Thursday, September 23, 2010

New Beginning 785

Considering all the obnoxious byproducts of humankind in the last millennia, you'd think the worst of them would have been discarded centuries ago. I glared at the tin in my hand, stamped on both sides with the legend 'Spam'.

I sighed and tossed the ration can to Tetze, who caught it with his deft mouth tentacles. Sometimes I envy his flexible digits, both the number of clusters he has on his face, head and limbs, and the speed with which he can employ them; although his skin resembling upchucked sperm rat...not so much.

He kicked my ass in basic during the offensive hand-to-hand module with just his face clusters. A couple duties later some wet end recruit irritated him; he heaved a power lifter over his head, all two tons of it, and threw it at the guy.

You could say I respect him.

I know it's a good thing we salvaged the ration stores and field gear from the wreckage of our escape craft, but every night around chow time it pisses me off again. I hate Spam. I snapped the portable field stove open, and set it on my footlocker.

"Only two cans left," my bunkmate Rrrril hissed through his beak as we all sat down to eat.

"Don't worry," grunted Tetze. "Are other options."

I paused mid-bite. Around the circle everyone was intent on their food: super fast Qzetl with his elongated legs, telepathic supergenius Gini with her over sized brain, Rrrril with his wings perfect for aerial surveillance, and then the mighty Tetze, casting a rapacious eyestalk at plain old vanilla human me.

"Think I'll go check out the crash site again," I said. "There may be a few more cases of Spam we missed."


Opening: S. Smart.....Continuation: Sarah from Hawthorne

9 comments:

Evil Editor said...

Unchosen continuation:


Tetze shuffled the can from his mouth tentacles to his "arm" tentacles and focused on the label, squinting at the picture of a glutinous lump of shaped meat in the center of a plate. His body quivered and his skin flushed a blotched. "Mom!" He screamed.

As two of Tetze's eyes swiveled to glare at me, I knew I'd made a bad move.

--anon.

fairyhedgehog said...

I found myself struggling a bit with the first sentence and I'd be inclined to just lose it.

Evil Editor said...

The first sentence is awkward. Perhaps:

I glared at the tin in my hand, marveling that Spam, the second-most obnoxious creation of humankind, had not yet been eradicated from the universe.


"I hate Spam" should be the last sentence of the last paragraph. Either delete the following sentence or make it the start of the next paragraph.

Taylor Mathews said...

I want to read more.

That said, this probably isn't going to be the most helpful comment of the day.

150 said...

I'd keep reading!

A good rule of thumb is to put the most powerful word in a sentence at the end, so based on that I'd make the first sentence:

You'd think in the last thousand years of human development, it would have occurred to someone to eradicate Spam.

Laurel said...

I liked the first paragraph. I thought it was funny, but I would lose the third and fourth paragraphs and put the information someplace else.

This doesn't sound like my kind of story, but I really liked the writing.

Dave Fragments said...

This all works for me. It sets up an interesting voice and tone and an interesting character as the narrator.

EE stated the only changes I would make. There's lots of words I wouldn't use that are the writer's stylistic choice.

writtenwyrdd said...

The opening is funny and the continuation runs with it most excellently.

Spam will be with us forever, even in space? That I can believe.

Author, there's not a whole lot wrong with this start. I'd delete "you could say I respect him" as it's redundant, and doesn't add anything when you don't follow it up with something that's related but return to the spam in the next paragraph.

I think the opening humor is great, the situation is set up, and the type of story (science fiction post ship crash) is set up. Now we need the meat, the actual start of the story. You promise some nice humor with this start, so I do hope that lasts through the story as well.

_*rachel*_ said...

I like this, especially the riffing on spam and the way you work in Tetze's description. I think it could use a little paring, though, to give it just a bit more zing.

I think I'd read on.