Sharing a short, untitled story

[ScarletSabre]

So, I was watching a Youtube video with a friend the other night, and then a couple of days later, it inspired this random writing prompt in my head. A couple of days writing it while bored at work, and I have something hopefully semi-decent to show you all xD Hopefully you'll like it, but be warned, it's hardly been spellchecked etc.

The prompt - Spoilers for the story within, please read after the story itself

Spoiler

So I was watching SovietWomble's new video (Go and look him up on YouTube RIGHT now, you will thank me later) and from one of his comments I randomly thought of the prompt for myself - Could I write someone charming and likeable enough that we're on their side as they wait to be charged with a crime that seems overblown or a setup etc... only to have the reveal at the end when they step out of the car/van etc that they're being tried at the Hague.

The story

Spoiler

Derrick mopped up the blood of his jailer in silence.

The man lay on the ground outside of Derrick's cell, slumped with his face pressed against the floor, blood pooling from his smashed nose and spreading as it flowed through the grooves between the tiled floor.

Derrick sighed as he finished blotting out the blood with his spare blanket. He was half tempted to let the pool seep under the door, it added some colour to the drab austereness of his cell.

A bed, a pillow, two blankets, a toilet, sink and a desk had been his entire world for the past four months, a far cry from the comfortable manors he'd lived in previously.

The guard gurgled as he painfully dragged air through his crunched cartiledge, and Derrick chuckled as he sat back on his bed to relax. "Oooh, that sounded painful."

Derrick had no sympathy for the man groaning in semi-conscious pain. The sadist had thought Derrick was a pampered fop, claimed (in graphic detail) he was going to be someone's prison slontze when he was released to general population.

Then he'd spent a good minute and a half telling Derrick how he'd spent two weeks arranging to be Derrick's guard, trading shifts and overtime just to get alone and close to him.

Too close, it'd turned out. When the man had reached through the bars and hoisted Derrick towards him by his jumpsuit, Derrick had reached out himself and grabbed the man's lapels.

One hard yank and his skull and nose had cracked against the solid steel, and he'd crumpled.

Eventually, the door to the guard's break room creaked open, and Derrick opened an eye from his doze as Martin, one of his regular guards, poked his head through.

He looked to the guard on the floor, the blood, and then raised an eyebrow at Derrick. "What happened?" he asked wearily.

"Hey, it's not my fault." Derrick shrugged, smiling at the portly man. "He grabbed me and tried to get physical, I just defended myself."

"You can check the footage." He nodded to the black dome of the security camera in the corner of the hallway leading from his cell to the door Martin walked through. "I'm surprised it took you so long to notice, I figured you'd have someone watching it as a backup."

"We did, at the start..." Martin sighed as he turned the unconscious man onto his side and checked his pulse and breathing. "But you've for the most part, been a model prisoner, and with the trial coming up... They relaxed the shifts a while back."

The trial.

'Finally.' 

"Why'd he flip out on ya?" Martin asked as he finished tending to the unconscious guard.

Derrick shrugged. "Oh, something about blaming me for killing his sister's animal. I honestly wasn't really listening." He rolled his eyes. "Taking the blame for every random insect and mongrel's death gets monotonous after a while."

Martin sighed and shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the camera from the corner of his eye. "Derrick, I wish you wouldn't talk like that... I mean it's not like I disagree with ya, but you're not gonna do yourself any favours at the trial." Despite the camera not recording sound, he kept his voice low.

Derrick snorted. "Oh please, if I was the monster they claim, I would've grabbed his gun instead of his collar." He shook his head. As if he'd do something like that to a human being. Killing animals were one thing, they were almost universally a waste of space in Derrick's opinion, actual humans were another thing entirely.

"Well yeah..." Martin said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"So, how's Anne?" Derrick asked as he leaned back.

"Oh, she's great!" Martin said, brightening up instantly. "She did what you with the gas, and the project is ahead of schedule now!"

"Glad to hear it," Derrick smiled. He liked Martin, and working on that hyperconductivity problem for his wife had helped pass the last three weeks. Being away from notes or labs was more stifling than the confines of his cell, sometimes. He was getting fidgety, his hands needed to do something, to be working again.

"Yeah, she told me to give you these."

Martin reached into his uniform jacket and pulled out a slightly rumpled paper bag, which he passed through the bars to Derrick.

Derrick chuckled as he looked at the bag of cookies. "I thought it was traditional for the cookies to be baked, not bought from a store."

"Yeah, well if Anne could bake something edible, she would've," Martin chuckled as he leaned back on the wall, relaxing beside his still delerious colleague. "She said it's the thought that counts, and if you don't want 'em, I'll take 'em. They're the good ones too, she hardly ever buys 'em."

"You'll take another, you mean." Derrick said wryly. "The bag says five, I count four and a bunch of crumbs."

Martin just grinned innocently. "Well this place IS full of thieves and criminals, don't know if you've noticed."

"And the guards aren't much better." Derrick shot back, nodding to the one slumped beside Martin. "Don't know if YOU'VE noticed." he said through a mouthful of chocolate-chipped goodness. These were good.

He'd have to make sure he thanked Anne when he got out and his assets weren't frozen. Martin had been good to him, a better friend than the people he'd ordered for years had been, the ones who'd abandoned and betrayed him when things went slightly wrong.

They'd insisted they were following his direct orders to save their own hides, making him the scapegoat for what they had agreed was the right thing to do. Sure, the chemicals had been his vision, his creation, but they'd agreed it was the best way to curb the growing plagues and infestations. Of course there was going to be some side effects, some collateral damage.

No, no focusing on that. He took another bite of the cookie as Martin checked on his colleague again, thinking about how best to repay their kindness.

He and Anne would be able to send their kids to college with the breakthrough she was making, so maybe some kind of pension for them? Martin was getting some gray in his temples, he was probably only a few years from retirement... And everyone knew how that went.

Derrick doubted Martin would care, he seemed to be a genuinely good person, and someone who believed in Derrick, not after money for his kindness.  It'd been a pleasant surprise when the man had struck up a conversation with Derrick on one particularly boring shift, and they'd quickly become fast friends.

But it'd been a long time since he'd had a friend who didn't want some kind of access to his wealth, best to plan as if Martin was out for something like that, just in case.

"damnation, these are good. I think I've missed food like this the most." he said as he finished another cookie.

Martin smiled over his shoulder as he continued to rouse his colleague. He seemed lightheaded from the bloodloss, his ruddy face now peaky, or at least in comparison to his read-smeared shirt.

"I'll tell Anne she made your week." Martin said as he managed to haul the dizzy man to his feet, supporting him on his shoulder and walking him slowly towards the guard's room.

"My month, I've been bored out of my skull since I cracked that problem for her, tell her to find another for me!" Derrick grinned as he brushed some crumbs from his jumpsuit.

"If I did, I doubt ya'd have time to work on it, you'll have to figure out what you'll say at the trial." Martin chuckled as he pushed the mumbling guard through the doorway. "Suh-Sophie..." he groaned, eyes rolling as he tried to turn his head back towards Derrick.

Martin sighed, sombering as he got his colleague through the door and settled on a chair out of Derrick's view from his bed. "She'll get over losing him." he said to him softly, then turned back towards Derrick, voice low again.

"The trial is in a few days, I think. They want to blindside you and give you as little time to prepare as possible, so they can make more of an example of you."

Derrick nodded at him in thanks. Martin nodded back, then let the door close behind him, leaving Derrick alone with his thoughts. And his plans for the trial.

'Make an example of me, eh?'

As if he'd let that happen. He hadn't gotten to where he was, or accomplished all he had without being persuasive. And charming, if he did say so himself. He smirked to himself as he began to think about what he would say.

Derrick pulled the final cookie from the bag idly, and spotted something from the corner of his eye. A smear of the guard's blood between his finger and thumb. He must have missed it when wiping the blood from the tiles before, or squeezed the sheet too hard.

"Oh look, I have blood on my hands." he said mockingly, waving and wringing his hands in parody of his condemners. He sighed to himself, rolling his eyes as he got up to wash his hands. They'd better get that mess cleaned up soon, it could get chilly at night and he wanted a new blanket.

-------------------------------------

Two days later they came for him. They had brought him out of his cell, cuffed his wrists and ankles with manacles so he could walk normally, but not run, and then strung a length of chain between the two sets of restraints.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked Martin, one of the guards leading him out towards the transfer areas. Martin just shrugged and grimaced apologetically.

The other guard just grunted and gave him a poke with his elbow to encourage him along. Derrick grunted back.

"I mean, I know this is a circus, but do we really need me as a one man band?" he said conversationally as he jingled his way into the back of the transport. They ignored his attempt at conversation, and exchanged visor-covered nods and documents with the guards who would be transporting him. 'Signed for in triplicate... I feel like a damnation Amazon package.'

Martin wasn't wearing his helmet, holding it under his arm, his skin glistening with sweat in the morning sun. He gave Derrick a worried look, as if debating something internally, and Derrick just grinned at him and nodded his head, giving as much of a wave of farewell as he could without rattling his chains.

Last thing he wanted was to give these new guards any excuse to assume he was testing his bonds and rough him up. Though that probably wouldn't look good at the trial... He considered it, but dismissed the idea, saving his energy for his planned speeches.

The doors closed with a thump, and as the transport moved off, Derrick lost sight of one of the few friends he'd had in the last few months, and one of the best friends he'd had in years.

Relaxing in his seat as best he could, he looked at the guards sitting across from him. A woman, her visor up as she studied him. She was rather pretty, her mouth scrunched up in consternation and her pale green eyes complimenting her blonde hair nicely.

Beside her, a guard dog sat on the seat as if it was a real person. Derrick snorted in amusement at that. The mongrel glared at him, and growled softly.

"Oh hush, Stevie." the woman said softly, putting a hand on him. "Don't let him get to you."

The dog settled down in his seat, silenced for the minute.

"Stevie, and...?" Derrick asked, smiling pleasantly. The woman shot him a glare of her own, lips drawn to a line. "Oh come on, we may as well know each other, it's a long trip, and you look like you'll wake me up to ask me whatever's on your mind if I try and nap."

The only sound for a minute was the vibration of the transport and bump as it went over the occassional speedbump and pothole, bouncing them in their seats. All the while her eyes never left his.

"Olivia..." she said finally.

"Nice name. Derrick. But you probably knew that."

"Yeah, everyone does at this point. You're rather famous."

"Oh please, I was famous long before this. Though for different reasons."

"Yeah, I know, big chemicals and big trouble. Fracking was pretty stormin' bad too you know."

"I agree, which is why I was researching alternative methods, and eventually alternatives to it altogether."

She blinked, then frowned at him. He smiled.

"Yeah, you could find that out with five minutes on Google, or Wikipedia... If they haven't edited my page again. Last news report I caught said so many people were trying to edit it they had to put a lock on it. Has that even happened outside of me and Todd what'shisface?."

Olivia didn't seem to find it funny. Derrick just smiled at her.

She flushed. He grinned a bit wider, he knew the response he got from women, even discounting his fortune. He'd always been above average, and he'd passed the time without something to do in his cell with the callisthenics routine he'd been trying to make a habit of for a year. He was fairly sure he'd toned up a bit, if nothing else.

"How can you smile like that...?" she asked afte ra few minutes of silence, her voice soft enough he barely heard it over the engine and traffic outside.

"Hmm?"

"With all the... deaths you caused."

Derrick sighed. "Think of all the deaths you've caused in your life, do you let them weigh on you?"

"I haven't c-"

"Yes, you have," he cut in flatly. "Every fly you've swatted out of the air, every slug you've poured salt on to keep out of your roses, every mouse and rat you've set traps or poison for, every ant or spider you've stomped on without noticing."

She sat there, mouth open slightly as she pondered it.

"Yeah, dozens, if not hundreds of deaths. And yet you don't give it a thought. And here my company creates the chemicals that helped end some of the plagues and famines causing starvation by killing off parasites, insects and animals, and I get called a monster."

A bit of heat entered his voice, and the dog growled again. Olivia put her hand on him again, almost missing as she continued to stare at Derrick.

He calmed himself, sighing. "I get that people are upset over losing ones they got attached to. But the benefits far outweigh anything else in the long run, even some of the analysts on the news agreed with our data on that."

"And here I am, the face that gets put to it so people like you can feel better about themselves because they "didn't go as far" as me." he raised his manacles to put air quotes around the last part, making sure his sarcasm and disdain was visible as well as audible.

"Besides, it's not like I killed them with my own hands, I just made the breakthrough that allowed us to tailor the killings to leave people untouched."

He could see he was getting through to her, she looked thoughtful even as she shook her head. She was clearly thinking about his words. He smiled. He'd worked on that one for hours in his cell.

Her hand on the dog tightened, and the final bumps came as the transport slowed. That was faster than Derrick had expected. How long had they been talking? There were no windows back here, no frame of reference, maybe those pauses had lasted longer than he thought.

Olivia slid her visor back into place, replacing her thoughtful expression with a dull reflection of Derrick's own as he smiled at her.

"Let's go..." she said as the doors opened her voice soft, thoughtful. Derrick couldn't be sure with her visor, but he was sure he caught her looking at him with interest as he climbed out onto the street.

Flashes of light surrounded him like a swarm of insects, and he smiled for the cameras calmly. They wanted him to seem rattled, to show fear or nervousness. He wouldn't. He would beat this, show this trial for the farce it was.

He stood straight backed, walking as if he was at just another function or red carpet event. The way he would again as soon as he was aquitted, and granted reparations for all of this.

As he was lead towards the steps he paused as he looked at the array of cameras and microphones sectioned off at the side.

Derrick frowned. The media. damnation vultures. Most of this was their fault, leaking the correspondences between him and his trusted members of staff, finding out the plan before the reveal. They'd forced them to act before they could ensure they only affected the areas they wanted to.

Because of them, Derrick's dreams had gone from a humanitarian announcement to a rush to ensure they didn't get tied down in the legalities for years, letting the issues get worse and worse before their solution would just be ineffective anyway. They had had to do it before the tipping point. Of course, they'd spun it to get the most views, and clicks, and articles about whatever damnation memes were being made of the story.

'Modern journalism.' he thought with a disgusted shake of his head. Well, he'd be sure to get compensation from them all for every second he'd spent incarcarated, every distortion they'd published.

He blinked as he picked out a voice amongst the rabble of people shouting jeers and the occassional, quickly muted call of support. There was someone from the BBC. No wonder they'd believed everything the tabloids had said; people would believe anything said in an English accent.

"Move it, bastard." the guard dog from the transport growled as he shoved Derrick up the steps, making him stumble. He glared over his shoulder at him, feeling disgusted at the treatment and making sure to stay out of reach, listening to the woman from the BBC as he climbed the steps. He was curious how his arrival was being described and broadcasted.

"This is Angela Donnel, here at the International Court of Justice in Peace Palace, where disgraced billionare mogul Derrick Maxon has just been escorted inside, to face charges of genocide, ethnic cleansing, geneva convention violations, and war crimes being leveled by eighteen different countries."

The voice faded into the buzz as Derrick marched along and smiled pleasantly at the guards he passed, heading to be judged upon further.

 

Let me know what you all think, how I did etc! Hopefully it'll entertain you if nothing else!

[StrikerEZ]

@ScarletSabre Man, that was pretty good. Could be polished up a little, but it was really good. As it went on, I could tell this man had done something really messed up. That casual reveal of the crimes he committed contrasted with the casualness and the charming personality of Derrick was really good.

[ScarletSabre]

12 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

@ScarletSabre Man, that was pretty good. Could be polished up a little, but it was really good. As it went on, I could tell this man had done something really messed up. That casual reveal of the crimes he committed contrasted with the casualness and the charming personality of Derrick was really good.

I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, it could definitely be a lot more polished, I feel, but since it's essentially a first draft written off the top of my head, I think it came out pretty well, all things considered ^^ Glad to hear I got the foreshadowing and Derrick's charm well too!

[Kureshi Ironclaw]

I really enjoyed this! It will be really good with a good polish. I kept trying to figure out what the prompt was as I was reading and came up with a few cool incorrect ones that I might try out.

[ScarletSabre]

58 minutes ago, Kureshi Ironclaw said:

I really enjoyed this! It will be really good with a good polish. I kept trying to figure out what the prompt was as I was reading and came up with a few cool incorrect ones that I might try out.

Oooh, please do tell what you thought the prompts were, I'm curious what you thought, haha! Glad you enjoyed it though!

[Kureshi Ironclaw]

I think the best one I thought of was "what if a god became stuck in human form and was put on trial for crimes against humanity". Maybe a bit too edgy for me to tackle at this stage, but someone fond of religious commentary might have some fun with it and be willing to open that can of worms. Although I feel some people might just see it as a cheap avenue to bash religion, which I don't want anyone to do. I still think it is an interesting idea though.

[Kaj]

I must say. The way you wrote it was amazing. I'm just an amateur, but the way it made logical sense, plus like Kureshi said, the casualness and foreshadowing were very good. Have some Fortune and Mental Speed. Plus a bit of Connection for good measure. I always love exploring it in the POV of the bad guy is the hero in their own eyes.

[ScarletSabre]

On 11/07/2018 at 10:08 AM, Kureshi Ironclaw said:

I think the best one I thought of was "what if a god became stuck in human form and was put on trial for crimes against humanity". Maybe a bit too edgy for me to tackle at this stage, but someone fond of religious commentary might have some fun with it and be willing to open that can of worms. Although I feel some people might just see it as a cheap avenue to bash religion, which I don't want anyone to do. I still think it is an interesting idea though.

Oooh, it's an interesting thought, and some authors have definitely tackled similar ones ^^ I recently read Villain's Rule - The Shadowmaster Book One, where there are interactions with gods being held accountable, tropes being subverted, twisted actively and used for the protagonist's benefit, and even (minor spoilers)

Spoiler

a court scene where he holds the sterotypical elves of fantasy accountable for stagnant progress with their lofty, holier than thou ways.

So it'd definitely be a fun, interesting idea to read about, it dfepends on how you do it though ^^ I'd personally have the god arguing that since he exists, so do devils and other gods, and that his hands are tied by them etc.

5 hours ago, Kaj said:

I must say. The way you wrote it was amazing. I'm just an amateur, but the way it made logical sense, plus like Kureshi said, the casualness and foreshadowing were very good. Have some Fortune and Mental Speed. Plus a bit of Connection for good measure. I always love exploring it in the POV of the bad guy is the hero in their own eyes.

Glad you enjoyed it! I'm glad the foreshadowing worked for you, I was a little unsure about it... Though I do think the reveal

Spoiler

of the guard dog that'd been growling and "sitting like a real person" being human was pretty good, if I do say so myself ^^ Though on reflection I could have made it a little more clear, had him push him with the butt/barrel of his gun etc, in case people thought there was a talking dog or something XD

It's always a fun, and interesting POV for me too, if I ever manage to do a proper book outside of my NPCQuest project, I hope to have conflict on both sides with a villain who isn't a moustache twirling charicature or just embodiment of evil, and people on both sides being characters you like and root for... If I can manage it here with this it's a good start, haha!