Tag: The Achievers

FP449 – Unlocked

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and forty-nine.

Flash PulpTonight we present Unlocked

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Freelance Hunters!

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we encounter an unexpected series of visitors.

 

Unlocked

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The rear door of the chugging hatchback opened with a hushed click, and Tori Garza, thirty-eight, felt her Honda shift and tilt under the mountainous stranger’s settling weight. She’d known something like this visit was coming, yet the newcomer had caught her sitting in the driveway as she waited for her two children to finish filling their pockets with electronics, gum, and beloved formed-plastic figures.

The invaders eyes’ were covered in the thick black plastic of a style that wouldn’t have been out of place on a blind man, and his brow was lost beneath the low-hung brim of his maroon flat cap.

Across the street, in front of the Mitners’ empty house – Peggy being at work and Anthony having taken their little ones out for an afternoon of overpriced pizza and ancient videogames at the local Chuck E. Cheese – stood a second intruder. Though he too wore tinted glasses, his bald head was exposed to the sun and his dark jacket a little too tight to be buttoned without making the bulge beneath his left armpit noticeable.

“If you’re here to murder me then get it over with before the kids come out, please,” said Tori, but, though a cold blade did come up to touch the side of her neck, she received an answer even more horrifying than that which she’d expected.

“No, I wasn’t hired to kill you, I was hired to ruin you,” said Mr. Backseat, and he tilted his head toward the window. The man in the black nylon jacket began to shuffle towards her front door. “My associate is a fellow of especially low moral fiber, though I suppose I shouldn’t talk out of school on the matter given the questionable nature of my own shaggy philosophy. Still, when it comes to executing tykes there’s no one as excited, or as skillful, at the job.”

“You won’t get away with this,” she replied. His brow stiffened at her tone. The fear he’d heard before placing the weapon to her neck was suddenly gone – now that the mother knew she herself was in no immediate danger, she seemed calm. Was she as cold as his client, who’d employed the pair to murder his own children?

Mr. Backseat wouldn’t have called the chill along his spine fear – he might have laughed it off as something like professional admiration if he’d thought on it at all – but his attention was on his partner’s slow progress.

His gloved hand tightened its grip on the knife’s handle nonetheless.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but YOU won’t get away with this. You’re going to claim two large men did it while you were forced to sit and watch, but there will be no prints, no unsightly signs of violence. No one is going to believe you. Better yet, if you resist or attempt to stop us, I get to rough you up a little. I hold a degree in applying self-inflicted injuries and a doctorate in ensuring only those witnesses I want are on hand.

“Remember, especially in light of the lack of spectators, that if you should attempt any heroics I will be forced to make it look like a murder/suicide. I think we can agree that such an outcome would be disappointing for all involved.”

As the fisherman expects a tug on his line when he knows a potential meal is nibbling at his bait, the cap-wearing man instinctively expected some physical response – a twitch, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, perhaps a slow move to unbuckle her belt – but he received no such satisfaction.

Instead Tori simply sat and watched the front door.

The intended murderer knocked twice, ignoring the bell entirely, and there was a pause both in the car and upon the stoop as he awaited some reaction from inside.

It was Luther, five, who answered. He was small for his age, his brown eyes too big for his tiny face. He might be a heartbreaker someday, if he lived that long, but he currently reminded his mother of nothing so much as one of the characters from the saccharine mangas his older sister, Selina, obsessed over.

Those within the car could not hear the transaction between child and intruder. The man in the backseat braced his arm and tightened his legs, his reflexes working to keep the situation under control should the boy’s mother attempt to run, scream, or otherwise provide some warning to the too-friendly kindergartener.

She did not.

The killer’s lips moved into a wide grin as he offered his hello, and Luther’s response seemed short and welcoming. Reaching out a smooth-skinned hand, he wrapped his fingers around two of the visitor’s thick digits, then, with little more than a glance at his waiting mother, showed the stranger into the house.

“It’s fine if you want to cry,” said the blade-holder. “The officers will expect it one way or another, though they may think you’re faking it.”

“I’m fine,” answered Tori. Her words floated out on a breeze, as if she were instead more concerned with formulating a mental grocery list or what movie to rent to fill up her newly-single evening.

“Are you?” asked the professional, his occupational pride pushing him to press his weapon further into her flesh. A single droplet of blood drained along its stainless steel edge.

“Are YOU?” replied the woman, her eyes finally coming to focus on the black plastic across the bridge of his nose. It seemed to him in that moment as if she could see through the tint as clearly as the windshield before her.

That was when his plan began to fall apart.

It began with music – familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. Behind his sunglasses, the goon stiffened.

Every orifice of the house was forced wide. Screens were popped from their frames and doors were left swinging to the wind. Even through the Honda’s glass the thick rhythm of Casio keyboard and guitar began to overwhelm the hardened intruder.

As human forms began to splash from the home’s now gaping mouths, the ruffian’s hand, distracted, slipped away from its tight position against his victim’s skin.

Men, women, children – even a dog in a custom-crafted uniform – began to tumble onto the grass, their landings quickly turning into an ongoing frolick. Some took each other’s hands and formed rings, dancing to the thick percussion of the tune. The shorter among them ran circles in and out of such gatherings, and the tallest took to a hand waving dance that bordered on a war strut.

Each one wore a small paper sign set upon a string about their neck.

“Witness!” it said.

Still the flood continued.

Two dozen figures turned into a count of nearly a hundred, and finally the man in the black nylon jacket reappeared. He was held aloft, his arms and legs bound to one of Tori’s kitchen chairs, his sunglasses lost somewhere within the shadows of the darkened home.

Luthor led the parade that carried him onto the lawn, his arm flailing with a wooden spoon counting out the music.

A Skinner Co. ProductionThe man in the backseat was suddenly certain that he was, in fact, suffering an aneurysm and end-of-life hallucination, or that his youthful indiscretions with high-powered narcotics had finally come back to haunt him with an atomic-level flashback.

It was neither case, but his trepidation was distraction enough to allow Tori to unbuckle and slip from her seat, joining her son in his victory march.

Though she wore the plain jeans and pink hoodie she’d intended to sport at the mall, Selina was there as well, her own oversized disguise bouncing about on her capering head. Otherwise each shape – tall, small, round, or slender – wore the same outfit: A cheap black suit and a rubber mask displaying a pasty face sporting large black mutton chops.

Two weeks previous the despondent mother had wept upon her keyboard as she crafted her plea: Would The Achievers help in such a mundane, yet so threatening, situation? She had read Internet whispers that the group might, but she had not even truly believed in their existence until the first of the volunteer vigilantes had arrived: A college student of twenty-three, her mask out of sight and a sleeping bag beneath her arm.

What had been a slow moving and lonely divorce, filled with threatening late night phone calls and tears carefully hidden from her children, had then turned into an unexpected two-week sleepover. The basement floor had become a game of slumbering Tetris, the laundry room an industrial operation cheerily handled by more hands than Tori had ever housed previously, the oven a constant source of handcrafted stews and homemade breads.

Without warning the assailant still seated in the Honda recalled where he had encountered the music before: It was the extended theme to a show his father had watched religiously, Law & Order.

The sirens he heard soon after were not from the soundtrack, however, but by then the dancing mob had disappeared, leaving two duct-taped monsters, a memory stick containing Mr. Backseat’s unknowingly recorded blatherings, and a story the police would never believe.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP417 – Doll

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and seventeen.

Flash PulpTonight we present Doll

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Green Light, Red Light

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present a tale of modern terror and psychedelic incidents, unfolding, before the astonished eyes of a mother and child, on a Capital City backstreet.

 

Doll

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

They were sitting in front of Fas’ Gas & Lotto, and Mom was thinking.

Cassandra knew this because Mom, as she often did, had said, “Mom’s thinking, Doll,” when she’d told her she had to pee.

The eight-year-old was aware she shouldn’t press the issue. Eventually her mother would either remember the question, or the girl would simply wait until a safer stop. She’d mapped out all the best places along the twenty block sprawl that was their nightly stroll.

It was tempting to slip away and ask Phil, the hard faced counter jockey who watched the 24-hour gas station, but Phil had a tendency to be mean to Mom, and, besides, her mother would grump if she were done thinking and didn’t have Cass at hand to soothe her.

Waiting to be dragged along by a flopping Raggedy-Ann arm was Cassandra’s best bet, and she had mastered patience in her long walks.

A blue car drove by. Mrs. Wilkerson pushed her shopping cart towards the south end. Mom thought.

After a time the woman stirred, but Cassandra’s brief prospect for relief was knocked back when her caretaker refilled her glass pipe and leaned away in an unsubtle act of subterfuge. Still, reflected the eight-year-old, at least she wasn’t burrowing in her arm with the unbent tip of a paper clip this evening.

The sight always left the girl quietly upset, however necessary her Mom insisted it was that she dig the gnits out.

Down the block and across the street, a newcomer with braids appeared. She was wearing a black suit. It looked fancy, but not quite a tuxedo. Cassandra had rarely seen anyone so dressed up.

Without thinking, she asked, “isn’t that the lady who asked to take our photo?”

“Mom’s thinking, Doll,” came the reply, and Cass was relieved it wasn’t accompanied by a sharp pinch as a reminder of the importance of silence.

Earlier in the week the stranger had stopped and held up a camera. That too had been a wondrous sight, as the girl had only ever seen people take pictures with their phones. She’d been embarrassed about her eye, though now the bruise was nothing more than a shadow of yellow and green.

“My name is Molly,” the photographer had offered, but she knew Mom had been too busy thinking to remember such a thing. When she was so lost in thought her mother rarely retained any of the conversations they had with passersby.

FP417 - DollThough Cassandra hoped she might again come and say hello, the woman disappeared into the shadows beside the Washeteria laundromat.

For ten minutes the street sat still, the buzz of distant traffic acting as the sole indication that time was passing, then the parade began.

From the Washeteria’s alley, a drummer in a suit not unlike the one she’d thought she’d seen the photographer in, came strutting at full processional pomp – yet his flailing sticks made no noise as they landed upon his snare.

Her jaw wide, Cass turned to her mother, but the woman’s focus was solely for her feet.

The girl knew better than to interrupt her thinking, but she was sorely tempted when the soundless bagpiper followed the drummer’s lead out of the laundromat’s lane way.

This second musician was dressed identically to the first, down to the same rubbery white mask, with unnecessary sunglasses and hairy black chops painted across the cheeks. She was far too young to recognize the metal band leader’s visage, but five more appeared, bumping between with the sidewalks as they held aloft the tail of a yellow and red Chinese dragon.

The hushed shifting of cloth was not enough to rouse her mother.

The beast made as if to catch and eat the mum piper, but, just as its mouth was about to close on the unnoticing performer’s puffing cheeks, a knight stepped from the alley, a mute cheering crowd of peasants behind her.

Cass knew the warrior with the braids cut through the rear of her disguise was a knight, as she wore a plastic breastplate over her suit jacket and carried a toy sword. The serfs, a group of ten distinguishable from the others in duplicate costumes by their corn sacks, flailed their arms in adulation as they trailed their defender.

For a moment Cassandra thought she spotted her own twin within the tumult of the small mob, but then the knight was upon the monster, and it was all the girl could do to not disturb her mother by cheering herself.

The dragon dived, the knight ducked. It swiped it’s tail, she swung her weapon. Plunging her blade deep, the champion slayed the beast’s fabric, and the parade disappeared beyond the corner.

Finally the street went silent, but still Mom observed her toes, thinking.

A hushed hour passed before she sobered up enough to realize her suddenly silent daughter had been replaced with a life-sized doll, accurate down to the gap toothed grin and a blackened right eye. The woman knew nothing of 3D printers, but, if she had, she would have recognized their work in Cassandra’s perfect plastic replica.

It would be dawn before she was sure she wasn’t simply high and hallucinating, and another six months before she could convince Cassandra, and The Achievers who had taken on her guardianship, that her daughter should come home, as she would now treat her like a real girl.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP392 – Underachiever

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and ninety-two.

Flash PulpTonight we present Underachiever

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Beer Trail

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we tell the tale of a wayward youth, and the gun he considers his last recourse.

 

Underachiever

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Theodore, sixteen, had bought the revolver a month earlier from a man named Bill. Bill had also been selling questionable televisions and grandmotherly dishware from the rear of his Econoline van, but it was just the pistol that the boy had been interested in.

His mother loved Theo and his sister, Abbie, dearly, which is why she worked such long hours at the Piggly Wiggly to compensate for the lack of support from their deadbeat father. The job, however, was also the reason she drank so much when she got home.

The mother and teen’s schedules rarely intersected, but in those brief moments – often when she’d just returned from a shift and he was about to depart for a cheap action flick at the multiplex – she had come to suspect something was awry.

She had not seen the weapon, but anxiety over what she might discover about her son had left the bulge in his right pocket un-confronted.

The night before the shooting had been a hot one, and the teen had watched the sunrise crawl up his wall while contemplating facing another round of bellowed insults from Mathew Barnes.

Barnes, a year older and a foot taller, had spent the better part of three semesters making Theo and Abbie’s walks to school miserable, and any change in route only seemed to bring new energy to the torment.

A Skinner Co. PodcastDespite their efforts to fight back, or surrender, or seek help, four weeks earlier the menace had moved from verbal to physical. Sick of hearing the imitation of Abbie’s stutter that his family was too poor to do anything about, the youth had made some choice comments regarding Mathew’s mother’s hygiene, her uncritical choice in lovers, their shared lineage, and the possibility that, despite the time paradox, Theo may have in fact been his father.

As Barnes had been flanked by two of his better friends, venting cost the big brother several bruised ribs, a twisted knee, and a bloody nose.

Still, a cruising patrol car pulled aside to see what was going on, and, when silent Mr. Acevedo – who’d caught the tail end of the incident while walking home with his first coffee of the day – was asked who started it, the finger was pointed at Theo.

Theo, hand on pistol, again passed Mr. Acevedo in the hallway that morning. As always, the balding handyman had struck him as distant and alien. The same internal blinders that made the boy unable to see the similarities between his own life and that of the man who lived in the same building, in the same neighbourhood, in the same city, had left Theo feeling there was but a single solution – that left him feeling as if he were alone in solving the problems with Barnes.

Moments later, when Barnes had raised his hand high and brought his palm down across Abbie’s left cheek in response to the girl telling him to b-b-b-b-blow her, Theo found himself reacting with a full fist and a scream.

That might’ve been the end of Mathew Barnes, and Theo’s life as a free human, were it not for a sudden intervention.

The saviour was not, however, Abbie’s estranged father as summoned by his mother, it was not uniformed officers called in by Mr. Acevedo, it was not even Mathew’s crew arriving to defend their fellow goon.

A single white van peeled around the corner, its side-door sliding wide to reveal a figure: A besuited man with a pasty white face and thick black mutton chops. Below the stranger’s handlebar mustache projected a multi-barreled rotating canon.

It began to spin.

The first three shots fired from Theo’s pistol simply seemed to warp the space around the machine gunner, but the final trio landed across his chest, causing spiderweb cracks at the impact points.

Before the boy could fully comprehend that he’d slain a television screen, the flood of PVC-skinned sumos began.

From the building’s rear pathway, from the loading bay that lead to the trash room in the basement, from the neighbouring towers, a hundred figures, each with a face identical to that of the man in the van, erupted into view.

The clones, Theo realized, were just masks, their necks tucked into inflatable plastic suits that made them all equally round – then there was a rubbery impact at his shoulder that sent him stumbling towards an approaching balloon belly.

The sumos were giggling, and, within a dozen playful impacts, Theo could not resist but joining in. He did not notice the pistol disappear in the melee, nor would he ever wonder about where it had gone.

His nemesis did not have it so easily. As Matthew had buffeted others, so too was he now buffeted. Nothing more than a pinball in a deluge of bumpers, he lost all control of his direction, his self-control, and his bladder.

From beneath a dog pile of a half-dozen inflated Achievers, a truce was extracted from the tormentor – a truce that he would never dare break.

Abbie, who’d set adrift her online plea for help some four weeks earlier, could only clap.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Coffin’s theme is Quinn’s Song: A New Man, by Kevin MacLeod of http://incompetech.com/

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP266 – All Things Being Equal, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and sixty-six.

Flash PulpTonight we present All Things Being Equal, Part 1 of 1

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by All Things Geek.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Capital City finds itself in need of a hero.

 

All Things Being Equal, Part 1 of 1

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The news had drawn Madeline to the river’s edge.

In those days, breaking news was a rare event in Capital City, and so, when she’d realized the bridge-jumper pinned beneath the camera’s gaze was only blocks away, she’d hurried to leap on her ten-speed, Galahad.

As she’d unplugged her cellphone from the charging cord on the kitchen counter, her mom had asked, “Maddy, where you going?” and she’d replied, “to the bridge.”

Madeline felt some guilt at intentionally not mentioning the gathering crowd and unfolding drama, but the girl had known her mother would be quick to deny her the adventure.

Now, she was finding it difficult to continue to hold her tongue.

“Careful, you don’t want to go in with her. Half of ‘em survive the fall, but they at least get a chance to prepare themselves,” stated the nearest officer, at whose back she was staring. “Even then, they always pick up a few broken bones on impact.”

The figure at the center of the affair endlessly paced a metal beam at the structure’s brink. Though the span was blocked at either end, the suicidal pedestrian sometimes neared to a point just feet from Madeline – so close, the girl thought, that she could almost reach out and pull her to safety.

It was close enough, certainly, to hear the ragged woman’s sobbed pleas.

“I’ve tried everything,” she said. “Everything! Why won’t anyone help me?”

Madeline had, in fact, come to help, but, much to her frustration, the police weren’t letting her through. It annoyed the girl that her experience as a hero meant so little. A year previous, when she’d been ten, she’d managed to save a man’s life.

She’d found him in a double rutted back-lane running off of Gibraltar Road, crumpled between a huge green compost bin and a white-paneled shed.

He’d started at her approach, and she could see his oversized black suit was wet with blood.

“Are you OK?” she’d asked.

She’d gotten used to watching men fall down when dad was still living with them, but the blood was something new.

At the sight of it, Madeline had bitten her lip, and repeated her question.

“Are you OK?”

“No, not really,” was the man’s reply, but his voice had sounded younger than she’d expected. Turning his head had obviously been a difficult chore, but his eyes had swept left, then right, taking in the full length of the dirt lane’s scrubby bushes and unpainted fences. Maddy had found herself doing the same.

There was no one else at hand.

The man had righted himself then, using the shed for leverage and support.

His fingers painted a red fan on the plastic siding.

“You don’t happen to have a cell, do you?” he’d asked.

This was the moment she’d dreamed of as she’d run Galahad through puddles and over curbs, and it almost seemed too easy that the solution would simply pop from her pocket.

Nonetheless, it was no easy thing for the man.

The call was short, but the wait was long.

She kept him talking. He refused to answer any questions about why he was there, but he was happy enough to discuss the manga InuYasha, an unexpected common interest.

Still, the pain had been intense, and he’d wept as his friends pulled their black van to a stop, but he’d said it: He’d said that she’d saved his life.

He had also extracted a latex mask – a caricature of a man’s face, with huge sideburns and a wicked grin – from the interior of his coat. It was far too big for her, but she sometimes liked to put it on and stare at herself in her room’s star-stickered mirror.

Then he’d given her a phone number.

“If you ever need help – serious help – you text there.

“I might not answer, but someone will.”

She’d never used the digits. She hadn’t had a reason to until she wrote, “there’s a lady on the Lethe bridge, and no one’s DOING anything!”

For fifteen minutes she split her focus between the small message screen, and the bawling woman.

In despair, she sent a follow-up: “You said you would help me!”

Another half-hour passed.

The conflicted had taken to sitting, and creeping her ragged jeans towards the edge of the steel lip that was her too-short seat.

With tears of frustration in the corners of her eyes, Madeline began shouting at the reluctant officer.

“You’ve got to do something, damn it!”

She knew he’d been trying – that he’d been complaining about the lack of a boat on the scene moments before – but her anger at the situation demanded a target.

“There are protocols. We’re doing everything we can,” he replied. “You just stay calm, li’l lady – or are you a lady? That was some mighty strong language for someone so young.”

“Wait till you hear the language I’ll use if you don’t do something.”

“Listen, we’re trying to lock her up as quickly as we can, but -”

A hush fell over the spectators, causing the bing from Maddy’s pocket to echo like a cough in a library.

The source number was blocked, and the message said simply, “We’re coming.”

Suddenly, Maddy was the last thing on the cop’s mind.

After surveying the river, he turned to his partner.

“Fuck me,” he said,”it’s The Achievers.”

Once they’d been little more than Internet myth, a group of anonymous vindicators responding to cries for help from the lost and forgotten.

Recently, however, they’d grown more brazen.

A dozen swan boats, each powered by a latex-faced metalhead wearing an oversized black suit, appeared from beyond the waterway’s curve. A tarp was affixed, with taught nylon rigging, to the birds’ sleek white necks, so that a broad expanse of blue stretched between them. At the center of the surface lay, apparently jokingly, a pair of throw pillows.

As the masked invaders peddled ever to the left, the assembled raft was locked in perpetual rotation, and moved forward only because the river carried it along.

“God damn Busby Berkeley film,” said the officer.

“Oi! Come on down, the water’s fine!” shouted the temporarily-nearest Achiever.

Above, the despondent form stiffened.

“It’s OK – we’ve done the math!” coaxed the mask, his tone now more serious.

Seconds lingered. There were no more pleas as the jumper stared from her perch. To Maddy, it felt as if the impending-suicide was simply waiting for the illusion of help to dissipate.

The girl only had Galahad and her phone, but, again, it would be enough.

Everyone’s focus was on the boats below, or so they later claimed, as none stepped forward when asked by the press to identify who had thrown the aging hunk of plastic.

It was a good toss, which landed squarely in the wailer’s cloud of light-brown hair. With a notable thud, the cell ricocheted from her frozen skull, clattered against the steel rail, then dropped onto the makeshift safety net.

The woman was close behind.

The suits moved quickly, to secure her in one of the boats, before slicing the ropes that connected them.

With a wave, The Achievers pull-started the small black engines affixed to their waterfowls, then sped out of sight.

Finally, grinning, Madeline knocked back Galahad’s kickstand and turned towards home.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

187 – Lair, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and eighty seven.

Flash PulpTonight we present, Lair, Part 1 of 1.

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the bistrips comic Treed.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Veronica Peralta awaits a monster.

 

Flash Pulp 187 – Lair, Part 1 of 1

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

ChillerThe Peralta’s house rocked with the intensity of the assault. The less stable amongst their collection of porcelain dogs – a dozen of which rested above the gas fireplace – began to topple and shatter on the well-swept faux-wood flooring.

Mrs. Veronica Peralta contemplated the black masses pressing against the windows, and the silhouetted limbs bouncing from the all-too-thin glass behind her drawn curtains. She had stationed on the couch, well away from any potential flying shards, and she was careful to keep her face impassive.

Across the room, her husband, Danny, cringed at the roar. The tumbler in his left hand was shaking as he slammed down the useless telephone. He set the drink on the room’s dominating coffee table, ignoring the coasters Veronica had strategically positioned about its surface.

“What the sweet hell is this!?” he asked, grabbing up a poker that had, until that point, largely been ornamental.

Veronica wondered if the double-panes would flex and burst under the assault.

She clasped her hands on her lap.

“Vern – is that music!?” asked Danny, his ear cocked as if it might help clarify the morass of chanting and roars that emitted from the exterior.

She thought there was a hint of an organ grinder’s melody on the wind, but she wasn’t sure – whatever the case, she didn’t bother to respond.

As the deadbolt, which had so far stymied the advance, tore through the wood of the flimsy barrier in a series of splintering pops, Veronica smiled, and allowed her fingers to brush away a joyful tear from her purple cheek.

* * *

She’d spent the morning in preparation for the monster. Her feather duster had worked furiously over the gleaming surfaces of the home, while her free hand re-arranged pillows, straightened ornamental blankets, and gathered up wandering television remotes.

Fear made her eyes keen and her fingers industrious, and by noon, with the chemical smell of Pine-Sol thick in the air, she had to admit that she was simply re-polishing unnecessarily, and forced her legs to a halt.

Filling a glass with tap water, she sat at the kitchen table, and fell silent. She considered retrieving her laptop – her one refuge – but her mind, unable to relax even in the absolute stillness of a suburban Tuesday, began to circle the monster endlessly. What would the view be as the door opened? Were there imperfections along its path?

She assured herself that she’d anticipated every possibility, but also recalled she’d done similar in the past with unfortunate results.

The thought drove her to stand again, and the afternoon was spent in a cycle of doubt and confirmation.

Then she’d heard the slam, followed by the wrenching back of the entrance’s screen.

Danny was home.

* * *

Supper had gone smoothly, but she’d missed starting the coffee maker while retrieving his desert, and he’d given her a cuff to the left ear. His seated position had made it an awkward smack – while it stung for some time after, it was a lesser blow than many she’d endured.

He’d told her he wanted a glass of his whisky anyhow, and she foresaw a turn in the evening that did not bode well for her.

While she was opening a new bottle of Johnnie Walker from amongst the supply of liquor Danny kept in the shelving below the living room’s entertainment center, she’d heard a squawk from the lawn beyond the bay window.

A crowd had formed on the grass while she’d been handling dinner service – a mob of over-sized black suits and gloves, above which floated the rubbery visage of a mutton-chopped metal musician reproduced in mask form. Across the street, Mrs. MacDonald stepped onto her porch, dragging along Stony, her shitzu, for the mutt’s daily inspection of the neighbourhood.

Spotting the gathering, the dog walker quickly turned, scurrying for safety.

Remaining focused on Mrs. Peralta, inside her living room, the mass raised their right hands in unison, and waved hello.

Veronica screamed, and nearly let go of the bottle, but clenched, instead, at the fear of reprisal if she were to waste a drop.

She’d heard the rumours of The Achievers; she’d thought they were a bunch of kids playing at games on the Internet, a sort of digital urban legend, like haunted YouTube videos. She hadn’t truly believed, when she’d unraveled her brutal history into a General Discussion thread on her favourite kitting forum, “A Stitch In Time”, that anything would come of it.

Not really.

* * *

It was over quickly, once the hole was forced, and the horde had entered.

“Vern, call the cops! Do something!” was the last thing she ever heard from Danny, as he was carried away on the upraised arms of a dozen masked marrauders.

“I hate that frigging nickname!” was the last thing she ever said to him, as he was conveyed onto the driveway.

He didn’t know it then, but his years in South America would be incredibly educational.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Standing at the foot of her imploded entry, she watched the evening begin to settle at the edges of the city. A teenage boy on a mountain bike drove by, oblivious of what had just occurred.

She waved, and he returned the gesture.

Close behind the lad, a silver Cadillac SUV slid to a stop.

Another suit exited the vehicle, but this one was sharply dressed, and wore no disguise.

“Elden Lozada,” he said, as he approached with his hand extended. “It’s my understanding that you require a decent lawyer, and I happen to be mandated by state law to work a certain number of pro bono cases.”

A dog barked in the distance.

With her former husband out of the country, Veronica was quite pleased with the court’s settlement ruling.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP163 – Enter The Achievers, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and sixty-three.

Flash Pulp

Tonight we present, Enter The Achievers, Part 1 of 1.

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This episode is brought to you by MT Starkey Short Stories.

It’s for your own good.

To find out more, click here.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we introduce The Achievers.

 

Flash Pulp 163 – Enter The Achievers, Part 1 of 1

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The bungalow at two-fifty-three, Oaks Boulevard, had become a quiet war-zone. The grievances leading to the conflict were long forgotten, but the date marking the commencement of open hostilities was generally agreed upon: the thirteenth of March, the year previous. On that date, Mr and Mrs. Pope’s silk wedding anniversary, every piece of ceramic dishware, functional and decorative, had been shattered. It was a four-hour blowout that alienated the neighbours on either side and which required an extensive conversation, on the rear-bench of a police cruiser, to halt.

For eight months the only shots taken were verbal, but, in November, as a film of snow clung to the skewed roof-tiles, collateral damage was beginning to show. Bertie Pope, sixteen and president of her high school’s trivia club, was in the middle of an uncharacteristic throw down – the second time in her memory that she’d raised her voice to her parents, despite the regular heartbreak of their continued arguments.

She’d encountered a dispute in progress as she’d entered, and, dropping her backpack, she’d let her bottled-frustration vent.

“Won’t you both shut it!?” she’d shouted. “Try being nice to each other for, like, ten minutes.”

For a beat, she’d received a satisfying silence, but, then, Velma Pope, her mother, had finished formulating her retort.

“You want quiet? Just wait a sec and your Dad’ll be out the door and back to work. Then it’ll be just you, me, and the quiet.”

“- don’t forget the sound of your furious wine-chugging,” replied Bill, Bertie’s father. He leaned into the teen, kissing her on the cheek. “Anyhow, sorry, baby, but I’ve got a backlog of paperwork that -”

The outside door folded itself neatly, rocketed over the filthy beige mat intended to capture the brunt of the dirt infiltrating the home, and slammed into the fake-wood pattern of the coat-closet’s sliding doors.

“We’re here,” announced the pair of suddenly revealed men standing on the stoop. They dropped their home-made battering ram.

The duo were dressed identically: cheap black suits – a size too large, black leather gloves, and rubber masks intended to portray the likeness of Lemmy, founder of the metal band, Motörhead.

For a brief second, the twins cocked their arms at their sides, achieving the classic Peter Pan pose.

“Oh ####,” said Bertie, “it’s The Achievers.”

“‘Ello, Jello,” they replied, in unison.

None of the Popes believed the intruders’ Australian accents to be genuine.

The leftmost retrieved a straight razor from his right pocket, and approached Velma.

The rightmost rushed Bill, clobbering his jaw with a sharp jab.

The pudgy office dweller lost his footing and went over backwards, even as his wife was grabbed by her assailant. The blade flashed once, then returned to its slotted handle. As her wildly-flailing, but only mildly-lacerated, palm left a panicky spray of blood across every nearby surface, the invader adjusted his grip and closed his gloved-fingers on her hair.

Demonstrating the stun gun clearly before placing it against the base of her neck, he ushered her from the house, then threw her bodily into the rear of a black van parked out front. He locked the double-doors.

With a well-measured kick to Bill’s ribs, his partner followed. Snatching up the hefty ram, he jogged towards his getaway, and, as the vehicle peeled from the curb, the passenger-side kidnapper rolled down his window and waved to slack-jawed-Bertie and her breathless father, who’d managed to stumble into the front-yard before toppling onto the uncut grass.

Then they were gone.

Before Bertie could locate the cordless extension and dial for assistance, sirens filled the air.

A patrol car stopped short in the recently evacuated street-space.

“Ma’am,” said the first officer to exit, “we got a call saying, uh, that a forty-ish balding male had been seen dragging his wife from the residence -”

The officer, whose tag indicated his name was Bolokowski, had discontinued paying any heed to his own words, as he’d continued talking solely to cover the awkwardness of spotting the suspect in question, weeping openly on the front lawn in a considerably disheveled state. With a series of sharp gestures, his partner indicated they ought to approach and detain the wailer.

Although Bill would be released after twelve hours of questioning, it was under the strongest of suggestions that he remain close at hand.

Bertie had confessed immediately. She hadn’t expected it would actually happen. The Achievers were a rumour; a myth transmitted amongst the damaged egos and hopeless lives of the underbelly of Internet geekery. No one really knew who were behind the group – in truth, only the conspiracy-prone believed they existed – but the story told was that leaving a sufficiently tear-jerking request, in a public space, and containing ample usage of The Achievers moniker, would attract their attention.

In a moment of weakness, on a particularly wretched October evening, Bertie had done just that, misusing a forum dedicated to the films of Akira Kurosawa to lay out every barb she’d been forced to bare.

The detectives had listened to the tale patiently, then dismissed the girl and her explanation. Despite their obvious suspicions, the wreckage and blood were too little evidence to stand against the bizarre story told by both father and daughter.

Months passed, and the local press, having little else to feed on, used much ink in implying Bill’s involvement in a homicide. The knowing looks of his coworkers, combined with constant anxiety that The Achievers might suddenly reappear at any moment, drove him to drain his vacation time, then apply for stress leave.

Instead, Michael, from management, provided a very reasonable severance package and an apology.

Bill’s time at home found him a changed man. Maintaining the house’s condition became a secondary focus only to spending time with Bertie, who he now feared might disappear at any moment. The pair spent most meals watching recorded episodes of Jeopardy, and most evenings exploring their shared love of excessively-complicated boardgames.

Six months later, as Bill greeted his daughter upon her return from her first school dance, the van reappeared.

“‘Ello, Jello,” said the masked man hanging from the passenger-window.

The vehicle’s rear swung open, and a blindfolded woman stumbled onto the pavement.

“Mom!” shouted Bertie.

Before she’d closed the distance, The Achievers were gone again.

As her daughter lead the still-blinking Velma into the house and onto the couch, Bill was so pleased to see her return, he offered her a drink.

“No – I – I don’t do that anymore. I mean, I can’t promise I’ll always be perfect, but the last thing I want is for – for them to -” she took a moment to collect herself. “I’ve spent the last, uh, however long, in a twenty-by-twenty room, with a toilet, an exercise bike, and a cupboard full of arts and crafts supplies. They delivered three nutritional, if not particularly well cooked, meals a day. At first I painted. Mostly reproductions of liquor bottle labels. Then I started writing you both letters – rambling apologies. After a while I realized I really enjoyed the process, so I wrote a novel.”

All three, closely huddled, were in tears.

“They didn’t let me keep any of it,” she continued, “but it was only my first try. The next one will be even better.”

Her account of the incident made for a brisk-selling book, and the accompanying tour was the first family-trip the Popes had had in years.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.