Mole People Fan Fiction

I never knew until my last post how much you loved Mole People, so I’ve decided to dip my toes in the fan-fiction pool for the first time ever. Thanks for the inspiration! My apologies to Universal Pictures for the copyright infringement, but they shouldn’t have made their mole people so damned sexy.

And now, without further b.s., the greatest work of Mole People Fan Fiction ever created:

Levity is the Mole of Wit

By Cire Nhoj Rekab

Bella Swan and Darth Vader sat back to back, their hands bound with tree roots, as the Mole People brought forth armfuls of sticks. Here, deep within the Earth’s crust, a breeze issued from an ancient lava tube, chilling Bella’s arm and shoulder exposed by the tear in her dress.

They were about to die, burned alive in sacrifice to the insect god Garfoobel.

The raven-haired Bella showed no fear (a childhood injury had paralyzed her face muscles, which often led people to wonder if she could act feel emotion at all). Yet she was fearless not from bravery. Being this close to Vader, feeling the firm muscles of his black-caped back press against her flawless, porcelain skin, hearing the masculine hiss of his breathing apparatus… made her feel so alive. “Let them bring fire,” she thought. The burning she felt for Vader was hotter than the torches of a thousand Mole People.

But Vader pondered not love or fire. He thought of what he had witnessed just hours before aboard the Enterprise, a scene that shook him to his very respirator: Captain Kirk and Spock, lying in passionate embrace beneath satin sheets, violating Starfleet regulations nine ways to Sunday. Despite all his power, Vader could not Force the image from his mind.

“I see you’ve resigned yourselves to your fates,” said Ian, the Mole Person in charge of gathering flammable materials for sacrifice. “That’s good. Your little wizard friend, with the funny glasses and the yellow and maroon scarf… he thought he could defeat the great god Garfoobel, but he was wrong.”

Bella thought that skull stuck in the dirt over yonder had looked familiar. If she weren’t so busy brooding, the realization would have made her scream, “Haaaarrryyyy! Noooo!”

Vader mustered all the menace he had in him and turned his helmeted face toward the Mole Person. “Ian. I am your father.”

Ian tossed another branch on the pile. “No you’re not.”

“Search your feelings,” Vader said, impressing himself with his soulful delivery.

“One,” Ian said, “Mole People don’t have feelings. And two, that’s my dad right over there making Garfoobel’s tea. His name’s Archibald but, of course, we call him Stan.”

Damn, Vader thought. That worked so well last time. If only he could shoot finger lightning like the Emperor, this would all be over in a jiffy.

Garfoobel!

“Come on, then,” Ian said. “Over to the stake with you. And no funny business.” He hoisted the entwined couple to their feet and shoved them toward the iron post at the center of the Circle of Sacrifice. “You’re actually doing the topsiders a favor, you know. Without human sacrifices, Garfoobel would be up there smashing up the place. So think about that when the fire starts to lick your toes.”

The voice came from behind them. “Stop right there! They’ll be no sacrifice tonight!”

The Mole People, Bella, and Vader whirled around (which should have been a physical impossibility, given that the lovely waif and her planet-destroying love interest were tied together). Standing before them was Dr. Who, pointing his weird little screwdriver thing. His travelling companion, Clara, clung to his arm.

“And why not?” the Mole Person asked.

“Because,” said the natty Time Lord, “You cannot kill trademarked characters like Bella Swan, Darth Vader, and Harry Potter without the expressed written consent of Lionsgate, Disney, and Warner Brothers!”

An epic battle was about to break out when the exceptionally beautiful Clara turned from the page and gazed directly into the eyes of the guy writing this story, which startled him, to say the least. “So why are you wasting your time writing this bollocks? Especially when I’m standing right here, waiting for you to notice me.”

“Well,” the writer said, finding the attention she gave him rather implausible given the severe attractiveness mismatch. “I’ve got this Mole People thing going, and I really ought to–”

With that, Clara stepped through the writer’s laptop screen, into the room, and put her arms around his neck. “You’re new at fan fiction, so I should tell you that you can make it end however… you…want.” She tapped his nose with her index finger for punctuation.

And they lived happily ever after.

Clara (Jenna Louise Coleman), formerly Dr. Who’s time-travelling companion.

The Stupid Sword

At the end of my “Writing Motivated Characters” post the other day (the one most of you discovered on Freshly Pressed – thanks WordPress!), I advised people against writing stories about stupid swords because no one wanted to read such a thing.  Several people disagreed in the comments, saying that, in fact, they did want to read a story about a stupid sword. So I wrote one.

In all its one-and-a-half draft, 900-word glory…

♦ ♦ ♦

The Stupid Sword

© 1352

by Elrick J. Bakirke

Bernie and Carlos stood over the object, hands on hips.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bernie said. “What do you make of it?”

Carlos shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what to make of it, man.” He wished everything would just go back the way it had been three minutes earlier, before they found the thing. Carlos and mystery went together like muskrats and cobras. Or like Doritos and chocolate chip mint ice cream. Both of which Carlos liked, by the way, but not at the same time.

“That’s got to be the stupidest damn sword I’ve ever seen,” Bernie said.

“Sword?” Carlos said, confused. He studied Bernie’s face. Bernie was 20 years older and had been working here a long time. He knew a lot of stuff.

Bernie nodded. “Yeah. I’d go as far as to say it’s deformed, but I don’t know if a sword can be deformed. I think they use that word for animals. You know, like a two-headed turtle or a goat with six legs.”

Carlos made the sign of the cross and looked toward the heavens. He noticed a water stain on the ceiling tile. “What do we do?”

Bernie shrugged. “We call Fabermann, I guess.”

Carlos was careful not to show a reaction, but he was thinking, “Why did I open my big mouth?” The last thing Carlos wanted was Fabermann poking around. Fabermann had gigantic lips but a tiny nose and even tinier eyes. He looked like a pink toad who needed a shave. Now that’s deformed, Carlos thought, chuckling a bit, despite the gravity of the situation.

Bernie, who was technically Carlos’s supervisor even though it was just the two of them, said, “Wait here,” and then pulled up a chair at the computer terminal. He made a Skype connection with Fabermann.

Carlos guarded the sword. “That’s one stupid sword,” he said, though he really had no idea what made it stupid. He just wanted Bernie to like him.

“Fabermann,” Bernie said. “We got a… concern here.”

Fabermann’s big head filled the monitor screen. “A concern? You’re wasting my time for a ‘concern’? Whattya got a water leak in 3H? Fix it!”

Bernie’s face scrunched up, which it did whenever he had something serious to say. “Well, it’s more like a problem. I think you should advise.”

“Spit it out, Bernie.”

Bernie shot a nervous glance at Carlos. Carlos shot a nervous glance at the sword. He had gotten so caught up with Fabermann that he forgot to watch the sword. Damn it!

Bernie said, “Carlos and I… we found something here in the break room. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a sword.”

“A sword?” said Fabermann.

“Yeah. A stupid sword.” Bernie sat back and sighed.

Carlos shuddered. Bernie hadn’t sighed since 2010. That was the last time Max Fabermann had gotten involved in their affairs. Events were more dire than Carlos had imagined.

Fabermann looked this way and that, contemplating. “You guys say you’re in the break room, eh? Sit tight.”

The door to Fabermann’s office swung open and Fabermann strutted through. “Show me!”

Bernie ran to meet him, hobbling like a chimpanzee with no knees. Carlos hated to see Bernie get pushed around. “Uh, right here, Mr. Fabermann.”

Carlos was scared, but mostly out of solidarity with Bernie. He pointed at the stupid sword, in case Fabermann was unsure.

Fabermann chomped his cigar and took a closer look. “Hmmm. This right here? This is the sword?”

Bernie and Carlos nodded.

Fabermann circled it, mumbling, then stood straight. “This sword. This stupid sword right here is why you called me?”

Bernie said, “Yes, sir.”

Fabermann whapped Bernie and Carlos in the head with his beret. “That’s my nephew, George, you idiotic baboons!”

George Fabermann peeked up from the magazine he was reading, People’s 50 Best Episodes of Cupcake Wars. “Hey, Uncle Max.”

Carlos’s pain was acute. Not from being struck by Fabermann’s hat, but from his sudden realization that Bernie Shempstein, his hero, mentor, and ersatz father was, in fact, a blithering moron. Carlos knew it wasn’t a sword! He knew it looked like a person reading a magazine, but he’d trusted Bernie!

“I trusted you,” he said. The words fell from his lips like they were made of liquid nitrogen, which must be heavier than air, if you think about it logically. It’s a liquid.

Bernie hung his head. “But… I thought… I mean, George didn’t say anything, so I just figured… Uh, am I fired?”

Max Fabermann laughed. “No, Bernie. You aren’t fired. You are forged!”

Carlos and Bernie said, “What!”

With that, a ball of flame burst from the ground, and Max and George Fabermann unfurled their wizard capes. The room crackled with sinister magic. Max pointed his staff at Bernie. “This is a fantasy story, you fool! Never mind that its author has no clue how to write one. He promised a story with a sword, and his readers are getting a sword.”

An arc of purple lighting – the only kind of arc in this story – issued from the staff and struck Bernie, turning him to a sword. A stupid one, by Carlos’s estimation, now that he’d had some experience with them. George the Wizard took hold of the sword and flew from the room with his uncle, their chilling laughter echoing through the halls of the maintenance department, which was in the basement of building 4.

Carlos fell to his knees in slow motion and screamed “Noooooooo,” because that happened in Lord of the Rings and it seemed like the right thing to do.

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The only sword song I could think of, Strike of the Sword, by Japan’s premier metal band of the 1980s, Loudness. Akira Takasaki shredding on guitar.

 

Ridiculously long sentence, anyone?

Like most writers, I strive to get better every day. I work on mechanics, voice, pacing, plotting. I read advice from other writers. I speak my dialog to make sure it’s real. I aim for tight, crisp prose.

So why do I have so much fun with really really bad writing? I enjoy creating outrageous character names, stilted conversations, and absurd events. And who doesn’t love appalling metaphors and cringe-inducing imagery?

Best of all are looooong sentences. The longer the better.

Here’s one I just made up:

Now that Anton Krakamolitov had finally, after 20 years of relentless, single-minded, but soul-consuming searching, found the underwater cave of Eiberhorn the Serpent, that dreadful thing of which women dare not speak and men only whisper and about which children shudder in fear while cowering in the darkest recesses of their medieval cabin-like domains – the very beast whose undulating, quivering surface of resplendent, sequin-esque, purple scales is impervious to even the finest forgings of weapons-grade iron into implements of destruction that shame even the mightiest superarrows of yore – he began to have second thoughts about what he was preparing to undertake, which caused him not inconsiderable anguish (given the aforementioned 20 years of his hard, bitter life he burned away to reach this moment), mostly because now, as he gazed down at the near lifeless body of Pedro Morganthish, whom he had brought as a sacrifice for Eiberhorn the Serpent (for who was Anton Krakamolitov but a pious devotee of the beast, since his all-consuming quest was, if one knows about worldly things, very like that of one who commences a ruinous religious pilgrimage?), he began to feel the pangs of a remorse that are often indistinguishable from food poisoning and are so often associated with making a human sacrifice of one who killed another’s grandfather, in Anton’s case being Braddox Hammer, the greatest warrior on all of Odinhood, because, though Anton loved his grandfather, he knew that Pedro – poor, dying Pedro – was only defending his recipe for mint pie, without which the Morganthish family would be worth less than the dirt between the treads on Anton’s boots (had Anton’s boots not rotted away years ago), making Anton, who was still looking down upon the gaunt, suffering Pedro, realize in his heart turned stony from all these wasted years of questing and not brushing his teeth that he could not, in good conscience, throw Pedro to the heinous devilfish called Eiberhorn the Serpent, the beast that Anton believed was hiding in its hell cave fathoms below the surface of the black, mirror-like, seaweed choked water, but that, in fact, was no longer down there at all, as it was just now breaking said water surface, with its ghastly maw gaping wide and lunging too quickly for Anton to do anything other than scream in horror as the massive, drooling demon chomped down, crushing Anton, Pedro, and the half-bullet shaped sailboat in one, singular, pointless-quest-ending bite.

405 words. Let’s see what you’ve got!

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