[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #26

Saxon Brenton saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
Sun Oct 3 00:53:49 PDT 2004


The Daily Super Short-Short Story #26
 
A Devil Came Down to Georgia 8
 
Last Time: Martin used an impromptu attempt at lucid dreaming to fly 
away and wake up.
 
     When Martin had carried out that body morph in his dreams earlier, 
it hadn't been this painful.
     He didn't remember leaving his room, and to be honest he wasn't 
even sure where he was on the darkened early morning campus. The waves 
of nausea combined with the sporadic cramps of pain were the things that 
were the main focus of his attention just at the moment. It was making 
him stumble about a lot.
     He was also having trouble walking because of the shape of his feet. 
His ankles and lower legs had ballooned out under the encrustation of 
metal debris that had grown from his flesh, turning them into something 
that vaguely resembled the thick, weight-bearing supports of a mecha. 
Now he had to walk with a rolling bow-legged gait to keep them from 
getting in each others' way. They tended to catch against each other like 
velcro as well; they weren't smooth metal plating, but made up of a 
random collection plates and wires and tubes and protrusions, with the 
occasional growth of flesh twisting through it all.
     The rest of his body wasn't much better. None of this clean, 
streamlined look reminiscent of a terminator or a robocop. The one 
glimpse that he caught of himself in a window - before he had recoiled 
away in horror - showed that it... his body... looked even worse than 
having been taken over by the borg.
     Another spasm of pain drove him to his knees, causing him to stagger 
against a nearby wall for support. Some new warping of his flesh must've 
just taken place. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know exactly what it was.
     Once the worst of the pain had passed he tried to get up and move 
on, but he found that he was stuck. Glancing about, Martin realised that 
his left arm had grown out, tendril like, against the wall that he was 
leaning against and was insinuating itself into an auto teller machine. 
He could see the root-like tendrils thickening as they took a firmer 
hold, and with a curious detachment he also suddenly realised that the 
screaming that he could hear was coming from himself.
     Martin heaved away from the wall with panic stricken strength, 
uprooting the dendritic growths from his arm out of the ATM and half 
tearing the dispenser out of its resting place in the process. The 
machine fizzled sparks and an alarm went off. Sobbing with terror the 
young man turned and fled.
     Some time later Martin collapsed onto the ground and lay there. His 
chest was heaving to regain his breath, but he would have been even more 
disturbed than he already was to realise that this was more out of habit 
than from need. He stared up at the light haze over the city in an 
attempt to focus himself and, perhaps, ignore the nightmare. After a few 
moments he heard footsteps.
     He whisked himself around to confront another youth. Martin was 
too rattled to recognise the delivery boy who had asked directions the 
previous day. He didn't even notice that the newcomer wasn't wearing any 
shoes. Still, for a few seconds Martin's tension eased slightly as he 
saw that the other man was just standing there, neither intent on 
attacking nor running away to call the anti-mutant assault robots.
     But no matter how minimal that drop in anxiety was, it was 
nevertheless a false sense of security. Damian already had a plan in mind 
for Martin, and it wouldn't be pleasant. Speaking through TJ's mouth, the 
evil sock began with a causal sounding, "Uhm, hi. I've been watching 
you... and, uhm... Would you have sex with me?"
 
Tomorrow: Probably something really Acraphobe.
 
The Daily Super Short-Short Story series and the wondersocks created by 
Arthur Spitzer, and used with belated permission.
 
-----
Saxon Brenton    University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au 
The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero 
fiction of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup can be found at:
     http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/



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