Fortnightly Writing Contest: THEME: A Friend In Need (CLOSED)

[Mandle]

A Friend in Need

The story must include some element of a strong friendship, and one friend (or group of friends) helping another with something they could not do themself or on their own, or both friends, or all, could be helping each other at the same time.

An important factor will of course be making the reader really feel that the friendship between the characters is genuine and rings true.

So, lean on each other and stand by each other and, well I guess it's hard to do one without the other... JUST LIKE IN THE THEME!

(Nailed it)



Thank you to all true friends who entered this round and now on with the voting conditions:

We have 3 official entries, not counting my non-entry, and they are:

Sinitrena with "Another Spin"

Baron with "A Friend in Deed"

Stupot with "The Woman in the Boat in the Canal Behind the Woods"

As there are 3 entries then please just PM to me your selections in order of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and the inverse points of 3, 2, and 1 will be applied. You need only mention the author by name in your votes.

Voting is open until Wednesday, November 23rd.

BFFs!

[Mandle]

A week left... anything going on?

(I got nostalgic from the images I put together above and watched When Harry Met Sally again for the first time in decades. Still holds up!)

[Sinitrena]

A week left... anything going on?

I... had an idea, and started to write. Then I realized that the beginning I had written would give the ending away, so I have to re-write it - but I like what I've already written.

In short, I'm a bit stuck. But I should be able to solve this and make the deadline (hopefully).

[Sinitrena]

On second thought, I might need a bit more time 

[Baron]

I've been ill, trying to get my immune system caught up after two years of hiding from germs.   

I'll say at this point there's a 25% chance of me making the deadline and 75% chance of me needing an extension.

[Mandle]

I've been ill, trying to get my immune system caught up after two years of hiding from germs.   

I'll say at this point there's a 25% chance of me making the deadline and 75% chance of me needing an extension.

*Rolls 2d10* Ah, it came up "54" so that's well under 75%. Extension granted until Thursday, November 17th, 2022.

[Sinitrena]

The story won't get better if I keep staring at it. So, here it is:

Another Spin

It was late, and the clock on the mantle ticked unbearably loud. When he heard it, that is. When he woke from his far too light slumber, he always heard it pulsing in his head, impossible to ignore, impossible to push from his thoughts. It was like it was ticking his time away, beat after beat after beat.

If he had been able to, he would have stood up a thousand times and turned it off, every time he awoke. But he couldn't, not any-more. His legs were so tired, his mind so foggy.

Memories mixed with dreams and dreams with shadows. The eerie light that drifted through the crack under the door threw shadows on the walls. He could hear voices there, in the next room, occasionally, too quiet to understand. Intentionally quiet. His wife, Susan, and his daughters. It had been a few weeks now, a few weeks since people started to whisper around him, to speak in hushed voices when they drifted in and out of his room. Their faces changed, but their manner did not, their expressions did not.

They did not say it, not with words, but with every fibre of their actions, every movement, every look. Every gesture was muted, every sentence carefully crafted, every visitor a memory from long ago. But why would they need to tell him something he understood long before they did? Why did they have to elevate his fears by being so secretive about it? He wanted to scream, to beg, to rage, but he could not; not with everyone so muted, so nice.

Now, the light in the next room turned off and the whispered voices slowly faded into rooms even further away. From time to time, light blinked through the thick curtains when a car passed by on the street down below. It was just a strip of light, blinking in and out of existence, not in rhythm with the clock that always ticked and ticked and ticked.

James felt the pillows next to him, the cold bed-sheet where his wife didn't lie that night. She slept somewhere else now, in peace and quiet, and the bed felt so empty without her.

Soon, it would be time for him to go and then Emma wouldn't lie next to him ever again, they would never again kiss or dance in the kitchen. They would never again laugh on the ferries wheel at the fair or scream their heads off on the roller coaster.

When he was especially tired and couldn't sleep, all sounds seemed to become louder. And now, thinking of the ferries wheel and the fair, he could just about hear the music drifting over from the fairground.

Bumm! Bumm! Bumm! it beat with his heart and the carnival barker's voice echoed in his ears. Come, come! Step right up and try your luck!

The hammering of the music was soon joined by the scratchy, muted knocking on his door he had become accustomed to over the last few weeks. At first, he ignored it, observing the shadows on his walls instead. They spun like the ferries wheel, they shook like the bumper cars, they swished like the coaster going around and around and around.

He could almost see them, almost feel like he walked between the various huts again, with Emma at his arm and the giant teddy bear in his other. The ring was burning in his pocket then and the words stumbled through his head even more than those that left his mouth. Emma chattered away about this and that and he could have cursed himself for his inattention. In fact, he did curse himself under his breath and Emma might have even heard him.

The knocking became more insistent, almost audible, before it suddenly stopped and the door slowly invaded the quiet of his room. A head peaked around the corner. Silhouetted against the muted light of the next room, it was impossible to make out any features of the face. James blinked a couple of times while his visitor stood in the door frame, but the person stayed a blurry vision.

The visitor said nothing, probably waiting for James to ask him in or at least to see if the old man was awake, but when neither was discernible in the darkness, the man finally came in. He was followed by a second silhouette, then a third, though this third one seemed almost inhuman in the dark. Leaning on an object he was pushing, he seemed like a centaur walking backwards.

"Turn on the light." the first man whispered.

"What if he's sleeping?" the second asked just as quietly.

"We want to wake him, don't we?" The centaur disentangled himself from the object and turned towards the wall.

A second later, bright light flooded the room, turning dark, unrecognizable shapes in the darkness into just as indiscernible shapes in the blinding light. The flecks of light from outside dancing on the walls disappeared and were replaced by those dancing on his retina. James blinked again, trying to see the faces to the voices he knew so well.

And then, there they stood around his bed, Marc, Julian and Caleb, the same cheeky grins on their faces as in their boyhood when they stole cherries together from the neighbour's garden or shared their answers to a maths assignment. Emma was missing. She hadn't really been part of the group since she turned James down.

James tried to sit up. He felt so weak. As soon as he moved to push his scrawny body up, Marc already stuffed a pillow under his back while Julian pulled a chair towards himself to sit down. Caleb, on the other hand, seemed to have brought his own chair, because he now plumped down in an old-fashioned wooden wheelchair. It creaked and groaned loudly under Caleb's heavyset body.

"Marc? Caleb? Julian?" James asked, looking from one to the other, "What are you doing here?" He knew the answer, of course. They came for the same reason as everyone else. But for once, he made an effort to not show his disdain for all these old friends staring down on him as if he were a dancing bear at the fair. For once, he was actually glad to see the faces looking down at him and a weak grin spread over his face.

Marc, by far the fittest of the four old friends and always the speaker of the group, was the one to speak now as well, "The carnival's in town." he said, as if it was an obvious explanation.

It wasn't. He knew why they were here, why did they have to pretend? "What?"

"Psst!", Marc said and put his finger to his lips, "Quiet. We sneaked in!"

"Sneaked in? What are you... When did you... What?"

"To kidnap you! To the carnival! - We even brought a wheelchair, James." The grin was both infuriating and enticing.

"I'm dying, Marc." James said, surprising himself with the calm tone of his voice. It was the first time he said it, though by far not the first time he thought it. It took all joking right out of Marc's demeanour.

No matter how calm he said it, the words hurt. They hurt his lungs and his heart, but most of all they hurt his mind. He had known for a while now, and for a while death had started to scare him like a little boy from every shadow in the corner and every breath he took. He was not ready, it was not time yet. It felt like death's cold hand was always on his shoulder, pressing his heart with every beat. And once the grim reaper stopped massaging the old muscle, James' life would end and he would have to go with him.

While the cold statement destroyed the air of happiness his three old friends tried to bring to the room of the dying man, Julian, always willing and ready to engage in all kinds of mischief, quickly wiped it away. "This is exactly why we are here."

Caleb nodded and Marc took up the thread of the conversation right away again. "That is why we are here! You are dying" – it was weirdly comforting that Marc didn't try to deny it or sugar-coat it, "so it doesn't matter if you're lying here in bed or do something fun one more time in your life. The carnival's in town!"

James laughed, slightly wheezing. It was an honest laugh, one he needed and one that made him stop worrying about his health for a second. "So it is. I don't think Susan and my daughters -"

"Your daughters would want you to go out with a smile on your lips, wouldn't they?"

"I doubt they want to see him go at all, Marc." Caleb was always the most reasonable of the Wild Five, but that didn't mean he wouldn't help them with their pranks, throwing eggs at a car or later just stealing the same car for a joyride.

"That's why we sneaked in..." Julian said as if explaining the blatantly obvious to a child.

"Come on, let's get you out of bed!" Marc said and started to do just that.

*

The wheelchair rattled over the cobblestones of the pavement, just as creaky and rickety under James' light weight as it had been under Caleb's much heavier.

"It belonged to my grandpa." Caleb said when James looked quizzically at the old thing.

"That explains why it looks like its from the last millennium – because it is." It felt so natural for James to slip back into the joking tone he had always used with his friends, mischief their normal state of mind.

"The last millennium is not so long ago. Never thought I would live to see the next..." Julian mused.

"It was so far away when we were young..." Marc agreed.

Philosophizing and remembering the past, the four friends slowly walked towards the fair ground. They had not bothered to dress James in street clothes, had not bothered to force his stiff legs into unwilling trouser legs or his hurting arms into sleeves. His pyjamas were just fine, and a blanket over his legs and a jacket over his shoulders would keep him warm enough in the summer night.

They were by far not the only people out this late at night. Men and women, young and old, walked the same direction as them, excited towards the carnival, or away from it drunk and stumbling, pushing each other or singing off-key along to the music that drifted over from the beer tent. A live band was playing, their music nearly drowned out by the music and sound effects of the carnival rides and general noises of all festivals.

As they came closer to the fairground, the sounds became more distinct: the howling siren of the roller-coaster announcing the next loop, the bumper cars beeping at each other, the clicking of the low-range airgun at the shooting gallery, the shattering of the tins falling at the ball toss booth...

And the closer they came to the carnival, the more people were on the streets surrounding the fair ground, some staggering on the pavements, others walking outright into the streets, blocking traffic that was already obstructed by illegally parked cars. Marc and Julian walked in front of the wheelchair, pushing through the crowd and clearing a path for their friends. It wasn't easy for two old man, both squarely in their 80s, but as soon as they reached the fair ground the crowd dispersed from the narrow streets onto a wider square, before booths and other attractions formed narrow paths of their own further along.

And there she stood, just like all these years ago, and it felt like seeing her young and beautiful all over again. A grin spread on James' lips and his heart beat faster, just like it did then, and for a moment he even felt the need to dance in his legs again.

Emma. She was standing at the entrance of the fair ground. The short skirt she wore resembled the one she had worn then so much, it could have been the same. It was a bit too fluffy for any fast-paced activities, revealing her legs just like it did back then. And like then, he didn't care that this was impractical clothing for the fair, only that she was as fair as a fairy. And that she was, that she certainly was. She looked young, oh so young, certainly younger than he felt, though his body seemed to quickly catch up with his wishes. Seeing her standing there rejuvenated him in a matter of seconds.

James looked up at Caleb, who leaned on the handles of the wheelchair, slightly wheezing from the walk through the streets. "You didn't say that Emma would be here."

"Surprise!" Caleb whispered back.

It was so long since he had seen her like that, strong and smiling. She had become old, they both had, of course, but now, here, on the fair ground, she had regained so much strength. She smiled shyly, a bit coquettish, flirting with him as if they were still young.

"Come on, Caleb, move it." Marc said, "He can't walk alone." It was a sudden and harsh reminder of his failing body, but strangely enough he didn't mind that too much seeing Emma standing there in front of him.

Caleb took a deep breath to strengthen himself for the next steps. Pushing the chair forward, the soon stood in front of Emma. Smiling, she bent down and gave James a quick peck on the cheek.

"Where to first?" Marc asked, looking over the crowd in the night. Large spotlights illuminated the square in a cold white light and other lights in all colours of the rainbow flashed randomly and in rhythm with the beats of the different music from all the rides. "Roller coaster?"

"Not yet." Caleb answered. "I don't think they let wheelchair-users on the roller coaster."

Marc shrugged. "Too bad. Beer?"

"I'll get some." Julian said and had already disappeared in the crowd when James looked up.

He had paid little attention to the short conversation, too absorbed in his chit-chat with Emma. They hadn't talked for a while, not like that. For once, all worry was forgotten and all fear irrelevant.

"You look beautiful." James said.

"You look strong." Emma said, laughing. It weren't random words, not random compliments, maybe not even honest words. It was a tradition, their way of saying I love you.

Emma was leaning on the back of the wheelchair, half sitting on the armrest. James almost wanted to ask her how she managed to sit like that, when her body felt just as tired as his. Almost. It was an effort, but he didn't want to talk about it, not this evening.

"Ferries wheel?" Marc suggested next and James wasn't sure if he was talking to him or Caleb, but he nodded.

*

A mug of beer rested in his lap, cold even through the woollen blanket that lay over his knees, as the friends pushed James further into the carnival. Emma still sat slightly on the armrest, leaning against the back and against James' shoulder. Her fingers played with his, tipping on one after the other, taking them up and letting them gently fall down again, as if they had not control of their own, as if they were paralysed. They weren't, but James let her play, enjoying her closeness and her touch, leaning against her like she leaned against him. She felt warm, offsetting the cold of the beer, and she smelled of fresh roses and lavender. Close to her chest, he could smell the gentle scent even over the smell of popcorn and stale beer, of candyfloss and gingerbread hearts.

Emma was chatty when they met, but he later learned that she actually liked her world quiet, that she preferred to listen and observe and only the nervousness of being in love had turned her into a blabber mouth. Leaning on the wheelchair now, she remained mostly silent, they both did. Instead, they touched each other, they smelled each other, they laughed with each other about things nobody else noticed and that they did not acknowledge to each other. They just were there, these things, known to them and nobody else, obvious things like the pothole a wheel got stuck in for the fraction of a second, or less obvious like the foam on the beer forming a snowflake for just a moment, only to disappear again in the sea of alcohol.

All these years ago, James would never have thought that they could be so comfortable with each other. Then, James stumbled over his proposal on this very same carnival so badly, that he might have asked her to have a shit with him instead. To this day, he didn't know how she understood what he wanted to ask, even with the ring in his hands. He fumbled it so badly, that it fell into the dirt and rolled a few metres away. One of the hooks holding the stone was still missing to this day and the ring had stayed in his bedside table all these years.

They didn't stop on any of the booths. Emma was the one who liked shooting or throwing darts, so much so that she won the teddy on the day of his proposal for him. It sat in the cabin of the ferries wheel with them, the third wheel, so to speak, as the ring gently tumbled through the cage-like floor of the cabin and into the dust underneath.

Now, there was no teddy and the attendant helped to gently lift the old man onto the seat in the slightly swaying cabin. There were two benches in each, facing each other, enough room for four people, but James and Emma had their cabin to themselves. Julian and Caleb and Marc filled the next, Caleb taking up the place of two people with his massive form.

"It is getting late." Caleb said.

"It was late when we started." Marc answered.

"Too late," Caleb agreed, "It is always too late."

James heard them and ignored them, too focussed on Emma's hand in his, on her smiling face and the greying hair falling down to her shoulders. It had hardly changed its colour in all these years. Once sandy, it had only lightened a bit in the last fifty years, but now it shimmered strong again in the dark red and blue light coming from the scaffold of the ferries wheel. And in this light, the little crinkles on her forehead were gone and the dark age spots on her skin were less visible. Squinting, he could almost believe she was as young as she once was. Hell, squinting, he could even believe he was! In this magical light of the fair, in this unnatural blinking and flashing, his PJs, some kind of plaid print, almost looked like the elegant trousers of a casual suit, the suit he had worn for his proposal.

As the ferries wheel slowly turned metre by metre to let people out and in until it completed one full circle, James had only eyes for the love of his life. No ring was burning in his pocket and no giant teddy she had won sat next to them on the benches, but he still wanted to ask her once again. He still wanted to right this awkward mistake he had made so long ago.

All these years ago, the words had come out in a tumbled mess, today they were stuck in his throat.

"I love you, Emma," he finally whispered and her crystal laughter filled the cold night air. For a moment, the icy hand of death brushed over his skin, reminding him of the time that was left and the time that passed. "I love you, I've always loved you." He felt for the pocket of his trousers, for the diamond ring. "I could never love anyone else. I want to spend eternity with you. You are my life, without you, I am nothing. Do you -" The words wouldn't come, no matter how hard he tried.

"Marry you?" Emma asked, her smile indulgent and slightly sad. "You always wanted to make a proper proposal, didn't you?" She laughed.

"Yes. Please, Emma, please marry me. Till death do us part."

"Death will not part us." Emma said, kissing James on his cheek in an almost chaste way.

It felt strange, distant and yet so familiar. James brushed his thumb over her cheek, inhaling her scent once more.

The ferries wheel kept slowly turning and soon it had reached its highest point. James and Emma leaned against each other and looked out of the barred window, into the streets of the city and on the heads of the people deep below. Here, the lights of the carnival were weaker but still so bright that the sky overhead was bare of any starts. Instead, a black mass stared down at them. A cold shudder ran down James' back. The ferries wheel had stopped for a moment, like the clock of his life coming to a sudden standstill. Again he felt the cold hand of death brush over his heart, pumping, pumping, pumping it, but slow. The night was warm, but for him it was cold and only the warmth of Emma's shoulder protected him from shaking. More even, she protected him from the fear that should come with death's cold grip. His hands hovered over him, they brushed his skin and his veins, but the fear did not come with them.

If only Susan had been able to offer the same level of comfort. The thought came unbidden and disturbed the peace of mind that slowly started to build for James. But Susan was home, sitting in the living room with her daughters – their daughters – and James was here in Emma's arms. Here, where he felt safe, even from death's pumping fist.

When the ferries wheel started to move again, the feeling returned to the back of his mind.

Underneath the cabin, the fair ground started to clear out. The music became more muted and the lights dimmed. Faintly, they could still hear the announcer of the roller coaster calling for costumers, new and old: "Let's begin, another spin!" And James' legs twitched in rhythm with the beat of the pulsing music.

When the cabin came to a stop on the ground again, James rejected the helping hand of the attendant, determined to walk on his own two feet and with the help of the love of his life down the few steps from the ferries wheel.

Marc, Julian and Caleb soon joined them, the wheel chair left behind at the entrance, as if they had known that James would not need it, would not want to need it. And he was fine. His legs carried him with Emma's help towards the raffle booth and further towards the roller coaster.

"It is time," Marc said, probably referring to the roller coaster James was too weak for just a short time ago.

Standing in front of the loop-the-loop, James looked from one old friend to the next. Emma was beautiful as ever, young and spry, smiling at him as if they had never broken up. Caleb had turned old, and his muscles had turned into fat. His back had rounded just as much as his belly, leaving him resembling a ball. Julian's hair was grey where it still existed and his eyes were red from unshed tears. Marc had never looked a day older than fifty, never in all his life. He had never turned a day older than fifty.

He nodded once, seeing them standing there like that, smiling and supporting him, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was comforting, knowing that this hand was there, like his friends were. Before, it had pumped his heart cold and threatening, but now it had moved, as if his heart no longer needed the constant stimulation. The hand would lead him soon to the world beyond, but it had lost its terror.

"It is time, isn't it?" James asked.

Marc nodded. "The time has already passed."

James head fell to his chest with a deep sigh. "Is there no time for one last spin?" he asked, looking wistfully at the roller coaster.

Emma's fingers entwined his and a kiss brushed over his cheek. "As many as you want. But Julian has to leave."

James nodded again. He remembered now, though he had never forgotten. But some things are not meant to be recalled. Julian was not meant to be here yet. Marc was. He had waited thirty years. And Caleb, for him it were just four. Emma had joined them three weeks ago. James had stood at the side of her grave, looking down onto the coffin, Susan's hand in his, his daughters at his side. Julian had smiled across the hole, not yet able to cry.

He didn't know if it was the death of his old and first love that made his heart weak or if it was just time. He spend the next weeks in bed and never stood up again.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently and James leaned into the touch. It pushed him forward, towards the roller coaster and the announcer there. Caleb, Marc and Emma joined the march of the dead, while Julian stayed behind, looking after the other members of the Wild Five. Death walked among them, leading them into a new adventure.

"Soon," he seemed to say, "soon. Soon, you will join them. You won't have to stay alone for long."

Julian nodded, the words strangely comforting, as the carnival slowly faded into the morning fog. It drifted through the open window and with it came the smell of candyfloss and popcorn and the dissonant sounds of drunk singing. There was no carnival in town, but he still had the taste of gingerbread and stale beer on his tongue when he woke.

He shed his first tears for Emma that morning. And when the call came that he was the last of the Wild Five, he was not surprised.

[Baron]

A Friend in Deed

   Mister Tobias sat in his favourite armchair, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.  His gentleman's coat was immaculate, as usual, and there was a newspaper half-read lying on the floor at his feet.  The servants had just stepped out for their break, and the Manor Club was now in full afternoon lull.  Mister Tobias might have even nodded off for a moment or two before the sound of approaching footfalls brought him back to wakefulness.

   "Ah, Mister Mushu!" Tobias greeted the Manor Club's latest member.  "Good to see you about, my friend.  Fancy a drink?"

   Mister Mushu didn't respond immediately, which was his manner.  Truthfully there was a bit of a language barrier, with him being new and all, such that he couldn't always form his thoughts coherently.  Instead Mister Mushu tried out various chairs about the room for comfort before wandering back to visit with Mister Tobias.  "All done paper?" he asked, rustling through the pages on the floor.

   "Oh, well, I suppose," Tobias said, now stretching lazily.  "Except, do you know I don't think I was quite done with the sports section," he said, now rising to paw through the paper himself.  Upon finding the section he was after he remembered why he had abandoned it in the first place, and so made to return to his chair, only to discover that Mister Mushu had slipped into it in his absence.

        "Oh, uh, terribly sorry sir.  Terribly sorry!  But you seem to have confiscated my favourite chair.  I don't suppose I could, uh, prevail upon you to, um... that is, to vacate the premises?" Tobias asked, expectantly.  But of course Mister Mushu couldn't make sense of the garbled request.

      Mister Tobias tried again.  "You are in my chair, sir," he said simply this time.

        Mister Mushu frowned, for it was he who was enjoying the late afternoon sunshine now.  "My chair," he replied.

       "Now you see here!" Mister Tobias began.  "We've got rules in the Manor Club, sir.  Rules of precedence!  Quite right.  If you examine your Letter of Acceptance you will find in the fine print a lengthy array of protocols and regulations!"

        "My chair," Mister Mushu replied again.  He wiggled his backside deeper into the chair.

         "Indeed, sir!" Mister Tobias said, getting his dander up.  "I demand satisfaction!"  Tobias's tone seemed to bridge any kind of linguistic barrier, for Mister Mushu seemed immediately to understand that a scuffle was about to ensue.  He leapt up with enthusiasm and soon the two were grappling on the floor like school children, with bits of newspaper flying this way and that.  As quickly as it had started it was all over, with the two friends straightening each other's coats in a mollifying gesture.

      "You ok?" Mister Mushu asked.

         "Yes, yes," Mister Tobias assured his friend.  "But you know, I'm not sure I can settle again after all that excitement."

         Mister Mushu cocked his head to the side.  "Food?" he asked expectantly.

        "Why my good sir, that is a capital notion.  Capital notion!  Oh, but the servants have just stepped out on their break..." Mister Tobias trailed off pensively.

         "Food?" Mister Mushu asked again.

        "Well, I suppose it can't be that hard to, uh, figure out the lardering system," Tobias said, working himself up to stooping down to feeding himself.  "Yes, I suppose, why not?  Why not indeed!  Come, let us go seek our own provisionment!"

          And so the two friends wandered down into the servant quarters, searching for something to nibble on.

       "Ooooh!" Mister Mushu said, nodding up to the top shelf of what turned out to be a ridiculously high pantry.

      "Ah, the good stuff!" Mister Tobias nodded with approval.  "Yes, that will do nicely.  Bit high, though.  Probably to keep the low-lifes out of it, I suppose.  You know, mice and, er, moles I imagine.  So, uh, let's see how we might manage...."  Mister Tobias tentatively tested the lower shelves to see if they might support his growing girth, but found them too unsteady for his liking.  Mister Mushu did likewise, making it maybe halfway up before slipping down, causing a few lower items to cascade after him.

         "Drat," Mister Tobias commented.  "It's not so easy as you'd think, eh old boy!" 

       Mister Mushu licked his wounds, but he was by no means deterred from their enterprise.  "Food?" he asked, for a third time.  Maybe with the use of a larger vocabulary he might add some nuance to his statements, but Mister Tobias gathered his general meaning.

         "Well, what this calls for is a bit of coordination, my friend!  A little bit of thinking, and a little bit of teamwork, and a no small amount of sticktoitiveness.  Now, I'll start like this, bracing against the lower shelves and you climb up on my back like so... uh, yes, something like that.  And then we balance precariously while only reaching two-thirds of the way to our objective and... oh, there's a wobble that wasn't in the plan....  Oh!  Well, I'm sure the servants hadn't planned on using that anyway.  Oh heavens it's all coming down now, isn't it!  Watch out, old boy!  Jump clear of the avalanche!"

         Fortunately Mister Tobias was able to warn his friend just in time, and the two of them escaped unscathed from the mass of debris that now came cascading off the shelves to smash on the floor.  What a mess!  Fortunately the Manor Club was the type of place where the expense of some trivial property damage and food wastage was easily absorbed.  But to the great satisfaction of the enterprising friends the coveted bag of special treats now lay tantalisingly atop the pile of mess.

         "I say, well done my boy!"  Tobias exclaimed, and they both partook of the special treats with the gusto of gentlemen who had earned their hard reward.  "Oh, won't the servants be pleased to discover that we saved them the bother!" Tobias chuckled later as he and his friend ascended the stairs once more.  They found the chair in the sunshine again and after much to-ing and fro-ing decided it was just easier to share it.  And that's where the servants found them some time later, dozing off their meal, draped over each other in the cosiest armchair that the Manor Club could provide.

Spoiler

I believe Mushu was mentioned tangentially in the last competition as my wife's cat.  Toby is his older brother.  It goes without saying that the Manor Club is a very exclusive venue and the membership fees are prohibitively expensive.   

[close]

[Stupot]

The Woman in the Boat in the Canal Behind the Woods

The following is a true story. Names have been changed to protect my friends. Somebody died that day. We killed her. Well, sort of. It's... well, you'll see.

We were 13 and Toby was having a bad trip. He was holding onto his rucksack like a comfort blanket saying "teacher... p...policeman...". He was over the worst though. Earlier he had freaked out and Simon had had to father him back to some kind of normalcy, telling Toby to "don't fight it" and "let it take you to new places." Simon and I had done shrooms before and had taken a sensible dose, so we were enjoying a relatively tame experience. Toby, in his enthusiasm, had eaten way too many, and then when they failed to kick in immediately, had eaten some more. In hindsight, we didn't help him by going "Woah, dude...that's way too many!" and freaking him out even more.

After some time, though, Toby, whose small stature and screwed up face made him look like a small terrier, looked up at Simon and said, "paper". Simon's eyes widened (or perhaps I just thought they did) and he said "What?"

"Paper. You've got the paper and pens. I wanna see what shit I can come up with."

"That's the spirit." Simon's mouth grew into a large beaming smile that kept getting bigger and bigger but somehow stayed on his face and he tore off a page from his notebook and handed it to Toby, along with a pencil. Toby sat down with the pen in his hand just staring at the page. For the first time since his come-up, he seemed at ease with his situation.

Simon stood up and said, "I'll be back in a minute." The trees seemed to peel back and collectively inhale him as he disappeared in the direction of the canal. I'd guessed he had just gone to relieve himself.

I watched the back of my hand for a while; the pattern of veins was shifting and bulging and shrinking. After what could have been 3 minutes or 3 hours, I noticed Simon wasn't back. Toby seemed to have the same thought and it was Toby who said "Let's go".

We left our stuff and traced Simon's route between the breathing woods.

"Simon?" I called, but there was no answer. It was nighttime by now, but the trees were sparse and the moon bright enough to see that Simon was not here.

"What's that light?" Toby said pointing towards the canal.

"I see it too," I said. It was a very dim, flickering light. I'd heard of shared trips, but this felt real. I was pretty much back to normal by that point. Just a bit of an afterglow.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Toby said, and started backing up. But I grabbed his sleeve. "Go with it," I said, channeling Simon. So slowly we moved closer to the dim light. Toby flinched at nothing a few times, but he was doing well. And as we approached the edge of the wood, I realized the light was coming from inside a narrowboat on the canal. Someone was living there.

"Should we knock?" said Toby. "Maybe they've seen him."

I found myself inching closer to the boat. "Where's the door?"

"I don't know... try the window."

The flickering light from the windows no longer seemed scary. It was now warm and inviting. I put my head to the glass.

Just then a face pressed itself up against the inside of the window, contorted in a scream. I fell back onto the towpath, and it took me a few seconds to realize the face was Simon's and that he was screaming for his life.

Toby had frozen, as had I. We looked on in horror as Simon squealed and squirmed in the window of the canal boat. After a moment, I came to my senses and ran to help my friend. I jumped onto the stern and swung open the hatch. What I saw there filled me with dread. An old woman was squirming and writhing on the floor, her naked body wrinkled and spotted. She seemed unable to stand but was grasping a terrified Simon by his ankles and despite his youth he was unable to free himself from her grip. The woman was growling and something sticky and yellow was bubbling from her mouth. Toby came in behind me and screamed. The old lady looked at us. She seemed annoyed more than anything, but kept her grip on Simon, who had been stripped naked himself and was covered from head to toe in the same yellow substance.

"Help me," Simon screamed. And as if reading my mind he said, "This is real!"

Toby ran back out of the door. He was gone. "TOBY!" I shouted after him, but I didn't blame the kid for running. He was already fucked up enough as it was. Maybe he would find a policeman or a teacher to come and help us after all. The old woman, still grasping Simon by the legs, rolled over onto her back, swinging Simon around with her. His head hit the ground hard, but he was still conscious. Her filthy tits sagged down almost beside her as she yanked a still-screaming Simon down until his head was near her chest and she croaked "driiiink". That was when I realized her nipples were the source of the yellow liquid.

"SIMON!" I shouted, "I'll save you." The woman looked in my direction but again, she simply grunted and turned her attention to Simon again.

I was paralysed. My mind was telling me to do something, to fight her, to smack her over the head with something. There were plenty of weapons, in hindsight: large books, a candlestick. There was even a knife-rack right there on the side. But I remained frozen and useless, something for which, to this day, I have never forgiven myself.
Simon's head was now being held between this woman's sagging breasts and she kept saying "driiiiink". He managed to lift his head up to gasp for air, but she yanked him back down again and he was gagging and heaving.

"Simon!" I screamed uselessly again.

Just then, there was an almighty tearing sound and a flash of light. The old lady screamed as her entire body ripped into two pieces and exploded in a torrent of the yellow liquid. I ran to Simon and grabbed him. Thank Christ, he was alive. We took a moment to get our breaths back Simon sat staring into space for a while as I looked around the interior of the narrowboat. This once beautiful narrowboat was destroyed. I noticed a couple of picture frames and wiped the yellow goo off with my sleeve. There was a photo of the old woman, younger though, and a handsome man, most likely her husband.

When Simon was ready to move, we left the boat and started back to the clearing where we'd left our stuff.

"We tell no one." he said.

"Not sure what I'd tell them, anyway."

As if sharing our thoughts, we both looked behind us, both hoping the boat would be gone and it had all been some terrible trip. But the boat was there, and we knew it had really happened.

We got to the clearing and Toby was in a ball on the floor, crying. We ran to him and turned him over to see his face. He saw us covered in the yellow goo and he laughed hysterically for half a minute. Then he handed Simon the paper which he had drawn on earlier. On the paper was the same old lady, with the same withered body and the same evil grin, that they had seen on the canal boat. The paper had also been torn into two parts, right through the woman's torso.

Simon took out a lighter and set fire to the paper. A few moments later we saw the glow of the burning narrowboat from behind the woods.

I don't remember much after that, like how we got Simon home without being seen naked. And we never spoke of that night again. I still see Simon from time to time. He's doing all right. He's an IT engineer for a large company. And he does a bit of stand-up comedy at the weekends. Toby drifted away. He's an artist now. He never said as much but I'm pretty sure he drops psychedelics in the vain hope that his drawings come true again. Most of his work is just pictures of himself smiling.

[Mandle]

A non-entry from me that I wrote because I saw the story in another dream like the last one and couldn't leave it there:

A Letter Found Under a Mattress

If you are reading this then I am dead and, although the first part of my story concerning the last and best friend I ever had is well-known across the world, the second part is not. However, I wish it to be known just as famously as both my tribute to Tim Keller, and also as my confession.

As the internet keeps memeing out on a daily basis, the facts about the tale of Tim's and my triumph here at the Golden Grove Retirement Home are common knowledge, and accurate enough for a thirty-second-read on social media. But let's do a deeper dive into the real story from someone who was there (me), and from someone who is running out of time (me also). Running out fast for, yup, that's right: Me once again.

The first time I met Tim Keller was when the staff forced my grumpy old ass into a game of checkers with him in the home's common room. Checkers! Can you imagine? Like they think time stood still and every elderly person at death's door knows automatically how to play checkers for ever and ever. Well, I didn't. Gimme a good round of Connect Four or Othello any day.

But it seems Tim did know how to play and whooped my ass several times over. The expression on his drawn, gaunt face never changed no matter how far he knew he was ahead of me in the game, and no matter how many times he won. He didn't speak none either, just kept resetting the board, and I was fine with that. Didn't wanna be sitting there playing the stupid game with him anyway.

Then he got a sly look on his face, one that slid out from under his bushy white eyebrows and up at me for the first time, and he said "Son, this here fella is Mister Mike Henry. Say your greetin's."

I was startled to hear my name spoken so suddenly and, so far as I knew at the time, so out of context, and it must have shown on my face because the large man behind Tim's wheelchair grunted out a chuckle.

"You gotta excuse my pappy, ummm 'Mike' was it?" the big man said and, seeing the nod from me, continued on, "Well, nice to meet ya, Mike. An' like I was gettin' ready to say, excuse ol' Tim here cos he's one of those oldschool kinda assholes and..."

And that's when Tim splurtered out laughter at the same time he was trying to draw in breath and spat a spray of spittle and some wads of phlegm down onto the checkerboard, shifting a few of the pieces. I broke up all wheezing and laughing too, and I think that's the moment when the three of us became fast friends, and the two plans became kinda inevitable as they say in fancier writing than mine.

Now, for the sake of vanity, I'm just gonna mention here that the Facebook memes sometimes get me and Tim mixed up in the photos they show of us and, even when they don't, the photos don't show that I was the taller between us by at least an inch or two. Yes, it's true that I was the more rotund (NEVER FAT!) and bald one (damn his full head of silvery hair) but I was taller! And he was thin like a skeleton and smelled like fish-jerky gone two weeks rotten. I could hear his voice in my head laughing at that from beyond the grave so, "totes worth it"! Hehehe, that I used a "young'uns" term like that would annoy him so much but, like I always answered back to him: "Adapt or die". I guess we both did a lot of both those things now that I think about the context this letter is being read in. It's so much fun to be the voice from beyond the grave. WoooOOOooooOOOooo!!! But I should probably get on with the story:

We never played checkers again, but Tim's room was just two doors down from mine, and we spent a lot of the next two months or so in one room or the other. Often his son, Jesse, was there too.

It was one of those times that Jesse was there that he asked me "Mikey, you doin' alright?", with the suspicion engraved on his big, sunburnt face earned from his decades serving in the Texas police force. I totes tried to look away but then broke down crying. I tried to shrug off both of their arms around my shoulders from either side but then just let those shoulders slump and told them the embarrassing truth.

I told them how I had been shitting the bed. It was so shameful. My bowels were solid during the daytime but, as soon as I let myself drift off into the peace of sleep, more and more often, within an hour or two I was waking up from a warm rush between my butt-cheeks, and it felt horribly pleasant while still in my dream. Suddenly awake, I'd heave my old back up from the mattress and put a hand down to feel under myself and both sides of my hand felt wet warmth and I smelt that sickly-sweet shit smell coming up from under the covers and I knew I'd done it again. Golden Groves knew what was going on and started to prescribe adult diapers to me to put on before bed. But I hated them and, more often than not, I would tear them off in my sleep, and then shit the bed again more often than not.

This is where the orderly named Klyne Oswald comes into the story. I know that you all know what he did to me, but here it all is all over again from my point of view:

"Don't look at it like that." Klyne told me, whenever the issue came up when the other orderlies were around or during one of my rare family visits. "It just means that you're working! Food goes in one end. Comes out the other! You're working!" or some variation on that script.

But... and this is the second hardest part for me to write down of all of this confession... when he had me alone in my room in the middle of the night and smelled that I'd shit the bed. When he did what you've read about.

You've read about it in sterilized media accounts here and there, but can you even begin to imagine the shock of a person speaking low right up in your face in the dark and saying "You like this shit, old man? You like me having to clean up your fucking shit? Well, how 'bout you eat some of it first, you fucking waste of air?" and then him pulling his latex-gloved hand out from under you and pushing two or three fingers loaded with the stuff into your mouth? And holding your nose shut until you swallowed?

Can you imagine that?

And then can you imagine him leaning back in over your face and saying "Eat your own shit, you old bastard. Tell anyone about this and I will just say you did it yourself. Who do you think they will believe?"

Well, Tim and Jesse had to imagine it as well once I could finally get the whole story out between heaves of my chest and blowings of my nose. And they had to hear it for the first time without having been desensitized from reading about it in bold text on a tablet or on a phone.

Once I was done telling about what had happened, and how many times it had happened (less than ten but more than five) there was silence from the father and son. Then Tim started to yell "FUCK THAT BITCH! HE NEEDS TO FUC..." but Jesse put a hand over his mouth and whispered "Shuussh, pappy" in his ear.

"This is horrible" spoke Jesse low, still crouched behind his dad's wheelchair with his hand over Tim's mouth. "But we need to think this through."

And that is what we did. Well, mostly Jesse, but with some input from Tim and I about the regulations and timing of Golden Grove's routine.

We talked a bit about hiding a camera somewhere in my room to catch Klyne in the act, but the place was so white and sterile that the bastard would probably have spotted it.

Jesse said, "Well if he spots it then your problems are over. He'll never do you dirty again for fear of getting caught on film."

"That's not good enough!" I replied, eyes welling up a bit as I continued, "He'll do similar or worse to someone else. And that's not even the point. I want this son of a bitch in jail for what he did to ME! We need him caught red-handed!"

We kept talking.

About an hour before the rays of dawn broke through the slit in the closed curtains of Tim's room, the plan was pretty much in place. I went back to my own room as Jesse headed off down the corridor in the opposite direction with a last nod over his shoulder back at me. He had to look into a few technical details down at the police station. Bless that lad.

Bless him, because he looked the hell into those technical details with some guys in the forensics lab, and spent or indebted some favors I'm sure, and was back with us the next afternoon, a bit unshaven but excited to fill in the missing details of the plan.

It took some time for him to go through it and I worried over every step, but Jesse had the answers to my worries every time. As I fully grew to understand the plan, the more excited and nervous I became. This would work. But there was one possible scenario that I considered which could undo the plan and that took another half-hour of discussion and a trip down to a local hardware store and back for Jesse to buy the superglue, and then it was solved.

Then we were ready.

I took the two laxative capsules that Jesse had brought just in case this might be a dry night and stowed the rest of his supplies under the covers, cupped in my armpit. By eight o'clock or so I felt the rumblings of a mighty dam about to break deep within my bowels. But this time I was awake. I was in control, and I gleefully ripped my adult diaper aside and let the brown flashflood rip forth. And it was a flood of biblical proportions.

I could even hear it dripping off one side of the bed in long goopy spills. And the smell... I will spare you the descriptions of the smell.

Klyne was due sometime between eight-thirty and nine for his look-in check on me, so I had to work fast.

First out of the plastic bag I took the hard plastic cylinder that held the chemical and, following that, the wooden tongue-depressor which I clasped between my dentures and held there fast.

I unscrewed the lid of the plastic jar carefully and then slid my lower body off of the hot mess below my butt. The move went quite fluidly. I turned on the lamp at the top of the bedstead, all the better to see shit by, and then poured the chemical out of the jar and all over the top of my brown shiny mess.

I took the wooden depressor out of my mouth and stirred the chemical into my heavy puddle of shit-stew just enough, like Jesse had said to, only putting in the rounded end of the stick about an inch deep, and then put the stick into the plastic jar, screwed the lid back in place and put it back into the bag.

The bag from which I pulled out the tube of superglue. The bag that I then stowed away in the drawer of my bedside table. I was pretty damn pleased with my old mind for having done every step perfectly so far. There was only one step left, the contingency plan that I had thought of:

I unscrewed the cap of the superglue tube and applied long generous laces of it all along the insides of the fingers of my left hand. Then I carefully reached back and put the tube under my pillow, turned off the light, laced the fingers of both my hands together, and placed them in what I thought would look like a peaceful repose upon my stomach. And then I feigned sleep and awaited the arrival of the demon-orderly Klyne.

He came later than expected, about twenty-after-nine and I had actually dropped off into a real sleep. My first peaceful sleep for some months without the worry of the bed-shitting and the mid-night meals that might follow.

"OH, JESUS FUCK! You have OUTDONE yourself old man!" was my wakeup call from Klyne, and then the usual gloved hand into the shit and then up toward my mouth. But this time I fought and fought hard. I whipped my head back and forth so much so that he would need to plaster that shit all over my cheeks and jaw before landing his fingers in my mouth.

And then, when he did find the hole, I bit down hard as fuck and Klyne screamed with his fingers clamped between my dentures. He ripped his hand back from the pain reflex, pulling my teeth clear out of my mouth to fly and smash, broken and rattling, in the corner.

And then I yelled out bloody hell for help in every color of the scream-rainbow.

Within a few seconds the door crashed open, the lights came on, and Jesse had Klyne's hands pinned behind his back and cuffs on his wrists and had him slammed face-first down into the dripping shit around my bed at least thirty seconds before the first of the many night staff of Golden Groves arrived to take in the scene.

Jesse's investigation in front of the staff witnesses took little time at all. He had only to turn off the room lights and turn on the blacklight he had brought to reveal the unmistakable glow of the Luminol that I had mixed with my own feces to activate its peculiar taste for bodily fluids. That white glow that shone out most tellingly on the tips of Klyne's gloved fingers, and on the mess around and inside my mouth.

The contingency plan that Klyne might try to dip my own fingers into my shit and claim that I had done this myself was never needed. He just hadn't been that smart. It took some time to apply the chemical to my fingers that dissolved the superglue, whatever that stuff is called, but I was just grinning through my toothless gums up at the ceiling the whole time.

My two excellent friends and I had defeated the villain of the story and got to live happily ever after.

Except, that is not what happens outside of stories.

Instead, over the next few months during and after Klyne's trial and incarceration, I noticed that Tim's Cerebral Palsy was getting worse and that it was getting harder and harder for him to even talk.

This is just an example of how he spoke to me during his later stages:

"Muuoo-key, caaun'nt jyouu jus sh'out the'y 'uuuck oup 'oor 'unce?" which I understood the meaning of then as "Mikey, can't you just shut the fuck up for once?" and continued to understand even better as his disease progressed further, right up until the end. I will spare the reader(s) of this letter any further trouble by just writing down what I understood him to have said in normal English from here on in.

And this brings us to the reason why I'm writing all this down. The second plan that nobody up until now has known of:

This plan also involved Jesse and his police connections. He was the one that got the police-issue stun gun to us, that one that arcs electricity over its two metal horns. Tim told his son that it was to defend against any future abusive staff, and it could well have been for that purpose so no foul can lay on Jesse's record.

In fact, it was this very point that convinced me to finally go through with Tim's plan.

I protested and pleaded with him when he unveiled his plan to me, and I asked why it had to be ME that carried it out. He explained to me that Jesse was only a few years away from retirement and that we couldn't risk his police pension being taken away from being convicted of a crime.

I asked if he could do it himself, but his disease had progressed way too far for his muscles to obey him to that amount.

So, it came down to me. Me, a feeble old fart who nobody probably wanted to put on trial or send to jail anyway. Tim had found out months before from Jesse, all casual like, how a stun gun could be applied without leaving burn scars, and of course Tim and I had been through the intricacies of his pacemaker function.

I wet the face towel in the basin of his bathroom and came back into his room, folding it over and over into a compact pad of dripping flannel.

Tim already had his pajama top unbuttoned and spread aside to show a triangle of skin over the left side of his withered chest.

I asked him one last time if he was sure and he said "Fuck you! Do it, mate. Or go to hell yourself!" (I told you I would just say what he said without the drawn-out stammering)

So, I put the folded wetted towel on the triangle of exposed flesh and looked into his eyes and said "Goodbye, my friend." and he just nodded and closed his eyes. I put my hand over his mouth and zapped the towel with the stun gun and he bucked around a bit with his eyes squinched shut and then his eyes relaxed and he stopped flipping about.

I cleaned up the scene of the "crime". I put the wet towel into the bathroom hamper, and wiped his chest dry with another towel, which also went into the hamper. I put the stun gun back into his bedside drawer where his son would find it and never suspect. I pulled the covers up over him and gave him a last, deliberately dry kiss on his forehead, which he would never have allowed for in life.

And then I just left and went back to the bed I may or may not shit in depending on the night and on Golden Grove's dinner selection. I didn't wear the diapers that night and I didn't shit the bed, but that was probably just a coincidence of timing rather than anything meaningful.

Actually, very little has had any meaning for me since the night I killed the last and best friend I have ever had.

There was no investigation into his death. It was just ruled as a pacemaker malfunction.

Jesse visited me quite a few times after that, less and less often, and I might have imagined that I saw a question lurking behind his cop eyes from time to time, but no such question emerged.

So, Jesse, yes. Now I am dead and yes, I killed your father.

This is my confession and you and your father were the best people I ever knew.

Yours in all honesty,

Mike Henry.


P.S. Klyne can go fuck himself.

[Mandle]

Thank you to all true friends who entered this round and now on with the voting conditions:

We have 3 official entries, not counting my non-entry, and they are:

Sinitrena with "Another Spin"

Baron with "A Friend in Deed"

Stupot with "The Woman in the Boat in the Canal Behind the Woods"

As there are 3 entries then please just PM to me your selections in order of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and the inverse points of 3, 2, and 1 will be applied. You need only mention the author by name in your votes.

Voting is open until Wednesday, November 23rd

[Sinitrena]

Baron:

Spoiler

Cute. There's one tiny bit of critizism I have, and I think it's the same I had last round: Some of the information in your note should have been part of the story: I do think one can figure out that the characters in your entry are cats, but it would have been nice to have it confirmed in-story. Otherwise, cats are always a good thing to have around. 

[close]

Stupot:

Spoiler

I'm not really sure what to think of this story. I guess I'm missing the point (though I'm generally of the opinion that stories don't need a point) I think the first two paragraphs take a lot of the potential impact or surprise from the reader. From the get go, we know that what we are told might not be what actually happened. We can pretty safely assume that this is just the fever-dream of some kids who are high. Maybe the reader is supposed to wonder if the events happened, but there's just too much textual evidence that it did not, no matter how much the narrator insists that it did. In short, while the individual events were not predictable, the overall conclusion was.

[close]

Mandle:

Spoiler

You have some shitty dreams! I can't say I enjoyed this story, but I do think the topic (the topics, there are basically two - this is basically two stories in one)is important: elderly abuse is not looked at often enough and the need for assisted suicide should not be ignored. But the fact that elderly abuse is not talked about often enough also leaves me wondering about one aspect of your story: "although the first part of my story concerning the last and best friend I ever had is well-known across the world" Really? I wish people would talk about it, because otherwise it'll never stop (and abuse like that does happen in real life) but I have my doubts that people would actually care that much. Your world, while shitty for the protagonist, is actually more idealistic than reality is.

[close]

[Mandle]

Sinitrena: Thanks so much for your feedback on my story even though it wasn't necessary for you to even read it. MUCH appreciated! The sentence you pointed out about how the first part of the story was well-known across the world was not intended to say that people were discussing the abuse of the elderly. It was more cynical than that. If such a sensational case had happened, given the almost Mission Impossible level of the plan, it would spread on social media like a wildfire. People would read it, know it, "Like" it, and then soon go back to their own lives. It was just supposed to set up that something sensational had happened.

[Baron]

Voted!  Feedback is hidden below, if you care to peek beneath Mandle's fig leaf.   

Spoiler

@ Sinitrena

This was a touching story of true friendship, or at least the feeling of true friendship that is purest with the primary friends of one's childhood/youth.  I really liked the running metaphor of death's hand on James's shoulder.  The fogginess of thought and vision at the beginning of the story was also clever, although in places it kind of muddled the reader's understanding - I had to reread a bit to ensure I understood what was going on.  The twist at the end, with most of the Wild Five being dead, was a bit depressing for me, but true to the tone of the story.  Even sadder was the fact that James took refuge in his nostalgia for friends from decades past rather than the relationships in his own family (wife & daughters), but then half the time my own family pretends I don't exist and I'm only 43, so I can imagine after another forty years how one might decide just to check out emotionally.  I know you said staring at the story more wouldn't help it, but a bit more proofreading would have helped with some awkward phrases (It is a "Ferris" wheel - invented by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., "the soon stood", "two old man", etc.).

@ Stupot

This was one weird trip, man.  There were some great descriptions, especially of how the senses warp reality under the influence of shrooms, and the story was well paced.  The sheer craziness of the plot, however, made it difficult to take very seriously.  I tried parsing some deeper meaning into the boat, the old woman, and the naked friend, but ultimately all I could come with is that it's all just the random hallucinations of a shroom trip.  Disappointingly the friendship element falls apart, too, as Toby abandons his friends on the boat while you yourself (you insist it's a true story and it is a first person narrative, so I assume you are the third unnamed friend) are paralyzed in Simon's hour of need, not to mention that all the friends seem to drift apart as they grow up.  I suppose that's the most realistic part of the whole story, but it is a bit of a sad commentary on the long-term endurance of friendship.

@ Mandle

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.  Oh, and mercy killings, which is perhaps the truest form of friendship, making yourself miserable for the good of your pal.  But mostly all I have to say is shiiiiiiiiiiiit. 

[close]

[Mandle]

To all great friends, present or lost, I present the results:

(Thank you so much to Frodo for voting as well)

Sinitrena: 10
Baron: 8
Stupot: 6

A friendship group hug over a round of excellent stories and a last handshake to Sini to build the next round for us!

[Sinitrena]

Thanks, everyone, you gave me far too much points, I swear 

See you all next round, but please put on a jacket, it's gonna be cold over there!