Tuesday, August 28, 2007

~How Thunder Stepped into the Sky by Ann Walters~

Her name was Carmela and she spoke in chocolate words with breath like a long slow lick of the skin. Her voice, ah, her voice – what wasn’t it? It was a goddess bathing. A rhinoceros at full run. The muffled drift of snowflakes over corpses on a battlefield. Carmela never walked when she could sing, never slept when she could rinse her hair with water from the village well. The missionaries failed, as did her parents, her husband, her children. Her heart was never theirs. Nor did it belong to the trees, the grass, the river’s wide ego. She could not be held so tightly. Her name was Carmela and she lifted herself up into the sky on a single strand of chestnut hair. She crouches there still, her teeth a brilliant flash, her voice the rush of a child from its mother’s womb.

***Brilliant, Sharon! Such an unusual and textured turn of a phrase. Many great pieces for this image, please read the comments!***

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Various Colours

“It’s the Lifelike9™, our newest model. As you can see it’s amazingly natural. The skin has actually been grown. Real skin, not substitute, it means the skin feels more human obviously, but this mostly comes from the way the heat conducts much more realistically over the grown skin rather than the ersatz skin.”

“Looks good,” he said non-committal, “what’s the AI like?”

”Ah a connoisseur, then as you’ll know the artificial intelligence is the most important part of any sex android.” He moved over to the droid, “Michelle?”

The droid spoke, “Hello.”

“Tell me about the customer.” He said with a wry smile.

“Well he doesn’t look convinced, and all of his comments so far have been non-committal: enough to keep you selling but not enough to secure interest.”

“Wow! That’s incredible!” Yelled the connoisseur.

”Exactly, that’s our empathy processor doing that. The droid is aware of your feelings, but most amazingly is has its own feelings it is conscious of. For instance you can make the doll feel horny, angry, embarrassed, appreciated. Total inter-activity, it reacts to you treatment of it.”

“Interesting. So it will have feelings about me and about itself?”

“Exactly.”

The connoisseur thought to himself for a while then declared: “I’ll take one but not in black. Do you have any whites… or even Latinos,” He looked the droid over once more, “no I’m definitely not into black.”

”Good,” thought Michelle to herself, “because I’m not into sorry arses like you.”

Comrade Kevin said...

I wasn't here voluntarily, you must understand. Ordinarily I wouldn't be caught dead amongst the pretty people and the imaginatively worthless fashions that will never grace Main Street, to say nothing of Fifth Avenue.

I'm blinded by flashbulbs and overstimulated by the blaring music which causes the entire room to vibrate.

I know one of the designers and his legions of sycophants who will drool over whatever the master should wrought from his demented subconscious. No one has the guts to tell him that, as always, the Emperor has no clothes on.

I suppose I'm merely jealous. Some gullible soul will snatch up a dozen or so outfits, wear them once, and keep them in storage inside a closet the size of most peoples' houses. There's nothing particularly real about these proceedings--merely wealth and the games the wealthy play with each other.

My mind flashes to my favorite quote by Wilde: "Fashion is a thing so intolerable we must change it every six weeks." Never has this maxim been so applicable.

Anonymous said...

"Lick me?"
"No, too obvious."
"Unwrap me?"
"Neah."
"Crunch me, taste me, munch me?"
"Ne, ne, ne."
"Want a piece of me?"
"Too macho."
"Recycle my wrapper?"
"Do you remember edible panties way back having anything to do with green?"
"Like me in more ways than one."
"Now we're getting somewhere."

Sharon Hurlbut said...

How Thunder Stepped into the Sky

Her name was Carmela and she spoke in chocolate words with breath like a long slow lick of the skin. Her voice, ah, her voice – what wasn’t it? It was a goddess bathing. A rhinoceros at full run. The muffled drift of snowflakes over corpses on a battlefield. Carmela never walked when she could sing, never slept when she could rinse her hair with water from the village well. The missionaries failed, as did her parents, her husband, her children. Her heart was never theirs. Nor did it belong to the trees, the grass, the river’s wide ego. She could not be held so tightly. Her name was Carmela and she lifted herself up into the sky on a single strand of chestnut hair. She crouches there still, her teeth a brilliant flash, her voice the rush of a child from its mother’s womb.

Anonymous said...

As she walked into the room, she thought, "Screw them. And, fuck him."

She held her head high. Grace was done with all of them. She no longer needed or wanted them. She didn't care what they thought, but she held her tongue.

His family didn't care for Grace. She tried to talk to him about it but he would only snivel, and beg for her to be patient.

"They will learn to like you," he insisted.

She didn't want "like." She wanted respect and adoration. And, Grace wanted him to understand.

Dressing for the party, she looked in the mirror and smiled at herself.

"This will do."

When she entered the room she saw him and his family. Upon seeing her, his mother's mouth was set in an "isn't she something" grimace.

And then, from the far side of the room, she saw a man rising from his bar stool. He looked directly at Grace and beckoned oh so slightly.

Her tongue licked her lips and she glided toward him.