I'm not quite sure if this would be where to post something like this but I can't find a better...
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A Neurotic Collection of Mostly Unrelated Short Stories
- Thread starter Sturmi
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I'm not quite sure if this would be where to post something like this but I can't find a better place, so here it is I suppose. Also this is my first thread and 2/3rd day on SV, so please tell me if I'm doing anything wrong.
This will be a place where I'm going to post short stories that pop into my head that I remember to write. It would help a lot if I could get some critique as well(pls be gentle).
Here's the first of hopefully many.
It really was just a matter of time.
The Saarland. Austria. The Sudetenland. And now Danzig.
To be fair, I never really expected to have been allowed to keep the Saarland. As much as Napoleon may have claimed, the Rhine is no more French than it is German or Dutch. It is one of the many hearts of Europe, beating with the smoldering embers of soul, still so deeply embedded on these lands forever scarred by countless factory complexes, steel mills, and oil refineries.
Optimism was most certainly not in my thoughts when it came time for the referendum. 90% for Germany. 9% for status quo. 1% for me.
I can hardly blame them. 1935 could not be counted among my best of years. And when you can simply look across the border, laying eyes upon a new Germany, soaring miles into the sky, already sprinting past the horizon, I am nothing more than a tired reminder of the bitter past.
Austria was less expected. Quite honestly I had hoped that the Hapsburgs would simply rot in their little corner of hell for the rest of their days. A civil war, a pseudo-facsist "Chancellor" and a maddeningly nonsensical excuse for a democracy later, an angry Fuhrer would come in to reclaim his homeland.
That was the first time I had been afraid in a long while. I remember when I promised Britain and italy, and they promised me, that as long as we lived, we would never allow the Austrians to unite with the rest of Germany. It would become a simple and unavoidable fact, that we would never be able to compete with such an economic titan.
In many ways, that reality had already come true. Italy had long ago become distant, with their forays into Abyssinia, and abandonment of the values I hold so dear. Britain still pined for the dead who lay upon my countless fields, pockmarked by crosses of wood, stone and marble. Most of all I am nearly a broken country. My people have bled a war for a piece of dirt that, if I am honest with myself, is as German as it is French. My colonies are plentiful and rebellious, whose lives yearn for the Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite as I did over a century ago. My people squabble for leaders to lead them, to find only clowns, and a rotting house, falling apart, held together only by doubt of another way. My people are tired. I am tired.
Austria was simply another mound of dirt on a mountain that could never be climbed.
Then came Czechoslovakia. A nation who I found a friend in. My greatest shame.
I remember the first day I met her. She had volunteered to fight in my armies from the very first days of the war to the very last. Her legions fought with the spirit and strength of a people that had suffered much under the iron boot of the Hapsburgs, but were never bowed. And so I watched her.
Struggle after struggle, from the Marne to Cambrai, she stuck with me. Every crushing defeat, every Pyrrhic victory, I could count on a petite girl with a smile on her face after the battle to ease the pain.
She would tell me stories of the old days of Bohemia, and of her cherished Slovakia, forever under Hungarian rule.
At some point, I came to call her friend.
And so, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, she brought me to her home. The Czech were now a republic, free from the rule of Austria, and now in control of her own destiny.
Slovakia, and her were inseparable, even in the maddened chaos of the years after the war. I had the honor of bearing witness to their union, and watch my friend become Czechoslovakia.
They embraced my principles with a zeal, that I will always cherish, and I promised to protect them. She was unique in the way only the nations born of union can be. I saw a little of my first days of republic in her. Us against the world. A people that find strength in themselves to fight to the bitter end.
In the end I failed her. I stabbed her in the back, and left her in the dirt to die.
I cannot blame the Sudetenland Germans for their actions. A strong nation, rising above the rest of Europe, and a chance to be part of it? It is an offer too tempting for many to resist. And here I failed too.
I am a republic. Some would go as far as to say The Republic. I am the example to Europe, the exemplar of what Republic can be. I show people that democracy will always be better than those that would smother freedom in its crib. But I couldn't. Because I couldn't fight Germany. Because I couldn't unite my people. Because I wasn't strong enough to stand for my dearest friends.
When Germany asked for a conference, I played along.
When Britain agreed to leave Czechoslovakia to the dogs, I played along.
When Germany took the Sudetenland, I played along.
Each and every time, my heart splattered itself upon my ribs, asking for death, so I would not have to witness what was unavoidable.
I dragged myself to Czechoslovakia that day. I couldn't even look her in the eye. I told her she was to accept the cession of the German majority sections of her country. We both knew what I actually meant.
She was defenseless. Nothing but open plains and hills from the border to Prague. I was giving away a fifth of her population and an integral part of her country to the person I have fought for my entire life, because I was too weak.
I never want to see someone break down like that ever again. The cauldron of her mind boiling with a mix of righteous fury, soul-crushing despair, and a look of betrayal that pierced my eyes like a javelin, judging me for my sins.
I went home that night to cry. For once not for my fallen, not for my past, but for the little country I had thrown to the wolves because I couldn't save her.
I knew Germany would come for her soon. Her industrial prowess too tempting to pass up.
I can only imagine the terror Slovakia was in. The panic, as she gets to choose whether to abandon her lifelong friend, or die with her.
In the end, my friend is now the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, puppet of Germany.
Maybe I made a mistake.
No. I have made many mistakes.
I am a nation who abandons her own principles at the drop of a hat. I left my friends to die at the hands of an enemy I have fought since time immemorial.
I cannot leave anyone else behind. I refuse to.
I am not ready yet, but I have no choice.
Germany has shown her true face to the world, and I will not stand by and watch her consume more nations like a starved pig.
Poland stands between the Germans and their newly found Soviet comrades.
War is coming, and the Germans thirst for Danzig.
The Soviets starve for a Poland once more oppressed under their fist.
I have no choice. I make my stand here, with Britain once more at my side.
If, no, when Germany comes on the war path, I will be here.
I will not die for Danzig.
I will die for Gdansk.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This took several hours more than I thought it would through the power of procrastination.
I know I have some historical discrepancies in there as well, but I honestly couldn't make it flow correctly with what I wanted to write, and I really just want to get it out after writing for 5 hours.
This will be a place where I'm going to post short stories that pop into my head that I remember to write. It would help a lot if I could get some critique as well(pls be gentle).
Here's the first of hopefully many.
Why die for Danzig?
It really was just a matter of time.
The Saarland. Austria. The Sudetenland. And now Danzig.
To be fair, I never really expected to have been allowed to keep the Saarland. As much as Napoleon may have claimed, the Rhine is no more French than it is German or Dutch. It is one of the many hearts of Europe, beating with the smoldering embers of soul, still so deeply embedded on these lands forever scarred by countless factory complexes, steel mills, and oil refineries.
Optimism was most certainly not in my thoughts when it came time for the referendum. 90% for Germany. 9% for status quo. 1% for me.
I can hardly blame them. 1935 could not be counted among my best of years. And when you can simply look across the border, laying eyes upon a new Germany, soaring miles into the sky, already sprinting past the horizon, I am nothing more than a tired reminder of the bitter past.
Austria was less expected. Quite honestly I had hoped that the Hapsburgs would simply rot in their little corner of hell for the rest of their days. A civil war, a pseudo-facsist "Chancellor" and a maddeningly nonsensical excuse for a democracy later, an angry Fuhrer would come in to reclaim his homeland.
That was the first time I had been afraid in a long while. I remember when I promised Britain and italy, and they promised me, that as long as we lived, we would never allow the Austrians to unite with the rest of Germany. It would become a simple and unavoidable fact, that we would never be able to compete with such an economic titan.
In many ways, that reality had already come true. Italy had long ago become distant, with their forays into Abyssinia, and abandonment of the values I hold so dear. Britain still pined for the dead who lay upon my countless fields, pockmarked by crosses of wood, stone and marble. Most of all I am nearly a broken country. My people have bled a war for a piece of dirt that, if I am honest with myself, is as German as it is French. My colonies are plentiful and rebellious, whose lives yearn for the Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite as I did over a century ago. My people squabble for leaders to lead them, to find only clowns, and a rotting house, falling apart, held together only by doubt of another way. My people are tired. I am tired.
Austria was simply another mound of dirt on a mountain that could never be climbed.
Then came Czechoslovakia. A nation who I found a friend in. My greatest shame.
I remember the first day I met her. She had volunteered to fight in my armies from the very first days of the war to the very last. Her legions fought with the spirit and strength of a people that had suffered much under the iron boot of the Hapsburgs, but were never bowed. And so I watched her.
Struggle after struggle, from the Marne to Cambrai, she stuck with me. Every crushing defeat, every Pyrrhic victory, I could count on a petite girl with a smile on her face after the battle to ease the pain.
She would tell me stories of the old days of Bohemia, and of her cherished Slovakia, forever under Hungarian rule.
At some point, I came to call her friend.
And so, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, she brought me to her home. The Czech were now a republic, free from the rule of Austria, and now in control of her own destiny.
Slovakia, and her were inseparable, even in the maddened chaos of the years after the war. I had the honor of bearing witness to their union, and watch my friend become Czechoslovakia.
They embraced my principles with a zeal, that I will always cherish, and I promised to protect them. She was unique in the way only the nations born of union can be. I saw a little of my first days of republic in her. Us against the world. A people that find strength in themselves to fight to the bitter end.
In the end I failed her. I stabbed her in the back, and left her in the dirt to die.
I cannot blame the Sudetenland Germans for their actions. A strong nation, rising above the rest of Europe, and a chance to be part of it? It is an offer too tempting for many to resist. And here I failed too.
I am a republic. Some would go as far as to say The Republic. I am the example to Europe, the exemplar of what Republic can be. I show people that democracy will always be better than those that would smother freedom in its crib. But I couldn't. Because I couldn't fight Germany. Because I couldn't unite my people. Because I wasn't strong enough to stand for my dearest friends.
When Germany asked for a conference, I played along.
When Britain agreed to leave Czechoslovakia to the dogs, I played along.
When Germany took the Sudetenland, I played along.
Each and every time, my heart splattered itself upon my ribs, asking for death, so I would not have to witness what was unavoidable.
I dragged myself to Czechoslovakia that day. I couldn't even look her in the eye. I told her she was to accept the cession of the German majority sections of her country. We both knew what I actually meant.
She was defenseless. Nothing but open plains and hills from the border to Prague. I was giving away a fifth of her population and an integral part of her country to the person I have fought for my entire life, because I was too weak.
I never want to see someone break down like that ever again. The cauldron of her mind boiling with a mix of righteous fury, soul-crushing despair, and a look of betrayal that pierced my eyes like a javelin, judging me for my sins.
I went home that night to cry. For once not for my fallen, not for my past, but for the little country I had thrown to the wolves because I couldn't save her.
I knew Germany would come for her soon. Her industrial prowess too tempting to pass up.
I can only imagine the terror Slovakia was in. The panic, as she gets to choose whether to abandon her lifelong friend, or die with her.
In the end, my friend is now the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, puppet of Germany.
Maybe I made a mistake.
No. I have made many mistakes.
I am a nation who abandons her own principles at the drop of a hat. I left my friends to die at the hands of an enemy I have fought since time immemorial.
I cannot leave anyone else behind. I refuse to.
I am not ready yet, but I have no choice.
Germany has shown her true face to the world, and I will not stand by and watch her consume more nations like a starved pig.
Poland stands between the Germans and their newly found Soviet comrades.
War is coming, and the Germans thirst for Danzig.
The Soviets starve for a Poland once more oppressed under their fist.
I have no choice. I make my stand here, with Britain once more at my side.
If, no, when Germany comes on the war path, I will be here.
I will not die for Danzig.
I will die for Gdansk.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This took several hours more than I thought it would through the power of procrastination.
I know I have some historical discrepancies in there as well, but I honestly couldn't make it flow correctly with what I wanted to write, and I really just want to get it out after writing for 5 hours.
- Location
- USA
I really hope that I actually update more than once a month in the future.
A small clicking sound pops from the recording. The video shows a placid pond, with the recording device seemingly on the lap of a 14-something girl, judging by the skirt and not quite fully developed body. Her voice also supports this conclusion.
"The people who have made the conscious, and often remarkably bad decision to be my friend, often ask me something. What is it like to live with the certainty that you will die before age 20?" A rumbling begins, shaking the camera ever so slightly, but with a consistent rhythm, clearly full of purpose. The girl's voice continues onward even with the background noise beginning to flood her out.
"No, I am not in the late stages of some terminal disease, thank you very much, instead I am basically destined to die to some hulking mass from someone's drug fueled nightmares after I get too careless after some random night of patrolling. " From the lake, a vaguely humanoid figure bursts forth, and begins an otherworldly scream, more akin to a scene from hell than on the face of the Earth. It is covered in all manners of rotting flesh, and decaying algae, toeing the line between living and dead. It begins to trudge forward.
The girl picks up her camera with her left hand and begins to walk towards it.
"I am a Magical Girl, possibly the worst name I've ever heard for 'person sentenced to death', and every waking moment of my life now has something to do with trying to hunt down humanity's collective bad feelings given physical form. As it turns out, humanity's collective bad feelings, are in fact, pretty damn bad." Her walk becomes a jog, then a sprint, and finally she leaps into the air with inhuman grace, pulling a halberd from out of frame, a bastard child of a spear and axe, while simultaneously keeping the camera steady somehow. She flies towards the colossus at hundreds of miles per hour, preparing to strike.
"My very first experience as a Magical Girl in fact consisted of desperately attempting to flee from what appeared to be a titan-like mass of limbs and mouths," The monstrosity attempts to smash her out of the air with a gargantuan fist. She seems to disobey physics as her body pivots about the halberd stuck for mere milliseconds into the mass of rot, as she continues the remaining 30 feet to the rest of her target.The blade crashes into the excuse for a face the creature has, shattering the collection of yellowing skulls there.
She pulls the halberd out in a massive sweeping arc above her head and stabs it into a graveyard that one might describe as a back, carrying her body like a lever as she flies behind the creature and under it. " seemingly being stitched together, ripped apart, and re-stitched together constantly, by a mob of unnervingly deformed demons, that took great joy in adding anyone who got too close, into the ball of unspeakable things in a highly visible fashion." The small one hundred and five pound female finds herself standing on the sedimentary feet of the construct as she takes the remaining energy of her still moving weapon, spins it behind her, and nearly cuts the leg clean off as she leaps away from the two-ton fist of decay moving towards her at breakneck pace.
The morass of flesh and plants is now one hundred feet away. The girl lets out a little sigh, as a blue glow begins to emit from the tip of her halberd. It begins to grow in intensity, becoming ever brighter and brighter. An earthshaking rumble beats the ground as her target begins charging towards her. It is closing with incredible speed, being within twenty feet in a mere second. The glow of blue is now on the edge of blinding. It attempts to dodge at the last second, hurling its thirty ton mass to the side.
The girl quietly chuckles.
A beam of energy flares from the tip of the blade and screams out in a sound that would not be unfamiliar with a rocket blasting off into outer space. Its concentration is telling in how it should seemingly blind the camera, but is instead entirely focused at the now burnt pile of ashes that had wandered out of the lake a mere thirty seconds ago. "This is the 7th time this month I have had to deal with something like this." She has begun to point the camera to her face, unfazed by the equivalent of gore splattered all over her.
"So knowing that ninety nine point eight percent of Magical girls die before age twenty, is actually rather reassuring to me." Is a person okay if they can say that to anyone with a straight face? Let alone a smile?
" I don't have to plan after it, and there is a very large part of life that I simply don't have to worry about." She begins walking back to the bench that a seemingly normal girl was sitting at a minute ago. The halberd shimmers like a mirage for a few seconds, and vanishes.
" Don't need to worry about parental issues, since they're dead." She sits down and pulls out a lollipop, and seems to ponder it for a moment before removing the wrapper and placing it into her mouth, slightly to the side reminiscent of a cigarette.
"Four or five more generations of Magical girls will have come and gone before a normal person worries about retirement. " A loud crunch signals the destruction of the sugary head of the lollipop as the much prized sweet fragments are chewed a few more times before being swallowed.
"Is this basically the description of a person that can't function in normal society anymore?" A little blue glow appears on her finger as she touches it to the end of the stick that had once held her lollipop. It begins to burn ever so slightly.
"It most certainly is." She pulls out the stick, imitating a smoker with obviously practiced ease, the charred end now venting off smoke like an volcano after an eruption.
Magical Girl No. 935, "Galaxy Blazer", Sarissa Baker, looks into the camera with her hetero-chromatic eyes, winks and turns it off
I'm not even sure what I've written with this.
A small clicking sound pops from the recording. The video shows a placid pond, with the recording device seemingly on the lap of a 14-something girl, judging by the skirt and not quite fully developed body. Her voice also supports this conclusion.
"The people who have made the conscious, and often remarkably bad decision to be my friend, often ask me something. What is it like to live with the certainty that you will die before age 20?" A rumbling begins, shaking the camera ever so slightly, but with a consistent rhythm, clearly full of purpose. The girl's voice continues onward even with the background noise beginning to flood her out.
"No, I am not in the late stages of some terminal disease, thank you very much, instead I am basically destined to die to some hulking mass from someone's drug fueled nightmares after I get too careless after some random night of patrolling. " From the lake, a vaguely humanoid figure bursts forth, and begins an otherworldly scream, more akin to a scene from hell than on the face of the Earth. It is covered in all manners of rotting flesh, and decaying algae, toeing the line between living and dead. It begins to trudge forward.
The girl picks up her camera with her left hand and begins to walk towards it.
"I am a Magical Girl, possibly the worst name I've ever heard for 'person sentenced to death', and every waking moment of my life now has something to do with trying to hunt down humanity's collective bad feelings given physical form. As it turns out, humanity's collective bad feelings, are in fact, pretty damn bad." Her walk becomes a jog, then a sprint, and finally she leaps into the air with inhuman grace, pulling a halberd from out of frame, a bastard child of a spear and axe, while simultaneously keeping the camera steady somehow. She flies towards the colossus at hundreds of miles per hour, preparing to strike.
"My very first experience as a Magical Girl in fact consisted of desperately attempting to flee from what appeared to be a titan-like mass of limbs and mouths," The monstrosity attempts to smash her out of the air with a gargantuan fist. She seems to disobey physics as her body pivots about the halberd stuck for mere milliseconds into the mass of rot, as she continues the remaining 30 feet to the rest of her target.The blade crashes into the excuse for a face the creature has, shattering the collection of yellowing skulls there.
She pulls the halberd out in a massive sweeping arc above her head and stabs it into a graveyard that one might describe as a back, carrying her body like a lever as she flies behind the creature and under it. " seemingly being stitched together, ripped apart, and re-stitched together constantly, by a mob of unnervingly deformed demons, that took great joy in adding anyone who got too close, into the ball of unspeakable things in a highly visible fashion." The small one hundred and five pound female finds herself standing on the sedimentary feet of the construct as she takes the remaining energy of her still moving weapon, spins it behind her, and nearly cuts the leg clean off as she leaps away from the two-ton fist of decay moving towards her at breakneck pace.
The morass of flesh and plants is now one hundred feet away. The girl lets out a little sigh, as a blue glow begins to emit from the tip of her halberd. It begins to grow in intensity, becoming ever brighter and brighter. An earthshaking rumble beats the ground as her target begins charging towards her. It is closing with incredible speed, being within twenty feet in a mere second. The glow of blue is now on the edge of blinding. It attempts to dodge at the last second, hurling its thirty ton mass to the side.
The girl quietly chuckles.
A beam of energy flares from the tip of the blade and screams out in a sound that would not be unfamiliar with a rocket blasting off into outer space. Its concentration is telling in how it should seemingly blind the camera, but is instead entirely focused at the now burnt pile of ashes that had wandered out of the lake a mere thirty seconds ago. "This is the 7th time this month I have had to deal with something like this." She has begun to point the camera to her face, unfazed by the equivalent of gore splattered all over her.
"So knowing that ninety nine point eight percent of Magical girls die before age twenty, is actually rather reassuring to me." Is a person okay if they can say that to anyone with a straight face? Let alone a smile?
" I don't have to plan after it, and there is a very large part of life that I simply don't have to worry about." She begins walking back to the bench that a seemingly normal girl was sitting at a minute ago. The halberd shimmers like a mirage for a few seconds, and vanishes.
" Don't need to worry about parental issues, since they're dead." She sits down and pulls out a lollipop, and seems to ponder it for a moment before removing the wrapper and placing it into her mouth, slightly to the side reminiscent of a cigarette.
"Four or five more generations of Magical girls will have come and gone before a normal person worries about retirement. " A loud crunch signals the destruction of the sugary head of the lollipop as the much prized sweet fragments are chewed a few more times before being swallowed.
"Is this basically the description of a person that can't function in normal society anymore?" A little blue glow appears on her finger as she touches it to the end of the stick that had once held her lollipop. It begins to burn ever so slightly.
"It most certainly is." She pulls out the stick, imitating a smoker with obviously practiced ease, the charred end now venting off smoke like an volcano after an eruption.
Magical Girl No. 935, "Galaxy Blazer", Sarissa Baker, looks into the camera with her hetero-chromatic eyes, winks and turns it off
I'm not even sure what I've written with this.