This one is, was, and always will be kind of ridiculous. It’s the technical restriction – the end result is like the narrator has language Tourette’s.
I ended up keeping it quite short, for the sake of my sanity as much as yours. As a point of interest, I used twelve different languages – Afrikaans, Spanish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Zulu, French, German, Welsh, Latvian, Japanese, Luxembourgish, and Cebuano. And, in my defence, I don’t know any of these languages, and exclusively used Google Translate, so if something doesn’t read correctly it’s not my fault.
Remember, if you wish to submit restrictions for a future Flash Fiction Challenge you can do so here.
Title: Tell Me Tomorrow
Premise: A lone man wanders through a desert wasteland. He is tired and the last good meal he had was days ago. As he continues wandering he stumbles upon a walled in settlement. The man pinches himself, this is not a hallucination. The gates to the settlement stand open and he can’t hear a sound coming from inside. Desperate to find food and water, the man heads inside…
Dialogue: “Use the skyhooks to jump between them, but make sure you don’t swing too far or you might find yourself in the wrong dimension!”
Technical: Every sentence must have a word from a non-English language, no names, 10 languages (not including English) minimum.
Tell Me Tomorrow
“Use the skyhooks to jump between them, but make sure you don’t swing too far or you might find yourself in the wrong dimension!”
Those were the last words I heard before pop, I swung too far, and ended up in this verlate woestyn, this godforsaken desert I know not where, no food, no water, no nothing for company but my own exhaustion and despair. The capitán was gone, maybe in this dimension, maybe another, who knows. The rest of my fellow szakemberek were probably spread across twenty dimensions, assuming they survived the jump at all – not a guarantee, even for Professionals.
So anyway, I’ve been abandoned so now I’m walking through this woestyn, and it’s… it’s pretty bad – too hot during the day, too cold at night, and while it’s the hunger that hurts I know it’s the thirst that’s going to kill me. I’ve been seriously augmented, I’ve received quite a few atnaujinimai, so I can survive some pretty serious shit, but being stranded in the desert is a war of attrition that anyone will lose eventually.
So I’m walking through the woestyn when I have a Star Wars moment – in the distance I see a structure, artificial, not natural, still too far to make out any details, and like 3PO suddenly I’m thinking I’ve been saved. I reign in my excitement, because we all know how that turns out for 3PO, and start heading for the structure – I don’t know if it’s human-made, since there may not be humans in this dimension, but odds are good that whatever isidalwa built it survives off food and water, two things I am in desperate need of.
That brings us to le présent. I find myself standing outside of a relatively small walled settlement, of a style that looks completely out of place in the middle of the woestyn, creeped the hell out by the complete and utter lack of noise coming through the thirty-foot gates that stand wide open. The entire place, even the walls and gates, is made of some kind of smooth white stone – not the sandstone I’ve seen in the rest of the woestyn – that’s cool to the touch, despite the burning heat of the sun above.
The way in is paved with a road of the same white stone, the entire thing either seamlessly put together or, the way it looks, entirely one piece, with the word ‘wilkommen’ carved into the beginning. A German settlement, then – interessant.
I pinch myself to make sure it isn’t a hallucination – it isn’t – and then, despite my hesitation over the eerie lack of noise coming from within, I step over the ‘wilkommen’ and enter the settlement.
There are twelve buildings in total – a main hall (with an offshoot chapel), a workshop, communications, agriculture (no food or water, though), various others, mostly dormitories – all built of the same smooth white stone, all flawlessly constructed, all as empty as the soul of an offeiriad. Not one scrap of food or water though, not one nopelt scrap.
Kuso! Kuso kuso kuso kuso!
There is one thing in this godforsaken place, though – a sense of unease, that hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck, someone-watching-you, person-walking-over-your-grave feeling of unease that makes you jump at shadows and sends ziddert down your spine. I finish checking each of the buildings and leave as quickly as possible, fleeing from the settlement back into the woestyn. I suppose I could have sheltered there overnight, but… I’m not sure I’d last a night on the other side of the ‘wilkommen’.
As I’m walking away I realise something is following me – who or what, I know not, perhaps just my hunahuna, but I’m fairly certain it’s something.
I still have no food, no water, keine hoffnung, and now I’m pretty sure I’m being followed by what I can only describe as an evil spirit. Will I survive another night in this verlate woestyn, I don’t know, but if you do, if you know… tell me tomorrow.