Drill, baby, drill!
Haha. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
So, how’d you like the prompt today. Kinda odd to run with, but, of course, you managed it brilliantly as you always do. Bravo to you all.
Now, did you notice that we’re on week 51? That’s right, next week we’re ONE YEAR OLD! So stay tuned for party info tomorrow. Cause, baby, we’re CELEBRATING!
But back to this week, because this week has its finalists too, and they’re awesome writers with great entries. Here are the finalists that our guest judge, Jessica Olin, @olinj picked out this week.
Congratulations to you all! Here are their entries, give them a read and a vote, and be back here tomorrow morning at 9:00E to see who wins!
It couldn’t be dirty, not a sign of any of the past fun it might have been involved in. In fact, a little piece of trivia the papers would love is the fact that he boils them after each use. To keep them clean, to keep them pure. They sat like little silver soliders in a small three drawered tool box. Each of them a different length and thickness, you could never use the same one twice. Each one had a different purpose. All heads were different.
For the pretty girl he had strapped to the table, it would have to be something thin and long. He could tell when he licked the skin at her temple, this would have to be a delicate job. It would hurt more this way, and he hardened thinking about her screams.
Clicking the drill bit into place, he tore the duct tape off the girl’s mouth. She didn’t scream yet, just looked up at him with terror filled eyes, the sound of the drill starting causing tears to fall down her cheeks. Oh, it was so much sweeter when they cried.
“Go! Go! Go!” The drill sargent barked the order over and over again, giving each of his charges a brusque slap on the back as each reached the front of the line. One by one they dove into the course, bobbing and weaving but never quite meeting his satisfaction.
“No! Faster! I want to see you really moving out there!”
The last of the new batch entered the course, and the drill sargent began his walk to the other end, shaking his head at the miserable things he’d been given to work with. One was wallowing in a mud puddle, unable to get righted in the mire. Another had hit the wall too hard, and was sprawled on the ground. One was simply curled up into a ball. It happened. The stress broke them, the stress was supposed to break them.
It was all about finding the best.
At the end of the course a few recruits stood there, watching the sargent approach, snapping to attention as he did. From a distance the general approached from his vantage point watching the whole of the sorry affair.
“Well, sargent, what do you think?”
He looked at the miserable piles of gears and plating that surrounded him, grinding and wheezing from the relatively simple course. “Going to have to be a few more years of humans, I suspect.”
Beautiful. That’s the word that comes to mind as I watch the twisting threads of the drill. It’s thrilling. Hypnotic.
I find myself lost in its endless circling. I almost forget what I am doing, why I am even holding this drill in the first place.
Down it goes. It makes contact with a high pitched squeal. It’s music to my ears. As it goes deeper, so does the pitch. The harmony of machine and nature at its finest.
Smoke rises and fills my nostrils. This is why I bought the heavy duty drill with back up battery attachment. The drill gets stuck, but only for a moment as I pull down harder on the trigger. That’s why I chose the one with extra torque. It’s always better to pay more for better quality.
The blood splatters across my paper bib, but I don’t care, I relish it. The gurgled screams of a patient choking on his own saliva mixed with blood is exhilarating. His eyes look up at me as to question my intentions. Briefly he wonders if there was ever a God. Then he gives out.
Unlike my drill. It has a lifetime money back guarantee.
Miles fired up the drill, the high-pitched whir of stainless steel in the dry air a pulsing lesion. He braced himself and lowered the tip of the bit, lining it up with the bones of his foot. A breath in, a breath out, forceful. A second later, the sickness hit him. Oh, god — a flash of pain, a whiff of copper, the searing odor of flesh.
Weak but determined, he continued, screw the bolt to the board below. Salt dribbled into his eyes, and he raked a hand through his greasy black hair to slick it back. Legs and arms tremoring, he threw his tool to the side and reclined, the bite of the wood in his back freeing him momentarily from the fog in his brain to focus on one point — the metal driven through foot.
The beat of his heart throbbed there, the fire spreading with each wheezing, sucking breath.
“Okay, Paul,” he called, faking his bravery. “Do it.”
“Are you sure?” His friend’s voice spoke of his reticience.
“Yes, do it now. I must atone.”
Without a word, Paul set to work and Miles held to the spikes in the wood above his head. Paul tugged on the ropes, heaving, and the cross crested, rising to stand upright. Miles groaned, the tug on his arms a relief from the fire in his foot.
“Laurie,” he called out, his eyes landing on the small woman with the tortured eyes. “It is for you. It is all for you!”
She turned and fled.
I’ve never seen it so dark. The peals of thunder had ceased a few minutes ago and I was left alone in the darkness, or so I thought. All around me I felt the weight of the world pressing in and it helped to magnify the thunder of my own heartbeat in my ears. I reached out with my right hand, scratching away at the cold stone underneath me, grasping for whatever was in finger’s reach. Finding nothing, I stretched my left arm, still free and with more room around it than my right and felt.. something. There was a handle and a cord attached to it. Jake Preston’s drill. He’d been beside me minutes ago, and now, as I lay here in the darkness with sixteen thousand tons of anthracite bearing down above me like God’s own black anvil… I held onto that vestige of the world we’d come from like it was my grandma’s own Bible. It’s tough down here, a dangerous life, I’m told. I never gave it much thought til the lightning sparked, the roof overhead screamed out at us all, and came down. Buried alive are the two worst words I could imagine.
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