Clawing. Clinging, Air, thick with damp, draped itself in layers of moisture every time I moved. Humidity, ugh. The heat made it more like a walk-in sauna, oppressive. Even my breathing became laboured.
My head felt like sodden wool, thick and heavy, with no clarity in my thoughts. I just wanted to lie down and sleep it off. Ha! What a joke, that made it worse! Being bound up in sheets that clung like wet rags made deep sleep impossible. I awoke worse for wear. How many more days like this were there? Argh, a tropical summer could feel oppressive.
ICE is over at last; I've spent three days on my feet being nice to people, and that's used up all of my tolerance and fellow-feeling for the next three years. But it does give me a chance to catch back up on writing here, and hopefully I'll produce something that makes up for being late :)
Oppression The Tesseract lifted up slightly as it drifted towards the house, and Snake looked at Sberychev with his lips starting to form a question. "I don't want to go through the walls exactly," said Sberychev. "They might be a trap." "And the roof isn't, then?" "Not going to go directly through the roof, though. I thought we'd interface with what they've got -- pay a visit, as it were." "Pay a vist?" Snake's voice rose high enough to shatter glass. "They're trying to demand a ransom from us, and you're paying them a visit? And stop smiling at me like that! This isn't funny!" The Tesseract aligned itself carefully with the upper, nebulous structure of the shack, and then nothing happened for several minutes. Snake waited, tensed like a spring, and then sat back a little and relaxed, and then tried drumming his fingers on the floor of the Tesseract. They half sank-in, and half-bounced out, and made no noise at all. "So," he said. "There's a problem," said Sberychev. "Big surprise. I'd never have thought that there might be a problem with just trying to walk into the bad guys's hideout without them noticing. It's not like I'm Brad Pitt and you're Angelina Jolie." "Who?" Snake shook his head, his eyes managing to roll at the same time and making him feel dizzy. "There's something wrong in there," said Sberychev, missing Snake's abrupt sitting down. "It feels... oppressive. See?" He did something with his fingers that didn't make Snake feel any better, and suddenly there was a feeling like a hot weight pressing down on his chest making it hard to breathe, and a familiar, better-forgotten smell. "It feels like the prison," said Snake. "It smells like the prison. Like milk on the turn, or raw chicken left out in the sun." "The destructive coherence of living probabilities," said Sberychev. "That's what i said," said Snake. "We're not going in there now, right?" "No," said Sberychev. "That's definitely a trap. I think this whole shack is a trap. But... how are they managing to reproduce the conditions of the prison, do you think?" "I wasn't thinking about it," said Snake. "Still not, as it happens. I've got a question though, but you can only answer it in words of less than three syllables. Why doesn't this thing," he gestured around at the Tesseract, "smell like that then?" "The machin– gadgets – the prison autho– rulers – use have to lock the prisoners in," said Sberychev, his face screwed up with concentration. "We're... free-willed!" "That doesn't help much," said Snake. "But I don't want the complex version. Can we go home now?"
5 comments:
Sleep when they tell me
Eat and drink when they tell me
I can’t stand it now.
Oppressive
Clawing.
Clinging,
Air, thick with damp, draped itself in layers of moisture every time I moved.
Humidity, ugh. The heat made it more like a walk-in sauna, oppressive. Even my breathing became laboured.
My head felt like sodden wool, thick and heavy, with no clarity in my thoughts. I just wanted to lie down and sleep it off. Ha! What a joke, that made it worse! Being bound up in sheets that clung like wet rags made deep sleep impossible.
I awoke worse for wear.
How many more days like this were there?
Argh, a tropical summer could feel oppressive.
Morganna - I feel like Max could have written this... :)
Dragonfly - ugh, humidity is the wooooorst. You have managed to capture it's awfulness all too well.
ICE is over at last; I've spent three days on my feet being nice to people, and that's used up all of my tolerance and fellow-feeling for the next three years. But it does give me a chance to catch back up on writing here, and hopefully I'll produce something that makes up for being late :)
Oppression
The Tesseract lifted up slightly as it drifted towards the house, and Snake looked at Sberychev with his lips starting to form a question.
"I don't want to go through the walls exactly," said Sberychev. "They might be a trap."
"And the roof isn't, then?"
"Not going to go directly through the roof, though. I thought we'd interface with what they've got -- pay a visit, as it were."
"Pay a vist?" Snake's voice rose high enough to shatter glass. "They're trying to demand a ransom from us, and you're paying them a visit? And stop smiling at me like that! This isn't funny!"
The Tesseract aligned itself carefully with the upper, nebulous structure of the shack, and then nothing happened for several minutes. Snake waited, tensed like a spring, and then sat back a little and relaxed, and then tried drumming his fingers on the floor of the Tesseract. They half sank-in, and half-bounced out, and made no noise at all.
"So," he said.
"There's a problem," said Sberychev.
"Big surprise. I'd never have thought that there might be a problem with just trying to walk into the bad guys's hideout without them noticing. It's not like I'm Brad Pitt and you're Angelina Jolie."
"Who?"
Snake shook his head, his eyes managing to roll at the same time and making him feel dizzy.
"There's something wrong in there," said Sberychev, missing Snake's abrupt sitting down. "It feels... oppressive. See?" He did something with his fingers that didn't make Snake feel any better, and suddenly there was a feeling like a hot weight pressing down on his chest making it hard to breathe, and a familiar, better-forgotten smell.
"It feels like the prison," said Snake. "It smells like the prison. Like milk on the turn, or raw chicken left out in the sun."
"The destructive coherence of living probabilities," said Sberychev.
"That's what i said," said Snake. "We're not going in there now, right?"
"No," said Sberychev. "That's definitely a trap. I think this whole shack is a trap. But... how are they managing to reproduce the conditions of the prison, do you think?"
"I wasn't thinking about it," said Snake. "Still not, as it happens. I've got a question though, but you can only answer it in words of less than three syllables. Why doesn't this thing," he gestured around at the Tesseract, "smell like that then?"
"The machin– gadgets – the prison autho– rulers – use have to lock the prisoners in," said Sberychev, his face screwed up with concentration. "We're... free-willed!"
"That doesn't help much," said Snake. "But I don't want the complex version. Can we go home now?"
Greg - happy to hear you made it out of there alive :)
'There's something wrong in there' is such a wonderfully simple but sinister line.
Also: prisoners is three syllables in your second to last paragraph :P
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