Here is another short story based on my weekly creative writing exercise. #PlottoExercise
The apocalypse has hit. Society clings to what it had – but it’s obvious to everyone that its on the fast-track to extinction. It’s especially clear to Dennis, who has refused to marry his lover, Karen, for what good would a pair of vows do in a battle with nature’s primitivity. Perhaps, though, there was some good…and Dennis discovers the value of “holding on” when Karen is taken by a maniacal obsessive, Victor, who plans on taking both their lives in the most appropriate way imaginable: Armadillos.
Read the short story below. Afterwards, you’ll see the three randomly generated plot points that you can use yourself!
THAT’S RIGHT. ARMADILLOS ARE OUR BIGGEST THREAT.
I came in hot, but she was already gone. The dresser had been turned over; the dining table was slammed against the kitchen wall; the throw pillows that had been so meticulously placed by Karen were now ripped apart and maimed, their cotton entrails scattered across the carpet floor of our studio apartment. There’d been a struggle, yes – good on Karen – but she’d apparently lost. Her absence indicated as much.
“Karen!” I shouted, knowing its pointlessness. I was all out of ideas, and tired. You’d think the days’d be longer, maybe. But they’re shorter. When you’re energy’s drained, and all you can think day after day, is survival survival survival – well, that sort of life doesn’t leave much room for the expansion of thought throughout the day, which, now we know, is the essence of time.
And it seems that, because of my stupidity, Karen’s run out of the small amount she was allotted.
No, not stupidity. Stupidity kills in a futureless jungle like this world. It pays nothing and costs everything. No, not stupidity…though I’m not sure what to call it: whatever you call lack-of-wisdom.
I set myself on the couch and bury my head in my hands. The gloves are off. I don’t care. Where could Victor have taken her? Where?
Think, Dennis.
But does it matter?
Stop, Dennis. It’s that kind of talk landed you in this mess in the first place. Just think.
The thoughts are certainly distracting, though. And that rusted empty picture frame by the couch isn’t doing me any favors.
“Not that. Dennis, please. Use the throw pillows. I don’t care, really. Just, please, don’t burn that.”
“Karen, we’ve been over this. Photo paper’s flammable, all right? Cotton’s not. You wanna stay alive? You wanna stay warm? These are the sacrifices we were talking about.”
Through tears, “I can’t believe this is our only option.”
“You have a better idea? Hm? Karen?”
“It’s our last picture of us together – before the end.”
Her voice broke that day. Any word out of her mouth afterwards cracked or splintered into a stuttered garble of nonsense. We’d… – I’d used the photo for kindling anyway, despite her protests. Wasn’t like we had much else to use.
You could’ve worked something out, though. After that, you know that her hope dwindled. Marriage was all she had left. But you shut her out.
“What’s the point? Look outside. What’s a couple incantations over a book gonna accomplish. How’s that doing anything for us? Is a sanctified communion gonna protect us somehow? Last I remember, the Spiegels still succame to Leprae. Their marriage sure did wonders for them now that their faces look like sacks of oranges and their limbs have been chopped.”
It’s true, though. It would’ve done nothing for us.
Are you sure about that? Look.
What is that? Through my fingers, I see the tossed mess of broken furniture among the contents of ravaged cabinets. Beneath a flipped chair, just barely sticking out from the grounded backrest, was a blood-stained corner of some cardstock. And on it, I could just barely make out the recognizable curlicues of her lilted handwriting.
Using a bit of diminishing leg strength, I lift myself and rifle through the junk on top, pulling out this concealed message.
It’s a note she’d never shared with me. Bloody fingertips had held it, and drops of blood had shot across the words, leaving a sprinkled trail of dried droplets.
Dennis,
I’m so sorry. But I can’t go on. I won’t. Not like this. The world’s not home anymore. Home’s not home. There’s no future anymore, Dennis. I’m sorry. I think I’ll be bleeding out soon…
How recently had this been written?
Had she truly decided on…. No, I shouldn’t be thinking things like that. Stay focused. She’s alive. What can we use to solve this? This message has been moved. – Hidden? – Probably not. – What can I find?
Rather than rummaging, I carefully pick off fallen trinkets from the pile – the snow-globe, the porcelain statue of a gnome (now shattered), a broken thermometer kept sealed in a plastic bag. Though I know it’s impossible, I keep wondering if I’m going to, somehow, left a pocket-watch or kitsch teaspoon to find her lifeless, limp arm among the rubbish. I keep pulling these items of memory to find an answer, as well as to assure myself that I won’t find evidence of an answer I know cannot be true.
But as I dig – nothing makes its way to the surface. In desperation, I throw the piled items to the floor, along with all my levity and caution to the wind. The knick-knacks patter down on the patched, stained carpet like hail. But their impact is muted, barely heard. – Eventually, the accumulation of our lives spent with one another is marked by scattered bits of broken junk across a floor we’d, years ago, decided was pointless to maintain. – What was cleanliness, but the result of time ill-spent? Survival, we’d agreed. That was key.
I collapse on the floor, tired and hungry. The day was half-spent hunting – only to find a squirrel – while the other half had been spent in search of Karen – only to find a bloody note, revealing her desire to die. I feel numb.
I’m surprised she had it in her.
You’d think there’d be more spillage. A drop her and there is small. – Well, perhaps she walked out, walked away. – Sure. To where? – Somewhere? – Nah. She’d be…she’s exhausted. Bleeding out, she said. – Look on the carpet. Look for a blood trail.
I grant, annoyed, as I lift myself to an upright position. This feels like a waste of my time. Breathing in long (the air quality’s already shot), and letting out a heavy sigh – I scan the floor. The stains each tell a story. There’s a stain for each of our mistakes, and I find myself flipping through different emotions as I lock on this grayed, matted spot or that brown misting in the fibers. So many stories cycle through.
She dropped a dinner we had to salvage; I spilled the juice we’d spent two days looking for; chili…but that…? What is that one?
I lean forward and crawl to a long streak of splattered maroon.
This is blood.
It’s amazing I hadn’t seen it before. But here it is now. Smatters and splatterings – streaks of it – fallen and tossed, leading across our living space, and – straight out the door.
Had she walked out…? After…?
I follow the blood into the outdoor hallway, noticing the thinning streaks. It’s less and less. – Here, the blood’s smeared against the concrete floor.
Then it stops.
I step forward and back – my arches killing – desperately seeking some kind of sign, some place where the trail continues. – But nothing…. Up and down, up and down. Nothing. The blood ends.
Then, though…then, I see it. A bit of gauze, torn and blood-pocked, stuck to the stucco.
Victor was here. – Could Karen have wrapped herself? – Most likely not. – She was hopeless, in dire straits. – I’d put her there, hadn’t I? – Sure, yes, for our safety… – For our safety? Now Victor’s captured her at her most vulnerable. – What could he want? – What he’s always wanted. – What I have, but what I tried to avoid. – What will he do? – What he thinks is right? – But what is that? – Fulfilling her every desire…
No…
He’ll want to do it right, whatever that means. – Why bandage her up? Why take her? Where could they possibly be heading?
I study the wall on which the bandage had been caught in a hot fever. I’m sweating. I look up and down, grasping for any signs. But further down the hall – I see it.
It’s a set of black cylinders with what looks like deformed growths coming out of all ends.
Armadillo droppings.
I know where Victor’s taken her.
* * *
Inside the abandoned factory, test tubes and beakers littered the floors. It wasn’t safe to be here. The Leprae, it’d been said, permeated the air, and coming to ground zero like this was like asking for radiation poisoning by stomping through Chernobyl.
I have to be quick, I know that. But knowing Victor, he’ll call out for attention. He’s got a taste for the dramatic, which can’t be quenched by stealth.
“Victor! I’m here.” I yell it again, this time louder. I hear the echo of my voice hit me from all directions. My panic is obvious. Maybe I can use that as bait.
“Where is she? Victor!”
Silence for a brief period. The air is stale and tastes like unused coffee grounds. The tall metal walls settle in the cool night beneath the moon, while squirrels, coyotes and whatever other small, immune critters on the hunt for a meal knock against the empty boxes and run up against the thin, aluminum doors of cheaply made storage cabinets.
Different sounds bounce around the factory, though none are from Victor, none are from Karen.
But, then – it comes. A whisper: “Say it again.”
“Hello?”
“Say it again,” the whisper says. It echoes from every direction. I spin in confusion trying to locate its source. “Say it again,” it continues. “My name, my name. Say it. Say it again.”
“Victor? Is that you?”
“YYYEESSS!!” The voice was ROARED through the building. “I am the Victor! I am the Victor. I’m the Victor, Dennis, you asshole!” Victor revealed himself to me, standing on a metal platform set high in the air. Beside hi was Karen, her mouth and wrists wrapped with gauze.
Victor spit in my direction.
“Karen, are you all right?” I ask. But she’s too nervous to answer. I hear her muffled screams behind the layers of gauze and my chest tightens, my blood boils and I can’t see straight.
Victor thrusts his arm around her waist. “Shut it, Dennis. We both know you don’t deserve this fine, fine woman.” He plants a kiss on Karen’s cheek and my fists clench. “Can you give her what she wants?” Victor yells. “Do you even know? It takes a special kind of man to understand the goings-on, the deep patterns – I’ve got the sight. Dennis! Me! I’ve got the sight! The Victor!” Victor laughs and hugs Karen tight.
I do know what she wants. She’s told me for years, and it’s only now that I understand why she wanted it so badly. Reassurance is a powerful thing – and loyalty can make a home out of hell.
“Let her go, Victor,” I say as I look at Karen. She knows by my eyes that I love her.
“‘Let her go! Mehhh, let her go!’ You’re pathetic, Dennis. You don’t have what it takes. It takes a man’s strength to give the death blow. Or did you not even know?”
“You’re talking about this?” I asked, pulling Karen’s bloody suicide note from my pocket.
“Oh! So you do know,” gloated Victor. “Well, then, by all means, deliver her her needs.”
“She doesn’t want to die, Victor.”
“You bastard!” he said. Then, turning to Karen, he whispered, “He didn’t mean that.”
I roll my eyes. “Just let her go already.”
“I will do no such thing,” said Victor. “We are both tired of this world. It’s a world now without love, without passion, without art or culture, where swine is bred. And you – you!” he shouted, pointing his finger at me, “you’re a contributor. You make this world uninhabitable for the romantics like me and Karen.” He kisses her on the cheek, then pulls out a pair of rubber cleaning gloves out of his back pocket.
“This is why,” he continued, “I’m going to deliver us from this hell-hole.” From a box behind him, Victor pulls out – an armadillo.
Karen’s shrieks are muffled, but their high-pitch tones ring across the factor walls.
“Leprae,” announced Victor, hoisting up the armadillo high into the air, “will consume us both!”
I see Karen squirm out of her gauze gag. It falls around her neck. “Dennis!” she manages to say to me, “Dennis! Please, help!”
Victor, shocked to hear the voice of his beloved shout longingly for me, turns in fear and anger toward Karen. “Karen…how could you say such a thing?” he mutters.
This distraction was all I needed. I book it toward some medical equipment who’s high-reaching contraptions provide me with a pathway to the metal scaffolding on which they stand. Karen must’ve seen me take my shot, so she does what she can to distraction Victor’s attention. I hear her say things like, “No, Victor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” and “I love you, Victor. Look at me. Can’t you tell?”
Before he knows it though, I’m right beside him, ready to pounce and throw him to the hard concrete below. I’m imagining his bloodied corpse on the ground beneath our feet, and I take action to make my dreams a reality. I charge.
Karen sees me and shouts “I love you!”
Wrong time for a confession, though. It stops me in my tracks as if I couldn’t believe this angel would still want such a self-shut iron demon who’d thought of no one but himself for years on end without ever considering another.
Victor noticed and immediately took to thwarting my plan. He tossed the armadillo in the air.
The animal hit my face and already I felt the Leprae virus take hold of my macrophages and Schwann cells, tearing apart the myelin. The “armored” one fell into my hands, but it was too late for my nervous system to react to the animal’s hard shell. My hands felt nothing. Something was happening to my face – it’s the fast-acting build-up of scar tissue that was consuming my eyesight and filling the areas around my lips.
“Oluroodoo,” I say to Karen. I hope she understands me.
The last thing I see is Victor’s terrified expression as I lunge, the armadillo in hand, toward his face. I can only hope I made direct skin contact.
THE END
Thanks for reading! Here are the three randomly generated plot points to use for your own short story! #PlottoExercise
Please visit this blog post of mine, which has an explanation as to how these elements are generated from the Plotto book.
I post one of these every week, so keep an eye out and keep writing.
3 PLOT POINTS
MAIN CONFLICT: (146)
146
(142)(158)(170)(266)
B loves A; but A’s rival, A-3, makes a captive of B (81 tr A & A-3) and intends compelling her to marry him (352b)(851)(884a ch A to B & A-5 to A-3)
SET-UP: (1)
142
(162a)(82a, b)(87)(93a, b)
B, in love with A, discovers secretly that A no longer loves her, although he is willing to marry her as he has promised (324)(256)(287)(261)(325)(326-2)
PAY-OFF: (2)
851
(87)(176b)(232)(375)(600)
A rescues B from imminent danger, but only by bringing the danger upon himself * A is unable to extricate himself from the peril from which he rescues B ** A rescues B from [1] a ferocious wild animal, [2] from a burning steamer, [3] from the undertow while ocean bathing, [4] from a train wreck, [5] from an automobile accident or [6] from a landing airplane on a flying field (31)(367b)(500a)(885a)
RANDOM NUMBER: (1) a ferocious wild animal
STORY OUTLINE
FIRST ACT: B, in love with A, discovers secretly that A no longer loves her, although he is willing to marry her as he has promised
SECOND ACT: But A’s rival, A-3, makes a captive of B and intends compelling her to marry him
THIRD ACT: Therefore A rescues B from imminent danger, a ferocious animal, but only by bringing the danger upon himself – but A is unable to extricate himself from the peril from which he rescues B
Cameron Edward Reilly - ERC Writing 