Plan of Action (1064 hits)
Category: UberMadness!Rating: 0.39 on 45 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by UberMadness! (View user info) at 2006-11-21 06:40:17 EST
 |
This post is officially part of UberMadness!. Click here for more information on the rules and restrictions. |
Entry 1
By the time the interstate train arrived, my nerves were shot. It was only about five minutes late, but that was more than enough time to run over every possibility for the plan to go wrong. I tried to tell myself that my sweating palms were a product of the humidity; that hands were shaking in anticipation rather than fear. Self-deception isn't the most productive endeavour in the world.The train rolled on in, late afternoon sun gleaming off the glass and chrome of its surface. I hoisted my backpack, telling myself that all my worries were for nothing. It was the simplest of plans, utterly laughable. Board the train. Locate your seat. Poison the drink of the man next to you. Disembark at your stop and leave nothing behind. Easy, right?
There were only a few other passengers on the platform. The town was too small to warrant much traffic. I took a last glance around and boarded the train. Inside, the train seemed insulated from the warm sunlight, gloomy and divorced from the world outside.
For the most part, you'll find that people are quiet on trains like these. They'll murmur quietly amongst themselves, they listen to headphones, they read, do crosswords, whatever. Some just stare at the landscape; the endless fields unrolling beside the tracks, the cattle, the sheep, ponds, trees, fences, and the odd golf course. The result of this is that I was paid very little attention as I boarded. Excellent; the less attention, the better. A few people raised their heads briefly and gave me disinterested glances. Nobody would remember me.
My ticket was booked under a false name, and I was deliberately sat next to my target. All of this had been arranged by my contact, for an outrageous sum. The money was a mere detail to me. I hadn't been able to afford it straight away, as I pull down a meagre salary, but I had scrimped and saved. Then, for a final fee, he had provided me with my means; the small sachet of poison that felt as though it would burn through my front pocket at any moment.
There he was, my target. That rat fucking bastard. I recognised him from the photos: a man in his late middle age, prematurely grey hair now running wildly towards total whiteout. He was a handsome devil, I'll give him that, one of those lucky pricks whose lines and creases only serve to increase the sense of maturity and stature. He was wearing a grey suit. From what little I knew of that sort of thing, it was expensive. He was one of the staring crowd; he had no book or portable music device, nothing to distract him from the journey but the landscape and his thoughts.
I removed a battered paperback from my backpack, and placed my backpack on the overhead shelf. He glanced up at me, smiled a quick, small smile and then turned his attention back to the scene outside. The train began to move, the platform rolling away behind us. I sat beside him, my heart hammering away in my chest, as the last waving family vanished from sight.
I opened my book. The words blurred together, meaningless, devoid of context. I had no chance of concentrating on the page with the object of my hatred seated calmly next to me.
When I was six years old, my mother went on a business trip north. She was supposed to be back after the weekend. She never came back at all. After she was gone, my dad did his best, but after awhile things got to him down the plant and then he only ever took time out from his drinking to hit me. You learn a lot about people if you live in poverty with them, let me tell you.
Turns out my mother met someone. She never came back because she found another man; ditched me with my father, who turned out to be the kind of man who can't stay the course without letting his anger out occasionally.
"I love the country."
I looked up from the book and to my left. He had spoken. My target. Just opened his mouth and spoke to me, as though he had every right to engage me in conversation, as though I wasn't here to deliver his just reward.
He wasn't looking at me, just staring out his window as the hills sped past.
"Look at that. No pressure out there. Nothing but sky above and horizon ahead."
I forced myself to relax, pushing the tension out of my vocal chords. "I guess," was all I managed, my voice cracking and straining. I swallowed, cleared my throat. "Yeah, I suppose."
He looked at me, and a wry smile lifted one corner of his mouth. I made a concerted effort not to drop my eyes from his friendly gaze, and I just about succeeded. I think I flinched slightly, but he either did not notice, or affected not to.
"Maybe when you get to my age, you'll appreciate what I'm talking about." He chuckled and turned back to the window. "My job carries a lot of pressure, you know. It'd be great to just walk out one day. I keep telling myself, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow." He chuckled again, a hearty, slightly forced sound. There was something forced about the entire speech so far. It seemed as though it was a conversational opener he'd used many times before, so much that he'd got it down pat.
Somehow, in all my plans, all my dreams of how this was to pan out, I didn't think he could talk to me. I didn't want to talk to him, with his expensive suit and economy class seat. A white collar son-of-a-bitch who thought he was "in touch" with the working man.
"Come on," he said. "You're telling me you wouldn't like to just break free and head out one day? Just let loose?"
"Can't...can't say that I have," I told him, managing to keep most of the tension from my voice. I considered that to be a minor miracle.
"Don't you have any dreams?" he asked. "Young lad like you? You don't want to see the world?"
I had dreams; dreams where I had a mother. But I wasn't going to say that to him. He didn't recognise me.
"If I didn't have a wife, I tell you, I'd have flown the coop years ago."
If he didn't have a wife. If he wasn't married to my mother.
"She's something, though," he said, and he chuckled again. I wanted to hate the chuckle, I wanted to hate him, but it possessed some charm in its artificial jocularity. He smiled and continued, "I'll tell you about how we met."
There was nothing I wanted him to tell me, least of all that. I didn't want him talking to me, in his friendly and slightly muddled fashion.
"Are you always this up front with strangers?" I asked.
He laughed then, not his forced chuckle, but an honest laugh. I felt some of my tension ease, some of my animosity fading. Goddamn him, I was warming to him, being swayed by his natural charm. Goddamn him for that.
"Most times, most times," he said. "Can't help myself, really; I love to talk to people." He looked out the window. "Do you not want to hear of my wife?"
I opened my mouth to say no, but I said "Yes." I don't know what drove me. Perhaps I wanted to know. Or maybe, I just didn't want to be rude to an old man, despite my purpose for being there. Yeah, maybe that was it, absurd, to be sure, but human.
The window beyond his face showed the plains, the light in the sky turning red as the sun fell to meet the peaks of the hills. Shadows and red light fell across the lines and hollows of his face.
"I met her at a conference, up north. She was selling something; I can't remember what it was now. She had a trade stand in one of the halls, and I worked for a company who was doing some buying at the show. And that was it. Nothing to it, lad. Talked to her for awhile, went out for dinner that night and never looked back."
He was facing me, but not quite looking me in the eye. Instead, his gaze had drifted slightly above my eyes, at some far-off point in his own past.
"She had some ties to sever back home, you know. Not much. Didn't have a family of her own."
You lying bastard, I thought. Some stepfather you are; you don't even acknowledge my existence. I was fairly certain that they had never had children of their own. How could neither of them wish to claim me?
"Everything was so easy, it all fell into place."
So this was all there was to it? She went north and met a charming, well-dressed man and that was it? That was all it had taken for her to leave us behind; sending my father into a spiral of drunken depression and me into a life of beatings and missed opportunities.
He talked for some time after that, expounding on the joys of travel, and the adventures of his youth. I cannot remember most of it. What I remember is him standing, and climbing past me to go the bathroom. He had a cup of water sitting on his tray. I fumbled the sachet from my pocket, nearly dropping it to the floor. I looked around. Nobody in the carriage was paying me the slightest attention. I tore it open and spilled the tiny amount of white powder into his plastic cup.
It was done. Now there was only waiting. I felt no sense of accomplishment. At least, not yet.
He returned to his seat. The interior lights had come on, and the landscape outside was now invisible. I had stuffed the torn slip of paper into my pocket, and I gave him a lukewarm smile as he settled in his chair.
"So, have you got a girl of your own?" he asked.
I didn't. None would have me long. I had too many "issues," too much baggage to carry around. Sooner or later, it was always see you later, so long, get the fuck outta my house, Joe.
"Sure, sure," I said, "I got a girl. I'm going to meet her when I get off the train." I told myself I was lying to him to establish, to anyone listening, some sort of alibi. I told myself that I wasn't lying to him in order to impress him.
"Ah, that's great," he said. "For all my talk of leaving home, I wouldn't trade her for anything, you know?"
How could I possibly know? I never had a chance to know her. Not like he had.
"All this talk is thirsty work," he proclaimed, and picked up the cup of water and drained it. Just like that; my vengeance, consumed in a heartbeat. My single-minded plan, completed by an offhand comment and a single gulp of water.
He spoke to me some more. About fifteen minutes passed before he first began to have trouble breathing. He attempted clearing his throat. I could have told him not to bother, but I didn't say anything. I just watched him. His eyes began to bulge, and he was clawing at my arm. He would have risen from the seat and run for aid, I could see that, but he didn't have the strength. He wanted me to go to help. I wasn't going to.
Before he could breathe his last, before he could expire in his proletariat, economy class seat, I leaned over and whispered the phrase I had promised myself I would: "You stole my mother, you fuck. You stole my life. Now I've got yours." And then, without precisely meaning to, not even knowing I was going to until I did it, I added, "You should've been my father."
His face was baffled, uncomprehending. He hadn't the faintest idea what I was talking about. He flapped in his seat like a hooked fish. Then he was, finally, still.
I sat, staring at him. Then, the plan took over, and I pushed him backwards until he was resting, in apparent comfort, in his chair. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over him. I steeled myself and closed his eyes. Then I shot a quick look around the train; zero interest from anybody, oblivious.
His body began to grow cool beside me. I waited patiently in my chair, waiting for my stop. Thinking about what he'd said. About how she didn't have a family of her own. How he didn't recognise me, or even consider who I might be. And a possibility surfaced in my mind.
What if my mother had wanted out? What if she knew more about my dad than I ever did in those days? Of course she would. And what if she'd taken the opportunity, no matter the cost? If she'd just seized the first exit that presented itself, without thinking of the consequences; without thinking of me?
What if she'd never told him about me or my father?
The man I'd just killed might never have known about me.
If this is the case, then there's only one way to find out. My mother would be the only one who would know. I'd have to ask her, look her up after all this time. One more if; if she was completely responsible for all of this, she might go the same way as her charming lover.
I disembarked from the train at the appointed stop, and I stood on the darkened road outside the station. I wasn't ready to rest just yet, however.
There might be one more stop to make.
- VS -
Entry 2
Death is swift. One moment you're here, and the next you're gone. The exact moment it happens is near impossible to find.I've been married for a little over six years. We live in a nice neighborhood outside a big city. Good neighbors, great location, beautiful weather - there's nothing else I could want. My wife, Kate, grew up around here and she knew this is where she wanted to live the rest of her life. Her parents moved to Florida a while back, Kate tells me we live four doors away from her old house. So add "no in-laws" to good neighbors and great location.
Kate is a grade school teacher and I work at an office in the city. We see each other every morning, and we both have Saturdays off. We spend as much time together as we can on those days. Starting off with a walk in the mornings, then lunch at Lou's Café, and at night we take in a movie or go out to dinner in the city, or we just spend the night at home. I think I like those the best. We put our pajamas on while it's still light out, cuddle up on the couch and watch TV or listen to a favorite album.
I never thought we would end up in the newspaper on Sunday morning.
The house next to ours had been on sale for about as long as we lived next to it. A pair of newlyweds finally bought the place a couple of weeks ago. We would say hi when we saw each other and aside from his bluntness; we didn't know a whole lot about them. There were some days that we got back from Lou's kind of late and I would see my neighbor getting out of his car wearing a policeman's uniform. And once in a while, I would see the wife playing in the yard with a small boy. Three or Four I would guess. Their only child as far as I knew.
Then one Saturday, she just up and left. We were coming back from our walk and watched her pull out of the driveway with a car full of stuff. Kate went to their house and checked the door. It was unlocked and she told me to follow. I didn't know how it would look, to be trespassing into a cop's house but Kate urged me on. She thought she heard the little boy crying.
We found him sitting in a high chair in the kitchen, crying his little lungs out with a mess of Cheerio's in front of him. Kate quickly picked him up; my thoughts went to the snot and saliva mix that was seeping into her sleeve. She cooed him and started to slightly bob up and down. I guess babies like that because he seemed to calm down. I found a pacifier on a nearby counter and gave it to Kate. The baby had stopped crying already and she told me to rinse it off under warm water. I went to the sink and wondered when she got so good at being a mom. We heard a key go into the lock on the front door and I asked if we should go but Kate said that we were just helping out and he would be grateful. The neighbor heard us talking and came quickly into the room with his gun drawn and screamed something about hands.
I flinched terribly and lost sight of Kate for a moment. When I looked at her, I couldn't help but be amazed. She managed to stay calm and then turned so our neighbor could see his son's face. He seemed to relax and there was a bit of an awkward moment before he asked for his son. Kate obliged with a smile and put him into the officer's hands. I could hear sirens off in the distance. He shifted himself to hold the child more comfortably and then asked where his wife was. I told him about the car full of stuff that she drove off in. He didn't take it too well. Before I knew it, he was pointing the gun at Kate. I jumped again and Kate, her blue eyes wide, reached out for my hand. The sirens were getting louder. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I tried to step between them but he moved the gun so it was right in my face and motioned for me to move back over. He pointed the gun back at Kate. She squeezed my hand. The sirens kept getting louder and a bead of sweat rolled down my neighbor's forehead.
After another awkward moment I asked him why he was threatening Kate. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I pointed to my wife. He started to ramble something about his plan to ditch the cops and go to Mexico with his family. The sirens got even louder now and I looked out the side window and saw flashing lights at the same time I heard someone speak through a megaphone. I'm not sure about the others, but I couldn't understand what he said over the sirens. They must have realized the same because the siren quickly shut off and the megaphone told "Anthony Capelli" to come out peacefully so that no one else needed to get hurt. My neighbor shouted something back about hostages and I realized he was talking about us. Tears were streaming from Kate's eyes.
The megaphone asked Anthony what his plan was. He repeated what he said about Mexico but not loud enough for anyone but Kate and me to hear. They told him that he had already killed or wounded twenty-four people today and that this was it. The house was surrounded and he should give up. I agreed with the megaphone but Anthony said that things would be fine in Mexico. He had started to lose it.
There was shouting coming from outside. The real cops argued over what to do next. One of them shouted about his partner being one of the twenty-four. Someone else's brother was too. The shouting stopped suddenly and there were a series of footsteps on the pavement outside. They were quick and coordinated and then the door flew open and a group of men in riot gear rushed into the house. They screamed at Anthony who was taken completely by surprise. He accidentally squeezed the trigger. I felt Kate's grip on my hand loosen at once and she fell backwards. I quickly turned and saw a small hole in her forehead with a puddle of blood and other things behind it. It was just one unintentional shot. A shot that took all the color of the world with it.
I was kneeling in the blood next to Kate, still holding her hand. By the time I looked up again, my neighbor was in handcuffs and being pulled out the door. The policemen just stood behind me, none of them said anything, they just stood there.
Kate's eyes were still open. I moved a hand to cover them, like they do in the movies. I pulled my hand away but they were still open. Someone touched my shoulder and told me I should get some rest. It was the middle of the day but I agreed and walked back to my house where I headed straight to bed.
I slept straight through the afternoon and woke up the next morning. I reached to put my arm around Kate and everything from the day before came back to me. The phone rang - it was a police officer. He asked if he could come over to give me an update about my neighbor. I asked if he could do it over the phone. He sounded a bit dejected but then told me all about "Anthony Capelli's plan of action" as he called it. I wondered how much time they spent coming up with that title.
He told me my neighbor was a cop, but he was also working with the mafia. An anonymous tip, who they suspected to from a rival group, told them all about Anthony earlier that day but he was gone when they went to arrest him. I started to fade in and out, I just wanted to put this all behind me and let everyone else make a big deal out of it. I knew I was going to miss my wife every day and I wouldn't need anyone's help. The officer on the phone said something about Anthony shooting random people he passed by on his way home to distract the police. How that was supposed to work wasn't clear to me at first, but I guess if a person was shot and someone nearby heard sirens, they might run after the cop for help. Then he told me that he risked coming home so he could get his family and head for Mexico. I cut him off to ask if there was anything else. He sounded offended and didn't answer. He called me ungrateful and hung up.
I opened the newspaper and found the headline screaming Anthony's name. According to the article, he held two people hostage in his neighborhood home before shooting it out with the police. It ended by saying a court date had been set for the end of the month.
Life moved kind of quickly after that. Anthony pled guilty to all charges, making it easy to feel relieved that the trial wouldn't drag on and on. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection and I finally felt I was able to move on with my life.
Someone let my name and story out and after three weeks, I saw myself on the news. Then they told the world that Kate was "brutally murdered" and things suddenly weren't so behind me. The same friends and family I called to tell about Kate started calling me. They all expressed their joy that, "the sick bastard" as one of my cousins called him, was getting what he deserved. It was only after they expressed that joy that they tried to offer me whatever condolences they could muster. And in just about every case, it wasn't much.
I was just about ready to unplug my phone when I got one call from a state number. It was the prison where my neighbor was set to be executed. A young woman invited me to come to the prison and watch the execution on the twenty-fifth. I told her I didn't want to go but she said that wasn't up to her, as far as she could tell, I didn't have a choice. I've never been interested in arguing with someone who wasn't going to change their opinion so I agreed to go.
Kate always did all the grocery shopping and by this point, there was virtually nothing left in the house. I went to Lou's because I knew I could get something good there. While I was waiting in line, the tall man in front of me recognized my face from the news. Not the same report I had seen, but one that had released the names of the people who "get" to go to the execution. He offered me $500 for my seat. I asked him if he knew anyone that was killed and he said no. I asked him not to speak to me. I ordered a ham sandwich from Lou and walked back home.
The light on my answering machine was blinking to tell me that there were twenty messages waiting for a reply. I unplugged the machine, left my sandwich on the table and went into the bed room. It was Saturday. I put my pajamas on, grabbed my sandwich, and went into the living room to watch TV.
The days until the twenty-fifth went by quickly. Suddenly it was the morning of the execution and I was trying to figure out what to wear. I wanted to wear casual clothes so it wouldn't look like I was going to a formal event but all I had in my closet was a pair of khakis and a polo. I threw them on when I realized I was running late. I hurried out to my car and left. I wasn't sure why I was going; I didn't want to see anymore death. When I saw my neighbor's face after he pulled the trigger, I could see the regret in his eyes. He may have shot those other people on purpose, but not Kate. Police reports on the news said his wife had gone to Mexico. And I found out later that their son was going to be put in an orphanage in the city. I'm sure I felt as bad as he did that his plan didn't go the way he wanted.
I pulled into the prison's parking lot and was directed to a spot near the door. I stepped out of the car and stood next to it for a moment. A cool breeze hit me and for a moment I felt like I was on one of my walks with Kate. When I opened my eyes, I saw the prison. I had already watched Kate die, was I really going to do that again here?
One of the guards recognized me and walked out to the car. He told me I could come inside and take my seat.
The room he directed me to was arranged like a mini auditorium. There were five rows of five chairs, each row a small step up from the one in front of it. On the wall the chairs faced was a large window that led into another small room. In it was only one chair that sat on a platform about a foot off the ground.
I was the last person to arrive. I looked around at the faces around me. My guess was they had also lost someone in my neighbor's shooting. Then they brought Anthony into the room in front of us and strapped him into the chair. He kept his head down. I didn't know if I was going to stay but I thought I would have more time to think it over. There wasn't even an announcement. Almost too suddenly, someone was in the room with my neighbor and chemicals were being injected into his body.
I watched his face as the minutes rolled by.
A quarter of an hour passed. None of us moved. He had to be dead by now. I didn't notice it when Kate died because she was here and gone in the matter of a second. But my neighbor didn't go so suddenly. It took time and I still didn't know the exact moment he was gone.
Anthony Capelli, my neighbor, and my wife's killer, was dead. It would be a lie to say it brought me any relief. I knew it wouldn't. Loss doesn't die.
Entry 1:
Amontillado
AsshOly
BLITZKREIG_BOB
Bubba2341
charminglybeef
coley
Coyote
Cracked_out_cali
Crystle
darko
Davros
DrogoRoch
EchoBoxing
FunnyAsCancer
ghola
helbling
Hirilnara
Jack_McCallum
JMG114
joedaddy
JoeyG
kimmy02721
MadameDestrukt
Magicaddict
nrduncan
ripple
sparkle_pink
SPECIALk
Stagger_Lee
The_taste_of_Monkeys
WookieSuave
30 eligible votes (31 total) *
Entry 2:
CaptainThorns
Confuzitron
fuzzy_buzz
JonnyX
lechuza
orph
rad1101
redskieslookfake
Shaun_Rocks
sicosemen
stevie_says
supadupapupa
thecaes
12 eligible votes (13 total) *
* Eligible votes are those made by users who had either (A) posted 3+ messages OR (B) written 100+ [lowered from 750+] reviews as of the beginning of the UberMadness! competition.
User Reviews
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2006-11-24 01:20:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by supadupapupa (user info) at 2006-11-24 00:15:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
freakishly similar... but I just got into #2 more,
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-11-23 18:00:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-11-23 15:15:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-11-23 13:22:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Magicaddict (user info) at 2006-11-23 08:01:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
#1 had something to it - good description, reasonable plot, even if it sounded at first like the killer was being hired by someone else to do it before we realised he working on his own. #2 was very stilted and felt impersonal. Perhaps that was the author's intention, but it didn't sit well with me.
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-11-23 07:41:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
#1 I liked it more than two.
Submitted by ripple (user info) at 2006-11-22 10:52:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
all ubermadness fades to gray after awhile.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-11-22 09:37:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
2 seemed to lack passion. Was this on purpose?
Submitted by helbling (user info) at 2006-11-22 09:06:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Coin-toss decision; both well written, with about equal amounts of ties to the title.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-11-22 07:05:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That dude killed 24 people? In one day? That's insane. That number is WAY too high, Entry #2. Seriously, very unrealistic. Still, the rest of the story was pretty good.
Entry 1, it seemed you didn't know what to do with your character; he was kind of all over the place. I liked the idea of the story, but at the end what could have been a complex and interesting character turns out to be kind of one-dimensional and psycho.
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2006-11-22 03:40:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
"I wondered how much time they spent coming up with that title"
that...was unnecessary, and took me out of the story
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2006-11-22 03:16:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
jocularity?
fuck you.
Submitted by lechuza (user info) at 2006-11-22 00:45:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No comment
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2006-11-22 00:34:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2006-11-21 21:36:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked 1 even though it didn't really go anywhere..
Submitted by Cracked_out_cali (user info) at 2006-11-21 19:54:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Hirilnara (user info) at 2006-11-21 19:22:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
There was something coldly calculating about entry one that I really liked - which probably says more about me than anything else, but oh well...
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:51:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
The best part of both entries were their openings. They certainly made me want to read on.
Entry one's dialogue seemed far too forced, as if the author was crafting dialogue to send the story exactly where he/she wanted it to go. I didn't believe the characters or the motivation.
Entry two seemed very detached. The wife is shot, and the husband seems minimally affected. There was way too much telling and not enough showing in this story.
Tough vote, but I liked entry one's opening better.
Submitted by Confuzitron (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:46:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:20:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Shaun_Rocks (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:04:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:00:58 (#)
Ranking: 0
#2 started off really good, but somehow meandered near the end.
--------------------------
I had the same thought
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-11-21 18:00:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
#2 started off really good, but somehow meandered near the end.
I was convinced #1 was going to be a bore, but I liked it. A lot.
Good job, Author #1.
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-11-21 17:53:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-11-21 17:45:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by stevie_says (user info) at 2006-11-21 17:11:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-11-21 16:54:42 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
#1 was the 'Last Train to Mehsville', as not sung by the Monkees.
#2 wasn't much better.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-11-21 16:40:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by MadameDestrukt (user info) at 2006-11-21 16:19:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I thought both of these were very good. Vengance beat out grief, just because of the mood I'm in, I guess.
Submitted by kimmy02721 (user info) at 2006-11-21 15:14:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2006-11-21 14:37:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
These both seemed a bit rushed.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-11-21 14:16:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-11-21 13:01:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
hard choice
Submitted by Shaun_Rocks (user info) at 2006-11-21 10:48:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
1, I thought it was obvious that the father-in-law didn't know about the mom's other family but you used that realization in your conclusion. Seemed a bit predictable.
2, kind of choppy but some good lines.
Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (user info) at 2006-11-21 10:13:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I want some huuuuumor entries.
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-11-21 10:10:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Neither of these really hooked me.
Entry 1 was a little underdeveloped.
Entry 2 was good in parts and awful in others.
-Dave
Submitted by EchoBoxing (user info) at 2006-11-21 09:28:35 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
i'm trying to vote for the worse one based solely on scrolling past them really fast.
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2006-11-21 09:23:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-11-21 09:08:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-11-21 08:57:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow, both were excellent. Two by a cunny hair.
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2006-11-21 08:27:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by WookieSuave (user info) at 2006-11-21 08:17:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by fuzzy_buzz (user info) at 2006-11-21 07:37:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by The_taste_of_Monkeys (user info) at 2006-11-21 07:09:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Toughie this one, I liked both
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-21 06:50:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Filename for Entry 2 almost won it.