offkey - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

chavos · 11-17-2003, 08:49 PM

a draft of a story i'm working on...a warning that it is fairly disturbing and violent. i'm looking for ways to expand the story, or ways in which it needs to change to make sense. my apologies for the formatting, but i don't have a good server to host from.

The piano sailed towards the ground, picking up speed until it hit the young man standing beneath it. Bob sighed, and drew his finger back from the big red button in the center of his work station. Better to get the first one of the day over quickly.

He excused himself from his desk, giving a gesture to his co-workers to indicate if they wanted coffee. No response, so he simply got one cup. Adding several sugars and almost a tablespoon of Coffee Mate, he began to sip through the stir stick, a practice which he could not quit. He was sure it made him look awful and uncouth, but they never had real straws for coffee, and he was the kind of man that really enjoyed a good straw.

He got back to his desk, his screen still reading “Acquiring Target.” Good, he had a few moments more to rest before he had to get the next one. He turned to Tim, who he had worked with for several years.

“So what’s with all the guys hard hats, and the dust?”

“Not sure,” said Tim. “I’m guessing it’s a remodel. About time we got better desks. And hey, maybe we’ll get new chairs out of it too.”

Tim was an optimist, at least more of one than Bob, who had returned to sipping his coffee through the stir stick. A beep came through his headset, and his attention snapped back to the computer screen. “Target Acquired.” It was a grandmother crossing the street in Kieljud, Holland according to the read out. Her blue grey hair stood out in the sun, and she made her way into the alley where the movers were working. The deep brown piano, was of course, in mid-air suspended by a thin line. Bob thought to himself that people could be so damn reckless.

God…when would these people ever learn? You can’t be too sure about how you move a piano! I mean, for Chrissakes, it’s a friggen piano! You have any idea how much it weighs?

In fact, it was a mere four hundred and sixty three pounds, which Bob learned with a quick glance to his operations display. But at a height of seventeen feet off the road, that was more than enough. The digitized monitor reported this, as well as the final estimated velocity upon contacting the five foot tall woman, just shy of fifteen feet per second. All of that math was necessary on some level, but not to operate the system. Bob simply watched the light on the side of the monitor turn to red as she neared the shadow. He rolled his eyes and slapped the button. He could just pick out the whistle of the piano as it accelerated, then the crash of wood, and eerie chords of the snapping strings. Each steel strand let out a final note, distorted by the destruction of the frame.

“They never do learn how to properly move pianos, do they?”

It was rhetorical, but Tim answered: “No…I guess not.”

“I mean, how many friggen piano accidents will it take?”

“Dunno. It’s a damn cliché now…”

Both men trailed off and returned to watching their screens. “Acquiring Target” was the read out, as the viewfinder skipped around towns and villages, looking for aerial pianos, and the people walking under them. The beep came faster than Bob expected. This time it was a little girl, an only child in New York. She was walking down Park Avenue in the early morning, probably on her way to school. Shit. He hated taking out kids.

Her blond hair was done up in to short pigtails, to keep it off of her pink sweatshirt and the little plasticized backpack in an almost neon purple. She was skipping down the sidewalk. To add wings or a halo would have been to utterly redundant. Still some ways out from the 10th story apartment where the stairs were too narrow to bring in an antique Steinway grand, she had a smile that was radiant and beaming.

“Fuck.” Bob spat out his anger. “Why do I always get the fucking kids?”

“Just calm down. It’ll go easier if you just relax, and just press the button when it says to…you know this.” Tim voice was measured, exuding practicality as he continued. “I know it’s hard to get the kids, but a target is a target, right?”

“She’s fucking six years old!” Bob did not want to be calm, or practical. He was angry that he was going to have to take out a kid. And he was angry that he seemed to get more than his fair share of them. Tim almost always got middle-aged bankers. Sue got a lot of insurance salesmen. And Robbie had a streak of over bearing soccer moms. And Bob, Bob got kids. On the way to school, near playgrounds or an maybe the ice cream parlor. That, and beneath a suspended piano.

“C’mon. Get yourself together…you’ll miss your shot if you wait much longer.” Tim was speaking more urgently. He fished in to his pocket and drew out a joint, offering it to Bob. “Take a quick drag, and you’ll be alright.” A lighter was also produced from Tim’s pocket.

“Shit man! Where did you get this?” Bob had not seen such a prize in a long time. Weed was not easy to come by, and a possible source was well worth knowing.

“Jones, up a few floors in Haunting and Possessions. He’s gotten a bunch of assignments for dorms and rental housing. Guess he just lifts it from ‘em when he’s not scaring the shit out of them. One of the fringe benefits of being an Intangible.”

“He floats through walls. How the hell does he pick it up?”

Tim thought for a moment. “I dunno. But it’s good shit. Here, take it.”

Bob did. Fumbling with the lighter for a moment, he got it lit, and took a sweet drag. The girl seemed to be moving more slowly as he waited, almost motionless in the shadow of the nearly half ton piano above her. His fingers rested on the button, then flinched away from it. Time seemed to crawl even slower in the frame in front of him. Tim was taking out a forty year old father of two beneath a Kawai upright in Dubuque, Iowa, and picking his teeth with a paper clip.

“Disgusting,” thought Bob.

The girl’s face was stuck in a freeze frame, poorly lit in the canyon of the street, and distorted by the slow passing of time. She did not look so angelic now. There was perhaps a hint of a gargoyle in her countenance, the smile looking strangely inhuman with out any movement in it. With everything static, the beauty was simply gone. Bob didn’t feel so sorry for her looking like that. The computer screamed in bright red letters: “OPTIMAL RELEASE TIME!”

Bob’s looked at her face, and argued with himself. Who the hell is she to walk under a piano. I mean, now I have to feel bad about dropping the damn thing, and she’s the one who could have just looked up and crossed the street. Damn. Like she couldn’t have just walked by a few minutes later…would it have been that much trouble if she wasn’t perfectly on time one day? And that smile. What the hell was she so happy about? She was about to get smacked with a fucking piano and she was smiling from ear to ear, looking hideously grotesque just stopped in mid grin. All right, you little bitch. You asked for it.

Bob slapped the gleaming read button, and began to turn away from what was about to occur. But the piano hurtled down to the street almost instantly. There was a fine red mist in the air, and a few specks of off white bone could be seen the viewfinder. Whether they had come from the keys of the piano or the body of the girl, Bob did not know. Bob’s heart nearly skipped a beat as his eyes registered what was being shown, and cortisol and adrenaline began to flow in to his blood a moment later in response. The combination of these things made his breath fast and shallow.

“SHIT!” Bob had not expected to see this. Next to the main screen showing the haze of blood and dust hanging over the wreckage of a priceless piano and of a human being, there was a diagram of the piano, with a bright red dot in the center where the point of impact was. Or in other words, where the lethally heavy piece of wood and steel had crumpled the little girls’ skull in to the rest of her body, and crushed the rest in to the pavement. After a few more seconds, the last of the debris came to a rest. Bob had never seen a body in so many pieces before, despite having dropped pianos for some time.

Bob’s bile rose, and his stomach surged against the base of this jaw. He dashed his hand in to his drawer, pulling out a paper bag of the kind found on airlines, with the plain black type: “Smitings: Piano Division.” He filled it.

“Easy man…you did alright.” It was Tim. The joint was back in Bob’s mouth, and the smoke slipped out around his lips that could barely hold on to it. “I know it’s not easy.”

“Fuck. That was a fucking kid. Christ…”

“Easy with the C word….” Tim’s eyes went to either side of the hallway, discerning who might be listening, before he leaned in to whisper. “Don’t want to piss of the big guy, right?”

Bob wasn’t sure why using Christ’s name would bother his boss. Bob wasn’t sure who his boss ultimately was. All he could see was the bureaucracy. “It’s gotta be hell,” he stated.

“Nah. Not hot enough.” Tim paused for a moment. “I mean, who are we to say that these schmucks don’t have it coming to them. They might be horrible people for all we know.” He was pretty sure, and it was the prevailing opinion around the office. He continued: “And hey…I hear there is a batch of new recruits coming in. Maybe you’ll get replaced, get a new assignment.”

Bob hoped for this. Perhaps the workers we making a new part of the office, and he could get a job there and do something else for a change. He hated taking out kids. He hated the taste of coffee as it came back up his throat. Bob spat uselessly a few times, but he could not keep the joint away from his mouth that long. If a target came up, he simply dispensed with it as soon as the computer calculated proper release time. Releasing his eyes from focus, he concentrated his being on the smooth smoke of the joint. His lips moved around it in a soft kiss on the thin paper. His tongue steadied it at the proper angle as he nursed the calm out of it with the rhythm of his breath.
There was a clock on the wall above the water cooler, but Bob did not look at it until his computer displayed “OPTIMAL DEPARTURE TIME!” The clock confirmed this. It was five. After thanking Tim for the joint, Bob listened as his friend said a few things meant to be uplifting. Bob told him that they would see each other tomorrow, and Tim agreed. On the way out, Bob looked once more at the construction, and resolved to find out what was going in next to them. Looking down the hall to the left and then to the right, and once more to the left, Bob pushed open the worker’s entrance in the plywood wall. Looking inside, Bob’s hand shot up, just touching his lips. He longed for the joint and its comfort in his mouth.

There were desks. Rows of desks, with display screens bolted in to them, with a red button below. Knowing better than to look further, but doing so just the same, he went to one of the desks. In the drawer was a solitary item, a paper bag of the kind most commonly found on airplanes. It had plain black print: “Smitings: Piano Division.” Bob filled it, and crumpled to the thin carpet below him. He hated taking out kids. He hated the taste of the coffee as it came back up to his mouth.

J.R.V.A. · 11-18-2003, 04:44 AM

Bravo bravo, this is petty damn good. Thanks for sharing it

vonstalhein · 11-18-2003, 10:29 AM

thats a brilliant concept, really original and with a very morbid hilarity about it. I wish i'd thought of that. Planning on writing more?

chavos · 11-22-2003, 09:44 AM

yeppers...i need to expand it once or twice more for class. i'm thinking of following him home from this, but i'm not sure where the conflict will go....

utlimately, i want the focus to be on this moment of choice, where bob doesn't know if he can cease from doing evil, but doesn't try not to do evil.

vonstalhein · 11-23-2003, 01:43 AM

go for it man, it's too good a concept to waste. Keep up the morbid hilarity part if you write more please!

11-17-2003, 08:49 PM	#1 (permalink)
chavos Banned Location: St. Paul, MN	offkey a draft of a story i'm working on...a warning that it is fairly disturbing and violent. i'm looking for ways to expand the story, or ways in which it needs to change to make sense. my apologies for the formatting, but i don't have a good server to host from. The piano sailed towards the ground, picking up speed until it hit the young man standing beneath it. Bob sighed, and drew his finger back from the big red button in the center of his work station. Better to get the first one of the day over quickly. He excused himself from his desk, giving a gesture to his co-workers to indicate if they wanted coffee. No response, so he simply got one cup. Adding several sugars and almost a tablespoon of Coffee Mate, he began to sip through the stir stick, a practice which he could not quit. He was sure it made him look awful and uncouth, but they never had real straws for coffee, and he was the kind of man that really enjoyed a good straw. He got back to his desk, his screen still reading “Acquiring Target.” Good, he had a few moments more to rest before he had to get the next one. He turned to Tim, who he had worked with for several years. “So what’s with all the guys hard hats, and the dust?” “Not sure,” said Tim. “I’m guessing it’s a remodel. About time we got better desks. And hey, maybe we’ll get new chairs out of it too.” Tim was an optimist, at least more of one than Bob, who had returned to sipping his coffee through the stir stick. A beep came through his headset, and his attention snapped back to the computer screen. “Target Acquired.” It was a grandmother crossing the street in Kieljud, Holland according to the read out. Her blue grey hair stood out in the sun, and she made her way into the alley where the movers were working. The deep brown piano, was of course, in mid-air suspended by a thin line. Bob thought to himself that people could be so damn reckless. God…when would these people ever learn? You can’t be too sure about how you move a piano! I mean, for Chrissakes, it’s a friggen piano! You have any idea how much it weighs? In fact, it was a mere four hundred and sixty three pounds, which Bob learned with a quick glance to his operations display. But at a height of seventeen feet off the road, that was more than enough. The digitized monitor reported this, as well as the final estimated velocity upon contacting the five foot tall woman, just shy of fifteen feet per second. All of that math was necessary on some level, but not to operate the system. Bob simply watched the light on the side of the monitor turn to red as she neared the shadow. He rolled his eyes and slapped the button. He could just pick out the whistle of the piano as it accelerated, then the crash of wood, and eerie chords of the snapping strings. Each steel strand let out a final note, distorted by the destruction of the frame. “They never do learn how to properly move pianos, do they?” It was rhetorical, but Tim answered: “No…I guess not.” “I mean, how many friggen piano accidents will it take?” “Dunno. It’s a damn cliché now…” Both men trailed off and returned to watching their screens. “Acquiring Target” was the read out, as the viewfinder skipped around towns and villages, looking for aerial pianos, and the people walking under them. The beep came faster than Bob expected. This time it was a little girl, an only child in New York. She was walking down Park Avenue in the early morning, probably on her way to school. Shit. He hated taking out kids. Her blond hair was done up in to short pigtails, to keep it off of her pink sweatshirt and the little plasticized backpack in an almost neon purple. She was skipping down the sidewalk. To add wings or a halo would have been to utterly redundant. Still some ways out from the 10th story apartment where the stairs were too narrow to bring in an antique Steinway grand, she had a smile that was radiant and beaming. “Fuck.” Bob spat out his anger. “Why do I always get the fucking kids?” “Just calm down. It’ll go easier if you just relax, and just press the button when it says to…you know this.” Tim voice was measured, exuding practicality as he continued. “I know it’s hard to get the kids, but a target is a target, right?” “She’s fucking six years old!” Bob did not want to be calm, or practical. He was angry that he was going to have to take out a kid. And he was angry that he seemed to get more than his fair share of them. Tim almost always got middle-aged bankers. Sue got a lot of insurance salesmen. And Robbie had a streak of over bearing soccer moms. And Bob, Bob got kids. On the way to school, near playgrounds or an maybe the ice cream parlor. That, and beneath a suspended piano. “C’mon. Get yourself together…you’ll miss your shot if you wait much longer.” Tim was speaking more urgently. He fished in to his pocket and drew out a joint, offering it to Bob. “Take a quick drag, and you’ll be alright.” A lighter was also produced from Tim’s pocket. “Shit man! Where did you get this?” Bob had not seen such a prize in a long time. Weed was not easy to come by, and a possible source was well worth knowing. “Jones, up a few floors in Haunting and Possessions. He’s gotten a bunch of assignments for dorms and rental housing. Guess he just lifts it from ‘em when he’s not scaring the shit out of them. One of the fringe benefits of being an Intangible.” “He floats through walls. How the hell does he pick it up?” Tim thought for a moment. “I dunno. But it’s good shit. Here, take it.” Bob did. Fumbling with the lighter for a moment, he got it lit, and took a sweet drag. The girl seemed to be moving more slowly as he waited, almost motionless in the shadow of the nearly half ton piano above her. His fingers rested on the button, then flinched away from it. Time seemed to crawl even slower in the frame in front of him. Tim was taking out a forty year old father of two beneath a Kawai upright in Dubuque, Iowa, and picking his teeth with a paper clip. “Disgusting,” thought Bob. The girl’s face was stuck in a freeze frame, poorly lit in the canyon of the street, and distorted by the slow passing of time. She did not look so angelic now. There was perhaps a hint of a gargoyle in her countenance, the smile looking strangely inhuman with out any movement in it. With everything static, the beauty was simply gone. Bob didn’t feel so sorry for her looking like that. The computer screamed in bright red letters: “OPTIMAL RELEASE TIME!” Bob’s looked at her face, and argued with himself. Who the hell is she to walk under a piano. I mean, now I have to feel bad about dropping the damn thing, and she’s the one who could have just looked up and crossed the street. Damn. Like she couldn’t have just walked by a few minutes later…would it have been that much trouble if she wasn’t perfectly on time one day? And that smile. What the hell was she so happy about? She was about to get smacked with a fucking piano and she was smiling from ear to ear, looking hideously grotesque just stopped in mid grin. All right, you little bitch. You asked for it. Bob slapped the gleaming read button, and began to turn away from what was about to occur. But the piano hurtled down to the street almost instantly. There was a fine red mist in the air, and a few specks of off white bone could be seen the viewfinder. Whether they had come from the keys of the piano or the body of the girl, Bob did not know. Bob’s heart nearly skipped a beat as his eyes registered what was being shown, and cortisol and adrenaline began to flow in to his blood a moment later in response. The combination of these things made his breath fast and shallow. “SHIT!” Bob had not expected to see this. Next to the main screen showing the haze of blood and dust hanging over the wreckage of a priceless piano and of a human being, there was a diagram of the piano, with a bright red dot in the center where the point of impact was. Or in other words, where the lethally heavy piece of wood and steel had crumpled the little girls’ skull in to the rest of her body, and crushed the rest in to the pavement. After a few more seconds, the last of the debris came to a rest. Bob had never seen a body in so many pieces before, despite having dropped pianos for some time. Bob’s bile rose, and his stomach surged against the base of this jaw. He dashed his hand in to his drawer, pulling out a paper bag of the kind found on airlines, with the plain black type: “Smitings: Piano Division.” He filled it. “Easy man…you did alright.” It was Tim. The joint was back in Bob’s mouth, and the smoke slipped out around his lips that could barely hold on to it. “I know it’s not easy.” “Fuck. That was a fucking kid. Christ…” “Easy with the C word….” Tim’s eyes went to either side of the hallway, discerning who might be listening, before he leaned in to whisper. “Don’t want to piss of the big guy, right?” Bob wasn’t sure why using Christ’s name would bother his boss. Bob wasn’t sure who his boss ultimately was. All he could see was the bureaucracy. “It’s gotta be hell,” he stated. “Nah. Not hot enough.” Tim paused for a moment. “I mean, who are we to say that these schmucks don’t have it coming to them. They might be horrible people for all we know.” He was pretty sure, and it was the prevailing opinion around the office. He continued: “And hey…I hear there is a batch of new recruits coming in. Maybe you’ll get replaced, get a new assignment.” Bob hoped for this. Perhaps the workers we making a new part of the office, and he could get a job there and do something else for a change. He hated taking out kids. He hated the taste of coffee as it came back up his throat. Bob spat uselessly a few times, but he could not keep the joint away from his mouth that long. If a target came up, he simply dispensed with it as soon as the computer calculated proper release time. Releasing his eyes from focus, he concentrated his being on the smooth smoke of the joint. His lips moved around it in a soft kiss on the thin paper. His tongue steadied it at the proper angle as he nursed the calm out of it with the rhythm of his breath. There was a clock on the wall above the water cooler, but Bob did not look at it until his computer displayed “OPTIMAL DEPARTURE TIME!” The clock confirmed this. It was five. After thanking Tim for the joint, Bob listened as his friend said a few things meant to be uplifting. Bob told him that they would see each other tomorrow, and Tim agreed. On the way out, Bob looked once more at the construction, and resolved to find out what was going in next to them. Looking down the hall to the left and then to the right, and once more to the left, Bob pushed open the worker’s entrance in the plywood wall. Looking inside, Bob’s hand shot up, just touching his lips. He longed for the joint and its comfort in his mouth. There were desks. Rows of desks, with display screens bolted in to them, with a red button below. Knowing better than to look further, but doing so just the same, he went to one of the desks. In the drawer was a solitary item, a paper bag of the kind most commonly found on airplanes. It had plain black print: “Smitings: Piano Division.” Bob filled it, and crumpled to the thin carpet below him. He hated taking out kids. He hated the taste of the coffee as it came back up to his mouth.

11-18-2003, 04:44 AM	#2 (permalink)
J.R.V.A. Junkie Location: Utah	Bravo bravo, this is petty damn good. Thanks for sharing it __________________ And as she plays, her sweet song of laughter floats through the air and warms my heart

11-18-2003, 10:29 AM	#3 (permalink)
vonstalhein Insane Location: Where You Live.	thats a brilliant concept, really original and with a very morbid hilarity about it. I wish i'd thought of that. Planning on writing more? __________________ No Win No Fee

11-23-2003, 01:43 AM	#5 (permalink)
vonstalhein Insane Location: Where You Live.	go for it man, it's too good a concept to waste. Keep up the morbid hilarity part if you write more please! __________________ No Win No Fee

11-22-2003, 09:44 AM	#4 (permalink)
chavos Banned Location: St. Paul, MN	yeppers...i need to expand it once or twice more for class. i'm thinking of following him home from this, but i'm not sure where the conflict will go.... utlimately, i want the focus to be on this moment of choice, where bob doesn't know if he can cease from doing evil, but doesn't try not to do evil.