All For One (1339 hits)
Category: UberMadness!Rating: 0.85 on 65 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by UberMadness! (View user info) at 2006-12-04 20:10:59 EST
 |
This post is officially part of UberMadness!. Click here for more information on the rules and restrictions. |
Entry 1
When Guadalupe Martina Rosa Maria Sanchez-Domingo was born, her mother Lena was clutching a small statue of the Virgin Mary which supposedly wept when Lupe passed through her cervix. Lena believed that this was a sign from Heaven. The doctor and her husband both believed that it was simply something she imagined.Lupe's brown hair was soft and curly, and her hazel eyes even sparkled in complete darkness. As time wore on, she developed quickly, much to the shock of her family. No one spoke of how rapidly she had advanced, and at fourteen months old, she was more intelligent and well spoken than most adults.
It wasn't unusual for Lena to sit up all night watching her sleep, and her husband Renaldo became so concerned that he sought counsel from their church's priest.
"Father," he said in his low voice, "I think that something's wrong with Lena, and I'm scared for her."
Father Martinez cleared his throat and asked, "Is it because of what she believes?"
"Yes, yes it is, Father."
The priest placed both of his hands on Renaldo's shoulders and said, "Have faith and take joy in God's will."
As Renaldo walked home, he wondered what exactly the priest had meant. Was it true? Could it be that Lena was right all along? Strange things had happened, but he refused to believe that his child could be anything other than his sweet little daughter.
The air was heavy as he made his way down the street. He thought of how his daughter had spoken before she was even a month old, how she had taken her first steps before she was three months old, and how she had begun reading and writing before her first birthday. Those thoughts made him sweat even more than the hot summer air had.
Church bells began to ring, and he was reminded of old movies he used to watch at Christmastime. He remembered how completely infatuated he was with the pretty blondes and the snow covered streets. It was so quiet and still that for a moment, he felt as though he was the only living person on Earth. Renaldo stopped walking and just stood there with his eyes closed, feeling the light breeze across the back of his neck and pretending that it was the snow he had seen in the movies.
Suddenly, a little hand was inside his, and when he opened his eyes and looked down, Lupe was standing there.
"Hi Daddy!" she said.
"Lupe? How did you get here?" he asked.
"The bad men came to the house and Mommy told me to crawl out of the window," she said, "But it's all right, though. I sent them away."
"How did you do that?" he asked.
"I'll show you," Lupe said.
When they arrived at the house, Lena was in the middle of the room, kneeling with a rosary in her hand. All of the furniture was pushed up against the walls, and the house smelled faintly of smoke. Every piece of glass in the room was broken, from the windows to Lena's vases.
"Lena, what happened?" Renaldo asked.
Instead of answering him, she began to cry and shout the names of all the saints in Heaven. Fat tears rolled down her tan cheeks while Lupe and Renaldo stood there in silence.
"I didn't mean to scare Mommy," Lupe said.
Renaldo grabbed her arms and said as calmly as he could, "Lupe, I need you to tell me what happened."
"I told you. The bad men came and I sent them away," she answered.
"But how did you make them go away?" he asked.
Lupe looked down at the ground and said in her squeaky little voice, "I sang to them the way the angels taught me to, but I wasn't supposed to do it. They told me I wasn't supposed to do it in front of other people."
Suddenly, Lena stood up and shouted, "Lupe, go to your room!"
Lupe's eyes filled up with tears, then she ran out of the room and up the stairs. Renaldo turned to Lena and said, "What happened?"
Between deep breaths, Lena said, "If you heard the sound that came out of that child.... It was as though demons were crawling out of her mouth."
"She was just talking about singing...is that what she meant?" he asked.
"I don't know. All I know is that those men that were here meant to kill her, and I know if she didn't do whatever it was that she did, the two of us would have been dead," Lena said.
Little Lupe sat at the top of the staircase, listening to everything her parents were saying, but she wasn't afraid. She knew that the angels were going to take care of her, and that no matter what, she would always be safe. On her tiptoes, she made her way down the stairs and stood between her parents, who lifted her up and kissed her and held her. She felt nothing but love.
She didn't understand why that memory popped into her head right before she was about to be interviewed for a job. That was one of the last times she and her parents were all together. About three weeks after they moved away from their hometown, the men came for her again, but instead of killing her, they killed her mother. Not long after that, he father mysteriously died in a freak accident where he worked.
Out of all the gifts she had been given, none of them involved making money grow on trees, turning things into gold with the power of her touch, or turning the cockroaches in her apartment into Cadillacs.
Since every member of her family, both immediate and extended had given their lives so that she could live, Lupe didn't even have anyone in her life. Every last person had died for her because they believed she was the next Savior, the next Messiah, the next Jesus Christ. And there she sat, waiting to be interviewed for a job that probably wouldn't even put a dent in her massive debt.
How far from grace she had fallen.
The only thing she felt was rage. She felt rage at God for allowing her entire family to die in vain. She felt rage towards her family when they refused to believe that she wasn't so special anymore. But, more than anything, she felt rage at herself for not being able to save any of them.
One day, she just lost her power. Those bad men who were chasing her were demons, and the only thing that could drive them away was the song that the angels taught her. It was June and she was staying with her aunt, and they came. When she opened her mouth to sing, the notes fell flat. The angels were there to protect her, but they came too late to save her aunt, who she watched get flayed alive by the demons' vicious tongues.
"Guadalupe Sanchez-Domingo?"
"Yes?" she answered, waking from her reverie.
"Mr. Answini will see you now."
Lupe smoothed her skirt before she walked into his office. She had been to three interviews that week alone and none of them had panned out for her, so she knew she had to make a good impression.
"Hello, Lupe," the stately gentleman said.
She stretched out her hand and placed it in his. His hand was warm and his touch instantly put her at ease.
"Good afternoon, sir," she said.
"No need to be so formal, dear. Take a seat," he said.
When she looked at him, he seemed so familiar. Throughout the entire interview, she couldn't take her eyes off of him. She stumbled over her words, stuttering and saying things she didn't even mean to say because she was so preoccupied with placing the man in her life.
Before she left, she asked, "Do I know you from somewhere?"
He looked at her and said, "I think you should go home, dear."
Without saying a word, she walked out of his office feeling completely dejected. It was dark and cold, and she did want to go home. Her life had been lonely, full of let downs and promises that were made to her but never kept.
She had watched so many people who she loved die. And their lives were lost in vain, because she was not who they thought she was. Lupe was too weak, too scared to ever embrace the great task of being the Savior of the World. Between tears, she told the angel Gabriel that she was not the one He was seeking, and at that moment, Gabriel took all of her gifts. Except for one.
That was seventeen years ago.
Guadalupe Martina Rosa Maria Sanchez-Domingo returned to her apartment, where she got a bucket of clay and her sculpting knife. She then went to the local park, where she sat on a bench, carved ten birds and placed them on the sidewalk.
When they went to her apartment, they would find nothing but cockroaches and some half eaten food in the refrigerator. When they looked through her drawers, they would be empty. Her name wouldn't appear in her landlord's records. She would be erased from any earthly record that once held her name.
And that was exactly what she wanted.
A small crowd had gathered around her, mostly homeless men and prostitutes. One of the women asked, "What the fuck are you doin', lady?"
Lupe said, "I'm getting ready to go home."
They stared at her in disbelief as they watched her scale the church and stand on top of the highest spire. With her arms outstretched, she called out God's name and took her final leap of faith. Right before she hit the ground, the birds became alive and took wing, carrying Lupe towards the heavens.
"The fuck?" one of the men shouted.
They flew past the Milky Way, past the stars and past a million other planets until they arrived at the Gates of Heaven. It was filled with light and shone as though it were encrusted with trillions of tiny diamonds.
"And who are you?" Peter asked as he emerged from the Gate.
"No one important," she said.
"But Miss, you are of flesh and bone!" he exclaimed.
She snapped her fingers and the birds shattered.
And so did he.
The iconoclast, Lupe, was finally home.
- VS -
Entry 2
After months of searching for the woman, I was sure I had finally found her.Thanks to the internet, I had her name, address, and phone number. I gave her a call one Sunday morning and told her who I was. I told her about the file I had found among my father's things, and explained that I had a few questions about it. When she realized who I was she said she would answer my questions, but not over the phone.
We agreed to meet. I arranged a cross-country flight, and two days later I was sitting in Have Beans, an old coffee shop in Albany. In a bag at my feet was a copy of the old police department file my dad had opened on the woman, back when I was a kid.
I watched her cross the street, walking in the careful and delicate way of some older women, moving with the grace of another time. She was wearing a wool cap and a plain cloth coat. It was impossible to believe this woman was a murderer.
She entered the shop and looked from table to table until she saw me and nodded. She came to the table and sat down, certain I was the man she was meeting. People always said I looked like my father. I guess that's how she knew me.
I stood and asked, "Ingrid Lucht?"
She nodded again.
"You are Bill's little boy. A man now."
For a moment I wondered who she was talking about, and then I realized she was referring to my dad. He was Will to his friends and family, Detective William Weil of the Denver PD to everyone else. I'd never heard anyone call him Bill.
I sat down. A waitress came over and I got a coffee. Ingrid ordered a tea.
She took off her cap and a heavy braid fell down, a white rope. Her skin was pale and creased. Her eyes were a dark and stunning blue, like a winter sky at twilight.
"I think you have mistaken me for another."
She didn't have much of an accent after all these years, but she phrased things in a slightly awkward way. She was seventy-seven years old, and she had been away from Germany for over half a century.
She sipped her tea and I didn't really see any point is wasting time. I took the old file out of my bag and put it on the table.
"I want to ask you about this."
She looked at the file, looked at me, and raised her eyebrows.
"It's a file my father started putting together when I was a kid. There was a killing in Denver in the late seventies, a shop-owner had his... he was cut up. The case was never solved. My dad was a good cop. He closed all his cases but this one. He died last year. Cancer"
Her eyes widened, just a little. She looked out the window and watched a young couple walk by, both bundled in heavy coats. They were holding hands.
"I did not know about Bill. I am sorry."
"I went through his papers. I'm a free-lancer for the Post, and I'd planned on doing a book on my dad after he retired a few years back. I ran out of time, and ended up with a lot of questions. Most of them were answered in copies of his old case files. All but this one."
I opened the file and took out some glossy black and white photos. Crime scene photos. The once-white borders of some of the older photographs were now brown and cracked with age. The pictures had been taken across a span of years, from the early fifties to the late seventies. Some of them had identifying stamps from police departments other than Denver.
Ingrid turned her head, just a little, and looked down at the photos I had spread across the table.
I didn't see any disgust or repulsion or horror in those eyes, the dark blue now appearing almost black.
"My dad worked on the last of what he believed might a series of linked murders. The case he had was cold, but after years of digging, in a time when little of this information was in databases and had to be located in warehouses holding old files, he found similar cases and began to believe he had a serial killer on his hands."
I saw her eyes moving, as she looked at faces long-dead, sprawled and mutilated bodies, pools of blood like black ink.
"All of the victims were men," I said.
She looked up at me. I looked at her eyes and thought of blue-black winter ice, thick and as hard as steel. The corners of her mouth curled in the slightest of smiles.
"All of the victims had been cut the same way. There were seven victims in six different cities. The first killing took place in New York City, in December of nineteen fifty-one. The last was in Denver in the spring of seventy-eight."
Ingrid's lips parted and her smile grew wider, brighter. Her eyes were still as dark and cold as a winter night.
"And you suspect me of such heinous acts, Junior Detective Edward Weil?"
She gave her head a little shake as if the very notion were the most ridiculous thing imaginable. She raised her teacup and sipped the steaming liquid, watching me with those dark eyes.
"I also found this in the file."
I took out another photo and set it before her. There was a stamp in one corner. Department of the Army. There was also a date stamp. 17 July, 1945. The black and white photo showed five young women standing against a drab wall of crumbling bricks. There were three brunettes and two blondes. The women were thin and frightened, wearing worn, dirty clothing. On the border of the photo were two words written in faded ink.
Liberated Berliners.
Ingrid set down her cup and looked at the photo.
I tried to imagine her at twenty, or thirty, or even fifty. She would have been stunning. Slender and blonde, with eyes that could almost sear your skin.
"My father had notes on you," I said. "You came to America in 1949. You lived in the vicinity of each city and town where these seven murders took place. You were living in Denver in the spring of seventy-eight when my father was working on the murder of a man named Kurakin."
She reached across the table and touched my cheek with one thin finger. She touched an old scar under my right eye. It was shaped like the Nike swoosh.
"You were nine years old, then," Ingrid said, sitting back in her chair. "Perhaps ten. In your cheek here you had four stitches. You fell playing in the woods and just missed by an inch a branch piercing your eye."
I opened my mouth, but couldn't think of anything to say.
"I saw you once, long ago," she said. "Your mother was away for the day. I knew this. I stopped by. You were in the yard, playing with plastic soldiers. Your father was angry. He asked how I found his home, what I was doing there. I told him I had the experience of many years searching for and finding men. I knew that he was handling the investigation and decided to see him. We sat on your front step and you played and bravely displayed your stitches and I told your father everything. And then I left."
Part of me thought this was bullshit. Part of me searched my memory for that day, drawing a blank.
"Your mother was with friends from her church. Delivering baked goods to the elderly."
That much was true. For years my mom was part of a social group at the local church. She would bake pies and cookies and bread every other Saturday and spend Sundays delivering the stuff to a retirement home. Mom wasn't the most devout Catholic since dad would probably only have entered a church at gunpoint, but she liked the company. She liked doing good.
"Your parents, both of them were good people," Ingrid said. She looked out the window again. "Your father... good men are rare, even now."
I didn't know what to say to that. I felt like we were getting off track, and I was annoyed that I wasn't guiding this interview in the way I had anticipated.
"Are you a good man, Edward?"
I looked into those eyes, the shifting blue depths.
According to the women who were the other half of all my failed relationships, I was... what? Difficult? A bastard at times?
"Sure," I said.
Ingrid gave me that little smile again, as if she knew everything about me.
"Did you come here today seeking a newspaper story you could sell? Materials for a book, perhaps?"
I shrugged. "My dad could have retired with a prefect record if he had been able to close this last case."
She raised one slender hand to the side of her neck, her fingers stroking her heavy white braid.
"In honor of your father and the memory of the kind of man he was, and the kind of man I hope you are... I will tell you the truth."
She reached out and her fingertips grazed the crime scene photos.
"Two of these, they are out of order," she said. She shifted two of the glossy pictures. "The butcher in Allentown was killed before the office manager in Philadelphia. This was in nineteen sixty-three. They were killed only a day apart, but Alexander Sinoyev was found in his office before Gora Prikhodko was discovered in his shop."
When she pronounced the Russian names her accent hardened, the R's rolled and harsh.
She looked at the photos, her fingers settling on the picture of Prikhodko. He was lying on his back, wearing a white shirt and dark pants and a butcher's apron that had been pushed up to cover his face. His shirt was ripped open and his pants and under shorts were pulled down around his knees. There were black gaping wounds in his throat and groin.
"It is so easy," she said quietly. She looked up at me. "It is so easy to get a man to follow you anywhere. To make him drop his trousers. To make him close his eyes. You can look them in the eye and smile and know they do not remember faces, only breasts and buttocks and legs and—"
She reached for her cup and sipped some tea.
I looked at her a long time. She stared back at me in silence.
"You killed seven men."
She shook her head. "Not seven. Thirteen. It began in Europe. Not all of them emigrated to America after the war.
"Jesus."
Ingrid closed her eyes and recited names. "Voronokhin. Poliakoff. Artyukhin. Aksyonov. Lagin. Veller. Korchmar. Sinoyev. Prikhodko. Kotelnikov. Klyuchevsky. Bunimovich. And Kurakin."
The murder of Georgy Kurakin was the only case my father had never closed.
Ingrid looked at me and gave me her little smile. "Kurakin was the last, in Denver. He was the most difficult to find, and I believe that he suspected someone was hunting him by that time... Perhaps he knew his comrades were falling one by one."
"Why?"
Ingrid looked beyond me, her eyes darkening again. "I have, for you, more names. Ermentraude Fromme. Klara Schröder. Liese Stoph. Kinge Saltzman. Ingrid Lucht."
I gave her a questioning look.
She reached forward and grabbed the photo of the five young women standing against the wall. Her eyes flashed a darkening blue, like sapphires under a sliver of moonlit.
"This was us! Five average German girls. We never knew each other until we reported what had happened to us to the American soldiers, in Berlin after the war ended. The Americans were all men. They shuffled their feet and avoided looking us in the eye. They gave us rations and blankets and an address we could report to for lodging and medical care but not one of them asked us how we felt. How we were managing. It was as if they were ashamed of us for what had been done. For what had been done to us. We were treated like lepers."
She opened her purse and too out a pewter cigarette case.
"Ingrid, you can't smoke inside."
"Scheisse," she said.
I gathered the pictures and closed the file and stood up. "I'll go outside with you. I could use one too."
I asked the waitress to hold our table and we went out on the sidewalk. I lit up a Camel.
"Your father smoked Camels," Ingrid said. She lit a slender brown cigarette.
"Yeah," I said. "And they killed him.
"Perhaps you need a less subtle hint, hmm?"
She grinned and the daylight filled her blue eyes and I began to understand what she meant when she said it was easy to get a man to follow you anywhere. Ingrid was strikingly lovely at seventy-seven. She must have been almost unbearably beautiful when she was young.
We inhaled smoke and exhaled great swirling clouds into the cool December air.
"What happened to you and those other girls?"
She turned away, and glanced at me over her shoulder, and for a moment her eyes were haunted and filled with despair. She shook her head and the little half-smile returned. Her eyes were cold and clear.
"I gave you names," she said. "Now let me give to you some numbers. Two million. One hundred and thirty thousand. Ten thousand."
I shook my head, dropping my cigarette butt into an ashtray outside the coffee shop.
"In the last days of the war, the civilians of Berlin were in a living hell." She gave me a wistful smile. "Of course, we brought it upon ourselves, no? We elected a man we thought would save Germany, a man who turned into a monster. Even I thought Hitler was a good man, then. I was very young."
She finished her own cigarette and I held the door for her as we went back inside. After we sat down she spoke in a softer voice.
"People were starving, cold, frightened. The city was a ruin. When we heard that the Americans might be coming, many of us, those of us who were sane, realized the nightmare was almost over. Instead, the Russians came, and we found out the nightmare had only just begun."
I silently signaled our waitress for another coffee and another tea.
"It is estimated that the Russian army raped as many as two million women just after the war. This number is of course based on the surge in abortions performed on women who had previously been in the path of the Red Army as it swept eastward. One hundred and thirty thousand women were raped in Berlin alone. Ten thousand committed suicide. Ten thousand."
I didn't know what to say. I whispered "Christ," and she held up a hand for silence.
The waitress brought our coffee and tea, and when she was gone Ingrid continued talking in a soft voice.
"Mothers and daughters were raped. Pregnant women were raped. Children were raped. Women much older then I am now were raped. It was hell on Earth. I was sixteen years old."
She sipped her tea.
"Some women tried to bargain with groups of soldiers, promising themselves to the strongest if he would keep the others away. I once read that Stalin laughed off reports of these rumored atrocities as 'soldiers having a little fun,' and for the longest time what happened to us was just a rumor. Now it is accepted as fact. Now is too late."
Ingrid closed her eyes.
"Thirteen Russians. Kurakin was the biggest, the strongest, the one in charge. They raped me, one after another, on five different occasions. I had nowhere to go. My family was killed when a bomb dropped by the British or the Americans, who knows, blew our apartment house to rubble. I would try to hide from the men in the ruins of my neighborhood, but always they found me. There were times when I wanted to die, when they left me lying on the ground wearing nothing but tatters of clothing, weeping and bleeding from my..."
Her hands dropped into her lap.
"From both ends," she said.
I looked away, my face turning red at what I was hearing.
Ingrid slammed a fist down on the table, rattling cups and saucers.
"Look at me!"
I turned back to her, and it was then that all of my doubts fell away. I knew those dark eyes in that white face were the last thing the dead Russians had seen before they died.
"I bled from my ears and nose and mouth as well. I never stopped resisting them and they never lacked the energy to beat me. They pissed on me and forced so much vodka down my throat I thought I would drown. I wanted to drown. Instead, I struggled, and they beat me and raped me and left me lying in pools of their semen. It hung in my hair in clots. When I could finally stand up it ran down my thighs like molasses. I swallowed it."
My stomach did a slow roll, and I wondered how anyone could ever get past something like that.
"With every one of them I killed, first in Germany, and then in Paris and Barcelona and Istanbul and Southampton and Montreal and across the United States, with every throat I cut and every no longer hard and triumphant penis and fear-shriveled pair of testicles I cut off I tasted them less and less."
I expected tears from her, but her eyes were dry and bright. My own eyes were burning.
"They would stand over me and talk when they were done. Smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka and laughing. Acting as if I were not even there. That is when I learned their names. Names I never forgot."
She leaned over the table, close to me. "One for All, they would say, again and again. One for All, and then all of them would rape me. And years later, when I was ready, my own cry became All for One. All of them would pay for their sins against me."
Ingrid sat back in her chair and laughed. "I did learn one lesson from the way they used me. I learned that most men are just a prick waiting to bury itself and spurt. So I never had to work. I used what I had been born with to get money from men, or information. Information that helped me track down the rapists and kill them one by one."
In a matter-of-fact tone she said, "Did you know that the only orgasm I ever had was after I killed the first one?"
I looked down at my hands, folded on the table.
"I was covered in blood and standing over a half-naked body and I shuddered and fell to my knees. Afterward, I realized what had happened and I was not proud, but I was not ashamed, either. Perhaps my awareness is what prevented it from ever happening again."
I looked up when she asked, "How many orgasms have you had? How many have you given the women you have been with? I have never been with a man, other than those I killed. This is one of many joys that was denied me forever."
She put on her wool hat, tucking that long white braid out of sight.
"When I was a little girl, I thought life would be wonderful... forever. But those men ruined me. So I killed them."
She took a few dollars from one coat pocket and left them on the table.
"I was never charged with any crimes, never suspected of any wrongdoing, but I got away with nothing. A husband, children, friends... I have had none of those."
She reached across the table and touched my hand.
"Your father never closed the case because he let me walk away after I told him what I told you. There was no big dramatic moment like in the movies when the music swells and everything is set right again. I just walked away, and left him sitting on the step while you played nearby."
Ingrid stood up and straightened her cloth coat.
"Show me there are still good men in the world," she said. "Now that your father is gone. He was the only one who ever heard what I had to tell."
After a moment of silence she whispered, "Not so many women were as lucky as your mother. Goodbye, Edward."
She turned and walked out the door and across the street.
I never saw Ingrid Lucht again.
I sat in the coffee shop for a while after Ingrid left. I was certain I had the basis for one hell of a book. If I handled the material right, I could have a best-seller on my hands. If I could push something like this on Oprah I'd be a goddamned millionaire.
Then I thought of my mom, and of how Ingrid had said my mom was lucky.
I took my dad's file out of my bag and opened it again. When I found the picture of the five young women, I got a pen and wrote their names on the back of the picture. Ermentraude Fromme. Klara Schröder. Liese Stoph. Kinge Saltzman. Ingrid Lucht.
I left the coffee shop and walked a few blocks, smoking a cigarette. I saw an alley and went into it.
In a recessed doorway I used my Zippo to burn my dad's file. I burned everything but the old black and white photo of the five young women. That I would keep. As the rest of the file burned I felt the muscles in my legs twitch. Part of me wanted to stomp out the flames, save the file, and profit from Ingrid's story.
When the file was just ashes and a few unrecognizable fragments of old glossy photo paper, I went back out to the street. Within a few minutes I hailed a cab, and was on my way to the airport.
Entry 1:
CaptainThorns
darko
Doodles
EchoBoxing
ghola
JMG114
Maltese
orph
peckerhead
Pentameter
10 eligible votes (10 total) *
Entry 2:
_God
Amontillado
august_sobriquet
Axolotl
Bubba2341
charminglybeef
Crystle
Davros
domenad
DonovanMD
DrogoRoch
ELG
FunnyAsCancer
Genko
GodChicken
helbling
Hiredugan
Hirilnara
horse87
HotWillie
indoninja
Jack_McCallum
joedaddy
JoeyG
JonnyX
justagirl27
kaos-king
Natsukau
nrduncan
ParlorTrick
PMN
rad1101
richsghostdog
ripple
Sacrilicious
ScarfaceMN
sicosemen
sparkle_pink
SPECIALk
St_Jimmy
Stagger_Lee
stevie_says
supadupapupa
thecaes
TheUniter
TimetoDance
wijormiclat
39 eligible votes (47 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 Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-12-08 18:44:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Puddinger.
Submitted by DudeThatsBOSH (user info) at 2006-12-08 15:49:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
#1 is awesome.. strange it got so few votes.
haven't read #2 yet, it must be really good though.
Submitted by Hirilnara (user info) at 2006-12-08 09:00:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-12-08 04:09:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Damn the competition is good in this round. #2 I liked a lot
Submitted by ParlorTrick (user info) at 2006-12-08 01:22:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
But then I voted for Entry 2. Apparently I really did like that one better (great imagery.)
Submitted by ParlorTrick (user info) at 2006-12-08 01:19:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Both well done. Entry 1 gets it for orignality.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2006-12-07 17:27:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
good job, both of you.
Submitted by richsghostdog (user info) at 2006-12-07 14:42:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome story & plot, extremely well written. Kudos!
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-12-07 13:32:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-12-07 13:20:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Tough, but Entry 2 had enough more to sway me.
I would hazard a guess at McCallum for this one.
-Dave
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2006-12-07 11:40:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-12-07 07:52:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-12-06 07:18:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Also, good use of the title in #2.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-12-06 07:16:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Entry 1, interesting concept, but I wish you had done more with it.
Entry 2, Holy Jesus, man. That story made me feel kind of terrible. You didn't pull any punches. Good job.
Submitted by justagirl27 (user info) at 2006-12-05 23:17:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
1 was good but 2 was very good. definitely kept my interest!
Submitted by Natsukau (user info) at 2006-12-05 19:36:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-12-05 19:20:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Both good - and again, #2 had a better flow for the story - #1 wasn't bad, it just wasn't better at telling the story than #2
Submitted by PMN (user info) at 2006-12-05 18:01:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Wow, entry 2!
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-12-05 16:51:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Entry two was rather passive and didn't hold my interest the way entry one did. Entry one seemed to leave out a lot, but perhaps it's better that way than overkill. Certainly an intriguing, original story.
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-12-05 16:15:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-12-05 14:43:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I'll be like charminglybeef and say "I think #2 is McCallum"
Submitted by EchoBoxing (user info) at 2006-12-05 14:25:35 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
hated both
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-12-05 14:17:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-12-05 13:20:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by helbling (user info) at 2006-12-05 13:09:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hard choice.
Submitted by august_sobriquet (user info) at 2006-12-05 12:58:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-12-05 12:15:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
#2 was phenomenal!
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2006-12-05 11:46:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this is what you call call kicking ass and taking names
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2006-12-05 11:13:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
That's a fucker of a title.
#2 definitely did more for me.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-12-05 10:26:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Both were great...tough decision.
I'll have to go with the surreal spiritual story on this.
Submitted by ripple (user info) at 2006-12-05 09:56:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2006-12-05 08:51:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Both of these were really good with nice twists.
Tough choice for me, but I'm going to go with entry 1. Sadly, whenever anything involving Hitler is concerned, I think of "The Producers," and have a little chuckle. That was really the only thing that "ruined" entry 2 for me.
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2006-12-05 07:50:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2006-12-05 04:15:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Hiredugan (user info) at 2006-12-05 04:05:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2006-12-05 03:13:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by ELG (user info) at 2006-12-05 02:39:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Oh wow both are so good, 2 by just a hair...
and the rape, of course.
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:42:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by domenad (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:37:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I know McCallum when I read him.
Submitted by TimetoDance (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:08:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Brilliant
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:07:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I think I can guess who this was...
Can you?
Submitted by supadupapupa (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:06:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
both of these were really good! I'm sorry one has to lose, but I gotta go with number 2. I felt like 1 was too rushed at the end
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2006-12-05 00:00:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:35:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
boyz II men...lolz
Submitted by ScarfaceMN (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:26:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by _God (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:08:39 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh man....one of the best short stories I have ever read.
Submitted by horse87 (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:06:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:04:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-12-04 22:04:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Both good.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:54:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:54:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I honestly have no idea what happened in #1. Either big ol' chunks of it were missing, or it needed some work on the plot flow.
#2 just made me wonder how many people are going to say stuff like, "My rape slaves bring all the boys to the yard, and they're like, 'rape rape rape rape.'"
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:23:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:20:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:05:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
#1 was odd and a bit ridiculous at times but pretty amusing, and I enjoyed it.
#2 was fucking awesome. I'm so happy to read a good story of vengeance on a subject that is so ridiculously exploited for "comedic value" on this website.
Submitted by peckerhead (user info) at 2006-12-04 21:01:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked both of these... a lot.
Entry 2: a couple of errors which spell-check would or did not find: 1. "...didn't really see any point is <--- should be "in" wasting time.. 2. She opened her purse and too <---- should be "took" out a pewter cigarette case. (These did not factor into my vote.)
Submitted by stevie_says (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:59:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:59:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Both were terribly long.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:46:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fucking - A...
These were both so good.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:43:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:42:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:27:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
there is no way i can vote against you this time you sick fuck
Submitted by wijormiclat (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:25:10 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I didn't read either, but I voted for two because what kind of a fucking name is Guadalupe Martina Rosa Maria Sanchez-Domingo???
Oh and two had a picture of Hitler.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:21:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I didn't like one, and I'm too busy to elaborate.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:20:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2006-12-04 20:20:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment