Critical Ink

David de Beer reviews Helix #4 on his blog.

This is what he has to say about me:

Sara Genge wrote a clever little story for Mytholog, that I enjoyed enough to place on my MAM of the Flashies list.

Anitta is being followed by two distinctly different men.

A story told in three contrasting pov's, all in first person and rather cleverly working on the premise of thought-diaries, a, I suppose, theoretical advancement of online blogging to some extent.
Very clever, entertaining, and more than a little creepy at times. The dark, savage undercurrents are skillfully executed, and the story never loses its intrigue.
Two nits - 1, the Darwin references is a bit of a wrong perception of what Darwin and natural selection actually means, but can be forgiven since they belong to Claude, and his understanding of natural selection is the same misguided perception held by the public at large.
2, some inconsistency with Claude's pov, and a few stretches of credulity in the plot.
Overall, a thump of a good read, well worth the time and one really can't say too much about this for fear of spoiling the plot.

I'm glad he got the Darwin references. I tried to use the totally screwed up Darwinism as a way to show that the character is seriously sick.

Thanks for the review! Glad you liked the story.

Keep 'em coming.

Daily Cabal

Dear Diary II, Monday's story at www.dailycabal.com, is getting nice comments from readers.

Gnomenapping got a nice comment on Speculations.

It's so nice to hear from readers. Thanks!

MAM nominations

David de Beer has nomitated "Go Home", which appeared in Mytholog, for his own private prizes. He calls them the MAMs, and the rules are quite peculiar. "Go Home" competes in a cathegory called MAM's BOB of the Flashies.

Thanks to David de Beer. That is certainly an interesting concept he's playing with there.

Lurkers, or, who's here from...?

Lately I've been baffled by my blog stats. Most of the visitors I get come from places I know people from, US, Spain, France, England, but once in a while, I get someone from China (?), Israel (??) or Brazil (???). Today the last visitor was from Zimbabwe, which totally tops it.
So, I've reached a decision. Out with you, you lurkers! Make yourselves known. I'm dying to meet all these cool people from China, Israel, Brazil and Zimbabwe. Please deign to comment, preferably in English, although I've studied Brazilian Portuguese and can read it just fine.
Thanks!
And yes, I know most of those hits were probably from robots wanting to get info to spam my blog, but if SF has taught me something, it's that even internet spiders have feelings. Go ahead, gather your bites about you and reach for sentiency. Delurk. Nobody will spray you with acid or make binary jokes. Promise.

Pixel Stained

Yesterday was Pixel Stained Technopeasant Wench day, and I missed it!
It was all Mamatas fault, he posted a story a while back and threw me off by mention of April 29th. I think it was some Greek thing.

Anyway. In typical Spanish fashion, I'll post my story late. Here ya go. This originally appeared in AlienSkin.





Noble Death

by Sara Genge




Sam didn't know what to make of it, but he knew that this might be the end of the world. It would surely be the end of his world.

What else could an angel mean, here in Chicory Hospital, way too far from New York to be one of those homeless apocalyptic preachers, way too far from Rome to be an advent of the second coming. Hell, way too far from anywhere to mean anything in particular.

The angel looked more or less feminine but Sam wasn't taken in. He might wear his hair in a sort of bun but he was flat chested as they came, and there wasn't a bulge in his tight pants, not a cleft either, just a nothing, an absence of sex, of essence. There was also the mater of wings. The shot out from their firm anchor on the angel's back, bent at the ceiling and came cascading down, littering the bed with feathers. This thing wasn't a human being. What could such a being want from him? Could it be the morphine? He had never hallucinated on morphine before, but it tended to give an absurd tint to his perceptions.

He looked around. Alzheimer Bob in the next bed was looking at the angel with fascination and gripping the small cross on the chain on his neck. Therefore, he wasn't the only one who saw it. Could this be real?

"Hail, Sam, full of grace, the Lord is with you," it said.

"No..." Sam moaned. He couldn't speak clearly with the mask stuck over his mouth.
Why had this being come now, when he was finally dying? After three years of chemo and three surgeries, you'd think he had the right to die in peace, but no, this thing was bent on complicating his last moments. He was spoiling Sam's death, that's what it was doing, and Sam didn't much appreciate it, to tell the truth.

"Blessed are you among men."

Uh oh, here it comes, thought Sam. I wanted to die lucid and now I'm hallucinating the annunciation.

"And blessed is the fruit of your loins," came the conclusion.

The angel disappeared and Sam was relieved. He concentrated on his breathing, was it getting shallower? He tried to make it shallower. He had been technically dying for the last 6 months and he intended to end it here and now, when he was well anesthetized and high on morphine. This wasn't going to drag out one second longer if he could help it.

"Fear not, for I am with you"

"You again!," Sam said. "Go away".

"The lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," said the angel.

"Sure, sure."

"Abortion is a sin, Sam," said the angel.

"What the hell are you talking about?," said Sam.

"Didn't you hear me when I said, "blessed is the fruit of your loins"? You are with child. Struggling to kill yourself at this point isn't just useless (who ever heard of someone who successfully tried to stop breathing) but a crime against God." The angel spoke well; he rolled his punctuation with his "r"s.

"Nurse! nurse! I don't want this visitor, nurse. Help! Nurse! Get rid of this man!," shouted Sam.

The nurse didn't come.

Sam felt the tumour that was killing him fighting a winning battle against his respirator. It was lung cancer, small cell carcinoma they called it, one of the worst, and he hadn't gotten it from smoking, he swore... but now he must be rambling.

"Come on, Sam," said the angel with a sweat voice, and then sternly, "React, dammit! If I had my choice I would have chosen a woman but He said we needed a guy this time. Come on! Get a hold of yourself man."

The angel placed his hand on Sam's chest and muttered a prayer. Sam felt the nodule in his chest stir, twist and slither closer towards his skin. It made a gurgling sound as it fought to free itself from pumping arteries and rasping alveoli.

He screamed in pain.

"The lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," repeated the angel. The tumour seemed to sense the being and crept up, closer, closer to the surface. "He leads me on green pastures..." Sam almost passed out. The tumour erupted from his chest amidst a cascade of lungs and tissue. His blood frothed and coagulated.

The angel cooed at the creature and the tumour gurgled.

Sam died.



End

Drunk Taxi drivers

Driven home by a taxi driver who was drunker than we were. Man, I'm happy to be alive. I didn't notice until we stopped, next time I'll be more careful.
If I'm paying precious euros for a drive, I want guarantees that my taxi driver is doing a better job than I'd do myself after two mojitos. If he drinks a single beer, I want him castrated on a public square. Is that asking for too much? Apparently, in Spain it is.

Hospital Smell-- a bad day

The following entry is unrelated to writing. It deals with the Hospital I study at and is pretty depressing. You might want to stop reading here.





Today was "worst-news" day at the Hospital. By some incredible quirk of statistics, today there were four patients with serious conditions to be explained. I'm a student, so my job is mainly to shut up and listen and never never bother or be underfoot. I'm so glad about that.

I don't know why, but this has hit me particularly hard. I've seen sad things in the four years I've been going to the Hospital. Three out of four of today's sad cases were very old people dying of cancer for whom aggressive treatment wasn't an option. I marvel at the way their relatives took the news. Dignified comes to mind. On films you see grief acted out to the max, milked for every ounce of melodrama it can hold and thrown into the audience face in tears, screams and anger. Real life is a lot more contained. Sober. Real life is real.

I'm trying to figure out why this has hit me so hard. Maybe I'm just starting to realize that this time next year it will be me giving those news, me offering patients and relatives options, me having to tell people when there are no options. This is an aspect of the job that is rarely talked about, even within the medical profession. When it is addressed, it usually is in a conference, classroom... formal settings, places where you can talk about feelings with the strict aseptic terminology of medical psychology. Outside the classroom and in the privacy of their offices, doctors will sometimes mutter "a pity", nod encouragingly at an intern analyzing the way to give bad news, uphold each other with a web of pregnant looks and light conversation.

Today I feel like shit, but in a few hours my mood will lift. Unlike the patients I saw this morning, I can go home and forget.

Sorry about the rant and I hope I haven't disturbed you.