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I try to make my ficlets com­plete sto­ries, but not ones that can’t have a sequel or a pre­quel added to them. It’s not easy to make a com­plete sto­ry in 1024 char­ac­ters or less.

Here’s tonight’s effort:

Right on the edge of the world

“Well that’s a fine how do you do,” mut­tered Rubin.

“What you mean, Rubin?” Arnie’s voice always annoyed Rubin, but since the plane crash it had acquired a grat­ing qual­i­ty. It set Rubin’s teeth on edge, it real­ly did.

“We’ve come to the edge,” said Rubin. “See? The crick just flows on over…”

Arnie came up beside him. “So it do, so it do.” He stared down into the dark­ness for a long moment, then looked up at Rubin. His eyes were round and vacant like the moon. A lit­tle thread of drool had escaped his lip and glis­tened on his chin. “What’s that mean?”

Rubin sighed. “It means we turn around. Head upstream, hope we can find help…”

“We’s been walkin’ for days, though,” Arnie whined.

“Dammit, Arnie, don’t you think I know that?” Arnie recoiled from his broth­er’s fury, and Rubin sighed inward­ly. He relent­ed. “Sor­ry, Arnie. There’s no choice.” He smiled. “Know any good songs?”

“Do I!” They turned away from the void, and Arnie began to sing some idiot song. After a cou­ple moments, Rubin joined in.

Not me, but the char­ac­ters in a short piece I’m work­ing on.

The cab dropped them off at Hol­la’s, the night­club’s name writ­ten in white and blue neon on the build­ing’s side. Before they even got in the door they could hear the thump-thump-thump heart­beat of the music pound­ing through the walls and win­dows. Inside the drinks were two-for-one, and the DJ–a woman with a pate shaved down to downy stub­ble, huge black sun­glass­es, and the red­dest lips Peter had ever seen–played tech­no jams that thud­ded like jun­gle drums, call­ing every­one to the dance floor. The club smelled of per­fume and sweat, pheromones and spilled beer.

The beat got to him, got into him, and he let him­self be dragged by the hand to the black-and-white chess­board dance­floor. Ellen was a lit­tle awk­ward at the start–he won­dered how long it’d been since she’d been out dancing–but as the night wore on she found her groove. She pulled her hair free of her pony­tail and shook her head, hard, in time with the pulse of bass and drums. Her hair became a mane, and she was a wild ani­mal, hips shak­ing, hands in the air like she just did­n’t care.

At one point, Peter remem­bered sit­ting at a table with Ellen and a cou­ple they’d just met, a blond col­lege kid with an unlit smoke hang­ing out of the cor­ner of his mouth and a dark-haired girl with a low-cut top and enor­mous breasts held in check by some com­bi­na­tion of good for­tune, mag­ic, and an archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of a brassiere. He could feel sweat trick­ling down his ribcage, down the back of his neck. He picked up his bot­tle of Bud­weis­er and pressed it to his fore­head, and sighed at the chill. His mus­cles ached and he could­n’t seem to stop smiling. 

So does it paint a pic­ture? I sure hope so…

On the MP3 play­er: RV by Faith No More…

Would any­body tell me if I was get­tin’ stupider?