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jflaxman — Consulting the Oracle
Published: 2014-05-27 23:20:38 +0000 UTC; Views: 13133; Favourites: 139; Downloads: 79
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Description
Leanne sat beside her window and watched the faceless crowds pass by. “Everyone else has a smartphone,” she mused. “It’s time I got one for myself.”
She reached under her bed and pulled out two empty pizza boxes, three mismatched stockings, a copy of Rhiannon Hart’s Blood Song and an MX newspaper to reveal her most prized possession. She’d rescued the Oracle from a dumpster when she was a little girl, and the Oracle had been so grateful it had shared its invaluable insights with her.
“Where can I find a free smartphone?” she asked.
The Oracle fixed its eye on her. “Just follow my directions,” it said.
Leanne trusted the Oracle for it had never failed her. She crossed the filthy Skulper Drift, where false smiles slough from rotting billboards, braved the dark Zambala Vale, where needles glint among the weeds, entered Five Mile Cinderblock, a monstrous psychiatric ward, and descended the 36 Echoes of Pain, which resemble subterranean fairgrounds filled with madness and depravity. Each of these was connected by a gently curving ramp, and at the same point on each downward slope, she encountered the same man dressed in a sinister reptile suit that was somehow lit from within. Whenever she passed him he hissed “CLOSER.” This unnerved her more each time.
Tradition holds you will be trapped in the Echoes as soon as you set foot in them; descending the ramp that leads from the lowest somehow brings you back to the top. But none of these tales mention the exit the Oracle revealed to Leanne. Beneath the 36th Echo she found a dry and lifeless sea bed strewn with stone Dissociates sunk to mark times best forgotten. The Oracle told her to stop and dig with the crowbar she had taken from the Kiva of Destruction back in Echo 21.
Hoping to unearth a smartphone, Leanne set to work at once; but all she found was a glass eye she realised was the Oracle’s. “Thank you,” said the Oracle. “I’d wanted that for quite some time.”
“But where’s my smartphone?” asked Leanne.
“Never mind that,” said her guide. “You could have never come this far if you’d been reading Facebook posts and slagging twats who can’t speak lolcat. Why do you want one anyway? I tell you all you need to know!”
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Comments: 43
This si.......actually a really cool vienette. A kind of triumph of creativity and metaphysics over modern synthetic veneer. Great job, man. The picture is also very cool.
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Wow. As funny and silly as this is... its kinda sobering in a weird way. Great picture and a great story.
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Nice! Love the description story, and as always, your style of artwork is as pleasing and creepy and unnervingly original as ever.
Wish I had an Oracle like that, seems a lot cooler and more interesting than a phone that'll short out as soon as you get it wet ONCE...
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clever metaphor, and both a nice drawing, AND a nice story to go along!
it seems, if you have an oracle, or someone/something to guide you out of madness/horror/depravity, you can get out of trouble and start living life in a safe place. that is, if someone can use his/her mind.
also yeah, smartphones can be obsolete, but in some cases necessary. (i have one, yet i never go online with it! thats why my battery+sanity lasts for a long time....)
i prefer to use a PC for net purposes.
good drawing, man. i like how tired/puzzled leanne looks in this picture; also why she is a bit chubby? is she chubby, or maybe a pregnant teen?
as for the oracle, it saved leanne from the hall of the 36 echoes, she better be gratefull, because all the oracle ever wanted was its 2nd eye, and it granted her freedom and intellect!
good work, as always.
you should write a book. i would read it!
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A couple of viewers have said they'd also like an oracle. I haven't had much use for smartphones as they're more power-hungry, expensive and fragile than the $50 Nokia that's served me well on my own adventures.
Leanne's meant to be a bit lonely and unmotivated. I dropped a couple of hints at the start (empty pizza boxes and a dark teen fantasy/romance novel). I thought a more normal character dealing with everyday life issues would be an interesting starting point for weird and otherworldly stories. I imagined her getting braver and more proactive over time.
The multi-leveled subterranean fairgrounds, curved ramps and man in the reptile suit appeared in a much more detailed dream I had a few years ago. I've written a much longer story about Leanne and the oracle which is more closely based on another weird dream: jflaxman.deviantart.com/art/Th…
This stuff may end up in a book one day. Thanks for your encouragement!
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aha, i see!
i guess my advice would be: everyone needs an oracle, but they should never grow too dependent or attached to it; or they will lose all of their will/spontaneousness/individual thoughts/adventuring mind.
as for smartphones, i used to have an ANCIENT ericsson mobile phone, but after 7 years of faithfull service, it died on my hands. (battery started to go really empty, really fast, until one day the phone shutted down)
after mourning my old phone, i found out i could get a new phone for free*, namely a smartphone. (a cheap one)
so i did. i never go online with it, and i only use it as a phone, so the battery lasts for at LEAST 6-7 days, which must be a record for a smartphone nowdays.
(also thanks to my carefull use)
ANYWAY! about leanne; she is an adorable character, despite her being (seemingly) clumpsy, chubby and unmotivated at first sight. she is much more than that, because in the search for the smartphone, she went all the way through the nightmare lands, and she even travelled down inside the hall of the 36 echoes, surviving an even scarier challenge, even with the help of the oracle...
i have to ask: does the lizard-man represent the devil, or this was in your dreams/a random inspiration? the fact that something lights up from within the lizard-man, and the ''closer'' parts added up to its fear-value...
also: how did you come up with such a horrifying place such as the hall of 36 echoes? amazingly detailed!
bottom line, this is a GOOD basis for a book.
leanne, oracle, the horrors they both encounter, and their connected fates.
this seems very good. (once again),i would read it.
also i have reviewed/commented on your dream story, the torus of dementia; it was magnificent.
sorry for the wall of text, but i had to give you a detailed report, since BOTH your writings AND your drawings are great, i think you deserve a detailed comment on its good points...
*nothing in life is free, but i got a good deal, sir!
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Thanks again! Leanne's much more capable than she might appear at first (with or without the Oracle) and over the course of her journeys she comes to realise this herself.
The dream that inspired this short story was much darker and more detailed - I've actually left a lot out. I was in the Echoes of Pain and whenever I met the lizard-suit man he was walking up the ramp towards me, but we always passed at the same place as if he hadn't covered any ground. This is standard nightmare imagery (a sense of getting nowhere) and I used a variant in my Torus of Dementia story. This was also based on a dream but I left no details out and added a whole lot more - the Second and Third phases, the Vigsel Scree antagonist, Leanne and the Oracle were not in it originally.
The Echoes of Pain is a nod to Tim Lebbon's "Echo City," a very original fantasy novel filled with bizarre and frightening imagery, though his Echoes are districts that have been built over and abandoned long ago.
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yes, indeed, i have realised that after reading the ''torus of dementia'' story.
she begins to become a stronger, more independent character as the story progresses.
wow, in case you have left many details out of your dream, then please, write them all down in an independent story, maybe a journal of a lost man, who accidentally entered the ''echoes of pain'' and returned back to tell the tale...
it would be incredibly awesome to read.
ofcourse, the ''monster that never seems to reach me'' part IS a standard nightmare situation, i have been there. i have witnessed that, and with complete horror sometimes i was standing in a spot, and the monster walked towards me, yet it never reached me, as it never covered any ground....
it was clever of you to add it in the ''torus of dementia'', i liked it alot.
also, a standard nightmare situation could be the ''falling from the stairs''/falling from a cliff scenario.
this has made me to jump instinctively out of my sleep and to slightly jump in real life as well!
i see. you have interesting dreams (or dreanightmares i shall say)
so, adding the torus of dementia in full detail+with some extra details created a full-scale epic story of horror and action.
aha, i see. is the ''echo city'' good? would you suggest to me to read tim lebbon?
i also think that i should start reading H.P. lovecraft, so any suggestions about lovecraft would be very welcome.
anyways, keep writing, man... you write good stories and leanne/the orcale as some original characters that walk in a unique horror universe, the endless horror that is mohr bahru.
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holy shit that ending
Immediately thought of a girls' school near my place whose students (secondary, might I just add) have their faces buried in the phones after school neccessitating an adult to hold their hand whilst they cross the road after school (LCI, 6 lanes, and hardly any of them know that, in all probability).
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I love the half buried fish monster idols in the background. Hints of sacrificial temple.
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I'm wondering if there's a moral here. I'm stuck between "don't trust disembodied doll heads" and "you won't get much done if your nose is stuck in a smart phone."
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I really, REALLY hope you publish a book some day.
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do i even need to say ''SECONDED'' in here?
you should write a book, my friend, you have amazing storytelling skills.
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Maybe if we just keep pestering him enough
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indeed! keep up the peer pressure, viergacht, we can do this!
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Thanks for the encouragement. I'll have to learn to take compliments first!
More seriously, do you envision a book of unrelated stories and images, a single illustrated story, or stories and images with a unifying theme? I've thought about an "In Extremis" compilation and have some world-building projects under way, though I haven't posted much of the latter online.
If you're interested in more Oracle-related fiction I've just posted a story called "The Torus of Dementia." This one isn't illustrated and runs to 2700 words.
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Hmm, tough choice. You've got such a wide-ranging imagination, I think the best showcase for your talent would be a collection with a unifying theme and then just to go wild with the individual stories. A little like the Harlan Ellison/Jacek Yerka book that came out a while ago where Ellison wrote stories based on Yerka's paintings, but a little more themed.
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Smartphones are overrated anyhow. Only materialistic rich people and kids who sponge off their parents use them...
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I'm with you there. I tried a smartphone in 2012 for all the wrong reasons (a lot of friends had made the switch and I thought net access would be easier) but it was more trouble than it was worth - bigger, heavier, more fragile, shorter battery life, and not much good for travelling. I've gone back to a dirt cheap and almost indestructible Nokia.
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I wanted a smartphone for a while, but at the same time I never saw the point in having one. I'm pretty sure they have great Internet access, and hold more memory than an average cell phone. But I'm happy with this little flip phone that I've had for three years, it does everything I need it to do and I don't have to worry about it falling apart if I accidentally drop it on the ground... as a matter of fact, mine's a Nokia too. lol
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I'm no great fan of smartphones either. I still swear by my old Nokia!
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I haven't had a cell phone in years.
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Dude, write a book, please. I'd buy that as quick as I can pick up my wallet.
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Muahah. good story. I'm afk then to enjoy real life. ^^
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Superb as always.
IS she pregnant or just kinda fat?
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Thanks! She's meant to be a bit unmotivated/out of shape due to common modern ailments (I dropped some subtle hints in the text). It's nothing a few more adventures won't solve.
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I enjoyed the story and that's a really cool Oracle.
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Thanks! Both turned out better than I'd hoped.
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Random finds aside you'd need an oracle to know. It's one of those annoying conundrums.
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Took you long enough...i've been waiting for your work
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Sorry, I've had a lot else on. You'll be seeing lots more soon.
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Hehehe, nice~
This looks pretty cool man, legit nice work on these two
Smart Phone, pfft.
Nice work again man
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