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matociquala; I clearly needed this humiliating trip down memory lane.
She has challenged (no, wait -- double-dog dared, I could have ignored a mere challenge) to post the "awfullest, grottiest, ancientest peice of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open."
Oy.
Fortunately, she didn't say "or that you have in printed form," since I have notebooks from eighth grade in a box under the desk that holds my printer. I'm not sure anything in them is still legible; it's been several years since I opened the box.
I actually think the most cringe-worthy item I found in several minutes of electronic excavation may be not quite the oldest. The oldest is "clever" and rather less cringe-worthy; the most cringe-worthy item is "moving" (note the scare quotes; they're there for a reason) and may be marginally more recent. Both were written when I was in college. I went to college from 1991 through 1995; I think both of these were probably written in 1992 or possibly 1993. I restricted myself to things that I (a) completed and (b) submitted for publication or at least intended to submit even if I never got around to doing it. They're both competently written in a "well, at least I knew how to string words together" sense, but ... but ... gahhhhhhhh.
Clearly, the idea here is to maximize the humiliation, so I will post the most cringe-worthy piece, rather than the one I think may technically be older. (The dates are all screwed up due to a technology transfer, so I can't be sure.) If there is popular demand for the "clever" piece I can come back and post that, too. The underlying idea of that one is actually marginally clever, it's just presented in a depressingly dull and un-funny way while I poke you in the ribs repeatedly to point out how clever it all is. Still, it's less humiliating than this.
(LJ-cut for obvious reasons. The story is 1,541 words, if you're trying to decide if you actually have time to read it. You know what, if you're trying to decide if you have time to read it, you don't. It's five minutes of your life that you will never get back.)
GUILD OATH
Assassins don't wear black.
Most people picture the Assassin as a tall, dark-eyed man, garbed in black from head to foot, aiming a crossbow with a single black-gloved hand. Assassins don't wear black because it's conspicuous. Black clothing is both impressive, which attracts attention, and sinister, which invites distrust. Also, no night is truly black; a man in true black can't hide in the shadows.
Maire wore grey.
Almost everyone knows that Assassins are dealers of death. Just as few people picture Assassins wearing grey, however, few people think of Assassins as dealers of life. Maire certainly hadn't, although a four-year-old street child was unlikely to think of much beyond its next meal. Gyan, a Guild apprentice, had spotted her quickness and ruthlessness, and had lifted her from the gutter and taken her to the Guild.
At four, Maire could steal undetected, and had the quickness and grace of an alley cat. The Guild taught her how to move silently, how to pick a lock and lift a window; then they taught her how to kill as quickly and silently as she walked. She learned what poisons would kill instantly, and which would kill undetected; she learned which poisons would kill if slipped into food, and which would kill if scratched into the skin with a dagger. She learned to shoot a crossbow with deadly accuracy, and where to slash with a knife so that the target would not have time to cry out. And she learned to walk the streets unnoticed.
At seventeen, Maire hid her muscular build under a loose-fitting tunic and trousers. Her hair was cut as short as it could be without being unusual. Her only exceptional feature was her eyes, which were the color of winter twilight. She kept her eyes averted, and no one looked at her twice.
At eighteen, Maire took the Guild Oath, and sealed it with her blood and with the blood of her first assignment. Blood called to blood; any Assassin who failed had to choose between death by their own hand or death at the hands of a fellow Guildmember. Maire knew this with cold certainty; her first assignment had been Gyan, the man who had lifted her out of the gutter when she was a child.
Maire never counted the number of people she killed. There were Assassins who cut knotches into a black leather belt, keeping careful track; there were also Assassins who would show themselves to their targets deliberately, for the thrill of the risk or for the fear in the targets' eyes. Most of them had come to the Guild late, had chosen the life for the risk or the adventure. Maire used poison and shot people in the back from the shadows. And she never counted.
She would have guessed that she had completed twenty or thirty assignments by the time she was twenty-two. She was close; the assignment to kill Rachaen, High Priestess in the Order of the Goddess of Mercy, was her thirty-fifth assignment.
It looked like an easy enough assignment. Why anyone would take out a contract on a pacifistic priestess, Maire wasn't sure, but being curious was not her job. It looked like the only hard part would be getting the Priestess alone, and even that looked simple enough once she found out that that the Priestesses held weekly services of mercy, open to all petitioners.
***
Maire knelt on the stone slab before the altar. The crowd pressed in around her made her nervous, and she kept one eye on her back. She had slipped into the convent with a mass of petitioners; she could hear the sound of weeping from elsewhere in the mob.
The stone door to the convent proper swung open; six Priestesses came out. The crowd stayed remarkably subdued, somewhat to Maire's relief; confusion would be helpful when it came time for the actual assassination, but until then, she wanted things quiet.
One Priestess had the group form a line. Maire slipped to the back of the line. The petitioners each stepped forward and had a brief conversation with one of the Priestesses. The conversation usually seemed to end with hands clasping in benediction. Maire caught the occasional phrase--"child is sick...husband dying..."--but mostly just the weeping she had heard before.
Finally, she found herself kneeling before a white-haired woman with gentle brown eyes. "What have you need of, my child?"
Maire's mind went suddenly blank. Why hadn't she prepared for this? "Your blessing, and...the blessing of your Goddess, Mother," she whispered.
The Priestess laid a hand on her head and murmered softly. Maire raised her head and, with a shock, realized that she was the last petitioner in the Chapel, but that she could still hear the sound of weeping. "Who is crying?" she whispered.
"The Goddess of Mercy weeps over the pain in the world," the Priestess said. "I give you my blessing; for the Blessing of the Goddess you must go to another." The Priestess gestured to another. "Sister...this one desires the Blessings of the Goddess."
The woman approached. Maire averted her eyes; her instincts were suddenly screaming at her to be careful. "Put your hands between mine," she heard the woman's voice say. She raised her clasped hands.
Maire heard footsteps; she knew that the room was empty except for her and the Priestess.
"I am sorry, my child," said the Priestess when the room was empty. "The Goddess has no blessings for one such as you."
One such as you... It seemed to Maire that the sound of weeping grew louder for a moment. "Who are you?"
"I am Rachaen."
In a single quick gesture, Maire was on her feet, a knife at the throat of the woman. "I have come to kill you."
Rachaen turned her head and looked straight into Maire's eyes. "Then why am I not dead yet?"
Maire flinched. Every moment wasted increased the risk. She should cut the woman's throat and run. Instead she spoke. "I want to know why someone wants you dead."
"Because I speak for the Goddess, and she knows the hearts of all who come to her. She knew yours, did she not?"
"Luck." Maire looked away. There was something strange about Rachaen's eyes.
"Do you think of yourself as evil?"
"I deal death. Is death evil?"
"In proper time and season, no."
"Perhaps it is given to those such as I to make that decision." Maire brought the knife in abruptly, enough to feel Rachaen's body tense against her. She wondered why the late-trained Assassins so loved showing themselves to their targets; what people's fear gave them. She spoke the words she had heard them boast in stories; "You are afraid then. You have the unusual privilege of speaking with an assassin before she kills you. Aren't you going to beg me not to kill you?" Her voice felt cool, flat.
"Don't kill me, please. For your sake."
"For my sake? If I do not kill you, I will be killed by my Guild, unless I kill myself first. Assassins do not fail. Ever."
"Then kill me now, and quickly, because perhaps if you live you will learn mercy. My life has not been long, but I have at least felt joy."
"I have felt joy."
"You have felt pleasure, and even happiness. Never joy. Not even in killing." Rachaen twisted her head around again. "I will show you." Maire tightened her hold on Rachaen. "I will not try to escape." She closed her eyes--what was it about her eyes?--and whispered a brief word.
Light bursting through a smashed wall the scent of chamomile growing heavy in the air of a meadow the bird freed, soaring into the air on the wind
Maire's knife clattered to the floor. Rachaen stepped out of Maire's grasp. "That is joy."
"How did you do that?" Maire whispered.
"I asked the Goddess, if she could not give you her blessing, to give you at least a moment of joy."
Now Maire knew why someone wanted this woman dead. She stared into Rachaen's eyes and with a cold ice shock realized why they looked familiar. She had seen them, daily, in her own mirror.
"Who are you?"
"I am Rachaen." She tipped her head to one side and half-smiled. "And I think I might be your sister." She ducked briefly to pick up Maire's dropped knife, and handed it back to her.
"How?" Maire didn't need to ask. The Assassins were not the only Guild which took in lost children. She raised her hand ...those eyes...she could not bring the knife down.
Maire threw her knife to the ground and sobbing in sudden fear, turned and ran out of the Chapel.
Rachaen watched her go, weeping. Slowly, she turned away and knelt before the altar to pray.
She heard the steps behind her, but did not turn. "Have mercy on her soul," she whispered, an instant before she felt the arrow stab into her back and the poison filling her blood.
Maire picked up her knife. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "But I had an Oath to keep."
As she left the Chapel, she could hear the sound of the Goddess weeping...
THE END
Note the complete lack of logic or coherence here, please, and the Kitchen Sink approach to the cliches that appealed to me ("and they're twins! IDENTICAL twins who were separated at birth!") See? "Moving." Bleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
In the unlikely event that I ever write another assassin story, I'm going to sit down and actually think through how a corporation of contract killers might actually function, rather than going with assassins as presented by that set of hardcover handbooks published by a certain company then located in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. If you follow my drift. ::Drops heavy book on floor to cover up noise made by dice rolling.::
matociquala; I clearly needed this humiliating trip down memory lane. She has challenged (no, wait -- double-dog dared, I could have ignored a mere challenge) to post the "awfullest, grottiest, ancientest peice of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open."
Oy.
Fortunately, she didn't say "or that you have in printed form," since I have notebooks from eighth grade in a box under the desk that holds my printer. I'm not sure anything in them is still legible; it's been several years since I opened the box.
I actually think the most cringe-worthy item I found in several minutes of electronic excavation may be not quite the oldest. The oldest is "clever" and rather less cringe-worthy; the most cringe-worthy item is "moving" (note the scare quotes; they're there for a reason) and may be marginally more recent. Both were written when I was in college. I went to college from 1991 through 1995; I think both of these were probably written in 1992 or possibly 1993. I restricted myself to things that I (a) completed and (b) submitted for publication or at least intended to submit even if I never got around to doing it. They're both competently written in a "well, at least I knew how to string words together" sense, but ... but ... gahhhhhhhh.
Clearly, the idea here is to maximize the humiliation, so I will post the most cringe-worthy piece, rather than the one I think may technically be older. (The dates are all screwed up due to a technology transfer, so I can't be sure.) If there is popular demand for the "clever" piece I can come back and post that, too. The underlying idea of that one is actually marginally clever, it's just presented in a depressingly dull and un-funny way while I poke you in the ribs repeatedly to point out how clever it all is. Still, it's less humiliating than this.
(LJ-cut for obvious reasons. The story is 1,541 words, if you're trying to decide if you actually have time to read it. You know what, if you're trying to decide if you have time to read it, you don't. It's five minutes of your life that you will never get back.)
GUILD OATH
Assassins don't wear black.
Most people picture the Assassin as a tall, dark-eyed man, garbed in black from head to foot, aiming a crossbow with a single black-gloved hand. Assassins don't wear black because it's conspicuous. Black clothing is both impressive, which attracts attention, and sinister, which invites distrust. Also, no night is truly black; a man in true black can't hide in the shadows.
Maire wore grey.
Almost everyone knows that Assassins are dealers of death. Just as few people picture Assassins wearing grey, however, few people think of Assassins as dealers of life. Maire certainly hadn't, although a four-year-old street child was unlikely to think of much beyond its next meal. Gyan, a Guild apprentice, had spotted her quickness and ruthlessness, and had lifted her from the gutter and taken her to the Guild.
At four, Maire could steal undetected, and had the quickness and grace of an alley cat. The Guild taught her how to move silently, how to pick a lock and lift a window; then they taught her how to kill as quickly and silently as she walked. She learned what poisons would kill instantly, and which would kill undetected; she learned which poisons would kill if slipped into food, and which would kill if scratched into the skin with a dagger. She learned to shoot a crossbow with deadly accuracy, and where to slash with a knife so that the target would not have time to cry out. And she learned to walk the streets unnoticed.
At seventeen, Maire hid her muscular build under a loose-fitting tunic and trousers. Her hair was cut as short as it could be without being unusual. Her only exceptional feature was her eyes, which were the color of winter twilight. She kept her eyes averted, and no one looked at her twice.
At eighteen, Maire took the Guild Oath, and sealed it with her blood and with the blood of her first assignment. Blood called to blood; any Assassin who failed had to choose between death by their own hand or death at the hands of a fellow Guildmember. Maire knew this with cold certainty; her first assignment had been Gyan, the man who had lifted her out of the gutter when she was a child.
Maire never counted the number of people she killed. There were Assassins who cut knotches into a black leather belt, keeping careful track; there were also Assassins who would show themselves to their targets deliberately, for the thrill of the risk or for the fear in the targets' eyes. Most of them had come to the Guild late, had chosen the life for the risk or the adventure. Maire used poison and shot people in the back from the shadows. And she never counted.
She would have guessed that she had completed twenty or thirty assignments by the time she was twenty-two. She was close; the assignment to kill Rachaen, High Priestess in the Order of the Goddess of Mercy, was her thirty-fifth assignment.
It looked like an easy enough assignment. Why anyone would take out a contract on a pacifistic priestess, Maire wasn't sure, but being curious was not her job. It looked like the only hard part would be getting the Priestess alone, and even that looked simple enough once she found out that that the Priestesses held weekly services of mercy, open to all petitioners.
***
Maire knelt on the stone slab before the altar. The crowd pressed in around her made her nervous, and she kept one eye on her back. She had slipped into the convent with a mass of petitioners; she could hear the sound of weeping from elsewhere in the mob.
The stone door to the convent proper swung open; six Priestesses came out. The crowd stayed remarkably subdued, somewhat to Maire's relief; confusion would be helpful when it came time for the actual assassination, but until then, she wanted things quiet.
One Priestess had the group form a line. Maire slipped to the back of the line. The petitioners each stepped forward and had a brief conversation with one of the Priestesses. The conversation usually seemed to end with hands clasping in benediction. Maire caught the occasional phrase--"child is sick...husband dying..."--but mostly just the weeping she had heard before.
Finally, she found herself kneeling before a white-haired woman with gentle brown eyes. "What have you need of, my child?"
Maire's mind went suddenly blank. Why hadn't she prepared for this? "Your blessing, and...the blessing of your Goddess, Mother," she whispered.
The Priestess laid a hand on her head and murmered softly. Maire raised her head and, with a shock, realized that she was the last petitioner in the Chapel, but that she could still hear the sound of weeping. "Who is crying?" she whispered.
"The Goddess of Mercy weeps over the pain in the world," the Priestess said. "I give you my blessing; for the Blessing of the Goddess you must go to another." The Priestess gestured to another. "Sister...this one desires the Blessings of the Goddess."
The woman approached. Maire averted her eyes; her instincts were suddenly screaming at her to be careful. "Put your hands between mine," she heard the woman's voice say. She raised her clasped hands.
Maire heard footsteps; she knew that the room was empty except for her and the Priestess.
"I am sorry, my child," said the Priestess when the room was empty. "The Goddess has no blessings for one such as you."
One such as you... It seemed to Maire that the sound of weeping grew louder for a moment. "Who are you?"
"I am Rachaen."
In a single quick gesture, Maire was on her feet, a knife at the throat of the woman. "I have come to kill you."
Rachaen turned her head and looked straight into Maire's eyes. "Then why am I not dead yet?"
Maire flinched. Every moment wasted increased the risk. She should cut the woman's throat and run. Instead she spoke. "I want to know why someone wants you dead."
"Because I speak for the Goddess, and she knows the hearts of all who come to her. She knew yours, did she not?"
"Luck." Maire looked away. There was something strange about Rachaen's eyes.
"Do you think of yourself as evil?"
"I deal death. Is death evil?"
"In proper time and season, no."
"Perhaps it is given to those such as I to make that decision." Maire brought the knife in abruptly, enough to feel Rachaen's body tense against her. She wondered why the late-trained Assassins so loved showing themselves to their targets; what people's fear gave them. She spoke the words she had heard them boast in stories; "You are afraid then. You have the unusual privilege of speaking with an assassin before she kills you. Aren't you going to beg me not to kill you?" Her voice felt cool, flat.
"Don't kill me, please. For your sake."
"For my sake? If I do not kill you, I will be killed by my Guild, unless I kill myself first. Assassins do not fail. Ever."
"Then kill me now, and quickly, because perhaps if you live you will learn mercy. My life has not been long, but I have at least felt joy."
"I have felt joy."
"You have felt pleasure, and even happiness. Never joy. Not even in killing." Rachaen twisted her head around again. "I will show you." Maire tightened her hold on Rachaen. "I will not try to escape." She closed her eyes--what was it about her eyes?--and whispered a brief word.
Light bursting through a smashed wall the scent of chamomile growing heavy in the air of a meadow the bird freed, soaring into the air on the wind
Maire's knife clattered to the floor. Rachaen stepped out of Maire's grasp. "That is joy."
"How did you do that?" Maire whispered.
"I asked the Goddess, if she could not give you her blessing, to give you at least a moment of joy."
Now Maire knew why someone wanted this woman dead. She stared into Rachaen's eyes and with a cold ice shock realized why they looked familiar. She had seen them, daily, in her own mirror.
"Who are you?"
"I am Rachaen." She tipped her head to one side and half-smiled. "And I think I might be your sister." She ducked briefly to pick up Maire's dropped knife, and handed it back to her.
"How?" Maire didn't need to ask. The Assassins were not the only Guild which took in lost children. She raised her hand ...those eyes...she could not bring the knife down.
Maire threw her knife to the ground and sobbing in sudden fear, turned and ran out of the Chapel.
Rachaen watched her go, weeping. Slowly, she turned away and knelt before the altar to pray.
She heard the steps behind her, but did not turn. "Have mercy on her soul," she whispered, an instant before she felt the arrow stab into her back and the poison filling her blood.
Maire picked up her knife. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "But I had an Oath to keep."
As she left the Chapel, she could hear the sound of the Goddess weeping...
THE END
Note the complete lack of logic or coherence here, please, and the Kitchen Sink approach to the cliches that appealed to me ("and they're twins! IDENTICAL twins who were separated at birth!") See? "Moving." Bleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
In the unlikely event that I ever write another assassin story, I'm going to sit down and actually think through how a corporation of contract killers might actually function, rather than going with assassins as presented by that set of hardcover handbooks published by a certain company then located in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. If you follow my drift. ::Drops heavy book on floor to cover up noise made by dice rolling.::
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 07:02 pm (UTC)I have very few remnants of my early writing, just a few cartoons (and I'm not an artist at all) and some poetry. I did run across a story that I wrote when i was nine, set in the old west with a group of robbers. Turned out they were stealing money so they could start a bank. The story is cringe-worthy for its utter dullness.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 11:10 pm (UTC)My true juvenalia included a story written in fourth grade that included a magical talking white horse (and I hadn't even read Mercedes Lackey yet!) and more or less ripped off the plot of the TV version of Puff, the Magic Dragon. Fortunately, I have no idea where that is. (I don't think it's in the box in the corner.)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 03:28 am (UTC)The longest thing I wrote as an adolescent (which I never did finish) was 85 pages of handwritten melodrama about psychic kids who were institutionalized to prevent them foiling a conspiracy between a hypnotic opera singer (modeled loosely on Pavarotti) and the Vice President to take over the country, because their super-powers were the only thing that could stop it...