The holidays really knocked everyone out, and as of last week at this time, we only had 5 entries, so we held the contest open for one more week to give people more of a go at the topic. So once our entrants roused from their slumber, they got to writing, and we've got a fine batch to read from this weekend!
So pick the best three (3) drabbles that don't put you to sleep and hit that submit button!
Voting will end Sunday evening 10pm GMT, so don't hit that snooze button! The winner(s) of this week's Drabble Contest get to choose next week's topic.
[video=youtube_share;0Uk6hlpSkqE]http://youtu.be/0Uk6hlpSkqE[/video]
Audio Version
http://thargoidandfer-de-lance.co.uk/drabbles/drabbles-theme-sleepy-audio/
__________________________________________________ ________
01 - Frank - Meta Girl of my Dreams
...nothing can go wrong."...
I saw a gorgeous girl admiring my ship. She smiled, "Does this customised spaceship of yours have a psycho-interface? I always fancied having a go on one."
I connected her to the co-pilot's chair before sharing the dream-like state with her. Feeling part of the Cobra was as familiar to me as slipping on a glove, but I could sense the concerns of my co-pilot "Were those your memories? Did you calibrate the interface for two inputs?"
"Relax", I thought to her, "This is a bulletproof technology. Nothing can go wrong."
...I saw a gorgeous girl...
__________________________________________________ ________
02 - rootsrat - Siriusly?
Sirius B. was old and sleepy. He ate too much for supper and his only desire now was to rest forever. Something disturbing started happening deep within his bowels however. A few atomic nuclei lost their way and collided with each other. This has caused a nuclear reaction – something that Sirius B. didn’t experience for eons. He managed to raise one of his cosmic eyebrows and turned into a supernova.
Sirius A., his younger brother, sighed: “I knew he’d fart himself to death sooner or later”. Father Universe rolled his eyes and returned to its affairs as if nothing happened.
__________________________________________________ ________
03 - Ian Philips - The End
It's cold and I'm feeling sleepy.
At first the cold makes you shiver, an automatic response by your body to generate heat. Wait long enough and even that response stops, then you know you are in real trouble. But the problem is, by that time you just don't care any more.
I'm sitting in my pilots seat, staring at the heat gauge as it slowly descends.
The stars are pretty, outside the frozen canopy. The tumbling ship lets me see most of them.
A shot up wreck surrounds me, the sum total of my life's endeavors.
I mustn't fall asleep.
__________________________________________________ ________
04 - insanephoton - Pilot Fatigue
Alarms are blaring and there's the awful sound of metal scraping on metal. My heart races as I try to grasp what happened. Last thing I remember I was lining upwith the entrance.
Where am I?
Back wall of the station. Okay and my ship? No damage and I still have docking permission for pad 4. Let's get landed.
I must have dropped off during docking. I was lucky, it could have been much worse.
I was already feeling sleepy when I decided to take 'just one more trade run'. Big mistake. Now I really should get some sleep.
__________________________________________________ ________
05 - Galactic Midden - The morning after...
Sleepy woke, his head bumping the controls caused the main drill to kick loudly into action. “Ouch, my head… shut that off!” rumbled Grumpy.
“Achoo! Where’s the painkillers?” sniffled Sneezy.
“I think you’ll need to look in Dopey’s private collection” replied Doc peering through bloodshot eyes, “I can’t see straight enough to reach the medical bay”.
The mining crew of “The Heigh-Ho” had once again partied hard to celebrate Empire day. The drinking games had of course been Happy’s idea and soon they’d all know if Bashful regretted freely giving her affections as she stirred half-naked, arms wrapped around Dopey.
__________________________________________________ ________
06 - Splendour - Seven Dwarf Stars
Ice laced the glass of the cockpit as the ship settled down to sleep. Outside an icefield glowed a ruddy red, the sole light output of the nearby dwarf star. Seven of the small stars in a row, none of them scoopable. That salvaged nav data had turned out to be a real poisoned apple.
Liz White powered down the last of the non vital systems, leaving only a small trickle to the distress beacon and the ancient stardreamer system. "Thank Terra grandpa didn't have this ripped out decades ago. Here goes nothing."
She lay back as her eyelids drooped.
__________________________________________________ ________
07 - Erik Marcaigh - Time Out
The Orca settled onto it's landing pad on Lave's surface. The small spaceport just off the islands had been picked out by the couple and Kalran let them know he'd be moving on to a bigger spaceport on the surface.
"Cheers then, mate," said Seamus who handed out three glasses of Janx.
They drank it down and Rose caught Kalran as he began to slump. She took him to his cabin and put him in bed.
"We've got 24 hours before he comes to. Grab the weapons and lock down the ship. I'll pay the dockmaster and meet you outside."
__________________________________________________ ________
08 - Goose4291 - Tiredness can kill
The yellow Hauler "Peckham's Mogul" decelerated out of super-cruise, a few kilometres outside Lave station.
Onboard, Glen rubbed his eyes as he nosed the Mogul slowly towards the letterbox, exhausted from running the Lave to Achenar trade route for the past nine hours ceaselessly without a break.
As he entered the letterbox he smiled tiredly to himself, only two more runs and his dreams of Cobra ownership would be achieved.
The buffeting of a laser blast from the station snapped him from his reverie. In his tiredness induced stupor, he’d forgotten to request docking clearance.
The bulkheads began to fracture.
__________________________________________________ ________
09 - psykokow - Fortified
The two figures eyed each other cautiously, their breath peppering the air with steam trails. The holding cell offered little in the ways of comfort.
‘Ow long did the Imps give ya?’
’10 years slavery, for theft’
‘Geez, what did you take?’
‘My supervisors wife.. he was not happy, You?’
’15 years slavery for delivering 15 tonnes of Lavian Brandy for Senator Wagar’s Emporer day Celebration party’
‘Wow that’s harsh. So it’s illegal in Prism then?’
‘No not at all, just when customs opened my hold door they caught me urinating in the canisters’
’15 years!!! For a sly pee?’
__________________________________________________ ________
10 - MrMogadon - The Weird Dreams of Frank the Undead
Frank, weary after a day of doing whatever he does, settled into his nest behind the bar. Quaffing his usual nightcap, he failed to register an additional frisson which momentarily intrigued his taste bud.
The addition: a modified baculovirus. State of the art. Deadly.
However, a diet consisting largely of poteen-strength Janxx, had rendered his digestive tract so inhospitable that the poison was rendered harmless, to Frank at least, by his broiling digestive broth.
Frank awoke confused; in front of an open incinerator? Drowsy memories of him coughing; a startled yelp; bacon???
“Helluva dream” he thought, heading bar-wards for breakfast.
__________________________________________________ ________
11 - azdour - One journey too far
The overworked hauler pilot tried to keep awake. The stims no longer worked, but he had to quickly pay off his remaining gambling debt.
The hauler was a battered wreck. Too many interdictions and no time for repairs.
He was oblivious to the fact that soon death would pay him a visit.
Fail to repay the debt, they would kill him.
Make a mistake in landing, the station would kill him.
But his death was closer than he realised.
His trusty ship was his coffin.
The ship exited the station, the battered hull groaned.
The crack expelling the air grew.
So pick the best three (3) drabbles that don't put you to sleep and hit that submit button!
Voting will end Sunday evening 10pm GMT, so don't hit that snooze button! The winner(s) of this week's Drabble Contest get to choose next week's topic.
[video=youtube_share;0Uk6hlpSkqE]http://youtu.be/0Uk6hlpSkqE[/video]
Audio Version
http://thargoidandfer-de-lance.co.uk/drabbles/drabbles-theme-sleepy-audio/
__________________________________________________ ________
01 - Frank - Meta Girl of my Dreams
...nothing can go wrong."...
I saw a gorgeous girl admiring my ship. She smiled, "Does this customised spaceship of yours have a psycho-interface? I always fancied having a go on one."
I connected her to the co-pilot's chair before sharing the dream-like state with her. Feeling part of the Cobra was as familiar to me as slipping on a glove, but I could sense the concerns of my co-pilot "Were those your memories? Did you calibrate the interface for two inputs?"
"Relax", I thought to her, "This is a bulletproof technology. Nothing can go wrong."
...I saw a gorgeous girl...
__________________________________________________ ________
02 - rootsrat - Siriusly?
Sirius B. was old and sleepy. He ate too much for supper and his only desire now was to rest forever. Something disturbing started happening deep within his bowels however. A few atomic nuclei lost their way and collided with each other. This has caused a nuclear reaction – something that Sirius B. didn’t experience for eons. He managed to raise one of his cosmic eyebrows and turned into a supernova.
Sirius A., his younger brother, sighed: “I knew he’d fart himself to death sooner or later”. Father Universe rolled his eyes and returned to its affairs as if nothing happened.
__________________________________________________ ________
03 - Ian Philips - The End
It's cold and I'm feeling sleepy.
At first the cold makes you shiver, an automatic response by your body to generate heat. Wait long enough and even that response stops, then you know you are in real trouble. But the problem is, by that time you just don't care any more.
I'm sitting in my pilots seat, staring at the heat gauge as it slowly descends.
The stars are pretty, outside the frozen canopy. The tumbling ship lets me see most of them.
A shot up wreck surrounds me, the sum total of my life's endeavors.
I mustn't fall asleep.
__________________________________________________ ________
04 - insanephoton - Pilot Fatigue
Alarms are blaring and there's the awful sound of metal scraping on metal. My heart races as I try to grasp what happened. Last thing I remember I was lining upwith the entrance.
Where am I?
Back wall of the station. Okay and my ship? No damage and I still have docking permission for pad 4. Let's get landed.
I must have dropped off during docking. I was lucky, it could have been much worse.
I was already feeling sleepy when I decided to take 'just one more trade run'. Big mistake. Now I really should get some sleep.
__________________________________________________ ________
05 - Galactic Midden - The morning after...
Sleepy woke, his head bumping the controls caused the main drill to kick loudly into action. “Ouch, my head… shut that off!” rumbled Grumpy.
“Achoo! Where’s the painkillers?” sniffled Sneezy.
“I think you’ll need to look in Dopey’s private collection” replied Doc peering through bloodshot eyes, “I can’t see straight enough to reach the medical bay”.
The mining crew of “The Heigh-Ho” had once again partied hard to celebrate Empire day. The drinking games had of course been Happy’s idea and soon they’d all know if Bashful regretted freely giving her affections as she stirred half-naked, arms wrapped around Dopey.
__________________________________________________ ________
06 - Splendour - Seven Dwarf Stars
Ice laced the glass of the cockpit as the ship settled down to sleep. Outside an icefield glowed a ruddy red, the sole light output of the nearby dwarf star. Seven of the small stars in a row, none of them scoopable. That salvaged nav data had turned out to be a real poisoned apple.
Liz White powered down the last of the non vital systems, leaving only a small trickle to the distress beacon and the ancient stardreamer system. "Thank Terra grandpa didn't have this ripped out decades ago. Here goes nothing."
She lay back as her eyelids drooped.
__________________________________________________ ________
07 - Erik Marcaigh - Time Out
The Orca settled onto it's landing pad on Lave's surface. The small spaceport just off the islands had been picked out by the couple and Kalran let them know he'd be moving on to a bigger spaceport on the surface.
"Cheers then, mate," said Seamus who handed out three glasses of Janx.
They drank it down and Rose caught Kalran as he began to slump. She took him to his cabin and put him in bed.
"We've got 24 hours before he comes to. Grab the weapons and lock down the ship. I'll pay the dockmaster and meet you outside."
__________________________________________________ ________
08 - Goose4291 - Tiredness can kill
The yellow Hauler "Peckham's Mogul" decelerated out of super-cruise, a few kilometres outside Lave station.
Onboard, Glen rubbed his eyes as he nosed the Mogul slowly towards the letterbox, exhausted from running the Lave to Achenar trade route for the past nine hours ceaselessly without a break.
As he entered the letterbox he smiled tiredly to himself, only two more runs and his dreams of Cobra ownership would be achieved.
The buffeting of a laser blast from the station snapped him from his reverie. In his tiredness induced stupor, he’d forgotten to request docking clearance.
The bulkheads began to fracture.
__________________________________________________ ________
09 - psykokow - Fortified
The two figures eyed each other cautiously, their breath peppering the air with steam trails. The holding cell offered little in the ways of comfort.
‘Ow long did the Imps give ya?’
’10 years slavery, for theft’
‘Geez, what did you take?’
‘My supervisors wife.. he was not happy, You?’
’15 years slavery for delivering 15 tonnes of Lavian Brandy for Senator Wagar’s Emporer day Celebration party’
‘Wow that’s harsh. So it’s illegal in Prism then?’
‘No not at all, just when customs opened my hold door they caught me urinating in the canisters’
’15 years!!! For a sly pee?’
__________________________________________________ ________
10 - MrMogadon - The Weird Dreams of Frank the Undead
Frank, weary after a day of doing whatever he does, settled into his nest behind the bar. Quaffing his usual nightcap, he failed to register an additional frisson which momentarily intrigued his taste bud.
The addition: a modified baculovirus. State of the art. Deadly.
However, a diet consisting largely of poteen-strength Janxx, had rendered his digestive tract so inhospitable that the poison was rendered harmless, to Frank at least, by his broiling digestive broth.
Frank awoke confused; in front of an open incinerator? Drowsy memories of him coughing; a startled yelp; bacon???
“Helluva dream” he thought, heading bar-wards for breakfast.
__________________________________________________ ________
11 - azdour - One journey too far
The overworked hauler pilot tried to keep awake. The stims no longer worked, but he had to quickly pay off his remaining gambling debt.
The hauler was a battered wreck. Too many interdictions and no time for repairs.
He was oblivious to the fact that soon death would pay him a visit.
Fail to repay the debt, they would kill him.
Make a mistake in landing, the station would kill him.
But his death was closer than he realised.
His trusty ship was his coffin.
The ship exited the station, the battered hull groaned.
The crack expelling the air grew.
Last edited by a moderator:
Vicious cycle, work is!
