Re: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 4: Misty Swamp]
07-28-2011, 01:11 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.
It was a shame he had to go and dirty up his new fancy-shmancy clothes again, although he had to say that he was not all that surprised, not to mention that spending most of his life in the same filthy clothes kind of made him rather used to dirt and dry muck clinging to his frame. He still felt disgusting as he squelched his way down towards the destination that he had intended to reach four or five days ago.
He was rather thankful that he still remembered what he was doing here in the first place even though the rest of the previous days were all a blur in the corner of a sad, pile of hangovers that occupied his mind and wow that was a confused metaphor. The point was, he had to warn people/see if he was too late to warn people. Which also doubled as an excuse to, um, um, to see that person, yeah, Cherry something. Right. (Phew, it would have been embarrassing if he had forgotten what he was really doing here in the first place.)
Algernon’s mind wandered fruitlessly, mostly trying not to think about all the swamp muck in his ears. He thought about how he had been missing for a while and how anybody’d react and was slightly depressed to find that, really, nobody could be said to care about him enough to be tormentuously crippled because he had disappeared from their life. Even the group of adventurers had been rather nonchalant about finding him, unconscious and alive. Well, if there existed a person back in Kerosene that legitimately cared, then at least their minds would be soothed when news of his survival meandered its way back.
Why name a town ‘Kerosene?’ It seemed like poor foreshadowing in a mediocre book. It was like naming your child ‘Easily Cut With A Sharp Implement.’
Maybe he should watch out for arsonists.
Actually, with the boardwalk out, it wasn’t likely he would be going back any time soon. It wasn’t like he wanted to go deep-swamp scuba-diving a second time. And Kerosene had the unfortunate deficiency of People Who Actually Knew What the Hell Happened to Him the Past Few Days. (There were those researcher folks, but they didn’t really seem to know much at all. Hey, actually, how were they doing now? Probably pretty good.) Folks were nice there, but not helpful with jogging his memory. Or, rather, filling holes in his memory with rubber cement. Or something.
…And that was pretty much how Algernon’s boring thoughts went like for the remaining walk. He entered the town, dirty but triumphant and bearing the smell of swamp and adventure (which smells like swamp in this case).
The first thing he did was ask where he could find Cherry at this time of day. The second thing he did was find a new person to talk to so that it didn’t seem that he had his priorities mixed up when he then informed the town of the dangers of the mysterious monster bug swarm thing.
As the news spread and inhabitants discussed by way of worried murmuring and gossip and sometimes fisticuffs, Algernon continued to squelch his way around in order to find the elf.
Cherry had apparently found herself a place to sleep and, over the course of half a week, had gained a reputation as an astonishingly good therapist. (No, no, she wasn’t manipulating people, that’s not at all what Cherry did, she was just making people happy and using her powers in a constructive manner, people don’t like being sad and she could make all that go away for a while, so it would actually be crueler to leave them to stew over their sadness, right? Right? And it wasn’t her fault that people now kept going to her and talking about their problems ever since she “talked” a guy out of suicide that one time, crazy bas—the poor unfortunate soul.) The elf glanced up when Algernon entered her room, then started a bit and reactively stood up.
“Oh, you’re back.”
Algernon pretty much ignored the feeling that Cherry wasn’t entirely overjoyed by this fact. Perhaps even still a little nervous about the idea.
“Right, so, um, I pretty much just wanted to come over so I could get you to tell me a little more about what’s going on here, but, well, I guess I should tell you something first if you haven’t heard?”
“What?”
“So you told me about some bugs that I was supposed to look out for and it turned out that there are some bugs that killed some people from where I just came from and I think they’re the same bugs you were talking about and I just told everybody outside about it because, you know, they’re deadly, so they’re trying to figure out what to do and since you’re pretty much the only one who knows anything about them, I mean maybe I used to know something about them once but I don’t, in any case, you probably could help out, maybe? Because, uh, I don’t think anybody wants to die by bugs.”
Cherry took a moment to digest the ridiculously long blather. Once she did, though, she couldn’t help but feel some sort of horrible foreboding feeling set up shop in her stomach and sell butterfly ice-cream to the locals. “I can’t,” she said.
The look Algernon gave her was somewhat accusatory, but only somewhat because it just wasn’t in the bumbling soft-head to give such a look. Mostly, his look spoke ‘childishly bewildered.’ “But, um, there’s probably going to be…panicking? And maybe people dying.”
The easiest thing to say was that she actually really didn’t know much about Ouroborous and the only encounter she had with them was quickly solved by throwing fire. Actually, the easiest thing to say would be that any encounter with them would be quickly solved by throwing fire. There had to be someone around who had some sort of fire power. Hell, she could throw fire around if people were angry enough. The things probably had other buggy weaknesses like smoke and fly swatters or something.
But somehow, sheer reluctance and denial and optimism won out, which was why she said the completely moronic sentence of: “Maybe they won’t come here?”
It didn’t really take long for that to be proven wrong, just like how every other hopeful sentences are ironically stomped on until their jelly filling covers irony’s shoes.
It was a shame he had to go and dirty up his new fancy-shmancy clothes again, although he had to say that he was not all that surprised, not to mention that spending most of his life in the same filthy clothes kind of made him rather used to dirt and dry muck clinging to his frame. He still felt disgusting as he squelched his way down towards the destination that he had intended to reach four or five days ago.
He was rather thankful that he still remembered what he was doing here in the first place even though the rest of the previous days were all a blur in the corner of a sad, pile of hangovers that occupied his mind and wow that was a confused metaphor. The point was, he had to warn people/see if he was too late to warn people. Which also doubled as an excuse to, um, um, to see that person, yeah, Cherry something. Right. (Phew, it would have been embarrassing if he had forgotten what he was really doing here in the first place.)
Algernon’s mind wandered fruitlessly, mostly trying not to think about all the swamp muck in his ears. He thought about how he had been missing for a while and how anybody’d react and was slightly depressed to find that, really, nobody could be said to care about him enough to be tormentuously crippled because he had disappeared from their life. Even the group of adventurers had been rather nonchalant about finding him, unconscious and alive. Well, if there existed a person back in Kerosene that legitimately cared, then at least their minds would be soothed when news of his survival meandered its way back.
Why name a town ‘Kerosene?’ It seemed like poor foreshadowing in a mediocre book. It was like naming your child ‘Easily Cut With A Sharp Implement.’
Maybe he should watch out for arsonists.
Actually, with the boardwalk out, it wasn’t likely he would be going back any time soon. It wasn’t like he wanted to go deep-swamp scuba-diving a second time. And Kerosene had the unfortunate deficiency of People Who Actually Knew What the Hell Happened to Him the Past Few Days. (There were those researcher folks, but they didn’t really seem to know much at all. Hey, actually, how were they doing now? Probably pretty good.) Folks were nice there, but not helpful with jogging his memory. Or, rather, filling holes in his memory with rubber cement. Or something.
…And that was pretty much how Algernon’s boring thoughts went like for the remaining walk. He entered the town, dirty but triumphant and bearing the smell of swamp and adventure (which smells like swamp in this case).
The first thing he did was ask where he could find Cherry at this time of day. The second thing he did was find a new person to talk to so that it didn’t seem that he had his priorities mixed up when he then informed the town of the dangers of the mysterious monster bug swarm thing.
As the news spread and inhabitants discussed by way of worried murmuring and gossip and sometimes fisticuffs, Algernon continued to squelch his way around in order to find the elf.
Cherry had apparently found herself a place to sleep and, over the course of half a week, had gained a reputation as an astonishingly good therapist. (No, no, she wasn’t manipulating people, that’s not at all what Cherry did, she was just making people happy and using her powers in a constructive manner, people don’t like being sad and she could make all that go away for a while, so it would actually be crueler to leave them to stew over their sadness, right? Right? And it wasn’t her fault that people now kept going to her and talking about their problems ever since she “talked” a guy out of suicide that one time, crazy bas—the poor unfortunate soul.) The elf glanced up when Algernon entered her room, then started a bit and reactively stood up.
“Oh, you’re back.”
Algernon pretty much ignored the feeling that Cherry wasn’t entirely overjoyed by this fact. Perhaps even still a little nervous about the idea.
“Right, so, um, I pretty much just wanted to come over so I could get you to tell me a little more about what’s going on here, but, well, I guess I should tell you something first if you haven’t heard?”
“What?”
“So you told me about some bugs that I was supposed to look out for and it turned out that there are some bugs that killed some people from where I just came from and I think they’re the same bugs you were talking about and I just told everybody outside about it because, you know, they’re deadly, so they’re trying to figure out what to do and since you’re pretty much the only one who knows anything about them, I mean maybe I used to know something about them once but I don’t, in any case, you probably could help out, maybe? Because, uh, I don’t think anybody wants to die by bugs.”
Cherry took a moment to digest the ridiculously long blather. Once she did, though, she couldn’t help but feel some sort of horrible foreboding feeling set up shop in her stomach and sell butterfly ice-cream to the locals. “I can’t,” she said.
The look Algernon gave her was somewhat accusatory, but only somewhat because it just wasn’t in the bumbling soft-head to give such a look. Mostly, his look spoke ‘childishly bewildered.’ “But, um, there’s probably going to be…panicking? And maybe people dying.”
The easiest thing to say was that she actually really didn’t know much about Ouroborous and the only encounter she had with them was quickly solved by throwing fire. Actually, the easiest thing to say would be that any encounter with them would be quickly solved by throwing fire. There had to be someone around who had some sort of fire power. Hell, she could throw fire around if people were angry enough. The things probably had other buggy weaknesses like smoke and fly swatters or something.
But somehow, sheer reluctance and denial and optimism won out, which was why she said the completely moronic sentence of: “Maybe they won’t come here?”
It didn’t really take long for that to be proven wrong, just like how every other hopeful sentences are ironically stomped on until their jelly filling covers irony’s shoes.