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#1
03-02-2010, 09:21 AM
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Only about 1000 words
Ok, my turn. I just finished this particularly short story that should fit in nicely. Tear it apart ,please.
Pappa Willly’s State Fair Champion BBQ Sauce It’s beginning to take Jason a little extra effort to rationalize his actions. He peers out from the kitchen through one of the round glass windows in the double doors leading into the diner. It was one of the busiest lunch rushes he had seen since he and his father bought the diner almost six years earlier. Large groups of teenagers were piled into booths laughing and flirting, and every swiveling seat surrounding the Formica counter top was filled with a satisfied customer. His fathers secret sauce was a smash hit, the more people ate it the more people wanted it. Barbeque ribs, barbeque chicken, barbeque sauce in cups along with baskets of French fries, and everyone wanted more. Julie, our loyal waitress had even taken some of it home for her kids. Jason knew word was spreading fast and soon everyone in town will have fallen for ‘Pappa Willy’s State Fair Champion BBQ Sauce’. Jason had once been relieved to have at least found something to get the distributors minds off his fathers’ hot sauce while he tried to figure out a way to make or obtain more. Neither of them has to worry about that any more.It had only been six weeks since his father first returned home with the eggs. He’d had a large mason jar full of it in his duffel bag, safely packed into the center, wrapped in towels like some sacred artifact. At first glance Jason couldn’t see what all the hubbub was about. It looked just like any ordinary hot sauce, a deep brownish red color. But there was something strange about the sauce, about the way the flavor grew on a person, it was almost addictive. It made you want to eat more. Willy said they had been discovered quite by accident during his latest vacation to South America. A large previously unknown parasite had plagued a small beach side town near where he was staying. He said the parasite looked like a hundred worms all stuck to one large thick worm body, and when the host died the thick, hard butt end of it would protrude from the mouth of host like a thick curling spring. The sauce would excrete from the worm only after the host’s death. When a cow or a goat fell victim, the excretions would attract predators from all around, and the worm would live on in the belly of those predators. When it began invading humans, it began to mimic flavors and smells found in the local diet. Its spicy sweet aroma apparently evolved to attract its primal source of nourishment- humans. “So its worm poop?! C’mon, that’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard”. But Willy insisted it was true, every single word. Willy had only ever had one goal in mind, to be the Carlton County Fair ribbon winner for best BBQ sauce, and to place the blue ribbon next to all the ones he’s earned for his homemade pies. One smell of his new sauces tangy, spicy aroma basted over a juicy pile of chicken wings would be enough to draw crowds from miles around. People wouldn’t be able to resist its evolved perfection. Jason could only think of the profits. Jason turns away from the double doors, the crawling of the worms had subsided enough for him to stop and think for a minute. There’s more than one bottle of liquor in this kitchen; the bourbon has been going down nice and smooth, but it sends the worms right back into a fury. He grits his teeth and takes another swig; he can even feel the thump of the large central worm inside him shaking back and forth. “Like that do ya?” He can remember his grandmother telling stories about more people being more like to get worms from unwashed fruits and vegetables than from uncooked meat. “Hell, half the town probably has worms already” Jason tried to reassure himself, he pulls the bag of herbs from his shirt pocket- some of Grannies old worm tea remedy. Cloves, pumpkins seeds, black Walnut, caster oil, thyme, fennel seed, grapefruit seed, peppermint and a shot of whisky. He just added the last one on his own. He thought back to the floaters he found this morning. Grannies tea must’ve been helping, but there were only three of them. They looked like little brown springs, like tiny versions of the huge worm that was currently reaching slowly out of his fathers grimaced mouth like a hard, curling, brown cock; Willy’s body still hidden away in the back of their cellar. ‘Over-run by worms’ is what Grandma Wiles would have said happened to Willy shortly after he returned home from his trip to South America. He tosses the bag into the trash, “what’s the use”; he’d already tried everything at the drug store. Jason takes a deep breath and gathers himself before walking back out into his late fathers’ diner. “How long can I keep this a secret?” Jason wondered “How long before the worms start making a sauce out of me? Maybe they started already.” He doesn’t want to think about it any more. “I wonder what I’ll taste like.” Jason’s met with praise from many customers. All of them smiling with Willy’s BBQ sauce smeared across their faces, Jason graciously accepts compliments from each of them. As he does so he ignores the pain in his gut, and he ignores the burning and the itching and the crawling, he ignores the future which he knows is bleak for everyone in this small town, the small town that he and his father had called home for nearly 6 years now. Jason smiles and serves up a couple orders of fries to a pretty high school girl and her friends, extra sauce, secretly wishing his father never brought it home so many weeks ago. For now all he could do was enjoy the success which he had always dreamed of, and pray the worms would kill him before the town members realized the sauce they so loved to eat may have already begun to eat them.
__________________
"The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin" Stephen Mitchell 
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#2
03-06-2010, 01:20 PM
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Less exposition. Try to explain things as they happen more.
__________________
Horror and Bizarro novelist and editor
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#3
03-06-2010, 05:05 PM
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Sweet, this is like Christams for me. I've been away from these characters for about a week now, stories always come across so shitty when you come back to them after awhile. This is my first real experience in writing such a short story (it was an assignment for school) and I can not describe how valuable your input is to me. I have two more stories coming up, an 8 page and another 2 page then all my final drafts, so now that I know at least one person is actually reading these things maybe I'll post the one of the others (both of the story lines would probably be suitable though) Oh well, thanks Doctor F., you've just cheered me up a little.
__________________
"The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin" Stephen Mitchell
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#4
03-07-2010, 09:38 AM
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No problem. There's some cool, original and disgusting stuff here. Keep it up. There's a surprising number of markets that are starting to dig flash fiction. When you know what you can do with four hundred words, you'll see exactly how much mileage you can get out of ten or twenty thousand.
__________________
Horror and Bizarro novelist and editor
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#5
03-14-2010, 04:52 PM
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WOW - I second Doc's sentiment: There's some cool, original and disgusting stuff here. - To say the least.
In terms of criticism: The tenses get a little confusing at times (but maybe "confusing" isn't the right word; I am just generally wary of pieces written in the present tense), and sometimes the voice switches from third person to first... But, for a short horror fiction story, that's great. You should send it out for submissions. Seriously.
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#6
03-14-2010, 06:12 PM
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wow, thanks. I seriously considered a second draft very soon, with your advice in mind. I'll post another story soon, then I'll rewrite the BBQ Sauce story. I think you will like the retelling.
__________________
"The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin" Stephen Mitchell
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#7
03-20-2010, 03:58 PM
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I think it's very hard to write under tight word requirements. alfred hitchcock's mystery magazine has a contest every month where they include a picture and you have to link the picture to a crime and write a story about it in 200 words or less.
in my opinion writing a good 200 word story is harder than writing a good 20,000 word story. I have not seen very many contest winning 200 word stories in AHMM that I like. not many people in this section ever will hear this, I liked your story.
__________________
stop the world - I want to get off 
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#8
03-21-2010, 11:42 AM
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Quote:
*closes mouth* ok, I have another smoother story line in mind for my promised rewrite, check back in later this week. I will be keeping it to 1000 words, because the challenge is important, for all the same reasons you guys have mentioned. Thanks, MurderDoll.
__________________
"The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin" Stephen Mitchell
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#9
04-02-2010, 09:02 AM
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Quote:
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#10
04-02-2010, 02:58 PM
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Quote:
__________________
Horror and Bizarro novelist and editor
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