DRABBLE poll: 'A bit of Gore' and 'Problem Solved'

[Ian Phillips]

'So this is christmas....' No that was another project.....this is...Ah yes the first drabble poll of 2014.

15 choicest cuts to choose from, most with blood spattered gratuitously all over the place.

Careful where you tread, and come and place your votes!

[Ian Phillips]

1) Solutions are often messy.. by psykokow

Senator Drew paced uneasily in his office. It had been over an hour since he had made to call to take care of a little issue bothering him, they normally worked faster than this.
A knock at the door broke his pace and he regained his poise and glided to the door.
An Imperial courier handed him a box and left without uttering a word.
The Senator walked to his chair and sat back with a satisfying creak and opened the box.
Inside was a lot of blood, an eyeball and a note. “A Piece of Mr Gore- Problem Solved”.


2) A Square Peg into a Round Hole by Frank

The burglars were outside John's quarters. Braynes was upset when 'Slasher' Stevens showed him the point of entry. He tried to keep quiet, "Have you got anything in your head apart from muscle? You see the size of that vent? It's not big enough for a cat nevermind a human. How do you expect me to squeeze through that?"

The massive man just held his knife tightly as he glowered at his little accomplice hissing insults at him.

The next morning John went downstairs to find a mound of dissected flesh on the bloodstained carpet next to the open vent.


3) Blood and bullets by Ian Phillips

The body lay strapped to the table as the knife descended. It slowly slid through the skin, blood oozing around the cut. Gradually at first, then eventually dripping from the naked flesh onto the table. The knife was pushed in deeper twisting and probing.

'You can't do this in free fall. The blood doesn't flow - it pools in the cut and you can't see anything. A little bit of gore shouldn't put you off - it comes with the territory. Ahh, there it is'.

So saying he raised bloody hands, holding a small slug of metal.

'There, problem solved'.


4) How to make your enemies (almost) disappear by Ian_H

‘So’, said the taller man, ‘you gained revenge over this pilot who nearly ruined you by framing him for a string of crimes, then purchased back your stolen vessel at the federal fire sale of his assets. And you carried out his execution in person so he would know it was you!’

‘The wonders of identity theft’ admitted the shorter.

‘But why hack the atomic dispersal to only disperse from the waist down? The blood and bile don’t matter, or the seven minutes he took dying in agony… but why risk the attention?’

‘Because I’m a sadistic basterd’ he smiled.


5) All in a name by DaddyHoggy

To: Galcop Flight License Department C4 (New Pilots Section)

From: Commander Juan El Gore.

Dear Sir/ Madam

I would like to report a bit of a problem with my newly issued Flight License. When I was given my original form to check over, I noticed that my actual, real first name, which is ‘Al’ (after my father, and his father before that, etc., etc.) was spelled with two Ls, as in ‘All’. I pointed this out to the Galcop official as I handed the form back. I think I may have used the phrase “No, One L”.

Regards

Commander Gore.


6) Master Key by insanephoton

'Why did you have to kill him? We'll never get off this rock now' Samantha wailed.

'He had it coming, What's the problem? We just take his ship and get out of here.'

'He locked the ship. We can't get back in without him.'

'Can't you just hack the locks?'

'No, they're biometric. Only his fingerprints or retinal scan will get us back in.'

'There must be a way to bypass them?'

'Well, perhaps...'

Andy brought the severed hands and head back to the ship. Samantha tentatively tried a hand on the scanner.

'Door unlocking. Welcome back aboard Commander Gore'


7) Outside the Box by Darren Grey

"ALERT: Hull breach."

Hell, not what I need! We're out of the Viper's fire, but getting sucked into the void ain't much better.

The air whistles past my face, deathly cold.

"We need to seal it up!" shouts Ali.

Yeah yeah, state the obvious, darlin'. I look around for some sealant, but this old junky ship ain't got nothin'.

Ali's shrieks are getting quieter now, sucked away through the gaping hole in the cockpit.

Sighing, I unbuckle myself, float over to Ali, and shoot her in the back.

It takes a lot more effort to stuff her into the hole.


8) A bit of gore problem solved by Zieman

Somewhere around the fringes of Human space, in an uncharted system, was an asteroid hideout. Yeah, the system wasn't completely uncharted, but almost. Inside the base Quill looked at the garish remains of two men in disgust. A Federal agent and an Imperial agent, now lying in a puddle of gore. No useful info gained, lots of nasty trails to wipe off. 'We have too many incompetent fools peddling around here!', he shouted. Alyana quickly drew her plasma blunderbuss and blasted Quill's head to the wall, replying 'Problem solved. Now, would someone who's NOT incompetent kindly clean up this mess...'


9) Thargoid invasion by W4rSkuLL

Heavy breathing, and the stench of fear reaks the dropship.

"Stay calm now", a last inhale and the marines are dropped into the fray.
The front is collapsing and thargoid heavy infantry are becoming a huge problem now.

He slips in the mud, up again, running through the chaos.

A head rolls by. It stops, some blood squirts out. And some gore. Lifeless eyes stares at his face.

Suddenly, a figure rises in front of him. A Thargonian blade winds his neck.
As he empties the clip into the savage beast.

The sight of full scale planetary war engulfs him.


10) Blood-and-Guts's solution by Darkoba

"Flight-deck! Attention!"

The drop-ship marines snapped to attention as the general, "Ol' Blood-and-Guts" strode onto the deck.

"Men, we have a problem. An Imperial spy is amongst us. However, our boffins have devised a concoction which analyses DNA and releases poison if it encounters Imperial blood. You will all receive the jab. We'll find our spy."

One-by-one the marines entered the med-bay capsule momentarily then returned to the line.

The first marine turned green, then more as the injection worked.

Only the eighth remained unaffected. The general shot him.

"There's no such concoction, son. You should have taken the jab."


11) The Infinity Equation by Gibbonici (101 words)

My partner's name was Hendrick. For twenty years we roamed space together, 200LYs beyond the frontier in cold and uncaring infinity.

Out there you must reconcile your sanity with the callous mathematic of your near-nonexistence. Infinity, you see, cancels everything out.

But Hendrick couldn't reconcile himself.

He slowly went mad, driving me to distraction with his fretting and crying. In the end I blew his brains out with a snub pistol. It took two days to clean him off the galley bulkhead, but he was cancelled out. Nonexistent.

It's just me and the stars now; infinity+1, a different equation altogether.


12) Hmmm tasty. by Bikky
‘Working in The Thargoid and Fer de Lance can be taxing. We’ve recently started serving food, and this is where things come unstuck. With such a wide variety of tastes, we’re finding it hard to keep up with demands. The odd brawl and death have been known, which proves inconvenient when the police start buzzing around. Then Jonty came up with an idea to solve all our problems. Twenty three customers were waiting for their raw meat pate’s, when shots were heard. Jonty rushed out into the bar area, and dragged the body back and put it through the mincer.’


13) Problem Solved by Philip Coutts

The ship drifted, dead in space, lifeless and cold like the majority of the crew. Captain Scott stood on the bridge transfixed by the desolation that one small Thargoid fighter had caused. Cold, sickly sweat started to run down his face, this was bad in fact it was catastrophic. “How can I get the power back on?” he mused. The main power cable had been completely severed, sliced by the Thargoid’s laser, he needed something to complete the circuit, just enough to get him somewhere. He reached for the body of one of the dead crew…..problem solved he thought grimly.


14) Barndoor! by Phoenix_Dfire

There was no denying it, things hurt. The escape pod had blood splatters over most of the instrumentation and it took a minute to realise that it was all his. He could feel the flight suit doing its job of sealing up the wounds, but it didn’t seem to help with the pain.

He could feel the fogginess of the hibernation process begin to cloud his mind. He looked over the remains of his ship and, in the distance, he could see an Asp Explorer engage its frameshift drive.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone after Commander Ford thought Commander Stroud.


15) Trouble on the Horizon by Musashi

The tortured hull shrieked as the beam laser drilled it again.

"Where are those calculations?" shouted Alderson.

Miller's hands shook as he tried feverishly to determine the hyperspace destination coordinates. With the navcomputer a smoking wreck, his mathematical abilities were the crew's only hope.

"Problem solved!" he cried, entering the numbers.

The witchspace tunnel that wrapped the ship in its safe cocoon had never looked so glorious - but joy turned to dismay upon exiting. They stared, disbelieving, at the nightmare maw of a black hole.

A death sentence.

Alderson peered at Miller's scribblings. "Is that a plus or a minus?"

[Zieman]

What? I was the first to vote?

[Gibbonici]

Mine's 101 words? Wordcounttool.com told me it was 100 :/

No matter, as the rules are pretty clear I'll be happy to withdraw if necessary.

[Luniticisi]

Mine's 101 words? Wordcounttool.com told me it was 100 :/

No matter, as the rules are pretty clear I'll be happy to withdraw if necessary.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, the rules are pretty relaxed here

[Ian Phillips]

Mine's 101 words? Wordcounttool.com told me it was 100 :/

No matter, as the rules are pretty clear I'll be happy to withdraw if necessary.

You can't - the poll can't be changed :smilie:

Hmmm. I just checked it again in Word, and that says 100 words. Sorry.

There were a few dodgy word counts, involving hyphens or the lack of them: EG 'Fer-de-lance' was written as 'Fer de lance' making it 3 words instead of 1, but who is checking that closely?

[Gibbonici]

Cool, thanks.

I've noticed before that word counters can come up with different results depending on how they do it. Even in a 500 word document, Open Office (for example) can give a different result to wordcounttool.com by 15-20 words sometimes. It's a real pain for flash fiction writers.

[Darkoba]

Diffidulter an' difficulter... as opposed to "curiouser..."

I've now had to resort to a points system, then cross out the (not much) lower scorers, re-read the rest, score them, cross out... etc, etc. It's not only getting more difficult, it's beginning to occupy more time to make a selection. A great collection of drabbles.

Oh, wow! I just saw my score . Thank you

[Bikky]

I agree Darkoba,

I was totally stuck with 5 left... almost went for randomness

[Frank]

Diffidulter an' difficulter... as opposed to "curiouser..."

I've now had to resort to a points system, then cross out the (not much) lower scorers, re-read the rest, score them, cross out... etc, etc. It's not only getting more difficult, it's beginning to occupy more time to make a selection. A great collection of drabbles.

Oh, wow! I just saw my score . Thank you

It's been a long time since I've been able to just point at the best Drabble and put my tick next to it. I use a bubble sort. I start at the top and decide whether the next one down is better. The winner is then compared to the next Drabble down, etc. It's a lot easier to compare just the two Drabbles.

Congratulations on leading the pack.. so far, but I'm only 9 votes behind you so it's still anybody's game

[Bikky]

You nearly had a vote off me Frank. You were one of my 5 remaining, I had 2 firm, but needed to remove 2.... sorry bud... I was surprised to see you with 0 though....

not surprised to see me with 0

[Frank]

I was in exactly the same boat with your Drabble Bikky. In fact I don't feel so bad when a Drabble as good as yours could also be at zero votes

[Ian Phillips]

You know what I find so depressing?

Every week I look at the votes, and in the first day or so, 6 - 8 people vote, and I am usually close to the lead with my drabble.

Then the rest of the votes start to come in and the good drabbles get all the votes, whilst I don't get any more, lagging further and further behind.....

I'm just going to find my Marvin suit....

[Darren Grey]

I always find the drabbles I vote for are 1 point ahead of me!

[Musashi]

I was in exactly the same boat with your Drabble Bikky. In fact I don't feel so bad when a Drabble as good as yours could also be at zero votes

That's the trouble with trying to get feedback on writing from competitions with a limited number of votes. Given the quality of all the entries, I think we'd see a much more even set of scores across the board with the kind of system over at Drablr, similar to Facebook 'likes'. (If you like a drabble, you hit '+1').

Like we've often said, 3 votes is never enough! But it's a different beastie that we've got here