The Destructivedisk Anthology/Semi-Charmed

Semi-Charmed was written for the June 2011 Short Story Contest. It was written pretty spontaneously one night while I was in my sister's room. The name is derived from Life by Third Eye Blind. I don't really remember where I got the story's name from.

Initially, the story was entered in the contest. However, this was deterring others from entering the contest, because they assumed that they would lose to me. When User:SonikFan112 told me that he didn't want to enter for that reason, I decided to withdraw from the contest so that more people would enter.

Even if I had not withdrawn, though, I would not have won the contest. SonikFan's entry, Slimed Me! ended up being a better story. If you haven't read that, you should definitely go check that out. It's one of my favorites on the site.

The story was written on June 1, 2011, mere hours after the new topic was posted. It was written pretty quickly and had virtually no forethought put into it. It was moved to its own page on June 14, 2011, about two weeks later.

Semi-Charmed
The fire, the fire, the cataclysmic fire

Shot down from a place ever higher

Destructive and completely inexplicable

A curse from the gods, oh so inhospitable

Crashing down, the clanging bells of death

A comet so very fast, never to ever rest

Silver in color, the complexion inexorable

Wrapping its bright hands about the people

This demonic ball of murderous inferno

Crashed upon the ground with deadly crescendo

With the clicking of a hatch and a sudden apparition

We found this to be a shuttle of the heaven’s emission

The new angel was small, no more than a child

His tail was frenzied, his hair was utterly wild

In the spirit of his own creation his clothing shone

And after it all he spoke with a choral tone

“The King of my land has sent me to live over here”

I couldn’t help but imagine God with his frightening leer

“and to learn of the fighting culture of all of you”

And He wanted to evaluate our barbaric wars, too!

With unimaginable speed all of our people flocked to him

And to touch his angelic tail we came to outstretch our limbs

The women offered themselves all at the ready

The men wanting to be his companion steady

But he outreached his hand to a small girl timid

She reached her hand back, her smile vivid

“Hi there, I’m a Saiyan prince named Tarble

And, little girl, you’re really quite the marvel!”

My jaw dropped, my eyes really quite wide

Saiyans were never the name of those on the other side

We had called them angels, spirits, but never Saiyans

What if he was not an angel… but instead a demon?

The ancient texts were never to be wrong!

Saiyans appeared in no book, not a simple song!

But from the sky this creature descended

With a celestial vessel he was lended

Of course! By the deduction of elimination

His soul came from the land of damnation

“Attack, attack!” I yelled, with the utmost leadership

He was nothing but a demon trying to jump ship!

They all quickly turned to trust me

My unwaveringly loyal followees

And with a thousand belligerent screams

They pounced, taking him to the ground in teams

He collapsed in mere seconds, no resilience

His strength was gone, he lacked defense

Our threat was gone, our village once more at peace

And he hadn’t been a challenge in the very least

No demon could have been beaten that easily

The devil should’ve sent something harder for me

Unless… he was not the spawn of the devil at all

It was then that I found my assurance slowed to a crawl

An alien he might’ve been, an extraterrestrial

Arrived at our planets with hopes of a race jovial

Instead finding himself trampled and abused

And leaving me with a grudge not to be truced

The young girl was kneeling down next to his unconscious body

She leaned down next to him, his once glistening armor now shoddy

And said, in a whisper, “Hi there, mister Tarble, my name’s Gure

If you’ll be mine for now I promise to always be yours!”

The Saiyan brought himself back to stand on his feet

I halted my citizens, asking them all to take a seat

He staggered a bit, before steadying himself with her

“Well, what’s the name of this planet, miss Gure?”

Endnotes
When I wrote Semi-Charmed, I didn't like it very much. Reading back on it now, it's aged a lot better with time. There were a few major problems - namely, some of the rhyming seemed forced, the pacing seemed off, and it could come off as being preachy to some people. However, this is, overall, one of my favorite stories that I've written so far. The rhyming is a lot better than it was in the final chapter of Tien: Origins and the story is pretty tight overall. It makes good use of an unreliable narrator and is well written through and through. Writing the story in poetic form actually helped the story to convey its theme, so it was a success in that regard. I would give Semi-Charmed an A-.
 * 1) To date, this is the only story that I've written entirely in poetic form. I also wrote the final chapter of Tien: Origins in poetic form.
 * 2) The story is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, namely some type of holy man on Gure's planet. We learned this in English class while learning about Poe, so in some ways this story can be seen as a homage to Poe and his wonderful poems.
 * 3) The story was most influenced by Bells and Tell-Tale Heart, both by Edgar Allen Poe.
 * 4) Basically, the plot here is fueled by the narrator assuming that the Saiyan is a demon sent from hell to ensure his race's damnation. That's why the role of the unreliable narrator is so important and integral to the story's plot.
 * 5) The story's theme isn't meant to be critical of religion at all. It's more of a criticism of the fear of the unknown and xenophobia then anything else. Basically, just because something is mysterious doesn't mean it's bad. This is symbolized by Tarble, who's completely harmless but they decide to attack him simply because they don't know what a Saiyan is.