Thankfully, Parabola decided (on a whim) to give me a writing prompt that I latched onto with fervor. I just found it now, and it was lulzy so I decided to post it. Hotmail addresses edited out just to be safe.
From: Parabola
To: ViceVersus
Subject: The Invasion of Calligraphy Brushes
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:43:11 +0000
Task: Describe to me, in no less than 1500 words, the mass conquest of the United States of America by an unbeatable army of calligraphy brush wielding aliens.
Gogogo!
THE INVASION OF CALLIGRAPHY BRUSHES.
When they landed, there was chaos.
Not the pleasant sort of chaos, the sort you'd find at a circus or an entertainment palace. This was the chaos that often got people trampled, pushed, thrown back as the fist of human hysteria closed ..
It wasn't a particularly elegant entrance. Just a sleek alien spacecraft dropping out of the sky, engines shrieking like banshees - or maybe it was just the passengesr shrieking. It tore into the side of the Statue of Liberty, skipped through the Hudson river, and then skidded to a screeching halt in lower Midtown. Chaos.
While the craft seemed to be unharmed, the buildings, streets, and people all around lay torn and ravaged. Smoke coiled, curled up towards the sky - so did screams and sirens. The craft sort of glinted there, almost wickedly. Almost as though it were enjoying itself.
People following the wisps of smoke might have stared up at the heavens, wondering if God were playing the petulant child, simply throwing things at the precariously stacked towers of mortality. Who hadn't done that as a child? Built something up with love and tenderness, then struck it down in a fit of adolescent glee? New York City was that precious stack of alphabet blocks, then, and this hellish other-worldly thing .. it might have been a fist, another plaything ..
.. whatever you considered it, there it was. And it was there to stay.
The news networks were at a loss. To say ALIEN INVASION seemed much too unrealistic. And this was a realistic world, now, that we lived in. A world where things did not fall from the sky, where lives were free to go on without delay. The scenes of carnage were too real in the minds of New Yorkers to pretend that things hadn't happened. Already there were cries of The End, of another 9/11.
But there were a few people who remained calm even as the turmoil tightened. These were not the men and women who were staring at the wounded, at the rubble. They were (from behind cleosd doors, of cours) interested in only one thing. They were staring at the hull of this craft, waiting. Watching.
Waiting for when the doors would open.
When they did, there was instant quiet. Sirens wailed faintly, but there were no more screams. We watched, they watched, the whole world held their breaths. We all had one heartbeat - simply staring at that pale silver, oddly swept craft ..
They came bearing calligraphy brushes.
Out they marched with military precision. This was what They had been waiting for, those watchers. They felt something in the pits of their stomachs, a combination of 'I told you so' and 'What could we have done.' They lowered their heads, they took off reading glasses with shaking hands. there was nothing they could do.
The aliens were short and squat, with wide eyes but proud faces. They held the brushes to the sky, and the message was clear.
Humans were so intent on killing - blasting each other away on the streets, eradicating each other in wars. If not with guns and knives, then with words and harsh feelings. They were, it seems, in a self-destructive spiral. Why not help them, if they seemed so eager to destroy themselves? They held the brushes aloft, and the meaning, the symbolism was as sick as it was brilliant.
They meant to start fresh, to rip a new canvas. With broad steps the little aliens stepped from their ship, and began to rewrite history in wide unforgiving strokes, painted red with the blood of a desperate world.
