Thread: Passing Strange

This is fantastic...I was interested from the first few lines, I think you're too hard on yourself. I just didn't see this thread before now.

Whew, well there's one fear down the drain. Nina isn't mad.

Yet.

Last night I lay awake for hours with ideas for this story running through my head - I now actually have something approaching a complete idea of what needs to happen, though with plenty of room for improvisation (which is the spice of this story). In fact when I woke up I instantly started thinking about it again, driving any possible dream fragments right into oblivion. But it was worth it - I'm dreaming a very powerful dream now, one involving all of us.

I've never written before about a bunch of people I know (or semi-know). Not only that, but in this case, as soon as I finish a chapter it goes immediately online where the very people I'm writing about can read it. Kinda scary really.

Oh, and I'd just like to add - the lawyers make me do this part (read it in a very fast and very tiny voice):

All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is of course entirely accidental and not at all legally binding on the author.

Now I need to do something I haven't bothered with yet - making pages of notes and something even resembling an outline. Very loose though. Very loose. That's how I work.

Alright I'm caught up now, out with the next chapter!

What he said!

It's a bubblin' and a brewin'. In fact I was just working on my notes.

It's funny how easy the beginning of a story is to write, when everything is wide open and you're still setting up things however they occur to you. But then you hit a point where you have to stop doing that, because you now have loose ends that need to be tied up neatly at story's end, and you can't keep creating new ones. In fact at this point I have to have a good idea what kind of knot I'm going to use before I can even write the next chapter - I think I'll go with Gordian. Only one more major component that needs to be worked up, and a few characters, and then I can launch into the story proper once again.

The thing that kinda sucks is - now that I've worked up most of the idea for the story structure, there are little things I wish I had done differently early on. Oh well, hell, now that my name is blue, I can always go back and do a little creative editing...

Soon. I promise. Tomorrow maybe.

I know exactly what you mean. If I had a dollar for every story I stopped writing because I didn't know how to keep it cohesive, I wouldn't need to write in the first place.

I hadn't read any since the first chapter but I just read the whole thing today. I think it's great. It's especially interesting for DV people to read this because we know what you're referring to. The ED part was funny, and I like how you take people's names or avatars or opinions you have of them and base the character on exaggerated versions of those things. I especially like the SaltySeaDog story that's almost entirely based on his name. And I think I heard him say in a thread once that he loves people easily? I'm not sure about that, I might be thinking of Sloth, but maybe you got that from wherever I did. The whole thing seems very dream-like, like stuff the subconscious would come up with.

I wonder what someone who wasn't a DV member would think of it. They'd miss out on certain meanings, but it might seem even more random and strange to them.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

I like how you take people's names or avatars or opinions you have of them and base the character on exaggerated versions of those things.

*gulp* Remember that? Please?

SIX

This Little Piggie
Went WEEE WEEE WEEE

MaryTheMare: This is so sexist. Nothing but stereotypes. All the men are of 2 types - either brawny or scrawny. And the women are all beautiful sexualized powerful goddess figures. Totally 2-dimensional - no character development at all.

Doreenema: You tell em sister! I was gonna say something myself.

Doreenema: Hey - what the hell??!! Why is my name Doreenema? That sucks! Doreen is an ugly name, and the last part sounds like enema! Who's responsible for this??!! I can't remember what it's really supposed to be, but it's not Doreenema! Something close, but much prettier.


This is like before - when I found myself sitting on my bed watching lines of text appear inexplicably in my notebook. I'm not looking at my notebook now though - it's a computer screen right in front of me - it's the only thing I can see. I don't seem to have a body at all.

MaryTheMare: So you gonna answer me? What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?

I can't tell who these people are talking to

MaryTheMare: I'm talking to you asshole.

Wha.. ?

MaryTheMare: Yeah that's right. You. You're the one writing this, right?

Um...

MaryTheMare: Oh hurrrr de durrrrr! Like you don't know what's going on. Fine - you have your little fantasy.

Um... really? You can hear me? Or maybe my words are appearing on a monitor for you? Hey... you can't blame me for the way this is going! I have no control here... I don't even know what's going on!! All I know is I'm trapped in this - this - damn I can't think of what it's called!! But you know - nothing is quite right here... primal emotions exaggerated... the Amygdala! .... And besides, doesn't the fact that you're in this now change the dynamic a bit?

MaryTheMare: Wait - so what are you saying? That I'm not beautiful or sexy?

Doreenema: I'm contacting an admin. I want my name changed. This one is horrible. Maybe something with Monica - Monica is a pretty name, but it needs something before it, or after it - just a little prefix. Maybe DeMonica. That sounds nice.

Mancow: DeMonica??!! Seriously? You don't see what's wrong with that?

Doreenema: Oh and Mancow is such a great name!

I start to drift back and away from the computer monitor. Slowly, like a half-deflated helium balloon. Up to the ceiling corner of a small apartment. The only light comes from the monitor, which I now see is a notebook computer sitting on a kitchen table, and a large picture window opening onto a 3rd or 4th story view of a frozen snow-covered modern city. The sky is a softly glowing cobalt blue with a faint Aurora visible in the distance. Inside the apartment is completely trashed. Clothing scattered everywhere, bottles and plates piled here and there, signs of the aftermath of some massive celebration that must have happened the night before (I get a sense the cobalt sky is early morning rather than evening). There is no movement or sound in the apartment and I still don't seem to have a body or be able to move under my own power at all, only look at the still image before me and think. I can't even close my eyes! So I begin to study the mess spread before me, and as I do a story begins to emerge. More of a mystery really, story implies that I can understand it...

Most importantly there are 2 figures, both still as statues. One is a small slender man seated on the couch in a slumped bent-backed posture every line of which spells pure depression, his face cradled in his hands and elbows on his thighs. He might be crying. He's wearing Lederhosen. Seated at the kitchen table behind him, at the computer, is an amazingly beautiful woman, tall blonde and busty, and dressed in an Octoberfest Beerhall peasant girl outfit from which her massive cleavage swells provocatively. Her long blonde hair is braided into two thick ropes and atop her head sits a Valkyrie style helmet, slightly askew. There's something very odd about her face - it looks like a mask, A very realistic and detailed mask, but still a mask. Like a silicone face made for a special effects shot in a movie. Or CGI.

Scattered all over the table and onto the floor and furniture I see platters piled high with knackwurst, sauerkraut and German potato salad, crusty breads, half-empty jars of various mustards and relishes, empty and half-empty bottles of German dopplebocks and lagers and a few improbably large and ornately decorated beer steins. There's a stack of CDs beside the stereo that all seem to be German polka music and Wagner operas. And one Kraftwerk cd.

Curiouser and curiouser.


The apartment fades to black for a moment and then a new image forms around me. It's a torture chamber, all stone and timber and guttering smoky torches and I get a sense of deep underground. I still have no body and am unable to move, but this time rather than a still image to be studied it's got movement and sound. Before me stands the Black Queen, and before her an elaborate wrought iron device whose function I'm currently unable to fathom. She's let down her raven tresses and bound them back with a pink scrunchie, and is now wearing a grey t shirt with a Hello Pony logo on the front with baggy grey sweatpants and white sneakers. Like she's ready to get dirty - do some serious cleaning up or painting or something.

She claps her hands sharply twice and in shuffles a pair of huge shaggy orangutans each holding a thick leash, with both leashes attached to O in his pig form between them. They lead him up to the wrought iron device and then wrestle him forcibly up onto it where they hold him spread eagled as Neener fastens the cuffs securing his legs to the device. All 4 of them. Now its strange form makes sense - it was custom designed to secure a spread-eagled pig. O's torso and head are still very close to human size, but his legs of course are much shorter than human arms and legs. Finishing with the straps and buckles Queen Neener steps back and surveys her handiwork. O is laid out on his back spread eagled, but tilted at about a 45 degree angle, and can lift his pig head to look at her. Which he is doing. A half dozen pure white wolves as tall as a man sit in a broad ring around them, long pink tongues hanging from muzzles as long as a man's forearm.

The Black Queen leans forward and places her hands on wrought iron supports on both sides of O's large heavy pig-head so she's staring straight into his face from just a few inches away. He's still wearing the shiny black shades, so she slides them up onto his forehead with gentle caressing hands and looks directly into his beady little pig-eyes.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" She asks, her voice a little too loud, a little too strong. "To be in my bed again? Not the bed you had in mind I'm sure, but I've had this one specially made just for you." She gently touches a finger to his chest, begins to trace a slow wandering line downward.

O's clothing has transformed with him and he's still wearing it - including the Katana, which is a bit smaller than it used to be and has shifted uncomfortably around on his pig-hips so that it hangs between his spread legs and its black cord-wrapped handle is pointing straight up toward the ceiling, making slow little circles as the sword swings slightly from his belt. She leans back and takes a gentle grip on the sword's handle, begins to draw it slowly from its sheath.

"Neener no!" O grunts in a strange strangled pig-English. "You know that wasn't real. It was just a... "

"A what?" Neener says sharply, suddenly drawing the full gleaming length of the Katana with a shnnnng from its sheath and whipping it around to hold its point under his chinny chin chin. "I don't know the word either - but I do know that this - whatever we're in now (a sweeping gesture of her other hand indicates the surrounding torture chamber) is just as unreal. Why shouldn't you suffer punishment here for a crime committed in an equally unreal world?"

She steps back rapidly and slices the air viciously a few times, testing the weight and balance of the sword.

"Neener you know it wasn't real - it was just an adventure. That wasn't really you... "

"Not really me? How do you know? It WAS me, you bastard! You pig! I had the same experience the same night. I read it in your journal just after writing it in mine! It was a shared - experience. I immediately deleted mine because I didn't want you to know - what you had done to me... how you hurt me."

Now O is silent. His mouth hanging open. His heavy pig head falls back weakly against wrought iron. "... shared... ?"

"Yes! Shared! Just like this is shared!" Neener shrieks, turning savagely and slashing the air just in front of his face with a quick careless motion of his own sword. Her mouth sets in a grim line and she steps back, lays the tip of the katana against his chest where a moment ago her finger had traced a gentle loving line. The cold steel blade now follows the same line, wandering slowly downward. It stops when it touches his belt.

"Did you ever stop to think about your adventurings Naughty Knight? All those encounters - both military and amorous. What you did to your opponents? Your blade dripping gore as you wade in deeper and deeper... "

Slowly she thrusts the point of the sword in just above O's belt, into his abdomen. Slowly, inexorably, she drives it in until two feet of shining blade are buried in his midsection. O is sobbing openly now, his head flailing from side to side and tears streaming freely.

"No! I didn't!" O screeches. "I didn't know! I didn't... think..."

"Well think about it now!" Neener hisses, driving the sword deeper with a savage thrust that makes him jump. "I loved you you know. In a way you couldn't understand, you poor brute. Real love. Not this athletic romping, this sexual torture. Your kind of love never touched my heart though - it was only a burning blade stirring my guts. Deep inside. Too deep." She punctuates her words by ripping the katana from side to side, twisting it, jabbing, and stirring furiously as if making angry soup.

"No! Stop!" O pleads.

"What's the matter Naughty Knight? Can't take it? A taste of your own medicine? Spit on your own pigsticker?" The entire time Neener jabbing and twisting and ripping. And O sobbing and shrieking.

"Squeal like a pig!" She hisses at him. "And then die like one."

With that she stops the torment, partially withdraws the blade, and turns it so the sharp side of the blade is pointing upward. She then slices all the way up his abdomen to the ribcage, opening him like a frog on a dissecting table. She pulls the sword out, running red with blood, and hurls it clattering and clanging on the floor across the chamber. Then she does the most horrifying thing - she sinks a hand into the raw gaping wound that is O's belly and wiggles it around a little, slim forearm muscles flexing and releasing as she tries to grip something inside. With her other hand she reaches out behind her and snaps the fingers abruptly a couple of times, at which her Orangutan henchmen spring to action and drag forth another heavy and strange wrought iron device from across the room. This one is a bit less mysterious than the first - it looks somewhat like a spinning wheel. The kind from Rumplestiltskin. They position it a few feet in front of the writhing body of O. Now the Black Queen pulls her hand from O's abdomen, so covered with blood and gore it seems as if she's wearing a crimson glove to the elbow. And gripped in her hand are his entrails - his guts. The large intestines I suppose. It resembles a string of bloody sausage links.

She pulls this sodden rope of knotted entrails forcibly from the yawning wound and touches it against the surface of the wrought iron wheel, which I now see is covered with small wickedly sharp spikes. She now makes a 'spinning' motion with her free hand before one of the orangutan henchmen and he begins to spin a crank on his side of the wheel device, which starts the wheel itself turning slowly. A system of gears and ratchets transfer the crank's movement to the wheel in such a way that as the crank turns rapidly, the wheel itself turns slowly - ponderously. O's entrails catch on some of the spikes and the spinning wheel gradually begins to wrap them around itself, dragging the ropey entrails out slowly from his belly.

O's movements have grown very weak now, his head just resting against the wrought iron frame of his torture bed and his breathing labored and shallow.

Neener steps back and surveys her work with pleasure. She looks down at her clothes - not a drop on them. Her mouth slides to the side in a pretty gesture of satisfaction at a job well done, and she flings off the gore and blood from her forearm. Several of the huge white wolves leap to the spot and start lapping it up hungrily. She then steps close to O and wipes the rest onto his body.

"When you're finished grind his flesh. Prepare for a large feast and invite everyone. We'll serve sausage."

Damn Nina that's cold

...that is all.

Om nom nom nom

^LMAO! So very wrong!

Weird that sausage became a theme in this chapter - in both nREM dream segments. Did not see that coming.


** edit for this is too weird -

I went upstairs to find something to eat and all I could find was some old breakfast sausage in the back of a refrigerator drawer that I cut in half and fried up to make a sandwich. Life imitating art? Time for an RC.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

*gulp* Remember that? Please?

It was funny, and to be honest I'm glad I'm in it at all. After reading the first 5 chapters I'd thought you'd forgotten me.

That was pretty gruesome, unexpectedly so.

Coincidentally I've been having daytime imaginings during walks about shared dreams with people in DV, except I'm usually the protagonist of course, and they usually involve real issues, fighting monsters that represent real problems, etc. Similar to this in ways, and I started that before reading your story. I wish shared dreaming was real.

You actually have a more substantial role coming up later, but it's not till near the end. I mean, as an actual character, not just a name showing up on a message board.

Had some O for breakfast this morning. Not bad, not bad.

Lol just don't eat too much - you might O.D.

'I regret that I have but one body to feed to my hungry fellow DVers.'

And with that O becomes a Christ figure. Where's that red wine?

(Which is weird because didn't I just say on another thread somewhere that I thought O was the second coming of Christ? :O

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

You actually have a more substantial role coming up later, but it's not till near the end. I mean, as an actual character, not just a name showing up on a message board.

Okay, glad to hear that. I didn't want to say anything if there was no plan but I guess I was a bit disappointed at the briefness.

I'm very much looking forward to Zhaylin's inevitable part. I'm sure that will be interesting.

*begins desperately trying once again to write Zhaylin in*

I've tried, but so far Zhaylin hasn't 'taken' as a character. It kinda works like this - certain people on the board are obvious choices, because they're colorful characters already and well-known, or because their name lends itself perfectly to satire, or because they fit some needed role in the story. I try to come up with parts for certain people, but sometimes it just doesn't work. Or sometimes I come up with something fantastic but that might piss them off.

Actually I was a little afraid to write you in, but considering your last post, your role has just become much better. And you just might show up next chapter. I might also have a clue now as to how I can include Zhaylin too.

I'll tell you what though - I'm glad my notes* are very loose for this! I love these little between-chapters posts and the things that happen here, but dammit - they keep changing the whole story!!!

Oh well, it just keeps getting better for it.

* I love this - when I started writing story notes I created a text document that I named Passing Notes. (Get it - the story is called Passing Strange... )

Ok Darkmatters I read it all. Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream.



I can only imagine what you plan on doing with me. Oh, and this should be required reading for all DV members!

Hahaha!! Awesome! So glad you like it - and your part is coming soon, I promise. I think you'll be happy with it.