Shooting Star

Rachel Phoenix finally figured out why the structure she was climbing was called the Tower of Venom and it had little to do with the owner’s namesake. Even with a black veil over her nose and mouth, she still gagged and coughed at the fowl odor emanating from the barred windows. Feces, urine, vomit, and god knows what else assaulted her slender nose like a war hammer to the face. The heat waves from the oncoming shooting star in the sky baked this biological sludge like the ophidian tower was a gigantic oven. The elf rogue had no time to waste vomiting herself inside out. This mission had to be completed no matter how badly she wanted out.

Just a few more dry heaves in her ninja veil and a hell of a lot more tugs on her grappling hook and the winded elf in black rags rested on the top of the tower for a while. She could just drift off into dreamland no matter how horribly it reeked. In fact, this murderous odor would have been the perfect anesthesia if it hadn’t been for the raucous sound of a tornado fart echoing throughout the land. Rachel snapped out of her trance long enough to hold onto her rope with a death grip to avoid being blown off.

Once the literal shit storm subsided, Rachel couldn’t hold her lunch down any longer. She removed her veil spilled her guts off the side of the tower. The tidal wave of sickness left her light green skin pale and her muscles so weak that she could barely stand up. She was barely on her knees when she turned around and saw the source of the odor in its entirety. There he was: the ironclad dragon giant sitting on…a toilet. The Tower of Venom…was a giant fucking toilet…for a giant fucking man dragon.

Atlas Venom, as the giant was known, laughed so hard that he sent another gust of wind Rachel’s way. The tiny elf held onto her rope with the strength of someone ten times her size. Sickness or not, flying away in the barf-worthy breeze was an undignified way to die, especially when so many lives were at stake.

Once the giant’s obnoxious cackle ended, he leaned his rotten skull down to level with his intruder and asked, “Can I help you?” The elf rogue took the time she needed to catch her breath and settle her rumbling stomach. “Well?!” Atlas belted.

A few more heavy breaths later, the elf said, “My name is Rachel Phoenix. I’ve been sent here by the Order of the Forest to keep you from doing something incredibly stupid and potentially dangerous. Well, you do stupid shit all the time from what I’ve heard, but this is really going to get your attention.”

She pointed at the flaming star in the sky, which seemed to have grown tremendously since she last gazed upon it. “You see that? We all know you have the power to smash that thing to pieces. You’ve smashed everything else to pieces, why not a shooting star? But if you do that, neighboring villages will be affected by the blast radius.”

Atlas scratched his ass and belched a cloud of toxic sludge before standing to his full height and pulling his iron pants up. Rachel didn’t know what was more disgusting: the tower slash toilet or the fact that Atlas’s lesion-covered ding-a-ling had been hanging there this whole time. She tried to keep herself together by gently massaging her stomach.

“Listen, you dumb bitch,” burped Atlas. “I don’t hear you coming up with any great ideas on how to get rid of that thing. Last time I checked, I’ve got pubic lice bigger than you, so there’s no fucking chance you’re going to smash that thing away. If you’ve got any better ideas, then you’d better start flapping those gums or else you’re one dead little whore!”

Rachel folded her arms and said sternly, “Alright, if it’s ideas you want, it’s ideas you’ll get. If you have the power to smash a shooting star to pieces, you certainly have the power to catch one and drop it in the neighboring ocean behind you. You could break it up little by little and flush the pieces down that lovely toilet of yours. You could even have it as a snack if you wanted to. I’m sure whatever’s rotting in that gut of yours isn’t going to be too badly affected if you ate a giant flaming star.” She paced back and forth with her hand propped on her chin. “Let’s see, you can throw it in the sky and then break it up. You can…you know what? Literally anything else would be better than you scattering the pieces across the land with your reckless ways. Anything!”

Atlas gazed up at the shooting star and noticed that it grew once more. The scorching flames caused a few beads of sweat to trickle down his hairline. Rachel tapped her foot impatiently and said, “Well? We don’t have much time. What’s it going to be, big boy?” The remark caused the dragon giant to scoop her up in one hand and squeeze her already thin body into the width of a toothpick. No matter how pathetically she screamed or how many crunching sounds her body made, Atlas refused to take pity on her.

“Unlike all the filth swirling at the bottom of my tower,” he shouted. “I don’t give two shits about the other villages! They’re the ones who couldn’t accept me to begin with! They’re the bastards who laugh and throw stones at me whenever I show my face! You think my life is just one big fucking joke?! You think I choose to sit here on a giant fucking toilet?! That was the king’s idea! That’s what he calls comedy! I don’t feel one bit sorry for those pieces of dog shit! They’ll get what’s coming to them in short order!”

A tropical storm of sweat trickled down Rachel’s face as she felt the shooting star hurling closer to the tower. “Wait!” she squeaked, prompting Atlas to loosen his grip around her body. “If you put an end to this disaster, you just might be a hero to those people! Nobody would even think to treat a hero that way!”

“Hero?! You think these fucking people deserve a hero?!” roared Atlas while shaking Rachel in his fist. “Their idea of a hero is some rich snob who flaunts his money around without giving a drop of it to the poor! Apparently, those kind of fools work harder than the poor, or so I’m told! You, Rachel…you represent all of those people! All of those monsters! They don’t deserve shit!”

“I don’t represent anybody who casts judgment on others! I represent the innocent ones who will bear the brunt of your reckless ways!” squealed Rachel, who squirmed and struggled until at least her arms were free from Atlas’s grasp. “You’re painting my society with a broad brush, my friend! There are good and evil people from all walks of life! People should be evaluated as individuals, not as groups! If you’re too blind to see that, then you’re no different from the evil ones you claim are bullying you!”

Atlas peered up at the shooting star and then back at Rachel several times while contemplating everything the elf told him. The diminutive rogue took this time to catch her breath and collect her cracked bones. Even with sore ribs, she managed to burst out, “Hurry up and make your decision! That star’s getting closer!”

“You don’t have to rush me, you stupid bitch,” snarled Atlas. “I’ve already made up my mind.” His own eyes resembled shooting stars as they blinded Rachel with a hateful gaze. He could feel the elf quiver and vibrate in his massive lizard hand. He then grinned evilly at her and dropped her in the toilet. “Down you go with the rest of the shit!” he snapped before pulling the handle and watching her swirl.

Except the rogue didn’t swirl. She clung onto the side of the bowl with another grappling hook rope, the blades igniting little sparks as they struggled to keep her still. The swirling brown water dragged Rachel across the bowl while she kicked her legs and held on with a death grip around the rope. Adrenaline flowed even hotter through her veins when she heard Atlas laughing about this whole incident. She kicked harder and held on tighter. And then, the rope snapped like a twig and she was destined to spend eternity in a shit-covered hell.

As she swam through the toilet water whilst ignoring her injuries, she could hear Atlas’s monster laugh morph into a prolonged, “No!” followed by an explosion, a burst of fiery light, and crunching bones of his own. The Tower of Venom bottomed out from underneath Rachel and she went on a tidal wave ride throughout the land. She struggled to keep her head above the shitty current, but eventually sank beneath and swallowed the most vile substance ever to exist. Between heaving for oxygen and vomiting at the same time, Rachel’s lungs felt like she had swallowed the shooting star herself. The current jostled her around like a rag doll, giving her more bumps and bruises along the way. When she was ready to pass out, she landed with a thud.

Except that thud was cushioned by several bales of hay and the tidal wave of shit and piss had crashed upon the land below. Rachel coughed, gagged, and breathed heavily all in the span of a few seconds. Her ribcage ached as though someone fired a cannonball into her gut. Her legs couldn’t carry the weight of sickness and crumbled underneath her when she tried to stand. When she caught most of her breath back, she wiped the sludge away from her eyes and ears long enough to see what just happened.

Atlas’s gargantuan body laid strewn across a wheat field with the shooting star crumbled on top of his broken bones, shredded skin, and bloody organs. Instead of celebrating a staved off apocalypse, nearby farmers in overalls and straw hats laughed their asses off because of the literal shit storm that followed.

Rachel’s brows furrowed together and her teeth clamped down hard in anger despite the taste in her mouth. The villagers’ attitudes left a worst taste in her mouth than anything from the Tower of Venom ever could. Atlas had been right this whole time. The whole world did think he was a freak. While his mannerisms could have used some work, his spirit was in the right place. All of that mind-numbing, soul-crushing torment broke his heart like it would have someone a fraction of his size. Even the biggest and the baddest had feelings too, unlike the pigs who mocked his death.

Rachel slowly drew a knife from her sheath and jumped to her feet, her raging adrenaline allowing her to ignore the pain delving into her body. “Hey!” she shouted at the farmers, who now began trembling in fear and backing up carefully. Trembling herself (but for a different reason), Rachel angrily whispered, “If Atlas Venom was alive right now, he’d say…you’re welcome!”

Rachel Phoenix

NAME: Rachel Phoenix
AGE: 30
OCCUPATION: Elf Assassin
CANON: Tree Party Nation


With the way the 2010 D&D movie script Tree Party Nation was written, alignments were in multiple shades of gray instead of complete black and white. There were no good guys and bad guys and if there were, it would be hard to tell them apart. On one side of the battle, you have a group of environmentally conscious warriors called the Tree Party Nation, who have noble intentions of preserving their forest home, but go about it in a violent and sadistic way. The other side of the battle is Myles Blood’s Goliath Kingdom, where chopping down trees might seem cruel and unusual, but it does give his citizens good-paying jobs and develops his city. Two ambiguous forces of violence colliding and Rachel Phoenix happens to be on Myles Blood’s side.

But if you think this badass chick is a one-dimensional ass-kicker, think again. She also at one point had the capacity for love. In fact, she was the ex-fiance of the Tree Party Nation’s leader, half-elf ranger Barrett Croft. Rachel thought Barrett was too radical for her tastes, so she aligned herself with, in her mind, the voice of reason in Myles Blood, human cleric. However, just because she broke up with Barrett, it didn’t mean that she didn’t have any feelings for him remaining whatsoever. A very small part of Rachel wanted to be with him again.

By the movie’s end, she gets her wish. Barrett Croft broke out of a Goliath prison and held everyone hostage with a nail bomb detonator (yes, they have those in D&D somewhere). Barrett even had the device wrapped around Myles Blood’s chest to show the audience how serious he was. Brute force wasn’t going to put an end to such terrorism. Rachel’s love would. Both the Tree Party Nation and Goliath’s Army had lost a significant number of soldiers in this war.

Now Rachel must convince Barrett that it’s time to make love instead. She made him an offer he would never refuse: put down the bomb and run away to a faraway environmental paradise with her. They would never return to Goliath or have to deal with Myles Blood again. It’s just two love birds solidifying their romance. And it wasn’t an assassin’s prank either. This was true love. Barrett found it within his heart to put down the detonator and walk away in Rachel’s arms. That’s how the story ended.

Even as I write this plot down on a blank document, part of me is wondering why Tree Party Nation would be a dud of a creative project. There are three-dimensional characters everywhere, there’s plenty of fantasy violence to go around, and the ending is something everybody can be happy with whether you’re a diehard geek or a sucker for lovey-dovey ooey-gooey romance stories. I’d actually have to go back into my archives and reread Tree Party Nation to see why it would be a dud.

But then again, a part of me already knows why. First of all, it was written in the style of a movie script. Movie scripts matter…if you live in California. As I write this character profile, I currently live in Port Orchard, Washington, where the only things that matter are knitting, war stories, and loud vehicles. Secondly, the story was written in 2010, a time in my life where my writing was mediocre at best. In fact, I feel that way about anything I’ve written before mid-2013 when I joined the Weekly Short Story Contest and Company group on Good Reads.

It might be a prejudiced way of thinking, but that prejudice has oftentimes been completely justified. Canned dialogue, scattered story structure, undisruptive writing, these things make me afraid to reread Tree Party Nation. So if Rachel Phoenix is going to be used again, she will take part in yet another fantasy story whether it’s a novel I write or a D&D campaign I run. Where else would you find a woman named Rachel Phoenix who openly admits to being an elf assassin? There isn’t a whole lot of need for ninja stars and jagged daggers in a modern setting. Yeah, she’s definitely a fantasy kind of girl, in more ways than just the literary genre. Hehe!

　

***LITERARY QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“If Clue was played with Dungeons & Dragons rules, you could beat a confession out of Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe and have sex with Miss Scarlet on the table of the conservatory.”

-David M. Ewalt, author of “Of Dice and Men”-