Keeping Your Spirits Up

"Still below the weather, hon?"
"Much better now."
"The nap helped?"
"No, finding the poison you used on me and dosing your tea did."

Finding Your Inner Freak

“Huh. We tried abuse, vinyl, shoes, nothing.”
“Can't I just not have a fetish?”
“C'mon,” she said, lashing me from below, “that’d be weird.”

The Final Battle

“I’m a wizard,” he cackled, from his room below our stairs. And maybe he was. But it turns out that the wizard’s natural enemy is the Taser.

Results will be posted January 7th, and I'll be sure to harangue… um, ask nicely for your vote, if I make it that far.

Recap: NYCMidnight's "Tweet Me a Story" gives contestants 5 hours to write a story of 140 characters or less which must include a supplied word. My word was BETTER. Entrants could submit up to 3 stories, and 25 finalists were chosen. Two of my stories made the cut. Now the judges will select the top winners, but there will also be a reader's choice winner and that's where my shameless begging comes in.

If you've got a mind to, please consider going here and voting for my stories. They are:

From my blanket, I watched the surf. "It doesn't get any better than this."
From his time machine, me from 2023 sighed. "No, it doesn't."

"That's it, I have to know. You've been with me and with Mike. Which one is the better man?"
I smiled. "The one who didn't have to ask."

Both are marked as BY CHRIS BRIDGES. You can vote for as many as you like, but only once. No registration required.

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE or not, you know. Up to you.  You can see the rest of the finalists in the other groups here. Voting ends 6 p.m. EST tonight.

Thanks.

Self-Improvement

“Dammit, could you be a better man just once in your life?”

"Oh, sure," he laughed, lunging for her.

“Could you hurry?” she said, and fired.

Memories

From my blanket, I watched the surf. "It doesn't get any better than this."

From his time machine, me from 2023 sighed. "No, it doesn't."

Dying to Know

"That's it, I have to know. You've been with me and with Mike. Which one is the better man?"

I smiled. "The one who didn't have to ask."

I'll keep you posted on the results, because you know you're desperate to know. And here's one that didn't make the cut:

Keeping Your Spirits Up

"Are you feeling better, hon?"

"A little."

"Did the nap help?"

"No, but finding the poison you used on me and slipping it in your tea did."

Written for the "A Thank You for Dollhouse" book compiled of fan messages for the cast and crew of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse." The book was delivered Friday night, Dec. 4, just as we were watching two of the best episodes of the season so far.

Yeesh.

Monday night I was idly wondering if I was close enough to cheat until I added up how many times I'd have to copy what I'd already written and paste it in again to win, and gave up.

My excuses this year? I was caught up just before my Save Hiatus buddy Adam Levermore showed up to stay for four days so we could attend the STS-129 Shuttle Atlantis launch Tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center, which was an amazing experience.

Plus I had to show him around a few spots in Daytona (OK, one spot) (OK, the speedway) and then I figured it would be rude to ignore him while I wrote even though a) I knew he wouldn't mind and b) at least one evening he was busy ignoring me to write his own stuff. But hey, there was a guest in the house.

Then after he left I had just a few days before Teresa would be leaving for a week-long trip to NYC so that time was precious and I knew I'd have a whole week to myself to write. No problem! Plus I had a lot of shuttle photos to work up and stuff.

That week was spent dealing with errands, dinners, coordinating rides, IMing to Teresa, and reconstructing the contents of my iPod Touch after my iTunes library lapsed into a persistent vegetative state and forgot that I had any apps. All vitally important.

Then Teres came back, and joyous time was spent catching up with her.

And and and… (Coincidentally, my excuses for not working out for three weeks are strikingly similar to these)

Actually I did do a fair amount of writing, in my Flickr descriptions and e-mails and forum posts and articles and Twitter tweets. The problem wasn't getting me in front of a keyboard, it was getting me to write my novel, and looking at it now I still don't get an urge to work on it (although I did think of stuff I wanted to put into a previous unfinished NaNo novel). Which means that a) my novel idea isn't thrilling me, and b) I'm not enough of a novelist to write it anyway and make it thrilling. So this one goes on the shelf.

However, to get myself back into the habit of writing I'm lowering my bar a bit and leaping into Hollidailies, where I commit to posting at least one blog post a day for a month, Dec. 7 to Jan. 6, 2010.  Instead of 1,667 words a day I need only produce 50, and I think I can blather that long, so be prepared for at least a steady trickle of brain leakage.

Hmm. Maybe I can write my novel in 50-word bursts…

The Kitten, the Flame Demon, and the Car Wash
by C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

Jess watched from the car wash lobby as the screaming flame demon roamed the streets. It wasn’t charging yet, but it was definitely rampaging in their general direction.

“The heat is on, ladies,” she said. “Maybe this can happen faster?”

“Gimme a second, OK?” Amanda said, before turning back to kneel in front of the weary young girl they’d rescued the day before. She was maybe 7 years old, but her eyes now belonged to a very old, very tired woman.

They had found her in an abandoned mall surrounded by roaring flames and smoldering bodies. She didn’t respond to them, wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. She’d been utterly silent and listless since they brought her back, as if she knew she was already dead and was vaguely wondering when she would fall over. “Honey?” Amanda asked her gently. “I need you to listen to me.”

There was an explosion. “Just torched the McDonalds,” Jess called.

“That thing, that fire thing that attacked your… that you saw? It’s coming this way. No, no, hold on,” she said soothingly as the girl stiffened. “We can stop it, but we need your help. Do you know where those horrible things came from?”

A pause, and then the girl shook her head.

“Do you know what magic is? Casting spells?”

A nod.

“Well, some very foolish people thought they could teach a computer to do magic. They thought they could program it with all the spells, the knowledge and the rituals of thousands of years, and then push a button. Do you think that was a good idea?”

The girl looked out at the angry towers of smoke rising from all around the city and shook her head violently.

“That’s right. They learned how to do magic, but didn't understand that power without wisdom is dangerous. Last year they accidentally called up a host of demons, and we’ve been fighting them ever since.”

“The boutique’s gone now,” Jess yelled. “If we’re gonna do this, we need to do it now!”

“And we have help,” Amanda said quickly. “There’s a race of very intelligent, very powerful beings already on the earth, here to protect us, hiding their abilities until now.” She stood up, opened the door to the office, and pulled out a cardboard box, which mewed. The girl’s eyebrows rose. “You might have met some of them already.”

A kitten’s head appeared, looked around wildly, and then focused on the little girl. “Blert!” it told her. Her expression never changed, but Amanda saw her relax ever so slightly.

“Cats can do magic,” Amanda told her, “every one of them, and their real job is to guard the doorways into the demon worlds. Those doorways are everywhere; under bridges, in the backs of closets… It’s a very important job, and they’ve kept us safe for a very long time.”

“Getting closer!” Jess yelled.

Sweating now, Amanda scooped up the kitten. “OK, short version. Jezzalyle here can fight the flame demon. Don’t underestimate her, she’s like 85 years old and a battlecat warrior. But we need your help. They don’t understand English but they can read our thoughts, and children are better at talking to cats than adults are. Adults never pay enough attention.” The girl nodded at that and even smiled a bit. “Could you ask her to help us? Please? Quickly?”

Jess started backing away from the glass. “It’s almost here!”

The girl took Jezzalyle from Amanda’s hands and held the kitten up to her face. The kitten looked her directly in the eyes with a disturbingly level expression.

Time seemed to stop as the girl visibly concentrated as hard as she could, and for the first time she spoke aloud. “Hello, Jezzalyle. I’m Laurie. Would you fight the demon for us? Would you save our lives?”

After an agonizingly long moment, Jezzalyle leaned forward and head-bumped Laurie’s face. The girl actually giggled a little hysterically at that. Amanda grabbed the kitten carefully. “Works for me. OK, you guys get in the office. I’ll get her positioned. Ready?”

She left and returned almost immediately, without Jezzalyle. They all heard a tiny snarling noise.

“What’s happening?” Laurie asked.

“Stay down, hon,” Jess said. “She’s challenging it. We can’t look directly at her when she–”

The demon began lumbering toward the car wash, beelining toward the tunnel and the hissing creature that was confronting it. A wave of heat washed over the women, who ducked out of the way.

“Down!” Amanda yelled and pushed Laurie’s head below the counter.

There was a loud clang. There was a series of roars like crashing waves, and a furious hissing noise that went on and on. Then there was silence.

The demon was gone. Steam billowed through the tunnel and out into the street. Laurie started to scramble over the counter.

“Where’s Jezzalyle?” she asked frantically.

Amanda pulled her back and hugged her. “She pulled the demon back through the doorway!” she said happily. “She’s going to banish it forever. Another cat will watch us till she gets back.”

Laurie took a deep breath and smiled. “She’s amazing.”

“Yes, she is,” Amanda said. “Now you go clean up, and we’ll see about some food.” Laurie hugged her back and left.

Jess took her hands off the car wash controls she’d been operating and they both watched the hoses retract and water swirl into the drains, along with what looked like a tiny bit of charred fur. “I think it’s adding the premium wax job at the end that finishes them off.”

“Probably.”

“Seriously, ‘Jezzalyle’? ‘Battlecat warrior’?”

“Didn’t hear any better ideas.”

“She won’t thank you when she finds out flame demons actually snarf cats like popcorn.”

“Yeah, but she’ll be alive to hate me, and that’s good enough.”

Jess sighed. “We’re going to go to hell for this, you know.”

“How will we tell the difference? Get ready, you’re going back out.”

“Food run?”

“No,” Amanda said, watching the girl skip away. “We’re gonna need more cats.”

———————————————

You can read my previous entries here.

The Final Score
By C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

Being a coffee shop barista, even an emergency temp one, was everything Aly thought it would be. “Here you are sir, have a nice day, die in a fire,” she muttered before turning to her mother, who was filling the large catering pot. “How do you keep from murdering your customers?”

“That gets you talked about,” her mother said. “Try making terrifying designs in their latte cream instead, that always cheers me up.”

Aly sighed. Helping out her mom was one thing, but she couldn’t take being back in this town for long. At least she didn’t have to go near—

“You know where Electricland Arcade is, right?” her mother asked suddenly. “I need you to run a delivery… Aly? Why are you hitting your head?”

—

Matt stood ready, his hands dry, his shoulders loose, a retired gunslinger here for one last battle. Looming in front of him was his old archenemy.

“So, Donkey Kong,” he said grimly. “We meet again.”

The high score screen mocked him. An unbroken string of MNAs, with a single FRC arrogantly perched on top.

“FRC, whoever you are, you’re going down.” Matt settled comfortably on an old wooden stool and checked his gear. Snacks, check. Heap of change, check. Massive amounts of caffeine, on the way.

A quarter brought the machine to life with music he hadn’t heard in years. A broad smile spread across his face.

“Bring it on, you damned dirty ape.”

—

This place hasn’t changed a bit, Aly thought. It’s still a total dump.

But where was everybody? Everything was turned off; all she could hear was one game playing in the back. She followed the sound and almost dropped the box she was carrying.

It was him.

It was goddamn Matt Archway, at the same goddamn game, on the same goddamn stool, ten years later. And if anything he looked even better, which was infuriating. This just couldn’t get any worse.

“I smell coffee!” Matt called without looking. “Thanks, honey, just bring it here.”

Aly set her jaw, wondering why God hated her so and if dousing her ex-boyfriend with boiling coffee would bring closure. “Here you are, sir. Is there a party…?.”

“Nope, just me. You can set it there,” he said, whipping the joystick around like a madman.

Good to know he ignored everybody equally, she thought, turning to flee.

“Hey, could you pour me a cup? I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”

“Of course, sir. Right away, sir,” she muttered, yanking out the coffee pot. “Die in a fire, sir…”

“What?”

“Nothing, you just keep playing your little game,” she grumbled. She placed the cup on the console where it wouldn’t be in his way, held the pot in shaking hands and tried not to notice how strong his shoulders looked.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Matt said. “How did you know to…” He looked at her reflection in the monitor, his jaw dropped, and Mario almost got hit with a barrel. “Aly? What are you doing here?”

“Revisiting my nightmares, apparently,” she said bitterly. “Have you seriously been coming here all this time?”

“What? No, they’re tearing the place down tomorrow.”

“So of course you’re the last thing to get moved out. God, you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Sure I have. I don’t drink Cokes anymore,” he said, timing his jumps carefully so he could pick up the cup. “Now I can afford Jamaican Blue Mountain.”

“You’re having your video game catered?”

“Hey, this is a special moment for me. I spent a lot of time playing this game.”

Aly just stared at him. “Really.”

Matt granted her a rueful glance for an entire two seconds before turning back to the game, effortlessly jumping over beams and dodging fireballs. It was like talking to an air traffic controller during a blizzard. “Right, sorry,” he said. “But tomorrow they’re selling it off and I wanted to get the high score again before they did.”

“You’re insane! That’s the legacy you’re passing to the generations, your freaking initials? Hell, Matt, even Mario moved on from this game.”

“Yeah, but his girlfriend stayed with him.”

“Well, maybe if I went ‘ding!’ and points flashed over my head when you touched me, you’d have noticed me more!”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Matt said, finally turning to face her. “You never told me you were upset, you just dumped me and moved away.” Behind him Mario was struck by a fireball and died. Aly actually felt a twinge of guilt at that.

Matt stood up and looked at her. “I didn’t pay enough attention to you, and that was ignorant of me. But you never gave me a chance to do better. I haven’t played here since the day you left.”

“Then why…?”

He pointed at the screen. “MNA stands for ‘Matt ‘n’ Aly.’ Always did.” He laughed humorlessly. “I wanted it to last somewhere. Stupid FRC.”

“Matt—“

“Screw it. Thanks for the coffee. Tell your mom I’ll see her later.” He gazed deep into her eyes as if memorizing her. “God, you look amazing. I hope someone out there deserves you.” And she watched him walk away.

After a long moment Aly grabbed the cup, drained it, and poured another as she reached for her phone. “Mom? Bring the generator. Don’t ask why.”

Then she put down the pot. “Right, then,” she said. “FRC, you’re going down.”

—

A week later Matt walked into the coffee shop feeling miserable. Good thing Aly was probably gone by… what?

She was behind the counter, looking beautiful. And next to the water fountain in the back was the Donkey Kong machine. He couldn’t help himself; he went and looked at the new top score.

MNA.

“Hey, I watched an expert for years,” Aly said, smiling and hugging him. “You learn a few things.”

“Me too,” he said. “I learned you don’t win until you get the princess.”

There was a distinct “ding!” when he kissed her. And somewhere Donkey Kong roared in defeat.

OK, yes, granted it's still a few months till November when National Novel Writing Month attacks, but they couldn't wait and frankly I can use the nudging to get ready. I started strong in my first NaNoWriMos but my performance the last few years has been sad.

Getting psyched already…

Life Lessons, by C. A. Bridges

My columns, should you choose to accept them, would be a variety of subjects with the common thread being the real life lessons I take away. Example:

Review: “The Graveyard Book,” by Neil Gaiman

Ordinarily one might think I have no reason to read a children’s book, as I am no longer a child and frankly wasn’t much of one to begin with. But there are lessons to be learned from all books great and small, and I loathe missing the chance for enrichment in any form.

This particular form is currently garnering all the praise it can get. Hordes of critics, writers’ organizations and librarians, working in shifts, have been feverishly devising new awards to quickly bestow upon this lively (ha!) tale of a small, recently orphaned boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard. Morbid as the subject may be, the lessons the boy garners are valuable ones indeed. Lessons of bravery, common sense and deduction, stories of responsibility and valor. Lessons valuable enough, in fact, that even after only a few short chapters I judged them worthy enough to be passed to all children.

I started small, with a nephew.

Jimbo, as he was unfortunately known, was a particularly sticky and noisome boy, with an equally annoying family (sorry, sis). My intended program of involuntary personal growth could only benefit him. But I decided, upon reflection, that it would be unnecessarily cruel to actually murder his parents, as well as being too much work. Instead I offered to feed and water him for a weekend so that his newly emancipated mother and father might enjoy the bliss of a quiet house, and then, once he was in my clutches, I merely informed him that he was now an orphan.

I had been concerned that the lack of physical violence in his presence might fail to suitably traumatize him for my purposes but as it turned out, detailed, step-by-step description of his parents’ fictional, horrendous demise was quite enough, especially when I added the appropriate gestures and sound effects. This was an excellent sign! A traumatized child is a child ready to learn. It was off to the graveyard!

Of the cemeteries in our area, only one fit my needs, i.e. had the right combination of gothic decoration and lax security. I led him to the center, tied his leash to an especially ornate headstone (with a rather well-done bust of a winged angel), gave him a short speech about how I envied him his new life, and legged it away to watch from a distance.

To Jimbo’s credit, he stopped crying after barely a day had passed. But I have to express my profound disappointment in the local apparitions. Where were the spectral caregivers, ready to step up and take a hand in the little tyke’s development? Where was the wise old dead Victorian admiral, or the kindly dead couple who never had a child in life, or the cunning dead con man with a moral to impart?  How was Jimbo ever going to get himself raised if everyone in the graveyard was just going to keep on deliberately decomposing?

I tried sneaking around the place and provoking the lazy, good for nothing haunts, digging down to the coffins in several cases and screaming into the dirt, but all I accomplished was a ruined pair of trousers and an even more traumatized Jimbo, who foolishly continued to jump at the slightest of blood-curdling noises. Even dragging out the desiccated remains of a likely-looking father figure and leaving them where he could stumble across them did nothing to jump-start the mentoring process.

I hid behind the monument to Major Gen. Argus Defestrum (1879-1947) and read the rest of the book in the hopes that I had merely missed an important step. No such luck. An excellent story, to be sure, but it was obviously predicated on more civic-minded corpses than the ones I had to hand.

However, in the additional background material helpfully supplied by the publisher I found an interview where Gaiman explained that he intended “The Graveyard Book” to be an homage to Rudyard Kipling’s classic work “The Jungle Book.” That brought up nasty memories of my previous, equally disastrous attempt at raising a child with surrogate wolf parents (a niece, Mindy, who recovered from my impromptu social engineering with aplomb and a recurring tendency to howl). Perhaps similar drawbacks awaited my efforts?

No! I couldn’t stop now, not when the increasingly filthy Jimbo had such a glittering, death-filled life ahead of him! He would be raised by ghosts if I had to do it myself.

His tether only allowed him so much freedom – I had assumed that his new step-wraiths would unhook him – so it was a simple matter to secret myself behind a tomb and moan lessons at him. “OoooOOoooh, Jimbooooo,” I intoned, quite well if I do say so myself. “Weeeee’re gOOOOoooooing toooo beeeeegin with bAAAAAsic aaaaarIIIthmatic!”

Unfortunately I had forgotten to keep track of the time, or Jimbo’s parents, and my attempts at spectral child-rearing were abruptly ended with those familiar, hated words: “There he is, officer.”

I have since been unable to see Jimbo to determine if I had any effect on his intellectual development, but I like to believe I helped him for the better. By the time he was placed in the ambulance he had very nearly stopped twitching.

“The Graveyard Book,” by Neil Gaiman. Highly recommended, if completely unworkable.

"TransmogriVacations, Inc."

by C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

“A lobster? An actual crawling around, dunk it in butter lobster?”

“It’s what we have available right now in your price range, sir. Lobster, beetle, or vulture. Live your dream, sir.”

“What kind of beetle?”

“Dung.”

Parkleman sighed and slumped in the chair. “I’m in accounting,” he muttered, looking around the travel agency. “Dealing with balls of crap ten times my size is precisely what I’m trying to get away from.”

The sign over the door read “TRANSMOGRIVACATIONS, INC.” and in smaller script underneath: “BE ALL SOMETHING ELSE CAN BE.” There was an enchanted logo next to it depicting a cartoon man changing into a lion, a dolphin, an eagle, and then a man again, over and over. Parkleman stared at it for a long moment.

“You can really change me into anything I want to be?” he asked again.

The mage behind the desk raised an eyebrow.

“Anything I can afford, I mean?”

“With but a word and a gesture, sir,” the mage said in the same memorized, seductive cadence familiar to salesbeings across the universe. Despite the flowing robes and commanding beard, he was quite obviously, in a thousand telltale ways, someone being paid on commission. “You can become any living creature you can imagine. Soar the heavens, sound the mighty deeps, hurl yourself between the trees, or experience the indescribable joy of emerging from a chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly.”

He leaned forward with a professionally earnest expression. “My customers have desperately mated while plunging through the sky toward the ground below. They have crept through the tall grass towards their prey, reveling in predatory bliss. Some have desired a time of quiet contemplation and beauty, opting for the calm dignity of tortoises or blue whales. Others have found personal glory by leading vast ant armies to victory over insurmountable odds.”

“I’m sorry,” Parkleman said. “But none of these options sound like an improvement over my current condition. I already spend my days doing mindless grunt work and being harassed by my boss and his ‘I can do anything I want to my employees as long as I don’t actually completely murder them’ attitude. How is pushing around dung, eating carrion or getting popped in a boiling pot a step up for me?”

“You say you perform drudge work. Imagine the satisfaction of completing a dung ball, knowing you have materially improved the lives of your family? And isn’t flying under your own power worth the occasional dead carcass? But we pride ourselves at knowing our customers’ minds, sir, and in you I see a need for tranquility.”

“As a lobster?”

“As a gentle creature that exists in an endlessly engaging world of color and motion. You eat, you sleep, you drift. No responsibilities, no deadlines, no pressure. A visit to the seashore, but from the other side, as it were.”

“That’s what you see for me?”

“That’s what I see for your credit rating, yes sir.”

“And the pot?”

“TransmogriVacations guarantees you will be placed far from the reach of any humans, sir. There will be no pots.”

Parkleman considered. Everyone he knew had already transmogrified at least twice. James in his office had been a silverback gorilla last year, Carl in Marketing had pictures of himself as a 20-foot python on his desk, and every summer Mr. Bruteby came back to brag about the stunningly beautiful animals he’d run down and eaten.

Mentioning his plans had been a mistake, though. Mr. Bruteby had laughed long and hard when Parkleman had put in for his vacation, and loudly congratulated him since being even the tiniest, most helpless animal had to be an improvement over being Parkleman.

Parkleman felt his face heating up again as he remembered the pitying look Miss Dabishy had given him as he skulked out. Even if he spent two weeks as whatever lived underneath dung beetle dung, it would be worth it to get away from Mr. Bruteby.

“I’ll take it,” he said firmly, and he realized with a start that he was actually looking forward to it.

“You won’t regret this, sir,” the mage said. “What’s a vacation for, if not for doing what you can’t do the rest of the year?”

There was paperwork. There were rituals involving chalklines, powders, and rare unguents. There were gods to be appeased. There was a final waiver. There was a flash of light.

And he was a lobster.

And it was everything the mage said it would be.

Parkleman almost forgot to be amazed that he was breathing water and had somehow misplaced 98% of his body mass. Secure in a small cave under an outcropping with plenty of easily accessible food, he sat and simply stared at the brilliant colors and vivid patterns of the fish as they swooped past in endless variety.

The sea was so full! Vast cities of coral reefs and sponges dotted the ocean floor creating intricate labyrinths he could explore for hours. He spent an entire afternoon watching the mesmerizing undulations of a clump of kelp, fascinated, as sunlight dappled down from the surface far above.

And the constant movement of the ocean itself was incredibly calming. He felt nearly weightless, floating in the all-encompassing embrace of the water, intimately connected to everything around him for miles.

There is a freedom to be found by giving yourself over to something far more powerful than yourself, and he gave himself utterly.

No responsibilities, no deadlines, no pressure.

Parkleman was completely at peace.

A lasting, soul-deep peace, one he would take with him back to a new and better life, he could tell. Already the petty office politics seemed so–

KLOMP!

Fish scattered as Mr. Bruteby swam past, crunching a last few bits of Parkleman in his powerful teeth and reveling in the feel of unstoppable force. What’s a vacation for, he thought happily, if not for doing what you can’t do the rest of the year?

And the shark charged off into the deep, reveling in predatory bliss.

————————————————————————————

Here's the story I did for the first challenge, where I came in 5th by what I choose to believe was a very narrow margin.