Author's Games: Star Wars

Sponsorship Task: Primitive Male and Female Entries

Since my husband graciously took it upon himself to fill in both the Primitive Male and Female spots, I'm going to go ahead and post both of his entries together but separate from everyone else. 

15. Primitive Male: Fidget (word count 991, handed in two hours late) 

Fires... Screams... Death.

Fidget woke to find his best friend Skree shaking him vigorously. He sat up too quickly and the whole room spun around him.

"Careful, you Ranx," Skree whispered harshly. "Don't you die on me too." He sniffed back a few tears. A soft whine rumbled in his chest.

The memories of their village slammed into Fidget all at once. He pulled Skree into a tight hug, more for Skree's benefit than his own. Skree began to sob but Fidget found that his grief was too distant for tears, as if his heart refused to accept that they were gone... that she was gone.

Suddenly, the door to their small, gray walled room whoosed open. A strange creature walked in followed by a rolling metal ball. The creature had weird rubbery skin with a large protruding face. Two eyes rose up above his head or would if they weren't being squished down by the largest hat Fidget had ever seen. The creature began to make noises that Fidget couldn't possibly understand. He opened his mouth to say so when the metal ball cut him off.

"My Maker wishes to ask you a question, primitive," it said in passable ewokese. "He wants to know what skills you possess. Can you fight?"

"Who are you," Skree sneered. "How do you speak our tongue?"

"My Maker calls me Keed. He programed me with all the languages spoken throughout the galaxy. Now answer the question or I'm ordered to shoot you." The metal creature raised a limb, attached to it was a weapon similar to the ones the strange white monsters used to slaughter their village.

"We're hunters", Figdet said before Skree could anger the strange machine. "I was the best hunter in our village and Skree helped me many times. I can trap and track anything in the forest."

"Yeah," Skree interupted him. "And he killed twenty of the white monsters that killed our village by himself." Skree face twisted up with smug pride.

"Interesting," Keed said. "My Maker could use someone like you. He requests that you hunt and kill all of the other meatbags that are competing in the games. He will reward you well if you make their deaths painful and brutal."

"Never!" Fidget shouted as he pushed Skree behind him and as far from Keed as possible. "I vowed to only kill what our people needed to survive. You ask us to kill for sport... for senseless pain and suffering. I will not and never will!"

Without hesitation, Keed's Maker pulled a long black weapon from his back and fired at Fidget. Acting on pure instinct, Skree pushed him sideways out of the weapon's path. Fidget hit the floor hard and turned back to look at Skree.

A large black hole pierced its way deep into Skree's chest. As Fidget watched, the hole grew bigger and bigger. Skree's body was slowly turning to ash as the wound spread. In seconds, Skree was nothing more than a pile of blackened bones in a mound of ash.

"No!" Fidget screamed so loud that the lights in the ceiling above flickered and dimmed. He crawled across the cold metal floor to run his hands through the ash that had once been his best friend. The grief that had once been so distant, now slammed itself him, dragging him down into the deepsest blackest bog of pure misery and pain.

All his life, Fidget had lived alone, a free hunter, living his life in the woods that he loved. Then Skree came and changed everything. He brought life and laughter and eventually... love to Fidget's world.