Also, the whole genre of steampunk is one I quite enjoy, and the aesthetic of punk-rockers was too much fun not to try and bring to life in writing, so mixing the two together and using genuine interest as an incentive to spend hours writing worked out really well!
The story opens in a kind of second person narration where you, the reader, are the character, but breaks into third person once the... inspirational experience is at its end. I'm thinking I will probably write a concluding piece to this that explains how the character ends up being in a merciless GM's game, but as this is just a two-shot story they'll both go in Short Stories.
Hope you enjoy, and have yourself a lovely day! More on Wednesday, for your enjoyment.
Punk Tinker by Mac Clevinger, April 23, 2017
Enter the workshop of a girl on the cusp of being a woman. Pass through the door, shutting its heavy frame firmly and locking it once, twice, and again; draw the bolt to a clattering halt and check the boards nailed across foggy windows. Stand in the middle of it all, the piles of schematics and scrap parts scattered atop scorched and battered tables. Abandoned ideas, works in progress, projects that lie beneath thick canvas and strain against the ropes that tie them down; each one a checkmark on a list, practiced eyes confirming their presence in seconds.
Breathe in the smoke and dust, the old mildew and spilt oil, the burnt accidents and polished metal. Breathe in the memories of the work of years as something sour but attractive wafts its way to your attention. Feel a trembling of need – no, you don’t call it need, you call it inspiration, inventiveness, an aid that you can quit any time. Never a need, not a crutch, just a tool.
Kneel before it, mindless of tearing a stocking on the scraps that coat the floor, and reach forward. Deft fingers passing between the boards, you smile at the simple ruse as you push the door inward and draw out a clinking bundle. You don’t need it. You’ve never “needed” it, you just… it just…
Ignore the feeling, and carry the bundle to a spot cleared of debris. Turn a crank once, then twice, then grin as a feeble light begins to grow; your light, that you made. A light in the dark that you and you alone possess, for now. Around you are all the things that you, alone, possess, but you have plans. Schematics too big to fit on a sheet of paper, ideas that didn’t originate from the bundle in front of you, two solutions that would both come to fruition.
Put the bundle aside, for now, and try to think. Find that spark within yourself and let it grow as the feeble light continues to do, extract inspiration from the very energies in the air around you and put it into word, into image, into an idea you can make reality, just find something, anything, before the trembling becomes too much to bear and you leap upon the bundle as if a starved beast and you feed.
Sit back, turn the light down, and lose yourself. Breathe out the sour smoke, and watch it dance in the low light, watch the room dissolve into darkness as shapes in the smoke take form. Watch figures veiled by fog, dimly lit, and shining march before you, exposed gears clinking in unison as steam erupts from beneath their armored exteriors.
Watch a thrown ball erupt in slow motion, dismantling the automatons into rent metal and piecemeal scattered across the heavens of smoke above you. Enter the scene as the heavens freeze and undo the devastation, reform the exploding ball, and show you the event again. Watch it slowly, piecing together an image in your head of every component of the automatons and the series of events that turned a ball into pure force.
Let the soldiers march to their doom for hours, twitching hand grasping charcoal and sketching the mesmerizing scene as you watch it again and again. Forget the world beyond the smoke, beyond your drawing hand, beyond pouring more smoke into the heavens when they near dissipation; forget it all, and try to understand through a clouded mind how such things could be until the light grows dim and the mind follows suit.
-
She awoke, groggy and fogged mind slowly returning to reality as she coughed and spat out a dark, gummy wad of mucus. Reaching out blindly towards the floor, she found the bottle left there for such occasions, and drank deeply. She couldn’t remember if it was supposed to be water or a homebrew, but either way it tasted like the sour smoke.
Tossing away the emptied bottle, she cranked the handle of the light until she realized that it had died during the night. Or – she scratched her head, still groggy – the day? She didn’t know how long she’d “slept” for, and the oppressive darkness didn’t give her any clues. Skin crawling at the barbarism of it in a place of invention, she lit a squat lantern and looked at what she’d made.
A stack of technical documents lay before her, each an extrapolated view of some device, gadget, or part that she would have to pore over for hours to truly understand. She flicked through the pages, a feeling of astonishment growing within her as each unimaginable construct begot another one beneath it. Some had names in the corner, others a seemingly random collection of letters and numbers, and all were blueprints to creating a world that existed only in her dreams.
The final pages were different from the rest, different from anything she’d designed before. There were no images, no ingredients, no explanation of how to build something or what it even was; instead the pages were filled with lines and circles, written in random patterns that went on for page after page, recognizable words appearing only on the last sheet.
They were nonsense, meaningless to her. She recognized words, or parts of words, but the structure and order of it left her confused at a first glance. She let go of the stack of papers and sat back in her seat, resigning herself to a long week of studying and experimenting with what she had discovered.
Rubbing her face with her hands, she sighed as she felt something cling to her hands and looked at the smeared lipstick with scorn. A jolt ran through her spine at the sight of the color. It wasn’t the black she normally wore: it was red. Shining and bright red. Memories tumbled through her mind of before she’d come home, of the girl she’d met and the promise she’d made.
“Oh, fuck me.” She leapt to her feet, running her hands through her hair in an attempt to fix it after spending a night stewing in that chair, and dragged the lantern towards a bright mirror surrounded by discarded clothes. She didn’t know what time it was, but she was sure she was late, and in no state to be meeting the angel with those blood-red lips…
Midway through pulling off her smoke-ingrained clothes, another memory sent a jolt up her spine. Tossing aside the clothes to join their sisters at the foot of the mirror, she ran back to the schematics and looked for the bundle of sour leaves, looking inside with trepidation. She could feel her pulse hammer in her veins as she saw the stained white interior of the bundle, but none of the precious thought-enhancer within.
She held the bundle to her breast as her mind raced, panic threatening to take over. She only needed to… had to… wanted to smoke a little every night, a lot if she wanted ideas. She was supposed to meet her dealer today for more, but she would’ve been fine for a few more days… She’d been stupid to use so much last night, what had she been thinking?
She remembered. A beautiful girl with ruby lips, enthralled by her stories of the things she’d built. A girl with the softest eyes that opened so wide in delight when she heard about the devices she’d made, the inventions she was working on… A cute girl that listened, and asked for more, and made her feel like she really was the person she made herself out to be, and not an actor.
A kind girl that she was going to utterly disappoint when she either showed up half dressed and smelling like sour smoke or completely ignored to see her dealer. She threw the bundle onto the table and stalked back to the mirror, rifling through the discarded clothing while she muttered under her breath. Two opposite sides of town, and an instinctive knowledge that she couldn’t run across town fast enough to see both.
She stripped and redressed, pulling on a black short-skirt overtop stockings and a black leather jacket over a black shirt with a white and purple skull painted on it. The light from the lantern reflected off the piercings on her face as she pulled at her hair, trying to make it fall naturally over the shaved sides of her head. The tips of her black hair were dyed a variety of greens and purples, some faded and some vibrant.
She touched up her make-up, feeling a tinge of regret as the red-smeared memory was removed, and looked herself up and down in the mirror, lifting her head and thrusting her chin forward. She may not have been big or tall, but she knew how to throw around what she had to make her own kind of strength.
She snapped her fingers, a plan coming together with her newfound sense of confidence and an urge to make more than a few people very worried. She didn’t have to pick between her dealer and her angel, she just had to be faster than what her feet could provide; a trivial matter for someone like her.
Against the wall lay a metal board, maybe twice as wide as the width of her shoulders and not quite so wide itself; affixed to it were four wheels that she’d made able to spin at her command. She used it to move heavy constructs around the workshop, but there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t…
Extinguishing the lantern, she grabbed the board and unlocked the door, bursting out into the light of day at the end of an alley off a side-street. Tossing the board down, she hopped on it and stared at the metal surface, mind reviewing the inner mechanisms that she’d built months ago. Chewing her lip, she depressed a plate with her heel and immediately fell off the board as it raced out from underneath her.
A few minutes later, having opened the board and reconfigured it, she rode out of the alley, leaning her weight into the turn as she skated along the paved streets she’d grown up on and passed the familiar faces that had long known her knack for inventions, and largely given up on warning her of the dangers of that which she didn’t fully understand.
The experience was exhilarating, her hair blowing in the wind as she planned her route towards the docks and then to see a pretty lady. She was young and ferocious, in love and imagining a future that she wouldn’t have to build by herself. The light wouldn’t be hers, alone, and she didn’t have to enjoy its radiance alone. Life was bright and she was happy.
And maybe the happiness could last, but it won’t.