He looked at the men. He knew what they meant, and this brutal realization made his voice crack as he asked, despite already knowing and dreading the answer; “Mother, what’s going on?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the men. He hardly even blinked, and his feet started backing him towards his closet. He had a distant hope that maybe he could hide in there until he woke up from this bad dream. He hoped this was a dream. This couldn’t really be happening.
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Mother said, still hovering in the door way, “and now is just not a good time. That arm will only cause you pain, and it would be better for my health and security if I didn’t have to support you with that. It’s for my health and wellbeing, darling, and yours.”
“And the money,” the words slipped out before he could stop them. Something strange was happening to him: his heart was beating faster, he could feel the blood pumping through him, and he had a heightened sense of the danger he was in. She was going to have him Disposed of, he knew she was. She’d just said it herself, in a roundabout way. There was no way he was going to get out of here now; not with this arm, not against five man twice his size and strength. But something bubbled up inside him, an anger and defiance he’d never felt before, and he realized something. They were liars… they were all liars. But they weren’t going to take him—not without a fight.
“I’m sure they’ll give you a lot of money for my body. Just like you got that fat raise after you killed my little sister!”
“Honey, you know better than that. Lucy was never really alive, just like you aren’t, it won’t hurt.”
“Lies!” he shouted. Mother looked startled, but he didn’t care. She wasn’t his mother, not like the ones in the stories. She was an imposter, a sick mockery.
The men made a semi-circle, trapping him in the corner. He ran back and forth, looking for an escape and shouted, “You didn’t hear her scream! You had your daughter murdered and you were too much of a coward to stick around and hear her scream!”
Mother’s face grew red with rage, “That is enough child! Don’t make this harder than it has to be. This is for me, don’t you love your mother?”
“You are no mother, you selfish witch!” He could no longer feel the pain in his arm, and his eyes blazed as he ran back and forth, sweat pouring from his brow and his heart drumming in his ears. “Why should I love you when you don’t love me?! You are not a mother, mothers don’t kill their own children!”
Mother’s face was a mask of total insult and horror. “I gave birth to you! Do you know how hard that is?!”
“You mean how they doped you up on drugs and cut me out of your stomach so you could parade me around until you got bored or I become too much stress? You mean like that? Just like you did with Lucy?!”
His hands shook as he stopped pacing and looked at her. Anger and disgust settled in his stomach like a boiling fire. He felt the pain from all those times she’d rejected and neglected him when he needed to be held. The despair he’d endured when the only times he had received her affection was in the company of others. All the unjust acts and fake love she’d given him boiled and writhed, burning away any faith he had left in her.
His voice, hardly more than a whisper, came out like sheets of ice. Every word trembled with venom as he stood still and clenched his fists, looking at her with a gaze that turned from pain, to hatred.
“You may have grown me in your stomach, you may have even let me have your food and shelter, but you were never a mother to me.”
Mother was beyond speech. Her eyes bored into her son, but her rage had no affect him.
Her anger was inflamed by his resilience to it, and she snapped her fingers. The men started moving closer.
But he didn’t stop. He started pacing again, then sprinted back and forth, his blood racing as he shouted, “A real mother loves her children! She cares about them first! She holds them when they’re crying! She doesn’t go out late and leave them without dinner! A real mother doesn’t Dispose of her children! Because I am alive! And Disposing is killing! Don’t kill me!”
The men had grabbed him. Each of his limbs were held by one of them, and they lifted him up in the air. Sudden panic hit as they trapped him, and he struggled and yelled,
“I’m alive! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’m ALIVE!” He thrashed in their arms, blood pumping in his ears. His breath came hard and short, and his mind raced.
As he struggled, he saw scenes from his short life flash before him. Little Lucy, and her death, and friends he’d lost in the same way. He remembered his friends, the books, and Emme. And he wondered: If he could think, he could feel, he could reason, if he could do everything the adults could, how could they think he wasn’t alive?
For the first time, his mother looked unsure, watching the boy struggle and scream with such intensity. And she glanced at one of the specialists in their white coats.
“Don’t worry ma’am, it’s an underdeveloped reaction in the brain. This happens sometimes—nothing serious. You just go relax; this won’t take long.” The man set the brief case on the bed and opened it.
When the boy saw it, he began to thrash harder and scream louder. The man pulled a long white cloth from the case and tied the gag in the boy’s mouth. He stared at his mother as she slowly turned from the door—his eyes wide and truly afraid.
He tried to scream her name, to get her to come back and see what she was doing. He had no love for that woman, but maybe if he could get her to turn back, to see what she was really doing, maybe he could break the cold bubble she lived in.
But in the end, he knew she wouldn’t. He’d seen her do this before, and too many like her had done the same. Now it was his turn to be condemned by her. Condemned by this whole damned world. This world that was so different from the one in the stories he’d read. This world that so easily excused life not its own. This world that had no love.
She didn’t love him—she hadn’t loved either of them. It was only a status symbol to look like you cared about your children.
He heard his own voice screaming inside his head, then the man with the brief case was pulling on white gloves. He strained his neck to look at the doorway. Mother was gone. He felt a stab of pain as all hope suddenly drained from him.
The man in the white gloves picked up a long, curved needle and began walking towards him. The boy’s terror was beyond measure. As he fought for his life he managed to get the gag out, and his screams were shrill and horrific, “NOOOOO!!! I DON’T WANNA DIE! I DON’T WANNA DIE!!!!”
As he jerked and screamed, the pain in his broken arm became unbearable. He looked at his cast, now twisted and falling apart. His eyes focused on Emme’s name as the needle went in, and a last thought lingered in his mind. Maybe, maybe I will see her again. Then the pain hit, and a split second later, the numbness. He threw back his head and screamed one last time, then went completely limp.
The money was paid; his body put in the back of a cold van to be cut up, used, and distributed; and the mother put on a short dress and went out for a drink.
A HISTORY OF SAD PUPPIES
By
Larry Correia and Brad R. Torgersen
How sci fi began to fight back.
Whence Puppydom?
By
Brad R. Torgersen
Origin stories. Everybody loves ‘em. The Marvel Cinematic Universe exists because of a string of successful origin stories, writ large. Everything (and everyone) has to start somewhere, right?
The phenomenon—as known in literary Science Fiction and Fantasy—of Sad Puppies, began with a piece of humor.
Larry Correia is not only a terrific New York Times bestselling storyteller, he’s got a funny bone too. Essential equipment, that; if you’re going to be an out-of-the-closet nonconformist in the sanctified—sanctimonious?—halls of literary SF/F.
Larry knows what history has taught us: totalitarians hate spontaneous laughter. It is unscripted, uncontrolled, and it can be directed
at Those Who Must Never Be Made Fun Of. So when Larry decided to take a Delta Tau Chi approach to pointing out that SF/F’s so-called Most Prestigious Award (the Hugo) was typically given out for all kinds of political and insider-clubhouse reasons unrelated to whether or not a given book or story actually has traction with a broad, fun-loving audience, he didn’t nail up a manifesto. He told a joke.
We’ve all seen the animal shelter ads: where a big-eyed, sad-looking dog stares forlornly into the camera, guilt-tripping the hell out of you while an ever-so-serious voice drones on and on about the plight of millions of unloved pets languishing in gulag-like shelters across the nation. And you—yes, you there, in the easy chair, eating a slice of cold pizza—are the only thing standing between that trembling creature, and an untimely demise.
Televised sermons are tailor-made for lampooning. Doncha think?
Larry spun it thus: across the world, puppies dwell in eternal sadness, because SF/F awards are given to boring crap that very few people read. Thus the only way you—yes, you!—can bring happiness and joy to puppies everywhere, is to vote for books and stories which are actually fun, actually have a fan base, and might actually be said to give the readership a good time.
It was a lark. A one-off. A poke at the truth. But just a poke. It might have ended there, in 2013. But Larry had dared to speak openly, a sentiment which was already on the minds of many. The Hugo awards were skewing wonkish, and favoring message-laden, politically-progressive esotericism, at the expense of “pulp” readability. It had been more and more like that since the dawn of the new century. Even past Hugo winners were muttering about the problem—under their breath of course, and strictly off the record.
So, in 2014, Larry got organized. He was on to something. Sad Puppies had touched a nerve. Good, on the part of those who’d grown to dislike the wonkish slant of recent Hugo-winning work, and bad, on the part of those who wanted the Hugos to skew even more wonkish, become even more of a political statement, tip even more to one side of the political spectrum. One does not point out that the emperor has no clothes, without ruffling a few feathers.
Sad Puppies 2 perplexed and alarmed the SF/F literary establishment. Because for the first time in recent memory, people outside of the SF/F literary establishment—common readers and ordinary fans—were having an impact on the Hugo results. Books, stories, editors, and authors, who were not among the usual list of pre-approved—cough, always progressive, cough—established names, were actually making the final Hugo ballot. This was blasphemy, among those who make it their business to ensure that the Hugos (and “proper” SF/F by extension) are vetted and checked, according to a very specific set of social and political criteria. More alarming still, the “movement” (as political progressives are wont to label everything) only appeared to be gaining momentum. Now that the hoi polloi were actually achieving a visible impact, they were getting excited. People from outside were actually getting involved! The carefully-crafted tradition of Hugo back-room-dealing was in jeopardy. Commoners? Being allowed to decide what’s good in Science Fiction and Fantasy?! Obscene.
The denizens of straight-laced Omega Theta Pi were deeply unhappy with the fact that the rambunctious lot from Delta Tau Chi were messing up Faber College.
Sad Puppies 3, launched in 2015, became the proverbial Faber homecoming parade. It was pure pandemonium. Some of which you may already be aware of, and some of which may be new to you. I am reasonably certain a metric ton of digital ink—not to mention a few pages of traditional press—were expended on the affair. Some of it pro, a lot of it con. I like to think that the folks from Omega Theta Pi showed themselves for who they really are: CHORFs (Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary Fanatics) so obsessed with keeping their totem out of the hands of unclean and dirty Delta Tau Chi members, that the CHORFs would rather obliterate the totem completely, lest their control be lost.
In the process, everything Larry Correia said, during Sad Puppies and Sad Puppies 2, was proven correct.
The CHORFs lost by winning. Sort of like how Hillary Clinton was the “popular” nominee, but Donald Trump is actually going to the White House.
Proof that you can do everything right—have the superior press game, the superior money game, the superior celebrity endorsements, and all the favorables anyone could desire—and still blow it.
Meanwhile, the rallying cry of Delta Tau Chi—Sad Puppies!—reverberates on. This book is proof of that. These stories would not exist, without authors and readers and editors who all see the problem for what it is. And while we can be certain that the Hugos will become (for the foreseeable future) an even more insular, more cliquish, more progressively-politicized award—any bets on how many allegories against the Trump administration are being written, even this very instant?—the tinfoil has at last been peeled off the rotten Science Fiction TV dinner. There is no going back, for Faber College. The veneer is gone. Poof. The ghetto is exposed. As a ghetto. Which pretends to be a country club—to include Ed White shaking his golf club at Larry Correia, while Ed is shouting, “The man’s a menace!”
Consider this book our way of ripping the cover off the car stereo built into Larry’s golf bag, and turning up the volume.
As for Senator Blutarsky? I think he switched parties, to the Republican side—in the wake of 9/11/2001.
A Selection of Sad Puppies Posts
By
Larry Correia
A Very Special Message (from Sad Puppies 1)
Every year thousands of pulp writers slave away in the word mines for as little as five cents a word…
(show picture of very sad looking author, sitting in bathrobe, listlessly typing, surrounded by empty cans of Coke Zero and cheesy puff wrappers)
Yet, despite providing hours of explosion-filled enjoyment to their readers, most pulp novelists will never be recognized by critics, and in fact, they will be abused by the literati elite.
(show extra sad looking pulp novelist, more than likely an overweight guy with a beard)
Literary critics stuffed this pulp novelist into a dryer, and ran it at high temperatures for nearly five minutes without even a sheet of fabric softener.
For generations, literary critics and college English departments have looked down at pulp novelists and refused to give them awards…
(show old-timey picture of HP Lovecraft, show old-timey picture of Robert E. Howard, show old-timey picture of Robert E. Howard punching out a Tyrannosaurs Rex while a woman in a chainmail bikini holds onto his leg)
Even though those guys are totally freaking awesome, and Conan the Barbarian is a thousand times more awesome than the Great Gatsby, you wouldn’t know it by listening to literary snobs.
The hoighty-toighty literati snobs prefer heavy-handed, ham-fisted, message fiction.
(show picture of sci-fi readers giving up in frustration as they read yet another award-winning book where evil corporations, right wing religious fanatics, and a thinly veiled Dick Cheney have raped the Earth until all the polar bears have died and the plot consists entirely of academic hipster douchebags sitting around and talking about their feelings)
Much like Michael Vick, literary critics hate pulp novelists and make them fight in vicious underground novelist fighting arenas. I actually did pretty good, until Dan Wells made a shiv from a sharpened spoon and got me in the kidney. Never turn your back on the guy that writes about serial killers, I tell you what.
Only you can stop literary snobs and their abuse of pulp novelists…
Voiceover Guy (from Sad Puppies 2)
The ugly truth is that the most prestigious award in sci-fi/fantasy is basically just a popularity contest, where the people who are popular with a tiny little group of WorldCon voters get nominated and thousands of other works are ignored. Books that tickle them are declared good and anybody who publically deviates from groupthink is bad. Over time this lame-ass award process has become increasingly snooty and pretentious, and you can usually guess who all of the finalists are going
to be that year before any of the books have actually come out or been read by anyone, entirely by how popular the author is with this tiny group.
This is a leading cause of puppy-related sadness.
Looking back at the Results of Sad Puppies 3:
As you all know by now, the Hugo Awards were presented Saturday, and No Award dominated most of the categories. Rather than let any outsiders win, they burned their village in order to “save it”. And they did so while cheering, gloating, and generally being snide exclusive assholes about it. This year’s awards have an asterisk next to them. It was all about politics rather than the quality of the work. Even the pre-award show was a totally biased joke. In addition, they changed the voting rules to make their archaic rules system even more convoluted in order to keep out future barbarian hordes. They gave as many No Awards this time as in the entire history of the awards.
So like I said yesterday… See? I told you so.
People have asked me if I’m disappointed in the results. Yes. But maybe not in the way you might expect. I’ll talk about the slap in the face to specific nominees in a minute, but I can’t say I’m surprised by what happened, when it was just an extreme example of what I predicted would happen three years ago when I started all this.
I said the Hugos no longer represented all of Fandom, instead they only represent tiny, insular, politically motivated cliques taking turns giving their friends awards. If you wanted to be considered, you needed to belong to, or suck up to those voting cliques. I was called a liar.
I said that most of the voters cared far more about the author’s identity and politics than they did the quality of the work, and in fact, the quality of the work would be completely ignored if the creator had the wrong politics. I was called a liar.
I said that if somebody with the wrong politics got a nomination, they would be actively campaigned against, slandered, and attacked, not for the quality of their work, but because of politics. I was called a liar.
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