=Class= Dialogue stories (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Gaming Community] >> [Legends and Lore] >> Writers of Lore >> [The Bookshelves] >> Collaborations



Message


Eukara Vox -> =Class= Dialogue stories (1/27/2012 2:10:42)

Put your "assignments" here! Remember to link the picture you chose to the top of your story.

Good luck!

=Class= Dialogue stories critique and learning




Mritha -> RE: =Class= Dialogue stories (1/28/2012 11:06:45)

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z157/Eukara_photo/Public/Oldfolkconversation.jpg

“...but once the war was over, I was finally able to settle down with my dear Catherine,” James said as he walked slowly down the sidewalk. A soft chuckle was heard beside him.

“I never did git tired of watching you lovebirds, always staring into each other’s eyes all dreamy like, ain’t no one else in the room as far as you was concerned.”

“Well she was perty!” James said defensively. “Besides, it wasn’t like you-”

Steve held up his hand after seeing a wooden bench leaning against the wall they walked beside. “Hold that though, I gotta-” he paused mid sentence, sitting slowly. “I had to sit. Boy what I wouldn’t give for the old days, back when our energy was as endless as hot cider at the old soda shop.” Steve glanced over at his friend as James sat down next to him, grumbling softly about the leaning bench. “Do ya remember those days?”

“Yea, I do.” James shook his head, laughing to himself. “Remember back when, we used to throw tomatas at Bonny May? She was a prissy one, she was. Always flauntin’ those lacy dresses like she was better than the rest.” James glanced over at his friend, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “You had the sweets for her.”

“Now thats just a bunch of malarkey.” Steve grumbled. The sun was starting to beat down on his face so he pulled his cap down lower over his eyes and pointed a finger at James. “You know darn well that ain’t true. She was a sassy one, I didn't want nothin’ to do with her!”

James threw back his head and laughed. “Then why were you always runnin’ after her, like a little lost puppy dog?”

“I liked makin’ ‘er squeal. Ruinin’ ‘er dresses with the tomatas was the icin’ on the cake.”

“Her bouncing curls had nothing to do with it?”

“Absolutely not!”

Hearing a scratching sound, James looked down. He considered poking more fun at his friend, but decided against it as his eyes followed a small leaf skittering down the sidewalk, blown by the wind. “I wonder what happened to that Bonny May,” he thought out loud.

“She moved to the city while you were at sea, never heard a thing about her since.” James frowned and Steve laid a hand on his friend’s arm. “Whats botherin’ you?”

“Cities. Ain’t nothing good ever coming from them!” Steve nodded silently, knowing what was coming next as he had heard it many times before. Pulling his jacket closer around him, against the cool Autumn wind, he prepared to listen to his friend’s angry rant. “I just don’t understand it, why would he want to go make big money in those crowded cities? Money ain’t everything, I taught him that!”

“Yes you did.”

“I taught him to work the land, sunrise to sunset. Yea we did without a few things, but we never dirt floor poor. That farm has been in our family for generations, but he doesn’t care about that. He never did.”

Steve hated seeing his friend so distraught. He patted James’s arm lightly, then said hopefully. “Maybe he will change, we have seen younguns come home after they had their fill of the city life. Member Robert’s son? He came home after a few years.”

James shook his head. “No, I’ve given up hope for John,” he sighed. “Ya know what he told me last night before he stormed off in that fancy car he’s got?”

“I don’t believe I do.”

“I told him he needed to come home, to learn the workings of the farm so that when I was gone, he would know how to take care of it.” James paused. “John said he wasn’t going to run the farm when I was gone, he said he was gonna sell it so some city folks. Build houses all over it.”

Steve stared at his friend in shock. At a loss for words, the two sat in silence for several minutes. Each watching the day to day happenings of the small town they resided in, but neither paying attention, too lost within their own thoughts. Knowing how dear the farm was to his friend, Steve hesitantly opened his mouth. “I’m... sorry to hear that.”

“So am I Steve,” James said, defeated. “So am I.”




Stray Cat -> RE: =Class= Dialogue stories (1/28/2012 20:44:46)

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z157/Eukara_photo/Public/Railroadconversation.jpg

It was not a terrible pain, but it bothered him all the same.

Tentatively, he rubbed his forearm. It made no difference. The pain struck his whole body: his bones, his muscles, his head, chest, arms and legs all burned with the same mild ache. And there was a ringing in his ears, a curious rattling sound that might have been the rumble of a…train?

The world around him was imprecise, permeated by a thin mist. He was standing in a clearing – that much he knew. As he glanced about, though, the details grew more and more distinct. A forest parted around him, its trees standing sentinel to either of his sides. The sky above him was overcast, hazed in silver, and beneath his feet, the stones of a railroad track prodded his soles and feet. The tracks were pristine: lustrously sleek, untouched by rust.

“You’re new here, then?” a voice from behind him said.

With a start, he whirled around, glimpsing golden hair just as the speaker sidestepped him. She was behind him again. He turned, slowly, uncertainly.

“Hi,” she said, faintly breathless. She was at least as tall as he was, though she could not have been more than a few years his senior. A great necklace of pearls fell from her neck, its white stark against the black of her blouse. She dropped to the floor and sat on a rail opposite from him. After a moment’s hesitation, he did the same.

“Hi,” the boy replied. “I—” He paused to search for the words. When none came, he simply said, “I’m Cole.”

“Nice to meet you, Cole. I’m Alyss.” She smiled then, and he knew he could grow to like her. They lapsed into silence, though a comfortable one. Cole could still feel the ache, but it was dulling. The rattling was as loud as ever.

“Where—”

“I guess the—”

They flushed, and broke off in chorus. Cole motioned to the girl, and she went on.

“I guess the main thing to know,” Alyss said, “is that you’re dead.” That final word hung between them, and left Cole at a loss. How was he meant to respond to that? He sorted through his head for something to say, but found only indignation at her casual unmourning. “Don’t give me that look,” she continued, frowning slightly. “You wouldn’t know it, looking at me, but I’m dead too. Not that you’d know it, looking at you.” She said it brightly, conversationally, but not without a certain undertone – a kind of melancholy, or perhaps bitterness.

Cole opened his mouth, but the words did not come. He drew a breath and closed it. It was a while before he spoke. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So I’m dead.” He studied a tree in the distance, and then the back of his hand. “So then where the hell am I?”

“A café, but, really—”

Cole cut her off. “Hold on. I see a forest. A railway.”

“Really?” said the girl. Her eyes lit up and she began to laugh, shyly at first, and then uncontrollably. “I see a café,” Alyss told him, clutching her stomach. She gave a final snicker and said, “Here. Wait a moment. I’ll fix you something to drink.”

She busied herself with something to her side that Cole could not quite see, though he knew that there was definitely something there. When she was finished, she gave a flourish and, inexplicably, pressed a mug of hot, scented coffee into his hands.

“Now. Where were we?”

“My death.”

“Your death.” The girl’s voice became a whisper, and her expression collapsed, giving way to a sudden tenderness. “Cole, do you remember?”

“Do I remember?” he said, and the rattling that echoed in the din of his ears ceased. “Do I remember? Do I remember?” Then it struck him that of course he remembered: how could he forget? It was his own death, after all, and then the sound resumed, a hundred times louder than before, and suddenly he was standing before the train, dead in its path. It smashed into him and something behind his face that might have been his tongue – or had he bit that off himself? – was pulverised, quickly followed by the rest of him. The hurt became his world, its caress the only that he knew.

Something met his cheek, and it began to sting. “Cole. Cole. Listen to me. You have to realise.

Alyss’s face swam into being somewhere above him. Her palm was still held mid-air. “Oh,” he said, and he began to cry."

His arm was wet and slightly singed: the coffee, he supposed. It almost felt good: to have something to focus on, to have something to fix him to reality – though he wasn’t sure that this was reality.

“Listen, Cole,” Alyss said, and through his tears he did. “Everyone here is dead.” She gestured toward the woods and, suddenly, Cole realised that there were other people there, a dozen or a hundred, or maybe more. “Hugh died in a car crash. Marcie drowned, though you should probably avoid bringing that up with her. Jamie, Kat, fire. Derry… You don’t want to know. But Cole: you’re not alone.”

He nodded, thankful. “I know,” he murmured, rising to his feet. “So what comes next?”

“First you have to head out that way.” Alyss pointed to somewhere along the railway, indeterminate in the distance and the fog.

“What do I look for? Is there something on the track?”

“This is a café to me,” she reminded him. “You just have to go out through the door.”

Their eyes met, and then Cole found himself asking, “Are we going to see each other again, or is this...it? Am I ever going to meet them?” He pointed to the trees and the people beyond.

“Yes,” Alyss promised him. “You will." Cole stared at her for a time, but she only smiled and nodded toward the distance – to the door.

He gave her one last glance, and went.




Goldstein -> RE: =Class= Dialogue stories (1/29/2012 3:26:07)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gxq5uJIKars/SkZR8rKwFMI/AAAAAAAAAgk/Tlbdcqv0CvQ/s400/barnard.the-plague-doctor1.jpg

A quiet, European town, nestled between a hill and a stream, was experiencing a tragedy.

It was normal (or perhaps, to the less sophisticated, plain) village, with not a single remarkable feature. The church steeple was shorter than most, the river didn't yield much fish, the homes were cozy but showing the beginning signs of dilapidation. There was no war, or famine, or force of nature tearing apart this small town. It was in the air, invisible, and silent only when it wasn't tormenting a poor soul.

"I...I require a priest," the man said, his breathing labored, his movements uncertain. His face was chalky, but that was to be expected. The good doctor had just bled him. More than he normally would have, but things had become dire. The sticky, black blood had to go.

"I will fetch him immediately," he said softy. It was a noble lie to tell the dying man. More likely than not, the poor man would be laid to rest on top of the priest's inanimate form, along with the countless other victims.

A gentle crying was the only thing that could be heard, for nature had seen fit to hold a vigil over the dying. The good doctor rose from his stool and placed a comforting hand on the widow's shoulder.

In between sobs that shook her petite frame she asked, "Will he be alright? He will pull through? I prayed enough, doctor? Tell me so."

"...I am afraid the only thing I can promise thee is that he will not suffer in his final hours."

The cries became desperate moans as she contemplated his words. "If only I had died first," she said. "Before Father Farli, before my father, my mother, my sweet Lorenzo, then I could have had a proper burial. But now, what will happen to me doctor?"

She tried to look into his eyes, but they were non-existent behind the rose-colored lenses. "I am afraid that the city can only offer you and your husband what it offers everyone else-a spot under God's earth."

Out of the various horrors he dealt with, this was always the worst. Not the sickening vomiting on his robes, or the mad screams of the quarantined, or even the act of watching the light of life dim in his patients' eyes. No, it was the suffering of those they left behind.

"No one should mourn the dead," the good doctor said sadly as he watched the few people that dared to venture outside of their homes scurry across the street below them, "for their time of pain has come to an end, and they are embraced by the arms of the Lord. We should pity the loved ones, for they are the ones that bare the heaviest burden."

The widow dabbed at her eyes with a soiled handkerchief, one that had already caught its maximum number of tears.

Surprisingly, the patient began to moan, something that usually stopped in the later stages of the disease. The good doctor, a faint hope for improvement kindling in his breast. But it was soon extinguished. The patient was clawing at his cheeks, creating faces that would amuse a child but wounded the good doctor.

"He is going to die and I cannot even hold him in my arms," the widow said. "I fear not death, but life is stubbornly clinging to me with its cold, unfeeling ways."

"Thou lack the bravery, not the foolhardiness," the good doctor said as he cut open a new incision on the patient's arm. It was pointless. The blood barely oozed out any more.

"Thou say I am a coward?" she asked, her tone vicious.

"No, I meant it as a compliment."

His explanation did little to mitigate her grief-fueled rage. "I am a coward? I, who, unlike so many other wives, did not flee when my husband became ill? Did I sprint to the woods at the first sore? No. I stood by him, cared for him."

"No one is doubting thyn loyalty," the good doctor said softly as held the bowl up to catch the blood that was finally seeping out.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I don't lack bravery," she said, perhaps trying to convince not only the good doctor but herself, "but the will. The will to throw my own life away. How I wish I could."

His secret tore at his heartstrings. He had noticed the purple bruise-like spots below her jaw on her neck; a sure sign of the disease. He did not have the courage to tell her her selfless acts would be the end of her. It seemed too unjust. "God has forsaken us," said the good doctor, closing the patient's eyes and finally deciding on a plan of action that had seemed unthinkable, but now seemed the only possible choice.

The widow had a jug of water resting next to the patient. The good doctor poured a glass, then poured a small vial into the glass. It turned the liquid a transparent green. A dealer of questionable values had sold it to him. What a shock it would be for he to learn that it was being used for a just purpose.

"Drink this," he said, "it will give thee vitality during times of melancholy."

The widow wearily accepted the glass and drained it without asking any questions.

"Thou may lie with thyn husband now, if thee wishes," the good doctor said as he collected his things.

"I may? What has changed?" the widow asked. She blinked back a fresh round of tears.

The good doctor closed his bag and made his way to the door. "The drink will grant thou brief immunity. Treasure the time thou has with him, it will be short. No more than ten minutes."

He cut short the endless torrent of gesticulating appreciation with a nod of his head and a closing of the door. Even though he knew in his heart of hearts he had made the most Godly choice, the thought of witnessing the convulsions made his stomach turn.




Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition
0.109375