A Token of Friendship

[Drago]

Alright, before the stories start, let me get real.
I know damn near none of you, and none of you really know me either. That aside, y'all are a fantastic community of creative individuals, and I wish I had been on the RPing scene more than I was when I was younger, because, as I've said, y'all are great.

That in mind, I wrote a few short stories. I am unaware of their quality, I just know that they are about two and a half pages long in a google doc each, and that I enjoyed writing each of them. I've decided I'll post them here, since they're kind of interesting, and I hope you all enjoy!

---


Story 1: “I never would have married you if I had known…”
(This one I wrote at around midnight one evening when I was given the above quote as a prompt, so that my friend and I could each write for fun. Depression runs rampant in the story and, at the time, in the author, so expect something serious from this. As I said, not sure how good it is, just that I liked writing it. A warning, it is a bit sad.)

John ran onto the busy streets of New York from his two person studio apartment, hoping that none of his students planned on going clubbing tonight. He didn’t want anyone to know about what was about to happen next. If he saw anyone he knew at his favorite watering hole, he’d move on to the next one, until he had his sorrows all to himself.


“I never would have married you if I had known…” she had shouted from the roof of their apartment complex.


A clause like that was the nightmare of most English teachers, yet this hurt him on far deeper level than his studious appreciation for grammatical accuracy. Professor Jonathan Stalvern was nothing if not a man who appreciated the use of correct grammar in daily conversation, yet his wife’s understanding of his obsession with syntax even when admitting that she hated this insidious quality of his was one of the reasons why it hurt him so. Jonathan didn’t know any better way to handle her opinion without a good dose of alcohol in his system.
He walked another block, trying to figure out exactly what he’d say to Paul when he walked in. Paul Middleton, John’s favorite bartender, was the type of guy who’d stop serving you as soon as the pain was dulled, and not a moment sooner. He was also willing to ignore a tab on a bad enough night, if you were a polite drunk, at least. Opening the door to “Business,” Jonathan’s favorite place to get hammered after a rough evening, was one of the greatest feelings that he would experience for a long time.
“Evening, Prof!” Paul shouted over the cover of “Piano Man” being played by an auditioning pianist and his slightly less talented singer friend. “The hell are you doing here on a Thursday night?”
“Just get me a glass of whiskey, Paul. And…if you want to know why I’m here, check the news or something. I don’t give a damn.” John waded through the small crowd as he spoke, sitting down on a barstool.
“Don’t you usually have bourbon, John?” Paul asked innocuously.
“I know what I said, Paul, I just need something strong tonight.”
“This isn’t like you, John.”
“I know.” Jonathan slid a hundred dollar bill across the table. “That’s the point.”
Paul was aware that the last time John spent a hundred dollar bill, his wife Mary was sharing a bottle of something sparkly with him on a starry Connecticut beach somewhere. According to John, that was fifteen or so years ago. This is why Paul had no objections to pouring a cocktail of tequila and rum into a pint glass, hoping that just one would be enough. John swallowed the cocktail in one swig, then shuddered. “That’s a good start,” John said, “Another one.” Paul responded by pouring three shot glasses of the same mixture. John drank with as much fervor as before, which was more than enough to introduce lines of worry and beads of sweat on Paul’s brow. The two looked at each other in silence, each with a different reason. Paul was anticipating John’s next move. Paul hoped he wouldn’t hear the word ‘another’ uttered from John’s lips tonight, but was confronting the truth that the word would come, in time.
John, however, was reliving a moment with Mary, touring her office building and having lunch in Central Park. He remembered that he couldn’t stop staring into her eyes, hoping that he could come up with another reason to keep talking, or another way to make this moment last for an eternity


“I never would have married you if I had known….” Mary had said an hour before Jonathan had started walking.


“Another.” John said the word as if he had rehearsed it, as if he had planned to say it ever since he started walking here. Paul grimaced, then filled another shot glass, which John, naturally, swallowed with speed and gusto. John remembered one night, the two of them sitting down for dinner at this new Mexican place, then the hotel sex that followed. He had never wanted a woman more than right before he told her about that room, and, based on her actions when they walked into said hotel room, she more than appreciated his sentimentality.
“Another!” John slammed his fist onto the bar.
“Alright,” Paul shouted “I haven’t seen you handle this much liquor before. I’m cutting you off.”
“Listen, Paul.” John said, with no slur or other sign of inebriation, “You’ve taken my Postmodern Lit course before, you know the difference between when I’m feeling lighthearted and when I’m feeling serious. Look me in the eye,” John grabbed Paul by the wrists and pulled him closer until their two faces were less than an inch away from each other, “Do I look like I’m playing with you?”
Paul, against his better judgement, filled another shot glass. John looked into Paul’s eyes and watched his wedding day reflected in them. He had never been so in love, and never seen a woman look so beautiful before. It was breathtaking.
John snapped out of his trance as soon as he saw the full shot glass that Paul had slid in front of him. He drank it slowly, then refilled it, motioning for Paul to go somewhere else as a single tear fell down his cheek.
Paul walked off and found himself at one of the bar’s many TVs. He changed the channel to the local news. He watched, listening to the reports of yesterday’s fire in Brooklyn.
John cried as he remembered Mary’s words last night, hearing the fear and anger in her voice from fifteen stories below.
Paul kept watching the news, ignoring the new state legislature on the subject of drink sizes in convenience stores.
John wept. He had found the word ‘wept’ in many of the term papers, essays and notes that he had graded over the years. Surprisingly, Paul was the only one, out of all of his students, who refused to use that word. John, his face covered in an amount of tears reserved only for mourning, finally understood why.
Paul finally heard the words he had needed to hear. “About an hour and a half ago, Brooklyn resident Mary Stalvern was seen atop her apartment complex, shouting obscenities while dressed in a nightgown. The police, firemen and negotiators were unable to stop her from jumping off of the building. Her husband, Professor John Stalvern, was nowhere to be found at the time of the incident.”
Paul put a hand on his former professor’s back, as Jonathan placed his arms on the table and buried himself in them. He had never seen John look like this. John was such a happy man, living a life that scholars like him would kill to experience for even a day. The loss of Mary, Paul suspected, had killed that happier personality as well.
Jonathan Stalvern is an alcoholic. Maybe if he wasn’t, his wife would have lived to see their daughter dressed in a cap and gown. The question is, what would he do with his life now?

[Drago]

Story 2: Into the Shadows
(WARNING, WAS WRITTEN WITH THE INTENT OF BEING CONFUSING AND SCARY. THOSE WHO DISLIKE REALLY GORY DESCRIPTIONS SHOULD MOVE ON. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WHO AREN'T EASILY FRIGHTENED, WELCOME...TO THE MADHOUSE.)

Far beyond the land of civilization, past even the most hidden forests and holes, there lied a cave that was very nondescript. Those who saw it felt no desire to enter, for it lacked any appeal or uniqueness. Yet, this very same feature caused a young halfling to shudder at its entrance, lighting one of his few torches. Yerrick Goodfolk, a simple man, was a priest of the Great Sun and Sky Above. He worshipped the Light and its bounties, ever so happy when a good harvest season allowed him to pick strawberries from the patches peppered across his dale.

Yet, Yerrick was not sent to pick strawberries in this cave. No, he knew the cave as Nilvashek, which translated, roughly, into ‘Shadows at Deep’ according to his scripture. Yerrick held his torch firmly, using it to brush away cobwebs sitting inches away from his form. He imagined the sort of horrors that inspired such a name and pushed forward, praying to the Sun and Sky Above that his path would be a bright one.


“Oh.” he said, staring down at a body approximately his size, clutching a small dagger in hand whilst it was propped against the cave wall. Yerrick inspected it, cleaned it of rust and put it in his pack, intending to use it as a letter opener back home. “I’ve only come a foot into this cave and already, there’s a corpse.” the halfling said calmly. Yerrick chanted for a few minutes and a small candlelight of flame appeared above his palm. He took this flame and placed it behind the skeleton’s now closed mouth. The priest watched, letting the skeleton burn and find its way out at last. He took out the skeleton’s dagger, appreciating how it felt in his hand and swinging it a tad. “Oh, Father Cedric would appreciate its craftsmanship” said the halfling, holding onto it as the ashes of the deceased finally calmed.


Despite the light of his torch, all around him was very dark. Had he not seen the entrance, Yerrick wouldn’t have even known where he had come from. Yet, the priest soldiered on, singing quiet hymns to the Light Above. He marched loudly and was not surprised to find something amidst his walk. An elder man, a bearded elf, also sat on the ground near a cave wall. He muttered something the priest did not understand, then looked at him puzzledly. The halfling replied with his songs of the Great Sun, singing proudly in the name of the Light Above. After some anger from the elder elf, his calloused soul finally rested and found calmness. And so did the halfling continue along his way.


He found himself placing his hand on the wall and following it. It was all very smooth stone, with very few incisions, until he reached something that did not feel like normal stone. He rubbed his hands over it and was unable to determine its meaning. Only by placing his torch a feather’s weight away from the wall was the halfling able to read the script faintly. It appeared that a word or two was carved out of, but some engravings remained:


“YE WHO ENTER HERE, THERE IS DARKNESS.”


The halfling was surprised by such an obvious statement and continued on, only to find that a few feet later, another engraving was written.


“STONE HOLDS TRUE, WHATEVER YOU DO”


This time, it appeared that words near the end of the engraving were removed. The priest continued, one hand on his torch, the other on the wall. He kept feeling engravings, warning him of something, yet becoming progressively more faded. The halfling was very preoccupied with these engravings, failing to notice that the darkness grew and grew with every step. His torch had not been visible for a good hour while walking, yet the priest showed no concern. Eventually, the halfling came to a stop and pulled a tinder from his pack. With a loud and righteous chant to the Sun and Sky Above, the holy man found timber in the cave, a single log to light. He did so, warming himself by the flame, deciding to rest by it after eating from his rations.


A leg of mutton roasted itself on the flame as the halfling bit into his cold, stale bread. He removed the mutton from the spit and already it tasted lukewarm. His flagon of ale seemed emptier than before. “No matter, no matter.” he muttered, grabbing his bedroll and falling to sleep. He tossed and turned slightly, yet felt much warmer than his surroundings, finally finding comfort in this dark, cold cave.








He awoke with a start to the sound of rattling chains. He awoke to his own chains, it seems. The priest was unsure how he had become strapped to this wall while he slept and this confused him. He rattled further from his upright position, hoping to see further than that which was directly in front of his face.


The halfling heard a footstep.
Seconds later, he heard a second.
It was followed by a third footstep.


Then, the priest regretted wishing to see.
The walls were engraved and coated in a shadowy liquid. The floors beneath him bubbled with an inhuman stench, swirling and moving in ways not even the strangest of liquids could. Directly in front of him lay two men, one coated in black scorch marks, panting heavily in a strange tongue. Sat next to him was a familiar elf, whose ears were cut off and dangling, faintly attached to him. All of his limbs were like this, attached by a few strings of muscle yet so close to falling off, except for his head. Despite all of this vision, still, all was dark.


It made a fourth footstep and stood in front of the halfling.
“We will rip the elf’s limbs off entirely, then we will take its neck and snap it in twain. We will peel the burnt flesh off of the other one and consume of its meat. The muscle will be tied in knots, the bones we will snap and the head we will bash into the wall until he finally dies of brutal agony. Yes, yes we will. Then, we will unbind these chains and return home,” said a darkness speaking in the halfling’s own voice, “where we will set fire to the homes and eviscerate the men. We will chew the skin off of the women and rip off the heads of the infants.” It overpowered the priest’s thoughts and mind, leaving so little energy with which the halfling could resist. His mind had become the mind of this darkness.


The halfling still stood at the entrance of the cave, as he had been standing before he lit the first torch. His mind showed himself walking through the cave, brutally burning a sleeping human body and slaying the elf with the powers of his corrupted voice, sleeping at the fire and awakening in the chains. Still, he repeated what the darkness was saying as he had in the darkness.


“We will feast on the skin of the women amongst my neighbors, reach through the ribcages of the males and lick the blood off of their beating hearts.” said Yerrick, stuttering, watching the darkness overtake his soul as he was chained in the cave. Yet, Yerrick was not actually speaking as he watched. He drew the dagger from his pack, the dagger that he watched himself grab and slashed both of his palms, seeking clarity from pain.


The pain had failed him. He began to stutter, muttering about the homeland and the faith, until it slowly became incomprehensible nonsense. He walked into the cave with the dagger, slaying sleeping bodies, living bodies and all that was around him. The halfling killed all that he saw with a calmness and a passion.


Yerrick watched the gruesome murders play out in his head, slowly falling to his knees. He had not yet even set foot in the cave. He had never set foot in the cave. He dropped the torch, listening as the chaos and insanity echoed through his skull, praying that the Sun and Sky Above could save him. He opened up his prayer book to recite a psalm, yet on all pages there was one of two pages. In the first stood himself, an elf and a black figure. The elf was on fire, the blackness was on fire, he was on fire. In the second stood an elf and himself inside a cave. The elf was blood, Yerrick was blood, all was blood.


He felt his chest thump once, twice, three times very quickly in succession. He looked up to the sky one last time as he fell to the ground in front of the cave. Yerrick had a heart attack and died, staring into the seemingly empty nothingness of the cave, it had overtaken his mind and body. Yerrick had never walked into the cave and he knew this consciously, but the majority of his mind forced him deeper and deeper. It was there that Yerrick’s tale had ended, lying before the mouth of the cave, for none can survive walking into the shadows.


“ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE, THERE IS DARKNESS.”
“STONE IS TRUE, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GIVE IN TO THE VOICE OF DEATH.”

[Drago]

Story 3: Paint the Town Red
(This one is meant to be a bit more lighthearted than the other two. I made a few not so subtle references to things because I'm a cheeky, unoriginal bastard. These references do however explain the story's premise quickly and efficiently. Enjoy!)

If there were any place more desolate than the town of East Clint, it would be the vast desert surrounding it. Here, tumbleweeds rolled more often than a drunkard’s dice, and there were a lot of drunkards who prided themselves on living in this town. Today, however, there were two men that weren’t sitting in the bar, shitfaced on something that was more water than alcohol. These two men sat down in the dried husk of what was the town river, opening their burlap sacks and pulling out their sandwiches. The two of them were old friends, both in their prime, who had built every single shack in this town, and then some. No pay was given, but they liked it that way.


Maverick took the first bite of his sandwich, breaking the silence of the arid, sandy winds in the distance. Jim soon followed, swinging his legs slightly in the dip the river had dug. They both ate quickly, staring at the soon to be setting sun. Eventually, their meals were finished. A moment of quiet passed again.


“You know what, Mav?” Jim asked, turning to his partner. “We still never found that right color for the barn. Now that the paint’s dryin’, maybe we have another shot to find that perfect color.”
“I reckon yer right, Jim,” the elder worker of them replied. “Back in the day, we used these imported dyes, mixed ‘em in with some a’ that cloth from ol’ Wilkin’s shirt store, an’ that was as red as we could get it. But I always knew….thar was somethin’ redder than that out thar.” Maverick pointed to the sunset, slowly falling. “Y’see that, Jim? Y’see the way the sun hits the sky like that? That thar is the red I’m lookin for, the real red.”


“I don’t know, Mav.” said Jim, quietly. “Do you think you could’ve just used blood?” Jim had studied construction in Cambridge and knew a thing or two about color from his father.

“No’m, not at all.” said Maverick. “Maybe I can show ye…”
“H-hold it right thar, you dirty paint sniffin filth!” shouted one of the drunkards behind him, shovel in hand. Maverick drew his revolver and quickly shot him in the head. Such is law in East Clint.
“Alright, c’mere. This aughta explain exactly why ye cain’t jes ‘use blood’ like one a’ them bandits would.” Maverick dragged the body over, pointing at the head wound. “Yessir, that sure looks red now, but a few hours and she dries up real quick, turnin inta this brownish color.”
“I guess you’re right, Mav. Now what do we do with this body?”
“Looks to me like I just shot Miller clean in the head. He ain’t got no kids, no wife, no job. Guess we’ll just throw ‘im in the river.”
“Throw him in the river? Doesn’t he deserve a burial?”
“I don’t know nobody here who can afford hisself a board a’ wood, let alone one a’ them coffins an some poor bastard to bury him. Jes put ‘im in the river and get it over with.”
“Alright, Mav.” Jim picked up the poor sod, Miller, and said a quick prayer to God before throwing the man into the ground. Jim wasn’t exactly the strongest man in town, so his throw fell quite short. Miller’s body ended up hitting some stones on the way down, revealing a very rusty, orange rock. This rock struck Miller in the head as he tumbled down the river, not that he would’ve cared, being a dead man.
“That’s an interesting color of rock. I haven’t seen anything like that since I was wading in the lake with Meredith as a young boy.”
“Yea, this river was all sorts a good things back when she still had water in ‘er.” Maverick had watched this town grow since he was a small child and had helped with building even then, on account of his paw being shot by his maw a good few years after he was born. “Ye wouldn’t have seen it, since yer arrival was a good five years after the drought hit.” It was dark in East Clint, though the sun had not yet set. For the first time in years, dark clouds were blocking the sun.
“What the dickens is that, Mav?” Jim shouted inquisitively to the slack-jawed painter “Mav? Maverick? What the hell is that?”
“Tha’s a storm cloud, Jimmy boy. I hadn’t seen one a those since....a long time.”
With a crack of thunder, the rain poured down in earnest, prompting the two men to run back to their shack and fill paint buckets with it. The two men danced and shouted with joy and soon the whole town followed, dancing around the river and completely ignoring the corpse of Ol’ Miller, who was happily floating away in a newfound stream of water. All the drunks felt happier than they did in the bar room, all the workers felt a moment of relaxation in a world of labor, and the bartender too was gathering buckets; for the next few weeks everyone would have water to drink. Jim had never seen a happier group of people, even in his days as a wandering schoolteacher. He danced and sang with the rest of them, howling along to the tunes of ‘Dixie’ and ‘Goober Peas.’
Maverick was staring instead at the river, which, despite being filled with rainwater, was very much not the color of it. It was a dark, scarlet shade, darker than blood or dyes could ever be. Mav took note of it and promptly found his way back to the watering hole, so that he and the other men in town could celebrate like real men. One round of drinking later, Maverick found his grey-bearded self taking a long nap on the ground after challenging all the men next to him to an arm-wrestling match.

The next morning, Maverick ‘Mav’ Taylor awoke to the painful, yet not surprising feeling of being slapped in the face by a man with multiple rings on his hand.
“Thank the heavens!” said Jim, who had tried everything from splashing water to dropping him a foot or two. Even coffee was not strong enough to wake this bastard up. “There are at least three men outside who said you owe them money.”
“Wha?” asked Mav, his face covered in drunken shock. “Naw, I just suggested ta them that we is gonna arm wrestle, and they wouldn’ ta done it if I dinnae give em any money er sump’n. How was I supposed ta known that they wanted me to bet on it? We wuz a bit tipsy, so I figured they was jokin and beat them all. Now they want their money back, but I ain’t gone and taken it.”
“Alright, alright, I believe you. Let me just deal with them.” Jim walked around to the front of the bar, calmly suggested that the gentlemen left, since they had no debt to this man. The gentlemen pointed out that the guns they were holding suggested otherwise. Jim, being more educated than Maverick, promptly ran away and tried to figure out what to do, rather than try to kill three men at once.
Maverick, when found, promptly feel asleep, but upon hearing Jim’s problem, said simply ‘The river, boy, go to the river.”
Jim had never ran faster than that moment. After a good hour of staring at the thing, he finally realized that some kind of rock was making the water look red, so he brought some back to Mav.
“Y’see that red, Jim? Tha’s barn red. Go paint their barn with it real quick, give these men the money. Don’t worry if it’s not enough, I gots a plan.”
Jim ran back to the men standing in front of the bar with shotguns trained on them, promised them some money and started making paint in the shack the two men owned. Jim had no doubt that the clay would produce a magnificent color. He only hoped that he would make enough money to avoid being the second coat.