?”
“Yes,” he smiled, and his blue eyes lit up, “And we come in peace.”
Dimitri gathered his speeding thoughts, “Talk about cliche.”
A wrinkled smile formed on the mysterious man face. He held up a feeble hand towards Dimitri, “I can explain more, human. Please, take my hand.”
Dimitri’s irregular breathing grew hotter with frustration. He glared at the man’s hand, “What?”
“My boy, take my hand so I may show you.”
“Get the heck away from me,” his voice melted with spite, “I don’t know who you are.”
“I can explain all in due time–”
“I don’t know where you’re from, I don’t know what this whole blue-light thing is.”
“My boy–”
“And I’m sure as hell not holding your hand, old man!”
“Son,” the man with the blue eyes put his hand on his shoulder, “you’re delusional.”
“I said get the he–”
Suddenly, a bright blue, blinding flash of light filled the entire setting. A rush of motion passed through Dimitri's finger tips. His stomach rose to his throat and churned with the feeling. The ground from underneath his feet was gone, and Demitri felt as though he was falling and standing simultaneously. Then, abruptly, a wave of black darkness flooded Dimitri's eyes. He felt gone.
* * *
“Man, Stanley, this storm is crazy. Sure would hate to be the guy caught in this rain,” a regular said within his stool. He grasped his cold mug of foaming beer in his hand, and sipped the cold alcohol. “Anything on the news ‘bout it?”
“Let’s check.” The bartender turned the dial on a dusty television set on a shelf. The screen lit up, and the local news casting program was on.
“That’s right, Robert. A class-five state of emergency has been called here at New Mexico,” the woman on the television reported.
“Hah, state of emergency! I laugh at the silly folk who are afraid of a lil’ rain,” the bartender smiled.
“Now hold on there, Stan, I have kids at home,” the regular’s eyes widened with fright, “Has New Mexico ever gotten hit by a hurricane?”
“No, stupid, we live in a desert! There’s no water here!”
“What about tornadoes? What about earthquakes!”
“Sush it, Kevin!” the two looked back up at the television. Footage of a massive crafts hovering above the sky had been playing since. The grainy amateur capture caused the colors of the clouded sky and the crafts to blend in, making it hard to differentiate. Towards the end of the footage, the cameraman points the camera straight up to see a craft incredibly close to the ground. He scans the craft with the camera, and focuses in on a hole aligned to where he’s standing. Suddenly, the hole lights up with the ominous blue glow, and the camera is dropped.
“Once again, that was disturbing footage from earlier today in Cancun, Mexico,” the television announced.
Suddenly the television interrupted the news broadcast. A strange blue logo that looked like skull was displayed for a brief two seconds. Then, an elderly looking man with glowing blue eyes was facing the screen.
“Wow, he sure does look strange, Stan,” said Kevin.
“Must be the Japanese again…” said the bartender.
“We mean no harm, Earth,” the voice boomed from the television, “and on behalf on the Velascian race, we apologize for interrupting your inferior human activities. My name is Threon, I am chief linguistic of my people. We have studied your planet’s language, culture, and weaknesses in order to save it.”
“I don’t think these are the Japanese, Stanley…”
“Reoccurring trends in the galaxies ionic patterns suggest that your planet is conflicting its very existence with another paralleling planet. To put it bluntly, your all going to die.”
“This guy’s serious…”
“Worry is unnecessary. We have already taken precautions to preserve the human race.”
“Drink up, we’re gonna need it.”
“We have chosen two members of your race that inhibit all the traits of high-quality reproduction systems to multiply. One male by the name of Dimitri Escon, and a female by the name of Veronica Esquet. The two are with us. You have three minutes to live. Goodbye.”
The television fell silent. The entire bar fell silent. Only the two men inhabited the restaurant, and they each silently took the news in. After a few seconds, the bartender took the mugs, refilled them, and handed one to Kevin.
“To us,” Stanley raised his mug for a toast.
“To us.”

-@lawlnick

the ravine, the sticks.

This was a little short story I wrote in a single hour at 6 in the morning after pulling an all-nighter. I was spending the entire night searching the internet and reading Stephen King's "On Writing." The book is truly remarkable, and King offers a wide variety of advice on the art of writing. One of the greatest tips he gave on creative writing was to start off with a character and then just let him live. So here was my experimentation of just starting with a character, and letting the story unfold itself. NOTE: This story may be a lot of typos, due to the state of mind I was in when writing it (I pulled an all-nighter!). Enjoy!

Half-and-half was the coffee type best suited for the journey. Caffeine-powered energy circulated throughout the nervous muscle system. The surface rippled as the decrepit wooden paddle stroked the ravine's still water, sweat accumulated on the brow of the white-haired boatman; agitated by the ambiguous sting in his eye–yet paddled onward. The road ahead: the only passage available to getting to the boatman's "home," was prolonging. The ravine tested tolerance.

He raised his chrome thermos to his large and violently pink lips. As the hazel coffee grazed his chapped lips, the man took notice of the mist surrounding his vessel. The boatman–although tolerable–was agitated with the mind settings of yesterdays and the previous, despite the relaxing waft of the ravine current. Paddling, stronger, faster, towards the mist: which once soared at the heavens; the boatman reminisces of skeletons from the past. Resilience to forget–the punishment for a guilty conscience.

More impulsive, his strokes began to turn. Steady ripples now turned to light splashes; the rowboat now tilted and turned with a faster, more complex rhythm. Veins tightened within his arms, wrists, and shoulders: frail, like any elder senior–patiently waiting for the final rest.

Shortly, pain crept into the consciousness of the boatman and he aborted his frantic paddling. Resuming a sense of tranquility, the boatman released the paddle–midway below water–from his firm grip; allowing the utility to float on–far from him. He let go, permitted peace to gather, and allowed the current to guide.

"There ain't no use," he screamed to the mist, "I can't run away."

Nearby stalks of plants–peeking above the water's surface–bent to the strong, sudden draft of wind, which has manipulated the vessel; it steered the boatman deeper into the vague obscurity of the mist. The boatman refrains from tears; congenitally, crying in any situation was a niche for weakness. He kept his eyes resistant to–his own–perception of this eldritch phenomenon. Yet, no senile man in his late 80's could resist what the boatman saw next.

Deeper and deeper, the wind emphatically guided the boatman into the mist. The surface tension began breaking and reassembling with the speed of trek of the vessel. And suddenly–a stop. The contemporary stillness and tranquility temporarily revisited the boatman again. He takes advantage of the calm; as still as the stars assigned to the sky–and takes a last profound and long breathe of chilled mist. His caffeine-stimulated muscle attempt relaxation–unknowing to the boatman his body was going a mile a minute–but, at the inhale, a gentle "thud" is heard from below the raft. The boatman peaks towards the edge of the rowboat–and his cardiac, ventricle, and muscle system reach the speed threshold. His body: a light bulb burnt out after it's final switch-on, a manual motor grinding it's gears, the putting out of a candle–fell into the still and peaceful waters; he floated next to the corpse of a women: in the early stages of decay–larva already picking out at her large and, what was once, violent pink lips.

With only the last final tremors of the boatman; they both rested, calmy and tranquil, atop the ravine–allowing the mysteries of the mist to engulf them.

-@lawlnick

victor vacinni.

No one ever grew fond of Victor Vacinni. Amid our preadolescence years and elementary era, middle school society conformed to the norm of growing use to someone; Victor Vacinni was an exception. In classes, we usually found him–glassy eyed and nosed stuffed–staring straight at someone: no blinking, no nonchalant glances at the ceilings. At lunch, his isolation often disturbed our ability to eat with tranquility. He sat there, in his own empty table, staring straight at one of us: no blinking.
We all had our reasons to feel uncomfortable near him. Daniel Clemens once told us that they both attended the same private preschool and he would perform acts of passive-aggressive sexual exploitation. “He would take off all the clothes of the girl’s Barbies and draw all the privates where they should be,” he reported to us, during one of our many lunch-table gatherings, “When our teacher caught him Sharpie-ing a penis onto a Ken, he told her that he liked things to be realistic.” Sunny Days Preschool admits students from age four to six; Victor was five in Daniel’s testimony. Jared Stewart cited another example of Victor’s odd behavior at a viewing of The Godfather. “We went to the same church when I was eight,” he said, taking a swig of his soda, “every time the pastor would want us to repeat a passage, he would always talk in tongues. To this day, I don’t know if he was faking it or if he was actually possessed by something.”
Chris Peters once recalled an event where he was rehearsing through another laborious period of biology–which he and Victor both attended–and, unfortunately, had the pleasure of sitting by him. Here, Chris, the opportunist that he was, paid careful attention to the physical aspects of Victor. “He looks even crazier up close, man,” he said, lighting a cigarette as we all huddled behind our high school bleachers one Sunday afternoon, “that crazy bastard had two lazy bright brown eyes. I remember Mrs. Smith, dumb braud, told the whole class to ‘converse’ with each other about decomposition or something. Hell, I needed to pass, so I talked to him, but as soon as I uttered a word he got really close, like this,” he got as close as he could to Johnny Carlson’s face; the tip of his cigarette brightened as it inched closer and closer to Johnny’s nose, “About this fucking close that creep-o got. Tell you all, I never seen so much disgusting hygiene on a kid before. Fuck, I’ve seen roadkill cleaner than that boy.” We all urged him to go on. “His snot: wet and dry. You could notice the dried up layer because it was magnified, like a jello, by the running wet snot falling and gathering up on his upper lip. His skin was greasy and reminded me of an old leather wallet. God damn it, man, I’ve never been so disgusted by a person in my life.”
We all formed separate opinions on one or two differing physical traits he held. Jared Stewart recognizes Victor the most for his sporadic hair lining, “It’s the type of hair lining where your only hope to pull it off is to completely shave it.” Daniel Clemens remembers him for the huge bug eyes he had, “They always look as though they capture the light in the room. It has a strange gloss to it.” Robert Miller recalls his mangy posture and the way he raised his wrist to chest level. Rudy Romeo juxtaposes Victor’s unspeakably high voice and his greasy curly hair. Kevin McDonald, his scrawny legs. Tyler Beard, his skinniness. Taylor Jackson: big cheeks. Johnny Carlson: mongoloid teeth. Chris Peters: snot.
Every lunch, we all sat parallel to his empty kingdom. Victor never ate; he stared. It was a silent mutual rule that none of us ever bring up his prolonged gaze towards us at the table. We would either burst out into false laughter from Chris’s naughty joke or made fun of eachother; We all looked for ways to conceal the discomfort of his stare.
Once, during an after school detention, Chris Peters and Taylor Jackson decided to amuse the two-hours of confinement away by passing notes. It started with a game of hangman inscribed into the college-ruled by granite pencils. The frustration of guessing, the silent laughter with the eyes, and the lingering hint of boredom at the innocent entertainment evolved the topic, evoked into the wadded up paper ball, to the taboo that was Victor Vacinni. First, a drawing of Victor with the more cartoonist angle. Chris exaggerated his odd shaped head, his bug eyes, and payed the most attention to the running snot. Taylor added labels and arrows such as: tiny dick, shit-stained pants, unzipped zipper–each arrow pointed to the appropriate anatomy location. The mocking within the note escalated with such a speed that the velocity sped up the detention time itself, but before the last two minutes of their sentence Taylor wrote one last thing into the flagrant note: Victor Vacinni is gay.
“I threw it out,” said Taylor, when we all asked while walking at a mall one evening, “someone might have picked it up.” Whatever the cause, the rumor permeated through every hall of middle school. The topic penetrated every gossip requiem the day prior. ‘Victor Vacinni is gay’ invaded the notes passed, in secret, throughout classes. The questioning of Victor’s sexuality spread faster than the medieval Black Plague, carried out by rats and maggots, infecting virgins to the news. It was a God damn epidemic.
Maybe it was bias on knowing that we spread the rumor, but Victor’s gaze at the cafeteria seemed more concentrated since. We all knew laughing loudly or telling an irrelevant story wouldn’t cover up the tension amid our sandwich eating and the glare, so we feasted in silence those days–the days the news was still saran wrapped. “You remember that one day, when everyone, like, made fun of him during fifth period and all he did during lunch was stare at us and write in some weird notebook?” said Tyler Beard, in a reminiscing moment we all shared during a lull in a road trip.
All of us produced theories of what he might have written in the notebook. Daniel thought he was compiling a hit list. “Come on, guys, he had all the motives to want to kill us. He was a major creep and he probably knew about the note that started it all,” said Daniel once, ill in bed. Kevin McDonald speculated that perhaps Victor was an artistic individual, and was simply jotting down his emotions. “Nothing great, in art, is ever produced through happiness,” Kevin stated, as we all drank coffee at a Starbucks, “the haunting experience may have been perfect inspiration for a piece.”
Over time, we all abandoned justifying the mysterious writing. Over time, we resumed our obnoxious laughter and mechanisms to refute the discomfort. We all continued digging into our lunches, our Pringles, Cheetos, carrot sticks. None of us could resist the thought that we were silently mocking the kid as we ate. Here we were: eating. There he was: alone.
However, our middle-school mystery of Victor Vacinni was answered by Mrs. Devila–our study period advisor. We all notice that he was gone that day at school. “I knew that day was gonna be really fucking weird. He was never absent at school, never,” Chris stated to us, beneath the bleachers, dropping the cigarette stub and extinguishing it with his foot, “it was ironic ya know. The thing more creepier than him being at school was him being absent from it.” The classroom air had a mundane chill the day we all received the news about Victor Vacinni. “You know ever since preschool, that kid always sent an eery warmth into the atmosphere. Like a dying animal breathing his last warm breath,” said Daniel Clemens as we all packed our left-overs of lunch and placed a tip for the waitress. The distinct facial expression Mrs. Devila wore, as she stepped up from her desk onto the center of the room–we all remembered that look, the look of sympathy and mourn. “Tell you one thing, our middle-school teacher was a heartless bitch, the way she gave us the news felt so forced. It’s a shame. No one ever liked that kid. The teachers had to act,” said Jared Stewart, as the movie credits fell and we begun to exit the theatre. We all remembered how we simultaneously stopped talking and turned in our chairs to face her. “She always use to complain about how we never stopped talking. I wonder why that day we all did,” yawned Tyler Beard, as he approached sleepiness and began to rest in the backseat of our car.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Devila, “I am sorry to inform you that Victor Vacinni will not be joining us any further,” that long pause, “Due to some graphic news that was sent out into the school today, it was brought to our attention that Victor is no longer with us. He died. I have been taken aback by the news that his life was taken,” another lull, “by his father.”
“His father apparently was some psycho murderer.”
“Fucking tells you a lot about why Victor was the way he was, huh?”
“The father,” Mrs. Devila now crossed her arms: body language for sincerity, “was arrested this morning, and, rest assured, he has been imprisoned and will not harm anyone ever again. A notice to each of your parents has been sent out to bring this to there attention.”
“Makes you think.”
“Why do you think we never stopped messing with him? Wasn’t it obvious this kid had problems?”
“We were kids, man, we were kids.”
We all waited through Mrs. Devila’s longer pause, and then she stated, “Let’s all take a minute in silence, to remember Victor Vacinni.”

-@lawlnick