This is a flash-fiction lipogram I just wrote. A lipogram is a text that intentionally omits a group of (or a singular) character(s). Omits letters of the alphabet, in short. I wrote this over coffee this morning, and I have no idea why it's about what it's about. The only requirements were that it be around 300 words and omit the letter "I". It's a fun challenge and actually gets you to choose your words WAY more carefully. Enjoy:
Spencer's Apocalypse
Spencer tossed the turned meat at the savage mutt over the fence and landed, a wet slap and a cloud of dust. The dog’s wet nose probed the rotten steak for a spell, then became entranced by an entangled mess of organs and flesh that foreshadowed future pups. Spencer watched the pooch gorge on gonads as the decayed orange sun sank below the aged stone wall. That meat was the last of the food. Grocery stores has been well looted weeks ago and he couldn’t stew up the energy to scour abandoned apartment complexes. He’d just have to sleep on an empty stomach. Once the dark came, Spencer knew the world beyond four cracked walls was a salvo of fanged ghouls and terror-wargs, as hungry as he, eager to rend supple belly fat, or lack there of. No amount of prep-work or bravery could outrun some scabby, feral nutcase armed to the teeth, sharpened rusty blades grasped by cold claws. Tortured agony follows those who venture out where shadows have no purchase. Spencer had seen these creatures come down on a young boy, who was barely seven. The boy, who Spencer had named Steven, pajama-garbed, wandered the streets, on the hunt for something called “Mummseeees!” Probably the boy’s mother, but Spencer was not one to conjecture. But Mummseeees came not; the shadowless creatures found the boy helpless, wet-faced, and needy. They gave no quarter and removed the boy’s teeth at once. They deconstructed “Steven” soundlessly, and Spencer sat, jaded, as they reduced the boy to a mere slop of pulp and bone. He took the event as a lesson, an omen even: never cry for Mummseeee. Spencer knew the day would return and the sun would send those cruel beasts back to the rocks they slept beneath. He would have to scavenge then, when boys wandered the streets freely, when meat would roam fearlessly, when Spencer could feast uncontested.
