It's the End of Civilization as we know it. A mutagenic plague followed by a global war fought with disintegration weaponry has left much of the Earth a desert of fine powder and what remains of humanity fragmented into humans, animal-like mutants and bloodthirsty monstrosities with lots of teeth. The surface, still teeming with the mutagenic virus, has become the domain of the dreaded Topsiders; well-organized, technologically advanced, and heavily armed un-mutated humans sworn to exterminate mutations of any kind in order to clear the way for the eventual resurgence of a new, genetically clean humanity. Faced with annihilation, mutants and "impure" humans have retreated into the depths of the planet to form communities and hope to win, or at least survive, what may prove to be mankind's final war. Endtown is the continuing story of one of those communities.
© Aaron Neathery - All Rights Reserved.
Emmy Lou by Marty Links
Eric the Circle by .....
Comments (54) (Please sign in to comment)
tarzina3 said, 7 months ago
and she has her tail back!
Nabuquduriuzhur said, 7 months ago
Who IS this guy?? He’s like an angel crossed with Montgomery Scott.
RockHouse said, 7 months ago
Guess who has her tail back.
unidyne said, 7 months ago
A blessing or a curse?
Jenner
said, 7 months ago
This scene would not hold the absolutely stunning amount of power that it does if the story of Endtown had not taken us all through the wasteland of tension, grief and despair that it has. Now is an all-too-rare moment of healing – and given that it is here, it’s beautiful.
SapphireDragonStudios said, 7 months ago
Flask is not only healed, but her tail is back!
Nabuquduriuzhur said, 7 months ago
(Pardon the bad pun). Does this make Marxie a Tailor?
Three Steps Over Japan said, 7 months ago
@GoldenRoya
“I’d say Touched by an Angel and Doctor Who had a love child, and Marx is it…”
Put a cigar in his mouth and paint on a black mustache and you’d be closer to the truth.
Nabuquduriuzhur said, 7 months ago
GoldenRoya:
I noted your fan fiction page. You might get a kick out of this:
“One trend now is that many bits of “fan fiction” are often more professionally done than what gets published in book form. When one considers some of the goop that was fan fiction in the 1980s, it represents a complete reversal from 30 years ago, at least in terms of what is actually published by the large media houses. Strange, but when you now have a system in place that rewards the mediocre and tosses the exceptional, well, what do you expect? It’s natural for those who want to write and who can write well to want it published somewhere— this trend to publish that which is a “sure thing” but mediocre is absurd when you think it though— the good stuff is what should be paid for, but the mediocre is what is being pushed by the industry today.
.
Much of the decline of the last 20 years of the fiction field can be summed up to these:
1. Large publishers requiring agents and thus reducing the quality of submissions.
2. Large publishers reducing the quality of publications by going to the “lowest common denominator.”
3. Large publishers not taking risks by not testing the market with new ideas." —NWF, Page 145
.
I didn’t mention that sometimes one has real “winners” for agents. I finally dropped mine.
Three Steps Over Japan said, 7 months ago
“And when your body dies, all those thoughts that make you you go back into the big bin…”
So, Flask wasn’t a mass murderer after all, and not even a coldblooded killer. She’s just guilty of unscheduled recycling. Maybe if she’d called ahead for personalized pick-up services everything would have worked out all right…
Level_Head said, 7 months ago
So Flask will now give up wholesale slaughter
Due to Marx’s retail therapy?
Well, therein lies the tail, and it oughtta
Be long gone — one tail short — but there it be!
There is something about Marx’s words that occur
To me as a conflict (but such is AM)
If he’s removed part of what makes her her
Did he now absorb it? Is AM still him?
Apparently this being takes it all in
Destruction and hatred and things that explode
Absorbing it all with maniacal grin
But this process changed him more than that missile showed
He has worked a small miracle (not counting death)
Removing bad thoughts like a book from a shelf
So she’s alive, and we’ll take a deep breath
But wonder: Could she have done this for herself?
=|====/ Level Head
Vote for Endtown 2.0
And for Doc Rat, too
The Endtown Forum
The Endtown Auction
The Endtown Books
Tarry Plaguer said, 7 months ago
@Nabuquduriuzhur
Speaking of Dr. Who and published fan fiction, have you seen this?
Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2
I haven’t read it, but I have to wonder about it.
Superfrog said, 7 months ago
There’s a touch of “the Green Mile” here.
rickD
said, 7 months ago
So…Flask is healed because Marx has removed the bad experiences that would spread like a cancer, etc. Does that mean that she won’t remember those events that pushed her over the edge? She was unhinged when she removed her tail. That experience is gone…so her tail is back. If her tail remained gone, then would the reason it was gone still be in her head? How far back would one have to go to change what Flask had become? She was a Topsider after all. Just living with them could bend someone’s psyche. On the other hand, falling in love gave Flask back some humanity. So she has not reverted back to human possibly because the reason that she mutated was a positive one (Flask was in love). And…is Flask still dead? Will she still be moving on, but intact instead of moving back into the pool of life energy?
Another late night pending as I wait for answers.
Three Steps Over Japan said, 7 months ago
@rickD
“Flask is healed because Marx has removed the bad experiences that would spread like a cancer, etc.”
Not really. He crushed the bad thing that was eating at her – hope.