The soldier’s lungs gave, causing a wheezy caterwaul to erupt from his mouth as his ribcage was crushed under the weight of a metallic foot. Blood began to spew up from his esophagus, gargled by the air escaping from his encumbered lungs. The Engineer observed from a distance, his legs made useless underneath the weight of a bulky, human shaped machine. It was dead—its eyes lacking the haunting cyan glow of the others, its small head gradually being sucked into the earth’s soupy mud. The back of the machine’s chassis was pried open, the engineer’s trembling hands fumbling with the inner workings as he counted the remaining seconds his team could buy him. The scout attempted to flee but he was pursued by the most nimble of the machines. For a good while it seemed that he was indeed more agile and dexterous than his robotic doppelgangers, but the muddy, rain soaked earth clamped to his foot like a suction cup, tumbling his spindly body down into the sludge. His pursuers surrounded him and began beating him senseless with their cold, metal bats. The boy’s shrieks pierced the air, tears began flowing from his face as his skull was smashed open like a pumpkin, his every last bone crushed and snapped by the machines lambasting him from every angle. Several minutes earlier, the demoman made a noble sacrifice, luring the machines towards a nest of stickes near him, attemping to buy the others more time. Yet by some miracle, he survived the explosion, his lower half destroyed and his entrails smeared across the battlefield. His face was charred, a look of pure delirium across his countenance. Harsh cackles and desperate cries erupted from the drunken Scotsman’s disfigured mouth, his sticky launcher still tightly gripped in his hand. A hulking, corpulent machine trudged up to his charred body, turning the demo’s intestines into paste as his metal boots hammered down into them with each step. The demoman smiled warmly as the machine drew its shotgun, aiming it point blank at his head. The gun fired, and the engineer could see the man’s head explode in slow motion, like red fireworks lighting up the night sky, chunks of skull and brain matter flying in every direction trailed by streaks of crimson. He was the last to remain, a realization that swept a cold shiver up the Engineer’s spine. The machines began trudging toward him, sending him frantic as he fumbled with a tangle of wires and cogs. Blood was draining from him at an alarming rate, his mind becoming laggard and claustrophobic, and his bald head profuse with sweat. But with a click, the machine atop him sprang to life, the internal cogs chugging away and its eyes illuminating to life with a deep red glow. It raised itself off the wounded man’s limp legs, and the Engineer inhaled the deepest breath he had taken since his very first. It stomped away through the muck, pushing through the mob of machines and receiving no resistance or aggression. The Engineer began to cackle, the machines were encroaching upon his position and the hazy glow of their eyes could be seen in every direction he could look. He smiled, whistling to himself quietly for his last remaining seconds before his body was torn limb from limb. --- “Helen. You know exactly what I want.†Gray Mann spoke, his crossed legs resting on his desk, a phone to his ear and a cigarette between his fingers. He wore a dapper, grey suit, his grey hair slicked back and his piercing, grey eyes aimlessly trailing their gaze across his office. “Your mercenaries continue to dwindle while I find faster ways of assembling more machines every single day. I think it would be best for all parties involved that you stop with this futile resistance.†The door opened and in stepped a large, hulking machine, its eyes glowing a deep red. Gray looked towards it and his smug grin vanished from his visage, his eyes growing wide in confusion. He motioned his hand to shoo the machine away, but it stood like a rock, motionless, staring at its creator. “If you’ll, excuse me, Helen,†he began. “I seem to have an uninvited guest.†He placed the phone on the receiver, raising himself up from his desk and walking towards the machine. “What are you doing in here, you imbecile? I thought I programmed you creatures with enough higher intelligence to know not to interrupt me in the middle of such an important exchange! And what is with that hideous red glow that your eyes have taken to? Uniformity is a requirement, not a choice, you special little snow flake. Your fashion sense will not be tolerated. Throw yourself into the central scrap heap and deactivate your vital systems.†The machine remained silent and in place, its body rumbling up and down from the feedback of its inner mechanisms. “You dare defy me? Or are you just too incapable of following the simplest of orders?†More silence passed. “Ugh.†Gray scoffed, contorting his pruney face and turning his back to the creature. “Guess the escort will have to take you out—piece by pie-“ He was interrupted before he could finish, his head turning in surprise at the sound of the machine finally speaking. In a crackled and distorted voice, low and metallic in pitch, it brokenly growled the words: “Activate. Sequence. 45b3.†“W-what?†Gray Mann responded. “Pleasure. Mechanisms. Arming. Prepare. To. Commence. Sexual. Pleasuring.†“WHAT!†Grey Mann screamed. “SEXUAL. PLEASURING. IS. IMMINANT. PREPARE. PROPER. PRE-LUBRICATION.†Gray Mann tumbled back in shock, grabbing onto his desk for support. “I PROGRAMMED NO SUCH FUNCTION!†he cried. The machine’s rumbling chassis began to separate and expand outward, revealing an array of phallic shaped instruments of varying sizes. They stretched outward from the machine on robotic limbs, thrusting at the air menacingly. Like a small rocket, one of the instruments fired off of the machine, missing Gray by a hair. It ricocheted off his desk, crashing out the window and far out of sight. The cowardly old man dodged out of the way as he screamed shrilly, assuming a fetal position at the foot of his desk. The turncoat machine grabbed his creator by the lapels and threw him, stomach first, onto the desk. It pulled at his pants, tearing them away with ease and revealing his wrinkly lower body, his legs wrapped in a large web of bumpy, discolored varicose veins and the fur of his buttocks encrusted with his leaky rectum’s anal discharge. Gray started kicking backwards and thrashing around, but to no avail, as the machine above him grabbed hold of his crusty ass and spread it wide. Like fish to bait, several of the phalluses swooped in at the sight of his brown, puckered asshole, stuffing his rectum and causing him to shriek in agony. His ass began to bleed as the walls of his rectum hemorrhaged from such a sudden expansion. With one hand, the machine grabbed hold of Gray Mann’s testicles, stinging them in its icy cold grip. It began to twist them around, cutting off the circulation and causing them to redden and swell. With each additional thrust, the machine’s grip on them grew tighter and tighter, the scrotum growing a darker shade of purple with each passing second. Gray began to piss himself, his urine spilling off his desk like a waterfall and splashing into a small puddle forming at his feet. He desperately clung to the desk, pulling himself downward towards its bottom drawer, just slightly out of his reach. With each inch he nudged forward, the harder the knot in his testicles was pulled. The scrotal sac became a dark, blackish shade of purple, the thin veins inside pulsing outward in deprivation. The wreathing pain in Gray’s lower abdomen was so intense he could barely afford enough oxygen to scream. Finally, he felt his finger tip touch the handle and pulled it outward, revealing a revolver. He stretched out for it, grabbing hold of the cold ivory and pulling himself up. In the blink of an eye, the machine wrapped it’s immense hand around Gray’s gun wielding arm and snapped the two forearm bones within its vice like grip. It yanked its scrotum-gripped hand backward with all its might, severing the blackened testicles from Gray’s body, and dragging along a sizeable length of the vas deferens with it. Gray was hoisted upward once more, and tossed towards the opposite end of the room, crashing into the wall and causing his body to slump over in agony, the wind knocked out of his lungs. The machine twisted and crushed the testicles into a long, phallic shape, like it were a malleable piece of clay. It trudged toward the downed old man, pressing the testicle-phallus up to its empty crotch. “PROCEED. WITH. FELLATATION.†It growled, grabbing a clump of Gray’s hair. The old man’s eyes widened at the sight of the mangled clump of flesh. It was riddled with veins and the thick coating of hair embedded in it was encrusted with blood . Beads of urine clung to its wrinkly mounds, dripping onto the hard wood in front of Gray. His lips were forced around the mass of flesh, his mouth and throat taking the entirety of the shaft. He began to shudder in disgust as he felt the sliminess of his testicular hairs sliding up and down his throat. “EJACULATION. COMMENCING.†The machine growled. It began to stuff the scrotum down Gray’s throat, echoing a monotone orgasmic moan through the entirety of it. The phalluses attached to the machine began to secret a thick, pasty fluid, dousing Grey and the entirety of the room in its viscous glaze. “Y-Y-Y-Y-YOUR-YOUR-YOUR P-PLEASURES H-H-HAVE B-BEEN M-MET-T-T-T†it barked, before deactivating and falling lifeless on the floor before Grey. The old man grabbed his throat in horror, struggling to breathe with a scrotum lodged in his wind pipe. He ran out of his office, searching frantically for a minion to save him. Gray turned into the main assembly line and his eyes widened in absolute horror. Hundreds of machines, their eyes all glowing a deep red, all engaged in a massive robotic orgy. Machines were barebacking machines, motor oil lathering their phallic appendages as they moaned distorted orgasmic cries and filled each others’ receptacles. More and more of them were being manufactured, better designed to suit their new pleasuring purposes. Upon noticing their master’s arrival, their heads synchronously turned toward him, all of them freezing in mid-copulation. The old man fell to his knees, his face turning a light shade of purple. The machines approached him, their erections primed and lubricated. By the time they began copulating with his withered body, his mind was far gone. They mounted him from all directions, pounding into every hole until he was no more.
This-this is amazing. in a great way, though, but I'm just adoring this. Best way to kill off Gray Mann!
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"pure delirium across his countenance." "a wheezy caterwaul" "the machines lambasting him" "bumpy, discolored varicose veins" " viscous glaze" Aside from this being one of the most disturbing things I've read, I found all these strange phrases rather jarring. There were a lot more in there that caused me to do a double take. These examples however were most jarring to me, mostly because I don't think you actually have a grasp on what these words mean, as the level of the writing would suggest. Using a thesaurus to replace random words doesn't make good writing (Stephanie Meyer is a prime example of this). For example, a caterwaul is a shrill, high pitched shriek. It's hard to imagine something piercing and loud like a caterwaul being wheezy. Lambasting's main definition is to criticize harshly, usually with words, and it's second definition is to scold sharply or beat (as in spank). I doubt that's what the robots were doing to the scout... Instead of using a thesaurus, work on building your vocabulary so that these words automatically come to you as you write. And if you don't know what a word means without having to look it up, probably best not to use it in your writing.
Delirium - a state of violent excitement or emotion. Lambast - to beat or whip severely. Viscous - of a glutinous nature or consistency; sticky; thick; adhesive. Source: Dictionary.com What the hell are you on about? None of the words I used were incorrect in any way. I don't even see what the pitch of a scream has anything to do with having a wheeze to it. Frankly, I'm insulted that you would accuse me of stooping as low as to resorting to thesaurus.com to spice of the vocabulary, especially considering absolutely none of my word choices were incorrect.
Also, what varicose veins AREN'T discolored and bumpy?
Hey now, just take a breath okay? I wasn't insulting you. I was criticizing your writing. If you weren't using a thesaurus, then good for you. That doesn't change the fact that all of these words and the frequency with which they were used were very distracting to the overall composition of the story.
I laughed. Hard. Not bad, Junkie. Keep it up. The phrasing was a little awkward at times, and I'm not really a fan of all-caps dialogue (but that's just a personal thing). Otherwise it was good. I look forward to seeing more weird shit from you.
@7 I do not appreciate your condescension, that is all. I am perfectly fine with any sort of criticism, but not when it is doled out by someone who can't even get their facts straight. Even after giving you the very definitions of the words I used, you come back at me with nothing and a generic "calm down lol" response. Did you not think I would be insulted when you have the gall to assume I used a thesaurus?
It's a common mistake most people make, using a thesaurus. I didn't get the feeling like you actually knew what these words meant. They stuck out like a sore thumb, broke the flow of the story, and in many cases just ended up confusing me. If you weren't using a thesaurus, I do apologize. I still don't think the words used in this story are good word choices. Yes, lambasting can mean to beat or whip, but you would normally use the word to refer to some sort of punishment, as in to teach a moral lesson. It is NOT the sort of thing a bunch of mindless robots would do to their enemy.
Christ almighty, Junkie. Loved it, it was well written, utterly repulsive (the story served its purpose well), and a piece I'm not likely to forget any time soon. "Uniformity is a requirement, not a choice, you special little snow flake." I loled I disagree with OP on some of the criticisms, I feel like most of Junkie's vocabulary was appropriate. There were a few out of place words, but nothing too glaring. Keep up the great work, man!
Junkie, your usage of your words was a little ill-suited to the description you were attempting and you can't fault your audience for being a little disconcerted by it. Please try to use their comments to your best interest and avoid awkward phrasing in the future. This is a constructive forum, so being immediate defensive to constructive criticism is not helping you in any respect. If you are looking for mindless praise may I please direct you to fanfiction.net. Thank you and good day.
Perfectly Cromulent Word syndrome aside, here's some other crit: 1) The rest of the story is written from Gray Mann's point of view, so why not have him be spectating over the opening scene where everybody dies horribly? 2) Descriptions read kind of like a police blotter. Case in point: Gray Mann spoke, his crossed legs resting on his desk, a phone to his ear and a cigarette between his fingers. He wore a dapper, grey suit, his grey hair slicked back and his piercing, grey eyes aimlessly trailing their gaze across his office This part of the story is pretty much told from Gray Mann's point of view, so incorporate the physical description into his incidental actions--that way, the audience not only knows what he looks like, but he also comes across as a raging narcissistic egomaniac. Here's my attempt at rewriting the scene... Gray Mann spoke with an imperious air, resting his crossed legs on his desk and enjoying the sensation of his custom silk grey suit against his skin. Cigarette between his fingers, he glanced aimlessly across his office until his gaze caught sight of his reflection. He ran hand against his hair--gray, naturally, and slick with the best oils a Mann of his standing could buy--and admired his visage. The door opened and in stepped a large, hulking machine, its eyes glowing a deep red. Which large, hulking machine? And why is its eyes glowing red significant? 3) Gray should've been dead well before the end of the story, unless you stopped to explain why not. He was tossed around like a ragdoll several times, had several phallic objects shoved up his ass, and had his scrotum ripped off. He should've bled out well before he was gangraped to death by his own robots. If the regeneration thing embedded in his spine kept him alive, then tell us in the narrative. That adds to the horror of the final scene--he should have been dead many times over, but because he modified himself to be nigh indestructible, he gets to live through the worst night of his life, realization dawning that this was why the Engineer had died laughing...
@dotchan Thank you for the feedback, I do appreciate it. "Perfectly Cromulent Word syndrome aside," Could you be more specific? I can't think of anywhere that I used some archaic, obscure vocabulary. "1) The rest of the story is written from Gray Mann's point of view, so why not have him be spectating over the opening scene where everybody dies horribly?" Would that not make him aware that the engineer had reprogrammed a robot that was sent after him? This also relates to your question of "which large hulking machine?" The premise of the entire opening was to show the engineer sending a robot after Gray in his dying moments, the robot's identifying factor being the red eyes which signified his switching over in allegiance, which you are supposed to make the connection to after he appears again later in the story. I felt describing him as a "heavy-bot" or something to that regard would sound silly in the context of the narrative voice. I'll try to make such a connection clearer in future writing. 3. I was actually going on TF2 logic for the reason of his survival, but the idea of incorporating his life support machine in keeping him alive is really a really great idea. Thanks again for the input.
@12 Oh, I agree. There are many awkward sentences/word choices in my story. I'm not getting butthurt over real problems evident in my writing. But OP's comments came off as condescending. It doesn't help that the words he assumed I don't understand or "used a thesaurus" to look up were correct. I'm all for constructive criticism, believe me. I'm not here to have my ass kissed. I'm here to become a better writer. The comments and criticisms of dotchan and everyone else above are all greatly appreciated.
Could you be more specific? I can't think of anywhere that I used some archaic, obscure vocabulary. Not so much "archaic" or "obscure" as it feels a bit unnecessarily complicated. I'm the wrong person to ask about the "meter" or "cadence" of a sentence, but the sentences that OP had an issue with are also ones I found to throw me out of the story as well. pure delirium across his countenance. why not just "across his face"? a wheezy caterwaul "a wheezing wail" reads more naturally, IMO. the machines lambasting him I thought "lambasting" was generally used to mean to lay into someone verbally, and not physically? bumpy, discolored varicose veins The "varicose" is kind of redundant combined with "discolored". I think you should have one or the other, but not both. viscous glaze When I read "glaze", I think "that transparent stuff on ceramics". Speaking of that sentence, something else jumped out at me... dousing Grey and the entirety of the room "dousing" and "entirety" implies a volume of ejaculate that, again, probably would've killed a normal human being at the moment of orgasm. Would that not make him aware that the engineer had reprogrammed a robot that was sent after him? I doubt it. Gray is presented as being so egotistical that he literally misses what's right under his nose. Of course you'd have to rewrite the ending a little, to have it that all Gray sees from his point of view is the Engineer's dying laughter, something that Gray shrugs off as "whatever, he must have lost it" before the robot comes in and does terrible things.
is it natural for someone to cackle maniacally while being terrified?
dotchan, you're honestly being really nit-picky on the guy's story at this point, especially with your argument that Gray should have been killed by the ejaculate or by being thrown around. This story is obviously not grounded in realism. This is a fanfiction about a game where men propel themselves in the air by shooting rockets and bombs at their feet. As for his choice of vocabulary, there's a lot of oddly written sentences but none of the words listed in your examples appear to be incorrect or misplaced in any way. to junkie, I enjoyed the story, but something about it felt missing. The ending seemed really rushed and crammed in at the last minute. The robot gang rape could have provided a great deal of horror to the story if it was expanded upon.
Oh my gosh. I laughed. And I have to say, I encourage any ridiculous phrasing or over-the-top wordage in order to further add to the ridiculousness of this story. That was... I don't even.