First dream of New Year

“Hey, honey, what’s wrong?” Tony hugged his sobbing wife. “It’s okay, everything’s fine. I’m right here. It’s okay”

It took some amount of head pats and whispers to calm her down.

“I saw a nightmare. A terrible, terrible nightmare.”

“Come on, Mayu, sweetheart, it’s just a dream” Tony smiled, pulling her closer.

“Don’t you know the dreams on the first night of New Year are prophetic? That’s what we believe in Japan.”

“Is that so? Well, we aren’t in Japan anymore, aren’t we? This will not work then.”

Mayu looked up at him, her reddened eyes glistening with tears in the darkness of the bedroom.

“Are you sure? Are you totally totally sure?”

Tony laughed and hugged her once again.

“Of course I’m sure, silly. Are you feeling better now?”

Mayu nodded and cuddled in husband’s hand. “May I stay like this for some more?”

“Of course, honey. Of course.”

…

As Mayu left the bathroom, she heard her husband talking to someone on the phone.

“Yes, I’ll come as fast as I can. Okay, bye.”

“Is everything okay? Who was it?” Wiping her long black hair with a towel, she came closer and gave Tony a passionate kiss.

“Derek. He’s got a problem with equipment again. He needs a helping hand.”

“He seems to need them a lot. Is it urgent?”

“I made mistakes when I was a newbie too. He will learn.”

“Will you be back soon?” Mayu pouted – smiling, to show that she isn’t really angry. Tony smiled and brushed her cheek with his lips softly.

“I hope so. But I don’t know how serious the problem is. I’ll text you, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting for you”.

…

Humming some silly tune she heard in a youtube video, Mayu entered her husband’s study, carrying a small carefully wrapped box adorned with a bow-tied ribbon. It was there anniversary tomorrow and Mayu imagined how pleased Tony will be when he finds a present in his table drawer. Smiling to these thoughts, she pulled open the drawer, and the tune fled her mind in an instant. Inside, she saw something she never expected to find among her beloved husband’s belongings – heavy looking, dark, glossy and ominous object. She gulped, her hand darted towards it, as if to make sure it’s not an illusion, but stopped in just an inch above. Born and raised in Japan, Mayu could not get used to how common firearms were in US and she was afraid of them. Her husband never mentioned owning one. Then again, it was nothing special here, so he had no reason to tell her. But still… why didn’t he tell? With trembling hand, she closed the drawer and left the study on shaking legs.

…

“What’s that? A present? Oh…”

Tony’s eyes darted away as he realized he did something wrong. Mayu’s eyes were filling with tears.

“First I spent the first day of the New Year alone, now you forgot about our anniversary!”

“Honey, please. I’m really sorry! It’s just… You know I’m in the middle of a big project now. We can make it really big! It’s absorbing all of my attention now, it’s really hard to concentrate on anything else now.”

“I know! After all, it’s the money from selling my late parents house that went into it!”

Mayu threw the present she prepared on the table and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll do what a good wife is supposed to do. I’ll calm down by washing your clothes

“I’ve already put them in the washing machine.”

Mayu turned around, looking at Tony with suspicion.

“That’s not like you.”

“Mayu! Where are you…”

Tony rushed after his wife and found her rummaging in the washing mashing. She threw a shirt at him.

“They don’t smell like you worked with machines.”

“Honey, please. You don’t think I’ll dive into engines as I am, wearing white shirt and breeches now do you? I have a uniform for that.”

Mayu sat on the floor, her back pressed to the washing machine, streaks of tears running down her cheeks.

“For real? I’m so stupid… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… Please forgive me.”

Tony sat beside her, hugging her head. “It’s okay honey. It’s okay.”

They returned to the kitchen, holding hands. Mayu sat on Tony’s laps and hugged him tight.

“It’s all because of that stupid dream. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Relax honey, it was just a dream. Nothing to worry about.”

Mayu suddenly went silent, lost deep in thoughts.

“I’m still afraid. I wonder… When you are out for a work, and I’m all alone… If something dangerous happens… It’s legal to have a gun in US, right? Can you teach me how to use it?”

“Wow! I never expected you will ask something like that. I don’t have a gun, but if you want to… Mayu? What’s wrong?”

Mayu leapt up from Tony’s laps.

“You don’t have a gun? Then what was that in your table?! Ah, I know! I saw it! I see everything now! Is this what it comes to? That’s it, Tony? Is this what your love and promises are worth? Were you just pretending so that my family money can be all yours?”

“Mayu, calm down. You got it all wrong. It’s not my gun! It’s my father’s! I don’t know how to use it! Mayu, what are you doing? Put that knife down! Put it down!”

…

The police inspector kneeled in front of Mayu, who sat on the floor, her stare wandering aimlessly around the kitchen and over the members of investigation team.

“Mrs. Barks, can you explain what happened here?”

Her expressionless face turned to him.

“He wanted to kill me.”

“Your husband? Did he attack you?”

“He wanted to kill me. He planned it. I saw it in a dream”

Inspector looked back at his colleagues.

“She lost it.” One of them whispered, coming close. “She keeps repeating the same thing, that she had a dream that her husband was planning to kill her”.

“If she’s faking it…” Inspector shook his head. “She is pretty damn good at it”.

At this moment the phone on the table gave a notification sound. The forensics expert carefully picked it up with a gloved hand.

“New voice message from Derek.” He read. “Should I play it?”

“Go for it.”

The man pushed the screen, and a melodic female voice filled the room.

“Hi darling! The tickets and other papers are ready. As soon as you get rid of the bitch, we will be out of the country in no time. Love you!”

_______________________________________

Some closing thoughts

1. I'm doing some dark themed entry once again. I wonder if it has something to do with my work? Or maybe it's just me being not in the best place and mood right now.
2. I'm not sure if it can be called "festive" since it's a thriller drama, but it's centered around a certain holiday belief that exist in Japan so I consider it fitting enough
3. I came up with beginning and ending on the run, but the middle part was more difficult and I feel I rushed it. Hope it's not too bad.

The judges are done being mean and judging the entries! We have a prize fund of 35$ and this is how it will be split

The 2 2nd places and 10$ each, with equal number of points from judges, are claimed by Abigail by @thxfam and Rapunzel Tower by @Thetageist

And the (almost) unanimous winner with prize of 15$ is Polar Night by @LiamRomK !

Congrats to the winners and HUGE thanks to everyone who participated in this event, whether by writing, judging, or sponsoring.

If you haven't already, go read all the stories, they are awesome!

I would like the winners to send me the addresses to send money to (I guess paypal is best for NG) so I can then send them to Tom Fulp and ask him to distribute the money from our humble fund.

So I had this ort of "inspiration" and decided to turn it into a short kind of script or something that fits the theme of the event. It is' of course, not participating in the contest, but I decided to post in the thread anyway.

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1528546#bbspost27782638_post_text

The amount of awesome stuff on NG is piling up so I decided to start making some playlists for some things. Like, the stuff that I requested or commissioned. For example, check this cool art of George Ushiromiya by @Serafin-corpse.

Unfortunately, I am almost unable to commission anything for now, but I hope that this playlist will start to grow eventually.

Also, a quick reminder that the Spooktacular writing contest is in progress, and you are most welcome to share your "Bad dream" stories.

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1528546

Earlier this year I promised to make a short script for @Aalasteir in return for a supporter status gift. It's finally here, brought to life with amazing voice talents of @Jojo, @Durinde and @Aalasteir himself. Give it a listen and share your thoughts

I made a thread to discuss the Spooktacular 2023 writing event. For now it mostly need judges I guess, having only me as a judge will not be objective at all

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1528195

Yesterday's morning was of the happiest in my life, cause I was named among the winners of the Writers Jam 1!

https://jamriot.newgrounds.com/news/post/1388154

Go read the winners entries, they are cool!

Anyway, that means I now have this 10$ that I can't receive anyway because of the whole shit that's happening in my country. And I thought I can use them for the good of NG as a prize money for yet another writing contest. And since it's Halloween soon and we have no writing part in the annual Spooktacular thing this year, why not make one? So I plan to try organizing a Halloween-themed writing contest and my 10$ will serve as a start of a prize fund. They will most probably be the only prize fund but whatever. So yeah, I will do some posts about that in writing forum soon. Stay tuned, I guess

I've beaten Auto Necrochess by @Stopsignal ! I already made it once, but I was so excited that I forgot to make a screenshot. Now I made it the second time but this time I was prepared and made some screenshots too. I really love this game and I think it deserves a lot of attention and maybe even a steam release with more units, challenges etc.

Safety rules are written in blood

As the blood-covered stretchers were carried away, screams fading in the distance, all the eyes concentrated on Jim.

“I wanted to replace him”. Jim said apologetically. “The boss said he’ll fire me if I ever exchange shifts with anyone again”.

Before anyone could reply, the foreman returned, wet spots of blood visible on the dark fabric of his uniform. His heavy stare ran over everyone’s faces, all grim and pale as his own.

“The fool decided he’s one smart guy and blocked the safety button” he spat on the floor. “He wanted it easier for himself. Now he is a one-handed cripple. That’s what you lot get for not following the simplest instructions”.

One of the elder workers muttered angrily “We seriously need to call for a priest and purify the damn machine”.

“I can’t hear you, Rommy!” foreman roared “Dare say that louder?”

The grey-haired worker lowered his eyes to avoid further angering the boss. After making sure that no refusal remained, the foreman pursed his lips and barked “Jim, you work on Bloody Mary tomorrow”.

Bloody Mary was the nickname the workers gave to one of the rolling mills. The new one, most advanced and efficient, the company pride and flagship. It produced twice as much all the other mills combined, and, obviously, the top managers were not willing to hear one bad word about their favorite toy.

Yet the workers had lots of those words. Working with metal is never completely safe, but Bloody Mary drew more of their blood in a year than the rest of the machines could had had in ten. It started with small things that everyone was long used to – gashes from chips on the workpiece edges, burns from flying sparks and droplets of red-hot metal, clothes caught and torn between rolls. Smashed fingers were worse, but not out of the ordinary also – a rare worker here could present a complete set of those.

So the new machine was not regarded as anything special, until two months after its installment Harry Tooms got his left eye burned out with a drop of melting metal. He was supposed to use a protective face screen, of course, but it was hot enough in the workshop as it is, and the screen made it even harder to breath and see, so workers often lifted the screen, and no one ever got burns as bad as Harry had that day. Two weeks later, James Rommy tore the whole length of his arm on the sharp edge of the cast when he tried to carry it in his hands instead of using heavy awkward pincers. He barely survived the blood loss and his blood, sprayed all over the mill, gave it the nickname.

The chain of injuries went on – feet crashed under slabs that were not caught in time, shoulders wrenched out when an unbuttoned sleeve was jammed between the rolls. After each incident the technicians gave the mill a complete check-up, but never found anything wrong in it. Yet the superstition started to form among workers, the image of blood-covered, possessed machine, hungry for more human pain. It eventually led to a protest when workers refused to work with it. Of course, the company was not going to shut down the most efficient equipment because of some delusions, and the foreman came up with a brilliant idea – he turned the “Bloody shifts”, as the workers called it, into a penalty for being late, being drunk, low productivity and other failures. Which, of course, made the myth surrounding the Bloody Mary only stronger.

So, when Jim Sant, a young, naive, enthusiastic man was assigned to the Bloody Mary right from his first day at the workshop, no one doubted he will son fall prey to the machine’s bloodlust. Yet Jim laughed off their sympathetic stares and their fears. How could the machine really crave for human blood? Especially this machine, a top-notch technology masterpiece. Jim was enamored with this mill, its shining rolls, playful blinking of lamps on the control panel, smooth movement of levers, hot breath of the induction furnace, rhythmic murmur of the engine, as loud and vigorous as his heartbeat. Two weeks passed, and Jim was completely fine. A month passed and not a single scratch or burn mark marred his skin or even his uniform. Workers watched him, humming cheerfully in sync with the machine engine, or wiping it carefully at the end of the day, and whispered “He tamed the demon”.

The only thing spoiling this harmony was the foreman’s idea of using the Bloody Mary as a penalty. He was not willing to abandon such an effective instrument of discipline, despite Jim’s pleading that the rest of the workers were simply too negligent for such a powerful device. And, naturally, no one except Jim could go through these nervous shifts unscathed. So, Jim began trading places with the punished workers when the foreman was out of sight. He was spotted eventually, and earned himself a long harsh talk and a fair share of threats. No longer able to cover up other’s mistakes, he had to wait for their penalties to end before he could return to his favorite workplace.

“Good morning, Mary” Jim said the morning after Pete Fom had his hand chewed. “How are you?”

He picked up the common habit of calling the mill with the nickname eventually, but he never called her bloody, of course.

“Let’s work hard today, shall we?” He went on, even more excited than ever. “This is going to be a great day”. During the shift he was in high spirits, his hands flying between levers and buttons. His eyes, however, constantly darted to the large clock on the walls, as if trying to make its hands move faster.

“So soon, so soon” he was humming when the last minutes of the shift remained. “In half an hour I will propose Jenny, and I’m sure she will say yes and we will be so happy together”.

At this moment, something thumped in the machine engine and it jerked abruptly, pushing the big steel slab that was rolled through, to a side, jamming it tight.

“Damn it, that’s untimely” Jim muttered. He now had to release the metal cast by lifting the upper rolls. To do so, he needed to push two safety buttons at once, unblocking the rolls, wait for the machine to completely halt and cool off, and only then he could lift them. The safety buttons were placed far from each other, so you could only push one with each hand, to prevent the temptation of pushing them both with one hand and operating the rolls with the other. It was going to take lots of time, and will make Jenny wait.

Jim looked at the clock again. He will not make it in time if he’ll do it as intended. He looked around, made sure that the foreman was not around, picked a pair of heavy pincers and put them on one of the safety buttons. Nothing bad ever happened to him, and nothing will. He will be as careful and accurate as always, and everything will be okay. He pressed the second safety button with his left hand, and heard a familiar clank of rolls lock opening. Without waiting them to come to a stop, he checked that his sleeve is buttoned and not dangling, and carefully lifted the first roll with his right hand. The steel cast beneath was still skewed, and Jim had to lift another roll, feeling the heat through thick protective gloves. “Come on” he urged, pulling the slab from under the rolls. ‘Much better” he exhaled, satisfied, as he adjusted the workpiece and lowered the rolls. He wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but something caught his right arm. It seems that the abrasion from moving rolls made the fabric of his glove unweave, and the threads got stuck between the rolls. Without thinking, he tried to pull his hand free, and his elbow pushed the pincers away from the button. Before he managed to do anything else, the rolls, working at full speed again, pulled him into hot tight hugs of his once beloved machine.

Severe violation of safety protocols. That was the result of the official investigation. After the incident something broke in the mill heart – its engine – and it had to be replaced. This made the workers, aware of Jim’s relationship with Jenny, whisper that the Bloody Mary became jealous and killed the only human she seemed to favor, along with herself.

@Aalasteir gifted me the supporter status. I tried to send him money via boosty, but it still doesn't work, unfortunately (It doesn't allow me to send USD). So he proposed that I will make a story for him to voice over. I will try to make it during August. Don't have a good idea for it yet though. So if someone is reading this and want me to write a story about certain idea or something, feel free to post it in comments.