Thread: 21/4/2011 - LM - Superhero's Night Off

Round Three! In your corners.
The prompt this round, thanks again to Leyline, is:


A Superhero's Night Off

The word limit is 650 words not including the title.
If you go over - Your story will not be counted.

The judges will be:
Mike
TheFuhrer2.0
spider8
Like a Fox


Here is a reminder about our latest rule:

You can no longer edit your entry after posting. There will be a 10 minute grace period, if you want to go in there and edit a typo or something, but really, you should approach this as if you were submitting your work to be published and paid for.
When you submit, that should be your final work, the work you are happy with.

This way our judges can confidently start to read through your entries before the challenge has closed and we can continue to turn these things over in a timely manner. I will spell this out again on the challenge thread.

Oh, and one other previously unwritten rule - One entry per person.


***

There are only two threads you can post your story in:

The LM Workshop Thread ** which is a special thread just for LM entries in the Writer's Workshop. Please do not just create your own thread with your story in it.
You would put your story here if you wish to protect your first rights (in case you want to someday submit the work to a magazine or whatnot).

Or the LM Challenge Thread (Right here)
If you’re not too concerned about your first rights.

** If you have elected to put your entry in the Workshop thread you must copy the link into this thread or else it will not be counted ***

Everyone is welcome to participate.
Judges are welcome to participate but their entries will not receive a score.

Submissions will be accepted until midnight my time (GMT+11), on Monday the 9th of May.


No comments, please - Only competition entries (or links to) to be posted in this thread.

Superheroes' Night Off
Judge Entry - 650 words

Tallahassee Thistledown stood on a rooftop next to a gargoyle statue and was gazing down over the city of Valhalla Under the Crescent Sun when the access door behind her squeaked open. She turned to see her friend, Angelique Adams, step out into the moonlight. It was a Wednesday night. Girls' night out.

"Well met," Angelique said, clasping Tallahassee's extended arm in the fashion of one warrior to another.

"I was worried you weren't going to make it," Tallahassee said.

"Hubby's bitching and moaning about taking care of the kids and trying to play that online game of his."

Tallahassee rolled her eyes. "Husbands," she uttered.

"Yeah," said Angelique. She looked down into the depths of the city. "Anything yet?"

Tallahassee pulled the zipper of her one-piece, skin-tight crimson leather suit down to the exact point of where her bare breasts would pop out if she sneezed hard enough, and then breathed in the cool night air.

"Nothing," she said.

Not to be outdone, Angelique unpinned her platinum blonde hair, letting it cascade halfway down the back of her own skin-tight black suit, and smoothed out the invisible wrinkles in the leather that stretched a very long way down her leg line.

"We shouldn't have had so much fun last week."

"Or too much Vodka. One of those," agreed Tallahassee, brushing a hand through her red hair. "Still, it's hump day," she said philosophically, "and we both know that 'those who aren't humping...'"

"'--are more prone to thumping,'" finished Angelique. She laughed. "What a silly axiom."

"The Mistress was never a good poet, but she did know a thing or two about human nature. It's true, as well," she added. "People are more prone to violence if they aren't getting any action. I know how I get when I haven't had a good root in a week or two."

Angelique nodded, and then looked to the door behind her. "Now where the hell is Naomi?"

"Probably hip deep in--"

"Here I am, wenches!" cried a black-haired woman, leaping out from behind one of the statues.

"Oh god," uttered Angelique, "she's already drunk."

"Nonsense!" said the beautiful woman known as Naomi Nibbles, strutting up to the other two with exaggerated, inebriated grace. Her dark hair and dark skin contrasted severely with the white leather suit that would have blended perfectly into a snowstorm.

"Seriously, Naomi?" said Tallahassee, her eyebrows raising. "White? You might as well be wearing glow in the dark neon pink, with rabbit lights flashing on your shoulders."

"Ooh, good idea," said Naomi. "I'll keep that in mind for next week." She shrugged. "You both know I was never one to lurk in shadows. I like being seen coming."

"That's what he said," said Angelique, causing Naomi to break out into laughter.

"Don't encourage her, Angie," said Tallahassee.

"Hark!" cried Naomi suddenly, wiping away tears and stepping up to the ledge. "Do mine ears hear someone in distress?"

The three women fell silent, listening to the wind.

"The park," confirmed Angelique a moment later.

"Well, ladies," said Naomi, cracking her knuckles. "Let's get this party started!" And with that, she yelled like a banshee booze hag and leapt off the roof into thin air.

Tallahassee sighed, exchanging knowing looks with Angelique, and then the two of them also jumped over the ledge.

The three mysterious and beautiful women, known to the media as TNA, would spend the better part of the night rescuing women from would-be rapists, murderers and thieves. At the end of the night, they would sit at their favorite booth in their favorite pub and drunkenly recount how many assess they kicked without bothering to take names. And then, stumbling back to their homes, where families awaited, where school lunches hadn't been packed for the next day and the bathroom still hadn't been cleaned, they would face a superhero's chore, and reality, once more.

The Gecko


Roll up roll up and witness the ultimate contest, between an almost bursting bladder and the agony of movement.


“Good afternoon,” she said with remorseless cheer.
Oh my beloved Vera, don't open the bedroom curtains, no sunshine, please.
“Well, who had a good time last night, Eh?”
Judging by the unrelieved agony of a hangover, the mouth full of turd flavoured glue, a tongue like a chihuahua with attitude, and a disturbing lack of memory, I did.
“I don't need to ask, all the best bits are on YouTube.”
What?
“It seems one of your arch enemies managed to smuggle a ringer into your lodge meeting, they took lots of interesting video and posted it on the net.”
Dear Zeus no.
“What's worse, when the criminal fraternity saw it they realised they had free reign in the city.”
Wait a minute, “didn't the agency supply cover?” By Zeus I'm croaky.
“Yes, the Cookie Monster, not exactly the best defence we could have hoped for.”
Zeus's teeth.
“Hells Razor and her brother Occam had a wonderful time, no bank was left unrobbed.”
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I croaked. The hydraulic pressure was winning against my super human strength.
“I'm surprised, considering you spent three hours in there when you came home this morning, repetitively moaning 'oh Zeus,' before falling asleep and nearly drowning.”


My wife and confidant wasn't exactly gentle with me, as she helped me into the bathroom. She left me there, propped against the basin. I Couldn't handle the mirror, so I looked at the toilet, and had a flashback. I remember, vaguely, making a call to Zeus on a giant white phone.


A lifetime later I managed to clean myself up, and reduce my pain to millions of internal sadists stabbing my brain and body in time with my pulse, against the odds I was not completely dead.


“Food?”
“Just coffee, please.”
While Vera clattered the mugs and kettle, her back was sending me the 'disapproval signal.'
“I don't understand why you behaved like that.”
Uh oh, “like what?”
“All of you, like stupid school children.”
Come on memory, don't fail me know.
“How did you persuade Bazooka Woman to replace her costume top with two large traffic cones?”
Oh crap.”
“You and the Blue Streak played some kind of drinking game with it.”
The stainless steel cups lined with silk, exuding pheromones captured from her milky white skin turning the vodka into nectar.
“Then you all got a lift on Aladdin’s carpet to Newyork, where Streaky bent over and you lit one of his farts, blowing the toga off the statue of liberty.”
Zeus!
“Finishing up at Gouty Jocks review bar, featuring two young ladies wrestling topless in a paddling pool full of warm custard. I think it was called, 'bring your own spoon night,'
Seriously deep crap.
“We appear to be a desert spoon short.”
I need a snorkel.

“As for how you got home, well you nearly didn't. Ted from two doors down found you in his porch, you'd managed to jam your key in his lock, but being the wrong one it wouldn't turn.”
Ted! The early morning jogger health fascist.
“So it was just another average night off then?”

Date Night
by "The Jaded" (650 words)

Jonathan was a little nervous, as this would be his first date with a woman he had met on a dating website. Pacing outside the restaurant entrance, he wondered if he’d recognize Karen from her online profile. Raven hair, slim, olive skin, nice smile - that’s what the picture looked like. Turning to survey the street for the fourth time, Jonathon again searched for his date.

“Jonathon Hunt?” A feminine voice behind Jonathon made him start. Turning, he saw that the woman that had spoken matched the picture almost exactly. “Sorry to sneak up.” She extended one slim, long-boned hand. “It’s me, Karen Worthing. From online?”

Jonathon smiled and accepted her hand. Her handshake was surprisingly firm, he noticed. “Yes, of course. Shall we head inside and get some dinner?”

“Yes, let’s.”

A few moments later, at the table, Jonathon started conversation. “So, when your profile says that your job is ‘law enforcement,’ what does that mean?”

Karen smiled confidently, as if the question was only to be expected. “I’m a consultant for the police. It’s nothing exciting, though. A desk job.”

“Don’t worry, it’s still more interesting than what I do.” Jonathon assured her.

“Wait, don’t tell me, I know this. You’re in... software, right?”

“That’s right. I’d tell you what I work on, but then you’d get that glass-eyed stare...”

Karen laughed. “Yeah, I think I would. I never did well with computers myself. I used to - ” She broke off, cocking her head to the side like she’d heard something. “Would you excuse me for one minute?” She went from amused smiling to looking a bit tired and annoyed in the span of a second. “I promise, I’ll be right back.”

“Sure.” Jonathon was mildly flustered at her change of attitude.

Karen got up and headed for the restrooms. Jonathon wondered what might be the cause of this interruption.

A scream outside the window broke Jonathon’s train of thought. Turning, he saw a small group of people outside pointing up and across the street. Along with about a third of the restaurant occupants, Jonathon went to the window to see what was the matter.

On the eighth floor of a parking garage across the street, a car teetered precariously in a hole smashed through the thin concrete wall. Jonathon could just make out the form of the driver inside. As he watched, the car tilted slowly down, and he knew that in seconds, it would fall to the street below.

A blue flash obscured the car, and when it cleared there was someone else inside. Jonathon recognized the flash as hallmark of “The Phantom” - the mysterious masked vigilante who always appeared and vanished in a blue burst of light. The Phantom’s weight made the car tip faster, and almost immediately it slid out and fell.

Just before it hit the ground, there was another flash, and Jonathon knew instinctively that it had landed unoccupied. The Phantom had vanished, taking the driver.

Jonathon went back to his table, and a few seconds later Karen reappeared. “Sorry about that.” She pointedly did not ask about the scene still visible across the street, or provide reason for her absence.

Jonathon suspected there was a link there, and prepared to ask about it.

“So how’s the seafood here?” Karen continued, heading him off.

“Er... I can’t say I know.” The interruption gave Jonathon time to consider what he’d been about to ask. If Karen was The Phantom, she wasn’t here to be outed - she was here for a date. Even if she wasn’t, then his asking such a bizarre question would not help his chances of a second date, a second date Jonathon could tell already he wanted.

“I think I’ll try it then. I like to live dangerously.” Karen decided, tucking away a strand of loose hair.

“I’m getting that sense, yes.” Jonathon signaled for the waiter.

Land of Deuville
(564 Words)

It is a trying life being a superhero. Dedicating hour after hour attempting to save the world, trying to conjure up new tactics in order to combat criminals and the evils of our world and, obviously, making time for all the outfits I have to wear!

I am not your traditional superhero. I choose who I want to be at that critical moment.
I am Batman.
I am Spiderman.
I am Superman.
I can even be Tarzan, if it were required.
The criminals I encounter are not the usual either, by any means. I take on the evils of parents, teachers, soldiers and many other revolting creatures. I spend my time securing the village of Deuville and destroying all of its notorious inhabitants.

This lifestyle can become very tiresome, and as a result the League of Obviously Bizarre Superheroes and Friends decides on a single night which all superheroes are relieved of their duties and are allowed to spend their time off behaving like normal humans. Tonight, April 23rd, is that particular evening.

Due to performing my duties religiously for years, it becomes arduous for me to return to normal life. I have attempted playing board games with my family. I had a bubble bath at four o’clock in the afternoon and spent the rest of the evening lounging in my pyjamas. I have watched far too many movies and brought my artistic skills to life on a piece of dull, processed wood. Nothing can keep my desperate yearning to perform my skills, or the memories at bay. One particular flash back haunts me whenever I close my eyes, even to blink.

It was a lifeless day, apart from the blobs of water the sky chose to spit down on my head. I retreated from my dripping attack and found refuge in my home. Within minutes I heard the alarms burning through my town of Deuville. Feeling the ‘webular’ masteries of Spiderman, I flashed into my suit and descended upon my town.

Devastation reigned. Giant creatures, all of a different form and make up, ripped apart the buildings. Behind all this disaster stood their leader: a vicious, pale-skinned cretin with legs that reached higher than our tallest structures. This creature towered above everything and I had no concept of how I was to bring it down.

Upon initializing my attack, I discovered the monster’s weakness – webbing tossed over the feet – this caused great anger and frustration. The beast began to yell and rub furiously to eradicate my webs. Noticing this pattern, I waited until the moment when the monster was bent over trying to erase my marks and I sent a fierce wave of sticky entrapment, trapping it in a giant ball. The creature fell to the ground, tears falling dangerously from its eyes. I had saved my town and brought the monster to justice. Barbie will no longer be a threat to my people, and neither will my sister for that matter. She was very unimpressed to find her plastic doll covered in wood glue.

Being a superhero is a tough position to hold, but being a four year old one is even more complicated. No one understands your desire to rid the world of evil, and parents become frustrated with the trail of destruction left behind in my efforts. One day, when I really do save the world, perhaps they will understand.

Superhero’s Night Off
644 Words

Boris sipped his club soda like a man who was in no hurry. He was 45 minutes early, as always. With the train it was either that or 15 minutes late. The new girl walked in, still in her jeans. She looked like she was trying not to look nervous.

“Here’s trouble.” Boris said. She smiled.

“Boris?” She asked.

“The very one.” She shook his hand like someone had taught her how to. “Have you got a name yet?”

“No, just call me Bethany, my real name.”

“No love, I might get used to it and blurt it out in front of the patrons.”

Bethany looked crestfallen. “I can’t think of a name. I want something... classy y’know? Not like Bambi or anything.”

Boris looked straight at her. She straightened up. Big, clear eyes, a beauty spot and spindly limbs. She had that open way about her that backpackers sometimes have. He wished loudly in his head that she would keep away from drugs.

“How about Belle? It means beautiful in French and it starts with the same letter as your name so it will be easy to remember.”

Bethany lit up. “Bellllllle.” She let her tongue curl around the sound. “Oh Belle? Could you come here please?” She and Boris laughed. “Yes. I’ll be Belle. Thanks Boris. All the girls say how wonderful you are.”

Boris blushed. Imagine that, of all the things that could make you blush in a place like that, for him it was always things the girls said.

It was busy, Fridays always were. Boris caught Belle’s first show. She kept her head up, looked them in the eyes, hid her nerves. He found her after and told her she’d lived up to her name.

One fellow took a particular interest. Boris hadn’t seen him before and he didn’t like the way the man kept looking over to see if Boris was still there. So he made sure he was. He pulled Belle aside quietly at the bar and told her to let him know if the guy did anything out of line. Belle, looking genuinely surprised had said, “oh no, he’s fine. Great tipper.”

Boris wasn’t rostered on Saturday. He had dinner with his daughter at that Italian place she liked. She sparkled and waved her arms around when she spoke of the family she had built. Boris felt relieved every time he saw her happy, saw her clear eyes. There had been a few tough years there, with drugs and opportunistic men, but that was in the past now. She had grown into a proud mother and wife, bringing the best out in her happy-go-lucky husband and their two bright kids.

“So, how are the girls?” she asked.

“Great. Crystal’s little Jamie just started school and Tiffany got back from her trip to Thailand to get her teeth done. They look real good now.”

“Hmmm, any romance on the horizon Dad?”

“Heavens no, when it comes to women I have the power of invisibility, even when I don’t want to. And I only meet the ladies at work love, and they’re all too young and pretty for an ol fella like me.”
“Oh Dad, you’re not even fifty! You might be surprised y’know. I reckon you’d be a catch, a nice, strong gentleman like you with a stable job and all his hair.”

“Ah love, you’re good to me.”

Boris decided to drop into the club for a beer on his way home. Just as he slipped his key into the back entrance he heard a muffled squeak. His body acted before his brain caught up, just like it always did. He bolted around the corner and had the bastard on the ground before any of them knew what was going on. Belle screamed and the man from the night before cursed and tried to struggle free.

A Hero's Study

http://www.writingforums.com/writers...t=#post1429416

Schrodinger's Splat (647 words - strong language)


Night and topography made the city a peaceful, bejewelled thing. From up here the lights hypnotised, became constellations. She stargazed whilst looking down. It was a familiar view.

02:58.

She shook, was nauseas and excited.

The nerves had grown in increments. The first attempt had been an easy, fatalistic thing, bound by ceremony, anniversary.

She had met Thomas at three a.m. on a Sunday morning, post-drinks and pitiful. Her friends, those not completely reduced by alcohol, had magnetised a stag-do, flagging them down like carefree hitchhikers. A crass bonding of ersatz Montagues and Capulets had played out, good-humoured and vulgar.

She'd splintered from them, desperate for quiet and a wall to lean on. A cold sheen prickled her face. She gagged, reflex-swallowed a shot of sick, felt it coming back with interest.

An enquiry cut through the trauma. She looked askance, her face caricatured with drunken sarcasm. How do you fucking think I’m doing? But his wide smile, mocking and sympathetic, so somehow overwhelming it would burn to think of it when he was gone, disarmed her.

A glorious snapshot sealed with ironic clarity within a pissed-up funk, soundtracked to three chimes of Big Ben. He'd rubbed her back and she'd felt better. Returned that incredible smile. Puked on his brogues.

Their time together had been fairytale, his loss a nightmare from which she could see no recovery. Inevitability remained, and the catharsis of gravity.

She had raged at her saviour, struck him when he’d set her down. He had interfered where he had no right to, had violated something sacred.

'You think this stops me? You think I can't wait another year? Fuck you. Fuck you!' That final word ripped from her, bestial, like the final push in a delivery room.

But time corroded resolve. Friends and family didn’t give up, weren’t put off by her insularity. They became stronger for her, obstinate to her attempts to push them away and, with great tact, chiding of her self-pity. Everyday banalities infringed: she paid bills, sold Thomas’s car, completed a tax return.

Worst of all she thought of Quantum Man. The man – though the debate as to his physiology was heated, conspiratorial – who defied science. She’d felt cocooned by him, utterly impervious. She imagined him naked; imagined what superhero sex would be like.

Her guilt was colossal.

She grew determined but that was the problem. She now had to try for this. When she jumped for the second time it was with expectation, and it was met.

They had talked for hours; her mostly, of her motivations, of Thomas, but him a little too. What he was, where he came from. But even he only had theories.

She wondered if she was hogging him, if their conversation was costing people’s lives. Shocked herself by not caring.

As daylight kissed the London skyline he pre-empted her and asked if they could meet again soon. She was overwhelmed, elated, but it was too early.

‘One more year. Please.’ He nodded, understood.

More bills, another tax return. She laughed with her friends. She thought about him more, and the guilt assuaged.

She would jump again and when he saved her she would admit her love for him.

And so here she was, awaiting rebirth, a new beginning.

Big Ben chimed into life.

‘Forgive me, Thomas.'

A deep breath and a trembling smile, and she eased herself from the ledge for a third time. The last time.

**

The two women squealed their laughter as he threw them onto the bed, their champagne scattering.

Tonight had been a fucking blast!

To think he’d fought against the Superhero’s Union to impose a night off per week. How pious he’d been. Even heroes needed a break.

‘Now,’ Quantum Man said, peeling off his reinforced polymer suit with a drunken lack of dexterity. ‘Who needs rescuing first?’

Across town Big Ben struck three times.

Deadly Butter
(641 words)

Deadly Butter, a twenty four year old man who fancied himself a crime-fighting butterfly, had tried to save a classroom of children from evil asbestos. He courageously attacked the fiend, which lurked in the classroom roof, with the largest chainsaw he could find. Unfortunately, following a complaint lodged by the teacher and the traumatised children’s parents, the mayor of Smittings told Deadly to take the night off from his life-saving duties.

*

Deadly paced up and down the hallway of his home, and repeatedly passed a large mirror on the wall. The reflection in the mirror was of a skinny man with a bulb of greasy hair lying atop his head. Dull wings riddled with holes clutched onto his back, and a pair of tangled up antennae were glued to his head.

He was trying to figure out what to do with his free night. There was no one he could ring up, as all of his fellow crime-fighters would be busy saving lives, and Deadly’s old college friends had yet to apologise for calling him a moth. He couldn’t go girlfriend hunting either, as women didn’t understand the charm of being caught in a butterfly net and would often slap Deadly across the face for it.

His thoughts were interrupted by the noise of glass shattering in the kitchen, followed by a loud, shrill shriek. He clasped at his ears. The shrieking stopped before the mirror had the chance to crack. Deadly’s mother came running into the hall.
“Simon!” she screamed, fat cheeks filled red, and hair visibly going greyer than it already was. “I know it’s one of your lot! Bloody twit dressed up as a bee just crashed, head first, through the kitchen window!”
“Courageous Bee’s here? Cool! He didn’t tell me he had the night off too,” said Deadly.
“He crashed through my window!” Deadly’s mother repeated.
“Mum, he’s Courageous Bee, you can’t expect him to know that there’s a panel of glass there!”
“Sorry about breaking the force field thing in the kitchen Mrs B,” said Courageous, walking into the hall, and seemingly unfazed by the shards of glass lodged into his head.
Deadly’s mother glared at Courageous before returning into the kitchen.

“So, why are you here? Did the mayor give you the night off too?” asked Deadly.
“Yeah, I stalked an old lady wearing a massive flower hat earlier. Apparently I frightened her, but it was her own fault for wearing provocative head ware.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Honestly, I think the mayor is purposely trying to get rid of us super heroes for the night. I mean, did you hear about Sneaky Catter? She gave him a permanent order to never crime-fight again, just because he decided to make his cocoon from the Town Hall roof the other day.”
“Eh, he was a moth caterpillar anyway.”
“Well, what about Jet Speed Hopper? He got hit by the mayor’s car yesterday and is stuck in hospital now.”
“Why would she be trying to get rid of us for the night?”
“To execute an evil plot perhaps? It’s worth investigating... and investigating isn’t the same as crime-fighting, so we wouldn’t be disobeying her orders anyway.”

*

It was pitch dark by the time Deadly and Courageous arrived outside the Town Hall. A line of lit torches stood on either side of the path leading to the front door. They walked in and were greeted with more torches, illuminating the corridors.
“Trying to save on electricity?” said Deadly.
“Or ambience for some sort of cult gathering,” said Courageous.
They reached the mayor’s office and Deadly poked his head around the door.
“Do you see anything?” asked Courageous.
Deadly pulled his head back out and quietly shut the door.
“She’s having it off with Randy Fly,” whispered Deadly.
“Oh, so that’s why she didn’t want us around.”

All yours, judges.

(Will anyone believe me if I say I thought today was the 9th?)