Three Minutes

[otter]

Set it up: Hot water, drain plugged, white ceramic tub holding it all together.
 
Tall man, drop the towel. View pans up, seeing nothing but the back of his head. 
 
He steps forwards, slipping into the tub. From his left hand, just out of view, a momentary flash of silver. The water's warm, steam's rising up off of the surface of the bath. The Man has a calm, almost serene expression on his face as he closes his eyes.
 
Breathe in. Breathe out. Steady your hand.
 
Again a flash of silver, a blade at his neck, right at the outer jugular. Sink in deeper, make sure it's nice and warm. One swipe and it's open. Blood flows out, staining the water.
 
His face twitches for a moment, slight pain, and that one moment where he wonders what he's just done, asking himself why he did it, that one part of his mind screaming "FIND HELP" as loud as it possibly can before it's suppressed. There's no going back now.
 
He leans deeper into the water, his eyes snapping open, looking over at something on the wall.
 
Three minutes till midnight, on the clock. Three minutes to make one last flippant quip, to shed a bit of wisdom onto the recorder you left, or to give one last prayer to whatever you believe in for forgiveness and deliverance.
 
Still silent. He breathes out, relaxing, and blood comes out again. One minute, fifty seconds left. He's unconscious.
 
Shift view. Small bar, lights still on but the chairs are all stacked on top of the tables, and there's the Barkeep, walking around, sweeping up under the tables. The door opens; in walks the Man from before, an odd scar at his neck. The Barkeep nods, heading over to the bar, sitting down on a stool behind it. The Man replicates the movement almost exactly.
 
"Long night?" the Barkeep asks, and the Man nods. He opens his mouth, about to say something, then stops himself, shaking his head. Not much different than usual. Just another long, hard night.
 
"Another fight?" Yep. "Your dad doing any better?" Nope. "Gonna get that promotion at work?" Not anymore. The Barkeep sighs, shaking his head with a rueful smile. "The usual?"
 
Oh, ###### yes. The Man leans forwards, resting against the bar, as his eyes flick to the clock. One minute left. The barkeep sets down a small mixed drink, only double the size of what you'd get in a shot glass, but packed with more alcohol than most anything else in there. It takes a special kind of man to drink this drink.
 
The Man sips at it slowly, lost in thought, still looking at the clock. Fifteen seconds left, he finishes it, setting it down. The Barkeep looks at him, again with that same rueful smile.
 
"No regrets?" Nope. "Anything you gonna say before you head out?" The Man stops for a moment, then points to the glass.
 
"Some things weren't meant for mortal man to taste," he says, his rich tone ringing out. "I'll see you later, got it?" Barkeep nods, the Man walks out the door.
 
Cut the lights. In the background, an electric clock.
 
Midnight.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Grochi ad Infinitum

[-Windrider-]

OTC?!

[Padishah Mehmet II]

Freaking speechless, Ilyusha. Just speechless.

 

Not even particularly sure what you meant by this. In fact, that's probably why I'm so speechless.

 

I like the style. Reminds me of authors I couldn't name off the top of my head, with its way to name characters according to the role, so to speak, they play in the reality of the story.

It was a pretty interesting story, even if a bit short. Oh, also...

 

Oh, ###### yes.

Might wanna fix that.

-Dovydas

[otter]

Nah, I like it how it is.

 

Also.

 

Did you notice whot he Barkeep was supposed to be? :3

[Dual Cee]

I can honestly say, this story is different, far different then the stories I'm used to read. Beginning with the writing style you used, it is not something you see all day, I'm not saying it's bad, no not at all, you did a very good job in keeping your writing style consistent throughout the story, so that's good. The plot of the story itself was, rather hard to understand, I had to read te story four times or so to basicly understand what was going on. But then again, I'm not a native English Reader and this style is new to me. But I liked the plot, I loved the way you made a countdown towards the end, and gave us a time regularelyl, except for just random. Well, the story is written good, no grammar or spelling mistakes where mine too see, which is always a good start, the story was off, but creative. And now the little, since it's just writen well, nitpicking:

He steps forwards, slipping into the tub.

I think the use of the verb "slipping" is not the best choise, since I believ he's puched in it, right? So it makes it confusing and harder to follow the story due you made it look like an "Accident".

Three minutes till midnight, on the clock. Three minutes to make one last flippant quip, to shed a bit of wisdom onto the recorder you left, or to give one last prayer to whatever you believe in for forgiveness and deliverance.

This paragraph looks odd due to your usage of "you" which did not return in the rest of the story, hower, if you change it to "he" I believe this is the best Part of the Story.There wasn't much too say due the well-writenness of the story. A good, but slightly off story.Keep up the Good Work...

[otter]

As to your first comment, the only other word that would convey the idea of his action would be sliding, and I like slipping more. =P

 

As to the second, don't ask why I did that, but at the same time, I'm not changing it. The switch to second person from third person in that part was intentional, and if I had a word for why I did that, I'd tell you, but I don't.

 

Regardless, nice to see that you liked it.

[Nuile the Paracosmic Tulpa]

Someone . . . from . . . somewhere . . . here to . . . I can't remember now . . . I'm not sure if I'm Nuile, here from the SSCC with a Charity Review to review your story, or . . . I don't know what I am doing, because I don't know what this is. Is this a story? I guess it is. I'll review it.

 

I'm going to begin by commending the style you used here. At the risk of only repeating what has already been said, I think you executed it perfectly. I'm only against present tense when the writer's pretending it's past tense with present tense verbs. But in this case, present tense is just the thing. It gives it a cinematographic feel; there's a lot of potential in this. You have a definite Alfred Hitchcock style going here, although the story itself probably better suits some modern horror director whom I have intentionally ignored all my life. That's the question, then: Loving the style, do I feel it suited the story?

 

There are a lot of ways this style would work. Infinite possibilities. Do I like this story in this style? Yes and no. The first scene is one I've read a hundred times in the Ambage. I don't care how many times or in how many ways it can be done, it's the same scene. But . . . I've never read it like this. The strength of the imagery conjured by the cinematographic descriptions lifts it above the deranged babbling of the others, where it stands alone in a light of narrative power.

 

The style saved the content. But content and style worked together in the second scene to stand even taller. The second scene is so simple, yet none of it makes sense. It's thoroughly imbued with the notion that something vital to the understanding but in the grand scheme of it all pointless, is being withheld. There's something, as it were, outside the four walls of the frame. Here--Alfred Hitchock. There's something else, something unrevealed, something so vague and so unidentifiable that we can't even define the questions burning in our subconscious mind. We're asking ourselves--what? We don't even know. But subliminally these questions are being asked, and we're enjoying the sensation as dormant realms of our brain we can't consciously use are speculating about the unseen, the unknown, the incomprehensible aspects of what we've just seen--or, in this case, read. It's the literary equivalent of an out-of-body experience.

 

 

Various editorial comments:

 

Sink in deeper, make sure it's nice and worm.

 

The image this conjures--of a knife worming into man's neck--may be what you want, but I question word choice and grammatical structure. More likely, you meant warm.

 

The Man sips at it slowly, lost in thought, still looking at the glock.

 

Tick tock. Glick the Glock talked with clock. Glick picked bock. Clock tocked. Glock talked. Glick mocked. Clock got ticked. Ticked clock socked Glick. Glick the Glock rocked. Ticking clock tocked. Barkeep got Glick's bock.

 

Either you're Seuss or that's meant to be clock.

 

Oh, ###### yes.

 

Ah, crosswords. Family fun.

 

 

Stories like this make me feel as if I'm alone, safely huddled in some bright-lit corner of the Ambage, huddling over cheerful stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Littlest Elf, and Dr. Seuss, hiding from the cackling shadows and tartarean mental aberrations of the cimmerian membership.

 

What intrigues me about this story, more than almost any other I have read in this bilious genre, is the sheer incomprehensible, nebulous incorporeality of it. By whom could this be delivered but our deranged otter? As usual you have mystified everyone with the insensate productions of that inscrutable mind of yours.

 

Sincerely, Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith