Re: LAST. THING. STANDING. [S!1][ROUND ONE: TELEVISION LAND]
12-22-2011, 03:13 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
A stage.
A counter, worn.
A background piece, half subsumed with <font color="#FFFFFF">static.
A black and white television, flickering picture, antenna bent, supplemented with broken shards of metal.
A camera, covered in dust. Tarpaulin here and there, crates smashed open, broken wood. Gray realm fighting black and white, chaotic white, endless, void-like black speckled with brilliant painful white flaying against a little dim gray.
“Sir!”
The man wore what once was a brilliantly tailored suit, now worn and mottled with something less age and more neglect, reeking of helplessness and a quiet, quiet anger.
“Won’t you buy something?”
Bright black and dark white played on Barry Barnes’ handsome face, hiding in its little crevices and sliding down the hillocks of his hair, seeming to scream in childish delight as it illuminated in its unreal, crushing power.
It was another facet of the static that beyond its cruelty, in another face of its crystal, fractal, quantum facade there was a speck, a line, a square with eight sides flickering from and to existence – that remained inquisistive, curious – how like a child –
Slowly, almost madly, Barry twisted a knob on the television.
On it appeared a spaceship – he stared at it, having seen its contours a thousand times before. Once, he had sold Galaxy Guardians merchandise, in a rare partnership that had culminated in failure. He still had hundreds of Barrybucks’ worth of figurines…well, he didn’t anymore. He didn’t have anything anymore.
Barry stared at the camera, and knew there was no one watching.
He looked away from the noise, to the black and white picture on the cheap television set, watched the shot change to the interior of the ship…
The snarls of static made like their name, twirling elegantly in, consuming the channel that had died, that could no longer support itself, Chapter 11 in a book of unwritten laws.
There was no more money. He would never sell again.
With that, he dove into the screen and the stage died, the light vanished, the camera went, the lenses swallowed, the grayness eaten, the television taken one piece at a time, case, antenna, legs, and until there was only the screen, which showed only static that bled over its edges and the channel was no more.</font>
A stage.
A counter, worn.
A background piece, half subsumed with <font color="#FFFFFF">static.
A black and white television, flickering picture, antenna bent, supplemented with broken shards of metal.
A camera, covered in dust. Tarpaulin here and there, crates smashed open, broken wood. Gray realm fighting black and white, chaotic white, endless, void-like black speckled with brilliant painful white flaying against a little dim gray.
“Sir!”
The man wore what once was a brilliantly tailored suit, now worn and mottled with something less age and more neglect, reeking of helplessness and a quiet, quiet anger.
“Won’t you buy something?”
Bright black and dark white played on Barry Barnes’ handsome face, hiding in its little crevices and sliding down the hillocks of his hair, seeming to scream in childish delight as it illuminated in its unreal, crushing power.
It was another facet of the static that beyond its cruelty, in another face of its crystal, fractal, quantum facade there was a speck, a line, a square with eight sides flickering from and to existence – that remained inquisistive, curious – how like a child –
Slowly, almost madly, Barry twisted a knob on the television.
On it appeared a spaceship – he stared at it, having seen its contours a thousand times before. Once, he had sold Galaxy Guardians merchandise, in a rare partnership that had culminated in failure. He still had hundreds of Barrybucks’ worth of figurines…well, he didn’t anymore. He didn’t have anything anymore.
Barry stared at the camera, and knew there was no one watching.
He looked away from the noise, to the black and white picture on the cheap television set, watched the shot change to the interior of the ship…
The snarls of static made like their name, twirling elegantly in, consuming the channel that had died, that could no longer support itself, Chapter 11 in a book of unwritten laws.
There was no more money. He would never sell again.
With that, he dove into the screen and the stage died, the light vanished, the camera went, the lenses swallowed, the grayness eaten, the television taken one piece at a time, case, antenna, legs, and until there was only the screen, which showed only static that bled over its edges and the channel was no more.</font>
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