In this series, I will take the Word of the Day from Dictionary.com and craft a short piece of creative writing around it. My goal is to embrace the meaning of the word in some unique way, all the while trying out different styles, rhythms and characterizations. It is as much an exercise in creativity as it is an exploration of grammar. Enjoy!
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By Alex Seise
You can’t just mash two things together to create something better, stronger. It doesn’t work that way.
The doctor’s hands quivered as she groped across the tray of tools. Even with the gravity orb humming in the center of the ship, she felt her heavy white boots occasionally floating upwards, a disconcerting presence that hovered over her already distracted mind.
They’re not geep, or mules, or labradoodle doos, she thought looking at the two specimens chained to the operating slabs before her. One had distinct human male features; a broad chest coated in a light, neat layer of fuzz, and a chiseled jaw line dotted with stubble. His masculine hands were large and rough, the sign of someone who toiled daily. But when her eyes flickered toward the sleek red shell that enveloped the other creature beside him, though… She took in its gruesome foreign appearance, and any hopes for finding so much as a trace of human physiology swirled away like the deep churning chasms of a maelstrom brewing over a kitchen sink drain.
It wasn’t the spin around and down the drain that scared her, though; it was the growling garbage disposal unit waiting just below that with sharp fangs and a voracious appetite.
The near-weightlessness and the precariousness of the operation awaiting her supervision stretched the lining of her already mangled stomach, and she felt a wave of hot acid crash on an otherwise dry parcel. It made her heave in her mouth, but she suppressed the vomit back down. In the low gravity, it protested the return to the visceral pit; but the muscles of her esophagus did not relent, and down it went.
