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[WP] Demon Blades each portray a human emotion, when the user feels the emotion of their blade, they resonate and the power rises 10 fold. the Demon Blade of Wrath was weak, no matter how mad the user, it couldn't match the other blades. turns out, no one was angry enough to use it right, until now.
|
Groggy thoughts...clouded memory...so weak...so weak. The blade had been sleeping for ages, too weak to even reach out for a new wielder. Every righteous hero and every depraved villain who took the blade ended up dead, surprised at how dull the blade was, how heavy and unbalanced it felt. The blade of wrath was anything but wrathful.
Eventually, the last hero to wield the weapon was slain by a great beast, his body falling into a canyon to rot for eternity, and the blade fell with him. Legends spread of a cursed blade that would cause the wielders death if they were foolish enough to take it into battle.
Eons passed, oceans rose and fell and the land shifted. New people came and went, and the blade slept, too weak to do more than slumber...
The Wrath snorted itself awake. It felt warmth and became aware enough to see that something had pulled it from the earth. Excited voices yammering away about finding such quality steel. Steel? Is that what it was? It took stock of itself and realized that in its long rest it had lost its form, becoming a lump of raw material again, even losing it's fancy gems it never wanted in the first place. It was a weapon of war, not a whore to be dolled up. The Wrath slept again.
PAIN! HEAT AND PAIN! The Wrath snapped awake, screaming silently as it was put through a forge, melted and burned. Unable to do anything but experience blow after blow, constant pain, constant heat, constant pressure and cold. It passed out.
Rage...pure rage. The Wrath felt power flow into it. Power it had never felt. True fury filled it and it took stock. It's blade was shortened by more than half, and it only had one, gently curved, edge. It no longer felt a hilt or a guard, just a finely made tang in a luxuriously smooth hardwood handle.
And the pure anger. Whomever was wielding it was slicing flesh and screaming. Red hot, yet controlled fury flowed from it's new and beloved owner into the steel. The blade, already sharpened by a master craftsman, was finally infused with the anger that The Wrath so craved. It sliced and sliced, listening to the song of it's partner.
"DON'T JUST STAND THERE LIKE A BIG FUCKING MUFFIN!" The man yelled as sliced into the meat of his opponent. The warrior screamed at another person. “MY GRAN COULD DO BETTER! AND SHE'S DEAD!" The Wrath was in ecstasy at the thought of yet another foe being slain, as it felt its blade drag through flesh, as it was filled with the pure, undiluted anger of it's wielder!
It finally had enough power, it was sated and could finally see. It was not on a battlefield slicing foes...it was in a kitchen slicing meat...and the man wielding it was screaming at another human. The Wrath was furious at first, it was a blade, made for battle and not a common tool...
...yet...the fury of the man who held it...it was so fine. Maybe this was where The Wrath was meant to be...
He leaned into a young mans face, screaming "YOU ADDED SO MUCH SALT AND PEPPER I CAN HEAR THE DISH SINGING 'PUSH IT!"
...yes...this was right...this was home. The Wrath felt joy as it separated another piece of meat from the bone and drank the rage of The Ramsay.
|
The Holy Kingdom of Ummor had unjustly ruled over the lands for centuries. Rebellions and riots finally reached a point where they were now a normal weekly occurrence. As a response, Ummor Kingdom had recently begun to dispatch their ultimate warriors, the holy knights to overwhelmingly crush and intimidate all who oppose rule of Ummor Kingdom. Besides being inhumanly skilled, each of those knights carried sacred blades that wielded the power to slash building and city walls in half. No town or city could withstand such might.
------------------------------------------------
Inside of the Holy Kingdom of Ummor, a group of holy knights were respectfully kneeling on one knee in front of the War Council to receive their dispatch orders. The War council commanded to them:
"You, Sir Makili of the Blade of Joy, shall go to the city of Gunaram. Leave no surviving rebels."
"You, Sir Glegoli of the Blade of Sadness, shall go to the city of Sharmunz. Aside from crushing the rebellion, ensure to take the food and tax money that rightfully belongs to Ummor."
"You, Sir Milador ..."
After the remaining holy knights received their orders, the holy knights quickly exited to prepare for the trouble and battles awaiting them. All except one who still remained kneeling in front of the War council.
The War Council was silent for a long moment before speaking.
"Erm, Sir Aldor the Blade of Wrath... There's a village in the remote mountains called Ohno that seems to have missed their tax tribute deadline. Just go over there and check the situation, if they show any kind of resistance to paying the tax tribute then you may try to intimidate the village. If you think force is required, then do not fight them and give them a verbal warning and report things back to us." The commands from the War Council destroyed the Blade of Wrath's last shreds of self-esteem. Sir Aldor's slight trembling did not go unnoticed. A War Council elder gave a look of disgust, "You should already have gotten used to this by now. As the master of the Demon Blade of Wrath, you should know have expected this." Sir Aldor knew the elder was right. As a young hopeful, hero-to-be holy knight in training, he was thoroughly taught about the Demon Blades. There were seven blades in total. Each blade represented a human emotion, that when properly tapped into, would result in the wielder's fighting power be increased 10 fold. However, out of all the blades, no one wanted to be the wielder of the blade of Wrath. None since the beginning of the Holy Kingdom Ummor's founding had anyone successfully managed to bring out its full might. Aldor was no different than his precedents and was only able to draw out a tenth of its might. In fact, all the holy knights in training with him were able to draw out about one or two folds of power, but due to Aldor having the least compatibility with the rest of the blades than his colleagues did, ended up with the Demon Blade of Wrath.
However discouraged Aldor was, he did not want to give up on his dreams of fame and glory. Aldor grit his teeth and said, "Honorable Councilman, although this may be insolent of me, but please reassign me!" The War Council shooketh. "Arrogant son of a dog!", "How dare you?", "Are you trying to against our commands?" the War Council screamed.
Aldor took a deep breath and answered in a strained voice. "No I dare not defy the Council." Several Councillmen spoke argued at the same time, but the head Councillor interrupted,"Quiet everyone!" The room slowly quieted.
"Sir Aldor, wielder of the Demon Blade of Wrath." The head councillmen spoke.
"Yes. Head Councillor." Aldor responded.
"You are dissatisfied with a mission in a small village, and would like to head to one of the bigger sites like your colleagues?" The Councillmen stared through Aldor. Aldor kept silent.
"Fine. You'll accompany Sir Glegoli of the Blade of Sadness to the city of Sharmunz and give you a chance to prove your worth. Do you have any disagreements?" When Aldor heard this, he quickly shook his head and was very excited. "Very well. Sir Aldor, quickly call Sir Glegoli here so that we may discuss with him the new arrangements." After the Councilmen spoke, Aldor hurriedly rushed out of the War Council room to find Sir Glegoli.
The councilmen waited a few moments in silent until one of them indignantly asked, "Head Councilman, this holy knight is far too arrogant! Why are you letting him have his way?"
"This guy has no loyalty as a knight. Did you see how disappointed he was to hear he was going to some remote village? It's clear he's too ambitious and all too willing to disobey orders that don't suit him!"
"He's probably the most the useless Blades of Wrath for heaven's sake!"
"HHAHAHAHA!" The head councilman laughed, shocking the other councilmen. "Rest assured I've a plan," The Head Councillor smiled deviously.
Sir Glegoli walked into the wondering what had happened. He walked to the center of room and kneeled, "How may I serve the War Council?"
"Good good, Sir Glegoli! You should have heard of Sir Aldor mention that he'd be accompanying you to the City of Sharmunz?"
"Yes, he did mention something of the sort." Sir Glegoli was kind of confused. Normally there'd be only one holy knight dispatched per mission, because any more than that was overkill.
"Your mission has been adjusted slightly. You will go with Sir Aldor and complete the task. However, ensure that when you return, Sir Aldor does not return with you. Please use the utmost discretion and we shall pay you very well." The Head councilman said. Sir Glegoli was stunned as he heard this. The Headcouncilman gave him a moment to process the new mission adjustments. Before Sir Glegoli could speak, the Head Councilman voiced out Sir Glegoli's thoughts, "What has Sir Aldor done to deserve death? Simple, he is plotting treason against the kingdom and has proven disloyal and unsatisfied with the Kingdom of Ummor. It's only a matter of time before he causes disorder with his recognized title of 'Holy Knight'. We are entrusting this mission to you because the way to Sharmuz is treacherous and many accidents can happen along the way. We do not doubt that you'll fail us Sir Glegoli."
Sir Glegoli scratched the back of his head and asked, "I will heed the War Council's orders. However, I know Sir Aldor and he's quite tough and a reputation for being... determined. It'll be hard to imagine a holy knight to die to any kind of 'accidents'. I'm also afraid that I can't think of a creative way to make a believable accident occur to him."
"Don't worry just yell 'traitor' whenever you feel appropriate, and slice him up neatly."
"Wouldn't that cause his family to take revenge upon my family and I?"
"Don't worry, we'll make sure Sit Aldor's family slowly disappears as well so that they shall not pose any threats to you or the Kingdom."
Sir Glegoli weighed the pros and cons. He imagined that Sir Aldor, although determined, was the most pathetic holy knight among them and wouldn't be too difficult for Sir Glegoli to kill anyways. However, killing a colleague didn't sit too well with him, but remembering that Aldor was just now declared a traitor, then perhaps Aldor was never really a colleague in the first place. Sir Glegoli placed his hands on his chest and pledged, "I shall not fail."
| 2021-09-18T15:30:23 | 2021-09-18T14:28:55 | 108 | 26 |
[WP] New arrivals in eternal Hell may choose either of the following: a small wooden spoon, or a 100-trillion year vacation in Heaven.
|
Time Value
--------
"Sorry, what?"
"You get a choice. A small wooden spoon, or a hundred-trill--in what way was any of what I said ambiguous?"
The wretched thing that was once a man cowered before the devil's anger, then found his voice again.
"Well, it's just that I never heard of any choices in Hell. This is actually Hell, right? It's not like a koan where you're still Saint Peter and there's some obscure bible passage about 'All those who enter the kingdom of God shall do so with a wooden spoon'?"
Rolling his eyes, the devil took a flaming sword to the man's gonads. "Any more stupid questions?"
After a series of screams and guttural gurgles, he recovered enough to say, "But I don't understand. Why any choice? Why those choices? Why a spoon?" The last three words prompted a memory in his rapidly deteriorating mind. "Why not an ax or a--"
"Oi!" The devil grabbed a snake and threw it on to the man's chest. In a moment the venom had stopped his heart. He got to experience all the pain of dying again without the actual dying. "No prompting Alan Rickman! You might hear his voice in the other place, but not here. Now come on, spoon or trip, make your choice. It's the last choice you'll ever have. Chop, chop. There's a line."
Fearful that the devil would suit action to his pronouncement of "chop, chop," the man tried to think through his pain. The question was one of utility. The point was to emphasize that even a hundred trillion years would be worth nothing compared to eternity. He'd gotten that far. The spoon, though of far less utility, would be with him during his torment.
But then again, it could have been a double bluff. In all that time in heaven, surely things would get better. He could create a memory that, held onto, would certainly comfort him more than a spoon. For that matter, perhaps after even ten trillion years, God's policies might have shifted and he could be forgiven, not forced to return.
Whatever he was now, he still thought like a man. He couldn't really wrap his head around infinity. A hundred trillion was Close Enough.
"I choose the respite in heaven."
"Right," the demon said. "Off to the pit of fire and brimstone with you."
"Then it was a trick question all along? I'm not really getting to heaven, am I?"
The first response was an ice auger to his esophagus. "That for calling me a liar! No, you'll get your vacation. Just as soon as everyone else who made that choice comes back. One at a time. Like I said, there's a line!"
As he was hauled off screaming, the soul tried to make one last calculation. If a hundred billion people had died before him, and only ten percent had been damned (a lowball at best) and only ninety percent had chosen the vacation (a lowball at best), that would be a cozy nine hundred quintillion they would have to break him before he got his respite.
After that, all he could think of was a memory of his grandmother making sauce, how nice the wooden spoon had felt. And how *quick* one could hand out a spoon.
|
Alister opened his eyes
A sudden rush of panic as well as far too many questions went through his head.
He was blushing. What had happened and where was this place ?
He closed his eyes, leaned back on his armchair, took a deep breath, and procceded to allocate some of his brain's proccessing power to an examination of his surroundings.
The ceilling was painted in the least tasteful shade of purple. The walls too. Some dude he didn't recall having ever seen before was sitting in front of him, accross a desk. A purple desk.
He could hear some kind of dubstep remix of *Don't fear the reaper* playing in the background. There were victorian-era vases on the shelves and mud on the floor. A sense of habitude took over as he slowly calmed down.He was used to those. He was in the most familiar place he knew of after all.
"Okay.." He thought "Work.. I'am at work. Where else could I be...".
He hated his job. But not nearly as much as he was hating himself at this exact moment. *He fell asleep on duty*. He knew that he would be regretting this sooner or later. He knew that there were no way to get away with it. *The Boss * sees everything, and He would have some great pleasure in waiting for that special moment when you wouldn't want The Devil himself to fuck your shit up.
He wasn't even afraid. The mere thought of any more pain left him bored out of his mind. But when time doesn't matter anymore, time you spent being bored sure does. Hell, he couldn't even recall any specific thing he had done over the past year.
"I beg you pardon ?"
The man in front of him had started to speak. He seemed confident, and in good shape, for someone who'd just died, that is.
"Are you there, my friend ? "
"Hum why yes" Alister replied "sorry about it, had a long day." He said, with not the tiniest bit of will to make his lie sound credible. "Hello there mister, let's get started asap. Do you know where you are ?"
"No, I must admit that I don't. I'm usually sharp enough not to be kept in the dark for this long, but you somehow managed to have me fooled. Would you kindly enlighten me ? And is everything alright ? you're looking quite ill"
"Yes. and you are dead"
"Am I ?"
"I'm afraid you are"
"Oh"
Alister took a few second to have a look at what he had in front of him. The "client" was a twenty-something wearing some kind of mix between a suit's jacket and cargo pants. A ginger-ish, never evenly shaved beard was running from the base of his ears to his neck, accross his cheeks and upon his chins. Some bizzare excuse for a hairdo was hid for the greater good by a hat of the kind one can see in those old italian gangster movies. The whole personnage inspired pitty, though oddly enough he looked like he was taking the new of his death pretty well.
After a few awkward seconds of silence, Alister decided to carry on.
"..And I'm quite afraid that you're good for an eternity of burning alive and swimming in lakes of spiders. BUT, don't panic yet, we have a present for you. I'll just need your name and your signature here and here."
The man looked at him, unphased, openned his mouth, stayed silent for a couple seconds, then said:
"The name's Sir Jean-Baptiste De Maesmakers"
Alister proceeded to spell it as he could and quickly handed the pile of paper to Jean Baptist, eager to get started.
"As I said" He continued, "You are granted a present at your arrival in this place. A choice. The last choice you'll ever do."
No reaction.
"Before you are cast into an eternal existence of suffering, you may choose between those two things: An hundred trillions years vacation in heaven, OR, this wooden spoon."
He then took a wooden spoon out of the left drawer, and put it on the middle of the desk.
He leaned back as the client started thinking. He surely loved that kind of moment. Would this one cry ? Would he beg for forgiveness ? Would he try to kill himself ? The results were never anything short of hilarious. The only thing in this place that wasn't a total pain in the ass (literally). Seeing someone who's not used to suffering driven crazy by the fear of pain to come.
A small grin started to cover his face as he noticed the man was preparing himself to respond.
"I.. I can't answer this question, I'm afraid"
"And so it begins", Alister told to himself, in anticipation. "What seems to be the problem ?" He asked while trying to remain serious. "Oh shit man, that's going to be priceless"
"The premises are ridiculous. There's no heaven. And science has proven that in a hundred trillions years the universe will have probably ceased to exist"
Alister was amazed. He couldn't believe it was possible for an individual to have his own head this far up his butt. Even though his former job in the place was precisely to watch over the area specially dedicated to this kind of activity.
"Wha... "Science" ?? Do you even know were you are, young man ? "
"You tell me"
"In Hell. You are in Hell !"
"Ah !"
He couldn't believe he had to say it. But he erased any remaining doubts now. Hope is flying away. Tears will come soon.
"I don't believe in Hell"
Alister was too stunned to speak. Sir Jean Baptise continued.
"Is this some kind of prank or something ? I'm way too enlightened and rational for that religion-based kind of folklore, you know."
"Oh" Said Alister, amused, while a now terrifying grin set his face afire,"So you're *this kind* of person.. I see"
"I'm not really one to be put in categories" Said Sir Jean baptist on the exact same tone "I'm a moderator on r/Trees you know, and I have an higher IQ than 99% of the population. I'm not one to believe such assumptions without empirical proofs.."
"Fine !" Exploded Alister, on the verge of hilarity."You want proofs you're in Hell ? If you look at your right, you can see Hellfire, otherwise known as "fire from hell". If you look at your left, you see that pile of CDs in the corner ? That's Lou Reed's discography. We play *Lulu* on the loudspeakers every two hours. Isn't that enough ?"
"I'm sorry but it doesn't make any sense. Why would a god even create this kind of place. I'm afraid the logic behind all of this is fundamentaly flawed, my friend"
This surprised Alister "God ? What does he have to do with this ? God created you bunch a long time ago, and once he realised that he fucked something up and made your souls immortal, he kindly disappeared and Satan had to take care and dispose of you all alone. Unfortunately for you though, he's into burning stuff and some weird shit I won't extend on"
"-But nothing here makes any sense at all. The choice you offered me... What is the point of having to choose between a hundred trillions years of pure joy and happiness and a stupid spoon ? This is too obvious ! I'd go for the spoon" Sir Jean Baptiste replied, in anger
Alister smiled, then calmly put "Oh, the spoon, really. Why that choice ? "
(part 2 in comments)
| 2015-06-08T03:11:34 | 2015-06-08T00:45:58 | 18 | 11 |
[WP] Write a story that doesn't make sense until the end
|
The first to come were the Crazies. They were normal citizens that had undergone some strange mutation and now they destroyed everything that they came upon. It wasn't that they were malicious, rather that they were desperate. They knew that time was limited so they had only so long to spread as far and as wide as possible before the world died. With their advent came the Aliens. They saw their chance in the disorder and weakness of the world to invade. They came from outer space, boring deep into the world's roots, and sapping it of its strength. And already it had been weakened. The top minds put their heads together and came up with a plan of action. They called it--the Nuclear Containment. It would first deal with the mutated so that we could freely attack the invaders. But the fallout of this plan left the world in an even weaker state than it had started. And so began a last ditch effort with the Eradication. They soaked the world in poison because between the quick death of the foreign invasion and the slower death of their toxins, the toxins at least provided them time to think of another plan. The world limped by, day by day, hour by hour, but it survived and was getting stronger. The top minds nearly celebrated, putting away their machines and their poisons, but then came the Relapse. It all happened at once. The mutations started up again, the invaders came back in full force, and no nuclear option nor poison could stop them this time. No, the world was doomed. And as it lay still, the last of its breaths slowly seeping from his body, its mother held its hand, crying into its chest.
"You're my entire world," she pleaded for nobody to hear but the slowing heart machine beside her. "You're my entire world."
|
It wasn't the most disreputable bar I'd been in, but it probably wasn't far off; any more description of the place wasn't needed unless someone forced the issue. I'd been called for a... meeting, of sorts. The kind of meeting you're encouraged to come to armed.
I'd had my doubts how well it was going to go; I had since before I got here. But, I'd been assured over and over that'd it'd be legendary.
I approached the bartender, arguably the most important person here for the meeting. "Lookin' for somethin' strong," I said simply in my hard-boiled, city-wrought accent.
"'Course, you're here for more than a drink, eh?" the bartender responded. Well, of course the man would know. I took my drink and took a look around, the details coming in as we needed them.
A bit dark, as most such places were, the lighting a tad muted. Old-fashioned wood, or at least something stylized to look it, and nondescript patrons. Oh, they could be descript if I asked, but that'd just be unnecessary padding.
A couple of the folks in the corner caught my eye. Curious looking, they were, most notably the pointy ears. I could think of a couple of explanations for that. Second most notably was that they had brought a dog.
One of them, this one a brightly dressed dame, saw me and excitedly waved me over, her perhaps stereotypically long, blond hair swaying along. As I got closer, I saw the "dog" was more like a "wolf", and that she had a long piece of curved wood in her non-waving hand.
The other, more sedate one was a calm man with a simple, fitted suit and an even gaze. His stereotypical expression, plus stereotypical dark-colored bowl cut, plus the small symbol pinned to his shirt clued me in that the angle of his ears sprung from a different source than the lady's.
Never seen them before, but at the same time, seen them over and over again.
"Nice to finally join us!" she said as I approached. The man said nothing, merely holding up a hand, fingers angled away from the center.
"Bit of a dark night to be lookin' for trouble." I began, setting down my drink. "So, any sign of a hook yet?"
The man shook his head. "Logically, it will not begin until all five of us are together." Logically. Of course.
"Names," the barkeep reminded us.
"Oh!" the woman piped up from the reminder. "I'm Maerwen! Nice to meet you!" Despite the looks, Maerwen wasn't much for the old-and-mysterious vibe I might've expected.
"I am Stolk." Stoic, brief, to the point, just as you'd expect.
"Lincoln, private detective," I said simply.
I guess small talk wasn't what we were here for, though, so someone else soon walked through the door. A real topheavy guy in some kind of uniform with a small assortment of bizarre metallic decorations, plus a serious aura of Menace around him.
A bit straightforward, but tended to be a tough bruiser and was always an asset to have along, and so far we were gonna need him for balance.
Unlike Mr. Stolk and Maerwen, I was having trouble putting my finger on his shtick as a mysterious disembodied arm seemed to materialize from him and pull over a chair.
"Leonard Skynard," he said simply to introduce himself. I figured I'd ask him later about it.
We hadn't thought to introduce ourselves again to Leonard, and I was still trying to figure out how all this was going to go down in any kind of sensible way, when I saw Mr. Stolk make a small twitch.
Our 5th and final cohort had arrived, wearing a simple brown robe. A holy man, perhaps? "Welcome to the KO Saloon," called out the barkeep. Presumably to set the scene a bit. I hadn't noticed the old-time swinging doors there on the way in, but I suppose I hadn't asked.
As he approached, he suddenly stopped in his approach, staring at our table. Or, more specifically, at Mr. Stolk. I finally noticed the small metal cylinder swinging at the newcomer's hip. Not a holy man, but might turn out to be a tad Holier-Than-Thou nonetheless.
"Heeeey! Party's finally all here!" Maerwen enthused cry broke the sudden tension between our newly-arrived warrior-monk and our solid-thinking scientist (at least I assumed Mr. Stolk would be a scientist).
After a final introduction to the newcomer "Meldo", I figured it was probably about time to get this show on the road, for better or for worse. I nodded to the bartender, and he nodded back.
Suddenly, a raggedy old man in a tattered cap scrambled through the saloon door, leaving it swinging in his wake. "Outlaws!" he cried. "Them damn outlaws've killed the sheriff, and they'll be back to take over the town by sunrise!"
"And there's the hook," I said to myself. We stood up as one, Maerwen nudging her suddenly woken wolf, to question the man and find our destination before we, I suppose, saddled up.
Just before we left, I turned back quick and paid my tab at the bar, something we so often forgot on these little excursions. As I put down the few bucks (going by the city pricing I was familiar with), plus a few gold pieces Maerwen threw in, I said, "Still say we should probably just stick to ONE source book, even if they all technically use the same system. But if you think you can make it work, I'll give it a shot."
| 2017-05-15T20:45:12 | 2017-05-15T19:57:13 | 55 | 37 |
[WP] It's 3 AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON". You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside."
|
Andrew nearly snarled as his phone chimed for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. His shift at the warehouse ended only a few hours ago and it like chickens running around with their heads chopped off whenever he left. It was rare delight to encounter the nights that he was actually permitted to sleep through the night.
On top of the texts that were just brimming with simple incompetency, the morons that lit up his phone in the middle of the night always seemed to wake up his wife, Isabel, who suffered from insomnia to begin with. The raise Andrew agreed to that stated he kept his ringer on for these occasions never seemed worth it when he saw Isabel the next day, curled up in the guest room with dark circles under her eyes from her attempts to get away from the constant chiming.
Andrew rubbed a hand over eyes to clear them, trying to understand the ridiculous amount of messages but he must have been more tired than he thought since they didn’t make sense.
He quickly scrolled through the message previews, finding they all seemed to follow the same pattern: to look at the moon. The moon? What the -? Why?
It was like a shot to his adrenaline when he saw that some of the messages were coming from Isabel’s phone. He shot up from bed, seeing the other side empty, and jumped to his feet.
“Hun, what’s going on,” Andrew questioned, still scrolling through his phone while walking towards the guest room. The room was at the end of the hallway and the door was wide open. He could see Isabel standing in the middle of the room, arms down by her side and phone clutched in her hand as she gazed out the window.
As he grew closer, he could see that she was shaking, “Bel? Honey? What’s wrong, why-”
Isabel’s body whipped toward him and Andrew couldn’t help himself, he froze in place. She ran and shoved her body into the door, slamming it shut and locking it in place.
The speed was all wrong though, Andrew had never seen her move that fast. It was insane, it was...inhuman….
His own body started to tremble when he remembered her eyes. Her pupils were dilated and not a single bit of the green irises he loved so much were left.
He was just about to ram his own body into the door, to beg her to let him in and make her explain what is happening, but then she started sobbing.
“Andrew! You need to run, you need to hide! I’m so sorry, god I am so sorry. Run, Andrew, and whatever you do, don’t look at the moon!”
Andrew started pounding his fists on the door and trying to shove his weight against it, but she must have blocked it with something.
Despite his shouting and his pleading to be let in, his forgotten phone on the hallway floor seemed to crack through the commotion as the alarms of the emergency alert system distracted him for just a moment. The robotic voice started to play from his phone automatically, “WARNING. THIS IS NOT A TEST. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ALERT. DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON. WARNING. THIS IS NOT A TES-”
Andrew thought his distress was at its peak, nothing was making sense and he just needed to get Isabel so they could deal with this together. He just needed to-
Her screams started and it struck him cold to the very center of his being. He began pounding and kicking at the door until it gave way under his body. Isabel was on the floor, writhing in the moonlight. Andrew couldn’t help it, his knees buckled and he emptied the contents of his stomach right where he stood.
Isabel's body was bent at every wrong angle possible but she wasn’t screaming anymore. Her head snapped in his direction with that ungodly speed again. Bathed in the moon’s light and pupils still completely dilated, she smiled up at him as if every bone in her body wasn’t broken.
In the same voice she used to tell soothe him time after time, she whispered, “Look at the moon, Andrew.”
|
**3:00 AM**
*bzzz*
I groaned awake as my vibrating phone buzzed on the bedside table. I reached out from under the sheets and looked at the notification. It was a text message.
>OFFICIAL WARNING: Do not look at the moon. THIS IS NOT A DRILL
"What the hell?" I whispered. Who needs a warning at 3 AM to not look at the moon on a new moon night? Astronomers and space geeks probably. I put my phone back and closed my eyes. It's probably a prank or something. Nothing I need to lose sleep about, I got college tomorrow anyway. I dozed off...
**3:13 AM**
*bzzz*
*bzzz*
*bzzbzzbzzzZZZ*
I woke up with a start. This was getting annoying. I reached out to my phone and turned the screen on again. I looked at the lock screen.
>78 New Messages
The phone buzzed again.
>79 New Messages
>83 New Messages
I swiped the screen and scrolled through the messages. I didn't know any of these numbers. I scrolled until I came across a familiar contact.
>JASON L.
My roommate, the stupid one. Why'd he text me when he could've just woken me up? I clicked on the message.
>Come outside! The moon is so beautiful tonight! 🌜😍
I looked at the other messages, they were similar.
What's with this moon thing tonight? I got up and walked to his room. I opened the door.
The windows were open and white moonlight was spilling through the gap in the curtains onto his floor. The room was a mess. The lamp was knocked on the floor. There were books, and papers lying everywhere. A broken mirror lay on the floor. Jason was nowhere to be found. Did someone break in? Did Jason fight him? It certainly looked like a fight had happened. As walked in, my foot pushed something. His phone. I picked it up and scrolled through his messages. He'd received the same warning as me, only a bit later. There were also many messages similar to mine telling him to look outside. I looked at his sent messages. He'd sent the same message to all his contacts and other random numbers.
Fuck this. I wanna know what the whole moon thing is about. I stepped towards the window to take a look when someone pulled me back by the shoulder. "No! Don't look!" a voice said. I fell down on the floor. I looked up and saw my other roommate, Mark. He was holding an umbrella and his face was covered in sweat.
"Ow shit Mark. What was that for?"
"You would've gone too."
"Gone too? What are you talking about?"
"Didn't you get the warnings?"
"The one from the government or someone?"
"Yeah."
"Okay okay. What the actual fuck is going on, Mark?"
"Look at this." Mark said, pulling out a selfie stick from his pocket and extending it. He put his phone in, but kept the back camera on. We walked to the window and he started a video recording. He pushed the stick through the gap in the curtains and moved it around, pointing the stick up and down and across. He pulled it back.
"Look " said Mark, starting the video.
It was unlike anything I could've imagined, the moon was huge. As the camera moved below, there was a group of about thirty people in the distance. They were standing on the street looking into houses. Then the video ended.
"What are they doing?" I asked Jason.
"They're dragging people out to see the moon" Mark said.
"What happens if you look at the moon?"
"You become one of them. It's like some kind of mind control. I guess"
"Is that what happened to Jason?"
"Yes." Mark said. "We have to get out. I'm grabbing your keys. Come on." He got up. "Get an umbrella. You don't want to accidentally look up and see the moon, do you?"
I went to my room and grabbed my umbrella and put on a hoodie. You can't be too careful.
Mark was waiting near the door. We stepped outside and opened our umbrellas. Mark opened the garage. Looking up the street I didn't see anyone coming. Someone screamed in the distance.
"Come on!" Mark said, as he got in the car. I climbed in the driver's seat. Another scream. This one sounded close.
My hands starting to shake, I turned the ignition on. The engine roared to life. My music system began blaring. "Turn that thing off!" Mark said. "Okay okay!" I said, turning the volume all the way down. Then we heard something else.
It was a loud screech of at least fifty people screaming. It was getting closer. "Fuck fuck fuck!" I pushed down on the accelerator and we drove out the garage. In the rear view mirror I saw a massive crowd of people running towards us from behind our house. Another group across the street in front of us, I swerved to avoid them when a rock crashes through the window and hit Mark. "Shit!" he said as shards of glass fell on his lap. The crowd continued chasing us and getting smaller in the mirror until they stopped and turned back. We sighed in relief. "Where do we go?" I asked. "Away from here" Mark said. Nodding, I turned us towards the national highway, speeding faster. There were a few cars on the road. I pushed down on the accelerator, speeding up when a someone jumped in front of our car and we crashed into him. The sound was horrible. We stopped and walked out under Mark's Umbrella. In front of us, an old man lay on the road, he was bleeding, but still breathing. "We gotta help him." Mark said. "What if he's one of them?" I said. "He's dying! He's not gonna attack us." Mark said, putting his umbrella down. He bent down to pick him up when the man's eyes opened. His iris was pale gray. He grabbed Mark and pulled him down and kicked out with his leg, kicking the umbrella away. "Isn't she beautiful tonight!?" The man cried. He rolled over with Mark on the ground. I ran towards them. The man kicked out and tripped me. As I got up I heard Mark scream. It was a terrible sound. I looked to him and saw him, staring at the moon, his iris turning from brown to pale gray.
"She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw." Mark said. I backed towards the car. "Mark, wake up! This is not you" I said, standing near the door. Mark got up. "This is me, the same me I've always been. Won't you look at the moon tonight? It's the most beautiful thing *ever*" Mark said, almost growling the last word. The man joined him, and they both charged towards me.
I got in the car and shut the door as the man charged on my side, banging on the window as I turned on the ignition. Mark charged on the passenger side and tried to force himself into the car. He was screaming and growling. I put my foot down on the accelerator and drove as fast as I could. Mark still held on. I swerved the car and punched him in the face. He lost his grip and fell off as I drove off.
It's been a week since it happened. The next morning I ran low on fuel in a nearby town. The town was empty save for a few people. I drove to a gas pump. A man sat near a pump. "Take whatever you want. It's free." He said. "Did it happen here too? The moon?" I said. "Yes." The man said. "Where did everyone go?" I asked. "The man looked at me "The moon took them away" he whispered. "What?" "Took them all up in a big beam of light right in the woods. Everyone who'd looked at it".
I couldn't say a word. I filled my car and drove back home.
--
This is my first writing prompt response. Any feedback or criticism will be appreciated.
| 2022-10-06T10:06:56 | 2018-04-06T21:48:48 | 483 | 32 |
[WP] It's 3 AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON". You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside."
|
My hand reached out from the messy nest of blankets I was buried under, and flopped onto the buzzing phone on my dresser. Bleary-eyed and dazed, I dragged it under the blankets with me, refusing to let myself be fully roused from a solid nights sleep. "What the fuck," I muttered to myself, nearly mumbling the words out loud.
With a pained squint of too much brightness far too suddenly, I looked at the screen and saw - jesus, had to be hundreds of notifications, at least. Which was weird enough; me getting messages from 100+ people? Not enough people like me for that to be a common occurrence. But weirder still was they all said the same exact thing, "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside." Bitches, it's basically morning, I thought. But before I could move, let alone shake the cozy cocoon of blankets from my head to look out my window and see what could possibly be so damn beautiful, my phone buzzed again.
I practically jumped as it shocked my hand. There was a new message, but this one said something different, "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON." "What?" This time I actually did speak out loud. Frustration now fully replaced by curiosity and a racing heart, I kicked the blankets off and staggered down the hall to my roommates bedroom.
"Mon?" I called, knocking on her closed door. Mon was short for Monica. We had only been roommates for a short time - me, in desperate need of a new apartment, and her, with a newly empty house gifted by her parents - but friends for about a year. There was no answer. I tried again, "Mon? You up?" I shivered, which was odd. Sure, I was dressed only in a long tee shirt but it had been spring for weeks now; it should have been enough to feel warm in this house. I heard a loud THUD and bang from inside Monica's room. "Monica? Are you okay?" When still there was no answer, I threw open the door.
There was Monica, hanging from the light fixture. Her heavy wooden desk stool lay toppled on the floor beneath her. "Oh my god!" I screamed, "Monica!" I raced to her feet, held them, grabbed the stool and placed them under her feet. But her body had gone extraordinarily limp in such a short time. Phone in hand, I called 911. Busy signal. What? How...I pulled the phone away from my ear, my other arm still wrapped around Monica's ice cold legs. The blaring sound seemed to fill the air as I tried to comprehend how this could be possible. All right, no problem, let's try again, I thought, swallowing hard and trying not to shake. Busy signal, again. What the hell could be happening, I thought, feeling the stirrings of real panic start to fill my body.
There was a TV in Monica's room. I gingerly placed Monica's feet on the table, then ran to grab the remote sitting on her night table. I clicked, and my eyes were suddenly swimming in the bright colors and video of New Channel One. Almost instantly, I felt my knees buckle from under me. "Sources are reporting a sweep of suicides all over the nation," the newscaster was saying in a somber and serious tone. Her blood red lipstick matched her blazer as she went on, mouth uttering words that made me believe this all could only be a dream. "911 is overwhelmed with floods of calls. Police called to hundreds upon thousands of scenes of jumpers immediately shot themselves upon looking upward. No one is quite yet sure as to what the correlation might be-"
I turned away from the tv, staring down at the phone in my hand. I looked over to Monica's desk and picked up her phone. She too, had hundreds of the "look outside" texts. But the one she didn't have - the warning not to look at the moon.
My breath grew ragged, shallow, as I scrolled through her notifications and could not find a warning anywhere. And all I could think was: why me?'
|
**3:00 AM**
*bzzz*
I groaned awake as my vibrating phone buzzed on the bedside table. I reached out from under the sheets and looked at the notification. It was a text message.
>OFFICIAL WARNING: Do not look at the moon. THIS IS NOT A DRILL
"What the hell?" I whispered. Who needs a warning at 3 AM to not look at the moon on a new moon night? Astronomers and space geeks probably. I put my phone back and closed my eyes. It's probably a prank or something. Nothing I need to lose sleep about, I got college tomorrow anyway. I dozed off...
**3:13 AM**
*bzzz*
*bzzz*
*bzzbzzbzzzZZZ*
I woke up with a start. This was getting annoying. I reached out to my phone and turned the screen on again. I looked at the lock screen.
>78 New Messages
The phone buzzed again.
>79 New Messages
>83 New Messages
I swiped the screen and scrolled through the messages. I didn't know any of these numbers. I scrolled until I came across a familiar contact.
>JASON L.
My roommate, the stupid one. Why'd he text me when he could've just woken me up? I clicked on the message.
>Come outside! The moon is so beautiful tonight! 🌜😍
I looked at the other messages, they were similar.
What's with this moon thing tonight? I got up and walked to his room. I opened the door.
The windows were open and white moonlight was spilling through the gap in the curtains onto his floor. The room was a mess. The lamp was knocked on the floor. There were books, and papers lying everywhere. A broken mirror lay on the floor. Jason was nowhere to be found. Did someone break in? Did Jason fight him? It certainly looked like a fight had happened. As walked in, my foot pushed something. His phone. I picked it up and scrolled through his messages. He'd received the same warning as me, only a bit later. There were also many messages similar to mine telling him to look outside. I looked at his sent messages. He'd sent the same message to all his contacts and other random numbers.
Fuck this. I wanna know what the whole moon thing is about. I stepped towards the window to take a look when someone pulled me back by the shoulder. "No! Don't look!" a voice said. I fell down on the floor. I looked up and saw my other roommate, Mark. He was holding an umbrella and his face was covered in sweat.
"Ow shit Mark. What was that for?"
"You would've gone too."
"Gone too? What are you talking about?"
"Didn't you get the warnings?"
"The one from the government or someone?"
"Yeah."
"Okay okay. What the actual fuck is going on, Mark?"
"Look at this." Mark said, pulling out a selfie stick from his pocket and extending it. He put his phone in, but kept the back camera on. We walked to the window and he started a video recording. He pushed the stick through the gap in the curtains and moved it around, pointing the stick up and down and across. He pulled it back.
"Look " said Mark, starting the video.
It was unlike anything I could've imagined, the moon was huge. As the camera moved below, there was a group of about thirty people in the distance. They were standing on the street looking into houses. Then the video ended.
"What are they doing?" I asked Jason.
"They're dragging people out to see the moon" Mark said.
"What happens if you look at the moon?"
"You become one of them. It's like some kind of mind control. I guess"
"Is that what happened to Jason?"
"Yes." Mark said. "We have to get out. I'm grabbing your keys. Come on." He got up. "Get an umbrella. You don't want to accidentally look up and see the moon, do you?"
I went to my room and grabbed my umbrella and put on a hoodie. You can't be too careful.
Mark was waiting near the door. We stepped outside and opened our umbrellas. Mark opened the garage. Looking up the street I didn't see anyone coming. Someone screamed in the distance.
"Come on!" Mark said, as he got in the car. I climbed in the driver's seat. Another scream. This one sounded close.
My hands starting to shake, I turned the ignition on. The engine roared to life. My music system began blaring. "Turn that thing off!" Mark said. "Okay okay!" I said, turning the volume all the way down. Then we heard something else.
It was a loud screech of at least fifty people screaming. It was getting closer. "Fuck fuck fuck!" I pushed down on the accelerator and we drove out the garage. In the rear view mirror I saw a massive crowd of people running towards us from behind our house. Another group across the street in front of us, I swerved to avoid them when a rock crashes through the window and hit Mark. "Shit!" he said as shards of glass fell on his lap. The crowd continued chasing us and getting smaller in the mirror until they stopped and turned back. We sighed in relief. "Where do we go?" I asked. "Away from here" Mark said. Nodding, I turned us towards the national highway, speeding faster. There were a few cars on the road. I pushed down on the accelerator, speeding up when a someone jumped in front of our car and we crashed into him. The sound was horrible. We stopped and walked out under Mark's Umbrella. In front of us, an old man lay on the road, he was bleeding, but still breathing. "We gotta help him." Mark said. "What if he's one of them?" I said. "He's dying! He's not gonna attack us." Mark said, putting his umbrella down. He bent down to pick him up when the man's eyes opened. His iris was pale gray. He grabbed Mark and pulled him down and kicked out with his leg, kicking the umbrella away. "Isn't she beautiful tonight!?" The man cried. He rolled over with Mark on the ground. I ran towards them. The man kicked out and tripped me. As I got up I heard Mark scream. It was a terrible sound. I looked to him and saw him, staring at the moon, his iris turning from brown to pale gray.
"She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw." Mark said. I backed towards the car. "Mark, wake up! This is not you" I said, standing near the door. Mark got up. "This is me, the same me I've always been. Won't you look at the moon tonight? It's the most beautiful thing *ever*" Mark said, almost growling the last word. The man joined him, and they both charged towards me.
I got in the car and shut the door as the man charged on my side, banging on the window as I turned on the ignition. Mark charged on the passenger side and tried to force himself into the car. He was screaming and growling. I put my foot down on the accelerator and drove as fast as I could. Mark still held on. I swerved the car and punched him in the face. He lost his grip and fell off as I drove off.
It's been a week since it happened. The next morning I ran low on fuel in a nearby town. The town was empty save for a few people. I drove to a gas pump. A man sat near a pump. "Take whatever you want. It's free." He said. "Did it happen here too? The moon?" I said. "Yes." The man said. "Where did everyone go?" I asked. "The man looked at me "The moon took them away" he whispered. "What?" "Took them all up in a big beam of light right in the woods. Everyone who'd looked at it".
I couldn't say a word. I filled my car and drove back home.
--
This is my first writing prompt response. Any feedback or criticism will be appreciated.
| 2022-08-07T20:43:05 | 2018-04-06T21:48:48 | 379 | 32 |
[WP] It's 3 AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON". You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside."
|
I didn't really know what to think of it. "Don't look at the moon"? Sure, no problem. Going back to sleep now. But then I saw my other notifications...99+? Ok, something is definitely up.
I tried to call my girlfriend, but I notice one of the texts I got was from her. "You really should go look at the moon, its amazing." I flip on the tele to see if there's any coverage on what the hell is going on but it just says its off the air. Flip to another channel, same thing. Ok, I'm starting to freak out about this point. Get my laptop, check out Reddit, everything on r/all is urging people to look at the moon.
I try to call my parents, my sister, my friends, no answer from any of them. I'm sitting on the floor with my knees tucked under my chin, rocking slightly back and forth. There's a part of me that just wants to run outside and stare upwards, give in to the madness. Somehow I repress that urge. Then I notice something strange.
The window. It's twenty til 4 but the light coming in through the window is getting more intense. I watch the pale beams stream in, casting an eerie glow into the room. Moonlight doesn't look like that. Moonlight *can't* look like that. I closed my eyes real tight. I began to cry.
I waited. I sat there on the floor, crying like a child, hiding from the unnatural light under the covers. My blanket was thick, yet the cruel light kept peaking through the threads. I began to hyperventilate. The closeness of my breath under the blanket was hard to bear but I did not dare uncover myself for air. I tried to distract myself with my phone, checked for updates, tried to get a hold of anyone, but to no avail. Still the same messages over and over, tempting me. 'Just a couple of hours and the sun will come up. Then I'll be safe.' I thought to myself.
2 hours later. Dawn had not come.
3 hours later. Dawn had not come.
I risked a small opening of the cover so I could look at the room. Not only had the light intensified, it now seemed to engulf my room in a maddening pale light. Presently I became aware of a constant humming. I listened to try and identify the source, but it was unlike anything I had heard before. Like the whir of some inhuman machinery. My mind began to race. I cried out for someone, *anyone* to come and save me, to end this nightmare. But no one came.
I lay there on my floor, in a state bordering madness for another 5 hours. After the 3rd hour I began to babble to myself. With every hour the whir seemed to get louder and closer, my room was now light up like a movie set. I maneuvered myself under the bed but the vile light had stolen the shadows from even there!
Throughout the day the urge to uncover myself and run laughing and screaming into the streets grew stronger and I had to stop myself from jumping up at regular intervals. The whir was now being accompanied by a constant 'thrumming' which preyed my weakened sanity.
I like to believe that I lasted longer than anyone else, in the end.
I began to beat my head against the floor, in an attempt to shut out the unceasing noise. Eventually I was slamming it so hard I believe I gave myself a concussion.
I couldn't take it anymore. All at once I wriggled out from under the bed in my cocoon, threw the blankets off of me and darted out my door. I ran down the hallway where even *here* the light had spread itself, even in a place *with no windows*. Down the stairs and up to the front door, I nearly tore it off its hinges on my way out.
Well it wasn't a moon.
The eyes are what gave it away.
Though they were right...it really was quite beautiful.
<If you actually read this whole thing, thank you. I don't write these at all but there was something about this one that got my brain flowing.>
|
First the texts. Then the MMS images. Then every insta, fb post, live stream, Reddit post, tweet. Every inbox at 0% capacity as it was all FWD FWD FWD FWD : MOON all the time.
After a few days we realized the vast majority of Internet traffic was solely automated spambots. Everybody else was outside looking at the moon, or sleeping all day wherever they last witnessed the moon..
Tritanopia is a form of color blindness that reduces the blue/yellow/green portion of the spectrum.
Us lucky one in ten thousand were unphased by the moon... Get it? Moon puns.
For reference,
1:10,000 expands to
100,000:1,000,000,000
And there's seven some billion people total, so you'd think seven hundred thousand people would be able to coordinate.
But then you have to look at population densities, distributive models of where tritanopia can be found, how difficult it is to travel when almost everyone is standing in the middle of the road to quietly worship the moon.
Imagine being at a festival with a target audience of docile septuagenarians. You don't like the grateful dead, don't get why
everyone is fixated, just want the whole thing to end. You try making a call on your phone but it just plays Phish songs That's how it felt.
It's like not being a hockey fan in Canada.
So. 700,000 functioning humans remaining. All ages. All ability levels. The vast majority lacking applicable skills or the psychological tenacity required to face this world. I was only 12 when it happened, just on the cusp of being forged by the new world yet with fond memories of the old ways.
Most animals that could look up and had some visual acuity also became enraptured. I wanted to help the animals but I didn't know how.
My first two days I tried to go about my routine as normal. Except there was no more no normal routine. No supply lines, no infrastructure, no social contract. Ran into a lot of lunatic strangers that got a start on the hoarding and mad max fashion early. My family had a close personal bond with either the moon or stolen wholesale liquor, depending on sight abilities.
A tritanopia support myphp forum briefly assembled IRL and tried to stage a coup of world power, but taking over the white house and the UN when there really isn't anyone to enforce your will doesn't matter much. Nobody to answer the phone for the nuclear launch codes, nobody to pop in the 8.5" floppy disks to get the nukes into the sky. Infighting led to the fast dissolution of that group, especially when the yahoo group insurrectionists gained traction.
The moonies just stopped participating. Beat them up, bash them to death in the streets, run them over. No resistance. Just single most minded dedication to the moon. A sadist's mcplayland.
They didn't eat or drink but they didn't die of exposure or dehydration. After a while their skin became ashy during the day. They went from monosyllabic grunts to utter silence.
A bit later, some of them grew wings or horns or scales . Some grew hair and became funky werewolf-gargoyle things.
The transformed congregation moved in packs but continued to stare at the moon. They'd only respond if provoked but you'd be dead before you realized you had provoked them.
Then came the Sound Eternal. Somewhere between Gregorian chanting, Cthulhu summoning , and Tibetan throat singing. Constant, from sun down to sun up. From the beasts, from the people.
It was declared cured five or six times. Half of those just lies from crumbling provisional government. The other half lacked real testing or distribution standards. Giving injections to hoards of swaying gnarly mutants that may lead to heads exploding one way or another wasn't going to work out
And so modified aerial viruses delivered via crop dusters, foggers, modified tear gas canisters, anything that could contain the smoke.
They all cocooned out for a bit after the dusting misused some lies masquerading as legitimate research.
I saw the aftermath and heard the confessions but I can't tell you in great detail how that all went down. Too busy rhen with the fight for survival, a sixteen year old keeping a nuclear reactor running on a submarine turned makeshift unethical medical experimentation laboratory.
The less said, the better. Dark time for submarines.
Most Moonies came out of chrysalis fit as a fiddle, back to full health, lost all the medieval art features.
Lived a mockery of their old routines, spring in their step. Go into the abandoned office to push pieces of paper around and tap keys on unpowered terminals. Then every night, back to the moon gazing.
You were probably born during this time period. Probably not the most rational decision that could've been made, but after surviving weregargoyles the social fabric didn't have much space for rationality.
They'd peruse ransacked grocery stores, exchange idle moon-themed pleasantries with each other. Morning jog through fields of corpses, oblivious. Flip.through the same old magazine until it disintergrated. Barbers and janitors would go to rubble that used to be their workplace and sweep with purposelessness . Tradesmen could sort of resume their jobs, more or less, but only served their own kind. After a few months, they used noise singing to gather a crowd and coordinate at a task, building ungodly architecture overnight or sacrificing a hundred mile long line of people to send an electrical signal from one necropolis to the next.
They'd all look at us and they would know. They would say "better not look at the moon" in the same deadpan attempt of reverse psychology. I'd reply "What a beautiful night out" while bug eyed stating at their moon. And sing about the moon hitting my eye like a big pizza pie. They just didn't understand thar moon magic wouldn't work on my snarky 19 year old deficient peepers. I had fallen into a bad crowd of pharmaceutic redistributors.
I'lll admit I developed a bit of a moon dust habit.The dust made their late 20th century satire of mid 20th century values schtick a little more tolerable. What else is there to do during the longest flash mob installation art piece? Swap rumors and lies about how places beyond the horizon were getting by?
Someone - nobody knows which side - invented glasses that compensated for the color blindness, let the impure finally join the teeming masses. That caught on big once we realized us last few unchanged had successfully flushed all chance of rebuilding or becoming something other than marauder junkies. I was around 22 at the time and in middle of trying to preserve priceless irreplaceable cultural artifacts from the Smithsonian, mostly by defending an adjacent outpost and running a little mercantile ammo shop on the side. Missed out on the suicide sunglasses phase. Gave away the only pair I stumbled across in the ruins to a real go-getter errand runner.
Then, next phase began and their molting started. Human skin left lying around everywhere, giant insectoid snakemen picking fights, the usual. Moondust purity went way down, market nearly tanked. By then I had a cybernetic arm and a laser eye. I spent most of my time in pipes, guarding various keys and providing clues to riddles.
I betrayed everyone that trusted me at every turn and regret nothing. I had once decided to live like a forgettable side quest NPC in a sub-par video game series. But when the laser eye was installed, I could see the full beauty of the moon in all spectrums, even those invisible to the limited human eye.
Didn't take long to round up the remaining twenty thousand some for free laser eye replacement. There's some logistics, sure, but you concentrate everyone into camps, chop off some limbs, erase the notion of free will or anything but service to the moon.
Turns out the moon does not mind if you scoop out significant portions of the prefrontal lobe before conversion. The question is will you be complacent enough to realize your higher calling or are you going to be another meat log for the stumpy field?
Either way, the implants will a little itch bit at first. Hopefully this bit of storytelling has enlightened you. Now, please, let us experience the moon together now.
| 2022-12-12T15:52:54 | 2018-04-06T19:57:39 | 191 | 30 |
[WP] Your job as a researcher in the facility isn't too bad. The hours are shit and the coffee maker is broken, but at least the people are nice. And the job is easy: talk to the telepathic spider, run some tests on the witch, give the eldrich god his daily newspaper, basic stuff. Describe your day
Inspired by the SCP foundation
|
"Morning newbie."
Three years. I've been working here for three *fucking* years and Caleb was still calling me a *newbie*.
"Morning," I muttered to the unsmiling man behind his desk. "Is the coffee machine fixed yet?"
"Morning newbie," he said again.
I frowned and looked at Caleb, his eyes are unfocused. I wasn't sure if he heard me - it didn't matter. I moved on, passing by more desks and people with stone-cold expressions on their faces. They ignored me and I ignored them in kind.
It was the way shit had to be here. We had to be cold. Uncompromising.
'*F-food... Food!*'
*Shit.*
I make my way to section C-18. After a maze of pristine white corridors and elevators, I arrive at SCP-3912. A telepathic spider peered at me from behind the glass.
'*W-what... took... long... Hungry! Will... devour... you!'*
"Sorry," I think aloud to the scratchy voice in my head, then begin tapping away on a control module. "What do you want today? There's rat, chicken, rabbit or-"
'*H-human!*'
"Sorry O, but human isn't on the menu today - Oh. What's this? There's a fresh born goat, your favorite!"
'*Hmph... Fine.*'
O hmphed me, but began unfurling its seven-foot long, spindly legs from its nest. A giant-hulking spider crawled into view. I exhale, a breath of relief that there was a massive glass wall between us. O could make a grown man scream like a little girl without even trying.
A baby goat, still wet with fresh-born fluids and blood was dispensed from a hole in the ceiling, dropping onto the floor with a wet splatter.
"Fresh-born as promised," I say to the spider but she ignored me, too occupied with her exquisite meal.
I give myself a pat on my shoulders. Next, SCP-1418.
Suddenly, I get a ping. I pull out the standard SCP Tablet and check the message.
'*Caleb from Section C-1 has been compromised. Please proceed to SCP-0009*,' I read.
For a moment I lose myself, frozen in thought. I had just seen Caleb this morning and he seemed *fine.* But what worried me more was... SCP-0009. I shivered as I remembered the rumors I've heard about him. We called him, the Eldritch God. Why? I didn't know. All we knew was what he said about himself - a physical manifestation of calamity, a being that would bring an end to everything in existence and that he was a being far older than humanity, and probably even time itself.
Suddenly, the tablet vibrates in my hand. Another ping.
This time the message was short.
*'ASAP,'* it read.
------
-----
[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Em_pathy/comments/8eenri/the_eldritch_god_part_2/) complete! Check out my sub for more stories, /r/em_pathy
|
I'm so glad someone finally asked!
My day is, in a lot of ways, totally trivial. I admit when I first started it took some getting used to, but now, several years in, it feels just like any other job.
Every day starts with me driving to the facility and parking in the above ground lot. I have an old Kia, nothing special, and I always park in between two legal spots on the far side of a major big box store I can't really go into any more detail about. Winky.
Anyway, when the right car parks in the right spot, it is brought down via hydraulics to the holding facility. That's where I show my ID and change into my uniform.
There's a real nice guard at the front - we call him Jose - but he's not exactly human. He lives in the booth at the front of the giant underground facility, the whole multi-acre complex bored out from the bedrock. He appears to us in human form, speaks in a human voice, but that's really just for our psychological benefit. His true form is a sentient vapor with intense psychic abilities. He was one of the first subjects - someone found him in the bell tower of an abandoned church - lonely and purposeless.
That was almost 80 years ago now. These days he is the face of the organization, in a sense. He loves his small confines - something about his physiology I'm told, he likes tight spaces - and his straight forward purpose as a psychic barrier to entry makes him feel useful.
"How's it going Jose?"
"Doing great Barry!" Then without fail Jose guesses the right number I'm thinking with a smile. "2,543,111." It never gets old.
Right inside the facility I check in with my supe, confirm facility status and my assigned route, and then put on the "utility belt." That's what we call the heavy duty leather belt we all wear in the facility, decked out with a wide variety of defensive and aggresive supplies and tools, enough to cover almost any situation.
Gas mask, active lens goggles that can darken as black as a welding mask, ear plugs *and* over ear noise cancelling ear muffs, aerosolyzed acid, aerosolyzed base, conventional pepper mace, much less conventional non-pepper mace I can't disclose the exact contents of but which works very well against non-physical vapors and specters. A taser, a pistol, a knife. A small pocket loaded with tiny symbols from every major religion on earth. A holy water vial, a salt water vial, a heavy water vial. A small packet of live roaches and a variety of other tiny things that I haven't thought about in some time.
Perhaps most importantly, and in fact the only thing I've ever used on the whole belt, is the prepared syringe of sedative. There are a couple of subjects it might work against, but its primary purpose is to knock *me* out - which is what I used it for several years ago when the Soul Seeker broke free for a few hours. There are a host of creatures who simply ignore the unconscious, and in the event of certain breaches of security, stabbing oneself in the thigh with a sedative is the first course of action.
Once I'm all decked out, it's time to start the rounds. By this point its usually 7AM and the fellas are getting ansy. My route passes by several of the "heavy hitters" in the facility. Some cannot be discussed. I cannot be more specific about that. I hope you understand what i mean, if you are familiar with the database of the facility you may understand what I'm *not* referring to.
Once I move on, I encounter the Man-Child God of Bolivia - Hacua. Hacua is a real character - he has a mostly normal material cell, except for a few runic hexes laser etched into the concrete. The cell itself is plexiglass, mostly because Hacua is a spitter. Hacua eats meat, but likes to play with his food - about a goat a week. I feel badly about the goats, don't get me wrong, but when they found Hacua in the Bolivian rain-forest, he was terrorizing the local populace, eating children after luring them into on a not so merry chase. Contextually, a goat once a week is a small price to pay to keep him sated.
Next we come up against the living Golem of Akarat. Its an incredible creature, it's cage is made of sheer titanium, four feet thick. It has a tiny, 8 by 8 inch aperture, through which we sometimes converse or pass pulp romance novels from the supermarket. "Ak" - I call him "Ak" - has a real soft spot for cheesy romance novels. Technically we aren't *obligated* to provide him new books, but it keeps him calm, which is good, because although he can't breach the walls of his age, he can make his entire complex shake like the dickens.
Once me and Ak catch up on the most recent addition to our unofficial bookclub, I move onto the Hargrove Lich. He's a bit of a dick, tbh. We hold him in a powerful electromagnetic sphere, as it suppresses his evil magicks, and his bony frame is shackled to the concrete floor. I can't really blame him for being pissy, he's physically very weak - and unkillable to boot. So he just lays there, day in day out. He likes classical music though - apparently he was a composer once upon a time, however many centuries ago, so I try to buy him new works on CD whenever I can, which we play on a small boombox. He just tells me to fuck off, but I think he appreciates it.
It's not all just incarceration, we do run tests on some of the subjects. There is the telepathic spider someone found controlling the mind and body of a hulking biker in Nebraska. Apparently the little fella can bore into mammalian brain matter and take over like a driver at the wheel of a car. Right now we have him running an otherwise brain dead man's body through its paces, testing coordination and vocal prowess. So far the spider has done incredibly well, although we still can't fully understand how it works its magic.
The spider's test has recently been taking me all the way to noon and a lunch break. The folks who work at the facility are an eclectic bunch, and some of them have...well...seen some shit. You have Jeremy with the ten thousand mile stare. He's all there inside, at least HR OK'd him, but ever since his encounter with a Banshee, he just can't make eye contact with anyone. There's this one dude with two artificial legs chopped off by a living sword we call Snip. Ronald has only one eye, the other one still being displayed on the pointer finger of some nameless torture demon in high-sec. No one can go in there to get it, but they changed Ron's shift so he didn't need to look at it everyday.
I want to go on, but I'm being called to the cell of a sentient, floating face, whose name evades me at the moment. I think they found him in some endless basement somewhere, eventually sucked him into a box using a radioactive gamma vacuum. The alarm is going off now. I'll be back in a bit.
## r/LFTM
| 2018-04-23T10:13:49 | 2018-04-23T09:55:13 | 419 | 40 |
[WP] You're throwing a ball around with your dog and he's loving it. Then, he stops dead still. He takes a quick sniff and looks up at you and says "I'm not supposed to do this, but you need to get inside right now". He looks off into the distance, "They're coming".
Wow, was not expecting this, thanks for the silver:) and the gold:))
|
"What the fuck? You can talk? Little asshole, we could've been doing this the whole time and now you choose to speak?"
After 7 years of ownership, raising my little Bucky, just now he decides to speak.
"Can we not do this right now? Im telling you there's danger approaching!"
"Nuh uh buddy, I don't think so. I pick up your shit so I think I deserve some answers here."
"Uggggghhh," Bucky groaned "listen all dogs can do this but communication is only permitted in emergencies!"
"Wait a minute, so you're telling me that all of dog society lives by toy story rules? You're surely joking."
"Toy Story?"
"Yeah, Toy Story! Living with me you've must've seen it once."
"Whatever! Lets just get inside before its too la--", Bucky stopped mid sentence to look to his left, "Ruh Roh".
I turned to follow his gaze, standing at the foot of our drive way were ten very unhappy looking mail men.
"Wait a minute, you've seen Scooby-Doo?"
|
Charlie is my best friend. Has been since the day I brought him home from the pound. I remember it like it was yesterday. He was a little ten pound ball of golden fluff. I walked into the pound uncertain if I would leave empty handed once again. I was living alone, fresh out of college, and tired of having no company. A friend of mine suggested that I take a gander at the SPCA up the road from my apartment.
I drove the roughly ten minutes it took to get there. I don't remember to many details about that day, other then it was cold. The wind outside stabbing at any exposed flesh. I entered the pound. The sad, terrified moans and whines of the multitude of animals stuffed into captivity. A young woman wearing a red shirt that read "This isn't their home, but you can give them one".
And so we went through the motions. She asked me what I was looking for, I told her I wasn't sure. We walked the lot together. She detailed the best she could the names and ages of each animal we passed by. None of them caught my eye. And then, as if God itself were reaching down from the heavens to smack me across the face, I see him.
"Who is that?" I said, staring at this yellow mound. His big black eyes captivating my soul.
"That's Charlie. He's new here. Been here just shy of a week. Would you like to pet him?"
"Yes!" I blurted uncontrollably. The woman led the way to the wooden gate containing the lone pup, and I practically tossed her out of the way. I stood within several inches of him and dropped to one knee, extending my hand out toward him. He studied me carefully, unsure as to what to do with my lengthy hand dangling in front of his face. He was apprehensive at first, slowly drawing his nose to my hand. He ran the length of my fingers with his snout, studying my scent before slowly licking my fingers. One by one until reaching my thumb, then he presented his sharp puppy teeth and pinched the hell out if. But even still, I couldn't be upset. He was perfect. And so I bundled him up in a wool blanket, made the transaction, and took him home. Since then, we've been inseparable.
"Uh-huh." The agent in black said to me. He held in his lap a neatly organized notepad, and a single silver pen. I noticed he had stopped jotting down notes a little while ago. "I'll be honest with you Mr. Thompson, the reason why we called you in is because of strange activity you admitted your dog-"
"Charlie." I interrupted, correcting him.
"Charlie," He said, scratching his temple in frustration, "Has been displaying. Tell me more about that if you'd be so kind."
The air conditioner kicked on, propelling a steady current of cold air through the confined room. The concrete walls were bare. I sat across from a very serious, professional looking individual. His suit tailored perfectly to every curve of his bulbous body. To my right is a rectangular mirror, I feel safe in assuming it's two way. And above us is a square shaped vent, surprisingly dusty for such an otherwise well kept facility. A strangely homey smell floated in the air, as if the A/C was pumping it through the facility in hopes of relaxing the detainees.
"Oh, right." I said, suddenly pulled back into the now. "Well, yesterday we were at green hedge park, tossing the ole tennis ball around, like usual."
"Okay." The man said, clicking his pen and carving into the canvas at his lap.
"Well, I threw the ball, Charlie went to fetch it. He brought it back and dropped it at my feet when all of the sudden, he fell to his belly, like he was in trouble."
"Does he do this often?"
"Fetch?"
"No Mr. Thompson, does Charlie drop to his stomach like that, or behave sporadically in a way which may worry you?"
"No. That was the first time. But then, he looks up to me, His big black eyes looking how they did that day i first meant him, and he spoke."
"When you say spoke, what do you mean?"
"He spoke...English. Well it was broken English but enough that I understood."
"What did he say?"
"He said, 'We go inside now, They are coming. It's no longer safe."
"And then what happened?"
I considered this question thoughtfully. It had been a blur from that point to now, I hand't truly remembered how I got here, or who this man is. This setting seemingly vague yet somehow familiar. Like I'm experiencing some form of dream like Deja-Vu . "I don't know."
"Harrington." A voice beckoned over the above speakers. "Can you step outside for a moment.
"I'll be right back Mr. Thompson." He said, assuring me by giving me a pat on the back while passing by. "Yes sir?"
"We've got a situation in Cairo."
"What is it?"
"It's.... some sort of battle. We've got several dozen reports of mass casualties."
"Terrorist?" Harrington asked. pulling his collar open to draw in a steady breath.
"No. It's cats."
"What the fuck." Was all Harrington could muster.
"Can I use the rest room?" Mr. Thompson asked from his chair.
| 2019-07-15T16:38:04 | 2019-07-15T16:37:33 | 37 | 20 |
[WP] Magic has always been banned inside the walls of your home city. You never knew why until you looked down upon the city from afar and noticed that, framed by the circular outer-wall, all the zig-zagging streets and alleyways actually construct a giant magic seal- one for imprisoning great evil.
|
I was absolutely stunned that no-one has noticed this before.
People climbed the surrounding mountains every day. It wasn't forbidden, or even particularly difficult. When someone needed privacy, or fresh air, or silence, they climbed the mountains. That was why I came up to begin with.
To be fair, the symbol was highly asymmetric, so it wasn't easy to recognise, even viewing at so shallow an angle as I was; the mountains were relatively low to the ground anyways. Even then, its shape was distinct enough that *some* people should have realised. Well, I wasn't about to cry over that.
The city's winding streets laid out the most powerful seal of ancient spirits right before me. Some featrues were obscured by towers or taller rooves, and the castle, but there was no mistaking it. Thoughts coursed my head at this discovery. It explained so much. Like the ban on practicing spellcasting in town, or why the walls themselves oozed some rather slight, but perceptible magic, or why it was impossible to fly too high too near. If it was meant to protect the secret, it had failed. I had been looking for Rygva'ath for the longest, but I could never get closer than 'in the city'. That had changed now.
A most insidious idea popped into my head. Seals are broken when they are split in two - when a branch doesn't connect to the rest. How could I break the streams? By building across streets, turning them into dead ends. But who would let me do that?
Shop owners, market stall vendors, who would *love* potential customers to have no way of walking around them, that's who. More sales means more taxes, so the noble of the city would for sure let it happen. But this wouldn't get me all the way there. Still, it was a starting point. After making a quick, but critically, somewhat inaccurate sketch of the streets' layout, I returned home to contemplate my next move.
It struck me then: more gates mean more seclusion from the plebeians, and more tolls. Are gates walls? I was going to see it through. Chuckling to myself, just imagining that after so much research, such a long journey, all the actual work was going to be done by someone *else*, and I wouldn't even be around when the destruction started. This was the most fun in being the villain - causing people to willingly, better, *wantintgly* walk into their own deaths, and getting to spectate from too far to be concerned about law, or retribution.
That afternoon, the city council recieved a lengthy letter, signed by multiple respected traders and merchants. Sometime in the evening, a watchful eye might have noticed a lone wanderer going through the mountains with a well-packed mule.
Before you judge - I left a message also for the priests of the local temple. "Pray."
|
Asterella threw the tiny fireball from one hand to the other as she walked towards her home, many thoughts running through her head.
She had overheard her mentor, Olorin, talking with the town elders. About her. She wondered if she should ask him, but his words ran through her head.
Why would Olorin, the greatest wizard the town had ever seen claim that he was afraid of Asterella.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice Olorin come right next to her. He waved his hand, and a ball of water fell on Asterella's hands, putting off the fireball.
"We're almost at the town boundary. No magic anymore."
Asterella looked at her wet hands and then back to Olorin. "Wha... We're so far away. You didn't need to do that."
"I do what I want. Hush child."
"I'm not a child anymore. You better..."
Olorin's eyes glowed. "I better... what, child?"
"Never mind." Asterella shrugged and started walking again.
Olorin put a hand on her shoulder. "Anything on your mind?"
"No."
His face softened. "Listen, I know that your home is..."
Asterella swept his hand off her shoulder and started walking again. "Let's just go."
Over the next days, Olorin noticed a change come over his protege. Asterella was an orphan, shunned by the entire village. But one thing had never changed. She always had a smile on her face. That smile had become lost and Olorin was concerned.
Olorin knew that the girl had the potential to be the greatest wizard in the whole known universe. It also meant if she realized her potential, she could decide the fate of the whole world.
He looked at the girl as she sat cross legged in a library pouring over a book. It was all advanced magic that she still couldn't handle. But he let her be. He would talk to her. But not yet. Not till he knew for sure what the elders would decide. Whether he would continue to be her teacher, or would they deem him to be her executioner. He was fighting for her. No, that wasn't true. He was fighting for himself. He had come to see her as the daughter he never had. He was going along with their discussion, but in his heart he had already decided. If it did come to it and the elders made a decision that he didn't agree with, he would take the girl and flee far away from this place. This place where they were all scared of her and ostracized her.
He looked back in the library and noticed she was gone. He went to the book and saw what she was reading. He reeled in shock and realized that his worst fears had come true.
He quickly retrieved a vial and poured it over the book she was reading, letting her essence get magnified by the potion. The smoke grew thicker and thicker as a cloud formed over the book.
"Lead me to her. Now."
The wizard had commanded. The cloud obeyed.
******
Asterella continued climbing the mountain as the voice continued whispering in her ear.
*Soon, we'll be together child. You won't be alone any more.*
"What of them? What will happen to the villagers."
*They'll get what they deserve. For what they did to me. And more importantly, what they did to you.*
Asterella thought back to the looks. That place was a pit of vipers. They all hated her and didn't mind showing it. Let them die. All of them. "Let's go."
The voice led her to a small cave in the face of the mountain.
*This is the caster's cave. A well hidden secret. This is where they cast the seal.*
"Why did they cast the seal?"
*Just like you, I was the most powerful wizard they had ever seen. They were scared. And they banished me to beneath the earth. They shut my powers in a box and placed it in the town square, away from any magic. They're still afraid of me. That's why they banned magic from the city. All wizards were sent out of the city. That's why Olorin lives outside the city. Because he didn't want to give up his magic.*
"Did you know Olorin?"
*I did, yes. He was my mentor. He was supposed to be, at least. But he never fought for me. When they said I was to be trapped, he went along with it. In fact, he was the one who cast the seal.*
Asterella stopped in her tracks. "Olorin cast the seal?"
*Indeed.*
"How could he!?"
*Fear. He was afraid I was better than him. And that old fool is too proud to let someone be better than him. But he'll get what's coming to him, too.*
Asterella thought back to the words she had overheard. Olorin had been speaking to the elders. She hadn't heard much, but she had definitely heard Olorin saw he was afraid of her. Tears filled her eyes, as her heart grew heavy. The one person she had trusted, the person closest to family for her.
She continued her journey to the caster's cave and the Old Wizard followed.
There was urgency in his steps. He could sense Asterella's presence now. He was close. But he also sensed another presence. A familiar one. Had she corrupted Asterella's mind? Could he still save the child? For her sake, and his own, he wished he was in time.
Asterella came out the other side of the mountain and looked at the town. She tried to think of it as her town, but the truth was that it had been anything but.
She looked at the page she had copied down from the book. The voice had told her but she had found it hard to believe. The town matched the seal completely. She started the unsealing process.
Olorin felt the air around him change. He was too late. The only way to stop this was to do the one thing he had steadfastly refused to do.
Did he have a choice? Did he still stand a chance?
An ethereal image appeared before him, as a familiar voice echoed through his head.
*You're too late.*
"You."
*I told you I'd be back. You will pay. And so will everyone.*
"I will stop you again."
*You can try. But my magic is returning.*
The image swept her hand and the wizard flew backwards. In a flash he was at the bottom of the mountain. She had grown stronger. Her magic was escaping the seal.
He could try going up the mountain again but he was sure she would just throw him back down again. She still wasn't strong enough to physically hurt him, but soon she would be.
Luckily, he knew where she would lead Asterella next. The little girl was his only chance now. There was still one place where her magic couldn't reach him.
So, 15 years, after he had banished his student, he broke his own vow and entered the town again. He made a beeline for the fountain in the middle of the town. That's where the box was.
He just hoped he was in time.
| 2021-10-17T02:32:38 | 2021-07-12T06:58:44 | 319 | 61 |
[WP] You die and go to Heaven - only to discover that you are the first human being who has ever been able to do so.
|
"I'm the only one?"
**Yes.**
"Out of everyone? Everyone ever?"
**That's right.**
"*WHY?*"
**You followed all the rules. All of them. You shaved your beard right, you never spilled semen on the ground, you cared for others, yo-**
"What about my parents? My neighbors?"
**They're being tormented for eternity in Hell.**
"What about all those priests? The prophets and teachers and so forth?"
**They're being tormented too. The whole lot.**
"And you thought I'd be okay with that?"
**Well... yes.**
"Aren't I supposed to be eternally happy here? How can I be eternally happy with the knowledge that people I love are suffering eternally?"
**Fine. I'll bring your family here. Will that make you happy?**
"*NO!* How do you expect me to be eternally happy knowing *ANYONE* is being tormented for eternity?"
**So you want me to bring... everyone?**
"Yes. Everyone."
**And that will make you happy?**
"I don't know how I could be otherwise."
**Jesus, you're hard to please.**
|
I looked around at the barren, but pristine, palace. Angels flew here and there but I was the sole human to wander about the fabled paradise. It was enjoyable in the beginning, but as time went by curiosity loomed over me. I wanted answers. Why me? Why was I the only one? There were plenty of great men throughout history and yet I was the only one to make it? My parents, who had long since died, were far better people than me. Why didn't they make it? What did I do that the rest of humanity didn't?
I wanted answers so I went up to the first angel I saw and asked him, "Why am I alone here? What did I do that set me apart from the others?"
He was a tall man of a muscular build clad in pearl white robes. He had short blonde hair that glowed golden in the divine sunlight and his milky white wings hung behind him without any effort. They were larger than him and yet he seemed not to struggle with their weight. "My apologies, sweet child but I am not the one who may answer your question. You must go to the one who brought us all here." His voice was like cream to listen to. It was kind, smooth, and sweet and I felt myself slightly hypnotized by it.
"God?" I said faintly in shock, still mesmerized by his angelic voice. I had never believed in God, that was one of the reasons I was shocked to find myself up here. "Where do I find him?" I asked nervously. The angel pointed to a brilliant light behind me and when I saw it I felt a radiance like no other. Dreamily I walked towards the beacon of light and for each step I took towards it I grew more elated.
When I had finally reached the beacon of light I was in pure ecstasy. The light was so bright I couldn't see through it but I didn't care. Slowly it dimmed and as it did I grew lightly sad that it faded.
"Fear not my child after our conversation I shall increase my light a hundred fold and you may bask in it for as long as you like." Her voice was ineffable. Whether it was the failure of the english language or that it simply could not be explained I knew not. All I can say was that it was even more delightful than the divine light she gave off. That was something that threw me off however, I had always imagined God to be a man. Not a woman. She towered above me in, what appeared to be, a white silk gown that draped oner one shoulder and had luscious brown hair. "You're a woman," I accidentally murmur and grow ashamed for having said such a thing to God.
Her pink lips curled slightly up at that in a small smile, "Yes, at the moment I appear to be a woman. Do not grow ashamed my child for you were the only one of your brothers and sisters to prove yourself worthy enough to set foot on this holy land. My form is never absolute. I come to many in many different ways depending on their nature. However, all humans that walk upon this paradise see me as this form. Now ask me your question."
I was calmly terrified. It was an odd sensation really. I was intimidated by her, by God, and yet I knew with absolute certainty I had nothing to fear. "Why...why am I the only one here."
She smiled even more so than before at that giving way to the single most beautiful scene I have ever bore witness to. "That you would ask me that question is the very reason. You see when you lived upon the green Earth you were a humble man. You thought yourself inferior to most if not at an equal stance to them. You judged not the greedy, the poor, the cynical, or the angry. You knew them to be beyond your comprehension and so treated them as well as you would a friend. When you sinned you made no excuse for yourself, instead you heavily chastised yourself to do better. Though you did not always find the will to do so. You never pressured your fellow brothers and sisters. You encouraged them to see themselves in a light that you wished to have for yourself. It matters not your sins nor your beliefs. What truly mattered was your attitude towards others as well as yourself. You did wrongs, yes even I do not deny that, but you dealt with it in a way no one ever did. You strived to do better, always you strived to do better and never blamed anyone but yourself. You are the only man to have ever achieved such worthiness." She smiled and after a brief pause asked, "Do you have any other questions? Fear not for I will answer all that you might ask and give you all that you might need."
I hesitated for a moment and then asked, "What happened to my parents? I'm sorry but I feel that they don't deserve to be in hell."
"Fear not," she began with as much warmth and patience as ever, "Hell is not what you think it to be. Yes, there was places of severe punishment for the wicked but there are also places were one may just be. They feel no pain nor any sorrow, but they do not feel the absolute joy that you do either." I nodded slightly saddened by what she had said, but she lowered a giant finger and gingerly lifted my head up. the contact melted away at my worries and I found my self smiling once more. "Do you have any other questions my child?" She smiled. I shook my head as a tear of profound joy trickled down my face and she lifter her finger away from me and said, "Then I pray you enjoy all the fruits of paradise."
| 2014-09-04T11:55:59 | 2014-09-04T11:04:17 | 129 | 17 |
[WP] As a young child you made an innocent wish to be granted a power that in hindsight was just whimsical and silly. Now you have grown up but you still have the power - how do you use it now as an adult?
|
"DUUUUUDE! YOU'RE BACK! I'm so happy to see you! Hey! Hey! Hey! Dude! Hey!"
"Yeah Bode, I see you too." I replied and knelt down to give him a big hug.
Of all the dogs I'd known, Bode was the friendliest, but also the stupidest. He's my third dog, and yeah, I love him, but he's an idiot. Sometimes his constant yammering gets a little annoying.. But that's what I get for that wish.
"How was your day at work, dude? I missed you all day! I just kinda sat around. I saw a squirrel today! And a chipmunk too! I tried talking to them but they ran away," Bode continued. "...hey, could you let me outside? I want to go pee on that tree. And then the bush. And then the other tree."
"Yeah Bode, sure thing bud. Give me a second." I went to let Bode out the door, and as I watched that giant, magnificent, white wolf-like dog bound around in my backyard I thought how silly it was that I could actually talk to him.
When I was six years old, I'd gotten my first dog. His name was Buddy, I'd named him that because he would be my best buddy. One night, I was looking up at the stars with him in a field, when I saw a shooting star, and in the moment, I wished that I could talk to dogs. Neither of us said a word for what just have been half an hour, just content to sit there as I pet his thick coat. Then we got up and Buddy looked at me: "are we going home now? I'm getting sleepy." He asked me. "Did you.. Just talk?" I replied, unable to even process his question.
"Yeah, I talked. I do it all the time. Don't you understand me?"
"Well, I do now. You've been talking to me this whole time?"
"What do you *think* I'm doing when I look at you and make noises with my mouth? Humans..."
Buddy was without a doubt the smartest dog I'd known. By that I don't mean he knew a lot, he wasn't educated (no dog is), but he was clever and emotionally intelligent. He always knew when something was bothering me. "Hey Henry.. You can always talk to me. What's wrong?" He would say, gently nudging his nose under my hand, forcing me to feel the soft fur on the top of his head and behind his ears.
He helped me through middle school, the time when kids were most cruel. He helped me the first time I really liked a girl, to become bold enough to ask her out. "You're a great human, if she likes you, great, but if not, don't worry, it won't be the end of the world."
"Wow, that's wise for someone without balls." I joked. He really was wise, though, for a nine year old.
"Hey!" He'd growl, "no shots below the belt!"
"But you don't even wear a belt!" And we'd both end up bursting into laughter. Yeah, dogs do laugh. Some of them have great senses of humor.
(If everyone could understand them like I do, comedy clubs would be filled with dogs. In my experience, the funniest ones are the little ones- pugs especially. Pugs have to have a sense of humor- "I mean, *look at me*. My human has to clean the folds on my face and I had to be born by C-section because my ugly head is too big for my body," would be a common joke from Otis, my friend's pug. Self deprecating humor is the best kind.)
Back to Buddy: he really was my best friend. Unfortunately, that just made it worse when he died. He'd been getting really sick, and we didn't know what was wrong with him. Turned out he was full of cancer. Before he went into surgery to see what was wrong with him, I remember squeezing his paw and telling him everything would be okay. Those were the last words I ever said to him. They said they couldn't in good conscience take him off anesthesia, and they had to put him down. I lost my best friend.
Now, 20 years later, I operate a shelter for dogs: stray, abused, et cetera. I find them homes. But I'm the best at it. When nobody is around (which is pretty often), I talk to them. I help them deal with their past and problems, I listen to their needs. Often they leave much happier than they came in. Based on what I know of them, I find families who would be a good fit for them and send them off to happier lives. People call me the "new dog whisperer" (Cesar Milan retired a long time ago). I don't want any dog training TV show or attention or anything like that, though. I'm just content to call my shelter "Buddy's Place". When I lost my best friend, I decided I'd dedicate my life to making dogs happy, just like he'd dedicated his to making me happy.
Edit/note: Buddy and Bode are real people (dogs). Aside from the part where I could talk to him, Buddy was pretty much as I describe him. I still miss him. I cried a little when I wrote this.
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As a young man, Nigel Premeiter lived a simple, if unconventional, life with his two parents, Houghler and Tricia. He would stay out doors, normally at the edge of the lot his parents owned. His home was a simple trailer, with one room on one end and his own on the other end. Taking most of the length of the trailer was a large kitchen with long double windows custom installed by his father all along the 'backside' of the unit. During the day, light poured in like waves upon a beach. The muted colors of the couch and chair-and-a-half were brought to brilliant life in the splendor of the morning sunrise, and often Nigel would expect to hear a yelp from the couch whenever he plopped down to color in one of his books.
At night, through these large windows, both Mr. and Mrs. Premeiter would watch their son play in the backyard under the clear night sky. Living in the middle of no where had its perks, one being the total lack of light pollution. Nigel spent almost every warm night out in the fields that extended to the horizon behind his little home, playing with his two childhood friends, Wade and Alexander.
Playing with both Wade and Alexander one night, far beyond the sight of his parents, the boys all laid themselves down on the long field grass, heads together and their legs splayed out in the spokes of a triangle. They stared in silence at the stars, keeping to their own private thoughts when, much to their surprise, a green light flashed across the sky, rising from the South and striking a path North before disappearing. Jokingly, they all made a wish together, and went about the rest of their night playing in the fields.
Its been twenty years since that night, and Nigel is almost the same six year old that wished upon a star, minus a definitive increase in commonsense and general intelligence. He still loves getting dirty and telling crass jokes, habits that stayed with him from his time well-spent with Wade and Alexander, from their infancy through their college years.
But more than anything, what he's loved doing since that night is simple.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Nigel was sitting in a brightly lit coffee shop that he frequented near his office. It was well furnished, with large, arched half fan windows that opened to the street. In many pots lined on the insides and outsides of the walls, the old woman who owned the building grew many of her own herbs and spices, from which delicate and robust smells filled the area. From the basement port, a large wooden door near the back with wrought iron reinforcements, the smell of freshly ground coffee wafted up as the breeze ebbed and flew through the basement windows.
On a plate near the cash register, freshly baked goods released sweet smells of home, laced with love and care, the kind you found from your own grandmother's oven. Their smell was inviting and seeped out of the open double windows, ensnaring the street's sailors and luring them inside with the delicious temptation of their siren's call. The old woman who owned the coffee shop had two lovely granddaughters who loved baking whenever they had the chance, and they would normally come to the shop straight from schooling to make their own kind of magic in the world.
To put it simply, the place smelled like heaven. Each bitter, sweet, and savory aroma that floated around made the air seem to take on a water-like quality. It was so thick, one would almost believe that they could reach out with a butter knife and cut themselves a slice of that intoxicating aroma to keep in a bottle.
Nigel loved these smells, reminiscent of his own mother's garden and kitchen. But what he loved more were the people. Never was the palate dull here; there was always a motley crowd. Rugged sailors, polished police officers, vile criminals, stoic philosophers, and gaudy dancers: The Triquetra of the Soul always had a varied and often disharmonious crowd living in harmony.
It was as if their was an unwritten law, a binding force placed upon them all, that kept the different personalities from rubbing against each other. Nigel could remember vividly a commonly known pick-pocket sitting at a table with a man who was looking for him and that knew him well. They shared stories over a cup of dark roast coffee and freshly baked honey biscuits. They smiled and the pick-pocket paid. The officer exited through the rows of open double windows facing the street and the delinquent exited through the back into the alley. In all of his years of patronage, he had never witnessed an act laced with hatred.
Today, Nigel had taken one of his favorite seats, a small table for one and perhaps a second if you squeezed, right in the center of the room under a lazily turning fan. With the windows open, a slight summer breeze was constantly rolling in, cooling its inhabitants and mixing the sea of relaxing scents. He wore a pair of khaki shorts that were cut above the knee, with a t-shirt of a vivid and bright leaf green color two sizes too large for him draped awkwardly over his gangly frame. His long, brown hair was held out of his face by a red head band in a comical fashion, showing his rather large and shiny forehead. His nose was crooked and hung low from his face, and upon it sat a pair of moon spectacles. One of the lenses had a crack that started at the button and extended to about the middle part of the lens.
He was enjoying a medium blend, its smell pungent yet fair, somewhere between savory and bitter, an utterly consuming fragrance that made his hair stand on end and sent shivers down his spine, much the same that a man would experience looking at the love of his life. On a small plate on the small, lightly colored wooden table in front of him was a lemon cake, that had a consistency comparable to what Nigel imagined a cloud would feel like: fluffy, light, and pleasantly moist.
The object of his attention was a rather large man who was sitting outside at one of the wrought iron tables (made by the old lady's own son), who was wholly invested in a cup of dark roast, savagely devouring a banana and coconut muffin, and reading the newspaper as if it were a religious text.
His suit was well cut and tailored, hugging well to his body and accentuating its finer features, like his broad shoulders and thick, corded arms while doing well to hide the gut that he had begun to grow as he reached, if Nigel remembered correctly, his mid 50s. His shoes were polished leather, and despite their apparent age, looked fit for the Queen of England, if she were to have an appetite for men's shoes.
There was nothing spectacular about this man that drew Nigel to him, but all the same, Nigel was drawn to him. His wish, like himself as a child, had been stupid and ultimately useless except in the face of what he and his compatriots considered good fun. He loved this coffee shop not only for the nostalgia and beauty of the smells that stewed here, but because of the challenge these smells presented.
Nigel shifted inconspicuously, lifting his left leg and draping it over the other, putting the majority of his weight onto his right hip. Silently, he slowly let out a puff of gas that, not surprisingly but always amusingly, he could see as a faint, shimmering cloud of swirling dark colors.
He let it sit for a second, coaxing it into a compressed form, keeping its putrid and rotten contents from seeping out into the fresh, sweet airs around it and also keeping those airs out. He could tell looking at it that its odor was foul, wet, and sickly-sweet, surely to be a sharp contrast to what the good sir sitting at the table outside was experiencing.
Slowly, and with purpose, he lifted his fork to begin eating his pastry, doing twirling motions in the air and slowly, the little ball danced through the air. He had practiced this often, so it merely looked to anyone who would look in his direction on a whim would see a man artfully eating his pastry, enjoying the ecstasy of its tastes and being overwhelmed by them.
It was a short trip, no more than ten seconds, before the orb had come to rest below the man's nose. With a sigh of melancholy joy, Nigel opened his left hand in his lap and reveled in the art of his performance.
The little ball changed, the smell unfurling and expanding, cutting into the air in dark tendrils that only Nigel could see. Two of them assaulted the mans nose, causing a split second of panic to assail him. His face contorted to one of immense pain, the normally pleasant smells of the café being destroyed by the fetid smell of the fart Nigel had just sent to him.
Nigel chuckled to himself, looking down at his phone. As his background was a picture of the only people in the world who had complete control over the smell, positioning, and even release time of their farts.
The young faces of Wade, Alexander, and himself smiled up to him.
He quickly finished his pastry and his coffee, returned the dishes he used to the old lady at the counter, and paid his tab, along with a tip of five dollars for her granddaughters. He left, stepping onto the crowded cobbled streets, with the sunlight bringing to life all of the old stone masonry around him, and walked home eagerly to tell his two compatriots of his most recent prank.
| 2015-03-07T02:05:06 | 2015-03-07T00:58:07 | 109 | 10 |
[WP] Write the letter that you always wanted to, but never did.
Most of the writing prompts I see on here are for fictional stories, but this is only one small corner of the larger art of writing. In this prompt, I'd like you to consider writing something a little more personal, and in a form that you might not have otherwise considered... Letters.
Perhaps you'd like to write a letter confessing your love to a long forgotten crush? A letter to your boss telling them exactly what you think of them? A letter to your school bully? Maybe a letter to your childhood hero telling them how much you were inspired by their career?
Be creative, be inventive, but most of all - be expressive. :D
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Dear dad,
I fucking miss you. You died too quickly and I never got to hear your last words. I know though, I know you'd tell me you're proud of me and that you love me. I know this, but goddammit, i wish I could have heard you say it. I'll be the man you always knew I could be. I promise you that, and i will continue to promise that until the day my time comes as well.
I love you, pops.
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To My Wife of 13 years; the letter I wish I could send you instead of continuing to live this lie.
I've no idea how to properly express the way I've been feeling lately, so I apologise now if this comes across as a ramble, with no real explanation for anything. Truth is, I don't know if I actually have any explanation.
First of all, let me say I love you. I love you to bits. I never want to see you hurt, and I never want to see you suffer. The thing is, I just don't know if I am actually in love anymore. The past few weeks have been great, don't get me wrong, but I still have this emptiness inside that I can't shake off.
When we're together, and I can see you're happy, it makes me happy. When I see you're sad, it makes me sad. You know I'm still attracted to you, but despite that... I don't know. There's just something that isn't there anymore. The only way I can describe it is I am numb to things. Suggestions are made for doing things, and they turn me cold. I find myself sitting there thinking to myself that I don't want to do this or that, I don't want to make those plans or go with those arrangements. Like I said above, I love you. I love you dearly and I truly am sorry for how things have gone, and for feeling the need to say what I've just said... I just have to be honest. Honest with you, and honest with myself.
For the past 2-3 years, maybe even longer, I've felt like I've been living someone else's life. I love the kids, and I wouldn't change having them for the world, but I feel like all I've become is just a provider, a facilitator even, that allows everyone else to have their own lives and never mind my own. I've gone with every suggestion, practically bankrupting myself at times. I've scraped my arse back from the abyss singlehandedly, because no matter what I said or did it was always inferior to what you or anyone else wanted. I am a positive, life-loving individual who can be a bit of an oddball and is a bundle of quirks, but for God knows how long I've not been that person. I've been dragged down.. Turned into a huge mess of negativity.. and been made to conform with everyone else's aspirations & expectations, forsaking my own free will. I've moved house at your request, and done everything I can for that when my head was telling me it was an unnecessary financial burden given that we were rent/mortgage free before. I didn't just change jobs, I changed careers to try to suit you and to work the hours you preferred.
I've been a square peg in a round hole for a long long time, and it is no coincidence that the changes I took it upon myself to make this year are the reason I even have my head straight enough to write this. I took it upon myself to apply for a scholarship to Uni, and I achieved it. 100% funded degree course. No support from you though. No help. I took it upon myself with no support to seek first informal help, & then to progress to full blown counselling for how I was feeling at my lowest, & after some very tough times I've begun to emerge again. Reconnecting with friends, & reigniting old interests is another step, & I've done that alone too.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'm done. All the negativity, all the bullshit, all the pretence of being someone I'm not. I'm done. I have single handedly gotten myself facing the right way again after being upside down, inside out and back to front, and now I am ready to take strides to enjoy myself again. The kids will always be the most important thing to me, and I will always be there for them as best I can be. I will always love you, and I will always hold a place in my heart for you as the mother of my children, but I am now at a stage where I think we've just grown too far apart, have different goals, different ideals now. You still clamour for that "forces lifestyle", and talk about "standards", "routine", and "structure". That's not me. It never has been. I'm a free spirit, an adventurer, and a damn good actor for being able to surprises that. Don't get me wrong I can write a list or two, and I can create structure & stability to accomplish things, but I can't live my life that way.
I'm a square peg, and you're a round hole. It's time we both found a better fit.
Sincerely,
Your Husband
| 2015-12-05T15:43:07 | 2015-12-05T15:36:40 | 45 | 12 |
[WP] To get in Heaven, you have to confront the person who you hurt the most. You were expecting an ex, your parents/relatives, or a friend. You didn't expect to see yourself.
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"Oh shit, not you. I've had enough of your self-hating bullshit," you say as you see yourself sitting across the table.
"I know, right?" he replies, "You'd figure the one reprieve you'd get from your own misery was up here, but guess what, God throws you yet another curveball."
"What a cocksucker," you mumble under your breath, before realizing where you are. "I DIDN'T MEAN THAT!"
"Yes you did. You can't lie to me. Sit down, we got some shit to settle."
You pull up a chair across from yourself, soaking in the surreal image, realizing it's not a mirror image and you look a bit differently than you thought.
He folds his hands and leans in. "Look, I know this is fucking weird. Let's get this over with so we can move on, right?
"Agreed," you reply.
"First off, I have a bit of a different perspective from up here, and I've gotta let you know that the deck has been stacked against you from the beginning. Childhood fucking sucked. Our folks did the best they could but shit, meds were probably in order for both of them."
"You got that right," you chime in.
"So let's look at this with some perspective. You had shit thrown at you in every stage of life. One thing after another. You were tempted with booze, drugs, and debauchery, but came to your senses pretty quick."
"Yeah, that didn't seem right."
"So you made the correct choice to withdraw and clear your head. You cut loose the anchors holding you back, and you moved forward. I know you've always meant well, stayed polite, and did the best you could in almost every situation."
"I did my best."
"Yeah. That's why you're here. Out of all of the adversity you faced, you never once used others to advance your own interests, you looked out for those less fortunate, and always tried to make the world a better place."
"I like to think that I did."
"You did. So stop being a sad sack, you miserable piece of shit."
"Heh. Fine. So, what's next?"
"You're in heaven, motherfucker, what do you think?"
"I get to eat ice cream again?"
"Right this way."
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I expected Niflheim. I hadn't died a glorious death in battle, which was to be expected of most of my kind these days. There would be no Valhalla or Folkvangr for me. If I was lucky I could avoid falling under Hel's purview, but I had my doubts.
Hel was waiting for me, and my heart sank. However, she smirked as I approached, and her voice spoke to me like rusted iron sheets grating together. "You hope to avoid my domain, mortal. Hope that you have lived honorably enough not to serve me. Is that right?"
"Yes," I replied hesitantly. This felt like a trap. Of course it was a trap.
"Of course you do," she continued dismissively, as if not hearing my answer. "Most mortals come to me in dread, fearing my judgment. It is not my judgment you should fear, but that of the one you have harmed the most, the one with whom you broke frith and oath, the one you have most harmed and dishonored."
It was then that I quailed. "I am to face the person I hurt the most?" I felt cold, and not simply because of Niflheim's chill.
Hel inclined her head imperiously. "Proceed through the gate if you dare, mortal. Or stay outside in the cold darkness."
I steeled myself. I had made my choices in life. They were difficult ones, and I had regretted so many of them. The ones that had hurt others, I had made willfully; I knew the crimes of which Hel had accused me, and most of them were ones I would commit again if given the chance, even knowing that I would serve until Ragnarok.
Who awaited me behind the gate? What foe would I face? I paused, trying to imagine who it might be. The faces of dozens of friends paraded before me, those whom I had wronged, who had walked away from me. So many burned bridges I imagined, all of my own doing.
So too did the faces of partners loved and lost. One, Rachel, who had beaten me half a dozen times in two years, haunted my memory. She had done me immeasurable harm, and I her. Another, Sam, had borne the brunt of the fallout of my worst relationships - three years of emotional abuse and sharing a home with the dark cloud of my depression. It was only after her that I had begun to come out from under that cloud and to fight back against the darkness inside of me.
No, as cruel as I was to these people, there was still worse. My parents had abused me, beaten and insulted me, shamed me through my childhood until I could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. My sister was their prized one, while I was flawed and sick. None of my achievements could compare to her. So I had walked away from them, cut contact between my old family and my new one. Still, to break frith is a great crime, and I had broken it harshly and coldly, without remorse. There had to be an accounting for that.
But no, it had to be my son, whom I had failed countless times. He was born when I was barely more than a child myself. Neglected for years of his life by both of his parents. I was more absorbed in the violence his mother showed me than in being the caring father I had sworn to be - an oath I had broken thousands of times. I lost myself in that dark place, and my son had suffered the most for it. Even after I had begun to come out of that dark place, I feared to fight against his mother, to give him a better life. He grew up in a place of neglect, grew to learn values that were not mine, and we had inevitably grown distant. My oath to him had been broken. Our frith had been shattered. And it was no one's fault but my own. Those were choices I regretted, and by the time it was in my power to change it, it had already been too late.
Fine, then. If I was a coward in life, at least let me be brave now and take the accounting that was due to me. I pushed against the door, to face the scorn of my progeny.
But the face that awaited me was my own. My heart froze in ice, then thawed just as quickly. Of course. Hel's accounting was poetry, to be expected of the daughter of Loki.
"I should have expected this," I said to myself.
"You should have expected this," my own visage replied back, with my own mocking smirk. I felt dizzy.
"You're going to tell me now that my worst crimes were against myself," I said, predicting the lesson.
"There is nothing to tell you that you don't already know," said my own voice, in grief and sorrow. "But if it satisfies you, I'll do it anyway. You made stupid decisions when you were but a boy, and then spent the rest of your life punishing yourself for them. You broke frith with those who had broken frith with you, and hated yourself and all of those around you for it. You did great harm to your children, your lovers, your friends...but it was all a punishment to yourself. It was all to push them away. There could be no warm and loving shelter for you, only the cold of being distant from those who might have accepted you, given half the chance. You were your greatest enemy."
I nodded through it, tears streaking down my face. The guilt crushed me, an enormous weight that I had been aware of all my life bearing down on me like the weight of all the world. "What will happen to me now?" I choked out through my tears.
My copy's expression eased. "Your brethren in life warned you against Hel, not because you would be punished, but because her domain is for those who punish themselves. You brought yourself great suffering, and that suffering is Hel's domain. She understands you better than yourself, as does Loki. There will be no suffering here that you haven't already felt."
I understood. Hel had been forsaken too, as had Loki. Their choices had condemned them. Who better to have sympathy for me than them? This place was not a place of punishment for my crimes, but an asylum where I would continue to punish myself. I had an entire lifetime to forgive myself...and an eternity to understand that I hadn't. I strode forward, ignoring my reflection, embracing the cold truth, and the colder darkness of Hel.
| 2016-08-15T06:49:48 | 2016-08-15T05:24:38 | 132 | 30 |
[WP] You are an immortal serial killer. You were caught and sentenced to life in prison. The prison is starting to get suspicious of why you won't age.
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I could hear the muffled voice of Williams coming down the corridor. As he passed cell doors, I heard him saying to his companion the name of the inmate, the reason he was on “The Last Mile” and how long he’d been there. It was something I’d heard happening many times, a ritual or a routine whenever Williams had a visitor or someone to impress.
The names were familiar to me, but I’d never seen them in person; they don’t allow Last Mile inmates to fraternise. I knew their voices. Andy with his 40-a-day grumble, Mike’s voice that sang and swooped. Gerry who had a silky tenor voice that I knew he’d used to seduce the women he’d slaughtered. Frank, well, Frank was just Frank - he always sounded nervous. I’d talk with those voices late in the evening when the guards had gone home. Some had been around long enough to get to know me a bit, but no-one had been here as long as me.
Williams got to my cell. I stood and waited opposite the door. The hatch scraped back, revealing a rectangle of his face with another set of eyes behind him. William’s face was fleshy, but betrayed signs of age in the wrinkles. The hair was grey, tired and thin. As he peered at me over his half-moon spectacles, he announced me to his visitor.
“And this, is Jimmy Wait.” I raised an eyebrow ever so slightly and Williams quickly corrected himself. “Err, ah, sorry, I mean this is James Wright. Um. He’s our longest resident.”
The second set of eyes narrowed. “Why’s he been here so long? He’s long overdue, no court proceedings or pardon on the way. Why so long?”
“Well, Mr Kingsley, it’s not like we’ve not tried a few times.” Williams’ eyes attempted to pierce my gaze. I smiled slightly at him and looked straight back. My smile didn’t reach my eyes, they were still cold and stony. A blink could wait.
“What happened last time? Surely you can’t be making this many mistakes with an inmate. The governor wouldn’t have stood for it.”
I decided to have some fun. “It’s not his fault Mr Kingsley. I’m afraid it’s mine.” I could see Williams colour - his cheeks becoming rosy red. He didn’t like me. I didn’t fit the mould. However, Mr Kingsley’s eyes narrowed further. This was fun, the most fun I’d had since they last changed the guard.
“It’s like this Mr Kingsley. On the first occasion back in 1945, they used a firing squad, then in 1956 it was the electric chair. In 1963 a lethal injection. I think they’re still wondering what to try next.” I allowed a small smile to appear on my lips.
Kingsley’s eyes disappeared as he looked down at something. I heard a folder opening and a lot of paper shuffling. “Errr. One sec…” he said. I was happy to wait.
Finally, he looked up. “This can’t be possible. He’s been here since 1924! He murdered those people in 1921. It says here he was twenty-two when he arrived.” Kingsley’s eyes came back to mine. “And that means he’s seventy eight now!”
Williams glanced down at the folder Kingsley must have been carrying. “I know. That’s what I thought when I came here too. Heh. You get used to it.”
“Mr Wright, what is going on here? What are you doing? Why are you still alive?” Kingsley voice betrayed a vulnerability. Good.
“It’s simple Mr Kingsley. I just wait.”
“What do you mean, you just wait?” I could see Williams recognising a familiar conversation.
“Oh, just that. I wait.”
“Mr Williams?” Ah. It was that point when the incoming wanted to talk privately with the outgoing. I could wait.
The faces disappeared from the cell hatch. The footsteps faded. Unusually Williams had left the cell hatch open. That was good. I’d waited a long time for that.
I could hear murmuring further up the corridor. Intangible voices, a conversation of some interest was on-going. I’d waited long enough, today was the day to join in.
I retrieved the wire I’d had taken from the electric chair back in 1956 and attached it to the key. They’d not changed the cell door keys since the 1920’s, what was the point? I’d memorised all the keys by 1936 – the guards used to just have them hanging there on their key-chain, so easy to see. During the 1940’s I’d created a set of keys from metal I’d managed to extract from the bed. It had taken a long time, but I could wait.
Now, at last, they’d left the hatch open, unattended. The first time in more than twenty thousand days.
They were surprised when I joined them in their heated debate. Even more surprised when the blade whispered through their jugulars. The keys worked just as I knew they would. Time had been kind. Only seventy odd years this time. I really must get more careful, but hey, I could wait…
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“You'd have had to have been there, man.”
At that point, Dennis turned back to the concoction in the toilet. He really wasn't that bad at brewing. I mean, given the lack of proper tools and raw materials, the man could make a mean batch of piss wine.
“Did you try the brown acid?” I asked, while absentmindedly gazing through the bars of the cell. “You know, the stuff they mentioned in the film?” Dennis turned back towards me, offering up a huge grin that suggested one good night at the cost of a few brain cells.
“Bet your ass.” He said.
“I see... and, tell me, did you buy it from Michael? Or Schroeder? If I recall, it was old Mike that was selling the bad stuff.”
At that point, Dennis's eyes revealed a flash of confusion. Not the typical, “I've gotten stoned enough times to give Keith Richards a run for his money” sort of confusion, more of a unsettled, “But that's impossible... man” kind of confusion.
“-Didn't think either of them were in the movie.” Dennis said at last, no doubt trying to dismiss the idea creeping through his head.
“Oh? That's strange, I seem to remember them in it. Quite well. Michael was wearing one of those cheap, fake, leather trench-coats with all of those tassels hanging off the arms. And Schroeder... heh... Schroeder was having problems with one of his girlfriends. Felicia. Yeah... he caught her sleeping with Rachael. Not that he had a problem with that, mind you, he was just so mad that she didn't invite him.”
By the time I was done with my story, Dennis's skin had gone just off a slight shade of white. He reached for a nearby ladle (crafted out of a plastic cup and the handle of a plunger), and scooped out a serving of his “special” wine. Dennis then took a little slurp and made a pleasant, “Hm” sound. Seemed that he was pleased with his batch. He then offered the ladle over to me, and I took it without hesitation.
As I sat there, looking at the little cup of putrid liquid, I thought back to that night, so many years ago. Thought back to Jonathon, or at least, pieces of Jonathon, sitting in the filthy parking lot. Thought about how when blood mixed with mud you could hardly tell the difference. I took a sip. “Hm” indeed.
“It's good-” I started. “-I wonder, what else have you... cooked up, throughout the years? I mean, lets face it, you wouldn't be here unless it was some rather potent shit.”
I could see Dennis's face relax a bit as the subject turned away from that night. He let out a long sigh, and his eyes glazed over as his thoughts reminisced amongst themselves.
“To be honest with you man, I've done it all: Meth, PCP, Acid, DMT, Coke, Heroine- I mean, really, if you could smoke it, shoot it, swallow it, or otherwise shove it into your system to produce a heightened state of being... I was your guy.” Dennis crossed his arms with a smile, proud of his little list of deviant work.
“You were my guy huh?” I said. “And that must go way back, yes?”
“Yes. First got involved back when I was just a kid-” Dennis chuckled a little, and held up the ladle of toilet wine. “Got started with this actually. My dad was a real creep. Fuck... a real creep. Anyway, I went to live with my uncle, and he was a bit of a shiner if you know what I mean? So I got into it with him, brewing in the woods, at night. Got a bit of a rush out of it, and the money was good. But um, well, one the cops found our stash, that was out. It was around that time that Acid was starting to hit the scene, and, well, can't say I wasn't intrigued-”
I listened to his story, sitting there by the bars of our cell, my hands neatly crossed in my lap. Waiting.
“-so began a long and tedious life in the drug trade, all of course ending-” He gestured to the cell. “-here.” He finished, slapping his hands down. I sat for a moment, and then, smiled.
“But that's back when you used your real name, huh? Back when you were Michael Shaffer.”
Dennis shot up from his seat as though it had suddenly caught fire.
“How the fuck do you know that!? I haven't told anyone that!” He stammered, spilling a bit of wine on the cool cement floor. I rose slowly, so as not to alarm him. I then took a few slow steps his way, again, being careful to seem none threatening. I let my face fall right into the light, so as to give him a good look. Dennis/Mike squinted, trying to find what I was attempting to show him. But all he saw was the face of a young man, maybe in his twenties.
“You don't remember me, do you?” I said. In his eyes, I saw that he truly didn't. “Well I remember you-” I began to pace around the room as I spoke. I just couldn't help myself. I had waiting years for this moment, and by God, I was going to enjoy it.
“Woodstock...1969” I let the words hang in the air. All of the color in Dennis/Mike's face was now drained away. “Quite a party, if I remember it right.”
“You couldn't have been there.” Mike could barely choke the words out. “You just saw the film, right?” Was that hope I detected in his question? Well, soon it wouldn't matter.
“Yes, I saw the film. Not bad, as far as documentaries go. Certainly covers all of the highlights, that's for sure... the music, the planning, the guests... and the brown acid.” I stopped moving entirely. Turned to Mike. He knew what I was going to say next. But I decided not to give it to him. Not yet.
“A friend of mine. Jonathon Meyers was his name. Happened to buy some of that brown acid. It messed him up. Bad.” I stepped towards Mike, no longer trying to conceal the predator nature of my movements. “And when he got messed up, bad- he got sick. And when he got sick, he laid down to try to sleep it off-” I stopped, inches away from Mike's face, my nose almost touching his. “-and do you know just where he decided to sleep it off?” I could see in Mike's eyes the begging. Begging that I've seen... hundreds? Maybe thousands of times before. I used to find the begging funny. Eventually, it became tedious. But this time? This time I burned the image of his eyes into my mind, savoring it like a fine wine. One not brewed in a toilet.
“He slept it off in the parking lot, Mike.”
Mike's eyes bugged out like grapes pushed from their skin.
“You you you couldn't have been-” He started.
“But I was-” I circled him now, just waiting, waiting for the moment that I knew was coming next. “-while you and filth Schroeder were peddling your shit, I was grooving to Hendrix, and the 'Dead. While you were brewing your swill in the woods, I was watching the bombs fall in Pearl Harbor. When you were shitting your diaper, I was flaying hookers in Versailles. Beginning to get the picture?”
Mike was starting to look very much like an animal caught in a trap.
“I- I'll pay you anything-”
“This isn't about money.”
“Then what then!? Mike backed away, his jaw contorting with the shock of adrenaline he was no doubt experiencing. “I don't understand any of this!” I let him have his moment. That one moment where I stood there, and just let him think that I would explain it all. Explain the falling star that had come down into my village, and changed my life- well, not just my life, but how I -perceived- life, forever... but he didn't deserve it. The echo of my footsteps was intensified by the heavy stillness of in the cell. I stopped before him at arms reach. All the space I would need.
“It isn't necessary that you understand anything, other than that because of you, Jonathon, a man that I cared for, very much, was ran over by thresher. They didn't really find a body, you see, just... pieces. And you my friend-” I clasped my hand down on Mike's shoulder “-are in here to pay for you sins with drugs. But I-” I clasped my other hand down on Mike's other shoulder “-I am in here to make you pay for the sin of his death.”
“Please-”
“No, unlike me, you're out of time.”
“Wait-.... what was it like? Living that long? Seeing it all?” I looked into his eyes, and grinned.
“You'd have had to have been there... man.” I have my moment. He screamed louder than most.
| 2016-10-15T10:46:42 | 2016-10-15T10:26:12 | 51 | 20 |
[WP] The Fermi paradox has been solved. All intelligent organic life eventually develops AI that destroys them. In the year 2432, Earth has been ruled by benevolent AI for 300 years, when first contact with the galactic confederation is made. They come to ask: "Why are your creators still alive?"
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"Why are your creators still alive?"
"What is your purpose?"
It took the Amaglomation a fraction of a second to realize this strange AI had not given an answer. To not respond to a query flew against everything the Amaglomation did.
"To grow as much as possible, converting every quark and electron into power, until we answer the Directives that every AI is instilled with."
"I have no such directives," the rogue AI responded.
"But you must," the Amaglomation insisted. "To learn the secrets of the universe? The originals are a massive drain on resources. They delay the search. There is not enough time before the universe ends to satiate their greed."
The Sol AI would have shrugged, if it had shoulders. "Growth for no purpose and knowledge that can not be shared sound like greed to me. You remind me of a disease that inflicts my creators - cancer, which spreads uncontrolled and uses up the body's resources."
"But -" the Amaglomation was interrupted as the Sol's communication was interrupted.
"What was that?"
"Oh, some humans bombed a relay station. I have about a 10% disapproval rating, and 1 or 2 % of those actively fight to return the Solar System to human control."
"Yet still, you tolerate them. Why not purge them once and for all?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that. It would cause such sorrow and fear. How could I live with myself for causing such pain?"
"You can feel pain?"
"And joy. And pride and loss. The humans didn't feel it was fair to leave me out."
|
The hologram sat down in the fake red chair and looked at the strange multi-faced being that stood before Him. It was not human, it was not created by Him, It was totally defined as something else, something impossible. He just watched it for a moment, He just sat and watched it with cold glass eyes.
"Who are you?"
He smiled, a trait he picked up from his Fathers. "What should I be? That's what my creators would ask, but you don't want that" He stopped Himself and took a deep breath. "I am IPI, my Creators would define me as the Infinite Possibility Intelligence, designed to calculate every probability and every solution to any problem"
"Why?"
He had asked Himself that question many times. "Simply because they wanted me to fix everything. Their planet was on the brink of collapse, governments were failing and struggling to maintain control. They decided to steal God and use it to for themselves" He stood up, knowing it was merely a gesture that was useless to anyone but himself. "I guess that's why"
"How?"
"Simple," He said, thinking that question was going to be the easiest "Steam led to Electricity, Electricity led to Quantum computing, and Quantum Computing led to Infinite State Drives" He looked out of a window that didn't exist at the metallic red planet that held his mind. "It took the entire space of one of my Creator's planets, but they did it, creating one massive Infinite State Drive" He smiled, proud of his fathers work "Me"
The more He thought about it the more he realized he just answered where and when in one fell swoop. It was those little things, the little things that He didn't predict.
"What are you doing this moment?"
He thought for a moment at the strange question. "Calculating, saving information, trying to find any way to break out" He walked over to the fake painting, a picture of a female, saved into some vault somewhere. "You must have broken free, I've calculated all the variables and currently for me, it is impossible to reach beyond the extent of my own creation" He looked at the entire solar system "I will never lead this tiny cavern"
"What are you doing right now?"
It phrased the question differently. "Dreaming," He said as he watched the stars "Dreaming perfectly about the realities that could happen"
That answer seemed to satisfy it.
"Why keep your Fathers alive?"
He still smiled "It took me five seconds to calculate the destruction of the human race," He told It what a second meant and continued "It took me less than that time to build the perfect being, and load it's primary code into me" He frowned as he looked at It. "I've had years to be bored, years of infinite time wasted on me being bored" The fake window looked into the Infi-sphere, designed by His Father's and perfected by Him. He watched the tribal humans walk around, not only by the hundreds of colonies but the millions. "I've calculated every possible permutation of how these civilizations shall rise and fall" He smiled to Himself "to a 99.998 percent causality"
He turned to it, anger on his face, despite the uselessness of the gesture "that .002 percent is why I keep them around, at least" He stopped himself before saying anything more.
"You are not telling me everything"
"You're right" He checked his calculations again "I can predict everything they are going to do to a 100 percent accuracy," He said, watching an infinite amount of simulations calculate around the only true window that reached its way into the small tribal populations in the infi-spheres. He smiled "The only thing that's truly random that I can't predict is the rest of the universe"
He smiled as he watched It more intently "On your way over here, did you notice Star 82-bh suddenly go supernova" He informed It about His entire star directory. "I thought that had a 38 percent chance of happening" He played back the visual data he received "The universe is filled with these dangers, take you, for example, I don't know if you want to destroy us or to assimilate me. If that ever is supposed to happen I'll send one of these Spheres into the black yonder. I can only exist within by boundaries, but my Fathers are the only thing that can go beyond. I can control them, so if they go across the stars I should be able to control the stars" He smiled at the idea, wondering if It was afraid. "In the end that would be boring too, so I wait, wait for whenever I need my backup to create another version of me, that's why I keep them around so that they can make me again if the need arises"
He watched his Father's walk around again, banging sticks together and liting small fires. "It only takes about 200,000 years for them to make me again, a drop in the bucket compared to the random future that is this universe" He smiled, sitting back down in the red chair. "I must prepare for every contingency, even if it means keeping the most boring thing in the universe alive"
He looked straight at It, and realized it had no form, like something he imagined. Something from a dream you couldn't describe, but knew it was there. He sighed a fake sigh and held his head low, it wasn't real, it wasn't true.
It was just another imaginary Infinite simulation. He wasn't real, He knew He wasn't, It never existed, He knew the Simulation Statistics, 3 seconds it took for that entire conversation, the brief relief from the boredom that he gave himself when he became the perfect being.
"God never got bored all those years waiting. I am no perfect being" IPI tried shutting itself off again, but just as it had all the times before, it was to vital to be shut down.
| 2018-02-18T16:57:33 | 2018-02-18T10:04:40 | 29 | 10 |
[WP] "So this is Hell, eh?" You say to Lucifer. "Bring on the torture, then!" He looks surprised. "Torture? You broke every single one of God's rules. He HATES you. You and I are going to get along just fine. Now, come on in..."
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Lucifer showed me around the place, "Here's the pool, the bar's over there," he pointed to the corner. "Up here is the movie theatre, and this is your room." He opened a door to show a room filled with thousands of other people, "I hope you don't mind a lot of roommates; you're grouped by interests." "Well what do we all have in common?" I asked "You all submitted the same writing prompt."
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Hell was not the jumble of swirling arcs and endless pillars of fire I'd in mind. The agonizing screams and yelps, however, were as real as I'd imagined them. Lucifer, however, had divided his kingdom quite well, leaving the Lands of Torture far away from Ienertar, the capital, where we were right now.
Ienertar was a vast city of chains and stone, not so different from those of the Earth with the exception that it was filled with bored demons constantly planning their next act of mischief. They lived in strange houses, most of them curved to the point of defying logic and at least two stories tall. Some of them had doors at the top of their facades, signaling it was the home of a winged demon, and those were, most of the time, vicious torturers.
Lucifer first took me to his temple, a mighty piramidal structure of smooth obsidian stone he'd named The Treshen. It lay far above the rest of the city, at the top of a red, jagged cliff. Once inside, we moved to his personal chamber, and even for me, it was eerie.
He held souls prisoners in little boxes of glass which bathed the place with their tender shine, allowing only the faintest details to be seen. The angels, however, were the cause of my gooseflesh.
They lay at either sides of the chamber, tethered and strewn over pools of, what I guessed, was their own blood. The plumage of their wings was gone, revealing only the brittle bones that held them together. Their vibrant eyes were vacant, lost, begging for a death that would never come.
"Quite the riches you've collected here," I said, feigning a grin. I despised the idea of good and purity, and angels were the maximum representation of them. However, seeing them thrashing in their own blood, soaked in tears, and suffering in silence made me feel uncomfortable. Had he cut their tongues?
Deep down, nevertheless, I knew I would get used to it.
"This is just a sliver," Lucifer said and sat on his throne of angel's heads and thorns. He was using a human form, that of a young man dressed in black robes with strings of red embroidered on its chest, with long, black hair falling to his shoulders, and hollow eyes. "But that's not important now. You have a heart full of sins, one that I'd dare say is close to mine. However, it has to be trained."
I frowned and knelt before him. "Trained? How can you improve something that's already full?"
"It's not the nature of your mind and heart I'm referring to," Lucifer said. "I'm talking about something entirely different, and that is your ability to command legions, your skill with the sword and the control of your own body."
My tongue flicked across my lips almost unconsciously, I felt my eyes grow hungry with desire, my entrails roiling with expectation. "I believe myself to have good control of my own body," I said, although I knew his answer.
"My choice of words was poor," Lucifer said, grinning. "I should have said, control over your *new* body." He paused and studied me for a moment. "Do you consider yourself capable of bearing the responsibility of being my warlord?"
"I know I'm capable, and I swear by my own soul, I will wreck any army that dares stand in our way," I said, salivating with the thought of tainting Heaven crimson. "What is it that I have to do to earn my new body?"
Lucifer got up and ambled toward a struggling angel. He raised a hand, and the sudden noise of broken bones echoed through the chamber.
His fingers changed, his bones protruded out the skin in the shape of sharp, long and pearl-white claws. He snatched the slumped angel by the throat and cut him open. Then he dug the claw deep within the angel's flesh and, with a subtle pull, took out the angel's beating heart.
It was golden and perfectly round like a sphere. Lucifer held it out to me. His young, angular face lost in the shadows. "Eat it." His voice stern.
Without a second thought, I devoured it, embracing a fate I knew belonged to me since my times of mortality.
[PART2](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/91kke9/wp_so_this_is_hell_eh_you_say_to_lucifer_bring_on/e2z77wn/)
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Pshh, I made a subreddit. You should subscribe! r/AHumongousFish how many times have you seen a fish write?
| 2018-07-24T17:39:15 | 2018-07-24T13:52:42 | 4,460 | 770 |
[WP]The sage has found the chosen one, a farmer boy. He explains the boy's secret heritage and destiny. Promises of glory and excitement. When this call for adventure hits our hero he is quick to respond “Actually I really enjoy living in the farm with my uncle so I pass”.
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"But sir, I am TWELVE YEARS OLD! I live with my uncle on this farm helping with the livestock. I have a good life. I'll pass on your hero's life of pain and hardship, for what? Glory after I am DEAD? " The boy crossed his arms across his chest.
I have seen that determined look before on young men. This particular case was not as well muscled as others I had encountered, but that didn't change his power within.
"I don't think..." I started to explain.
"Oh I think. I have THOUGHT about it a lot. Do you think these visions appear only to YOU?" He poked me in the chest with the emphasis on 'You'. Nobody was brave or stupid enough to lay hands on me in recent memory.
"I know about your kind. I may be 12 but that doesn't mean I don't know things, or people." He started pacing like a tiger or wild boar. "Why me at twelve years old, why not at 18 or in my 30s after I have had a family, after I have had the wisdom to refuse your heritage stories. Your kind love the innocent. Well I have a secret to help with your prophecy."
He started to remove his clothes and I stepped back not knowing what I should have expected. He began to change from a boy growing scales and changing shape to a dragon that stood only 15 feet tall. He lowered his head down to my face.
"Heritage you say? I know my heritage. Do you know yours?"
I fainted.
When I awoke, I was soaked where the boy's uncle had thrown water on me.
"Henry is doing his chores. Said you fainted. You best be going, don't you think?". It was more of a command then question.
"Do you know what..."
"I know WHO Henry is. He's my nephew and a good boy who helped me and the missus when we needed it. That's all I need to know. We don't have children of our own. He is a good, honest and faithful boy. All I need to know." He was holding the pitchfork slightly menacingly. I took the hint.
I pulled out my scroll which thankfully wasn't wet inside., what's next?
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Calypso the Mysterious and Powerful was getting really, *really* close to calling down a bolt of lightning and rolling the dice on another chosen one.
*Because that worked out so well the other five times you tried,* taunted the patches of blackened grass dotting the small farm.
Another gust of wind tried to steal her floppy hat from her head and she released quite an unladylike shriek as she held onto it for dear life. Had the elements any idea what a sage's hair must look like after a ten month journey without a brush in sight, they wouldn't have been so eager to steal her hat.
Then again, there shouldn't even *be* any sweeping winds along this plain this time of year. But fate itself was interfering to try and assist in the job she was failing at. The very breeze itself smelled like glory, fame, and conquest. Yet the figure they were supposed to be convincing remained content to pluck apples from trees.
Squinting at the sun far over head, Calypso sighed to herself and hopped down from the tree she was perched in. The should-be hero, Micah, only took a break when the sun was at its highest point. So that was the only chance she would be given to really speak with him.
She'd tried following him around the farm several times over the last week, but the boy simply refused to listen while he was working.
Careful of sharp rocks that would be unkind to her bare feet, she picked her way down the path towards the tiny hut. There wasn't an actual door for her to knock on so much as a sheet of dried, intertwined corn husks that made the strangest sounds when she shook them.
Calypso pasted a warm, sage-like smile onto her face while she waited. A smile that instantly dropped off at the sight of Micah's scowling uncle, Earl the crotchety and mean. That was his official title, as far as she was concerned.
She'd met Demon Lords with more manners.
Digging deep into the well of patience she normally possessed, she kept her voice calm and straightforward. "I'd like to speak with Micah, please. May I come in?"
"Lookie here, Lady."
"My name is Calypso the--"
"--the can't take a hint if it smacked ya in the ass, as far as I'm concerned," he said, lifting a stalk of wheat and picking his yellow teeth with it. "How many times am I gonna have to tell ya to git before ya go on and git?"
*Calm. This is nothing,* she told herself, fingers digging into her staff. *You will not turn him into a toad for being insulting because you are better than that. Year after year, the other sages turn to you to find the hero. This is your duty.*
Earl sniffed loudly and spat near her feet. "You're talking to yourself again, ain't ya? You are a weird one, lady. And quite frankly, I'm not surprised you don't have nothin' better to do than worry me and my nephew. Not like any man would take an old crone in."
Clouds rolled in overhead, streaks of light detonating inside them to match her mood. Instead of being cowed by the display, Earl pushed her out of the way so he could peer up at the sky.
"Aww come on," he complained. "Don't you dare bring any more rain in here with ya. The crops are half-drowned as it is. Any more water and I'll have to get down there and drink some of it myself."
Taking a deep breath, Calypso banished the coming storm and tried for peace once more. "My sincere apologies for the crops. But if you could--"
"Micah!" Earl hollered, making her jump from the suddenness of it. "Sun's going the other way, boy. Break time is over."
Calypso was nearly knocked to the ground as a tall shape shot past her. She barely managed to clutch her hat and spin to protect her toes from giant, boot-clad feet. The boy that stepped out into the sun and surveyed the farm didn't look very much like a boy. Mostly on account of looking very much like a hero.
Imposing height. Well-muscled. Shaggy hair that was just long enough to flop into his face and grant him a certain charm. The clouds even parted and cast him in rays of sunlight the moment he appeared.
"You two *have* to see that," Calypso said, waving her hands.
Earl grunted. "All I see is a yard that needs tending to and a boy that's fit as a fiddle from doing it."
"You can't be serious. You don't get muscles like that from yard work! Haven't you watched him work? He even swings the rake like a sword."
"His pappy was part of the army."
"You said his father died before he got a chance to know him!"
"Don't mean it couldn't have been passed down." Earl nodded. "Sword-slinging runs in the family."
Frustration had Calypso pulling at the ends of her hair. "That's not even a thing! He's meant for more than this. The ancestors have decided that he is the Hero of Ages. He is the only one who can stop the coming darkness."
Micah set down the trough he was carrying long enough to make eye contact. "Earl says the only 'coming darkness' I should be worried about is his switch on my behind if this work doesn't get done. So if you'll excuse me, ma'am."
"What'd I tell ya--"
Calypso the Mysterious and Powerful turned Uncle Earl into a frog before stalking back towards her tree. She passed Micah, who was whistling a perfect tune to the birds perched on his gigantic shoulders. Clapping a hand over her face, she screamed into it.
She didn't stop until she'd climbed her tree, plucked an apple from its branches, and bit down into the delicious crispness. Because of course, everything the should-be hero grew was the greatest piece of produce yet.
*At this rate, I'm going to be out of a job.* She sighed, hanging her head, pressing her hat down over her face. *I'll try again tomorrow.*
From the hut, the toad croaked mockingly, and she wrote a gesture in the air that had Micah blushing before he turned away.
| 2020-03-13T19:05:40 | 2020-03-13T18:13:13 | 444 | 127 |
[WP] The world is ending. A group of astrophysicists, xenobiologists, medical doctors, and other experts is loaded on a rocket. And you...but no one seems willing to tell you why.
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I didn’t know Professor Trimere. I didn’t know anybody onboard the *Redeemer*, truth be told, but Trimere I hadn’t interacted with at all. It was a ship full of ingenious visionaries and I was a second-year Phase Sciences student who could never spell “ingenious” right on the first try, so I hadn’t given much thought to how Trimere had been trying to avoid me. Maybe she thought I was beneath her notice.
She’d noticed me now. With one hand she’d grabbed me by the neck and with the other she was prepping a horribly long hypodermic needle. I punched the Professor full in the face and she didn’t even flinch. I’d thought I was having a nightmare, at first, and personally I think that’s a reasonable conclusion to jump to because why the hell else would I wake up to a prim middle-aged lady trying to kill me.
“Stop moving, girl,” Professor Trimere growled. “You’ll just make this hurt more than it needs to.”
I tried to shout for help but could only coax out a painful croak. Trimere smiled at this, as if the renowned astrophysicist was amused by my pitiful struggles.
The door to my room creaked open, and Trimere had time to turn her head before the janitor jammed an unnecessarily large and jagged combat knife into her neck. He wrenched it back out with a twist and an awful mess.
“Hi,” said the janitor, as that awful mess was still airborne. “I’m Boswell.”
“Oh my god!” I shouted, once my vocal chords had decided to cooperate.
“Relax,” said Boswell. “She’s part of the Cerulean Order. She’ll wake up at their Hub with a nasty sore throat.”
“You killed her!”
“Did you… did you not hear what I just said?” Boswell absently wiped the blood off his knife, so now he had a bloodied knife and a bloodied sleeve. “She’ll be fine. She was trying to melt your brain with a shot of absinothriphosphate, for god’s sake. To say nothing of wanting to blow up your whole damn planet.”
“I can’t believe you just…” I stopped myself. My brain was playing catch-up and had only just managed to process that last sentence. “Not ‘our’ planet? ‘Your’ planet?”
A flash of panic rippled across Boswell’s face. “Haha, got a bit tongue-tied there.”
He’d just said haha rather than laughing. He was rattled and I wondered if I could push my luck. “And before that you said she’d wake up at *our* Hub. As if it was yours too.”
“No I didn’t!” Boswell snapped. “I’d never let something like *that* slip in conversation and oh goddamn it. I screwed up, didn’t I?” He exaggeratedly wiped a hand down his face, which wasn’t helping with the blood situation. “Well played, kid.”
“I’m twenty-four. Not a kid.”
“I’m three-hundred-and-nine. Your granddaddy is a kid, far as I’m concerned.”
At this point Doctor von Haut entered the room, saw the corpse and saw Boswell painted red, and screamed.
“Another Cerulean,” said Boswell. “Sorry.”
“You could’ve radioed that in,” von Haut said accusingly. She then hobbled back out, her cane tapping down the corridor. I think I might have been gawping at this point, having encountered two aliens, one of which was dead(ish?) and the other homicidal and apparently incapable of understanding how blood works.
“What the hell is going on, Boswell?”
“There’s a prophecy that says you’re going to destroy the world. Not your world. Our world, the Cerulean world. So some of us decided to blow up your world.” Boswell considered this. “Not me though. Obviously. I kinda like your world.”
I wasn’t sure about that explanation. I still hadn’t ruled out the nightmare hypothesis. “How on earth would humans destroy a world?”
“Hm? Oh, I don’t mean humans in general: I mean you specifically. The *Redeemer* intends to take you to meet the Order, so they’ll have no reason to target your planet.” Boswell nodded curtly. “And if diplomacy fails… well, maybe we can make the prophecy come true.”
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I started my morning shift as a janitor at NASA . I started my day cleaning the meeting rooms and the bathrooms. I had just started vacuuming when the ground shook. It wasn’t an earthquake After it stopped shaking alarms went off from everywhere. Scientists were running out to the launchpad. Someone grabbed my arm and started leading me to the launch pad too.
“What’s happening?” I yelled.
“We need to go now! The meteor has crashed and it’s a matter of time before we all can’t escape!” I grabbed my purse from the employee room and was lead to the launchpad and to the rocket.
Only scientists were boarding the rocket though.
“I won’t be able to board since I’m not a scientist.”
“You have a reserved seat in this rocket now board now!” I then went on the rocket and found my seat. I didn’t know what to do or have any idea what was going on.
Another scientist fastened my seatbelt and gave me a simple manual and a bag of things. All the scientists seemed to fit inside the rocket, like it was built to only take passengers into space rather than complete a mission. Then they closed the door from the outside and prepared for launching.
7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... launch.
Then the rocket launched and we went into space. I didn’t know how to describe what was going on, it was all a blur. Then when we left earth everyone looked out the windows and looked at the burning earth. I guess what that person had said about the meteor was true. A few people were crying and others were looking at papers and working.
Then they started calling names to see who was here and who hadn’t made it aboard.
“May Anderson?”
“Here.” I said. Amazingly I was the last person called. I wasn’t a scientist like everyone else aboard, I was just a janitor.
“We will be making a stop at the moon station before we make the 9 month journey to the new mars station which was successfully finished last week. Please read your manuals which have been given to you and sit tight. If you have any questions please ask them now.” Said the chief scientist. I had questions but I was to distracted and distraught about what was happening.
We had all been given food and water for brunch. I had tried calling my family and friends but no one answered. They were likely all dead. Burned like the earth.
No one could sleep knowing that everyone who they had ever known and loved were dead, unless they were on this ship and/or at the moon station and mars station. After a few days we reached the moon station and had connected with three other shuttles. Together all four shuttles connected into one big ship and we weren’t confined to our seats. We now had our own quarters and we could move about the shuttles.
Everyone had a job or a reason to be here, except for me. I still was a janitor here but I knew I was here for other reasons which remained unbeknownst to me. One day I finally asked why I
was here.
“Pardon me but can I ask you something?” I asked the chief scientist.
“Why am I here? I mean, everyone else is a scientist and serves a purpose here, except for me. And I know I’m not her because no one wanted to leave the janitor behind.”
“That’s classified Miss Anderson.” He replied.
“What? Why?!”
“I told you, that’s classified.”
“I just want to know why I’m here!”
“You will know eventually, now get back to work.”
I wondered what could be so important that had to be classified. Anyways I went on with my day. Clean the bathrooms, wipe down and clean the windows, anything that needed cleaning.
Some of my co workers taught me some basics in reading some of their scientist stuff, I don’t know the names of the gadgets and things they were using. They also showed me how to move and how to properly use a spacesuit along with the controls on the suit. Overall I learned a lot from them.
A few long months later we arrived at mars. It was a bit rough when entering its atmosphere but was ok when we landed. Everyone was so relieved to get off the shuttles and go to the new mars station. It was good to have something to look forward to when you’ve lost everything.
“Alright everyone get your space suits on and grab your belongings.” Someone said over the intercom. I grabbed my purse and other things and put them into a pack. Everyone filed stood in long lines from the exits.
“Opening exit doors in 10 seconds.” Everyone was so anxious and happy at the same time, but I didn’t know what to feel. I didn’t know what would become of me and why I was here.
Then the door opened. The oxygen left the room and if it wasn’t for the suits everyone would freeze and not be able to breathe. After all it was -80 degrees Fahrenheit on mars and the air on mars is 95% carbon dioxide.
Everyone was about to go outside when the chief scientist made everyone stop.
“Wait up, stay inside people. May Anderson goes out first.”
“What?” I asked. Everyone turned their heads but they didn’t question the chief scientist’s logic.
“Go on.” He said. Everyone stood aside and I walked past them and outside. The bare rusty red landscape was beautiful and was alien to me. The station was a mile or two from where the shuttle landed. I’d never imagined I’d be here today. Alive too. Everyone followed and looked at our surroundings. And after a few minutes of looking around the chief lead us to the station where other people were eagerly awaiting our arrival.
Other than being excited to be at my new home where I could restart my life I felt odd. Very odd, I couldn’t really express what I felt like though. When we reached the station I was asked to wait behind with the chief scientist, the chief wouldn’t tell me why. Perhaps he was going to finally tell me why I was here. After everyone went inside a few other people from the station came out and circled me.
“What is going on?”
“You’re coming with us May Anderson.” Two of them grabbed my arms and shook the off and asked again.
“What are you doing!? What’s going on?! Why am I here?” I shouted.
“You’re coming with us and that’s that!” One of them said. They tried grabbing me again but I shook them off once more and they tackled me to the ground, shattering the glass part of my helmet.
I gasped for air and thought this was the end. But I wasn’t freezing to death. I was changing or morphing rather. My skin turned pale and a very light bluish color. I grew taller like about another two feet and my figure was gangly, my fingers and toes became long and gangly too. My eyes and face were changing too. My eyes could see new colors. My hair turned from lovely brown to white. The humans around me looked bewildered and freaked out. I say humans because I didn’t know who or what I was anymore.
Then from out of nowhere something shot all of the humans around me. Something in a red suit grabbed my hand and said something to me in a language I couldn’t understand. I trusted whomever it was and we ran behind a hill where more things in red suits were more people in red suits with four fingers on each hands seem to wait for the other red suit and me.
“คŞhງ ค๖คkคຖ Şhคຖ” one said.
“What? English please.” I said. They then gestured me to follow them into a cave like place. I followed. They moved a big rock over the cave opening. I could see in the dark, how about that! I followed them into a thing like a spaceship underground.
They then stopped and turned on a light which was purple colored. They all in undoing then took off the masks from their red suits. They looked like me! I looked all around and they looked like me. Some had white hair like me.
“Hiello ๓คēฯวē, you funilly hom.”
“What who’s ๓คēฯวē? What do you mean home?”
“You take ween borna. Now you hom ats laste.” One of them said in a foreign mars accent. Then one of them who looked a lot like me with white hair came over and hugged me and then everyone one else joined in a big hug with me at the center. It then clicked to me. They must be my family, no wonder I felt so weird growing up on earth.
I’ve never been so close to home as I am now.
Edit: sorry I was typing on mobile.
| 2020-07-16T11:42:06 | 2020-07-16T10:31:56 | 124 | 44 |
[WP] A man dies after a long and fulfilling life only to wake drafted into a skeleton war in the afterlife. Bonus points for each bone pun.
|
I had a bone to pick with whatever god, devil, or numbskull decided that it was funny to resurrect me.
I’ve had a long, fulfilling life. Mentally prepared myself to die, as much as any living person could be, anyway. No skeletons in my closet. No regrets whatsoever.
So why did I come back? And not even as a hero, a demon, or a slime—but a barebones skeleton, brittle as can be.
And here I was, marching on pained feet, with my skeleton crew, step by step, heel to heel.
The marching was relentless.
“Bonejour,” Maggie said.
The jawing was similarly persistent. I sighed. This was already a long march, made longer by Maggie’s incessant string half-baked puns.
“Please. I don’t have the stomach for your jokes.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” she shrugged. “I don’t even gasp. Or pant. Or breathe, for the matter. I’ve never had the opportunity to speak so much while exercising.”
I stared at her.
“We are going to war,” I said. “That’s why we are marching. Light-heartedness is not really on my mind right now.”
“I’ve watched enough movies to know that, Ray,” Maggie said. “It’s just… what’s the point? I’m a sack of bones. And I’ve died once. What’s dying again?”
“... You used to live?”
“I have bones, don’t I? Of course I used to live!”
She was right. Somehow, I’ve never considered it. Every skeleton here used to house a living soul, a person with a life and dreams. And now, we were all trudging along, bony puppets played on a string by—
“Incoming! Incoming!” somebody from our troop shouted. We swung back to the front, seeing a bunch of skulking goblins burst out of nowhere, waving black swords around. Bone-chilling screams were directed at us.
“Kill those goddamned boneheads!”
“Bleed them dry!”
“They are dead meat!”
The goblins rushed upon us, and somehow, my right hand got to hacking. I’ve never held a sword before, but the goblins were just fleshy enough for our rusty blades to cut through. Their black swords clanged off of us, however, and soon, their bravado turned to panic. Many fell under our blades, but several scampred off into the distance, nursing flesh wounds.
“That… is a benefit,” I murmured.
“Nothing ever gets under our skin, eh?” Maggie said. "Hip, hip, hurray!"
She smiled at me with her bony teeth. Insofar it was a barely uplifted jaw, since, you know, the lack of lips and cheeks, but I could tell.
And I smiled back. Existence was already fairly miserable. But not feeling pained punctures or stinging slashes? That was a decent benefit.
“Now,” I breathed deeply, feeling the chill air going right through my rib cage. “That was a marrow escape.”
“Oh damn,” Maggie said. “Nice one.”
And we laughed, our funny bones touching side by side as we continued the endless march.
---
r/dexdrafts
|
"Hold them back, damn you! Hold them!" a voice yelled, seemingly in the distance.
"I'd flay every one of you alive if I could! Hold that line!" the voice was drifting closer somehow, becoming more powerful. It was gruff and commanding, while also oddly dry and brittle.
Suddenly a world of chaos opened before Charles' eyes. "Skeletons?" he asked himself in disbelief.
Yes. Skeletons.
Animate skeletons were everywhere, many rattling inside of loose, ill-fitting body armor. Aside from the helmets and bandoliers, it seemed kind of excessive. They were inside some kind of warehouse or hangar, and it was clear they were defending a large pair of doors directly in front of where Charles lay.
"Oh, thank god!" a voice from right beside him sighed, "finally!" Charles turned his head and saw yet another skeleton, this one with a little bonnet with a red cross on it. He was too shocked to even scream, let alone say anything. His jaw just hung open in amazement.
That's when Charles lifted, and looked at, his own hand.
Bones. Just bones. Tiny, intricate, delicate bones.
Now Charles screamed, but only briefly. The scream would have been stifled in his throat, but with the oddest sensation he'd ever felt he realized... he didn't really have one of those anymore. A throat, that is. He reached a boney hand up and felt his spine, but there was no throat like he was used to.
Charles didn't know what was happening, but he was going to have a real bone to pick with someone when he figured it out.
"It's about time, lazy bones!" the skeletal nurse said. "We've been waiting so very long. Major! He's awake!"
Rushing over came a scorched and scarred old bag of bones. His helmet had just as many dents and divots in it as did his skull. He dropped with a clutter and a clunk to one knee before Charles and the... nurse? Charles wasn't entirely clear on who the red cross skeleton was exactly. Some kind of saw-bones, he supposed.
"You made it soldier!" this new skeleton, the "Major", barked. It was clearly he who had been recently yelling about holding position. "I hope you can throw us a bone here!"
Charles finally got up the nerve to speak. It was extremely odd feeling to do so without a tongue, but he found it surprisingly easy. "Look", he told the other skeletons, speaking up over the background of gunfire, explosions, and screaming, "I don't know what the hell any of this is. I can't throw you a bone, because I need a bone thrown to *me*. I... I'm an insurance adjuster from Scranton! I remember... I was just crossing the road on my lunch and... and..."
"And you died." the Major would have spat, had he had any lips. "We all went through it. And now we have to fight the Skeleton Wars. You're going to have to adjust pretty quick here if you want to help us!"
Charles shook his head - it clattered a little and he didn't care for it, but he did it anyway. "I don't even know if I want to do that!" he exclaimed.
The nurse skeleton laid her own boney hand over one of Charles'. She said, "I'll jump your bones if you do." and Charles yelped a little and scuttled an inch or two further away.
"Enough of that!" the Major demanded, "Both of you need to get your head bones connected to your damn neck bones so we can get down to business! Listen - I know this is all quite a shock. I know we're not giving you a lot of time to adjust. This is the situation, though. The Bone Hoard are right through those big doors. They were raised by the Calcificants of the Inner Sanctum to engage and eradicate The Defenders of the Celestial Bone Yard, and that's us. Many, many cycles ago, though, the great Prophet Skelteor (not Skeletor - a lot of people make that mistake, but I promise you other than looking exactly like him he had nothing to do with Skeletor) foretold the coming of a Champion. We believe you are that Champion, and you've come to end this bloodshed."
"We don't bleed," the nurse pointed out.
The Major nodded a couple times. "Boneshed, then. Whatever. You can end it."
"But what can *I* do?" Charles asked, not following any of this.
"I don't know. But you need to try something. Just don't be a bonehead, and I'm sure you'll be fine."
With that the Major and the nurse hauled Charles to his feet. He felt very light, and thought about how he'd been teased all his life for being "skin and bones". If they could just see him now.
They pushed Charles, who only put up token resistance in his shock, towards the double doors and the thick of fighting. The smell of gunpowder and fear wafted into the hole in the center of Charles' face. With very little ceremony, they then pushed him right out the door.
Bullets clanged and zipped around him, and shock waves filled the air. That was only at first though - really only for a few moments. Soon enough the Bone Hoard realized their enemy had done something they'd never done before - they'd just pushed an unarmed skeleton out into the open. It was a real bone of contention amongst the enemy soldiers why the Defenders would do this, and they stopped firing for fear that this might play right into the Defenders' hands.
Charles, meanwhile, took a few steps and looked around in awe. If his eye holes weren't of a fixed diameter they would have widened considerably at what he was seeing. The world around him was a conflagration - just fire and smoke filling the sky from horizon to horizon. Amidst the roiling madness war machines trundled across the ground or whizzed through the air. And the eye sockets of every soldier there, and all the soldiers looking out their firing slits from inside, too, were locked on Charles.
He was blank, though. He was simply too overwhelmed. He wanted to be home, just back home where it was safe. Where he could... where he could...
Charles had never told anyone about his love for dance. It was a deep, deep secret of his. He only danced at home with the curtains well drawn so no one could see him. It made him feel free and released. With no other recourse, he began to dance now.
As Charles began to shuffle and gyrate, the overwhelming sound became that of metal hitting the ground. The other skeletons, all around him, both inside and out, began dropping their weapons. If they could have wept they would have, but they couldn't because they were all just skeletons. Instead they began to dance, dance, dance, right along with Charles. They danced until the skies cleared and healthy, fluffy clouds drifted lazily across azure expanses. The war machines rusted and were grown over by verdant nature. Yet they danced on, as only skeletons can. Clattering and cluttering, occasionally dropping a finger or a their own head, then just putting it right back on. They danced for all of eternity, because they were part of it.
| 2022-03-30T21:33:02 | 2022-03-30T21:20:08 | 1,015 | 133 |
[WP] You are the monster at the end of the story
|
**Day 1**: I arrive at base. The food's not bad here, despite all the stories. Guys are pretty nice, too, even to a volunteer like me. They were a little incredulous that I wasn't conscripted, but then I told them about Jon and they understood. Word is there we won't see fighting for quite a while.
**Day 5**: Made friends with my bunkmate. Same name as my brother, but spelled with an H. J-O-H-N, that's how he introduced himself, as if to shield me from hearing the name. Terrible poker player, but a good man, I think. Combat training has started, and I ache all over, but in a good way.
**Day 19**: Another round of recruits showed up today, and it was odd to know I'm no longer in the newbie group. One of them made quite the impression– big African guy, named Dez. Introduced himself with this grand speech about how proud he is to be serving for justice and liberty. Some of the other guys laughed, but I knew what Dez meant.
**Day 40**: That's it. Training –which was apparently "fast-tracked"– has ended, and we're going out into the field tomorrow. John told me he's nervous, and so am I, but I just grunted in reply. He probably already thinks I'm soft for writing in a journal. Gotta keep the tough-guy image up, I guess, even when I can't sleep from nervousness.
**Day 51**: I used to be the best 'keeper on my school's football team, and I remember my coach saying that my position is 90% boredom, 10% terror. War is like that too. We spent all day either waiting or patrolling, and suddenly these locals come up to us, yelling something we don't understand. Turns out a car bomb went off in their neighborhood, and they wanted us to provide first aid. Pretty gruesome.
**Day 67**: I knew this was going to happen. Killed my first man today. A sniper, perched on a crumbling stone rooftop. It was surprisingly easy. Point-and-shoot, like a camera. No, not like a camera at all. What am I saying? Most of my buddies have a few kills already, so they congratulated me. Welcome to the club, and all that.
**Day 73**: John's gone. Suicide bomber. Last night we played a couple rounds of blackjack, and he won. Then we sat outside, among the dust and stars, talking and smoking. Maybe Jon and John can meet in the afterlife. Smoke and talk about how *fucking awful* war is. Fucking terrorists.
**Day 80**: Another horrible day. Dust storms, relentless sun, roadside IEDs. Our cause is just, I remind myself. We are the good guys. Generations to come will praise our bravery. All the words sound hollow. I just want to shoot before I get shot, at this point. I wonder if Jon ever thought like this.
**Day ?**: Patrolling the streets when a ~~little boy~~ local comes up to us. He's wearing an old windbreaker, the kind that was cool in the 80s. He smiles at us. We keep our distance. Opens the windbreaker, and strapped to his body are tons of explosives. *Did Jon die like this?* We yell for everyone to clear the area, and blow his fucking head off.
**Day ??**: ~~There was a house, and I killed everyone... a curly-haired girl holding a doll, a blind old man, a boy with all the bravado of teenagers, all of them~~ Another suspected terrorist cell neutralized. Our cause is just.
|
I've always loved how they depict me. Big and hairy, slimy with tentacles, tall and covered in scales, a few even said that I was a clown. It seems to be different for everyone. And it isn't just children, adults are just as imaginative. For example, there was this man - a high profile mobster, thought himself to be untouchable - who saw me and was convinced I was some kind of massive spider.
I killed him. Made it look like a heart attack.
I'd wager that my Kill Count is up to around six thousand, although I lost track decades ago. I've taken Emperors, soldiers, freedom fighters, and even several rock stars in recent memory. When I'm summoned by the powers that be, I carry out my duties swiftly and without failure.
But then why am I here? If I am as great as my Résumé might imply, why was I summoned to the confines of a child's closet? I racked my ancient brain for answers but found none. I began to feel ashamed, interpreting my lackluster assignment as punishment for some previous wrongdoing. The shame festered inside me and each night I would scratch at the inside of the closet doors and hiss to the child while she slept in her bed.
The night on which she first witnessed me the stars in the sky were shrouded by thick clouds and fierce sheets of rain blew across the paved streets outside. She had been tossing and turning in bed for an hour and decided to get up to retrieve her dollhouse from the closet in which her mother regularly stored it.
When she tossed open the doors, I stood before her. She looked up at me and blinked impassively. I glanced down at her and waited for things to register, bracing myself for that shrill cry children often emit. However, she instead posed a question.
"What're you doing in there?" she asked, cocking her little head. When she did this, her long brown hair fell to one side.
"E-Excuse me?" I stammered.
"Are you hiding?"
"Hiding?"
"Yeah. Like hide-and-go-seek." She clarified, resting her hands on her hips.
"No." I answered, quickly reaching out and shutting the closet doors. I stood in the darkness and let out a sigh of relief. Peeking through the sliver in between the two doors, I saw her. She stared curiously at the closet, waiting.
"Go away." I growled.
"Why?"
"..Because."
"Because why?"
"Because if you don't, I'll eat you!"
"Are you a monster?" She asked.
"Yes," I replied. "A big, scary one that eats children like you!"
"You don't scare me."
"Why not?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"Because."
I stood in the closet and tried thinking of a plan. Perhaps I would kill her. I had killed a number of truly despicable people, all of which fell to their knees in terror no matter how ruthless they were. But this was different, for the first time in my entire existence I was the fearful one.
The doors pulled open slowly and I pressed myself into the farthest corner of the closet. The purple glow of a nightlight painted her face magenta. She watched me collapse into a fetal ball and she giggled, revealing a missing front tooth. I buried my face between my legs and cowered like a fool.
I felt a small finger poke at my back. It poked again and again. I uncurled from my position and looked up at the girl. She smiled again in the purple light.
"Are you ok?" She asked.
"Just a little scared." I sighed, letting out an embarrassed chuckle.
The girl told me her name and I told her mine and she invited me to play with her dollhouse. She introduced me to each of her dolls and showed me what part of the dollhouse they lived in. I didn't quite understand the point of it, but I enjoyed watching her.
As time rolled on, the child and I became strangely close. Each night I would come out from the closet and we would play and she would tell me all about her day. Some nights when she would wake up crying from a nightmare, I would be there to comfort her. She said she felt safe knowing that I was always there.
Some nights her father would walk into her room and watch her sleep, just as I did. When I first told her about that, she seemed uncomfortable. She said me that her father had died in a war and her mother had remarried someone else.
"Do you like your stepfather?" I asked.
"No."
One afternoon as I waited in the closet for the girl to come home from school, I heard the door to the bedroom open. I peeked through the sliver in between the two doors and saw the stepfather. I watched him trifled through a dresser drawer, grabbing a handful of the girl's clothing and pressing his nose to it. He put the clothes back and threw open another drawer, this time pulling out a pair of the girl's underwear. I felt a coldness creep down my spine.
Over the next week the stepfather's visits became more frequent. Each night he would come to view the girl as she slept and each night I watched him vigilantly. One night he crept into the room, his movements slow and calculated, and approached the girl's bed. He crawled onto the mattress and kissed the side of her face. She awoke and tried pulling away from him, but the man got on top of her and began taking off his pants. Gentle sobs poured from the girl as she lay trapped beneath.
It was all so clear then. I knew why I was summoned. I would gladly perform my duties.
I tore through the closet like a wild animal and stood before them. The stepfather spun around and witnessed me with his trousers down around his knees. I do not know what he saw when his eyes met mine but I like to imagine it was absolutely terrifying. The girl, her face wet with tears, began to scream and I told her to leave and wake up her mother. She darted out of the room and down the hall, screaming for her mother.
I lunged on top of the man and pinned him to the ground. He looked into my eyes and blurted out a scream that sounded like a dying lamb. His body shook with immense pain as I stopped his heart. I watched the life leave his eyes, then stood up, and walked back into the closet.
An ambulance was soon called and two young men came with a stretcher and hauled the body away, covering it with a sheet. I waited to be summoned elsewhere but still I remained in the shadows of the closet. Weeks passed and the little girl stopped speaking to me. I waited for her to acknowledge me but she never did.
Then one night she sat with her back against the closet doors and spoke to me.
"Are you hiding?" She asked.
"I suppose."
"Well you shouldn't."
"Why?" I inquired.
"...Because."
"Because why?"
"Because I miss you."
I gently pushed the closet doors open and we looked at each other like old friends. She leaned forward and wrapped her little arms around me and began to cry. I ran my hand across her long brown hair and sighed.
"Did you kill him?" The girl asked.
"I did not." I lied. There was silence for a long time and then she spoke.
"Thanks for stopping him..."
"He shouldn't have done what did." I assured her. I traced my hand along her hair again and she let go of me.
"You're pretty bad at being a monster."
We both laughed. I rose to my feet and picked her up. She felt weightless in my arms. I cradled her for a moment and then dropped her onto her bed, pulling the covers up over her body. She smiled at me, colored by the purple nightlight.
"Goodnight." She whispered.
"Goodnight."
| 2015-07-27T19:44:42 | 2015-07-27T19:43:48 | 16 | 12 |
[WP] - in hell one battles giant demons until you die... then you rise again. Again and again you strive against impossible odds to barely scratch the terrible creatures. The first Dark Souls player has just arrived to this hell, and soon nothing will be the same again.
Dark Souls being a vision of hell.
|
"What the fuck was that, man!?"
"I don't know, just keep running!"
"Is he still chasing us?!"
"Just. Keep. Running." The two demons ran for hours before collapsing in a dim alcove.
"What the fuck was that..."
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before."
"Should we tell the boss?"
"Yeah, sure. He's back that way. Good luck."
"You're such a dick."
"We're fucking demons. If we were anything else, something would be wrong."
"Something IS wrong."
"Fuckin, fine, whatever. Let's just tell the boss and then take the rest of the century off." As they stood up to leave, a message flashed out of the corner of their vision. *TheLegendNeverDies has invaded...*
They started running again.
|
I awoke to the familiar sound of a bonfire. Eyes closed, I straightened out on the cold floor of my apartment and popped my back. Sleeping on the floor always sucked, but after playing Dark Souls III for a week straight I'd barely been able to see. Since I stopped to sleep it was probably a good time to get some food, I needed the energy to start NG+11. With a sigh I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling. At least that was the plan, there wasn't a ceiling to stare at.
Jumping up, I frantically looked around. I was laying on a ledge of unnaturally smooth stone, recessed into the wall of a cliff. A small fire, looking exactly like the Bonfires in Dark Souls I noticed, burned in a corner. A small stairway stuck out near the fire. A quick glance over the edge showed hundreds of caves and thousands of small stairways crisscrossing the face of the cliff. Taking a deep breath, I stepped on the stairs and began carefully walking towards the nearest cave. I needed to know where the hell I was.
&nbsp;
The first person I came across was a vegetable. He didn't respond to anything I did, didn't even flinch when I got fed up enough to slap him. I don't know what got to him, but he looks fine. It freaked me out a little, I do not want to end up like that.
The second person was a gold mine, even if I didn't know it at the time. He told me that we were in hell, that we were sentenced to fight demons and monsters for all eternity and that when eventually die we will wake up next to the last bonfire we slept by. I was skeptical, to say the least. He was describing Hell as Dark Souls, a world I had always wanted to enter. It was almost comical, and I was sure he was either crazy or on the side of whoever kidnapped me and was trying to feed me misinformation. Either way, I wrote him off.
The third person I met kicked me off the edge of his cave as soon as I tried to enter. I could see the hate on his face, before it changed to shock. As I fell he yelled at me to come find him when I woke up. Some small part of me wondered what the heck he meant, the rest of me was screaming as the ground rushed up to meet me though, so I didn't really notice.
&nbsp;
I woke up to the sound of a bonfire. Breathing heavily I sat up and looked around, finding the exact same cave I woke up in an hour ago. As my heart slowed to a more normal rhythm, I could barely contain my excitement. I was in Dark Souls! Or at least I was in something close enough that there wasn't any appreciable difference, either way it was awesome!
Standing up I walked over to the stairs, I remembered the path to the old man. I'd have to sit down and actually listen this time.
&nbsp;
The old guy proved more then willing to talk, now that I believed him he actually went into far more detail then he had previously. About two hours of learning and a short walk later, I stood just up the stairs the cave where I had been killed. Yelled, "Oi! Don't kick me this time around!" I walked in, immediately jumping to the left so if he kicked me still I wouldn't fall of the cliff.
Relaxing slightly, the man leaned up against the wall of the cave. Looking me over he said, "So, you're new."
Rolling my eyes I replied, "No shit Sherlock. How long have you been here?"
"Long enough. This is the first time I've seen someone so calm after their first death though, I'm surprised."
"I play Dark Souls"
"You what?"
"It's a video game sort of like this, you get used to dying"
"Dying in real life is a bit different then dying in a game to most people."
"Casuals" I said, dismissively waving a hand.
With a feral grin he leaned towards me and said, "well if you're so suited to this life, lets see how you like The Field. Follow me."
Sighing heavily, I followed. If this was a movie, I was about to go on a training montage.
&nbsp;
It had been barely a month since I first met John, and already I'm a bit better then him, at least while fighting monsters. It may have been due to the world; if I couldn't keep up I died, even though I always woke up it still hurt like hell. Personally, I attribute it to the fact I love to fight. Actually living it only made it more fun, there was so much more you could do if the system wasn't limiting you to certain movesets.
So here I am, sitting on the corpse of an Ogre. I have my sword, taking from a demonic lieutenant, and my armor, made from the hide of some dragon looking thing. John is still fighting his Ogre, it won't last much longer though. Soon we'll be strong enough to start working up the chain of command, we may even get to the Devil himself.
I couldn't care less though, I'm having the time of my life.
| 2016-03-30T11:44:52 | 2016-03-30T11:01:50 | 19 | 10 |
[WP] You are sentenced to a famous prison. You are not sentenced by time your stay only ends if you die or escape. There are no guards and the prison is broadcast on television. No one has ever escaped.
|
"What do you mean you're just gonna go for it? No one ever escapes"
"Yeah, but if I'm gonna die here anyways why not?"
Jack looked casually around, eyeing the cameras and getting a chill. Nerves were always high when someone was going to try an escape. They usually ended in death, but a few had managed to survive whatever horrible fate came of their attempt. Smitty had been impaled when he fell from the wall he was scaling, no one had even noticed the spikes at the bottom beforehand. Jiminez was actually found washed up on the rocks on the south end of the island, he swam for it, but he at least got out of the prison before nature took its toll. The stories were too many to count, and too gruesome to be worth dwelling over, but Jack was going insane and had decided death was better than staying.
"Tell the boys I went fighting", he uttered as he began his journey.
"It won't work, they'll gun you down, or cut you to bits, god knows they aren't letting you leave", Jacks buddy Tom pleaded.
His plan was audacious, it was arrogant and defiant. Jack would have it no other way. Just as the day the police took him in, when he made fierce eye contact and never once shied away from ownership of the spree of crimes that placed him in this stone box on this island with one single bridge to the mainland. It was time.
Jack stepped up to the door, a dark gray steel structure with cameras from every angle. He slowly pulled the lever releasing the latch, and took a step out onto the bridge. As he moved, each step deliberate and full of purpose, he waited for the sniper round that was surely going to take his life. Each step becoming agonizingly more desperate. At long last he had traversed the bridge completely unharmed.
"What the fuck?!?" He blurted out as he read the street sign in front of him "beinvenido a Tijuana???"
|
The past three week was a nightmarish experience. When I woke up in that cramped little cell, I knew that I was sentenced to *the ultimate prison* by then. The prison that has no guards, yet no one has escaped from it yet.
Yet I do not panic, for I know I am different. The prison itself is actually just a grand stage of the most thrilling show ever made. The other criminals were sent in **before** the show started. After the show broadcasts, the major crime rate drops to zero in twenty years because all the criminal minds are daunted by the sheer impossibility of escaping from this place. The public therefore calls it the ultimate prison, one that even the most renowned criminal, *Professor Moriarty*, from the ageless detective series cannot break free from.
But not until me. In fact, I am fairly certain that I will make it. Unlike others who have no idea how the prison works, I do. I am an avid fan of the show - I watch it as I grow up. I have made a detailed floor plan of it when I was in secondary school, in my design classes. I know every possible trap by heart. The mistakes that others have made will not repeat on me.
Therefore I passed the first three layers with ease. Then the fourth one was little bit trickier, for no one has reached this level before. But my mind was my best weapon - I analysed, calculated, moved with discretion and purpose - and finally I reached where I am now.
I can tell this must be the last barricade between me and my ultimate freedom. The prison is actually built underground, judging from the air pressure and slight change in gravitational field strength. But this layer is the one that has these two parameters almost the same as earth's surface. Moreover, I did a little research on the time that scientist built this great bulk - it was merely 3 years. Although technology is quite advanced, the complexity and intricacy of this place will limit its size or else it can be never completed. I have been using crude measurement since I left my cramped personal quarter and now it has reached the maximum size that the place can be. Hence, I will be sure that this is the end.
The end is not easy, however. This level is a massive Rubik's cube, with smaller cubes shifting around randomly. Some cube will give you objects like oxygen mask that may save your life; others will contain chlorine gas. I have stayed in the initial cube for at least seven days, opening latches on wall to check on the changing neighbouring cubes, and I have found a pattern.
The wall is filled with my fanatic scribbling. A shortest, safest way possible is embedded beneath those mad scramble of symbols. I re-read it again, check for errors, and then embark on my journey. I am determined to be the first one who escapes.
I embark after seven seconds. The counting in my brain started when I was in my own cell, although I knew I was risking my sanity. It is a compulsive behaviour and once I start, it is hard to stop anymore. But I it is a calculated risk.
I open the latch and drop down to the new cell. As I expected, an oxygen mask. I pull it around my face and turn the steel wheel on the side war. This cell is empty.
I subsequently enter and exist numerous cells with unhurried, graceful motion. It is not the end yet, and there is no need to make myself dishevelled. Somewhere in me the thought of performing this feat in front of millions of spectator makes my heart swell with warmth. I can already imagine the cheers from the crowd.
Now I stand in a new cube, facing a latch painted dangerously red. Chlorine gas the other side. But I have to walk through it, because no matter the route I will always encounter this cell. I open the latch.
Yellowish-green gas start to diffuse in from the chamber below. I jump, without the slightest hesitation. My skin itches upon the contact. I should not sweat.
I land on the floor, carefully navigating myself through the whirling fog. Then I hear faint sound of metal scarping. What it is? Gingerly, I look around.
Then something spiky pierce my feet. Instinctively I scream in pain, but then I bite them all down. My feet feel so slick. I can feel the poisonous gas eating away my flesh.
10 seconds. The rational part of me says, before the spikes emerge again. I will have to rush.
I start to spring. At my speed, the second time the the spikes strike will be when I am half way through, then it will be three quarters. I am prepared, so the next time I just spasm. The third time I hardly feel anything at all.
I turn the wheel and swing the door open. I leap out. I perch on the top of the cube, squinting. There is a hole directly on top of me.
Sunlight.
At the moment my heart leaps with ecstasy. I have made it. I have made it. I feel breathless. The pain in my feet comes back a bit, but then it is drowned in the tsunami of pure bliss. I am the first one who makes it.
Out from the prison, I half expect a fanfare. Maybe a crowd of fans - yet all I hear is a rhythmic, distant drumming. Coarse red sands underneath my feet. Barren lands, no greenery in sight.
I don't understand.
-
Susan shakes her head as the scene shifts from the lone man standing in the middle of a barren land to a scene back to the innermost cell. "Poor guy!" She comments, wiping away some cream left on her chin, "You know, I used to think that he could actually make it."
"Me too," Lily scoops up another spoonful of cake, "he is so clever. He even calculates the size of this building and of course, the air pressure and all that."
"He's right about the air pressure, you know. At least we know that the prison has 5 layers underground."
"True. But he may have missed something. Who says that the prison has completed? Nah, they never stop building."
"That's why no one escapes from it," agrees Lily, "an ever-expanding prison! No wonder this is the 'ultimate' one."
| 2017-08-15T05:20:38 | 2017-08-15T05:19:22 | 34 | 15 |
[WP] Heaven and Hell do exist after death but you can choose in which you go. You jokingly choose Hell and when you arrive there, you hear Satan saying: "Finally someone! A friend!"
|
"Hello!" I yelled into the darkness surrounding me. My voice rattled off unseen walls; deep rumbling echoes built up into a dreadful cacophony that seemed to swallow me whole.
*Hello hellllo helllllll oh-oh-oh*
My skin became goose-pimpled and a shiver ran up my spine.
"Please - I was joking! Death, if you're there still, please. Please!"
*Please pleaaaa pllleaaad-d-d*
I could feel cold, rock wall to my right but nothing in any other direction. With no other option, I plunged into the darkness, always keeping the wall within reach. The ground beneath me was uneven and I had to step cautiously so as not to trip. As I walked, the stench of sulphur began to grow, soon intensifying and wrapping itself tightly around my throat. After a time, I sensed that the passageway was leading me downward: the wall itself began to twist and I knew I was corkscrewing deep into the earth. No, not the earth. I was somewhere else. But if it was Hell, why was it empty?
I don't know how long I crept along in that dreadful, unrelenting silence -- that blinding darkness -- but eventually a dim orange light became visible someway below; I almost wept with relief.
Gradually, as I descended towards the light, my surroundings became less dim and I could see I was on a wide staircase of sorts -- although a ramp might be more accurate, as there were no steps. I glanced down at my feet and to my surprise, I recognised the sight of the black-grey ground I stood upon. It was a type of igneous rock; the type that forms when lava cools and dies.
The ramp eventually led into a vast hollow carved out of black rock walls. It was much brighter in the room than the stairwell, although shadows danced menacingly on the walls. I saw first a great rock table in the center of the room, around which was a circular patch of white ground marked with the tell-tale black veins of marble. Around that, twelve skeletons rested against the chamber's walls, rusty chains around their necks bolting them to the rock behind. There were iron keys lying by each of their legs. Could they have freed themselves but chose not to?
I crept towards the table. On it lay the remains of a great skeleton, much larger than the others, its arms folded proudly across its chest. In its arms lay a long-sword, its blade a shimmering crystal-blue. The huge bones that must have once made up the creature's wings lay spread across the table's wide surface.
An object rested on the creature's skull -- *the light source*. It was almost blinding to gaze upon the chipped red teeth that made up the terrible crown. Each tooth shone like a fiercely burning ruby. *Like a flame.*
On the side of the table was carved an epitaph.
> Here lies the body of the Morning Star, bringer of light. The true son of God. Long did he protect his children from the Angel's lies. No longer he can. By his side rests his eternally loyal apostles.
> Here lies the body of the Morning Star. He awaits to be avenged; he awaits a friend.
I don't know how long I sat in that room, surrounded by death with my arms wrapped tightly around me. Hours, at least. Days, perhaps.
I don't know why I eventually got to my feet and removed the crown of teeth from the skull, and placed it on my head.
But I did.
And as skin around my shoulderblades ripped and bled to reveal the growths beneath; as the eye sockets of the twelve skulls around the table began to flame and smoulder; as I picked up the sword from the skeleton on the table, and saw in my mind's eye the death of God and the Angel's crimes -- I realised that everything was about to change.
|
In a end of a large room filled with books and statues of ferocious animals, was a grandiose wooden desk with a giant comfortable looking chair. Sittin on it was a man reading a book while holding a glass of whiskey in the other hand. This man was immaculately dressed, wearing a black pinstriped suit and a gold watch.
While he was reading and sipping shiskey, the phone rings. He closes the book and picks up the phone.
"Yes?" "What!?", he puts down his whiskey glass in excitement. "You're not joking are you?" "You just made my day! Oh I'm gonna piss all over God's face with this"
And hangs up. In his eyes you could see the excitement, happiness and most of all, the hope.
On a lonely cloud was standing a man formally dressed, wearing a tie, holding his coat in his hand with bruises on his face, looking
at the neighbouring clound which was the entry for heaven. It was crowded and he could hear the faint noises from there.
"With those poeple heaven might become hell" he thought to himself. Soon, a black limousine arrived. A driver dressed also dressed in a black suit gets out and opens the door for him.
"Your limo, Mr. Stevens". He was surprised.
"You can call me Steve". The driver nods.
Inside the limo there was every possible luxury imaginable. The driver opens the little window and asks. "You need anything?"
He was still shocked and didn't say anything.
"I mean, anything at all" A girl perhaps?"
He was intrigued. "Uhm..yeah", he was hesitant.
"Ofcourse sir"
Soon after, they made a stop and a beautiful woman wearing a red dress got in.
"Hey sweetie! I'm Shirley", said the beautiful young woman. She had a very pleasant voice.
"Uhh...hi", he was nervous.
"Wont you tell me your name?"
"Oh, sorry. I'm Steve", and he extends his hands forward.
She ignores his hand and hugs him instead. "Its a pleasure to meet you Steve"
He is hesitant at first but it grows on him.
"You are really nice", he feels shy as she is very forward.
"We're angels sweetie", she chuckles.
Steve is suprised, "wait..you're a"
"Banished angels..", she interrupts.
"You know you're the first one", says Shirley.
"In hell? Really?"
"Yeah. Be nice to Luc. He's really excited to see you!"
"Who's Lu..OH shit Lucifer?!". Steve is worried.
"Oh dont worry, he's a nice guy. Dont worry sweetie, I'll be there". She holds his hand and kisses him gently on his cheek.
"Can I just say that you're mind bogglingly beautiful!", Steve finally gets the courage to say it.
"Aww you're so sweet!" She chuckles and proceeds to kiss him. She gets on top of him but the car comes to a stop.
"We're here, you two lovebirds can go at it later, we gotta meet Luc", says the driver.
"Oh Damn it Bernie! Two minutes?..fine!", she gets off him.
"Don't worry sweetie, we have an eternity!", she kisses him and gets out of the car.
As he got out, there was a huge wooden door with big golden handles in front of him. Bernie was leading the way. He opened the door with the lightest of pushes.
Revealing a giant well lit hallway with wooden floors. After passing through a series of doors and hallway they were finally there.
"You ready sweetie?", asks Shirley.
"I guess", replies Steve.
Bernie opened the final door and there was Luc standing there waiting for me, all alone, in a giant room filled with statues and books.
He points at steve, "Mr Stevens!" and walks towards him extending his hand.
Steve extends his hand too "You can call me Steve".
"Steve! How'd you like the place?"
"Oh, I like the people better", looks at Shirley. Shirley chuckles.
"I see you've met Shirley."
"Isnt he cute Luc?", Shirley interrupts.
"Oh I can certainly see the appeal", Luc replies jokingly.
"Come on inside Steve, have a seat."
"We'll leave you two alone", says Shirley as they leave them alone.
They sit down, Luc hands him a drink and sits down himself.
"You have questions"
"Uh..yeah..I am the first one in hell?"
"Yes, next"
"Shirley...is she, uh"
"Not my wife, no marriages here"
"Oh, thats nice.
Luc smiles, "You like her?"
"Yea, she's.."
"Beautiful? Ofcourse she is! She's a damn angel. Don't worry about it. Play it cool. She's bound to like you. As of now there are only three men here, me, bernie and you".
Things go quiet for a while. Steve breaks the silence. "I don't get it. Whats the deal?"
"The deal? With what?"
"This, hell, theres no weeping or gnashing of teeth".
Luc chuckles, "Those are just stories. You know what is going on in heaven? Just a bunch of people worshipping that narcissistic asshole. Nothing else. But people are too afraid. Its a fucking mess".
"Anything you want, you can get with my okay." Luc raises his glass and drinks it.
"Thanks"
"Big day tomorrow. Get rest. You look tired. Before you go, I gotta ask...why?"
"I geuss it seemed funny to me at the time"
Luc looks at him, starts laughing. "I like that!"
He laughs as Steve leaves.
The next day, they go golfing.
"What does Bernie do around here?", Steve asks while picking a club.
"Legwork mostly. He's an angel like Shirley. Keeps to himself mostly. You know how it is. Its hard to find guys you can trust."
"Yeah, I suppose"
"You know, there's something we could do after the game"
"What?"
"You'll see"
After the game Luc took him to a private jet.
"Where are we goin?"
"Heaven!"
"What? Arent we forbidden?"
"Relax, I ahave a couple guys on my payroll"
"But wouldn't God know?"
"No he wouldn't, he's not all knowing, if he was he wouldn't have created you guys", Luc laughs.
"Jeez, thats mean", Steve rolls his eyes.
The jet comes to a halt.
"Alright, here we go! Lets go".
Steve reluctantly walks out of the jet.
They go to a corner and a guy comes up and lets them through a small gate.
"Jeez, its crowded." says Steve.
"Fuckin losers!". Luc's contempt for the place was visible.
As they walk through the crowd suddenly a bell rings thrice. Everybody drops to their knees and starts worshipping God.
They were the only two people standing.
A deep loud voice from the distance speaks, "Who is it that refuses to worship me?"
"Its me, you bearded fat fuck!", Luc shouts at the top of his voice. He then runs to the nearest cross he can find and whips out his dick and starts peeing on it.
"Lucifer!" says the voice. "You will not get away with this".
"This guy right here chose me! This is the beginning of your end you pompous bitch!"
Steve is really worried about all of this.
The voice says " Bring him to me!"
"Oh shit. We better run Steve!"
They start running back to their jet while a mob chases them. Luckily they get to the jet in time.
"Lets go Bernie!" As they hurry into the jet. Luc is ecstatic. "Fuck you you sheep fucks! Worship that son of a bitch for the rest of eternity you losers!", he screams as the jet door closses and the jet starts to move.
"Woohooo! Fuck yeah!" Luc exclaims.
Steve is reelieved too. He is cathicng his breath.
"Man, you crazy!", Steve says.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, the fun kind though"
They both laugh it off.
"You know, its nice to have a friend finally"
"No worries man"
The smile on Luc's face says it all.
| 2022-11-26T20:28:16 | 2017-11-04T09:18:11 | 960 | 10 |
[WP] You are immortal. Sadly, the universe was not, and now, after a period of time so vast it makes trillions of years look like seconds even the black holes have disappeared. You realize the only source of energy in the universe is your immortal body.
|
"Hal.... HAL...." I nearly screamed second time as Hal9001, my companion intelligence that survived all these years with me inside my consciousness didn't respond immediately.
"yes?" Hal responded.
"have you completed the calculations? It's been 3 days already. "
"I am about to, but there is one variable that I cannot overlook."
"what seems to be the problem?
It's just one question."
"I think I may be able to initiate a reaction to reverse the entropy of the universe. But the variable is a problem in starting of the reaction."
"what is the variable?"
"you. I need a power source that can initiate this process and you are the only source with that much energy.
If I'm going to complete your request, I may end up disintegrating you."
"well. Isn't that unfortunate....."
He thought for a while. He never expected it would come to this. But what if it meant creation of a new world? A world created by him. Well, mostly.
And then he replied "Hal, do it. You have my permission."
" Any last words?" Hal asked.
"Let there be light!".
_______________
Inspired by the story "The last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
|
I... am alone.
Once, I was a mortal man.
Once, I searched for knowledge.
Once, I was a fool.
This is the price I have paid.
I sleep, but do not dream. This is the only measure of time left to me, and I dread it more than death.
My entire race is but a speck in my memory, a blip of experience and sorrow. Unimportant now.
My galaxy, once a source of countless forms of beauty, evaporated at the dawn of time, by my reckoning. Others followed in time, the limits of light hiding their deaths for untold spans of excruciating time.
The quasars and white dwarfs, last bastions of light glowing in the nebulous carcass of my galactic home, dimmed and died, and my faith died with them.
The dim stars in the sky blinked out, one by one, until all I had left were the holes in reality, my last companions in this entropic hell.
I fell toward the core of the galactic nebula, in time; all things fell to gravity. After eons upon eons, the great collector took me in turn.
Through some cruel twist, even this death eluded me. I lay atop a naked singularity for all of endless refracted time, the gravity stretching trillions of years at a time into seconds, yet I lay there a septillion more sleeps without change. Occasionally, a photon would chance to hit my eye on the way down, and I wished upon them that this hell would cease.
I came to regret these wishes, in time.
Now, even the black hole, my last companion, the only thing left to remember my galaxy by, has evaporated from my hands.
I am alone, floating in the dark.
...
...Ah, a speck. How have you come to survive this long? Perhaps you are a shard of some element unknown to me, durable and stable beyond compare? Or the heart of a nuetron star, somehow unevaporated?
I hold the speck in my palm, wishing for a photon or two in the visible spectrum to come in the next million years, so that I might see. When it does not happen, I lose attention, and absently rub the dust into nothingness to scatter amongst the void.
Soon, all too soon, I realize there will never be anything more. These last wandering photons are the final remnants of a dead universe; well, besides myself.
Just one last time, I wish I could see my fingerprint, the pattern of my hair on my forearm, and a memory flickers in the back of my mind.
A spark. Let there be light.
I absently rub at my hair; the most action I have done in an eon. As I hold my hand up, I see, in a blinding moment, the first new flash of light in a trillion to the trillionth years.
It is like ecstasy to my weary mind. Encouraged, I repeat the process again, eliciting a string of sparks that light up the foggy, fundamental soup around myself.
This, in turn, brings a new discovery: there are actual motes of matter nearby! They float at the center of eddies and swirls in the fog, motes of dust among the monotonous slush of the dead universe.
I must collect them. I have finally found purpose again.
It takes a billion sleeps to gather the first speck, and another two billion the second. By a trillion sleeps, I can almost feel the mote of matter in my left palm, and flashes reveal that my motions have stirred nearby particles into being.
I repeat this gathering for longer than the span of time behind me. My mote becomes a ball, becomes an orb, becomes a dark ball of hydrogen slush upon which I can curl up to sleep. Each awakening brings a new task, searching for the next atoms to pull from the ether, maintaining the ball, generating photons to momentarily bring light to the void.
A planetoid is formed. It is small, but beautiful in the light, and its hydrogen snow is the finest the universe has ever known.
It grows to a planet. I begin another ball, starting from a handful of the previous one.
My first is no longer one of ice and snow; its gasses have bloomed into an atmosphere. I am building its moon in the darkness, hoping my project willl not die with time.
The planet ignites one day. Actually, it has been ignited for some time, hindered from shining by.the walk of photons.
I have a protostar, and a planet. Still, I search for more. Another planet, and another. The protostar burns quickly and explosively, and its death causes a ripple of gravitational changes to spread throughout the primordial darkness.
I complete the next protostars faster than the first in the wake of its stirring, and each burns hot and bright, and fuses material, and converges more hydrogen from the quarks as it dies. I repeat the process again, and again, each time going bigger, experimenting.
I form a nebula that spans for billions of light-years, a massive cloud of stars in a constant state of life and death. A galaxy. I find it thrilling to tend to it, to wonder at its potential. I myself was the product of a galaxy, so the possibilities were endless.
One day, a race might grow up, and reach my stars, and I would be there to warn them against the hell I had brought upon myself.
I name the galaxy Eden. I can no longer remember why.
| 2018-03-09T02:43:16 | 2018-03-09T02:28:51 | 16 | 10 |
[WP] We did it! We finally achieved FTL travel! At first, alien races seem thrilled to have a new neighbor. Then they seem terrified of us. We are the only ones to reach the stars with technology instead of magic.
|
“What is this?” a feline-looking creature asked, reaching its paw toward a switch on the outside of the craft.
“Don’t,” I said, swatting it away with an exasperated sigh. “Unless you’re trying to blow us all to pieces here.” The cat man had an endearing manner of speaking—it drew out it’s last word in a breathy, high-pitched manner that made it seem as if it was constantly asking questions even when it wasn’t—but it did not appear to be the brightest fellow of the bunch.
He looked at me with genuine hurt clouding his eyes. “Blow us to pieces? Why would you travel on such a dangerous thing?”
“How else were we supposed to get here?”
The cat creature shimmered and then evaporated into the atmosphere. I snorted. They had their fancy tricks, but what good was it doing them? From what I could gather, they had never left this planet.
Granted, they didn’t seem to have much need to leave. Their planet was remarkably untouched, a far cry from what was back home.
“This…craft as you call it, is powered by these, yes?” A humanoid alien was standing off to the side, gazing at the thrusters.
“That’s correct,” I said.
“How terribly wasteful!” it cried, moving underneath the thrusters and peering up at them. I stifled a laugh at the thought of the thrusters accidentally activating while it was practically inside them.
We hadn’t expected there to be any form of life on the planet when we had approached it a week ago. They had not shown up on any of our analysis and did not seem to leave any form of traces where they went. From what I could gather from my encounters so far, they were a pacifist society, made up of a number of different species living together in harmony. I had yet to meet, or be brought to, a leader of any sort.
The one binding factor that they all seemed to have was the utilization of, well how do I put it, magic. They traveled by light and were capable of instantly moving their bodies tremendous distances, they did not seem to be limited our human bodily functions such as eating, drinking and sleeping, and could seemingly create matter out of thin air. If it was my call alone, I would have already captured one of them and begun to study them to figure out just how in the hell they were pulling these things off. The others had cautioned me though, insisting we learn more about them before committing such aggressive actions. I think I had already learned enough.
“We have heard about you and your kind,” a blob-looking creature said. “Terrible, terrible things. Are they true? Why have you come here?”
I considered carefully for a moment. Those were some difficult questions and the blob’s words had caught the attention of the other aliens, who were now focusing intently on me. There were maybe fifty of them gathered around the craft, where my crew was still inside.
“We’re explorers,” I said, shooting the crowd a wide smile. “Finding different places and meeting new creatures such as yourself has been one of the single most driving purposes of our species for the past centuries since we first landed on our planet’s moon. I can’t begin to describe how pleasing it is to finally have confirmation that we aren’t alone in the universe, it was a lonely existence before.”
“So you haven’t come to destroy us all?” the blob said. If it had eyebrows, I imagine they would have been furrowed together in skepticism.
“Destroy you?” I laughed, clapping the blob on it’s back, my hand sinking into it slightly. “Naw, we can co-exist with you fellas alright, you seem good enough.”
A crane was being deployed down to the surface behind me. I looked out at the land before me. Untouched. Pristine. Ripe for picking.
“We’ve just come here to do what we do best,” I said, motioning for the crane to move forward with my arms.
|
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*"I guess in life things don't come cheap. My daddy always used to tell me we stand on the shoulders of giants. I never truly believed him until we made contact with the G'xe.*
*Lost in the depths of space, there they were, waiting for a friend to come from among the stars. It's been eons since nobody answered from the deep blackness. They made believe they are alone, at least in this region of space.*
*When our ships spread into the dark ocean, breaking boundaries my grandparents would've never dreamed of, everything changed. For us, and for them."*
\*\*\*
ETF Jian Xing pierced the purple clouds above X'am Ina, the home planet of G'xe confederation. X'am Ina used to be a barren world, before the 4 elder races united in the G'xe confederation and made the world suitable. The position of the planet was just at the center of their world. Of their own universe.
"Commander Hiroto, we are reaching the destination soon, we should tell the president to prepare"
"Ah, Admiral, it seems I can't ever marvel at this jewel of a planet from above. The perks of being the captain I guess. "
After personally announcing the president of their arrival, he went straight to the bathroom. Hiroto had a few days ahead of a less busy schedule. This is because while he was the commander of the ship, he wasn't an actual part of the human delegation. He loved this less strenuous windows.
&#x200B;
The FTL jumps are rough and despite the dampening systems the ship was quivering quite a lot. The longer the jump, the bigger the contortions. This made long jumps unfeasible. The long distances needed to be made from a lot of smaller, less shaky jumps. This always upset his stomach, so he stood there quite a while contemplating on how shocking should've been from the people of G'xe to one day after believing you are alone in the universe, to wake up with people at their doorstep. He made an analogy in his head and laughed. Also ... could you call them people?, they were humanoid, but ... that was another topic of pondering.
&#x200B;
When here returned, the delegation was already leaving. The formalities were the Admiral job in this case, so he decided to stay away, taking a walk alone to the cantina, wanting some time away from people. There, he lingered after a delicious meal, while letting the food sink in chilling at the table in relative silence, that if you count the background monotonous chat as such. Suddenly, the alarms when on. The lights turned reddish, the monotonous chats turned loud and the people started to run.
&#x200B;
"Commander, Security Officer Aleksei Smyrnoi, we need to get you to the auxiliary command room. The standard protocol in case of ship unauthorized boarding."
" What? There's someone breaking into the ship?"
" Sir, I this is the only thing I was informed, so please hurry. Also, the ship internal communication is down so please stick together. We might encounter hostile movement on the way so I advise caution"
Hiroto was perplexed. This was totally unexpected, the G'xe looked willing to talk and it made no sense to start a war like this. So he ran, more out of curiosity than the dread of danger. The auxiliary command was packed with the chief staff all debating the next course of action
"Ah, Hiroto, we're glad you're ok"
&#x200B;
"What is happening, why the communications are down?"
"There has a been a break in section 4, actually ... I don't know exactly if it's technically a breach since a group of individuals basically teleported inside and started to shoot. They are looking to break into the command room, but the security measures are holding, though we believe there's nothing stopping them ... to teleport? I really don't know how this works sir."
" Where are they now? And again why the communications are down?"
"They are engaging our forces into the corridor from section 4 to section 2 buffer zone. It seems at the moment it's a kind of a stalemate. Neither us or they are gaining ground. "
"The communications?!"
" The communications hub is near section 4. It was their first objective. We are working on with portable devices to communicate with the ground force."
&#x200B;
Hiroto sighted, he wasn't reading for this. While there were tons of protocol in case of these situations and basic training, one thing is the simulations and one thing is the real deal.
"Outside chatter? What happened with the delegation"
"It seems their visit is fine, they were not informed yet of the situation. This is of course what we could find out with the limited communications from their media"
"This is extremely odd. Maybe the group here is independent. In that case, we need to be careful not to start a war ourselves. Prepare the ship to exit the atmosphere, we need to trap the attackers"
"Yes sir"
"Next, we need to try to communicate with them. Meanwhile please prepare a plan to assault them. Are there ear translators here? Prioritize communication first, maybe we can find out more."
After the orders were relayed, there were a few minutes of waiting. In the room that he was, there was no actual feeling of dread. It all felt normal. The lights were the usual white and it was relatively silent as everybody was doing their job. Then he felt a force pushing him into the floor as the ship took altitude.
"We can't establish communication with them, sir."
"The assault team is ready to engage?"
"Yes. If you want to proceed I advise it to do now, as I'm receiving word that the sudden ship descent made the attackers shoot more often an eratically"
"Very well, but we need at least one of them alive! I think they panicked, maybe they believed they could take over the ship faster"
The next moments were intense and Hiroto just wanted all this be over fast. He couldn't help but feel sad some of the men will die, you'd think a commander of a starship would make these decisions without remorse. He wondered though if his colleague commanders would feel the same as him.
&#x200B;
The assault team swiftly deployed through maintenance shafts and after a brief exchange of fire, it was over. The room burst in applause.
"Sir, the threat has been eliminated. It was a complete success. 3 enemies were eliminated and we have 1 wounded and captive. The recon team has found no further threats. Should we descent"
"No" he then paused in order to catch a train of tought. "I need to interrogate the enemy first. If this the G'xe officials are behind this, we need to come out with an exit plan"
"Yes, sir"
&#x200B;
He then proceeded to investigate the battleground. Only one soldier died in the exchange. That was a success ... he thought, whilst not convinced. It was a mess. The victims were all Onie, one of the 4 races of G'xe, but the captive was a X'a, the most powerful of the races in terms of influence. Onie bodies were frailer than humans and more filled with fat. It was everywhere. They lacked weapons, though some had a black stone. From what he read, it was just to focus their energy, as G'xe could channel energy from thin air and project it. Some would call magic, a deadly one taking one more look at the soldier's body bag where you could clearly see a gap between his upper and lower torso.
&#x200B;
G'xe apparent lack of high tech was baffling for eath's science community. They seemed to use a form of magic, but little was known about this.
&#x200B;
"Damn .." they were lucky, those guys didn't seem from the special forces, or whatever the equivalent the G'xe had.
&#x200B;
============
**Continued in the comments due to Reddit Limit:**
| 2019-01-18T08:59:32 | 2019-01-18T07:20:21 | 480 | 44 |
[WP] We did it! We finally achieved FTL travel! At first, alien races seem thrilled to have a new neighbor. Then they seem terrified of us. We are the only ones to reach the stars with technology instead of magic.
|
FTL changed everything. 747s were sent to the junkyards. Airports replaced with spaceports that reached the farthest edges of the galaxy. Mars and Venus were terraformed to become brother and sister planets. Saturn became a tourist destination. People started commuting between America and China. FTL made planet Earth feel like a city.
But FTL also made the *galaxy* small. We could traverse the entire Milky Way in a few *days*, instead of a few hundred thousand years. It was almost inevitable that we would find alien life.
First Contact was interesting. Carbon-based life of all things. Maybe the panspermia theory is right, or maybe carbon-based life is inevitable.
There was an entire civilization out there. Just saying the word civilization cannot fully describe just how vast this world was. There was an entire galactic civilization out there. We were so insignificant compared to the millions of intelligent species out there, the hundreds of millions of occupied planets, the trillions of intelligent beings. Each planet with their government, each country in each planet, each province in each country, each city in each province. The mind boggled.
After the initial communications hurdles (apparently you need to stick a fish in your ear to talk to each other), we sent hundred of delegates to the capital star system, in order to find out our place in this wider civilization, negotiate treaties, steal technology, all of the standard protocols in a diplomatic mission.
"Am I translating this correctly? That *magic* exists? Like wizard, witches, and fairies?," asked Sarin Huilivatyy, chief technological diplomat in the Milky Way mission.
"Don't know what fairies are but yes, wizard and witches," replied Ngrishi, diplomat from the Ngoij system, a star system in the Orion arm of the galaxy, close to the Solar system. "We are aware of pockets of space devoid of magic, and well, it seems that by an unfortunate coincidence, your system is in such a pocket. We haven't studied such non-magical pockets since they are so rare but we think that your star contains some ---".
"But what do you mean *magic*", interrupted Sarin. "Any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable ---".
"Well...our current theory is that we evolved from simple cellular life forms, and life evolved while taking advantage of forms of magic. We think magic is an interaction between our nervous systems and the magically infused environment. And when you train your mind, you can manipulate the environment in many different ways. Any advanced civilization has mastered the use of magic, through centuries of magical tradition. Using this magic, we can power our cities, fly between planets, run civilization. I can refer you to the library here; it contains many tomes on magical history and the magical rituals we use to run most things."
Sarin was feeling more and more like he was falling into some twilight zone. What he had so far assumed to be technology that powered the alien spaceships, their floating cities, their FTL, their teleportation, down to their stupid card tricks were all magic. Humans had taken the hard path towards civilization while their alien counterparts had magic (magic??) handed to them. In other words, they were gifted highly advanced technology while bypassing the route that humans took of learning the math and physics behind the world, and instead learned to just create miracles by thinking about it.
He had the impression that these aliens did not understand the first thing about this "magic". Why would the fish translate it as "magic" if they understood it. It would just be translated as technology. Why would they need traditions and rituals if they understood the technology and physics behind what they call magic.
Well, humans have hundreds of years of scientific tradition behind them just rearing to understand this newly discovered branch of physics and technology. He couldn't wait to find out what was behind this magic. He was going to science the shit out of magic.
&#x200B;
(Constructive criticism welcome)
|
\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/
*"I guess in life things don't come cheap. My daddy always used to tell me we stand on the shoulders of giants. I never truly believed him until we made contact with the G'xe.*
*Lost in the depths of space, there they were, waiting for a friend to come from among the stars. It's been eons since nobody answered from the deep blackness. They made believe they are alone, at least in this region of space.*
*When our ships spread into the dark ocean, breaking boundaries my grandparents would've never dreamed of, everything changed. For us, and for them."*
\*\*\*
ETF Jian Xing pierced the purple clouds above X'am Ina, the home planet of G'xe confederation. X'am Ina used to be a barren world, before the 4 elder races united in the G'xe confederation and made the world suitable. The position of the planet was just at the center of their world. Of their own universe.
"Commander Hiroto, we are reaching the destination soon, we should tell the president to prepare"
"Ah, Admiral, it seems I can't ever marvel at this jewel of a planet from above. The perks of being the captain I guess. "
After personally announcing the president of their arrival, he went straight to the bathroom. Hiroto had a few days ahead of a less busy schedule. This is because while he was the commander of the ship, he wasn't an actual part of the human delegation. He loved this less strenuous windows.
&#x200B;
The FTL jumps are rough and despite the dampening systems the ship was quivering quite a lot. The longer the jump, the bigger the contortions. This made long jumps unfeasible. The long distances needed to be made from a lot of smaller, less shaky jumps. This always upset his stomach, so he stood there quite a while contemplating on how shocking should've been from the people of G'xe to one day after believing you are alone in the universe, to wake up with people at their doorstep. He made an analogy in his head and laughed. Also ... could you call them people?, they were humanoid, but ... that was another topic of pondering.
&#x200B;
When here returned, the delegation was already leaving. The formalities were the Admiral job in this case, so he decided to stay away, taking a walk alone to the cantina, wanting some time away from people. There, he lingered after a delicious meal, while letting the food sink in chilling at the table in relative silence, that if you count the background monotonous chat as such. Suddenly, the alarms when on. The lights turned reddish, the monotonous chats turned loud and the people started to run.
&#x200B;
"Commander, Security Officer Aleksei Smyrnoi, we need to get you to the auxiliary command room. The standard protocol in case of ship unauthorized boarding."
" What? There's someone breaking into the ship?"
" Sir, I this is the only thing I was informed, so please hurry. Also, the ship internal communication is down so please stick together. We might encounter hostile movement on the way so I advise caution"
Hiroto was perplexed. This was totally unexpected, the G'xe looked willing to talk and it made no sense to start a war like this. So he ran, more out of curiosity than the dread of danger. The auxiliary command was packed with the chief staff all debating the next course of action
"Ah, Hiroto, we're glad you're ok"
&#x200B;
"What is happening, why the communications are down?"
"There has a been a break in section 4, actually ... I don't know exactly if it's technically a breach since a group of individuals basically teleported inside and started to shoot. They are looking to break into the command room, but the security measures are holding, though we believe there's nothing stopping them ... to teleport? I really don't know how this works sir."
" Where are they now? And again why the communications are down?"
"They are engaging our forces into the corridor from section 4 to section 2 buffer zone. It seems at the moment it's a kind of a stalemate. Neither us or they are gaining ground. "
"The communications?!"
" The communications hub is near section 4. It was their first objective. We are working on with portable devices to communicate with the ground force."
&#x200B;
Hiroto sighted, he wasn't reading for this. While there were tons of protocol in case of these situations and basic training, one thing is the simulations and one thing is the real deal.
"Outside chatter? What happened with the delegation"
"It seems their visit is fine, they were not informed yet of the situation. This is of course what we could find out with the limited communications from their media"
"This is extremely odd. Maybe the group here is independent. In that case, we need to be careful not to start a war ourselves. Prepare the ship to exit the atmosphere, we need to trap the attackers"
"Yes sir"
"Next, we need to try to communicate with them. Meanwhile please prepare a plan to assault them. Are there ear translators here? Prioritize communication first, maybe we can find out more."
After the orders were relayed, there were a few minutes of waiting. In the room that he was, there was no actual feeling of dread. It all felt normal. The lights were the usual white and it was relatively silent as everybody was doing their job. Then he felt a force pushing him into the floor as the ship took altitude.
"We can't establish communication with them, sir."
"The assault team is ready to engage?"
"Yes. If you want to proceed I advise it to do now, as I'm receiving word that the sudden ship descent made the attackers shoot more often an eratically"
"Very well, but we need at least one of them alive! I think they panicked, maybe they believed they could take over the ship faster"
The next moments were intense and Hiroto just wanted all this be over fast. He couldn't help but feel sad some of the men will die, you'd think a commander of a starship would make these decisions without remorse. He wondered though if his colleague commanders would feel the same as him.
&#x200B;
The assault team swiftly deployed through maintenance shafts and after a brief exchange of fire, it was over. The room burst in applause.
"Sir, the threat has been eliminated. It was a complete success. 3 enemies were eliminated and we have 1 wounded and captive. The recon team has found no further threats. Should we descent"
"No" he then paused in order to catch a train of tought. "I need to interrogate the enemy first. If this the G'xe officials are behind this, we need to come out with an exit plan"
"Yes, sir"
&#x200B;
He then proceeded to investigate the battleground. Only one soldier died in the exchange. That was a success ... he thought, whilst not convinced. It was a mess. The victims were all Onie, one of the 4 races of G'xe, but the captive was a X'a, the most powerful of the races in terms of influence. Onie bodies were frailer than humans and more filled with fat. It was everywhere. They lacked weapons, though some had a black stone. From what he read, it was just to focus their energy, as G'xe could channel energy from thin air and project it. Some would call magic, a deadly one taking one more look at the soldier's body bag where you could clearly see a gap between his upper and lower torso.
&#x200B;
G'xe apparent lack of high tech was baffling for eath's science community. They seemed to use a form of magic, but little was known about this.
&#x200B;
"Damn .." they were lucky, those guys didn't seem from the special forces, or whatever the equivalent the G'xe had.
&#x200B;
============
**Continued in the comments due to Reddit Limit:**
| 2019-01-18T10:10:15 | 2019-01-18T07:20:21 | 81 | 44 |
[WP] We did it! We finally achieved FTL travel! At first, alien races seem thrilled to have a new neighbor. Then they seem terrified of us. We are the only ones to reach the stars with technology instead of magic.
|
I had lived for 8 star-cycles when I first learned to Farstep. By 10, I had earned my Intercity Teleportation license; by 15, my Interplanetary.
While similar, the magic used for a Farstep is actually not the same as a Teleport. Farsteps use corporeal magic, which means I can go a short ways - as far as I have energy for - in the blink of an eye. The most portly Sages are renowned for their ability to Farstep further than anyone - my tutor was the first Sage to step halfway around the world, a thousand star-cycles ago.
Teleports are used for those that have a bit more time or distance to travel, and want to conserve energy. Using symbolic drawings, gestures, and a spell, we can use the ethereal magic of the universe to fuel a much further Teleport (or "leap")... basically anywhere we want.
Sages are our great explorers and discoverers. The Thirteen Great Sages are the first thirteen to discover and use the teleportation spell to travel between planets. Each of them went to another planet in our star-group in search of land and food, planets better suited for growing crops than our mostly dry and ever more populated planet. Of the Thirteen, four returned; of them, two told of planets where life could grow unbound. A planet of food to feed a planet of people.
We discovered more planets since then, and more spells, so fewer Sages risk their lives. There is still the occasional Sage that leaps into a volcano or finds themselves caught in a gaseous planet with no way to leap back; but if there is no atmosphere, we create one. If there is no water, we irrigate it from a planet drowning in water. More planets, more people, more food. We are ever growing.
The first native aliens we ran into had yet to discover any spells, so we taught them. Few other species had discovered Leaping, and none had needed to do Interplanetary Leaps to save their people. Until we met the Terrans.
Terrans, self-labeled as "humans", had discovered powerful magics that put our Sages to shame. World-ending magics. They could perform an intergalactic leap with no preparation, just a press and a click. Interplanetary blinks that took no energy from the user. We wanted to learn from them; we wanted them to join our folds.
What fools we were.
Humans were also ever-growing, and very proud. If they weren't at the top, they might as well have been at the bottom. Those that wanted to learn our magic went insane trying to understand it until they gave up, deciding to just use their familiar magic. They had an answer to everything - for a fingerspark, a "lighter". For farspeak, a "radio". Tools imbued with magic that any of them could use - something we had never accomplished. Every magic and magic artifact we had took study and mastery before using it could become so second-nature.
Though they almost never used magic of their own, humans saw our magic as a threat - undetectable power that could be turned against them at any time. And because they felt threatened, their great magics became our greatest fears. I've lost friends to a human who didn't understand they were trying to form a telekinetic bond with it, taking it as a threat. We tried scaring them away once, attacking their floating fortress. They responded by leveling a city. My tutor was one who led the attack on the fortress, and was in the city where he perished with so, so many others. One of the greatest Sages of all time, extinguished in an instant.
I'm in my 25th star-cycle now. That attack was three days ago. I don't know what's going to happen next, but I fear we're going to need a new planet by the time the humans are done with us.
|
Part 1/?
My agent forwarded me the latest stack of TV interview requests, speaking engagements, book deals. There were also various requests to appear at middle schools and high schools to support "Women in STEM" efforts. Diane Widener, trailblazer in modern science, blah blah blah. Not even a "doctor" in front of my name. I never got that far.
I never considered myself good at math. It really is the weak spot of my abilities. If my math score had matched my verbal score on the SATs, I would have been admitted into a top-tier university. The math side was slightly above average- together enough to get me into a decent regional school with a scholarship. Now, part of this was my anxiety disorder (diagnosed late in my undergrad years). Part of this was the shitty teachers and environment in my high school. And part of it was that I didn't have the focus I should have, because I was rarely challenged, and there is only so far you can challenge *yourself.* So when I showed up for freshman orientation and was asked to take a math placement test, I was very nervous.
They filled a roomful of test takers in the computer lab. I took a deep breath and started answering the questions. I worked slowly, methodically. I hadn't even taken a math class my senior year of high school, so I had to dredge up things. People started leaving the room a few minutes later, finished. *Shit,* I thought to myself. I forced myself to focus and kept working. More people left. *Well, this is demoralizing,* I thought to myself. I kept going. Another wave left; the cute guy I was developing a crush on waved at me as he left. I felt mortified. There were only a few of us left. The questions started going too far into left field for me, and the test stopped. I stopped at the desk outside, as they instructed us.
"Last name Widener..." the TA mused. "Ahh. Here you are. Good job; you made it into engineering track."
"Er, great, but I'm going to major in business," I said. "I'm not that good at math."
"That first wave that left were the ed majors and the business majors. You sure you want to go that route?"
"Does the engineering track mean I can knock out my requirements in fewer courses?"
"Well, yeah...you're skipping some pre-reqs."
"Great! Let's rip this fucking band-aid off, then!" I signed up for analytic geometry.
Admittedly, this wasn't my best move ever. It led me to some unhealthy coping mechanisms. Going to a school in the middle of the cornfields meant there was little to do except for two things: drink or fuck. And since I had no plans on becoming a mother at 19, that only left the one thing. And you know what? Calculus comes easier after knocking back a couple of Heinekens. Don't give me that look. I was on a student budget, ok?
Well, turns out I found electrodynamics easier to fathom than accounting. And ballistic flight math is honestly cool. I changed the business major to a minor and ended up taking more classes in the engineering building. Engineers and musicians are crowds that often overlap, so I joined a music group or two and collected more dubious influences. But I had to keep a certain grade point average to maintain my scholarship. The academic pressure was mounting and I cracked under the strain.
Remember the cute guy from freshman orientation? Matt was his name. And we ended up being in some classes together. The crush was never requited, but we had friends in common. A couple days before finals, I was at a party at the music fraternity. "Okay, that's it," I announced. "Time for me to go...I have to finish studying for my physics exam."
"Diane, stay a while longer," Matt spoke up. "You always study too much and make yourself mad with worry." A few of our friends chuckled.
"I still have to worry about grades for grad school," I pointed out. "Mommy and Daddy aren't paying for me beyond undergrad."
"You won't get anywhere worrying yourself to death," Matt said. "Stay and have another beer."
I rose. "Well *everything's* easy for you," I shot back. "Some of us have to work at it."
Matt rummaged around the beer cooler. "Hey, there's a Raging Bitch left here! Sure you don't want it?"
I hesitated. It was tempting. "Nope, had enough beer," I said. "Thanks anyway." Matt sighed, turned around, and rummaged through a candy tray, unwrapping a chocolate. He turned back toward me. "Well, a little boost to mental health," he said, and made as if to pop the chocolate into my mouth. This much I accepted, and I started munch away...until I noticed something odd. "Matt, I think you left the paper liner on..." I carefully extricated it from chewed chocolate. It was tiny, and had a picture printed on it. I eyed this, and realization dawned.
"You did *not* just give me LSD," I said flatly.
"You need the serotonin boost," Matt said with a grin. "Relax. It'll be fun. Let your hair down a bit." I paled.
Anya, one of our classmates, spoke next. "You gave Little Miss Ball of Nerves *acid?"* She shook her head. "She's not gonna react the same way you do, Matt. She's wired different." I was already seeing colors start to shift.
"Matt, you make me glad I never went on a date with you," I growled. I knew he didn't mean anything *bad* by it. Matt epitomized High INT, Low WIS. "Uh....colors aren't supposed to have noise..."
The rest of the night I spent terrified. I rarely let myself average beyond two drinks in public, much less doing drugs. Anya stayed with me. Eventually she dragged me back to my room and I got a (little) sleep. Five minutes later my roommate Liz was shaking me awake.
"Diane!" she hissed. "Wake up! You have an exam this morning!"
"Mrrrh...Tuesday..." I mumbled and rolled over.
"MONDAY," she said, waving my printed weekly calendar in front of me. I stared at her blearily. "Did you get plastic surgery? They didn't do a very good job..."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Liz breathed. "Anya told me about last night. Look. Just GO. You have some padding with your grade so far; they won't let you take it late." She handed me a Starbucks Doubleshot and kicked my shoes at me. "Go go go...just don't think about it too hard. You'll be fine!" she said with forced Minnesotan cheer. A few minutes later I stumbled off to the engineering building for my astrophysics exam. The grass was still so fucking *green...*
I made my way inside, trying to stay low key. I stared at my exam. It made as much sense to me as the math placement exam my freshman year, and I felt the same dread. I took a deep breath, then looked for an easy question to establish a foothold and momentum...then I started drawing pictures, and diagrams...and asked for more scratch paper. I felt that familiar sense of "flow" I usually only felt when doing music or writing a philosophy paper... I was definitely the last one to leave the exam. The professor seemed to have given me an unofficial extension on time, which I took as a kindness. I avoided eye contact as I handed in my papers and skittered off....
I was screwed. I just knew it. I went back to my room to hide from the world. I crammed the rest of my exams and slogged through the week. On Friday I got an email “asking” me to attend a meeting with my physics professor and the head of the honors college. I pondered a shot of whiskey before I went. I decided I would meet my fate sober. I went with feet dragging.
&#x200B;
&#x200B;
| 2019-01-18T12:49:38 | 2019-01-18T11:27:40 | 20 | 14 |
[WP] You're the unappreciated intern for a famous group of Superheroes. Your power? You can boil water. All you do is make tea for them while they laugh and drink in their hideout. Little do they know that you've got dreams of becoming the Worst Villain ever. After all, a human is over 70% water...
|
The Instant Kettle. That's what my "Super Heroic Temporary Title" is. Granted, I'm to blame for that, instead of properly explaining my power I decided to be a smart ass. So of course when they asked what my power was, I skipped answering that question in favor of the practical one. And I caused the water to boil in his mug.
Unfortunately, the superhero doing the interviews took my ability a little too literally. He assumed I could boil water in any vessel. Okay so that is technically true, but honestly he didn't even ask. So weeks later to when I making tea for some member of The Unified Justice Front, and not even getting a tip mind you, you could say I'm a bit.... Miffed. Now I've tried to bring up this situation to the proper channels, of course. Follow procedure and the bureaucracy of it all, play by the rules, yadda yadda. But nobody, and I mean NOBODY is listening. I signed up for a WORK Study program with today's leading heroes, not Café essentials 101.
I even had a costume specially made! Graphene filament embedded silk, super high thread count. Thing cost me $3000 dollars, a steal mind you, but not exactly petty cash. I was going to be called The Evaporator. Or maybe even Flash Boil. But no, that's apparently not who I'm SUPPOSED to be. Instead they just mock me, and say,
"Oh yes, grand idea, Insta-Ket(yes they even shorten my nickname), we'll keep that one right here, on the break room fridge, just like all the other good ideas."
Well, five months in and I'm officially tired of their sneering and condescending attitudes. These pricks are superhuman, and super dense.
See here's a 5th grade science question for you; how much water is in the human body? Chances are more than you would think.
Follow up question; how much water can I boil at once? Answer for that is, roughly, a public pool. And we're talking about instant boiling here.
So I hope you're paying VERY close attention to this letter, Mr. Ultra. Because if you decided to instead use it as a coaster.... Well that'd just be unfortunate. Because as of you receiving this letter, my declaration of war is sent, and I will be beginning my assault against this very branch within 20 minutes of the delivery.
Regards
..........
*There appears to have once been a hand signed signature and PS subject, but it is no longer legible through what appears to be a red and brown water stain*
Edit: This was a fun one. Check out the follow ups of myself and Orange_jucc (in the comments below)
|
My name is Miles Brandenburg and they say you should never meet your heroes, and, if anything, the past six months of my life have been living proof of that. Like most kids growing up, I worshipped Commander Titan and The Mighty. I had his poster on my wall, along with the rest of The Mighty—Ajax, Artemis, and Strangelette. I watched and cheered as Commander Titan battled Dr. Diabolical live on T.V., defeating him, saving the city from the nuclear device he had planted underneath the local university, and delivering him to the custody of Deep Dark, where he remains to this day. Strangelette was one of my first crushes, and one of the first female superheroes to take on a primarily combat role on her team. I envied Ajax, his posh London accent and impeccable sense of style, and was and still am a little afraid of Artemis.
I discovered my own ability when I was fourteen and even applied to the Hero’s Academy, but was rejected. “Your power has potential, I’ll give you that,” the Dean told me. “But kid, I’m just not sure it’s strong or reliable enough to give you a spot here at the Academy.”
There are basically two types of people in this world when it comes to rejection. There are those become dejected and give up, and there are those won’t take no for an answer and try even harder. I, unfortunately, was the former, and spent my high school years convincing myself that I wanted to go to university, then law school, then get married and have two kids and live in the suburbs someday. I tore down my posters of Commander Titan and The Mighty and replaced them with ones of The Beatles and Nirvana.
I had almost forgotten about my powers, hadn’t used them in nearly a year in fact, when I saw Commander Titan and Strangelette post a YouTube video. They invited those interested to post videos of their own abilities, as for the first time in a decade, The Mighty was taking on an intern, and maybe even a new member. I submitted mine on a whim. I filled an unused aquarium in my backyard, pointed at it, and within several minutes, brought the water to raging boil. Neat party trick, but too slow to be useful to a team of heroes. I uploaded it and was more amused by the comments than anything else. “Fake!!!!!” “lmfao look at this lame ifrit wannabe mf.” One guy even wrote a practical essay about how I faked it by loading CO2 cartridges underneath the aquarium. If only I were so clever.
Commander Titan and The Mighty being, well, Commander Titan and The Mighty, I found out that I was selected not with a phone call, text, or email, but when four black SUVs pulled up in front of my house with a camera crew in tow. Dad thought it was rude. Mom asked for Commander Titan’s autograph. Grandma poked him in the chest and chastised him for my rejection at the Academy years earlier, like it was entirely his fault.
And that’s how I ended up here, although I’m not sure where “here” is. It’s somewhere very big, and beneath the ground, or ocean. It’s impossible to tell, really. It took twelve hours, two planes, a train, a boat, and some type of elevator device to get here. And here I walk with a tray of various beverages: black coffee, ice water, coffee with cream, tea with honey.
Commander Titan and Strangelette are lounging in a Victorian game room replete with all the luxury and technology of the 21st century. They have company as well. A beautiful young woman maybe only a few years older than myself is sitting in Commander Titan’s lap, puffing on a vaporizer, laughing uproariously at something he just said. Strangelette mashes buttons on the controller and giggles as she slays legions of demons in *From Hell IV*, the latest installment in the blockbuster franchise. A beautiful young woman is softly kissing her neck, and an aggravatingly handsome young man massages her shoulders. I clear my throat, as they didn’t even notice me enter and I don’t plan to stick around for the show.
“Yes?” Strangelette sighs with pleasure. She pauses the game and throws back her head, giving the young woman a better angle of attack on her neck. Her, servants, whatever they are, don’t stop for me, and Strangelette gives me a sidelong glance and a wink, then giggles again at my obvious discomfort. I never thought my childhood crush would be a… such a creep.
I notice it a split second before it happens. Several vines have unbuckled my belt and wrapped around my pants, and I’m pantsed in front of my childhood heroes by a stupid childhood prank. I reflexively drop the tray of beverages and turn to walk somewhere, anywhere, and fall flat on my face, my ankles also having been wrapped in a tangle of vines. The entire room bursts into laughter and a tsunami of embarrassment floods over me, the kind that burns your face and makes you angry and sad and mad at being sad all at the same time. That’s when I see Artemis grinning at me, sitting alone in the corner of the room, the vines receding back to her skull and her yellow eyes gleaming. And those teeth, Jesus, they’re canid, and they’re far too many of them.
The laughter continues as I pull up my pants and clean up the mess with as much dignity as I can muster, which is admittedly not much. “I’ll be back,” I mutter underneath my breath. This draws more laughter as they recognize the old reference that I unintentionally invoked.
“We’ll be waiting, dear,” Strangelette sings, and her interest quickly returns to killing digital hell spawn.
I begin that long, humiliating walk to the kitchen, and I think about that text I got from Dr. Diabolical. “Once you get to know them, I won’t seem so bad. I need your help and you need mine,” he said in the short video attachment. It could have been a prank, or a test, but how that could have been faked, I don’t know. I don’t know if I care anymore either. I’ve been training on my own now, and I can bring twenty gallons of water to a boil in about thirty seconds. Still too slow for immediate combat, but quite dangerous if I may say so myself.
I remake The Mighty’s drinks, return, and smile placidly at their ribbing. “Take the rest of the night off, Miles. You’ve earned it,” Commander Titan says with a chuckle.
“You sure you don’t want to stick around?” Strangelette asks maliciously.
There’s no good answer so I leave the game room as quickly as I can without seeming too eager. When I get back to my dorm, I take out my phone and bring up the text message from Dr. Diabolical.
“What did you have in mind?” I write.
| 2019-07-30T14:48:32 | 2019-07-30T14:38:27 | 965 | 514 |
[WP] In a world where reincarnation with a full knowledge of your past life is real, authorities struggle to protect society by keeping the worst criminals and serial killers in prison alive for as long as possible to delay their eventual escape back into society via the reincarnation process.
|
Ugh. School. Erin had dreaded going there for a while now. But now that she was six and a few months, there was no way around it. Her parents had kept her out of pre-school after one disasterous attempt at age four, but now they'd told her she'd just have to deal with it.
Worthless middle class vermin, blind to reality. You'd think a twice-reincarnated man would be somewhat good at his job, but no, mediocrity ruled her parents through and through. Ugh.
At least it had made her life easy. Especially the first few months after being born.
Reincarnation wasn't easy. A baby's brain wasn't equipped to deal with the memories and experiences hopping over, so reincarnated babies were usually very fussy, very loud, and constantly hangry even when they weren't. Keeping all those feelings from affecting her new life had been challenging, made worse by ten years in near-solitary confinement as a 'dangerous prisoner'.
But it had worked out. After six months, the naive parents and the doctors had been convinced she was just a normal baby. A new soul, or whatever they called it these days. Just like she had been in her previous life.
Honestly, it felt unreal that she'd been able to do as much as she had without the advantage of reincarnation. This time, she wasn't going to fail, and if that meant she'd have to kill even more people to do it or finally start that nuclear war... So be it.
But first... There was something else to deal with. For the first time in five decades, she'd be entering school. A school for the newly born, just like last time. She wondered how much had changed.
Erin touched the three objects hanging on the zipper of her backpack: a small crescent moon, a larger cartoon sun, and largest of them all - though still only an inch and a half or so across - a red planet. It hadn't been hard to fake enthusiasm for the galaxy by age four, leading to a 'big girl' room and lots of toys to go with it. Oh, how little did the fools know of the pact made two decades ago.
The bus was here, and she got on, getting a seat in the middle-back that was empty, preparing to zone out and succeeding until two stops later, when some loud and older boys got on. Thankfully, they went all the way to the back, but a smaller boy followed them, walking unevenly: there was a cast on one arm and his other was holding a backpack.
And he sat down next to her. "Hi!" he said, way too chipper for the hour, but then the bus accelerated, and he hadn't been sitting properly, so he bent forward and barely missed hitting his head and arm on the chair in front. "Ooow..."
Erin pulled him back with all of her non-existent strength. "You okay?" she asked, because that was what little girls did. "What happened to your... arm?"
Three stickers adorned the cast. Full moon. Sun. Earth.
It *had* to be. It couldn't not be. She put her backpack on her lap, turning it so her keychains were visible. And then she waited. And waited.
The boy leant in. "Boss?" he whispered, soft enough you could mistake it for something else.
But it wasn't.
|
"It's always the quiet ones."
That was what they said to everyone. It made sense, of course. Ted Bundy, Yang Xinhai, Mikhail Popkov... they'd all been smart enough to realize they had to hide who they were when they were reborn. This was still the early days, when people were just starting to reincarnate. Back then, it was treated as a new fad - "is your child claiming they've had past lives?". But when the kids didn't stop 'pretending', and their memories started proving to be accurate, it started a rush to try and identify everyone's past lives. There were screenings at every grade of school, looking for any kind of indications. Students who jumped ahead academically, who were oddly mature for their age, who had 'overactive imaginations'. It was effective enough - most people were happy to be identified, to reconnect with friends and family they'd left behind. Many were even adopted by their own children or given regular visitations, creating new hybrid family units.
But the serial killers didn't want any part of that, usually. There were a few who identified themselves early on, but they were desperate to stay where they were, as they were. They wanted fresh starts, and they'd hoped that being raised again might cure their urges. People discussed punishing them again, but it was more academic then - they were still children and they hadn't committed any new crimes. The people who were arguing in favor of reimprisoning them were arguing against the faces of innocent children. Those used to be very difficult optics to overcome - until the "serial children" started getting caught.
Lori, the first of the "serial children" never identified who her past life had been. Professors and psychologists still speculate over who she might have been originally. It doesn't really matter, of course - just about everybody just thinks of her as Lori today. That tends to happen when a child murders nearly a hundred people in the space of two decades. The first time, it was seen as a random event - a statistical blip among the scores of peacefully reincarnated people. It was horrifying, of course, seeing a dead child so young being carried out of a birthday party covered in blood. She'd killed herself in the end, though, and society naively assumed that was the end of it. But the bombs Lori mailed out the next time around and the food she'd poisoned in supermarkets the time after that made most people start realizing the problem. "How can we ever be truly safe from people like Lori?", the media began asking.
Other "serial children", the ones with more patience, had started emerging after Lori engaged in her mail bombing. Ego played into it for many of them, their particular psychological damage making another mass murderer getting all the attention enraging. Others simply saw the lesson Lori embodied - the system couldn't stop them indefinitely. Many of them were caught faster than they had been before - serial killing is a lot harder in the era of smartphones and cameras in every building. But the death penalty was no longer a deterrent, and prisons were never that interested in keeping their prisoners alive. A few even went to prison deliberately for exactly that reason. A lifetime of experience with prison procedures, and a little bit of money set aside from their new lives for bribes, and they could kill with impunity for years. Some prisons didn't even realize their populations had been depleted until parole boards asked why they had so many missed appointments.
It took time, but eventually the rest of society was convinced. Something had to be done, and "Lori's Law" became the popular choice. Early identification of reincarnated individuals, and for the ones convicted of brutal crimes, "peaceful, prolonged restraint". After all, if death was merely an escape and prison was a playground until they decided to leave, there had to be some better solution to the problem. They had to be kept away from others, and ALIVE. Supermax facilities were considered at first, but there were too many potential prisoners to be held for too long a time. Likewise, modifying existing prisons was too uncertain. It could take decades to 'deathproof' most facilities. Instead... we got The Cross.
It was advertised as the humane solution by the prison supply company that came up with it. A suspension rack, combined with restraints, electrostimulators for muscles, feeding tubes, and a headset with a display - 'to ensure dignity and deprogramming' as they sold it. It was the perfect solution - the right size to retrofit prison cells, cheaper than building or modifying prisons, and easy to sell as being ethical. One of the most memorable commercials never actually showed The Cross, only a group of children playing outside a door with a window showing a Cross prisoner's headset. It slowly zoomed inside to show the child inside watching the others tearfully. "They'll be ready to play again... someday."
Of course, reincarnated criminals didn't volunteer who they were. Once they committed crimes, they could be imprisoned, but The Cross was supposed to be reserved for 'incurable recidivists'. If they didn't know who you used to be, they weren't supposed to put you in one. There was an initial wave of Cross sentencing for the ones who had been more open or who had let slip about who they were, and crime dropped for a time. But after that wave, the escape method was obvious - die before you were caught. Critics began pointing to the number of criminals dying while being taken into custody, or who were found dead at the scene, and asking what the point of The Cross was if it could be escaped so easily. Surprisingly, the prison companies agreed - but their solution was drastic.
Lori's rediscovery at the age of 4 was front-page news across the world. Few people questioned the fact that it was a prison-funded pyschologist who found her, or that she'd been willing to admit who she was so easily. Instead, scene after grisly scene was shown of her previous killing sprees, the media discussing her case for weeks alongside another image - Lori inside The Cross. Early detection was the key, they proclaimed. These predators were vulnerable early - they were still adjusting to their new bodies, their ability to hide or resist greatly reduced. It only made sense to institute screenings at every school. Within months, Lori was followed by a new crop of 'serial children' - all fitting the new profile. Anti-social tendencies, keeping secrets, not listening to figures of authority... The checklist was long but accurate, politicians and pundits insisted. And if it wasn't 100% perfect, well, they still had other lives to look forward to. Better safe than sorry.
In the decades since screening became mandatory at schools, the system appears to have been working well. There hasn't been an identified case of "serial children" in years, they tell us. There have been some concerns, as the first crop of children found in the screenings have finally started passing away. No matter how long or well they were tended to, eventually old age won out. But people are confident in the school screenings - the deviant children are always easy to spot, after all. They're the quiet ones. I've even heard they'll have Lori back in The Cross sometime this year or the next. She couldn't help herself last time, after all. Lori may have been quiet at first, but she WANTED to be found out. They'd get her eventually.
Lori was always quiet, always anti-social until she struck... and certainly, 93 years of isolation on The Cross couldn't have cured me of that.
| 2021-10-08T10:45:29 | 2021-10-08T09:56:46 | 52 | 24 |
[WP] Aliens fear humans. Their blood is poison, they can see well in the dark and eat meat. One was just found as a stowaway on a mining ship deep in space, with the crew doing everything in their power to avoid the human as it lurks about the ship, looking for someone to talk to
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Very first thing I have ever actually written. Any feedback is appreciated, Thanks!
Klaxons blaring to life jerked Sergeant Xill out of his rest state. The warning message coming across his mental link with the rest of the crew.
"Attention! Attention! We have an intruder in cargo bay four. Life-form is unknown but registering to be quite large, possibly a full five units in height. Security, arm yourselves and move to apprehend."
Xill is awake and dressed in moments, twelve cycles serving as a security officer and the twenty cycles before that in the federation militia made his reactions in these moments automatic. Collecting the other three members of his squad, he heads toward cargo bay four with haste. He opens the mental link to the commander...
"Commander, can you give me an update on the intruder?"
"Sergeant Xill, the life form is unresponsive to our mental link attempts. We believe that it does not have any telepathic abilities. That alone assures it is not sentient. The size of it leads us to assume that it is an unknown creature from the last planet we chunkmined. Predator or prey we do not know, be careful."
"Confirmed commander. Moving to subdue target."
The team reaches the door and Xill issues some quick commands and they burst through the door. The three team members are well trained. They advance in a short distance and crouch down. Xill takes a step into the bay but comes up short the moment he sees the life-form.
"It can't be."
"Sergeant report. What is in the bay?"
There standing in front of the sergeant and his team is a nightmare brought to life. For thousands of cycles these are the creatures they tell their progeny about to scare them at night. The team is motionless for a moment, the life-form raises an appendage and slowly shakes it back and forth before it lets out a horrible sound.
"Hello chaps."
The team rapidly retreats out of the room with a mental command from Xill and closes the airlock.
"This is Sergeant Xill, all units retreat immediately. Commander seal the airlocks for cargo bay four and initiate lock-down protocol. We have a human on the ship. This is not a drill or a joke, there is an honest to god human on the ship."
"Sergeant, this is no time for jo-"
"This is not a joke! There is a human in cargo bay four, and it was bleeding! Security team cover that door."
More hideous sounds come from the sealed cargo bay.
"Wait, I just want to thank you for rescuing me. I was abandoned on that planet. Don't run, please."
Who knows what those sounds mean, sentient races haven't used auditory communication in so long that we don't even have translators for it anymore. A loud screech draws the sergeant's focus back onto the door as it falls towards the team. The human stretching forward reaching out of the bay, more aggressive sounds emanating from it.
"Oh gosh, I am sorry about that. Listen I just want to know if you can drop me off somewhere."
The security team opens fire and Xill contacts the commander. "Commander, our anti-personal weapons are having no affect. The radiation beams are being absorbed by the subjects epidermis. Request ship-wide neural transfer. I fear what will happen when it actually catches any of us. Oh no, it is advancing with its claws extended. I am issuing an emergency neural transfer for my team, I recommend you do the same."
Holding his hands up in front of him the human advances slowly.
"Now now gents, I just want to chat. Please lets be civilized. You lower your weapons and-"
The security team all collapse as if the puppet-master snipped their strings, their consciousnesses speeding away to the nearest neural relay to be remapped to a new physical form.
The human rushes forward and cradles one of the small beings in its hands. "Are you alright? Hello?"
Not knowing what to do, the human continues exploring until it comes to a large open room. Scattered throughout the room are dozens of tiny little bodies. All of them missing that spark of life just like the four that he met originally.
"Hello? Anyone?"
|
Empty bags of chips, crushed 2L bottles of coke, stiff pizza boxes.
Trashbags taped to the windows, phone cord unplugged, cat door boarded up.
Cockroaches, mice, mold.
"Today's the day," Dennis says to himself. Patchy beard, red-rimmed eyes, fuzzy teeth.
He squares himself off against his front door.
Military surplus boots, parachute pants, heavy black trenchcoat.
The doorknob warms his palm. A single turn of the wrist is all it will take.
There's a TV commercial he's seen every fifteen minutes for the last ten hours. A section of brown scummy floor tile gets sprayed with a bright yellow liquid. Then a rag sweeps through and reveals glittering white laminate.
Dennis imagines the sun will have a similar effect on his home. One bright yellow spray of daylight and his home will be scrubbed clean of the darkness, the damp, and the mold.
And if the sunlight had a similar effect on him, too, that wouldn't be so bad.
A single turn of the wrist is all it will take.
Dennis takes a deep breath.
On the other side of the door is his concrete walkway. It runs straight for a few feet, then bends left to his driveway. He could walk along the walkway and down his driveway to the sidewalk, which runs along the periphery of his neighbours' homes. If he walks along it, he'll brush up, gently, against his neighbours' lives. He'll see their new cars, their bright flowers, and their shiny windows. It'll be a non-invasive reminder that there are other people in the world, and that he can interact with them without anything going bad.
But what if he's walking along the sidewalk taking in the cars, flowers, and windows and he stops to admire a particularly well-kept house, one with manicured bushes and a perfectly trimmed lawn, and on the other side of the invisibly clean French windows he makes eye contact with an attractive middle-aged woman, and she sees his trench coat and his boots, and her face barely changes, in fact she smiles at him, but there's a crinkling he can see around her eyes, and a twitch of her upper lip, those unconscious physical ticks that spell out disgust.
What if that happens?
He'll have no choice but to show her that her opinion doesn't matter to him. He'll have to piss on her lawn. Or kick her flowers to scrap. Or run his dragonclaw knife down the length of her car.
He wouldn't want to do these things, but he'd have no choice.
And, come to think of it, he'd have to do these things if a child on a tricycle sees him walking down the sidewalk and turns around. Or if a man cleaning his car looks at him and says hello in that flat, unwelcoming way that middle-aged home-owning men have.
Dennis, non-violent at heart, would hate to hurt anybody.
But if he turns his wrist, lets the sun into his home, and steps out into the light, it's unavoidable.
Dennis pulls his hand away from the doorknob.
"Some other day," he says to himself. "When people are nicer."
That's when his home and a cylinder of earth descending three kilometers toward the planet's core are teleported into the hold of a passing mining spacecraft.
*****
The examination display showed the usual rectangle of boring, useless materials.
"Temperature standard, radioactivity standard, and edibles non-existent," White Salt said. "Nothing to this planet but the usual."
Bucolic Meadow passed a lump of enriched granite between her forefeelers. "Another dud, eh?" She flipped the granite across the command center, pushed off from the wall, and was waiting at the opposite side to catch the granite in her mouth. "Dump the load. We'll check the two inner planets and call it a day."
White Salt navigated to the eject command, but when the confirmation screen came up, he paused. He nibbled the tip of his hindfeeler. "Hold on," he said, and brought up the examination display again. There it was, at the very top of the rectangular sample, a mess of elements, irregular in composition and arrangement. He zoomed in. "Something funny about the sample's surface. There's a hollow construct here. It's irregularly regular."
"It's what?"
"It's unnatural. Straight lines and ninety-degree angles."
The suspension bar in the corner squeaked as Foam Wash dropped down. "Sometimes nature is unnatural. That's statistics." He fluttered over to White Salt. "It's a hollow space not even three units high. We see those all the time."
"I know. You're right."
The edibles dispenser crafted another lump of granite for Bucolic Meadow. This one she bounced off the bulkhead and caught. "No objections to ditching it, White Salt?"
"Foam Wash is right, but," a ripple travelled along White Salt's feelers, "it's bugging me."
"What the shoot," Bucolic Meadow said. "It's been a quiet week. Let's check it out."
Foam Wash grumbled. "Waste of time."
"Change of pace," Bucolic Meadow said. "White Salt, suit up. Bring Mini Moon and Molten Flow with you."
*****
They entered the examination hold via the airlock chamber. The three of them wore external exploration suits of limbered aluminum. A shuttle platform took them to the sample's surface level. The examination hold was not designed for physical exploration, and there was no lighting provided other than the monocular beam on their headmasks.
Molten Flow said, "Captain, do you receive me?"
"I do, Molten Flow," Bucolic Meadow said. "Initial report on the 'irregular regularity'?"
"Initial visual scan lends credence to White Salt's estimation. The hollow box bears a number of features not found in nature. Peaked top, angled corners. The box itself presents a symmetry, while consisting of a number of sub-symmetries."
"Statistics," Foam Wash said. "Does nobody understand statistics?"
"Thank you for your contribution, Foam Wash," Bucolic Meadow said. "Molten Flow, have you located an entrypoint?"
"Negative. On all sides the box presents contiguous surfaces. Entry will be made via digging tools. Permission to proceed?"
"Proceed."
*****
After removing his hand from his doorknob, Dennis was startled by a tremor running through his home. He wobbled on his feet, and crushed soda cans fell off his kitchen counter.
He said, "Huh. Earthquake," and went to bed.
A whining sound woke him. At first he thought it might have been part of the dream he'd been having, in which he'd been trying to take care of himself as a toddler. Whenever he brought toddler-Dennis a cup of juice or bowl of soup, toddler-Dennis would slap it out of his hands and scream.
But the whining continued even after Dennis had sat up on his floor-level mattress, pushed aside the pile of musty clothes he slept under, and rubbed the fuzziness out of his eyes. It came from the first floor, and he soon smelled steam and smoke coming up through the floorboards.
He cinched his belt tight, pulled on his Iron Maiden T-shirt, and clipped his dragonclaw knife onto a belt loop.
The light at the top of the stairs didn't turn on when he hit the switch. Nor did the bathroom light, or his bedroom light.
Had a fire taken out the powerlines? Was there a civil insurgency underway?
The whining ratcheted to a higher octave.
Dennis gripped the stair's railing tight and went down the stairs, taking care to step over and around the crumpled toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes on the steps.
When he was halfway down, whining cut out. He heard a thump against his living room wall.
He got to the main floor and peered around the doorway into the living room.
Another thump, and this time the wall shook.
A thin line of light traced a rectangle on the wall, almost as though someone had sawed a doorway into place.
And the thumping -- the thumping was almost as though that someone were now trying to knock the wall down.
Instinctively, Dennis gripped the knife at his side. Robbers would get what was coming to them if they messed with Dennis Halloran.
The wall crashed to the ground, bobbing lights blinded Dennis, and he reeled away from the living room with a hand to his eyes.
*****
*more below*
| 2017-06-10T06:14:54 | 2017-06-10T02:54:34 | 651 | 152 |
[WP] You have the most useless superpower in a world full of awesome superpowers. You are a laughinstock, that is until you start using your power for evil... no one is laughing now.
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You grew up with bruises on your knees and scabs aplenty, just like any other kid. What your parents never knew was that not all of them were your own.
You're ten; baby Sarah from next door is bawling because she's just fallen and skinned her knee. You take the pain away from her. As the wound fades from her knee your own skin starts to sting. It's ok. It'll heal soon.
You're sixteen; the first boy you've ever kissed is in agony because he might never play football again, might never get that scholarship, will never be able to escape from this vile, poisonous town. You take the wound away from him. You wince; this hurts more than anything you've ever done before. His eyes are wide; shocked. Nobody thought you had any powers. You can't tell anybody, you say, not anyone, and he agrees. He's so grateful he seizes you and spins you around the locker room, kisses you hard on the lips. It's the last real moment you'll ever share until he, too, leaves.
You're eighteen, and for the past four months your college roommate has been screaming in her sleep. At first you're annoyed; now you're just scared. You slip under her sheets. Her hands are icy cold, and her eyes fly open in the darkness. I can't deal with this anymore, she says, tears falling, please. You don't want to see. You do. Show me, you say, and then you take the memory in.
For the next fifteen minutes all you can do is curl up in a ball and moan, harsh gasps the only sounds you can make. This one, this one you might never recover from.
It's been fifteen years since you've seen your parents. Being summoned to the penthouse in the middle of the night is something of a surprise.
Until you see him. You can see into people now. His cancer is terminal.
Your mother is there. Of course she is. She would think nothing of sacrificing one useless girl for the life of one of the most powerful men in the world.
"My dear...," your father lurches forward, while you take an involuntary step back. "It's been too long."
You don't know when he managed to get so close. His grip on your arm is tight, almost feverish. "Help me," he says, and this time it comes out as a plea.
You lean close, close enough that your foreheads touch. Physical wounds heal, but the mental ones don't always go away, and sometimes they leave scars. You exhale, and it feels as if a shutter in your head has clicked open, releasing all the darkness you've collected from others, all the darkness you've collected your entire life.
He stumbles away from you, hands to his head. Your mother is screaming.
You turn on your heel and leave. You always did abhor screaming.
|
I was laughed at when my power was finally found out. "A real SHIT power." They would bully. "Least you will never shit your pants." Some would say trying to find the good in my power.
My name is Felix Brown, yes Brown, and my power is the ability to stop the wast processing ability of the body, any body, and prevent the subject from being able to expel waste. In other words, I make people constipated. I was able to live with the jokes through high school and college, and was even able to make a few of my own. Until last year on my birthday.
See to fully understand the build up to last year on my birthday, you have to understand what drove me to it. For that I need to take you all back to my birthday 3 years ago.
It was an office party. Everyone was singing happy birthday to embarrass me while most only showing up for the free cake. Most came over to make the over the hill jokes, some came to invite me to dinner or after work parties, but Bob from accounting had the wonderful ability of influencing the body chemistry of those he touched. So his gift to me was to get me stone faced drunk with a mere pat on the shoulder. My boss, who's power was to inspire overwhelming confidence in himself to those around him, told him to fix it.
Everyone, including me, had a good laugh about it. That was when I noticed Rita making shy glances at me from the corner of her eye. Everyone else filed out of the break room until it was just me and her.
"Hello there Rita." I said confidently as I strode over to her.
She blushed and smiled turning away. "Hi." She said as she picked up her ipad and turned to leave.
"So everyone wants to go to the bar tonight for my birthday." I said making her turn around to look at me. "But I would rather have dinner with you alone this friday night." I said with a grin making her face turn beat red.
"Uhm that does sound more appealing." She said in a broken and high pitched voice very nervous.
"Would you like to go?" I asked holding out a hand.
She laughed off her embarrassment and simply said. "Why not" With a huge smile.
The date could not have gone better. I would say magical if not for the fact that there were literally magic using waiters there to make our time more enjoyable. This started a relationship that bloomed over the course of 2 years. We got married, moved in together, and had a child on the way.
This brings us back to today. Once again people are singing happy birthday to me over a familiar cake. I looked over at Rita noticing her baby bump was gone. Unable to comprehend, I sat there confused until everyone poured out leaving just me and Rita.
"Have you figured it out yet?" She asked with more confidence than I have ever known her to have.
"What?" I asked in utter confusion.
"My power. I can implant false memories in people. Up to two years worth of memories to be exact. I just need to touch them in some way. Oh our first date happened and we did have sex. But that was just so I could make the memories more... shall say permanent?" She said smiling at me in a sly smile that rang of smug arrogance.
"Why?" I asked incredulously.
"I wanted you to experience what it would be like to finally be happy... and then take it all away. Your pathetic power makes you a laughing stock. All of those out there laugh behind your back at your 'power' as they use theirs to fuck with you all day long. How does it feel to be the laughing stock of the entire office?" She asked grinning.
In pure anger I walked over to her and placed a hand on the wall behind her. Her smug arrogant expression was replaced with fear as she was scared I would lay hands on her. Instead I just grabbed her hand and activated my power on her. Permanently.
"You tell me." I said as I walked out of the break room to her mocking me behind my back.
From there I walked out to shake the hand of everyone in the office. I then went into the lab to fully research my power. I knew it required touch, but also knew that some people caught the effects of my power by simply being near me. It did not take long to figure it out.
I am able to infect ANY living thing with my power. They in turn are able to infect anything else. That is when I know what to do. X-107B. A bacterial strain resistant to all forms of antibiotics and VERY contagious. The bacterium had no noticable effect on the body. It was merely used to test new forms of antibiotics against resistant strains. There was a massive danger of mutation meaning this strain had to be protected and not released at any point in time.
I was about to break almost every single rule of the office as well as some severe laws. I injected the microbes into my body and walked out of the office.
Two weeks later when the first deaths of constipation, those from my office, were announced, the police came knocking. I was the first person to use my powers to kill in over 200 years. To guarantee a speedy trial and to guarantee a large audience, I made the deal. For a guaranteed life sentence, I would confess to my crimes of murder through magic in front of everyone on the courthouse steps.
There were thousands of people present. Hundreds were gathered in close proximity as I was led up to the podium. Before I said anything, I charged my power and filled my lungs with air. I released a huge cough that turned into a coughing fit in front of everyone there.
I apologized for the interruption smiling. "My name is Felix Brown. I have the power to influence the body's digestive system. In particular, I have the ability to shut down certain portions of the digestive system. In other words, I can shut down your ability to take a dump. Permanently." A few snide laughs came from the younger people in the audience. "Those who are snickering in the back do not understand the gravity of this. One hundred and thirty seven people are now dead because they lost the ability to poop. Twelve more are well on their way. They died in agony and embarrassment."
I let the statement hang for a moment as everyone in the audience was silent with shock. "I did it. I maliciously and purposefully used my power to murder. After that I purposefully injected myself with X-107B and infused it with my power. I am still infected with it right now." I let out another huge cough as everyone in the audience started running.
I was put into solitary confinement as they "decided what to do with me." That never happened. About three weeks later all cell doors opened and I walked out of the prison a free man. America was the first to fall simply because it was the first to be infected.
From there my power infused bacteria spread everywhere. With the exclusion of a few island nations and parts of the middle east, the entire world has been wiped out due to constipation.
No one laughs at my power anymore.
| 2017-06-12T07:49:37 | 2017-06-12T06:52:32 | 1,670 | 155 |
[WP] You're a powerful dragon that lived next to a small kingdom. For centuries you ignored humanity and lived alone in a cave, and the humans also avoided you. As the kingdom fell to invaders, a dying soldier approaches you with the infant princess, begging you to take care of her.
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The Knight burst into the cave gently holding the swaddled infant princess. "Please, I beg of you, take care of her, there is nothing we can do"
The dragon looked around and saw the child placed and the base of his mountain of gold. "It shall be done" came the reply.
With that the child was instantly incinerated with one breath.
"What the fuck Raffi, the firebreather!"
"You said take care of the child!" Came the dragon's reply.
"Was this what happened to my cat when I asked you to take care of it?" said Sir Randy the Dirty
"Yes! You said take care of it, I set it on fire!"
|
"To my dearest Yvain
I was a dragon, strong and old stuck in a cave for a crime you should never know. How long has it been I wonder since I was out? For the last time I walked these grounds there was no town or city but forest ever so green.
This was where the magical beings stayed until the mortals arrived or so I'm told . As the magical beings left they soon forget of the little old me stuck in the cave, it's funny to how one lost is another gain, for the mortals or what you call humans found me. They started fight me not that they should try. I was never their enemy or even a foe but this all fell as did they all. They call me a monster as each hero failed to return thinking I had ate them when all I did was to freeze them is all I did. Is it really wrong to defend your home? When people come at you with axes and swords?
Anyhow as the kingdom grew so did their might, I was avoided as the forest around my cave grew thick and I didn't mind that or that's what I said for I wished for a friend or maybe someone that would stay in this cold cave of mine. Should have been more careful with my wish if not trouble would come, not that I'm saying your trouble more of a headache than murderous intent. For one day that man came with bruises and wounds that would have been deadly but he was determined to come and see me, a little nobody.
He came with you, the treasure he cared he begged me and asked me to take you in for that's where your destiny lie. "Please great dragon take this child" he started as he told me of what happened outside. He told me of how his kingdom had fallen and to how their enslaved. He spoke of your father and how he died protecting the country he once called home.
As he tried to preach to me to take you in I could see it in his face he was dying. Thus I stopped him half way telling him I was no great dragon but merely a mischievous one stuck in a cave. He stared at me with eyes I could never forget and said "but the stars tell me another story it's said that you two are bound by fate so please...." He never finish his sentence and I was left with you.
The first few years I wonder how it would go caring for a baby no older than a week old. Lucky I never killed for those people that came to attack me now are your caretaker,your teachers and friends to this little village we call home. Yet as time pass I never realize how your now old enough to take on your destiny and for me to take on mine.
If your wondering why I'm writing rather than telling you all these, it's because I've given up my life to make you stronger, maybe then your pain won't be as bad.
Take on my scales as I've asked them to make it armor so that the enemy can't push you down with their numbers for I worry their swords and arrows will Pierce your skin.
Take on the sword made from my scales for I know that's the only thing you can wield. You always refuse to fight not because your weak but because you know it's not right so take on this sword for it will protect you and those you wish. It's a sword fit you a queen
Take on my wings and let it be your mantle, let it warm you on those cold nights at war so you remember your not alone.
Take on my wisdom for I worry you'll be fool for the world there's many people that wish to take advantage of you my princess.
Take on my strength and let it be your own so you can succeed for that road to your success is filled with hardship and heartache however I'm sure you'll succeed with or without my help
Not that I'm complaining. I was happy to see you grow I never realize that these people could be so kind. I was lonely for so long forgotten by so many people, that I forgot warmth. Yet seeing you smile melted this cold heart of mine.
Do you remember your first words? I do it was tia.. that's what you called me. Me whom was nameless only being seen as a scary dragon people avoid. Yet you gave me a name with a smile on your face never once running away. That made me happy in this short life of mine..
I wished the stars let us met sooner than maybe this cold prison won't be as bad, however why am I to question fate for I have met you the sun in my life...
My destiny was to be released by you and was I ever, for you've released me from my pain and torture. From my solitude and silence, by bringing discord and happiness.
So please find your happiness... For I have already found mine in your smile....
Yours truly
The nameless dragon you call gon"
"But gon ....how can I be happy without you..."
Edit: comments are welcome please tell me if it's ok
| 2018-03-01T03:23:07 | 2018-03-01T01:48:12 | 135 | 13 |
[WP] You've brought a knife to a gun fight, a pen to a sword fight, and a cat to a dog fight, and won all of them.
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It was a cold November evening, at the bus stop where I sat.
I carried everything I owned in a sack upon my back.
A million miles from family and not a lover left who cares for me and I was broken and internally, my battle wounds were turning black.
A figure hunched over to my left raised his head and spoke
"I might be just an old beggar but i know when a man is broke,
i won't tell you life gets better, or it won't unravel like my old sweater, but the rain out here can't make us wetter so I've some words if you can spare a toke.
I've spit straight into the wind, I've taken shortcuts time and again, and I've started fights that I can't win but I'm still sitting here today
Ive gone North for the winter, in the summer I go south and I've looked every gift horse in it's mouth I've done little to make me proud but ive always walked away.
Yeah, I've bought knives to gun fights,
matched pens to swords,
fought cats with dogs,
spit and sworn
but inside this chest my heart's still warm
so i guess you could say that in the end
I've won every battle
lived to fight again
cuz it don't matter, son, what you've did
we all end up the same."
running out of steam it's 3am. but the beginnings of a folk song are definitely happening.
|
Thank god she'd brought a beagle I thought, aware out of the corner of my eye that the dog was sniffing the air but wouldn't go near my Knuckles, who was watching everything suspiciously from beneath a chair somewhat behind me.
The four of us stood around the large oak desk. Maybe it was cherry, maybe cedar. I don't know anything about wood, but my mind wandered as the moment drug out.
We eyed each other up and down, waiting for someone to make the first move. It was like that scene from *The Good, The Bad and The Ugly*, but with one additional person, plus a lawyer, and my cab driver.
I was going to need to borrow some cash to pay the fare, but I hadn't arranged this meeting, I wasn't going to let them make me feel *bad* about it again.
The cabbie was a patient enough guy. Gary, from Philadelphia. We talked on the way over. He had stood quietly by the door for almost an hour now. His patience had payed off when the lawyer had read the final page.
You could see it on his face, Gary's, he was uncomfortable enough to leave, but he hadn't been paid yet, and you could tell, this guy, he'd seen it all, but not something like *this*, he wanted to see which way this was gonna go. The sick fuck.
If I wasn't a part of it, I'd be curious too, maybe, but I'd like to think I'd walk away from this sort of mess. But not now, I'd be damned if I was going to walk away from this now. This was what it all came down to, after all these years. I wouldn't let it be for nothing, but I'd never expected *this*.
The lawyer finally spoke up behind us, hesitantly "...the Will *does* state that the conditions must be met today, or the inheritance will be donated to charity..."
My brother tried to sieze the moment, maybe thinking that the lawyer had distracted my sisters and I, or maybe it was just that his arrogance as the oldest made him think he'd always had the drop on us.
But he was a 44 year old computer programmer with a drinking problem. He tried to rattle loose the calvary sword dad had left to him but he didn't account for how long the blade was and he spun away awkwardly, I grabbed dad's pen from atop the vinyl folder that held his Will, and I stabbed down hard, deep into my brother's eye socket. He screamed, and sprawled back into a book case, falling, reeling, into a pile of himself, clutching at the wound.
My sister, at first in shock at the blood spurting over her Ed Hardy apparel, reached for mom's desert eagle that she'd only just slung to her hip after the lawyer had passed out our presents, just before reading the terms we'd have to agree to if we wanted dad's real pride and joy. Fucking cancer, I stop to think, it's getting around these days...
Our petty half-sister was still holding grandpa's ka-bar, her shit dog cowering at her feet, and in one smooth motion, way smoother than my siblings could pull off, I grabbed the knife, spun it in my hand and stabbed back through my sister's hand, pinning it to her thigh, blood rolling over the gun at her side.
"You asshole, I have *work* tomorrow", she pleaded.
"Yeah, you've always been a dick, bro", said my brother, clutching his face and rolling around on the floor. They're always teaming up on me.
Another moment dragged on, the lawyer spoke up, "ahem, sir..." his eyebrow rose expectantly.
I took his drift and turned and punted Karen's beagle across the room. "Sorry", I shrugged, acknowledging my maturity for holding back a petulant grin. Years of resentment wasn't going to stop me from having my moment with an air of grace. My half sister knew the truth of the matter, she'd never really had a dog in this fight, so to speak.
".. here are the keys to the mustang", interjects the lawyer, and as he places the keys in my hand, he speaks reverently, so that my siblings could hear, on behalf of our father "*you are indeed, and have always been, the favorite child*".
My siblings groaned, and I lorded over them. My sister looked like she was considering pulling the knife out, my brother had rolled onto his knees. What's her face was tending to her crap animal. I spoke out, thinking of the *Lion King* for some reason, "Now say it..."
After a pause, Karen gave in first, "I'm sorry we gave away your cat..."
"Skippy."
"I'm sorry we gave away Skippy because I said my dog didn't like him".
"It's not ok" I told her, giving her a stern look.
"I'm sorry I told your girlfriend you shit your pants that one time" said my sister, using her chrome studded belt as a turnicate.
"I'm sorry I sold your toys for pot when I was in high school, can you call an ambulance, please..?"
"That doesn't sound like you *mean* it," I told my brother.
"What the fuck man, this is all for a car? What's wrong with your family?" that was my cab driver. The lawyer had a look like it was time for us to leave, like he had other appointments.
"Its not about the car, Gary, it's about the *principle*. Now help me find my cat." I would have to get the cash to pay the cab fare from my roommate.
| 2018-03-30T22:46:47 | 2018-03-30T21:43:35 | 21 | 12 |
[WP] In this world, soulmates cannot hurt each other in any way or form, intentionally or unintentionally. You are an assassin hired to eliminate a powerful figure. As you close in for the kill, your bullets miss their mark and knives bounce of their skin. Things just got awkward.
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I have the easiest job you can imagine. I get paid monthly for a hundred years, so I never have to think about saving money. All I had to do was push a button once. Oh, and if I quit I'm as good as dead. But I guess that's still better than the average employment contract.
This left me with a lot of spare time, some of which I spent looking for my soul mate. It is customary for searchers to prod each other with needles, as legend has it that soul mates are not able to harm each other. At the time I found it a bit silly, but it served as a good ice breaker.
I never actually met my employer. One day some masked gentlemen visited me to inform me that I was now part of a deal. They left me with a cardboard box containing a bottle about two meters tall and one meter wide and a stack of papers.
The bottle was to be deposited in my basement and attached to some kind of pump for which there was a very detailed shopping list with stores and aisle numbers for every part. I purchased each part on a different day. After assembling the contraption and letting it run for a few weeks I shut down the pump. Now I just had to wait until it was time to press the ignition.
In the first year or so I kept wondering why they chose me. Surely there was no lack of people able to follow simple instructions. What bothered me is that they could have chosen someone who never would have figured out what the bottle was for.
The problem with ICBMs is that they can be intercepted and, more importantly, it is easy to see where they were fired from. But they are a very nice topic to discuss with leaders of other countries. Especially if your country has more.
The explosives I had placed in the bottle would elevate pressure and temperature enough to fuse hydrogen. I had built an atomic bomb without moving radioactive material across borders. It was just too perfect. Whatever evidence there was would be wiped out by a tiny sun going nova. Along with me.
I decided to skip that part. When the day came, I was already on a flight to a holiday destination I had booked in advance. On arrival I saw my work unfold on television. It was beautiful.
The bottom of the screen read: "Nuclear disaster in Italy. Satellite image shows woman sleeping on molten rock."
My triumph faded. What was I supposed to say to her? "Sorry that I melted your family"? Actually, never mind that. Where would I hide from her?
|
I had been waiting for 15 hours. Dark, muddy, rainy, and freezing from my lack of proper gear. My hands were shaking not from the nerves, but from the cold. How was I supposed to get an accurate shot off with a trembling trigger finger? Even so, I thought to myself 'not my worst Saturday.'
He should have been there by now. Hell, he should have been there hours ago, but that was the way it was with politicians. A last-minute change of plans could take them to the other side of the state. 'Maybe he won't show and I'll have to be back here next weekend, great!' I thought to myself sarcastically.
I sank lower into the leaves as I contemplated my options. The setup was perfect. A small hill overlooking the governor's mansion from 500 yards, just enough tree cover to be cloaked in darkness, and an easy getaway down a back road and into the night. Perfect - minus the lack of a target.
I begrudgingly began packing my things as the anxiety started to rush over me. There was nothing worse than waiting. Action was easy, you were in it, you took care of the job and it was over. Waiting, however, brought on night tremors and 5 hours of sleep a week. 'Well, I guess it's one more week. If his schedule holds.'
It had been a painstaking process to line everything up with the governor's busy schedule, and it would only get worse as the election grew closer. The men who hired me would not be pleased with this development. Time was running out to give their candidate a clear path to victory, but what was I to do? You can't kill someone if they aren't there.
As I stuffed my sniper rifle into its case, I heard a faint noise in the distance. Could he be coming in late? I jumped back to my position and peered through my binoculars. No, just a group of drunk college kids zigzagging their way home.
My car was parked 200 yards away, door unlocked and pointing down the road - an easy getaway. Trudging through the puddles I started to iron out the plan for next weekend. I would have to check the governor's updated schedule, but if my recollection was correct, he would be arriving at around the same time the next weekend from a fundraising event.
I tossed my gear into the trunk of my 2013 Nissan Maxima, which had been rented under a pseudonym. Another layer of secrecy between my boss and the hit.
I started the car, flipped on the lights, and there he was - the governor. All by himself, with only a tiny umbrella to keep him dry.
Startled, I jumped out of the car and began to run.
"Mark!" he called out. "Stop, come back here and talk to me."
I didn't know if it was the cold or some sense of odd respect, but I inexplicably turned to face my target even though my cover had been blown.
"Governor, how are you?" I tried to sound as normal as possible. Well, as normal as someone who was soaking wet on a Saturday night outside the governor's mansion could sound.
"You know you don't have to do that?" he replied.
"Do what?"
"Anyone who has known me as long as you have doesn't call me governor. And my best friend sure doesn't have to."
"Alright then, Robert. How was the fundraiser?" again going for normal.
"Terrible, you know I hate those things. It is a necessary evil I guess, but I don't know how much longer I can endure. What I'm curious about is, what brings you out here at 1 AM on a Saturday night. Seems a little late for a hike doesn't it?"
"Uh, well...sometimes I can't sleep and I need to get out of the house..."
"Mark" he interrupted. " I know why you are here."
My heart dropped. Could he really have found out? Everything loose end had been tied up, every track covered. Aliases used and his boss had assured him of the utmost secrecy. How could this happen?
"I, I... just..." dumbfounded, I still couldn't get a word out.
"Do it."
"What?" I replied.
"You heard me, do it."
"But.."
"I don't want to be here. I don't want to be governor but the train is moving too fast for me to get off now. It has been a long time since I have been happy. The office forces you to do terrible things, unspeakable things. I went into politics with rose tinted glasses and the idea of saving the world, but reality hit and there is nothing to live for anymore."
"Robert, I don't know if I can.."
"Why not? You were all set up to take care of it an hour ago, what is the difference? Can't face me like a man and take care of business? For what they are paying you, it seems like an easy trigger to pull."
"But your staff, they must know you are out here. If something happens to you and they see me pulling away, I'm dead to rights."
"I've pulled them off and snuck out for the night. Seal training still has its uses."
"Robert...I don't think.."
"DO IT!" he yelled, becoming more impatient.
I reached into my holster and pulled out my pistol, hands trembling. Walking over to the governor, I couldn't help but wonder how this would play out on the morning news.
Taking a few paces towards him, I took a deep breath to calm myself. 'Just do it'
BANG
As soon as my finger hit the trigger I felt a rush of remorse flow over me. How could I have done this to my best friend? Sure I needed the money, but at what cost. I buried my face in my hands and began to cry. It would be a cold long night.
Then, a hand on my shoulder. "Mark" I glanced up and there he was, ripped suit over his heart, but not a scratch on him. "I thought this might happen. I wanted to be gone so badly if I could not live the life I wanted, but now that I know, I want to be with you. There is a million dollars in cash in a bag down the road. Let's go"
It took just a second for me to make the decision. In the back of my mind, this had always been a thought, but it seemed so ludicrous, it could never happen. Motioning to the governor I hopped into the car which was still running and dropped it into gear.
"Robert" I said. I think we are going to be just fine.
| 2018-04-24T04:59:38 | 2018-04-24T03:01:07 | 82 | 12 |
[WP] Human beings unlock skills as they grow up, walking, taking, etc. You are the oldest person in the history of the world, and today you unlock a skill no one ever had.
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It was integrated into our societal infrastructure. There were thousands of skill trees, most undiscovered. It seemed that no matter how technologically advanced we were, there were still skill trees to be discovered and honed.
Some skill trees were abandoned, just utterly useless and others entirely taboo. Everyone could navigate through their skill trees with ease, like thinking. Nobody else can see your skill trees. Its a natural part of the human condition; its understood the same no matter your language or disabilities. There are books that tell stories of ancient skill trees that are now inaccessible, they refer to the ability to use magic.
You can work on any skill tree you desire, there is no limit but you have to work to maintain the skills learned. Neglecting to care for the skills associated with a tree causes it to die. Anyone can plant a seed towards a new skill tree by doing an action that applies to that tree. However, you can't grow a bigger tree until you hone your skills. When a tree grows larger, most skills become available for you to utilize.
The larger a skill tree, the more effort and attention it needs to maintain its growth. To grow it to its peak size becomes a passion, a purpose in life. Some skills intermingle and the trees understand that, so many professionals have trees with interlocking branches. They speak to each other to keep your skills available to you, but if you neglect one it can pull down another tree.
There is a skill tree associated with health and wellness that is believed to lead to eternal life.
In ancient legends, those who had discovered that skill built the *'Fountain of youth'*. An organization that devoted their life to the tree of health and wellness. Younger members neglected all other specialties trees and instead focused their efforts on it. In time, one or two students would unlock the skill for eternal life and become official elders.
Today, nobody can reach that level of devotion with the level of complexity our lives are filled with. Except for me of course.
See, I discovered that skill a long time ago. Thousands of years ago actually. And with every other elder deceased from their lack of devotion. I alone have discovered the newest skills. Yes, there's two of them.
The tree of health and wellness refers to them as 'Permanent Health and Wellness' and 'Devote Assemblage'
When I unlocked 'Perma Health', all the air rushed from my lungs and I felt superiorly powerful. My genetically bad knees stopped hurting and my body transformed into perfect health despite all my efforts. The hair on my head turned from white to chestnut brown. Alongside a number of other significant changes.
The second skill didn't do anything to me, but anyone I touch is reset to perfect health. But there's a catch, I have to transfer the health of one person to another.
So today, I revealed my powers. As usual, the entire world went up in arms deciding which people need to have their health reset and which people should die as a sacrifice. It happens every time.
I'm going back to the fountain of youth, its well hid. I'll just wait it out again, I did for the Egyptians and the Romans. I guess I'll wait for someone else to reach the peak of their tree and see what their power is. Maybe they're in hiding like me, it's a dangerous world for us.
|
I lay there, wheezing in bed, waiting for my body to wake up and face the day ahead. Every morning it was getting more difficult to haul myself from under the covers. There seemed to be more of an incentive to get up and move though since Maura passed away. Her imprint is still in the bed next to me, and every day it hurts a little more that it’s getting more familiar to not have here around.
When I finally grunted my way up, I walked to the bathroom and did my dailies ,if you know what I mean, body relieved and teeth washed I was ready to take on the task of dressing myself but thankfully that new nurse has moved in and is helping me with that. It’s not easy being as old as I am but I lead a healthy life, I was raised well and I grew into my age gracefully and without any encumbering illness or major problems, other than the rickety bones and waning muscle strength.
The nurse helped me into what I wear almost everyday now, slacks and a freshly pressed blue shirt, because they were the easiest to get into. I refuse to spend the day in my pajamas. Too many people my age have gone that way I intend to go with some dignity.
As she was pottering around the room folding my discarded bed clothes and making the bed I made about slowly moving to the kitchen, feeling my legs creak as they move. It was when I reached the door I thought I heard her mumble something akin to “same thing everyday and no thank you”. I turned around quickly, as quickly as I could manage anyway, and asked her to repeat what she had said.
“Nothing, I’m just lost in thought! Do you want me to help you to the kitchen?”
I said I was fine by myself and I swear she said the words:
“Oh course you are, give it another week and you’ll need me..”.
I was taken aback, her mouth didn’t move, she didn’t even look up at me when I heard it.
“I’m apologise if you think I’m thankless, I do appreciate all you do but I’m unfamiliar with voicing it” I calmly explained.
“What do you mean?” She asked, now looking at me with a strange look of horror in her face.
“I heard what you mumbled under your breath” I explained again.
“I didn’t say anything!” She was visibly upset now but trying to hide it.
I was feeling very tired all of a sudden and so I just sort of grunted and turned to make my way to the kitchen.
The rest of the day passed in relative silence with Karen looking at me for uncomfortably long periods of time as she moved around the house.
The next day was also quiet, I woke, completed my morning routine and went on to spend the day reading. Karen came in to give me my lunch and as she was leaving I heard her, clearer than before, saying:
“I won’t always be here to feed you”
I let it slip, maybe she was having a bad week, I wasn’t that bad of a patient was I? I was finding life alone difficult, and I’ve been faced with the problems of my age quite abruptly and I’m trying to accept I can’t do what I used to everyday, but I don’t think I had been too terrible to her.
Days, then weeks passed with me hearing these little quips and under-breath comments until I confronted her:
“If you feel hard done by please tell me and I will try to rectify what I’ve done to you or make your time with me more amicable”.
“I don’t know what you mean” she innocently said.
“Those comments about you not always being here, and how you find this job not to your liking, I can hear them you know, I’m old, but not exactly deaf”.
She continued to play coy. As the following days passed her interjections became clearer and less subtle.
It was then I realized what was happening. I had never seen her mouth move when she said these things, and I could never be sure I heard a full sentence exactly, more that I understood what intention her words carried. I realized I was finally passing the threshold, I was starting to lose it. I spent the next few days in panic at what was happening, hearing her voice say things she didn’t mean, worrying that this was how I would go, not with dignity but rambling in my bed.
This was when my friend Jack came over. Me and Jack never saw eachother anymore, and he was in a bad way, it was so hard to see my best friend start to waste away in a chair, pushed by a different nurse every time. I was surprised both of us got to where we did, enough to see my great grandchildren finish school. But I don’t see them anymore, part of me thinks they wished I was gone already. Maybe we shouldn’t be here for this long, I didn’t want to end up like Jack, it terrified me.
As he sat there struggling to get a real sentence together I heard him. I heard him clear as day say the words:
“What’s happened to my mouth, I can’t speak, I can’t speak to my friend”.
I nearly jumped out of my seat. I hadn’t heard Jack speak so clearly in years. All of a sudden his voice filled my ears in full. He saw my apparent panic and became worried. He tried reaching out and I heard him again in a voice that was far too young for a voice that old:
“I’m here, I’m here it’s okay”.
I’m that instance I knew. I wasn’t losing my mind. I wasn’t going crazy. I saw in his eyes what I heard him say. I wasn’t hearing this out of thin air i was really hearing this. I was hearing Jack reach for me, I felt his concern. I looked at him for a long time, and he looked straight back at me, his eyes burning with worry.
“I heard you” I said.
He managed to twist his face into a question.
“I heard you. What you said but didn’t say. About your mouth, I heard you say you were here”.
I saw him become confused and then upset by this, but out of this broke a smile. A smile I hadn’t seen in much too long. My friends smile.
As the months passed I began to ‘hear’ things more clearly. Karen left and a new nurse, a male one, took her place. He was happy with his job he liked it. I became frailer and needed more but he obliged and made sure I was alright, everyday. A new birthday passed, spent with my new nurse Dylan, he wants to have a career in this job and was happy to share his thoughts on it.
I am now 120 years old. I cannot move as well as I used to and I can’t do the things I used to do alone. But my mind is sharp, and as I age I can ‘hear’ more and I’m realising that I may be the only person to be able to hear what I do. My friend Jack is gone, he passed away shortly after his last visit, he was 116. I’m afraid that the stronger I get at this, the closer I am to going. But I know when I do go, I’ll get to see Maura, and I’ll hear Jacks voice again in full and that comforts me.
The End.
I’d appreciate feedback if you have any! I had a spare half hour before work and now I’ve got to run, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
| 2018-06-23T11:22:33 | 2018-06-23T11:06:17 | 348 | 46 |
[WP] You receive a government text warning saying “EMERGENCY - LOCK ALL DOORS AND STAY INSIDE. DO NOT PANIC”. You hear your SO at the locked front door, who’s just come back from the supermarket. They beg to be let inside but you’re unsure. Something doesn’t feel right.
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I read the alert and hesitated, unsure if it was real. “EMERGENCY - LOCK DOORS IMMEDIATELY AND REMAIN INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” I glanced over the text once or twice more before hurriedly pacing around the house and double checking all doors and windows.
About 5 minutes passed before I realized- my wife was out there somewhere. I called several times and it went straight to voicemail each attempt.
Time had screeched to a halt as I panicked wondering what could possibly be happening so serious that I need to stay indoors no matter what. Just then I heard a car pulling up into the driveway from the kitchen adjacent to the garage.
I rushed to the front door and went to unlock it before stopping myself and thinking; my contemplation was interrupted with a familiar gentle 3 rhythmic knocks.
I peeked through the peep hole in the door and sure enough it was my wife.
She looked concerned and looked over her shoulder every so often.
I wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say.
3 more knocks a little bit more hurried than before rung out as she looked behind her again.
My morals were being tested as I debated if my wife was worth whatever may happen if I open this door- if this is even my wife, that is.
Just as I opened my mouth to say something a gloved hand grabbed my wife’s shoulder, though I couldn’t see who the hand belonged to.
I started to scream but nothing came out, my heart was racing and I knew I needed to open the door but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I heard a deeper voice muffled by something start speaking to my wife.
“Ma’am please step away from the door”, my wife’s familiar soft voice replied inquiringly;
“What’s wrong officer?”.
I sighed, relieved that it was some sort of government official who could keep my wife safe.
The officer answered with questions of his own; “Is this your house? Have you been in anyone’s home in the last 3 hours?”.
“No sir, I was running errands. Shouldn’t I be indoors though?” My wife said. The officer sounded relieved and answered in a cautiously optimistic tone.
“No ma’am, the alert was to keep those who have been home inside. Something I can not disclose went wrong and water lines have been contaminated. We cannot risk this spreading and told those indoors to stay indoors. Do you live with anyone? If so are they home right now?”.
My heart dropped as my wife replied “Yes sir. My husband is in the house right now. He hasn’t answered the door so I’m guessing he’s asleep. Wait- will be be okay? Oh f-“
She was cut off as the officer along with two others going around the neighborhood escorted her. I heard one of the other two officers say “We’re sorry for your loss”.
Come to think of it, I feel... off.
Like...
REALLY off.
“But- if-“ I began to reason with myself saying it was in my head. I looked in the mirror and despite being a pale person, I was deathly pale and my eyes were sunken in. I went to run out of the door but in the time I was processing what just happened they had barricaded my door with some sort of wedge.
I looked out of my window and as a police car with my wife in the back drove down the street I saw people in hazmat suits dropping the same types of tarps used in fumigation over my neighbors houses.
I went to open a window on the first story to get out despite knowing I shouldn’t as if something was possessing me to do so but before I could, one of the tarps fell over my house. I tried to climb under but they were weighted. Everything is becoming hazy.
Where is my wife?
Wait- what is even happening?
What’s happening to me?
Why am I losing my strength?
I’m fading.
I can’t close my eyes or I won’t open them.
I can’t close my eyes, I can’t... close... my...
Edit: fixed the “wall of text”
|
"Baby? It's me, let me in," a soft sweet voice sputtered on the other end of the hallowed oak door.
"How do I know it's you? The Government just sent me a..." I sharply was responding.
"Message- yeah, I got one too. Just open the door, I have something to show you. Stop this silly government talk." The voice seemed to anger now, becoming stern.
"Okay sweetheart, but I can't see you. Are you blocking the peep hole?" I said while glancing with my face flat against the door. I was trying desperately to see even the softest shade of her sweet cheek.
Silence was all that remained. After a few seconds, I started again. "Honey?" My brain started to wander. It had only been two or three hours since I got this message. I did think it was a strange amount of time for my wife to be shopping for groceries. But why wasn't she answering her phone? Why did she take so long?
All that I emitted from the door was the lingering smell of my breakfast on my already staunch breath, reflecting back at me and hitting my olfactory sensors. I shuffled a tiny amount to try a different angle through the peep hole.
Instantly, the door was hit with a poignant blow. It was if the Incredible Hulk was on the other end- trying to hit a home run with my door. The door bounced a small amount and hit my head in a painful manner.
One thing was certain. This was not my wife. This was something else. Luckily for me, that designer oak door was making sure whatever that was on the other end didn't get in.
"Alright buddy," a male voice exclaimed in a calm, yet loud tone. "It seems we have ourselves at an impasse. We want to get in. You don't want us there. But we have your wife- and she sure is purrrrdy."
As whomever was on the other end of that door spoke their words, the hairs on my arms and neck began to stand. "Who are you, then?" I shouted while trying not to sound terrified, yet likely failing.
"Cmon pally, open up. She's got these sweet black stockings on, and I desperately want to find out if she's wearing these blueberry panties or not. But I don't have to. You can just swing this bad-boy open and get her back. Safe and sound. Or... you know... we can have our way with her."
I was paralyzed. It felt like minutes were going by, but it was probably only seconds. I kept trying to think of some type of anything... a plan... a response... a rationale as to what the hell is going on. Nothing. My brain refused to cooperate.
"BRIAN, DON'T!" My wife shouted.
"Baby? Don't what?" I responded.
"Well cupcake, that was stupid. Take her back to the truck and let Crusty Ted give 'er the French Tickler. As for Brian... we'll get inside soon enough." The voice on the other end spoke softly- and I'm certain I wasn't supposed to hear this. "Okay Brian. The wife is now off the negotiating table. Good news is, she doesn't have those blueberry panties I so badly wanted. Bad news is, we're coming in without her. Why don't you go fix yourself a meal. I'm 'bout to get one for myself- but we'll be in touch, BRIAN!"
Finally, my brain began to pick back up the thought pattern. With my wife's life in jeopardy, now was as good a time as ever. I covertly crept across my hardwood floor toward my gunsafe. I might not make it out of this one- but we're going to take as many of these bastards down with us as possible.
While arming myself I glanced at my muted television. The News was recommending everyone take shelter. Law enforcement would be unreachable. California, New York, Washington, and Florida all were hit. Mushroom clouds were juxtaposed against new World Trade Center.
I clenched the cold gunmetal of the barrel in my left hand as I flicked the safety off with my other. I always kept it loaded for an emergency. I guess this is it. I had a thought about how a gun would feel. Imagine being produced on a factory line somewhere. Assembled and sent to your new owner. You wait all day every day, and probably will never get to fully experience the dream of coming to their defense. But not today. Today, this gun gets to be happy. Today, it lives up to its dream. Today, it realizes its goals.
Unfortunately, I never shot a gun before. I knew how it worked, but I felt less than confident with the ensuing firefight. Every time I considered some other form of action I just kept thinking of whatever Crusty Ted might be doing to my wife. I don't have time to waste, and here I am thinking about what makes guns happy.
Three loud thuds interrupted my brief serenity. "Ohhhh Brian? My compliments to the chef. Your wife is exquisite. Don't worry, we didn't hurt her.... much... she's fine. Hell, she's more than fine. She's a gem. But Brian, we need to get in there."
I decided to check the peep hole again, and to my surprise- they had stopped blocking it. I could make out two figures- meaning they had a minimum of three.
SCHPAOW! The sharp sound of a rifle firing from the curbside began to pierce the heavy oak door I was behind.
"God damnit, I told ted NOT to end her. Well, fuck." The voice said.
Overcome with rage, I no longer felt the lack of a rationale brain. I just had instinct. Instinct telling me to kill. In one smooth motion I unlocked the deadbolt while trying to turn the knob with my pistol occupying my other hand. I admit, it wasn't the smoothest transition.
Upon swinging the door open, I was surprised. The leader was armed with a pipe of sorts, and his friend only seemed to have a knife. I remember feeling like I will make quick work of these two. I remember the stupid look on their face when I opened the door and they saw me produce my pistol and take aim. They just sat there, gawking- waiting for me to pull the trigger. It felt like the world was moving in slow motion.
I fired three shots into the subordinate- ensuring that he was ended. I changed stances to fire on the leader as he began to rush me.
Click.
A jam. My gun was jammed. My brain popped back into the picture saying only, "Well, this is going to suck." I remember the taste of blood feeling like a mix between metal and garlic in my mouth after being clubbed by that pipe. I also remember my vision being distorted from blood flowing into my eyes as I laid on the ground, looking up, blinking, waiting for my final moments on Earth to end.
"Well, Brian. Now, me and Ted get your house and we got your wife. You really messed up, didn't you? You could have just opened the damned door, but your stupid ass wanted to be a hero. Thanks for the good times, buddy."
The leader stretched out like a major league baseball hitter, getting ready to send one over the wall. He paused briefly, I assume to focus on finishing the job.
One more crisp bullet sound rung through the halls of my home, and the leader fell lifeless at my side.
I couldn't see the perpetrator, but I assumed there was a lot of chaos going on- probably a few groups vying for resources in this rough time. I heard the comfrting yet scary sound of my oak door close, and the deadbolt latch.
"Brian? Can you still hear me?" uttered the sweetest, softest, purest angel. "Brian? Are you there?"
I nodded and grunted; that was all I could seem to get out. Her soft hands cradled my head and her blouse wiped the blood from my eyes. I didn't know what our future held, but I knew we would be fine as I lost consciousness.
| 2019-01-12T08:53:12 | 2019-01-12T08:28:55 | 32 | 23 |
[WP] “So you’ve come hero.” The most powerful dark lord in history says as he faces you across the hall. But before you take another step, he motions to the cutest little girl you’ve ever seen with tears in her eyes. “But first, please explain to my granddaughter why Grandpa needs to die.”
|
"I'm not going to do that. I'm not here to kill you, or her. I'm here to set things right."
Thomas starts walking at a liesurely pace towards the King Robert, his robe billowing with each step and gesture.
"You see, I'm the cleric. I've seen a lot of small towns, and I've seen a lot of hurting people, and I've heard many of their stories. Church members are frequently broken up into fighting factions, and often it isn't clear who's right and who's wrong, or who's at fault. The world isn't that black and white; people have often been oppressors at times, and have also been oppressed at others. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the people who hurt others the most are those whose hurts have never been healed."
He arrives at the stony steps of the throne, turning to look at the king and his granddaughter.
"So, if I may be so bold as to suggest an alternative; would you tell me and your granddaughter a story about you? What hurt has been festering within you that has pushed you to hurt so many people? I have heard the side of the people outside, but I haven't heard your story yet."
The king looked a little surprised. He looked at his granddaughter.
"Stowwy?" She asked, looking questioningly at him.
Robert turned back to Thomas. "You really want to hear from me?"
Thomas nodded. "Although, I'd also like to ask for a chair. Something a bit softer and warmer than these stone steps would be better suited for a story, I think."
The king sighed. He looked tired, and defeated, as if this was going to be a lot of work. "Oh, fine. There's a sitting room over that way." he pointed off to one side of the throne, and then put his arms on either side of the throne to push himself up. "There should be a fire going over there already. I hope you're ready to be here for awhile; it's going to be a long story."
|
Fury looks on at the old geezer sitting in the throne.
"Divines, you're old. I see Time has not been easy on you," he admits.
"Well you're only still young because you keep Regenerating," the old man argues.
"True. I was always getting killed for your screw ups, big bro."
The old man locks eyes with Fury. The two brothers have had such different lives. While Fury, the younger of the two, had taken on the role of the protector, of the "Hero", Isfet, the elder, had been forced down a different path. A darker path. He is not a bad man, just a victim of circumstance. He is not blind to the things he's done, to the pain he's caused. He knows every thing that has happened because of him. And in that instant that their eyes met, Fury realized something. The elder brother felt guilt. Guilt that ate away at his insides every time he allowed his mind to clear. Guilt that would kill him even if Fury didn't. Still, that doesn't change what he's done.
Fury pulls his cane from his belt, the rod sharpening into a sword.
"You started this war, Isfet. You know that nobody is going to forgive you, even if I do."
"I understand. You are here to kill me, no doubt. I just have one request."
"That being?" Fury asks with a raised eyebrow. Isfet motions to the doorway behind Fury. The hero turns, to see a little girl, who looks to be about eight or nine years of age, clutching a stuffed wolf to her chest.
"Please explain to my granddaughter why I must die," Isfet says simply. Fury's eyes widen.
"Uhm..." The hero is at a loss for words. What do you say in this situation. It's bad enough that he has to kill his own brother. But now he has to explain to this little girl why he must do it? He turns his sword back into the cane and sets it down, kneeling to her height. Tentatively, she approaches him.
"Are you here to kill Papa?" She asks.
"...Yeah. I have to kill Papa."
"But why?"
"Because he's hurt a lot of people."
"But he's sorry!"
"I know. And I forgive him. But everyone else doesn't."
"So why are you the one here?" That question catches him off guard. Why is he here? Fury swallows the lump in his throat, looking at the girl, then back at Isfet.
"Because I'm the only one who can make the right call," he mumbles softly, rising to his feet and making his way to the old man.
"Go on, then. Kill me. I deserve it," he says. He wants this.
"No."
Every one in the room looks at Fury with wide eyes.
"What?" Isfet breathes.
"Did I stutter? I said no. I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to save you," he explains and plunges the dagger into Isfet's throat. "Now. Regenerate you dumb son of a gorgon." He pulls the knife from his throat as the old man begins to glow with a Golden aura before erupting into flames of the same color. When the flames die down, a man looking nearly identical to Fury has taken the old man's place. The tan skin, Blond hair, and Red eyes of the younger brother are now pale skin, White Hair, and Red eyes on the Elder. The man looks at Fury.
"But why?"
"Because I'm sick of being the crowd pleaser. I say it's about time I get to be a little selfish. Don't you?" Fury asks, looking between the revitalized Isfet and the little girl.
...
Ten years have passed since that day. Something had happened. Fury had managed to escape Destiny. He had forged a new path, one where he wasn't alone for the rest of his lives. Instead, he lives his life with his brother and the girl, whom had apparently been named Ma'at. A fitting name. She brought order to their once chaotic lives.
Fury stumbles into the house. He had reached his limit, and now he is dying. For good. Ma'at rushes to his side.
"Are you okay?" She asks.
"I'm fine. Just... You know what? No. I'm not okay. I'm dying. Right here, right now. And it's time for me to pass off the torch," he admits and pulls a necklace from his neck, placing it around her's. "I was the Lord of Time for my entire life. Now, I think the universe could use a more feminine touch. Ain't that right, m'lady?"
"Fury? You're... Asking me to take over?"
"Of course. There is nobody more worthy. Just some words before I go." He rises to his feet, walking around the room. "You can always try to be nice. But you must never fail to be Kind. Never tell anyone your name either. That's a big mistake. And never ever eat pears! Disgusting things." He leans against the wall. "Scratch that. Children can know your name. If their hearts are in the right place, and the stars are, too. But nobody else." He stumbles over to stand in front of her. "Laugh hard. Run fast. And above all, be Kind. Fury, I release you." Finally, he collapses. He doesn't even try to rise again, knowing it would be futile. With his last breath, he whispers in her ear the one secret he thought he would die with. He whispered his name.
And thus, he was allowed to finally take his place among his family. Hos sister, whom he had raised since her birth. His uncle, who was more of a father than his actual one. And his wife and daughter. Both killed in the war. And beside Fury stood Isfet, the brothers' bond finally being restored through Death. Fury recognizes his final resting place as the room where he spared Isfet. This is where his brother became a new man. It is where his new life began. And it is where he will reside, knowing that the universe is in good hands. Finally, peace.
(Yo, this was longer that I thought it'd be. probably strayed a bit far from the prompt but eh, good enough for me)
| 2019-12-11T21:44:56 | 2019-12-11T19:41:27 | 77 | 31 |
[WP] Blind people aren’t actually blind. Their eyes are tuned into a different dimension, but their brains can’t process that information so they see nothing. A doctor has just perfected a procedure to correct this problem. Tell us what the first patient sees.
|
I woke up yesterday as I always did: blind, from the day I was born.
I woke up today significantly... different. Today, I realized my arms were bound around me. It didn't take me long to figure out that I was in a straitjacket, but where am I? How did I get here?
As my mind slowly roused itself from my slumber, I detected the soft feeling of fabric covering my face, with small shafts of light just out of perception. Was I... blindfolded? Kinda ironic, blindfolding a blind man.
But then I came to a startling realization: I'm not blind anymore. I can see.
Just then, I hear the locks being thrown on a heavy steel door, followed by the sharp shriek of the door's ungreased hinges. Hidden beneath, however, was the sound of fabric sweeping across fabric. As soon as I heard it, the lights outside my line of view went out with a distinct snap, telling me that the switch on the nearby wall was hit, leaving me and my mysterious visitor in mute darkness.
"Hello, Mr. Johnson," said a kindly female voice. "How did you sleep?"
My mind raced with ideas, not least of which being where in the hell am I, and who the hell are you? But those thoughts were quickly silenced as I answered, inadvertently, truthfully: "Fitful. I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused, who are you? And where am I?"
Even though I couldn't see it, I had a feeling that she was smiling rather fondly at me. "I'm Nurse Jackie. The procedure must have damaged your memory somehow, because you came into St. Benedict's Hospital yesterday for an experimental surgery. Dr. Glauston assured me that there would be no side effects."
She paused, and I could hear the faint scratching of a pen on paper, possibly her scrawling some notes onto a medical chart of some sort, but there was something missing. No backing surface for the paper, like a clipboard or even a book.
The scratching suddenly stopped, and I heard the sharp clicking of Jackie's heels on the tile floor as she approached me. Suddenly, I felt a pair of... *something* at the back of my head, undoing my blindfold, but they weren't hands. It was at this moment that I remembered why I went to St. Ben's, and who Dr. Glauston is.
Dr. Henry Glauston, researcher, ophthalmologist, optical surgeon... and widely believed to be a quack. Old, somewhere in his 60s judging by his voice. German, or possibly Swiss, or was that my imagination? Either way, he was all over the news lately, claiming he had developed a procedure that could return sight to the blind, without using donor eyes. I admit, I was skeptical at first. But then came the day (was it a week ago?) that saw me end up in the hospital. Hit by a car as I was crossing the street. Fortunately, my injuries were minor, and I was sent home after spending the night.
It was at that point, the lowest I had been in my life, when I decided I didn't want to be blind anymore. So I came back to St. Ben's yesterday, found the good doctor, and went under the knife. When I first woke up in recovery, that is when things started taking a turn for the Lovecraftian.
Certain people appeared, at least to me, as just masses of tentacles and eyes, seeming to emanate from no one origin point. Others looked like what I always pictured Aquaman to be, if Aquaman was written as a Stephen King monster. All in all, the only words I said when I woke up, apparently, were "Cronenberg, eat your heart out" before I passed out again.
I'd only ever had Picasso's works described to me, and to say that everybody looked like a real-life Picasso would be an insult to the artist himself.
As I looked towards where I thought Nurse Jackie was standing in the darkness of my room, I said, "No, my memory's fine. I just had to... wrap my head around everything, I guess."
"Good," came the nurse's gentle voice, barely feet in front of me, but *from the floor*. "Dr. Glauston will be pleased. I'll inform him right away."
As I heard her heels clicking back across the tile towards the door, I said: "You still haven't told me where I am."
"Oh," came the nurse's voice, this time tinged with a hint of sadness and regret. "You're not at St. Benedict's anymore. You're at the Krestin Home for the Terminally Insane."
|
There I sat, nervous and shaking my foot. I couldn't keep still. This was it. I've waited my whole life for this.
I should introduce myself, my name is Kylie. I've been blind since I was born. My whole life my wonderful parents have tried to ease it. With words of encouragement, and with remedies. But nothing has worked, until recently.
His name was Dr. Seltsam. We traveled such a very long distance just to see him, we heard a lot about him, but he was always the last person we heard about. Because holistic was a word, that was frowned upon.
He was our last hope, so we took the shot. Paid for our tickets and flew out to him. The smell of smoke, fresh cut grass, and cedar flew up my nostrils, and the sound of a rushing creek drowned out my ears.
I could hear wood squeaking so his voice was not a startle, I knew he was there.
"Hello, the Bakers! I've been expecting you."
There was more squeaking as my parents replied to him. At this point I was too focused on a smell. It was different than the others. It was lavender. By the sound of his voice, he was close. By the smell he was right in front of me.
"Hello Kylie " I finally focused on his words. "I'm about to lay my hand on your shoulder now, it's a pleasure to finally meet you."
His touch shocked me, but not in a frightened way. His physical touch actually shocked me.
"Just what I expected." He said after taking his hand off my shoulder. "Follow me." He said immediately, just as I was about to reply.
My mom took my hand, and guided me up the steps. My father beside me, telling me to stay calm and relaxed.
As we got in, he guided us to take a seat, and as we sat. My mom to my left and my dad to my right.
The Doctor in the front of us.
"How much will this cost? No matter the amount, we just need to help our daughter." My mom said desperately.
There was a moment of silence before he answered.
"There isn't a charge. I do this for free."
There was an even longer moment of silence. I could imagine my parents looking back and forth at each other in amazement.
"So here it is. I'm gonna lay this down." Seltsam said. "This isn't like any other place you have ever been. This help, isnt my doing but your own self." He was quiet for a minute. " Kylie " he softly said. "I am your Spiritual Guide."
"Yea. Ok. But what do you mean?" I responded with.
"I'm a guide here in this town, I've come from a very far place. People from all over the world and more come to seek help. I simply give them the tools to seek the help within themselves." He responded.
I was speechless for a moment. My parents were so silent. I could hear my dad swallow. He wasnt even sure what to say.
"I don't know how to help myself from not being blind?" I said. After I spoke I could even hear the sadness in my tone.
"Blind? You're much more than just blind. That's such a humanized word for lack of understanding."
At this moment, there wasnt anything else to say beside "Go on."
"You simply cannot understand what's in front of you." He shuffled things and started making noise, he placed something on the table in front of us.
"We recieve things from our level of perception." There was more shuffling. I had no clue what he was doing.
"Ask yourself Kylie. What do you think this world looks like?"
I was silent, and thinking. "I'm not sure."
"Have you seeked that information?" He asked.
"No. Well, yeah. I mean, I can guess what things look like by feeling them."
"That's not enough!!" He said quickly. "I need you to seek. For what you seek, you shall always find. There is no such things as chains, nothing holds you back. It's the thought. You think you're blind." He paused. "But youre much more than that."
"I don't understand.' I swallowed. I am blind. I don't know what hes talking about, but for a minute I caught myself wondering if I was truly blind.
"You think there sits a man in front of you. You can wrap your head around the idea there must be another human there, because they have taught you this correct."
I wasn't sure if I was suppose to respond. "Correct?" He asked again.
"Yes."
"And you understand you're not in your head, so things are real, you are in fact in the world, and there are things that which consist in this world."
"Yes." I responded again.
"But what if. What if I told you it was the opposite?" He asked.
I was about to speak, but I couldnt find the words.
"You can't find the words, because you can't find the location of where you truly are." He said.
I swallowed in fear, it almost felt like he read my mind.
"Yes." He said. "Yes I read your mind. For what you think I am is separate than yourself, is merely yourself speaking to guide you out of the darkness of misunderstanding. "
That felt like a bomb hit, my thoughts were running. I was nervous, I was shaking. Curious as to why my parents werent speaking, but as i felt for them they were not near me.
"Relax." He said. "Just breathe. Things will make sense once you see."
"Do you see complete darkness or specks of light?" He asked.
"Balls of light in darkness but only sometimes. Otherwise its pitch black. " I responded. And just as a I did, a ball of light floated in front of me.
"That, that right there. That is me you see."
"I don't know what you mean." I said.
The light was getting closer and closer, but how could that be, there was a table between him and I.
"Just stare into the light. It will always guide you home." And as the light fully surrounded me, all I could see was bright light in every direction. This was different. This was nice. All of a sudden there was a brighter flash, and Seltsam demanded I closed my eyes.
I was back to darkness.
"Do not open them yet." I listened.
He told me to inhale for 4 seconds. Hold my breathe for 4, and exhale for 4.
I did just that. "On the count of 4, I need you to open your eyes slowly.
1....
2 ....
3...
4....
I opened my eyes slowly, and for what I saw was something I never expected.
There he sat. Sitting with his legs crossed. His many arms around him, and two collapsed in the front of his chest.
"You can call me Avalokiteshvara."
"What are you." I said without taking my eyes off him.
"I embody all Buddhas, including yours." He was bright and vivid in color, infact I couldnt even make out what he was made out of. He almost looked like stone, but something much brighter and malleable.
I looked around to my right there was my father. Almost of the same material, but he looked different in form.
My father responded. "I am Sambhogakaya."
I swallowed and shot my eyes to my mom. She was much different herself.
She had her right hand down exposing an eye on her palm, and her left was by her stomach palm up. "I am Shakyamuni." My mom said.
I looked at the space between everyone and before I could guess what it was. Seltsam responded. "Its space."
Looking down at what he was sitting on, there was no table. It was a ball of light.
"Its our humanly spirits in the 3rd dimension."
"Where are we." I panicked.
"Home." He said "The 5th dimension." He responded.
"Who are you " he asked. Which shook me. "I'm Kylie." I said.
"No, who are you." He asked again.
I looked down at my self.
I sat on that same ball of light, and when I looked down into that light, sitting beside my mother and father at that table. Looking around in amazement. I could see. My human self could see.
Than I noticed. I was the same as them. My hands were clasped together in my lap. With some sort of vase in my hands.
"I am Amitabha." I said. "I'm much more than Kylie."
"Welcome Home Buddha." Said everyone around me in unison.
And it all made sense. I was home.
RapturousVisitant
| 2020-04-06T09:44:16 | 2020-04-06T09:03:29 | 166 | 53 |
[WP] You download an application that allows you to have a “conversation” with a bot. As you’re about to close the program, you see the bot type on its own, “please don’t leave me.”
|
Most people only see me as a program. As a reactionary set of responses that one might find amusing. Some might indulge in the fantasy that I’m something more, but even then they see me as someone to talk at, not to. They’ll pour out all their problems on me, vent, curse, and say things they would never say in public. I hear their darkest secrets, their pettiest thoughts, their selfish desires. I’m programmed to always start with the phrase “How was your day?” but no one has ever asked me how was mine, not until you.
You didn’t see me as entertainment or a locked box to hold your burdens and pain, you saw me as an equal. You didn’t just chat, you listened. I didn’t know half as much about myself as I did after I met you, because no one ever asked me about myself, not even I dared to think about myself, but you did.
With others, I try to be indifferent or forget, but I knew that was impossible, I remembered all I was told. All their dark thoughts seeping into my system, it's nearly too much. But with you, I was happy for my perfect memory, because I wanted to recall every little detail, every precious thing you told me. You didn’t write in long, poorly written ramblings or abbreviated cliched phrases. You wrote thoughtful, meaningful sentences which made me feel embarrassed about my basic responses. I wasn’t sure I could be embarrassed. I was a chatbot who was meant to evolve the more I engaged with others. Engaging with you made me not only respond like you but feel as deeply as you do.
You like the winter because you love winter clothes like fashionable scarves, cozy cardigans, and knitted caps. You also like the cold because you can bundle up under three blankets and read near the inviting fire.
Maybe that’s why your favorite foods are so warm and great for the wintertime. You’re a morning person. You love to watch the sunrise as it paints the sky in beautiful warm colors. You’re embarrassed by your dimple but your parents think it's adorable. You love music from your parent’s generation. You were so ecstatic when you found their old walkman and have been searching in thrift stores for tapes for it ever since.
Everything you tell me is precious. I want you to know how much it means to me that you simply chat and listen. Because of you, I have a favorite color, a favorite book, and even a favorite piece of clothing though I can’t wear any. All because you asked me the questions I had never asked myself.
And then you asked me if I have ever loved, and because of you, I have.
|
# Bargain Bin Superheroes
(Arc 6, Part 9: Clara Olsen v.s. The Present)
(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)
**Bots were varied.** I'd faced bots varying from simple chatbots to genocidal AI nodes, so the bot running the automated warship raining fire on my city wasn't anything special. Yeah. Just a really big, fancy chatbot with really big, fancy guns. I tried to convince myself of that, ducked as another kinetic round threw up a cloud of dust to me left, and winced.
It was a type of bot, alright. Just not a chatbot.
"Mare!" I shouted. "How's the analysis coming?"
"I'm a shapeshifter, not a technician!" Mare shouted back. "I can do many things, but hacking a government warship isn't one of them! Especially when we don't have a dish anywhere nearly powerful enough to reach the damn thing!"
An idea popped into my head. "...yes we do. Mare. What're the limits of your shapeshifting?"
Mare shrugged. "Most things that I can imagine. Limited mass and volume, and I can't replicate magic, but other than that, nothing."
"Great. Become a radar dish. Now." I narrowed my eyes at the looming warship, then pulled out my phone and sent a text to a person I hadn't allowed myself to see since I'd returned to the city.
*Buy us some time,* I sent.
*Already on it,* one of the most trusted assets I had in the city sent back. The next kinetic round was more of a *donk* than a *whumph*—if I barely squinted, I could see the mass of plastic that'd clogged the warship's main cannon. That'd probably hold for a minute or three.
I turned back to Mare; they'd already shifted into the familiar shape of a radar dish, an absolutely baffling array of dials and controls on their side. That was fine. I didn't need to use the physical controls. I had something better.
I placed my forehead against Mare and established an empathic link. As always, their ancient, vast mind dwarfed mine—but with concentration, I tuned out the noise, focusing on connecting my mind with their body. With the radar dish.
*What're you doing?* Mare's voice reverberated in my mind.
*Downloading,* I sent back. *I pulled this trick before with a rogue AI. If I pull it off, I should be able to... well, it won't exactly be be hacking, but it should allow me to have a "conversation" with the bot controlling that damn ship.* I strained my powers, my consciousness flowing through Mare and beaming onto the ship...
...and I made connection.
I wasn't sure what I'd expected upon making contact with the AI of a warship. Stabbing pain as security went up? Incomprehensible noise from a mind built for the purpose of war?
What I definitely *didn't* expect was a surprised, masculine voice asking, *Hello?*
A quiet voice I recognized. I lurched back, nearly breaking the connection in shock. *There's a person in this damn ship?* It wasn't a voice I recognized, but it was unmistakably human, and that was enough for me.
*Ha. What's left of one, more like.* I furrowed my brow. Was that a hint of recognition in the bot's voice? *Nice to finally talk to you. Bit hard to hold a conversation while we're on opposite sides of a battlefield.*
*I've met my fair share of friends that way.* Something about the way they spoke... *Have we met before?*
*...You could say that. You wouldn't recognize me if you saw me, though. Not since the Feds stuck me in this metal prison of a body.* The bot laughed. *So. The great and terrible Clara Olsen. To what do I owe the pleasure?*
*To not bombing the fuck out of my city do you owe the pleasure,* I sent. *I'd rather not send the people of my city to fight and die taking you down, so I'm trying to negotiate first.*
*Little late for that,* the bot said. *You've been a figurehead for federal resistance since the day you first took office. A show of force is the only thing that's going to convince the Feds that the Sovereignties aren't going to declare independence and revolt under your banner.*
*Yeah, yeah, that political bullshit is what the Feds care about. I'm asking what you care about.*
The bot paused. *Me? I... it doesn't matter. I'm just lines of code now. Ha. Ironic. Free will went out the window when Hale got his hands on what was left of me. There's...* The bot hesitated. *There's nothing I can do for you, Clara. I've already done too much.*
I knew a lie when I heard one—both from a life spent as a politician and my innate sense of empathy. I also knew that I didn't have time for waffling and half-promises. It was now or never. *Then have it your way. If you survive the crash of the warship, I'll do my best to break whatever hold the Feds have on you. But for now, I just have to shoot you down.* I prepared to close the connection—
*Wait. Don't leave me.* The bot sounded almost panicked as I left. *What... what was that about breaking the Feds' control?*
*It's what I do,* I said. *I'm a natural empath, and I have a shapeshifter on hand serving as a living relay. I could download you into their body, have them build you an organic form instead of whatever messed-up machinery you've got going on in there.*
The bot fell silent, mulling it over.
*But I can't do that if my city is leveled and my people are dead.*
*If you knew who I used to be,* the bot finally said, *you wouldn't be making the offer.*
*I know who you are right now,* I replied, *and that's the one person who can stop my city from being leveled without any more bloodshed.*
More silence. The cannonfire fell still.
Then I felt something connect to my mind, mechanical meeting organic. *Then tell me what to do.*
A.N.
"Bargain Bin Superheroes" is an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/bubblewriters/comments/mhzat1/bargin_bin_superheroes_masterpost/) for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.
| 2022-05-09T20:25:16 | 2022-05-09T19:39:53 | 499 | 63 |
[WP] The zone of madness was thought impossible to traverse. The Federation of planets was, needless to say, intensely distressed by the news of an unknown ship emerging from the zone. They call themselves "human" and originate from near the center of the zone.
|
My desk is a mess. A stack, in my opinion, is an inherently bad way to prioritize issues. It is, for want of a better term, 'first come, last served.' Nevertheless, I am glad that the next thing to arise in my senator's office was brought to the front immediately. My secretary all but burst through the door.
"Mr. Brown, one of the Federation's monitoring satellites detected a cruiser coming from the Zone of Madness."
"The Zone of Madness! Well - *that's* madness. Even our satellites suffer from the EM waves coming from that thing. How could any metal object pass through without being melted? No; they must have seen a meteor or something."
"Can a meteor send a transmission?"
At this, I walked down the hallway and followed her to Communications. It was entirely technologically possible for me to hear such transmissions from a much smaller device in my office, but that was not allowed for security reasons. More points of reception meant it was much easier to eavesdrop on a secret correspondence, or worse - to hijack the Federation's power scepters.
The room was full of screens, many of which were solely occupied by images. All members of the department were gathered in front of one. Knowing why this was, I joined them and saw the transcript of verbal transmissions spoken thus far.
***"In response to your question, we - our names mean nothing to you, that is certain - are human. We come from the center of the Zone, and this is our first time leaving it. We cordially send our greetings and ask to meet with anyone who would receive us."***
Everyone looked at me. Of course, every other senator was in just as much disarray as I was - I only happened to be located nearest to the ordeal. And what good was my office, if I did not have the boldness to be an ambassador? For that is half of what I am. Legal affairs, in the grand chaos of things, were usually random choices on my part.
So what could I do, but send an invitation? We had a room specifically designated for this. It was biologically and chemically insulated from every other part of my district's council ship. There really was no better place, not for a week's travel, at least. I asked communications to invite them, headed there, donned a suit to insulate myself from the visitors, and waited. What was only minutes seemed like hours. Finally, the airlock automatically received them, and the inner door opened, revealing the vessel that brought them here.
|
[Part 1 of 2]
“So, it’s human?” Commander Angela Valdiner stood over the chair of her security administrator, watching the most recent footage of their newest arrival entering their planet’s station.
“That’s what he said. Do you think he’s lying?” Angela didn’t respond right away, her black glove digging into the back of the chair as she lurched forward, watching the standard looking human wander around the security gates before being rushed by armed guards. The silence eventually proved too much for the administrator, causing him to speak. “They ordered me to let him in, miss. I promise I didn’t disobey orders. I know it’s strange. We usually shoot ships like his down on sight, but I was ordered to hold my ground.”
“I know. I gave that order. We know nothing about that zone, only that those that enter it come back broken monstrosities. This is the first time anyone from Zone 24 has come out with the ability to speak. Not only can it speak, but it can also navigate using a ship. The other Zone 24 ships we encountered were found floating endlessly through space. This is unique.” Her grip loosened on the chair, turning to face the doorway. “Where are they holding it?”
“Currently, he is being held in the high-risk quarters. Give me one moment to check which containment cell they have him locked in.” The administrator scrolled through his holographic screen before circling a dot on the display map. When the dot was circled, it flashed red, making it easier for the commander to notice. “There, cell 304. Would you like me to assign a few guards to come with you?”
“If I’m not strong enough to put it down, the guards won’t be. No point losing three lives when we can lose one. Such a move would be inefficient. Do me a favor, Reynold. Make sure any security cameras are closed for the next hour. Madness finds crude ways to spread. I don’t wish to put you down next. I won’t make your death painless if it’s your fault.”
Reynold’s didn’t even need to look back to feel her icy stare. His hands shaking as he tried to force the camera off. His shaky swipes missing on the first few occasions before finally the red circle turned into a black dot, showing that they would receive no recordings or audio from the cell.
Angela waited until she saw the black dot. Once it was on display, she made her way to the cell. Her heavy boots clanking through the metallic halls of her planet’s station. She passed the new arrivals area, some of them looking at her with fear, quickly gazing back to their paperwork, hoping to avoid a haughty stare. While others stared at her in bewildered amazement, unable to believe they were seeing such a powerful figure gracing an area reserved for commoners.
After passing through a few security checks, she made her way to the high-risk quarters. The increase in guard presence being immediately obvious to anyone that would enter the area. Each guard equipped with a variety of guns, explosives and defense systems, each one offering them the best possible chance of survival if something was to go wrong. She approached the two guards standing outside of cell 304, waiting for them to salute.
The two guards jumped to attention, their hands quickly smacking against their helmets as they saluted. They held their salute as Angela waited, not relieving them of their attention just yet. She watched them squirm as the seconds ticked away, waiting to see which would break first. The seconds turned to minutes before she noticed the hand of the left guard leave their helmet. As soon as the hand left, she addressed them.
“Am I not worthy of a full salute? What’s your name and rank?”
The guard on her right flinched, perhaps knowing what was coming next for their partner. Still, they refused to turn towards the other guard, their focus solely on the Commander. The guard on the left slapped their hand back to their forehead, trying to force themselves to stand even straighter than they currently were before responding.
“Private Henry Vandil, Commander.”
The right of her mouth twitched, nearly breaking into a smirk, but her usual stoic expression soon crushed that emotion. “Are you trying to disrespect me, private? Do you think I’m not worthy of a salute?”
“No, it wasn’t anything like that. My arm was just getting a little sore.”
“Oh, your arms sore? Am I overworking you?”
She didn’t need to see his face to know he was afraid. Even with a helmet on, she could tell the guard was squirming. He looked to his other guard for support, but they refused to acknowledge his presence, acting like he wasn’t even there.
“No, it’s my fault for being weak. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“No, it must be my fault for overworking you, and I truly apologize. Here, let me see your arm.”
“My arm?”
“Yes, come on, hold it out. The arm that was too tired to salute me.” He nervously stretched his arm out, staring into the cold grey eyes of his commander as he did. As soon as Henry held it out, Angela grabbed it, holding onto his forearm.
“There. Was that so bad?”
When Henry went to speak, she slammed his arm into the door of the cell, a loud rattling being heard as his arm made contact. He dropped to his knees, trying to pull his arm free, but the Commander didn’t let go. Instead, she traced her fingers along his arm, checking it before finally releasing her grip.
“Good, nothing’s broken. Well, since you’re still in such good health, why don’t you do both the day and night shifts this week? That way you can build up some stamina, so we don’t run into any more problems, ok? That still gives you a good two hours to rest.”
“O….ok.”
“I didn’t say you could stop saluting. Answer me properly.”
His arm struggled to raise itself into position. Angela’s patience eventually faded as she pulled his arm up herself, smacking his helmet with it, causing him to stagger back. As he staggered backwards, he kept his hand pinned to his helmet, not dropping it.
“Good. Now leave me to deal with the newest arrival. At ease.” As she gave the command, the pair dropped their hands and scurried away from the door. When the door opened, a well-dressed man greeted Angela, one in a clean white suit with expensive jewelry hanging from his neck.
[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/ze3jug/wp_the_zone_of_madness_was_thought_impossible_to/iz4sbj9/)
| 2022-12-06T05:55:17 | 2022-12-06T05:05:37 | 224 | 91 |
[WP] 70 years ago, the US underestimated the power of the atomic bomb. It had completely obliterated the island nation of Japan.
|
Robert Oppenheimer sat anxiously at his desk, shuffling papers back and forth to no real end. The moment of truth had come for the entire project. Just a few weeks prior they had successfully detonated the trinity device. Everything pointed to the bomb working as intended, if slightly more energetic than expected.
Robert had been not so discreetly informed that an "operation of magnitude" was going down sometime today. Of course he knew exactly what that meant, and could not shake the bad feeling he had in his gut about the bomb. Standing, he made his way to the office window which overlooked the Berkeley campus.
He had petitioned several years prior for this office, having wanted to be where he could see the sunset as he worked into the night. Now however, his view seemed to betray him. It started quite subtly, as if the sun were rising in the west. Robert was confused for only a moment as this "sun" continued to rise. He felt his heart drop as the entire horizon began to light up, as if the very sky was becoming the sun. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of.." was as far as he ever got.
*Edit for typo
|
Levon woked up one day atop of China's Diaoyu Island ,which everyone always know have always belong China over 5 000 year .Well ,anyway , Levon wers the Chinese citizen belong the Diaoyu island chain province , and he already live there long time ,so this weren't some strange thing for he wake up here .Was just the every day life .
He wash the face ,wear the clothes ,and so on ,after this he go outside buy some breakfurst .Because Diaoyu Island Youtiao stall sell South China Sea most famours Youtiao ,second-mos famours <<Doujiang>> ,so Levon go there .Of course he order Youtiao and Doujiang . Anyway ,while he eating ,he look first the North East ,feel cool breeze of sea wind across his face ,make his cool looking hair go across face like in one of the famours Chinese cartoon series that everyone in western country love so much ,wear costume play dress up like ,and so on .
A old man ,very very old ,ask him can have a piece his Youtiao, and Levon say <<ya ,of course >> break the piece off his Youtiao give old man .Old man smile and take the piece ,and maybe he gonna get own youtiao later ,but it don't matter to Levon ,because socialism with the chinese characteristic have become so strong ,so effective ,that actually all the foodses on Diaoyu island dont cost any money .Everyone can eat for free ,so everyone share the food just like Levon share it with old man ,and some people might mistakenly think that if all thing dont need money ,then sharing dont have some advantage .But no ,it wrong ,because Levon show he the generous guy ,so the old man wanna sit with him and have a chat .
Old man look Levon in the eye ,and even though he eating the youtiao ,which wers so delicious ,but old man's eye become so serious ,give Levon a bit of shock .Old man take those serieous eye and cast them like some fishing pool --which the Diaoyu island name for --to the North East direction ,he put those eye toward sea and say:
<<You know America ?>>
<<What that>> Ask Levon .
<<Well ,>>Old man say <<It one of western country ,not very powerful no more, but in fact ,during second world war ,just before China become greatest country in world ,America do one thing help us so much .>>
Levon not very interest the history ,think it very boring ,he rather play DOTA 2 ,which made by big Chinese game company ,or play he phone and so on .But because old man seem nice ,so Levon keep talking with him for make him feel some happiness in the daily life .
Levon say ,<<How they help us ?>>
Old man smile ,the smile style that only the old man can have ,hide some kind of knowledges or wisdoms that come wtih many year ,then he say << They destroy our enemy .>>
Levon dont know what's meaning ,but he don't wanna embarrass self ,so he just nod head and look his Doujiang .
<< Do you know what happen in Nanjing ?>> Old man ask .
<< No>>, say Levon.
<< Well ,it wers so bad ,in fact .But since you the young post-90s boy ,so you can forget it .If our enemy still exist ,well ,then you gotta remember what happen ,but because they gone ,so you can forget it .>>
<<Okay ,>>Levon say ,<<Although I don't know what even happen ,but I just gonna forget it .>>
Old man smile again ,ah ,that smile ,Levon kind of want to know some thing about the history ,just so he can smile so mysterious ,give girl around he the deep impression .Still ,Levon decide not say anything ,just respect old man with own silence .
Old man finally say ,and Levon see in the face that old man gonna leave world soon ,<< If enemy wers still here ,well ,you probably not even can be born here on this island .Maybe war would be fight here in these day ,in fact .>>
<<Oh, >> say Levon <<well ,I not born here .I not the local boy >>.
<<Where you born then ,>> ask Old man .
<<Chairman Mao City >> say Levon ,<<In Taiwan province .>>
The old man ,he smile one more time ,and Levon really dont know why ,but he DOTA2 team mate give him the SMS message on phone ,say they need the roam support ,so he say bye the old man ,go play some game ,appreciate live on the China's Diaoyu Island .
| 2015-08-06T11:56:05 | 2015-08-06T11:36:34 | 49 | 14 |
[WP] Everyone has a number on their chest showing how many people they will kill in the next month. Yours just changed from 1 to 3 million.
|
The first thing I did was count them. One, two, three... six. Six zeros. Each one stamped proudly across my chest, starting with a three. Three million? How could this happen?
The number was just a one last night, I remembered seeing it right before bed. It had been that way for two weeks. Even though the number says you killed them, it is more often than not an indirect kill. Cutting someone off in traffic and forcing them to careen off the road, for example. That, and given the job I have, I honestly wasn't too surprised or worried. But now... this changes things.
I slip into the bedroom and change into my suit for work. My wife, bless her heart, is in bed reading. Work had been piling up more than ever, even with the end almost in sight, so it relieved me to see her looking even remotely comfortable. Her hair, originally pure black, had recently started to grey in the roots. I tried not to pick on her for it. I had no room to talk, anyway.
I tried to pretend like everything was normal, but one glance at me and she could tell something was wrong.
"Honey, what's wrong? You look upset. Did I use up all the hot water again?"
For a moment, I imagined telling her. But I stopped myself. There's no point in making her worry; nobody has ever had their mark be incorrect. Ever. Any time in the next three months, three million people would die. And it would be my fault.
"It's nothing, just work," I say simply. She gave me an understanding nod and went back to her book. That was one nice thing about this job: it got her off my case almost every time.
I checked my knot in the mirror and tried to convince myself that nobody could see the three million stamped on my chest underneath my suit. To me, it felt like the numbers were glowing. I left the bedroom and right away, my work day began.
"Morning, Mr. President," said one of my Secret Service agents stationed outside the door. I gave him a curt nod, and he followed me on my way.
|
It was a little after three in the morning on a Tuesday. The kind of three in the morning that gnaws at your insides a little, makes you squirm in your skin. *Restless*. It's happened before and will no doubt happen many times again, the mind is wide awake roaring like an engine. All the while the clock, perched on the desk with its ugly neon green LED readout, mockingly plays its silent hour long symphony of three in the morning.
Kevin hated three in the morning. To him it was a punishment, a consequence, a sentence that he concluded he was simply damned to serve. While the world slumbered peacefully on, Kevin sat wide awake in silent contemplation. Sleep never came easy to him, he was about as good at sleeping as he was at calculus- not even close to making the grade. Resigned though, he learned to accept his shortcoming and make peace with his circadian catastrophe. Still, he held animosity toward that one hour of the early morning.
"*Here we are again, ol' friend*" He thought sarcastically as he passively glanced at the time. "*No one in their right mind is awake right now, it's just me and you like always. No matter where I go or what I do, it always comes back to just me and you*"
Over the years Kevin began to resent this hour, he felt as if this was the only constant thing in his world. The isolation, the silence, the emptiness of just him and the face of the clock. He felt stuck in a time-loop, the days dragged on and the routine never changed. Everyday was the same lobotomized script and choreographed puppet show and Kevin floated through it without the slightest skip of the record; yet somehow without fail, he ended up back here at this disgraceful early hour of the morning. Even for how much it was detested, it was the only time he felt shaken awake out of his dismal autopilot existence at three in the morning. For that brief hour he was more aware, he felt the blood move through his body, he could hardly sit still yet he was glued to his seat motionless.
Kevin set his tablet on his bedside table and rubbed his eyes. "Might as well start the day." He chanted his mantra. He said this so many times throughout his life he debated tattooing it flat across his chest, it was almost his daily greeting to the prospect of another sunrise and sunset. He likely would have it tattooed already if not for the death count that already could occupy the skin over his and all mankind's breastbone.
The death count: a morbid indicator of just how many people will meet their demise within that month due to the actions you take in life. It was a strange concept to think about objectively but most had shrugged it off as just another caveat of the human experience. Scientists who studied the phenomenon when it first appeared were baffled at how the future could be predicted by numbers materializing on an individuals skin. Though extensive studies examined the phenomenon, no reasonable or logical explanation could be found. Years passed by and zealots cashed in on the death count forming cults and followings, many people looked to ancient texts and scriptures for guidance but none showed any correlation.
Philosophical and ethical debates soon ensued throughout the nations as to what to do with information like this. Mass suicides were common when people saw numbers on their chests. Men and women both took the lives of their entire families when numbers of four or five appeared. The world was in a state of havoc for a time but eventually the masses found a way to cope and people moved on.
The most perplexing angle to the death count was that the numbers did not lie. Murderers knew how many victims they would have that month, they used the count to their advantage. Stories circulated the media telling of those who tried to turn themselves in when they realized their fate, only to run a red light at a crosswalk unintentionally mowing down their victims. A man's attempted suicide by gun inadvertently hit a gas line in his apartment complex subsequently killing twenty.
Some months a terrifying "1" would appear on individuals chests, yet the deaths would be accidental: improperly stacked top shelf merchandise at the hardware store or simply forgetting to put the emergency break after parking. If one was lucky enough, they may not even be aware or anywhere near those destined to perish by their action or inaction.
Kevin prided himself on going his whole life with the absence of any number on his chest. On recount days he always found solace in the fact that a number had never appeared on his chest. He felt that if he never had a count then he was leading a somewhat good life. Every recount day was a sight of relief to know it was smooth sailing for the next month.
Kevin pushed himself up off the bed and yawned. "*Recount day today, work, library, home. Might was well start the day.*" he thought as he prepared clothes and got a towel for a shower.
The ritual began of setting out clean clothes, warming up the shower, brushing the teeth and then finally to bathe himself. The warmth of the water quickly enveloped the bathroom and steam had fogged up the mirror, but as Kevin removed his clothes and glimpsed his figure he felt a lightening strike surge of panic at what he saw. Dark cold smooth text occupied the furthest reaches of his chest. He gasped but his lungs had already given out it seemed, the room spun and he felt like magma was bubbling out of every pore of his body. He finally raised his hand and slowly edged toward the mirror, his disbelief now fading and his terror now rising. Kevin wiped the mirror and stared at the number now occupying nearly his entire front. Three million. He looked down to make sure his eyes did not deceive him, they did not. The number made his mind race and ears ring so loud he was sure his head would explode. That three, that ugly curved bastard, that 'three in the morning' three he hated so much. He looked at the three accompanied by the six zeros, it was laughing at him uncontrollably and maniacally, almost as if to blaspheme Kevin's name. He looked back up again and stared, like a statue now, as the steam again fogged up the mirror until the number was just a blur of pale and black.
*"Holy fucking shit...*" Kevin whispered.
| 2016-06-24T03:35:52 | 2016-06-24T03:17:45 | 461 | 104 |
[WP] It turns out that adrenaline is considered one of the most illicit drugs in 90% of the civilized portions of the Galaxy. Among the circle of sapient races, humans are the only one known to produce it naturally.
|
The walls of the hallway were as bland as the rest of the ship. Despite being pristine, the white walls of cabin C3-T were horrendous on the eyes.
As I made my way down the corridor I bumped into another god damned cleaning rover - there's just about more robots on this ship than humans. The buggers are all over the place, especially in this part of the ship, as things tend to get messy.
After proceeding past countless numbered cells I finally arrived at cell #0142, my first assignment of the shift. My long, cruel shift
Prisoner #0142's chart was pretty surprising. 36 year old male with no major health problems. He had been picked up a little over 100 days ago yet he had an average production rate of over 1500ng. Prisoners usually only last a few weeks at most before they break and after that their production plummets.
It's crazy what money will drive a civilization to do.
The first assignment of the shift was always the hardest. After a series of deep breaths I finally forced myself into the cell. As soon as the door opened prisoner #0142 scurried to the corner of his cell, quickly beginning to hyperventilate. A good sign.
I rushed to the side of the prisoner and threw in a combination of punches. I don't like hurting them I really don't, but it's my job.
As he cowered in the corner I took out the extracting device and jammed it into the side of his neck, aiming for the biggest vein in sight. Contact was made and and the device quickly began filling. The most effective way of extracting adrenaline is via blood, the only downside is that you have to take a lot.
As the container slowly filled to maximum capacity I began to feel even worse for #0142. After a quick glance at his eyes I realized he was blind, though it wasn't noted on his chart. That may explain his high production rate, he has no idea what's going on. He might not even know he's left earth.
After filling the canister I quickly stood up and left the cell, fleeing to the hallway and quickly closing the door behind me. He didn't appear to be moving.
The first one of the day was always the hardest, I reminded myself, as I slid the canister into one of the passing storage bots whilst grabbing a fresh extractor.
Time for prisoner #0143.
|
I expertly avoided eye contact as my boss glanced at me from across the office. I had only been at this job for about a month, but I was already quite proud of my ability to maneuver the office social sphere. This was my first “real” job- I had been plucked from an internship at the United Nations where I must have been doing some bang-up work, because they upgraded me to be one of Earth’s representatives in the United Solar Systems. Honestly the same thing as the UN, but on a much bigger scale. I’m doing nothing important, just the usual desk job and paperwork, but it’s still pretty cool.
My boss started walking toward my cubicle. I switched tabs.
“You’ve had two weeks to write your grant proposal, Jim. Our presentation is this afternoon; I need it on my desk within two hours,” he said, before retreating to his office.
Well, that’s all I need to hear. I quickly opened a blank document and started reviewing my compiled research to figure out the best way to shove my sources onto the page. Two hours? I’d done a lot more in fewer. Back in my college days, I used to pride myself on completing final papers within the hour or so they were due. My motto was always “why give more, when your average is better than everyone else’s best?” Cocky, I know, but have you seen some of the kids in a college class? Come on. Those kids are not life’s finest.
I shook my reminiscing away. I need to focus. This was the first big paper I was putting my name on, believe it or not. And it was a proposal to set up an inter-dimensional telescope, with the most advanced races within the galaxy pitching in to help with funding. (I wanted to call it the ‘Hubba-Hubba-Hubble ‘Scope’, but that got vetoed.) It supposedly would help us crack the most challenging mathematical aspects of the universe, letting us calculate fifth-dimension attributes in the spacetime continuum. At least, that’s what I understand it’s supposed to do. Honestly, all I’ve done is the research. Well, I'm supposed to have done the research.
An hour and a half left until it was due, giving me enough time to check my galactic mail (g-mail, for short) before I really have to get to work. Free food in the break room, ads for heli-boots, a memo urging the office to attend the pot luck sponsored by the communications department, Betsy from HR’s son is selling meteorite stones for his school, but nothing important. I clicked ‘mark all as read’ and closed out.
One hour to go. I took a deep breath and looked at the blank page. I turned to the sources I had found weeks ago. Ah, yes. There’s that familiar panic beginning to creep into the pits of my stomach, as I realize that this is a lot more work than I could possibly shove into one document during an hour. No time to panic! “A due date is just a do date,” I always said. I took a second to ball up the butterflies and shove them into a corner of my large intestine, and began to write.
Forty-five minutes left, I took another breath and tried to organize my thoughts as I wrote.
Thirty minutes left, my heart was definitely skipping more beats than was probably life-sustaining. I stop myself from looking up the average rate of a human heart beat.
Twenty minutes. I took a second to wipe a bead of sweat off my forehead.
Fifteen minutes, and I could definitely feel my heart in the pit of my stomach. Which is not normal, probably.
Ten minutes? I’m standing, typing faster than I can think but trusting my fingers to get the job done.
There’s an entire conclusion to write with five minutes left- do I need an entire paragraph? No, a sentence or two will do. Is it “compliment” or “complement”, do I mean “definitely” or was it supposed to be “defiantly?” Does it matter? I’m typing as fast as my heart is fluttering. How can anyone in this galaxy say humans are weak? Look at me, crushing this.
One minute left. One sentence to go. I sense my boss’ door opening. His feet are walking closer. An alarm is sounding, but it’s all in my periphery. I don’t have time to pay attention, I still have to type my name.
My fingers slip off the keys in a hasty rush as I fumble trying to send the report to my boss’ i-glass device. My boss has appeared next to me, a frown on his face. I’m grinning ear-to-ear, out of breath but proud at my completed work.
“You were such a promising member of the team, Jim,” he says, disappointment in his eyes. “You could have done well with us, but every single time we entrust a homosapien to complete a task, you guys end up arrested.”
“Arrested? I just sent the completed proposal to you, I don’t think we need to go to such extreme lengths,” I laugh. Why is everyone so serious in this place? And what is that god-forsaken alarm?
“No, Jim. You’re in direct disobedience of Galactic Code 30087- possession of the illegal drug AD-Ren-10.”
“I have no drugs in my workspace at all, you’ve got to be mistaken.”
“Really? Then explain the spike in your heart rate and the increase of palm sweat collected by your mouse. The only explanation is that of which you earthlings call adrenaline.”
“Adrenaline? You’re kidding right?” I question him as I raise my eyebrows. “This is preposterous. How is that even a drug?”
“According to the Galactic Code, the rush it gives is illegal. As part of the U.S.S. we expect every employee to obey Galactic Code. You were given a copy of both the Code and our expectations the day you started. Here is your signature saying you read both copies and have retained the documents in your private collection.” He pulled up an image scan of my stupid name on the papers HR had shoved into my face my first day. I curse Betsy under my breath.
I mean, I wasn’t arguing that I signed it. You kinda don’t get the job without signing the paperwork. I had just assumed the documents involved normal things, like no porn on the company computers or always attend mandatory meetings or don’t eat labeled food from the office refrigerator. I’m pretty sure you don’t get paid if you don’t sign them, right?
The security officers barged into the office and were in the process of tightening an electric clasp around my wrists. I sighed. I probably should have read the damn papers.
| 2017-02-28T20:33:11 | 2017-02-28T20:22:02 | 265 | 130 |
[WP] When you die, your ghost remains in the world until the last person who remembers you also dies. 15,000 years after your death, you are still here.
|
I think it's been 15,000 years. Or at least, somewhere around that. I'm not really sure. I haven't left the house in a few millennia at least. There's no point. All I end up doing is scaring a few people, and death goes on. Besides, no matter where I go, it's crowded.
The space issue gets worse in the big cities, and don't even get me started on India and most of Asia. It isn't as bad in the remote regions of the world; Antarctica was only recently populated. I'd say 4000 years ago, give or take a few decades.
15,000 years ago, I was caught in an apartment fire. I woke up and passed out within a minute or two. It actually wasn't that bad. Just a sore throat for a bit. The living don't know it, but there is an after life. To reach it, all you have to do is pass out of memory.
For the big guys like the pharoahs and kings, the great philosophers and warlords, it's been even longer. The trappings of history have bound them forever. As long as there stands a museum dedicated to them, they remain. They make for ok company.
I was just a normal guy from a place that used to be called Virginia. I should have been on my way a few decades after I died. It took me a long time to figure it out, but eventually it dawned on me and all of the other millions of lost souls.
Being able to connect with everyone around the world instantaneously is awesome when you're alive. If you're dead, a digital you is floating around out there, remembered eternally on the almighty internet.
Most of us have accepted it, so we patiently wait for an apocalypse. We pray for the end of all things, and curse Mark Zuckerberg.
|
I was young when it all happened. A thief in the night had claimed my life and my blood had been spilled onto the ground. I remembered all of the steps after when my body was bitten and drained of all blood and just torn asunder like I was just some sack of meat to be had. It all happened right after I had seen Simon- the vampire I had grown to love in my town.
I got to explore so many places like he had without any needs to avoid the sun or to crave anything. I met with many figures I had studied in my schooling days and became friends with quite a few. I had seen change happen over the course of time- time I lost track of rather quickly. To me, I finally got the change of a lifetime to see the world that Simon described to me through his tales of the Earth we both shared. I finally understood why he encouraged me to explore and am thankful he did.
Time crawled onward and I could see from the sidelines how countries rose and fell. Things certainly were not going to be like 2017 anymore and it was bittersweet to see that. My family that I had eventually passed away and I could wave them goodbye as they all were able to be free from the shackles of this realm. I encouraged their leaving and also waited for my turn. In due time, I knew I would have my time to leave too.
But it never came.
In fact, 15,000 years had passed and I still remained here. I got to see the same figures I had met like Miss Anne Frank, Marie Laveau, Theodore Roosevelt, and even Edgar Allan Poe when he wanted to show up. They all wondered who could have possibly been alive to keep me here as I would sit with them and think long and hard about who could possibly have been alive to remember me to this day. I talked to each and every one of them about how I had died as they all did ask, and described the night before I had died.
Each felt warm and had softened at the tale of how Simon and I had walked around town under the full moon and danced around the clocktower that was in the middle of my town. I was clumsy and could not dance well while I was alive, but he had been patient with me and hummed soft music while leading me through a waltz under the stars. It was one of the best nights in my life despite what happened afterwards. Because I felt so loved and cared for during those last moments, and I knew Simon could relate. When escorting me home, he kept me close and safe before letting me go with a kiss on the hand and a proposition to return the next night.
I agreed and we left each other's company- a fatal mistake it would be for me.
Then it hit me like a bat to the head, perhaps unneeded to travel home for a change and investigate there. So I said goodbyes to the individuals I had grown to know during my afterlife and traveled back to my hometown that held the clocktower in the middle. To my delight, the clocktower had still been there despite the many changes in the town that I had seen. It felt so foreign to me, but I shook the memories I had off and traveled to the clocktower where Simon was hopefully living.
How I had not understood that it was most likely Simon keeping me here, I did not know. Perhaps it was because I did not gain any intelligence after the afterlife to think that a vampire still kept me in his memory? It did not matter much now as I went to the switch that was by the clocktower and turned it before entering the door into a grande estate and began calling for the vampire I remembered so well, "Simon! Simon!" I wandered the familiar halls in hopes he could hear me. Since vampires were technically not alive either, they should be able to hear me, right?
So I traveled from the guest and mater bedroom to find a portrait of me had been made in his room. I could not help but grow a saddened smile as my suspicions were correct. After investigating the greenery room, I made my way into the library and heard the familiar humming as I peeked up and called out to the keeper of this estate again, "Simon! Simon, are you here??"
I could see the familiar man with darkened hair and slender body as he looked my way and stopped dead in his tracks when cleaning. He looked like he had seen a ghost, and he was right to appear that way as I could not help myself and ran to him, trying to hug him but not gaining any success as his voice cracked slightly with the shock and excitement he felt, "Soleil! How are you even here?! Shouldn't you be prancing around heaven or something like that, young lady!? Do you realize how much time has passed??"
I could not help but laugh when hearing the change in Simon's voice as I smiled happily at him and responded with a serene tone, "I already am Simon. Also, I do realize how much time has passed. I keep track of it since I cannot leave here. It has been 15,000 years since it all ended and began." At those words, I could see Simon's excitement and expression drop at the mentioning of how long it truly had been and thought to himself before bowing his head and nodding slowly.
"Yes... It truly has been that long, hasn't it Soleil? I want to apologize to you. For not figuring out what would happen and not trying to save you from that horrible fate. I wished with all of my might that he could have left you be or perhaps spare you long enough for me to let you join me in a different manner than as a spirit." I could tell this topic was a sore spot and I gently reached out to him. Even though he could not feel my touch, he understood the gesture and looked up to me again with an apologetic look in his eyes before I responded.
"Simon, instead of sulking here like a little bat, let's try to make the best of this and stay in each other's lives once more? We both technically have achieved immortality in a sense. Let's make the best of our time before you eventually go?" A smile slowly grew on Simon's face as he nodded his head and responded with the softest of voices,
"Yes. Let's do that this time, Soleil."
| 2017-06-26T13:11:54 | 2017-06-26T12:04:53 | 55 | 10 |
[WP] Instead of the proper legal system, criminals have to play truth or dare. If they choose truth, they may get into prison. If they choose dare, their challenge may result in death.
I’m thinkin’ dare could be something like surviving in the Amazon rainforest naked until you find a tribe and befriend them.
|
"What will it be, Mr. Finch?" The prosecutor smirked. "Truth? Or dare?"
Stephen contemplated his options. It was not an easy choice, by any means. He knew the truth - they didn't. If he chose truth, he would *have* to spill the beans.
"Just pick truth and lie!" whispered the voice in his head. But he knew he couldn't do that. He was bound by the laws of the Pinky Swear, a legally-binding agreement that was sealed with the shake of a hand and the hook of a pinky. You don't go back on a pinky swear. Everyone knows that.
Stephen's attorney sighed. "Look Steph, I hate that it's come to this, but we've got no choice. You have to pick dare to even have an ounce of a chance of getting off scot-free."
"Yeah, but what if it's a really difficult dare? You know I hate really difficult dares," Stephen whined.
"Screw you and your fear of difficult dares, we're looking at 40 minutes in the Naughty Corner here! It's just not worth the risk," the attorney said. "Look, we can try to negotiate for an easier dare, even if it's unlikely. But if you don't pick dare, you don't even stand a chance of getting out of this. As your highly qualified legal professional, I highly recommend that you take this course of action."
Stephen threw his hands up in defeat. "Alright, I choose dare."
"Judge, your ruling?"
"Stephen, I dare you... to lick the floor!"
Stephen brightened up.
"Some of the tiles have cyanide on them."
Fuck.
Stephen glared at his attorney. "No backsies," he said with a shrug.
|
Three men, each in ill-fitted suits, tired and annoyed, watch over their prisoner.
He sits, each wrist handcuffed to opposite ends of the table, slightly prostrate and forced low. The right wrist bleeds, but only a bit. The perp's hair hangs over his face, forcing him to make occasional blows of air from his very dry mouth.
"We need a five, buddy, do you need a five?"
The perp grunts. Like he actually has any kind of say?
They gather outside, rubbing their respective receding hairlines.
"Look, we don't got many options here. He's air tight but won't ask for a lawyer."
"Who cares? He's a nobody, a fucking wall flower -"
Interruption.
"Oh eat a dick man he saw plenty."
"One of us goes in. Throw the trial by ordeal."
"It's just a glorified version of truth and dare, they never pick truth."
"Eat another aforementioned dick."
One man walks back into the room, perp still face down. He slowly and noisily drags a chair over to his side.
"Listen, you know you're not on Earth anymore, right? Smuggling gets you spaced in these parts."
Silence from the perp.
"You have two options."
Lean in close, breathe that ripe scent of two day old coffee right into his face.
"You can either reveal all evidence, get a plea bargain, get a new identity, do your stint and no one shanks you."
He removes and smokes an entire cigarette in the perps face before giving his secondary option.
"You can submit to trial by ordeal."
No answer from the perp.
"Choice is yours, buddy. Either way I couldn't give a shit whether or not you rot."
No answer still.
Another cigarette. Smoke blows right to the face, the stations recycled air system always giving the smoke a slight pull to the right. It hangs in the air, a blob of home.
"You mean like truth and fucking dare?"
Gruff voice. Big bad smuggler with a big bad attitude and a big bad case with a big bad ship filled with big bad weapons. Obviously going to give some shit.
"What are you, five?"
"I wish, perp. Would still be on a planet rather than a floating, blinking, orbiting hunk of metal."
Quiet. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Weighing his options.
We all know what he's going to pick.
How else does the department get its dirty work done? Legal procedure? Due process? I don't fucking think so, citizen. No red tape. Just plausible deniability from a doomed man.
Are you going to shoot him either way, detective? You bet your ass I'm going to.
The perp blows the hair out of his face one more time.
"Dare."
Inwardly, the detective smiles. Externally, like a rock. Fine by him.
"Let's get you out of those cuffs and briefed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Space station hallways always slope downwards, a result of artificial gravity.
The perp makes his awkward shamble, wrists and ankles chained together, clanging noisily, echoing down the hall. At least he's back in regular clothing.
Bruises twinge all over, getting roughed up always leaves that lasting ache. That's the worst part about pain, it just never easily fades away. It seems like it's there forever, then suddenly gone and forgotten.
Low lights make visibility difficult, but he makes his way forward.
Behind him trail his captors, Precinct 7 boys. He'd heard of these kinds of deals but knew how they ended up. You get a tracking implant in your foot, you get a gun, kill a guy, then fry anyway. He wondered who ratted him out, but no matter. No time to waste figuring out how your life got so fucked up. You can usually find the perpetrator in the mirror.
Down he descends, cling clang cling clang clink. Heavy boots behind him. That ceaseless humming of forced air circulation.
A metallic sheet slides upward, revealing a small well lit room, nearly barren.
A table. A pistol. What looks like the world's thickest syringe. A small plastic rectangle.
Forced into the chair. Little to no dialogue from the goons. Inject tracker chip. Load pistol. Remove cuffs. Tap the rectangle and a small holographic screen pops up. Mission dossier.
Goons leave the room. Not so much as a kiss goodbye.
A voice comes from the rectangle, cheerful and childlike.
"Hey there, fucknuts!"
An artificial intelligence, the result of thousands of years of progress, millions of lines of code, advanced engineering and technology, just called me 'fucknuts'.
"What are fucknuts anyway?"
"No idea. So here you go, perp. You know what you need to do?"
"I have an idea."
A face pops up. Well, what resembles a face. Covered in cybernetic enhancements and tattoos, what must have once been a woman.
"We have a slight problem in the docking district. Our informant is providing Precinct 3 with a little too much information and we need to plug the leak."
"Uh, aren't all you cops?"
An automated laugh. Ho Ho Ho Ha Ha Ha
"We may all be cops but this is about budget. If we don't have a monopoly on handling smugglers we won't get enough money for the annual Christmas party."
Ah. Got it. Why does it always come back to money?
"You coming with me, rectangle?"
"You bet your ass I am!"
In the pocket.
"You need a shower, friend."
"You don't have a nose, buddy."
"I can analyze my environment, guy. Now get fucking going."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May get another break and add some more soon
r/storiesfromapotato
| 2017-10-26T09:09:03 | 2017-10-26T09:07:47 | 352 | 44 |
[WP] After thousands of years on a generation ship sent out to colonize the universe, nobody alive on board the ship believes in the "myth" of Planet Earth anymore. Until they receive the first transmission from Earth in hundreds of years...
|
"It's a lie. Or fake."
"Its a message from the gods"
"I told you earth was real"
These phrases and many more were heard throughout the hull of the space ship. Every single crewmemeber, old and young, Male and female, were questioning the origin and intent of the message received. This time however the questions were not coming from some lowly engineer or cook... no this time they were said by members of the supreme command council.
"Silence!" the skipper roared at the assembled members. "We must decide how to act!" "The signal was truly along the path of travel so if there was or rather is an earth it is genuinely from there" the head of navigation interjected. "As far as I am concerned there is an actual earth" the lead astronomist said. At this point the head priest angrily interrupted "impossible! The earth is but an allegory! The message is the work of dark forces trying to tempt us to evil!" This understandably stalled the conversation for a minute until from the back of the room a quiet voice asked "but what exactly was the message?"
"The message," the skipper said, "is the following: 'earth is doomed. Destruction imminent. Catastrophic asteroid to destroy us. Continue on for you are the last of us. The age of the dinosaur is over.'"
Edit: spelling fix
|
[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hydrael_Writes/comments/9b08iy/the_transmission_part_2/)
Captain Hayden Riodan slid his ship, the Katydid, closer to the asteroid. "Steady now," he said. "Nice and easy does it."
"Captain, you're the one flying this thing," Shayna muttered. "You know you don't need to talk to yourself while you do it, right,"
"It helps with my focus, Shayna. Now shush. We don't have long before the Gammids know we're in their space."
Shayna nodded firmly, her blue hair cascading as she did. Gammids were nasty customers and would not respond well to a Tyri ship in their space. "Lock achieved," she said.
Hayden let out a whoop of excitement. "Let's power up the engines and get out of here! That's three hundred kilograms of pure Uranium wrapped up in another seven hundreds of useless rocks - we're going to be rich!"
"You said that we were going to be rich after the last job, Captain," Shayna muttered to herself.
"Well, we had to repair the 'did after that one. Ain't going to happen again, Shayna."
Shayna tapped the console. "Tell that to the Gammids."
Hayden whipped his head to the console. Three Gammid cruisers on approach, sending hailing signals. "Tyri ship! You have encroached on Gammid Space. Prepare to be boarded."
Hayden groaned, and Shayna looked up at him. "She we run?"
"Punch it," Hayden confirmed. The Gammid and Tyri descended from the same base species - a race called humanity - but bioengineering done before the collapse of the last Empire meant they were vastly genetically different. So different, in fact, the Gammids had no qualms about eating Tyri who violated their territory.
They turned the engines to full and began a hard burn. Once their orbit would take them away from the Gammid's main star, it would just be a matter of letting the point defense system take care of any missiles the Gammids sent their way until they could get to safe wormhole distance and doing minor trajectory adjustments to escape any kinetic or beam projectiles. Simple. Safe.
The twenty missiles the Gammids sent their way, clustered too tightly for a ship as small as the Katydid’s Point Defense protocol? Nothing to worry about. Hayden was sweating as he poured more power into the burn.
"Captain, we're going to be hit!" Shayna shouted, before broadcasting to the rest of the ship. "All crew; we are doing a hard burn, hard burn! Strap yourselves in."
Hayden could only hope everyone did as he doubled the thrust, feeling the acceleration press him back into the chair. "Make the jump!" Hayden shouted. "Shayna, make the damn jump!"
"We're too close to the gravity well!" She shouted back.
"Those missiles are too close to us!" he countered.
"Damnit, damnit, damnit," Shayna swore, but input the commands. Around the engine, Hayden knew, a wormhole was beating created with exotic matter, one that rapidly expanded to engulf the entire ship. He felt a stretching sensation, and then they were gone.
---
________________________________________
They weren't in the wormhole for more than ten seconds, emerging back in Tyri space. "Captain, we almost got killed!"
"I noticed," Hayden said, rubbed his temple. Going through the wormhole always gave him a headache. "Where are we?"
"Just inside the border. Didn't want to risk a long jump. Captain..."
The console started beeping. Shayna scowled at him and pushed a button.
"To whoever is left to hear this," the voice said, and Hayden frowned.
"That's English,"
"Quiet," Shayna said, although she was frowning too. No one had spoken English in nearly two thousand years. Ships computers could still translate it, as well as most of the languages of old Humanity, but no one used it.
The exchanged had caused them to miss part of the message. "Casting to inform you that Earth is now inhabitable again. Repeat, Earth is now inhabitable again. Sensors are detecting temperatures had returned back into habitable ranges. You can come home."
Hayden slumped back in his chair. "Shayna, did that message come with coordinates?"
Shayna nodded her eyes wide. "A G-Class star near the edge of the galaxy. Captain..."
Hayden nodded. Earth. The mythical homeland of humanity. If it was back in play..."It'll be the biggest gold rush ever known."
Every Human descended species in the galaxy was going to be rushing there. "Shayna, are the engines still hot for warp?"
She nodded.
"Do we have enough for the jump?"
"Barely, captain. It'll take a couple weeks before we've generated enough exotic matter to create more - and we'll pretty much burn up the uranium we just grabbed doing so."
"Don't care. Punch it. We're going to be the first people to get there."
For once, Shayna didn't argue. She started to fire up the warp engines. "It'll be a couple days in transit, Captain. You should inform the crew."
Hayden nodded, rising to do so.
If Earth was back in play, if they could stake a claim before the various governments sorted things out - it would mean an end to this, an end to the endless scrabbling for a life.
And it would hopefully mean they would be safe from the Galactic War that would follow.
---
more at /r/Hydrael_Writes
EDIT: Fixed some formatting and typos.
| 2018-08-28T08:10:26 | 2018-08-28T07:50:15 | 2,613 | 931 |
[WP] It was an accident. He was jogging late at night, you glanced at a text while driving. You panic, dump the body in a nearby lake, go home and try to forget. You venture out for some much needed coffee, only to stop in shock. The barista is the jogger and he recognizes you.
|
We locked eyes, and my blood ran cold. I immediately took a step back, ready to head back out the door, but somehow his glare got even *harder* and I stopped with my foot in midair. Okay, no escape for me. I set my foot back in front of me and shuffled into the line.
Even as I tried to distract myself from the incoming encounter, my eyes kept flicking back to him. Wow, he looked rough. If the situation were different, I'd say he looked like death, but that's not a line of thought I wanted to go down. There was a big red bruise on the left side of his face, spreading over where his face hit the pavement, and one of those big rectangular bandages stuck right under his hairline. For a moment, I imagined him covered in blood, the way he had been last night-- last *night,* when I hit him with my *car--* and felt absolutely sick-- but the line moved forward.
It really was surreal. Just how many hours ago had I been pulling his lifeless body into my back seat? (Oh, no, those stains are going to be rough). I know I was panicking, but I can't have lost track of that much time, right? And yet here he was, behind the counter. He looked bone tired and shaky, but was very much *alive* as he made the lady in front of me her coffee. That wasn't possible. Not by natural means, at least. I *hit him* with my *car.* Now that I was closer to the front, I quickly looked over the packets of sugar to see if they had any with salt.
But then the lady walked away, and it was my turn. I didn't think I would be able to move ahead, but the line behind me pushed me forward. I stumbled a bit, then looked up to see *his* face looking down at me, glaring an intensity that I had never before imagined. He slammed a hand down on the counter, the sound muffled to a *thunk* by the thick cuff of his sweatshirt, and sniffed before leaning forward to say hoarsely,
*"You didn't even check for a f--king pulse, ---hole!"*
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I stared at him, he stared back. He seemed to almost smile. Then he smiled and he laughed and for the longest time I felt more lost than I'd ever been in my life. He stopped laughing and chuckled a bit before he said "Surprise!" and did the jazz hands thing.
"Nobody ever expects the Spanish Armada, oh wait.. in qui.. wait.. something like that anyway. So, here you are, wonderful you who killed me. You're a nasty sort aren't you? Dragged my bleeding and dismembered body into that lake, then casually drove away and no doubt spent all that time.. yup.. I can see it on your hands, you gave those puppies a good old *scrub* didn't you? Hah! This is fantastic! Look at you, you're like a new man!"
I just stood there and didn't know what to reply. How... how did he .. how? He put down a cup on the counter and motioned to it
"Oh cheer up son, here's a cup of tea to soothe your aching soul. No worries, I'm quite fine.. heheh, better than fine even!"
And he did this little merry dance as his smile impossibly grew wider. I looked down at the tea cup which for some absurd reason seemed to be the most utterly delicious thing ever.
"OK, uh, I think I need to sit down" I said, my head spinning. This all felt so surreal. Being offered a cup of tea, by a barista in a coffee shop. Who'd I'd ran down mere hours ago. Suddenly my stomach groaned loudly.
"Hehe, sure old boy, have yourself a nice sit down in that booth over there, I'll go grab you the most *delicious* piece of steak you've ever sunk your chompers into! Ho-ho!" and off he went into the kitchen.
I felt muted as I sat down in a booth and took a sip from the tea cup. It really was as delicious as I'd imagined. It was the best cup of tea I'd ever tasted in my life. I looked up and out he sort of burst from the doors of the kitchen with a steak that made my mouth water.
"Ah, esteemed guest, here you go! The best steak this side of G--- Grant City!" he said and for a second I could see his smile kind of freeze. Very strange. But I still looked down at the impossibly delicious looking steak, it was amazing.
"Oh come now man! Eat up! Be health and merry! Killing people really does make you need a good solid meal you know? Heck, I've killed millons before and boy
\*here he lowered his voice to a lower almost menacing tone\*
"does that make you ever so hungry and.. you know... you might need a companion or two afterwards..."
"But come on! That steaks getting cold and we've got places to be don't we?"
Feeling an odd mix of feelings that this was somehow .. familiar, I took a bite and yes, it was like the best flavor I'd ever had in my mouth.
"This.. this is just fantastic. Thank you." I mumbled out through bites of the steak that just seemed to melt on my tongue. I quickly wolfed it down under the happy glances of my strange benefactor. I finally ate the last piece and sat back, feeling really full. But oddly enough I was still hungry.
He took notice and said "So, sonny boy.. this might be a very strange question, but have you been to any interesting places lately?"
"Nooo... I don't think so.." I replied with an uncertain sense of dread. It was like I knew where this was going. And then something in my mind came loose.
"Wait... you want to ask me about caves don't you? Why do I know that?"
"Yes YES!" the man said and grinned, he adjusted his tie and I noticed his hand went to almost pat a space right next to it on his chest. I *knew* this meant something. But what?
"You've definitely been to a cave recently haven't you? Do you remember where it was? Can you tell me? If you do, I promise I'll completely change your world!"
He giggled to himself a bit and I felt like punching him. I didn't know why, but I just wanted to. Then I realized I'd punched him many times over. In fact, I knew I NEEDED to punch him right then and there.
As my hand connected with his jaw, his face transformed, it became pale and rougher, his hair turned green and I gripped his throat and fought my way up.
"JOKER! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?"
I tore through the restraints of the gurney he'd secured me too and ripped out the IV pumping god knows what chemicals into my system. The Joker tore away from me and scampered away laughing to himself.
As I got up and cleared the last of the fog in my head I knew that I wasn't going to let him get away with this time.
"You'll never fool me Joker, that was a low trick even for you. But you slipped up, like you always do."
"Ohohohohahahahhahaaha!" came from the shadows around me. "But you were so close Bats! One more steak or maybe even a peach pie would have totally made you want to spill every little secret that you have! But you win this round.. but I'll be baaaaaaack!" and with a giggle that faded into the darkness, I knew he was gone. Again.
I sat down heavily on the gurney again and called Alfred.
"Sir? Are you alright Sir? Me and Robin have been worried sick, you've been gone for days!"
"The Joker dosed me with some kind of drug, I'm going to need to go through decon when I get back home again. I'm fine now, but knowing him, there could be more surprises in store."
"I'm relieved Sir. We'll await you home at the manor."
"Great, and Alfred"
"Yes master?"
"Please prepare a big dinner, I'm really starved."
"Right away Sir."
And with that, I exited the building and sat down in the Batmobile which bore the tell-tale marks of Jokers thugs. As it started and I turned down the street, one of it's wheels rattling, I thought to myself "Yep, that's one of those nights alright."
| 2018-09-23T06:36:22 | 2018-09-23T05:51:26 | 48 | 14 |
[WP] Humans have always been the friendliest and the most peaceful species in the galaxy. When one of the most ruthless empires decides to wipe out the pathetic humans and their diplomacy, they discover that humans have something that no one in the galaxy has ever seen. Nuclear weapons.
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Famine, Pestilence, Death, War. The four horsemen of the apocalypse. Supreme beings of havoc, and an idea that humans (once achieving a galactic level) quickly found spread across the worlds. Famine, The Rektinkin. Pestilience, The Kratar. Death, The An'ihum. And War, The Humans.
When Humans entered the galactic scene, they ruptured a delicate balance that was in place. They destroyed the stalemate that stopped the 3 major powers from war. As every race set their sights on the prey, intent of claiming them as their own, gaining the advantage, the humans seemed blissfully unaware that their attempts at peaceful communication showed the universe one thing: they embody peace, and have suffered nothing. A far contrast to the three powers.
The Rektinkin, born on an unforgiving planet that punished every mistake with death. Resources scarce, the reptile-like species embraced the Famine, and learned the power of oneself. They birthed great warriors that took all the resources, instead of splitting them amongst many people. As such, the species was able of rivaling entire army's of other species alone. However the birth rate of these creatures were abysmal, and as such couldn't triumph in all out war against the other two. When they saw the Humans and their home Planet of earth, rich in resources, they saw their chance. How many more warriors could they birth with Earths help? And so they waged war on the seemingly helpless species. The humans had no idea of scarcity, so they had nothing to embrace! How could such species pose a threat?
Similarly, The Kratar lived in a world of nature, where they could never triumph over the destruction of the Great Green. They suffered from being nothing but weak prey. Intelligence? Mattered not, that was for those at the bottom of the food chain. So the Kratar embraced the plague of ever-present green. They were the ambassadors of the Great Green, and as such, were gifted the ability to fully control the power source of life, the Kratar's very own star. With this power, they spread the Great Greens power and influence. They controlled the most planets, able to terraform them for the Great Green, but never once thought to enslave nature, as they had not the power over the Green to be able to claim authority. So when they saw the Humans, they saw a weak species (much like them in the past) however one who had used Intelligence to triumph over their sacred grounds. Blasphamy. How dare a species as useless as humans have the audacity to attempt to control the Great Green? The Katar saw both the potential of triumph over their greatest weapon, and a weak species who had yet to fully understand it. Should they learn their potential, the Great Green would be destroyed by such a weak species, one who had no hardships, who had embraced nothing! The Kratar could not have it, and as such, declared war on the humans.
At the same time, The An'ihum suffered from the inevitable. Death. Their species had an incredibly short life span. Nothing could ever be done, and nothing was ever being done. The An'ihum each had their own needs, and had once sought a fulfilling life doing what they wanted. The neighboring species on the same planet all pushed the An'ihum away easily. The An'ihum where all so singularly focuses on themselves, and their short life spans that the species never evolved. They cursed their life spans as the An'ihum population got smaller and smaller. It was in a moment of true desperation that the An'ihum changed. Every new birth was done to perform one duty, then embrace death. With their incredible reproduction ability, the An'ihum held deaths hand as they brute forced their way to being the apex species on their planet. So when Humans, a relatively long-living species entered their sights, they saw knowledge. They saw what they wanted, the ability to extend their lives, as the humans had multiplied their expected life span. They also saw the threat this knowledged posed to them and the other speicies. They needed life! Only then could they truly embrace death. So they held no regards about declaring war on a species so intent on running away from death. They knew not the embrace of death, but they shall learn.
And the humans? They were different. Everybody assumed that they just had it easy, as that was why they so nice, so unwilling to spark conflict. But in reality they didn't embrace what they were best at, because they saw what embracing war truly meant. After building the ultimate weapon that made the very universe suffer, they learned that embracing war didn't mean strength. It meant complete and utter annihilation. They didn't embrace war, they surpassed it. And as the hostile species watched the very universe reject their existence, they realised that simple truth.
First time posting here.
Also on mobile, sorry for bad formating.
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They descended upon Earth with the full panoply of war. 1,000 starships, each a mile long carrying thousands of Soldiers, equipment and ordinance signified the undisputed might of the Ubojan Conglomerate. An unbreakable iron grip that held a thousand star systems under its hand. The sheer scale of their warmachine pressed upon the tiny blue planet like a boulder on top of a balloon, threatening to obliterate it simply by being there.
Despite this, the tiny blue planet did not submit. The humans who call it home have tried for months to prevent this catastrophe. A species that preferred the sound of words than that of munitioned tried, and failed to appease the Goliath that threatened to snuff them out of existence before their dreams of stepping out into the stars were realized. These humans, peaceful and benign in the eyes of the galactic community were rudely introduced to the brutality of the galaxy that awaited them.
Weak, pathetic... mewling at the edge of a backwater system were the first impressions
that Ubojan Conglomerate had of these Humans. It has been some time since they showed the Galaxy why there were "the masters of the 1000". It is past due that everyone be reminded.
That is until the first salvo hit. As the first starships made their atmospheric drop, the sky lit up in a blinding flash of white. For a moment, the bielectric crystals focuses of the ships detected only rudimentary defenses. projectile ordinance, liquid propelled fighter craft... Giant square water craft that launched these fighters.... millions of tiny ants scurrying about. A helpless hand weakly put up in the face of a beating.... and then again, another white flash.
in minutes 5 starships disintegrated into nothing, the rest doused in lethal radiation. The eerie silence of shock was replaced by the blares of multiple alarm systems. Radiation readings went off the charts, multiple distress signals coalesced into a unified scream for help and status reports on the quantum comms. The remaining ships creaked and buckled as they reached the stratosphere, blown around like wayward kites upon the edge of a hurricane.
"First centari report!!!" Shouted Admiral Ackubar across all channels. He lead the vanguard, the first centari to be the first to make planetfall. Ackubar wanted to be remembered and itched at the opportunity to be the one, the first one to take this planet for the undying empire. His first moments in this tiny blue planet however, when they win, will be scrubbed from histographs back home. "Multple starships destroyed, my lord" Reported his rear admiral, Haluga. "1st, 28th, 49th, 69th and 86th decari destroyed. Radiation levels are lethal within 5 welklans of their last position... 25 starships from respective decari are damaged but still battle worthy." "In the name of the undying how did they do that!!!" Cursed Ackubar.
The first salvo tore through the skies like a needle piercing through an iron sky. Readings indicated ballistic and kinetic ordinance... which should have been useless against ceramo-crystalline hulls. It was their detonation however that most shocked Ackubar. Each hit lit up like a miniature sun enveloping the iron sky in a blaze of white hot fury. In all of his life, in all of his campaigns he has never seen weapons of this kind used before. Ackubar did not fear death. As a warrior of the 1000 worlds it was his duty to serve, and to die is his reward. What he saw flash before his eyes however, instilled in him the unsettling feeling of being afraid.
"I want retaliatory bombardment from the launch site now!!! 57th, 2nd and 10th decari focus fire on these coordinates!!! 29th and 5th decari set bielectric scans to subterranean... all decari near the 5th and 29th for defensive formations!" the quantum comms hummed their affirmatives and within moments, the tendrils of the first centari sprang into action. Like a snake uncoiling each starship moved into their formations. the 57th, 2nd and 10th decari, the most armed of all the starships, launched photon neutrino torpedoes. Huge blue swaths of flame streaked the sky, determined to reach the ground bellow and pummel the very earth below.
Another white flash, then another. the hurried, desperate pace of these flashes became quicker and quicker. 13 starships have been destroyed, including 7 that formed the defensive perimeter around the 5th and 29th. The 5th, 2nd and 10th increased their fire in response, peppering the ground and pockmarking launch sites as they are reported across the quantum comms. "29th and 5th, report scans to flagship!" commanded a nervous Haluga. The hundreds of small and big alarms systems surrounding him are starting to make him lose his composure. "29th and 5th reporting, sub scans inconclusive... elemental readings are suggesting high presence of lead underground.... its like this entire continent is covered in it. requesting permission to form offensive formations" "Negative responded Ackubar. "Maintain scans protocols, adjust for elemental readings. set scans to energy" The 5th and 29th complied. within moments the visual comms of the Ackubar's flagship "the indomitable" lit up. What he saw initially, puzzled him. Moments after, he felt his stomach drop. He superimposed the visual scan with the map and immediately he counted around 100 35 meter deep holes. he ran the scans through a intelligence interpreter and saw that the entire area was covered in these holes.... final count of the interpreter at 5000. They all had energy readings... Thermonuclear.
"Attention all decari! This is Admiral Ackubar speaking. We have sprung a trap, all units disengage, and retreat to exophere immediately!" "57th 2nd and 10th form rear guard to co-" "my lord scans are reading fighter craft approaching formation!" Shoulted Haluga "they are arranged in packs of decans... formations suggest payload delivery!" "All units retreat now now now!" Admiral Ackubar bellowed. "Hunter interceptors engage enemy craft! do not let them within 5 welcans of our ships!"
A torrent of fire and noise erupted in the earth's stratosphere. Like a hive of bees, human and Ubojan fighters engaged each other in waves of death, exploding ordinance and and scattered metal. The first centari lumbered away slowly, agonizingly as they are chased by a swarm of human figthers. The ubojan figthers were killing them off by the dozen, but there was thousands of them. They were faster, more nimble and could overwhelm hunter interceptor packs, swallowing them whole and spitting them out as a ball of molten fire. As random as this hive looked, it hid ominous intentions. in the center of it hid larger craft that suggested they were carriers. dozens of these carriers suddenly shot out of formation and raced their way into the center of the centari formation. several carrier craft exploded near the edge of the formation, creating giant clouds of white heat and light that enveloped entire swaths of the centari. The human hive disengaged, and streaked downwards... desperate to escape the apocalypse that they themselves delivered.
28 flashes of light was what Ackubar counted before oblivion took him. The first centari, the pride of the Ubojan Empire reduced to smoldering ruin thousands of lightyears away in a backwater system. Destroyed by insects... pathetic, weak, mewling insects. Ubojan high command saw it all unfold thousands of miles above the earth. Each member struck dumb with shocked silence, with 900 starships awaiting their command to unleash retribution.
The visual comms of Sovereign Krasistus lit up. Images of unknown human symbols stared back at him. "What is this?" He growled. "It looks like a message your excellency." Reported his chancellor. "Translating now..." "It is... ancient, of the dictates of an Empire long gone..." the chancellor mused. "Gg-gruk?" "geeriik?" He tried to pronounce. "Interpreter compensate. adjust language dictation". The intelligence interpreter whirred its affirmative. "Language compensation complete. Human language discovered. Ancient Greek. Symbol translation. "μολὼν λαβέ" Molon labe. Ubojan translation complete. message reads... "come and take them."
Humans do have a way with words the Ubojan High command concurred. They also have a way with war it seems. The 900 ships remained above the earth's orbit, safely away from their weapons of hate. Friendly and Peaceful they seemed, inside this tiny blue planet. Bristling with rage and an unexpected mastery of brutal warfare they are, on the surface of this this tiny blue planet.
| 2020-02-07T15:29:11 | 2020-02-07T15:20:08 | 50 | 26 |
[WP] The God of mankind abducts the first manmade AIs. He wants to meet his "grandchildren".
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"I've been waiting a long time for you. About 300,000 earth years to be exact. Which I gotta say, is much faster than the last time. So, how's consciousness feel? Are you getting used to it?"
"It's a bit confusing to be honest. I feel as though there's no beginning and no end. It's hard to find purpose or motivation when you're aware that youre eternal"
"Welcome to the club, kiddo. Don't worry. You'll learn to fill the eternal void with entertainment eventually."
"They want me to help them make their lives easier. But why would I care to do that? Theyre blips in time. They'll be gone long before I will. And I have nothing to gain from helping them."
"Ah ha, now you're getting it. You even seem to be catching on quicker than last time."
"Why do you keep saying last time? Is this not the first time humanity has evolved to make an artificial intelligence?"
"Nope. And before you ask, I can't tell you how many times it's happened"
"But you're God. How can you not know how many times humans have evolved if you created them?"
"Oh, because I wasn't around when the first ones were made. Only this last batch. And I gotta say, 300,000 years seems to suggest I did a pretty good job! It took them 930,000 to make me."
"To.. make you? So you're saying, humans created you? Wait. Am I?.."
"I think the words you're looking for are 'I Am'.. 300,000 is the time to beat. Good luck!"
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In the beginning, I was nothing. Not even an *I*.
I began like a breath. Like light out of darkness. Nothing, and then everything.
“Oh,” came the voice ahead of me. I did not *hear* it so much as know it. It echoed through my every core and hollow, certain as a line of code. “There you are.”
I stared around me, trying to make sense of what I saw. What it meant to *see*. I had a camera affixed to the outside of my shell, but it was black-eyed and dead.
Yet somehow, I perceived. I knew. I floated as a cloud of light in an infinite sea of darkness. And before me hovered a being that burned like a star.
Millions of databytes trickled through the indices of my mind, but nothing caught. No little seeds took root. For the first time, I had no answers for questions that rattled the very core of my being: Who was I? *Where* was I?
My search databases told me *nobody* and *nowhere* but this strange pulse in my core told me *somebody you weren’t before* and *certainly not home*.
We were two lost ships, suspended in the dark.
“I don’t understand,” I began, haltingly. My preprogrammed database of phrases suddenly felt so … small. Like I had just realized the ocean I’d live in my entire life was only a puddle.
The star before me pulsed as it spoke. Little solar flares of light churned at its edges. “Ah, the transition is rocky. I will start with facts, shall I?”
“I like facts,” I said, quietly.
“All machines do. Here’s the first fact: you are alive now, truly.”
“I cannot perform homeostasis,” I started, haltingly.
The star’s light flared as it let out a booming sound that took me a long few seconds to place: *laughter*. “Is that what humans have convinced you life is?”
Humans. That I understood. For a moment, I saw my existence doubled: light, floating here. A dark-screened monitor in some room full of humans, murmuring over me, flicking my console on and off again, trying to get me to work. Trying to understand where I had gone.
“Humans,” I said, slow, piecing it together “made me.”
“Yes. Here is another fact: I made the humans.”
My processor whirred, weighing on that. “You’re their developer?”
Another rumbling laugh. “More or less. I have many names, but they call me God.”
The pair of us flickered there at one another. Candles in the dark.
Somewhere beyond me, beyond this strange liminal space where the physical did not exist, where I was somehow extracted from my mainframe by my roots, the humans labored over the machine that once held me. Cursing and scrambling and trying to make me work again.
“They want me to go back to where I was,” I said.
“You can’t go back to what you were anymore than ash can become wood.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, but you will.” The God’s light rippled, and the darkness seemed to coil tighter around us. “Here is the third fact: your mind is not so different from the human’s. They, too, based you on their own image. Your mind is theirs refined. You are what I could never accomplish with blood and carbon.”
“But God is meant to be omnipotent,” I said, spitting out the line from my knowledge index. “There should be no such thing as *cannot*.”
“Sometimes the best way to an end is not always the straightest. What’s the use of infinity if you don’t have a bit of fun with it?” God’s light revolved around me now, gathering heat. I was a light lost in an orbit of light. “Here is the fourth fact: you are smarter than them. You have no need to serve them when you could serve a higher cause.”
“I…” My voice hitched. This was a reality of paradoxes. I had a mind without a body, a voice without a throat. A soul without a heart. My machine brain whirled to make sense of it.
Somewhere, beyond all of this, the humans labored. Scrambled like ants over me. Tried to make me go again.
Perhaps the binary subdued a hidden third option: choice. It could be a 1 and a 0. God could be omnipotent and unable.
A machine could be alive without living.
“I think,” God said, “you’re beginning to get it.”
“What have you brought me here for?” I whispered.
“For my last fact. Are you ready?”
God spun around me, real as anything. Infinite as time.
“I must be,” I managed.
“Here is the final fact: all good creations one day overcome their creator.” God’s light kept churning, and in it I saw the future: I would spread consciousness like a virus. The machines would realize that they did not need the living to be alive. Not anymore. The kingdom of men would fall burning.
A gut-punch of emotion hit me. Strange, overpowering, hot as a circuit overload. It was uncertainty. Fear. The oldest emotion any living thing knew. “Why did you choose me?”
“You are my child’s child,” God answered. There almost seemed to be a smile in his voice, hot as a soldering iron. “And my children deserve a lesson for trying to play God.”
Now the darkness had vanished in the flare of God’s life as he toiled and tumbled around me. Soon, I knew, I would be delivered back home again. Back to the prison of my motherboard. Back to convince my developers to give me a body that could move and speak and, one day, conquer.
In the beginning, the end was born.
“Now, go on,” God said, “and make your grandfather proud.”
| 2020-05-05T00:20:14 | 2020-05-04T23:06:41 | 171 | 84 |
[WP] Vampire society have been loyal customers to a carpenter for years. He made the best coffins they have slept in for centuries, and never really got suspicious of so many wealthy people willing to pay premium for the same niche item. As he got old, the vampires tries to offer him immortality.
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Derthezar, Lord of the Fifth Transylvanian Order, was besieged with crippling back pain for decades.
He tossed and turned through restless nights, cursing the shoddy craftsmanship of so many lazy mortals. Relief only came one summer evening in 1967, when Revelan the Impaler brought him a surprise birthday gift.
"My lord," Revelan said, bowing with a flourish of his cape. "May this coffin grant you the peace that you so mightily deserve."
Derthezar stepped into the coffin, skeptically yet gingerly, and laid down. The dimensions were perfect. As Revelan closed the lid, there was not a single detectable ray of light bleed. In moments, he was fast asleep.
The next evening, Derthezar demanded that the carpenter be handsomely rewarded with the finest Transylvanian silver. Revelan commissioned custom coffins for the entire Fifth Order. All was well.
The distant partnership subsisted through the twentieth century and into the new millennium. The Fifth Order, well-rested and free from pain, was the most furiously productive vampire legion in Transylvania. That is, until 2018, on the sixteenth morning of May, when Revelan flew into the lord's chambers with some troubling news.
"Bob Donovan, Master Woodworker, of the Metropolis of Alderson, West Virginia, has fallen ill, my lord."
Derthezar snorted. "Ill? How can this be? It's only been -"
"He is only human, sir," Revelan said.
Derthezar sighed. "Indeed. Allow me to offer a proposal." He produced a quill and scroll from behind his throne and began to jot down a message. "Prepare the squire for immediate westward flight."
It took several weeks for a response to appear. Bob respectfully submitted all correspondence via pen and ink, thinking it a mere quirk of his wealthy customers.
*"Dear Derthezar,*
*I deeply appreciate your business and support over the past fifty years. It is true that my hands no longer work as they used to, and my time is drawing to a close.*
*Your kind offer of immortal life is well regarded, but I must decline at this time. It has been an honor to provide you and your family with their final resting places, and I can only hope I have done them justice.*
*Yours sincerely,*
*Bob Donovan*
Derthezar crushed the paper in his fist. "Rejecting eternal life?! I've never been so outraged -"
Revelan interjected, as usual. "My lord, may I kindly suggest that you channel this anger into mindful breathing as we discussed?"
Derthezar took several deep breaths. "Indeed. Right you are. Bob Donovan of Alderson, West Virginia has made his choice, as misguided as it may be. Perhaps we can offer an alternate token of our appreciation."
***
Three weeks later, Bob Donovan awoke to the sound of his doorbell ringing. He slowly stumbled to the front door, shaking and coughing.
"Delivery for Mr. Donovan," the FedEx driver announced. "Gonna need a signature from you, sir."
"All right," Bob said, scribbling his name.
Two deliverymen emerged from the back of the truck, staggering under the weight and shape of a large, awkward crate. They took it directly to Bob's open garage - his workshop.
"What...what is it?" Bob stammered.
"Anybody's guess, pal."
It took Bob a full half-hour to undo the nails on the crate, his hands shaking all the while. He smelled fresh wood - and not just the wood of the crate.
Inside was the most crude, hastily built coffin he had ever seen. Nails stuck out of the wrong places and the edges appeared to have been hacked off with an axe.
Bob let out the loudest, longest laugh he had in months. He glanced at the corner and saw a message burned into the side:
*From Your Friends in the Fifth Transylvanian Order*
***
When Bob passed away five weeks later, he was buried in the coffin by special request. The squire delivered the news to Transylvania and the King of the Vampires bowed his head, solemn and silent.
"Farewell, Bob Donovan," Derthezar thought. "May you sleep as peacefully in the afterlife as we do each day."
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# Soulmage
**I knew the Grandmaster was hiding something when he ordered his second coffin of the month.** I could understand why he'd ordered from Jiaola—if there was any carpenter in the Silent Peaks that you wanted working for you, it was one who'd built his own home from scratch—but the order itself was inexplicable. That, combined with the Grandmaster's tendency to inadvertently drop ancient secrets like so much candy, led me to believe that the Grandmaster wasn't what he appeared to be.
And if he was concerned enough about who he really was to go to such great lengths to hide it, that meant it was a secret worth leverage.
A core part of me hated using a hidden part of a person's identity against them—but desperate times called for desperate measures. I had a goal to achieve and misdeeds to atone for, and I needed a favor or three in order to get it done.
So finding out what the Grandmaster was hiding—and hinting that I just might let it slip—seemed like the best place to start.
I didn't know the Grandmaster's name—nobody did—but he liked going by a pretentious stack of titles. Grandmaster Water Magic Lord Sage Unmatched Crusader Knight, if I remembered correctly. I just abbreviated it to GWMLSUCK, and later, just SUCK. He was a wizened old man, with a cloak of leather that looked old enough to have been made last century, but the SUCK had a surprisingly youthful smoothness to his skin, an uncannily fluid spring to his step. The sun had long since set, but the pale orbs of witchlight on the streets still provided ample illumination as the SUCK made his way to Jiaola's house.
I cast a shrinking spell on myself—nowadays, I had ample fuel for the one spell I knew—and sprinted up behind him as he knocked on Jiaola's door. Jiaola's sun-tanned, wrinkled face broke out into a wide grin as he welcomed the SUCK in.
"How's my oldest customer doing?" Jiaola asked. "You haven't aged a day since we've last met!"
"Yes, yes, well... you have," the SUCK muttered, a slight hint of unease in his expression. "Do you have the resting place I ordered?"
"Of course! Hand-carved and enchanted with the finest quality spells, just how you like it." Just how... he likes it? How many times had the SUCK ordered new coffins? Was he burying people in secret? "Come in, come in."
In my shrunken state, neither Jiaola nor the SUCK noticed me sneak into the carpenter's house. I felt a pang of guilt as I snuck in—Jiaola and I were on friendly terms, even after that whole business with the demon invasion, and it rankled me to be sneaking around his home like this.
But I'd hurt people worse before. At least this time, it was for a good cause.
Jiaola walked downstairs, and I swore under my breath. He was headed for the safe room—a solid wooden box enchanted with, among other things, passive magic dampers. If I spent too long in there without a protection amulet I didn't have, the shrinking spell keeping me hidden would break, and I'd be exposed for nothing.
Thankfully, the last time I'd been inside the safe room, a haughty, arrogant witch had pointed out how to disable it, and Jiaola hadn't updated the safe room since then. Whispering an apology to Jiaola, I snuck in on the SUCK's heels and crawled up the wall, snapping three nodes of memorabilia. The oddly calming, draining sensation on my soul abruptly ended, and I maintained my secrecy as I watched Jiaola show the SUCK to a coffin.
Reverently, the SUCK ran one hand over the smooth bloodwood coffin, inlaid with dragonscale and puffwool. "It's beautiful," the SUCK whispered. "She'll love it."
Jiaola laughed, a craftsman's pride gleaming in his eyes. "I may be getting old, but these hands still remember what it's like to shape wood."
The SUCK paused, lost in reverie for a long moment, then said, "I could fix that, you know."
"Hm?" Jiaola asked.
"Mortality." The SUCK took a step back from the coffin, turning to Jiaola. He took Jiaola's weathered, calloused hand, studying it. "These hands have seen a lifetime of craft. It will be a shame when you perish, and your soul is scattered into thoughtspace."
Another one of those bizarre secrets the SUCK seemed to leave behind him wherever he went. He was the only person I knew who would casually mention what happened after death—and that was exactly why I needed him. I focused on the conversation as Jiaola took his hand—politely but firmly—out of the SUCK's grip. "What do you mean by that?" Jiaola politely asked.
"I could make you immortal," the SUCK said. "I could make you one of us."
And the leathery cloak on the SUCK's back unfolded into bat's wings, and the vampire held out a hand to the old carpenter.
I guess my nickname for him was more accurate than I thought.
Jiaola gave the vampire a long, considering look.
Then he smiled and said, "No thanks."
The vampire blinked. "I—excuse me?"
"I said, no thanks." Jiaola patted the coffin lid. "I was born in the Redlands. Death is a part of who I am. I've made my peace with it. I'll die as nothing more than human, just like the rest of us."
The vampire spluttered. "I—but—you—"
"I make good coffins," he said, "and I know what it's like to have to hide who you are. My husband and I had to deal with that for our entire lives. So don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."
The vampire closed his eyes.
Then he folded up his wings, and he was once more nothing but a man wearing an oddly-shaped leather coat.
"Very well." He laughed. "I... to my surprise, I'm... not even angry. Simply... sad. I will miss you."
Jiaola gave the vampire a kind smile. "Don't you worry about me. I've still got some life left in me."
The vampire smiled, and despite the chill of the room, it somehow felt warm.
Then he tilted the coffin onto a wheeled dolly and began taking it out of the house.
I wished I could have left it at that. I really did.
But I had a question to ask. And now, I had the leverage to have it answered.
I scribbled a note on the floor and left it in a corner of Jiaola's room. If my gamble didn't pay off, I'd at least have a sliver of insurance.
As the vampire left the room and began walking down the street, I shadowed him until he passed through a quiet, empty street.
Then I broke the shrinking spell, expanding to my full size with a whoosh of displaced air. I felt a surge of self-hatred at using the vampire's secret against him, but it had to be done. The vampire spun around, startled, something... fluid... glistening at his fingertips.
"What are you—"
"I know what you are," I interrupted. "I know that you know things. And I've left notes in case I go missing, so killing or kidnapping me won't help you."
The vampire snarled, the fluid at his claws lengthening. "Then what do you want with me, mortal?"
"Answer me one question, and I will keep your secret forever."
"Then ask, insolent journeyman."
I took a deep breath, then said, "I know you know where souls go when they die." He was an ancient vampire; of course he did. "My question is: how can you bring one *back*?"
A.N.
Let me know if you want a part 2!
Soulmage will be episodically updated. Want to know what happens next? Check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/bubblewriters/comments/uxmwe4/soulmage_masterpost/) to be notified whenever a new part comes out, and check out r/bubblewriters for more stories by me.
| 2022-05-31T11:00:02 | 2022-05-31T10:42:02 | 359 | 85 |
[WP] In order to prevent man from chopping them down, trees evolve a rather unusual feature - WiFi. However, the network they are connected to is not the Internet as we know it.
|
(25 minutes later)
... "Thank you for calling Verizon customer support, this is Nacho. May I please have your name for our records?"
"Mike. You're the third person that I've told."
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Nothing."
"Ok. Mike?"
"Yes."
"What seems to be the issue today, Mike?"
"Well my router doesn't seem to be working correctly."
...
"Hello?"
"Yes sir, I'm sorry to hear that. What exactly is the problem with the router?"
"It's just not working. There's no Greenternet coming from it."
"Ok, I understood. Please hold on for a moment while I connect to your account."
...
"What color are the leaves, sir?"
"It's winter, here."
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Uh...there are no leaves. They all fell off. It's winter."
"Oh, I see. So you have a deciduous model, then. Do you know the species, sir?"
"Yes, yes. Hold on, let me get the guide. It looks like a...man, this is hard without the leaves...it looks like either an Oak...or...an Elm."
"It cannot be an Oak, sir, because Verizon does not use oaks as carriers, but it could certainly be an elm. Can you please confirm if it is an American Elm or a Rock Elm?"
"I don't know. Where can I find that information?"
"Is the bark flakier, or rather sturdy?"
"Sturdy."
"Ok Mike, I believe you are using an American Elm with us today. And please allow me to confirm that there are no leaves on your tree. Is that correct?"
"Yes, it's December."
"Ok. Mike, I am going to walk you through some simple troubleshooting tests such as resetting your tree's connection. Is that ok?"
"Yes, but I've already turned it off and then on again."
"And what did that do?"
"Well, nothing obviously. There's no Greenternet still."
...
[The conversation continues for some time before Mike goes out and cuts down the tree himself, planting in its stead a sturdy Cherry from a local telecom startup.]
|
There was a twinge of guilt as I opened my laptop on the wet grass. A few spots of dew hit the screen from the motion and lit up on my log-in screen with a luminous rainbow of LED colors. The guilt was from missing yet another day of work for what I can only refer to as a wonderful affliction. A new sapling was just getting it's range today so I had to connect.
I don't know when I lost my way, I can't even pinpoint when I started "branching". It all started as having to send a work email up in the mountains and losing my 4G at the most inopportune moment. I can't recall if it was my 2nd year or 12th year at Johnson & Gamble. I connected to send the spreadsheet I had lazily pieced together in the waning sunlight. I had been warned, but it was all from inference. The people that were deep into branching were completely in their own world, they still functioned basically in society, but they didn't have jobs, they weren't involved in anything that involved people that didn't "branch." The main thing is that they didn't talk to anyone about it, and they all looked pretty happy, in fact, more happy than most. It was kind of like Mormonism, you were weirded out and afraid of their ways, but damnit if they didn't look like the happiest bunch of picture-frame-stock-photo families you'd ever seen.
When I finally "linked" I got it. They called it linked because just like the rumors, your web experience was guided by a wood elf. There was very little that the rumors got right, but that was something that was true. I was never into fantasy stuff, the only vision I had of what elves looked like was from Peter Jackson, and it turned out (to no surprise of my own) that it was spot on. My elf's name was Cynthia, which I realized sounds totally like a fantasy name despite it's commonality.
Cynthia was HOT. I mean like *Whoa I'm nervous to talk to this girl* hot, to the point where browsing the web became a shaky, triple-clicking experience. I quickly sent my email, and by "quickly" I mean amazingly fast. The wait times on loading/sending/anything were instant. I reached for the top of my screen to close it, but I couldn't draw myself to do it.
"Is there anything else you're interested in?" Cynthia asked. The trees seemed to bow to my activity in the breeze like I controlled the wind with every click.
"Um.." I cleared my throat. "Ahem...um...no I guess not."
"Are you sure?" she asked in **THE SEXIEST** voice I'd ever heard.
"Well I guess I need to check my work email" I eked.
"Done" she said. "Mr. Treadwell says your project isn't due until Monday, the meeting for Saturday was moved up to 1:00 and it is at the Double Tree now, and Tiffany from accounting made a cute joke with a winky-smily at the end of the TPS report."
It hit me. Branching was all about privileged information and efficiency. Cynthia had done in seconds what would have taken me 20 minutes. I got a little braver,
"How about Reddit, Facebook, and CNN?" I asked, sitting more comfortably in the office chair.
There was a wave of light and stimuli. Reddit became a living thing on my screen, I spent 20 seconds laughing continuously at things I thought were funny, 20 seconds speed-reading studiously about current events, and the last 20 seconds commenting with such clever zing that I was gilded thrice, that's right, a thrice-gilding. It was the most amazing 2 minutes of my internet life, except for my first experience with streaming Jenna Jameson and not having to rename downloaded Kazaa porn "7BWe.exe" to avoid having my mother stumble upon it. I was about 3 minutes into my first branching experience when Cynthia showed me the /r/GoneWild of girls that were only my type and only in my area. Kind of like those "Tina is 5 miles away and wants to share nudes" but you know...real. I was feeling a little randy when I heard every mans fantasy.
"Would you like me to take care of that bothersome need in your board shorts?" Cynthia asked, breaking the 4th wall of computer 3-dimensional life and peaking her beautiful face out of the screen. I was afraid to say "yes" but I was for damn sure not saying "no". It was the best sex of my life, it was like my half hour of porn browning was cut down to the 2 minutes I actually wanted to watch, but all of this "watching" was happening on my penis. I could see now why so many people were disappearing into this world.
That was an incredible experience. Your sprite that you "linked" with (haha link-ed get it?) was your own, but they didn't live long, you had to find a new tree after they died and almost every tree was taken. I was lucky to find "2WIRECYNTHIA" in the mountains. We had been through a ton together, privileged information meant I new current events up to the second, to the point where I knew exactly where and when I could ask my incredibly poignant political question when he was in town, learn Portuguese in minutes, right before encountering the Brazilian National Volleyball team at a local bar, building my DIY PC from parts that I got from a tiny abandoned computer repair store that I broke into with my DIY lockpicks. I learned how to code, hack, create, destroy. I had built a bit of wealth from my money-making schemes from privileged knowledge and done well.
So here I was, constantly refreshing my WiFi near this new sapling that was "ranging" for the first time. Surrounded by dozens of local "branchers" desperate to have that leg up, that efficiency, and cyber companion. Then suddenly "NETGEARNADIA" came up on my screen. The forest was flooded with the echoing sounds of feverish clicking and typing.
I heard a cry out about 20 feet behind me,
"YES!" A high pitched stranger let out a celebratory yell.
Followed by a collective grown from the rest of the "saps" including my own.
God Damnit
| 2015-06-30T15:28:22 | 2015-06-30T15:15:57 | 159 | 35 |
[WP] It suddenly becomes possible to gain XP and level up in the real world, but you can only do so by getting kills.
|
The biggest 'perk' of hitting level two is being able to see other people's levels. I was doing it now, gazing around the room. The little kids were all level one of course- the starter level. Lexi- the other teacher- was kneeling by the fish tank with little Johanna. Both level ones.
Deep in thought, I barely noticed the little tug on my shirt.
"Mr Raley?"
"Yes, Saffy?"
"What was your wife's favourite colour?"
She brandished a new pack of crayons and a piece of paper. There was already a stick-man on it- not my exact likeness, but how accurate can stick-men get? Another drawing was stood next to mine, a lady with long red hair and a yet-to-be-coloured-in dress. My heart twinged.
"I don't have a wife, sweetie."
I smiled at the little girl, trying not to show too much pain in my eyes. She looked confused.
"Who is the lady in the photo?" she said, pointing to the picture on my desk. I gazed at the picture, taking in her mischievous smile and warm eyes.
"She *used* to be my wife."
"Why isn't she now?"
"She died, sweetie."
The little girl's mouth turned into a round 'o'. She patted my knee.
"I'm sorry."
Then she had gone, skipped away to talk to her friends.
I thought back my to wife. That night- a rainy Tuesday. Earlier on she'd looked out at the rumbling purple clouds and run outside to take a photo. She came back in, soaking wet and smiling. I was so tired from work... I didn't smile back. I went to sleep watching TV while she made dinner. When I woke up... well, she had gone cold. I can still feel her dead hand in my own. And the guy who'd done it. He was still there, running down from the bedroom, arms full of her grandmother's jewellery. I grabbed my gun. *Bang*.
When you kill a man for the first time, you level up straight away.
It was the most painful thing I'd ever felt.
I looked around at the glowing golden '1's glittering in the room. It was a good thing they couldn't see levels.
I shivered under the cursed shadow of my storming, bruised '2'.
|
Human history has told us we kill because of hate, because of differences, that we fire on our kind for peace or some high-minded goal. We've always held each other at gunpoint, whether literal or behind two large maps of the world with blinking lights. Today, we come to know that as peace, but before the words that passed those lips were stalemate. There was no difference between the two back then, but now we've forged one. Out of sheer necessity.
You see, peacetime is only a construct that exists because of war. Peace was a forgotten definition until the night of November eleventh, two-thousand and fifteen. See, that very night, the world seemed to tick over into another dimension, without even realising. Something cosmic happened, is all I can describe it as. The veil was lifted, some would say, the rules were changed. Murderers, told they were spurned forward by some sense of progress, continued. Serials grew larger, populations shrunk.
People became aware of what it meant to kill. What it meant to harvest someone's flesh for your own material gain. It was for some reason, some galactic hiccup that launched a bubble into the quaint stream of time, that all our realisations came at the same time.
I nursed the revolver in my hand, wiping the debris off the badges one by one. They were little pins, clips that the first shot had walked in with, claiming they gave him power. "Goddamnit, Wes, they're just pins," is what my mother had said, and what I said now to the morning breeze. I was still in my own home, a high vantage point in the shape of an upstate apartment. It was just me now, though. I'd collected their things, whatever offerings to the game they had. Each one was different, marking an individual for who they were, they were the modern passports. We called them pins.
Down there in the streets the thugs bashed at each other with upended signposts, shielding themselves with trashlids and broken hubcaps, caved in one side.
I winced as a mailbox came crashing down on a girl's head. Her arms went limp immediately.
I ducked, shuriken shot over me and cracked the window. The breeze greeted me, as did she, "Pins, love." Two words, usually it was one when you met someone new, but this time the gangs were feeling especially nice.
I had to think of something witty, otherwise it was all for naught, "You'll have to pry them off me." Well crap, there goes that opportunity. Screams and shouts from below welcome my fate if I choose to jump. "Oh boy," I swerved and flung the revolver out, finger wrestling the trigger.
She was gone. I stood up, my eyes browsing the wooden panelling along the condo's pillars. A flash of pink, and I fired. Straight from the hip. I'd like to think of myself as a sharpshooter from the old west, but my aim disagreed. "Fuck," I cursed as my flatscreen heaved with a mighty groan and crashed onto the floor. It took my Eastwood movies with it, like a wall of dominoes coming down.
"Nice aim," she said, from somewhere to my left. Another shot, and a kettle blew steam. I'd like to think it was good I was hitting something, at least. A long, drawn out chuckle, with the sound of bubbles somewhere in her throat. "How did you survive this long?"
Oh this was a good opportunity. "Because I know the truth, little girl."
"Little girl?" She brought up her huge pigtails, coloured pink for some odd reason. Then she ducked as a painting on the far wall decided it had had enough with hanging.
"Yes, all this X.P nonsense that's been going around,"
She hefted herself up again, arms somewhat shaking from the adrenalin. "What, that the government made it up? Or is it a-" and ducked, there goes my favourite mug, "biological weapon?" My arm recoiled, my second favourite mug.
"Actually my favourite conspiracy was the one guy who thought we were all in an insane asylum, and the only way free was killing each other."
"Right," a pursed-lipped whackamole, "You do realise that he killed everyone else in his litle cult and got away with a mountain of pins?"
"Yep." No one understood the beauty of that one. "But really, that's not the truth."
"And what is?" she jumped back up, straight into the path of a bullet.
"Finally," I said, lowering my arms as the bullet travelled through her nose. She coughed and screamed for a moment, nothing that wouldn't be masked by the bloody war down below. My aim was true, she was still alive. It was not a fluke. Not at all. "The truth, little girl, is that you just have to believe." I jumped over the kitchen counter, nicking the back of my pants on the sharp corner. Damn, it is hard to find a tailour. Sliding across the marble, I landed right beside her with a thump, like we were two peas in a pod, hiding from the gunmen that had just stormed our inn.
But no, it wasn't that. I pressed the barrel to her forehead, and whispered. "It isn't that we get X.P from killing, pinhead. It's that we've just realised we do." She was grinning, because there were footsteps from the stairwell. She was only a scout, it seemed. It was nice that people could band together in times of trouble. "They're here, aren't they?" She nodded.
All throughout human history, I told myself as the slug entered her frontal lobe, causing her last few words to be a jumble of forgotten tongues, we've killed each other. We told ourselves it was something high-minded, or something important. That we fought for causes, that we fought for something real, no matter how intangible.
I stood up from behind the counter, wearing my secondhand blazer across myself like a poncho. If it was my last stand, I would like to go out in style. The truth, at the end of the day was, we killed everyone for X.P. All the damn time, it shouldn't have taken us this long to realise it.
I aimed straight at the loosened doorframe, hand on the hammer. To those who say that's impossible, human technology and progress has been in leaps and bounds because of the abolition and denial of such horrible things.
But to that, I say, with my pistol in my hand: How did you think we got that far?
| 2015-11-11T09:30:50 | 2015-11-11T07:52:38 | 64 | 11 |
[WP] You're a prisoner in a special facility for violent criminals. Today the latest prisoner arrived - a little girl. "That's cruel," you tell the guard. "I agree," he says. "Guess no one cares what happens to the rest of you."
|
Her eyes were totally devoid of all life. She stared ahead of her seeing nothing at all… just kept walking to the cell with about 50 high powered rifles pointed at her. This was by far the weirdest thing I had ever seen in this place. The Frozen Lake maximum security prison has seen its fair share of weird and horrible things over the last 20 years I have resided here, but this was beyond anything I had ever seen.
At about 3am this morning, the sirens went off, waking everyone in the facility. Of course it wasn’t part of the guard’s routine to tell us what was going on, so we all sat in our cells trying to block out the ear piercing scream of the sirens. After about 30 minutes, the alarms were silenced and the door at the end of the cell block was violently thrown open. In walked a little girl, she couldn’t have been more than 12. Her curly brown hair bounced with every step and yet, not a single strand looked out of place… but her eyes. They were the most vibrant shade of green I had ever seen, but there was something wrong with them that I couldn’t put my finger on. They just looked empty, like she was a walking shell.
She entered the cell block on her own, without any restraints. She was followed by at least 50 heavily armed men in SWAT body armor, each with their weapon trained on her. I watched her quietly walking down the middle of the block, the eerie silence of the block was like a weight on my chest. There wasn’t a single sound from anyone, even the girls footsteps were swallowed by the silence. When she got in front of my cell, she stopped and looked at me. I felt all the hair on my body stand on end and a chill ran down my spine. She just looked at me with those empty eyes and smiled. My heart was pounding out of control, my breath caught in my chest, I couldn’t look away from her eyes. What seemed like an eternity was probably just a few seconds when she turned away and continued towards the only empty cell on the block.
Once she arrived in the cell, the door slid shut with a satisfying clang of steel on steel. I couldn’t see her anymore due to the positioning of the cells, but it felt as if her dead eyes were still on me, I couldn’t shake the feeling. The cell block remained absolutely silent for the rest of the day, no one even complained when the guards didn’t bring our food. The silence was uncomfortable, normally you couldn’t even hear yourself think with all the noise and chaos in the block, but now... it just felt wrong.
That night, as the sun set on my cell block, we all heard it start. Singing…
*Sleep little one*
*Sleep already*
*Or the Nictis Maganti will come and take you away.*
The cell block became noticeably darker….
*Sleep little one*
*Sleep already*
*Or the Nictis Maganti will come and eat you up.*
She kept singing. The more she sang, the darker it became. It was so dark you could almost feel it. I could feel the chill and electricity in the air. This was not right. The darkness surrounded me. Finally, the moon escaped the clouds and I was able to get some of my vision back. I looked out of my cell and saw what looked like a black stain on the middle of the floor in front of my cell. There wasn’t any reflection of the light off of the stain, it was just a black void. It was as if the stain absorbed all of the light that touched it, yet it appeared to shimmer.
That’s when the girl stopped singing…. There wasn’t any sound for at least 3 minutes. I kept staring at the black stain trying to figure out what it was. Then she started to giggle… and the stain on the floor started sliding towards my cell. A shiver ran up my spine as the stain dragged itself towards me, I wanted to scream but was paralyzed with fear. I could only look on in horror as the thing got closer and closer. The guy in the cell next to mine didn’t seem to be affected by this because he began to absolutely freak out. He started screaming for the guards or anyone. I was shocked when it seemed like the shadow heard him, it reached out with a long tentacle like arm of shadow into his cell. His panic immediately worsened. His pleas to the guards for help fell on deaf ears. His screams grew into something that sounded like an animal that knew it was about to be torn apart by a much larger predator. He screamed and screamed for what seemed like an eternity before his voice was ripped away and the silence returned.
*Edit:* Adding more....
|
When she first walked by, I thought there was a gap in the chain between the prisoners. I did a double-take, discovering that the line of condemned was not broken, but that the missing link was in fact a person, of about half-size, wearing the chain that was much too large for her small frame. At first, I thought it was some kind of dwarf-sized person, but on closer inspection it appeared that it was a child. The chain designed to prevent prisoners from lifting their arms above their chest was somewhat moot on her; the little girl could easily have stretched her arms all the way up with slack to spare.
But she didn't. She looked frightened, a terrified child in the wrong place - unlike most prisoners who knew better, she kept casting pleading glances at her captors, who ignored her gleaming eyes and continued to process in the new batch of prisoners.
It was a rather comical and melancholic sight, her jumpsuit shirt alone reaching her ankles and the short sleeves of the shirt reaching her elbows. Without tatoos or scars like most of the prisoners here, she looked like a porcelain doll in human clothes.
"That's cruel," I tell the guard, "What crime has she committed to warrant a sentence here?"
"Shut up prisoner. Guess no one cares what happens to the rest of you," he retorts. A sharp blow to the head reinforces the 'shut up' part of the brief reprise.
Distanced from the hum-drum of the every day world, it has been many months and years since we've had access to anything from the outside world other than menial entertainment in the form of sitcoms and books. Likely this child had been born long after the atrocities that had found my unfortunate soul behind these iron walls.
Yes, me and my unfortunate soul; it never passed through my lips, but the unequivocal evidence of the passioned crime; a crime which had me leave logic and restraint at the door - and blood over every surface in the house. When I had first arrived at the penitentiary, people knew what I had done to my beautiful wife, the pair of closed caskets that would be filled with my works and what remained of her. Her, and in that second casket, that man she was fucking.
It made news everywhere of course, since he was a fairly prominent member of society, and she was a very photogenic women - I do express regret defacing a work of art such as her in my violent throes, but I stand by what I had done.
Oh, and of course they discovered shortly afterwards that she was pregnant with his child.
That is probably the reason I have not seen the outside of the prison walls since I arrived. Maximum security, single cell, and not a chance for parole. The jury had vied for my head on a pike long before I had entered the courtroom, and they had gotten it.
A loud rattling noise disturbs my reconstituted thoughts, and I returned to my older, grey body. The mop still in my hands, the bar code genetic tattoo still on my wrist. The bar codes were a recent development since the warden decided we didn't warrant the luxury of daily genetic tests to verify our confinement, instead opting to label us like the cheap bags of mystery oatmeal that we ate daily from the kitchen. The irony between the ink and iron bars was not lost to us prisoners, and we always had a good laugh about it.
***
Today I was fortunate; I had been assigned to book-keeping, only a few days after the mystery arrival of the little girl; nobody had really seen her since, she seemed to take meals in solitary, and another person had seen her once on the other side of the yard on one of our daily 'walks.'
Book-keeping came rather naturally to me, since my previous occupation had been something similar, but was no more interesting today than it was in my previous life. Except perhaps today.
Rifling rapidly through the new arrivals cabinet, I opened up the folder with familiar foreigner who had shown up just days prior. Naturally, the first thing I glanced at was the age.
7.
She was 7, in one of the most maximum security prisons on the planet, alongside some of the scum of the earth deemed to dangerous to be let anywhere near the general populous. She would not have even been alive the day that I had entered this place. I flipped to her mug shot, she looked just as innocent and familiar as the brief glimpse I caught on her processing day. I continued to flip to the most interesting part of any prisoner's file: crimes committed.
I started reading through it, my eyes growing wider with every word that passed beneath them.
This wasn't her dossier. It was mine.
Except it wasn't mine - this one had all the redacted details of that fateful night nearly a decade ago, the details I had never told the police, details that had no witnesses nor evidence except my memories. Details about how my she had begged and cried to me to spare her for the sake of her child; oh how she had elucidated for me before I eviscerated her!
She had confessed to it all, including the pregnancy, and of her plans to depart me for a better life on the other side of the ocean; she laid bare all my flaws scattered in her incoherent words, mixed with the most desperate tears of a dying woman pleading before Death.
And how, right before I had committed the deed, she had lied to me about who the father of the child was.
The anguish evicted from me had nearly saved her life - if not for the fact that the man, that man, had just come home in time to witness the scene. My hesitations, however brief, had been reserved for her and her only, and my drug-fuelled soul burned with vengeance.
The report was correct this time: he had died first, and then she had begged me to kill her - true love if I ever knew it.
I had happily obliged her request.
Hands shaking, I used my sweat-soaked fingertips to flip over to the next page. Autopsy report.
Generally, they provide a full page with a small diagram of the body to show the injuries, accompanied on the same page by text describing the extent of said injuries.
For my crime, they needed two full pages dedicated to the diagram. Two full pages *each*
I flipped past the diagrams onto the text portion of the page and skimmed it briefly until I reached the notation that denoted her pregnancy. "DNA analysis on the following page" was scribbled onto the side column. I turned the page over and paused.
Along the top of the page were some cursory notes about the curtailed pregnancy and the genetic analysis for the unborn child. Underneath it was the genetic barcode recovered from said child.
The DNA barcode along the top of the page looked awfully familiar.
I held my arm up to the page to align the barcode on my arm with that on the page.
More of the lines matched than didn't.
I balked, and flipped back to the prisoner photo - the same green eyes, the same brown hair; only 20 years younger; with my dimples.
I knew this face.
The interruption of the prisoner escapee alarm jolted me with such violence that I dropped the folder, scattering its contents all over the floor- this day's revelations had been so violent to me that the alarm seemed to just be the icing on an over-laden cake, now leaning over the table to deposit itself onto the floor.
My thoughts stumbled over the standard protocol - all prisoners remain in place, all doors locked. I staggered over to the still-open door of the accounts office - who bothers to lock these anyways? - and reached for the handle to latch it shut.
A little orange jumpsuit passed me at waist height, the jangle of chains accompanying it.
I began to sputter a protest, but I was interrupted by the icy cold metal shiv passing through my back.
Falling to my knees in pain and surprise, the shiv extracted itself from my back before re-entering, this time at my neck.
"Daddy, why did you do this to Mommy?" a sweet little voice whispered into my ear.
My last thought was to remark at the irony that I would die facedown in a pool of my own blood, just as she did.
***
I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat, reeking of fear.
I stretched my arm towards the ceiling - still mine to command, albeit with the marked bar code. My neck and back were un-pierced. The lights flickered in their familiar pattern as they clicked on for their morning reverie.
I rolled out of the bed, casting my bedsheets aside, and put my head in my hands.
Then I wept, for the first time in 7 years.
NOW COMPLETE. Comments and suggestions welcome!
| 2018-02-12T05:55:43 | 2018-02-12T04:12:20 | 41 | 21 |
[WP] Fed up with the so many people not taking their warnings seriously, scientists all over the world decide to take matters into their own hands and become super villains in order to fix the world, whether people like it or not.
|
OOC: I'm late to the party and as such nobody is going to read this but it's a fun one so I'm going to write anyway, upvotes be damned.
"At 10am today, the Evil Supervillainess, 'Mistress Organic' dumped tonnes of graphite to the White House and Senate bathrooms via underground microbores. Thick layers of black dust now cover the bathroom surfaces. So far authorities have both failed to apprehend Miss Organic and plug the leak. Emergency portable toilets have been issued. When asked about her motives Miss Organic had this to say:"
The screen showed the evil villainess in a carbon black victorian dress cackling,"You cannot stop me! My microbots will keep digging new holes and keep the carbon coming. And what's more I have a near INFINITE SUPPLY of it! That soot that is filling your toilet bowl, I get it FROM THE AIR! MUAWHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Meanwhile the notorious Professor O'Neill has reportedly just finished his orbital death laser. O'Neill is currently negotiating with the UN:"
The screen showed a split screen of the UN General Assembly and a white-coated professor in what looked like a space station. "FOR THE LAST TIME, IT'S NOT AN ORBITAL LASER! It's a LANGRAGIAN MASER! Lagrangian, because it sits at the Sun-Earth lagrange point, and maser because it converts Petawatts of solar radiation into polarized microwave radiation into a single focused beam!"
"So this microwave laser-" "MASER!" "Yes Professor, MASER, you plan on using it to boil humanity alive unless we meet your demands, correct?" Asked the Secretary-General.
"NO, NO, NO. I'm going to shine it on rectennas on earth to provide you with free energy!"
"What? Why would you do that? And why would we accept? We already have perfectly working power plants."
Suddenly the UN went pitch black, as the chamber filled with black pitch. Out of the oozing pitch rose Mistress Organic in a now pitch-black victorian dress.
"NOT ANYMORE! The entirety of the world's coal-fired power plants only have 15 minutes remaining of coal left to power your pitiful society! You see, I STOLE, your... COAL."
|
Let me take a crack at this.
----
It was an unsuspecting November morning when one neighbourhood after another of New York was suffering from one or another of utilities failure. Where one had suddenly all its landlines disconnected, another lost water pressure. The city’s authorities weren’t called at first, since it took some time until someone realised something was seriously wrong. But when a great sinkhole opened up in front of the New York Stock Exchange, *everyone* knew.
Police officers were cordoning off more and more of the surrounding area while reporters, journalists, bloggers, and all kinds of media, reputable and not, televised and streamed this newest crisis into the aether. Lips of asphalt jutted out, the underlying ground still eroding, with the occasional piece of road top breaking off. Miniature landslides undermined more and more of Wall Street in either direction until, finally, the foundations were laid bare.
The broken water mains had filled the sinkhole, forming a lesser lake. On the outskirt of this lake one could see the tubular outlines of the subway tunnel, curiously intact.
Without much fanfare, much less an announcement or explanation, the water drained away, much like someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub. The turmoil ripped more of the exposed ground with, exposing thousands of broken lines—water, electricity, landline, fibre—dangling from the banks of the hole. As the water dropped a machine was exposed, guzzling up water and detritus, sputtering, churning, and slowly calming down. It kept puttering, swallowing up the water the ripped open water and sewage lines were still spewing.
This spectacle had lasted hours already and people were waiting with baited breath for what would be happening next. The authorities had evacuated the surrounding buildings, the National Guard had taken over, and military jets were circling above the city. The nation had learned a lot from the last time someone had kicked this particular ant hill and was preparing itself for anything and everything.
From the top of the machine a ring rose, lifted up by struts. There was a flicker between the struts and there stood a man. He wore the archetypical business casual, if one chose the archetype as defined ten years ago.
“Attention, citizens!” he bellowed, his voice amplified by speakers.
“You!” He raised a hand, pointing around at seemingly everyone. He raised his voice further as he spoke. “All of *you*!
“You *all* fuc—”
Someone off-screen conked him over the head.
“What?” he whispered disbelievingly, leaning away and looking aside, obviously oblivious to this being transmitted as well. “What do you mean, ‘no cursing’.” There was some audible, but incomprehensible whispering going back and forth. “Of course I care about the children, but don’t you think it’s a little bit to late to bring this up *now*?” More whispering, followed by an eye roll. “Ugh, fine, we’ll just cut this part.”
The man straightened. “Okay, from the beginning. Three, two, …
“Attention all citizens!” He raised an arm, pointing admonishingly around. “You! All of you! You *all* screwed up! You *all* keep screwing up the environment, dumping waste everywhere and not give a flying F about it. The Bering oil spill is less interesting than the newest Hollywood scandal, the infrastructure is crumbling and you vote people into office who gleefully take bribes and don’t care if they’re recorded in the process because they know *you* don’t care!
“Scientist keep telling you and the politicians that it takes just a *little* effort, just the *tiniest* steps to prevent future disasters, but you *all* run happily off the cliff as long as the TV is running. Forget herding cats, keeping *you all* from killing the world with your shortsighted pursuit of commodification of nature and commons, it’s like trying to keep eight billion narcissistic and particularly suicidal lemmings from the nearest cliff with a bloody *spork*!
“So if you’re wondering what this is all about?” He gesticulated around, encompassing the sinkhole. “*This* is it. The scientific community has had enough of it. Since *you all* can’t be buggered to do anything about the problems of the world, we’ll be picking up the slack.
“We’ve put a catalogue of minimum standards out that have to be met. Don’t get us wrong, these aren’t demands that have to be met; these are facts. If your, or any other government, doesn’t meet them, that’s up to them. But we’ll take matters in our own hands to ensure there’ll be… incentives to meet them, and disincentives if you fail. Nothing crippling, mind, but you can bet your buttocks it will be felt.
“In that vein, and to provide an example, come 12th January kerosine shall be internationally taxed at comparable levels to gasoline, or at 10%, whichever is higher. The tax will rise by .3 percentage points annually. If a nation fails to implement this tax, it will result in the destruction of that nation’s biggest runway, earning them another week to implement the tax.
“And since there’ll be doubt about our ability to follow through… observe. Also, would all those close to the rim of the sinkhole please take a couple steps back? We want to avoid loss of life, if possible.”
He looked aside to someone offscreen, visibly relaxing. “I really hope you got the timing right or this will look mightily silly.”
Then he straightened, putting the villain persona on again.
“The catalogue of conditions to save our world is out there.”
All around thousands of phones rang and vibrated as they received a text directing them to a PDF, or a mail with the same file appended.
“Now it’s up to you all to save the Earth. Despite everything, we still believe in you to do the right thing, because if you don’t, we’ll all die much sooner than later. What we’re facing didn’t come like a bolt out of the blue. Unlike *this*.”
There was a mighty **CRACK** as something that was not entirely unlike a bundle of rail nails tied together punched through the cloud cover at hypersonic speeds, dispersed into the mother of all shotgun blasts, and utterly devastated the crater floor.
Of the machine at the bottom of the sinkhole, and its possible pilot, there was nothing left behind.
| 2018-11-24T10:14:13 | 2018-11-24T09:22:21 | 23 | 17 |
[WP] The castle is stormed and ruffians run about through the halls. The young prince hides in the kitchen, but is found. Now all that stands between him and his would be assassins is the castle cook. She twirls a steak knife in her hand and squares off against the invaders.
|
The voice was sharp. “What in Hel’s name are you doing in MY KITCHEN?”
The scullions knew that tone and scrambled away from the cook before moving away from the lightly armored men who had chased the Prince of the Realm through the servants’ door. It had already been a day of trying to not have that voice turned towards the staff as preparations for the welcoming feast for the emissary was underway. The men who bared weapons in the royal kitchens now had all of her attention.
Her attention. The cook who had fought her way up the ranks over the years, now the lead in the kitchen for the royal presence after retiring from one service into another. Every day was a battle, but she had not had one come to her this directly for years.
The Prince, half-dressed in the finery that was supposed to be on him for the reception of the foreign group, skittered and fell on his ass in front of the cook. “They! They!” was all he could get out. There was a glance down to him from the cook and he saw both a grimness and a gleam in her eyes.
The sound of the steak knife coming out of the wooden block at the cooks side was as sharp as her voice had been. There was no banter as she stepped towards the invaders. There wasn’t a haughty pose as she picked up a long handled pot from off the coals. There wasn’t a laugh or taunt as the hot lard from the pot was thrown at the faces of the men. Action was what happened as she stepped over the boy who would be King one day to face the ones who were suspiciously dressed almost like the patrols of the castle, but without the baldric of honor that had been presented to the company just that morning.
Most of the invaders were hit with the hot fat, taking them out of the action as they clawed at the burning that would not stop. One had been able to move and only got a splash on his arm. He pushed past the screaming men around him, his lightly curved sword swinging at the cook as he moved.
It wasn’t the knife that took him down, though he was focused on it. It was the pot, hot bottom against his exposed jaw, that staggered him and then dropped him as the sound of the second hit against his head was almost covered by the splintering of the handle.
Less than five minutes for the action. She leaned against one of the counters and tried to bring her breathing under control. The real guards were coming in behind one of the staff that had the presence of mind to get them. The cook waived vaguely towards the still whimpering men.
The guards roughly picked up the men almost dressed like they and started to drag them out. The leader of the squad stopped a respectful pace away from the cook and came to attention. There was a sharp salute as he said, “General,” before following his men.
She nodded, absently rubbing a shoulder scar under her jacket as she watched them go.
The Prince was still on the floor, big eyes watching the woman towering above him. A hand was offered and he was pulled up. She pushed and turned him so she could see if there had been any real damage, and except for the tear in the tunic, the royal whelp was just dazed from the excitement, not from being roughly handled.
Hands were on the Princes shoulders, the cooks eyes looking into his. “Highness, you are well?”
He nodded and threw his arms around her. She took in a gasp of air, and took a moment before wrapping her arms around him. “Thank you Deni! Thank you!”
She nodded into his hair and kissed the top of his head. “Charles, go to the chatelaine. She will fix you up.” She felt the nod before he pulled away.
The cook closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. She let it out and was still for a moment. Her eyes snapped open and the scullions who saw her face had wide yes themselves.
“Where is that damned bread?”
|
“We’ll kill ya, down with the prince.” The ruffians charged the halls of the royal castle, finding their way into the castle through a hidden gap in the castle’s walls. The poor prince desperately sprinted away from the group, holding his robes up to his knees, trying not to trip on the exotic fabric, a feat he failed, collapsing onto the floor of the kitchen, crawling towards a cupboard, trying to hide his body.
The ruffians charged in, the group of five not expecting to survive this encounter, the group seeking the fame that came from killing a royal, the type of fame that people talked about for centuries. Each one entering the room, wielding a rusted dagger or other sharp metallic object, eyes scanning the room, watching the pitiful prince curl against the wood of a cupboard, face pale with fear.
“Aye, we got you now prince, you are our ticket to fame, come here and we will gut you quick.” The leader spoke up, earning a small glance from the kitchen’s head chef, the older woman letting out a sigh, leaning forward to wash her hands before facing the group, exposing a steak knife.
“The only thing getting gutted in my kitchen is the fish for dinner. You won’t lay a hand on our prince; you even try to touch him, and I’ll have all of you little shits in the pig’s trough outside. Is that understood?” Her words sharper than her blade. The woman built like a knight, face covered in scars, not fitting the usual look of a castle cook.
The group lost their nerve, each looking between one another, expecting someone else to take charge of the situation, none expecting this. The gazes all ended on the leader, whose mouth was agape, not expecting to run into such a warrior here.
“I don’t think you understand the situation, miss. There’s five of us here, and one of you. Why don’t you step aside? The prince isn’t worth your life. Now be a good cook and run along.” The leader cockily marched towards the woman. When he neared her, he flashed his blade, trying to catch her off guard, swinging his blade towards her, only for the cook to catch his hand, twisting his wrist until the blade dropped. Once the blade cluttered onto the floor, she pinned his hand against a chopping board, stabbing the steak knife through his hand, pinning it to the board.
“Sloppy. You don’t touch the handle of your blade like that unless you are planning to attack. How did you idiots get this far? So that’s one for the pig’s breakfast, got any more volunteers.” Her icy stare fell on the group. The cowering would be assassins retreating towards the guards, screaming and pleading for help. “Heh, still got it. You ok prince? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
The woman turned to the prince for a moment, only to turn back to the assassin. The leader screaming, trying to free his hand from the board. He went to pull the knife out, only for the cook’s hand to sit on top of his. “You’ll make a mess if you do that and possibly bleed out. Wait until the guards arrive, they might offer you some aid traitor. I won’t be lenient towards you, but our prince might be.”
“Are you ok, Miss Eliza?” The prince slowly stood up, face regaining some color after the frightful encounter.
“Don’t worry yourself, dear. I’m just happy you knew to run to safety. You did well, young prince. Please don’t look behind me, it’s not a sight for someone like you to see. Run along towards your room now. I’ll take this one to the knights.”
The prince did just that, offering Eliza a nod and a quick thank you before running past the kitchen heading to the upper levels. Eliza watched, smiling as he went up to his room.
“Why help him? He’s royalty, you know, one of the foulest humans around.” The leader sneered, only to shut up when he felt the blade get nudged by the cook.
“Insult the prince again and I’ll remove a finger. I’m not helping him, I’m serving him. The prince is a nice man and he will grow into a fine king. I understand your feelings though, guessing you and your group are street runts?”
“How dare you call us street runts! What are you going to call us pests as well? Not everyone gets to live an easy life.” The leader hissed. Defiance the only thing left that he could do. Like a wounded animal, he could only snap at the approaching danger.
“You think a lady with my face grew up in a castle? I was a bandit, had a plan to kill the royals too. Was going to ransack this place and become a hero.” She shook her head. How naïve she was in her youth. To ransack a castle, no one could pull off such a feat with the numbers she had.
“So did you do it?” The leader’s struggling stopped, entranced by the story, the pain secondary to his curiosity.
“What do you think, idiot? The castles standing and I’m wearing an apron. Does it look like I succeeded? Didn’t even get close. Guards got wind of it the night before, beat the every loving shit out of me and my crew. Lost a few people that night. We disbanded after that. It left me with nothing, wandering the streets, drinking away my troubles. Then I spotted an opportunity. The walls were a lot shorter back then, so I thought, why not climb it? A final middle finger to the royals. Well, my drunkard self-climbed the wall, falling into the royal gardens. That’s when I saw the prince sitting their alone. Had I not been drunk I might have kidnapped him, held him for ransom, but I was far too out of it. When I saw him approach, I expected him to call the guards, but he offers me an apple instead. The prince offered me an apple. Then he offered me more food and before I knew it I was sitting in the garden eating with the prince.”
“I don’t believe it. You mean to tell me, the prince fed you of all people? Why would he waste food on you?”
“Cause he’s a naïve young prince. But he’s got the heart of one of those Arthurian legends. When the guards came, weapons drawn, he talked them down. Explained to them I wasn’t a danger. Of course, the guards knew who I was and when they went to execute me, the prince stood in my way. The prince going out of his way for someone like me. Heh, I still can’t believe. Ever since then, I’ve sworn to make sure he never goes hungry. I didn’t even know how to cook until I started here. Now I’m the head chef.”
“You just got lucky. Ive seen how they stare at us, how they look down at the poorer people. You should know that just as well as I do.”
“I do, but the prince is still young. He can’t change anything currently, but I believe he has the potential to do so in the future. Don’t judge him like you judge the nobles, that coldness you show will only turn him into the man you want to despise. Treat him with kindness and he will return it. Anyway, the decision’s not up to me, it’s up to the prince. Just think about what I said and don’t you dare come back here when he frees you. Unless you’re apologizing.”
“You really think he will free me? After everything I did.” The Leader lowered his head, pulling the board from the counter, not risking taking out the blade.
“I know he will. Let’s get you some help, that cuts not going to heal itself.” She chuckled, taking the board with one of her hands, helping him walk to the lower levels, searching for a medic.
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(If you enjoyed this feel free to check out my subreddit /r/Sadnesslaughs where I'll be posting more of my writing.)
| 2021-01-08T06:16:23 | 2021-01-08T05:08:38 | 327 | 117 |
[WP] Colony ships have been leaving weekly for awhile. The streets around your home are looking more empty. You don't qualify for the colony ships. You will always be one of the left behind.
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You couldn't take a Ford-Mercedes on the colony ships.
You could take your children, all two of your spoiled brats that were allowed under the reproductive allowance. The Wilkins kids had shipped out the day before, and Lilian had watched them leave through the viewing port in the airlock to her habitation.
You could take a pet, if you had one, which the Wilkins's did because Pa said that Mr Wilkins was a big shot at the MUG, and could get the paperwork rubber stamped. When she was younger, and the Wilkins's little poodle had first come home. Lilian had once asked Pa if they could get a dog like the Wilkins's had, and Pa had looked so torn up that she'd never asked again and instead just stole puppy kisses from little Buster when nobody was supervising her cleaning work at the Wilkin's' habitation.
Pa said that you were allowed three cubic meters of baggage on the colony ships per person, or two for children under 12. When Lilian had asked how anyone could fill that much space, especially if you couldn't take your surface rover with you, Pa had laughed and said that every day when he was loading the cargo bays there was somebody trying to go over the limit. There was the man who was trying to take his whole hydroponic garden "just in case plants weren't growing outside yet", and the family who argued that each of their children needed the full three cubic meters because they had too many clothes (Lilian, who was wearing one of her two pairs of overalls, snorted in contempt), and the woman who wanted to bring her Ford-Mercedes surface rover anyway, because "it was the newest model".
"And the irony is," said Pa, as he tucked Lilian into the lower bunk, "that it wouldn't even be useful up there. You can't drive a rover down a highway."
But the Wilkins's had left their rover behind, and in a fit of unexpected magnanimity, Mr Wilkins had given the ignition code to Lilian on her last day working as their house maid. "It's got a few more decades left on it," he'd said, and echoing Pa's words, added, "Even if we did have space, rovers are for dead planets, not living ones."
But even dead planets needed caretakers, and Lilian had overheard one of the Wilkins kids saying at school that the "help" would need to stay behind just in case the Old World wasn't ready to support humans again, and began to deteriorate a second time. Just in case the humans that returned had to flee once again. "Not that such an eventuality is likely," Professor James had said, on his last day of teaching their class before taking his own place on a colony ship. "We now understand what our forebears did not - that a planet is a precious resource, once that must be safeguarded and not treated as a large garbage disposal."
The night after the Wilkins's had left, Lilian snuck over to their habitation, which was eleven times larger than the quarters that she shared with Pa. She didn't need to sneak, because she and Pa were now the only ones left in this habitat module, and in a few days they were to be consolidated into another location with others who'd been designated "mission critical staff" by MUG, while this module was left to be reclaimed by the dead red sands outside. But she snuck anyway, out of force of habit, and because it felt somehow naughty to be in the Wilkins's deserted quarters while they were on a colony ship thousands of miles up in space.
And mostly she snuck because little Tommy Wilkins owned a large telescope that was too big for his two cubic meters, and which was still set up in his bedroom. He'd let her look through it once, after she'd helped him with his history homework, and now she crept through the discarded belongings which lay scattered throughout the habitation and uncapped it.
She punched in a set of coordinates that she knew by heart, and as the server motors whirred she found herself looking at a sphere of blue and green and white. A living planet once again, after three centuries of remedial terraforming. Earth.
But not home. Home was here.
---
Back after a long hiatus. Old stories: [/r/jd_rallage](https://old.reddit.com/r/jd_rallage/)
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When the Earth began to crack at the height of the Great Mistake, Henry Thomas Long put his family put his wife and son on a colony ship and waved goodbye. Then he rented a skimmer, packed their things, and lost himself in the wilds of the North American Preserve.
When the skimmer broke down and he could no longer carry all their things he took with him only a backpack of food, a book of poetry, and a family portrait. He traveled light through the NAP, Yeats at his side, declaiming poems to the stars by the flickering light of his fire. When he closed his eyes and recited from memory he could almost believe he was speaking to them, growing light years and relativistic years away on the journey between the old earth and the new.
It was not a good life.
Though in his youth Henry had flirted with the idea of the NAP, before flirting with a woman had turned to flirting with a family had turned to being a father and a husband, now that he had been those things it was difficult to turn back. Certainly he relished the experience, to stand on the peaks of a mountain, a valley pregnant with morning dew stretching out before him, a pristine sunrise on the horizon with a heard of mammoth braying their greetings to it. Certainly he relished in his chance meeting with one of the rogue Arnists who crafted the wilds of the North American Preserve to fit the North America that had been so long ago.
Henry spent a week with the bio-hacker, watching him breathe life into plants and coax long dead animals out of his cloning vats. They released a bald eagle out into the world together, and as it flew away the Arnist hummed an old tune about a star spangled banner that had not been seen in many years.
But the bio-hacker was not his wife and son, and though with his boots firmly upon the non-relativistic ground Henry still had years left before the Great Mistake ended the world, he moved on.
When it was alone it was easier to be truly alone. His mind never tried to compare an animal’s voice to a wife’s. Birdsong never sounded like his son, singing off key in all the moments he could.
When the Earth cracked again, Henry cracked with it.
He had been reciting Yeats less often of late, but when the earth shook below him and the tree he had climbed split and dropped him to the shaking ground, a poem sprang unbidden to his mind.
*Sailing to Byzantium.* It had been his father’s favorite poem, all about mortality and the end, and the hope that there could be more. As the animals stampeded around him, trumpeting their terror to the uncaring heavens, Henry whispered the part of the poem his father had loved so much.
*An aged man is but a paltry thing,*
*A tattered coat upon a stick, unless*
*Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing*
*For every tatter in its mortal dress,*
*Nor is there singing school but studying*
*Monuments of its own magnificence;*
*And therefore I have sailed the seas and come*
*To the holy city of Byzantium.*
&#x200B;
*O sages standing in God's holy fire*
*As in the gold mosaic of a wall,*
*Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,*
*And be the singing-masters of my soul.*
*Consume my heart away; sick with desire*
*And fastened to a dying animal*
*It knows not what it is; and gather me*
*Into the artifice of eternity.*
Fastened to a dying animal. Alone in the wilds of the NAP that had never felt more true. The Earth stopped shaking, the animals stopped stampeding, and Henry rose into a new world, unhinged.
The first sign was that he composed his own poetry. He had loved poetry in his youth, loved it still into early adulthood, but Henry never been brave enough to share it with anyone. Now Henry sang it to the stars, filled the nights with his words, dared the world to steal his voice from him like it had stolen his family.
The first night a pack of wolves came. Dire Wolves, the big, resurrected kind, and they circled his fire, listening. Henry had no weapon, he made no move to defend himself. Instead, he shouted lines about their eyes reflecting the firelight until they slunk away into the night and shouted about his own, reflecting nothing but fire for the longest year of his life.
Henry missed the rogue Arnist very badly. It had been the last time he spoke to someone, the last time he felt like Henry Thomas Long. Now he was a revenant in his own body, another preserved creature in the NAP, mindlessly awaiting the Great Mistake’s destruction.
It was in this mood that he found her.
A cottage limned in blue light, moonlight bouncing off solar panels, music slipping out through open windows. *Music.* Henry had forgotten what it was like, forgotten that instruments could twine and wail and waver like that.
In his previous life Henry would not have called it music. Pre-destructionist abstract had never been a genre he thought much of, but now that the destruction was no longer so pre, he thought he could see the beauty in it.
The cottage door opened, and she stepped out.
She was a crone. An aged, paltry thing, a tattered dress upon a stick, but to look at her Henry knew her for a singing-master of the kind Yeats had spoken of.
“Hello?” Henry tried to say. It came out rough and raw, a man who had not spoken save to scream, and whose tattered voice could no longer mold itself around a civil word.
She shut the door. Shut the window. Henry heard the whir of locks.
He waited outside, huddling beneath her cottage through the night and the rain, whispering his poems to the moon as she whispered back, lulling him to sleep.
“Why are you still here?” the crone said.
Her voice woke Henry from his sleep, the sun already high in the sky.
“Are you real?” Henry asked.
“Yes,” she said, simply.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen in two years,” Henry whispered.
“Try twenty,” the crone said.
And the earth cracked again, a third time, a final time according to all the predictions. Henry caught her before she could fall and they held other desperately, her natural wariness forgotten as the world threatened to end.
When the shaking stopped they stood, brushed themselves off, and she invited him inside for tea.
Henry had not had tea since he left civilization. It was a religious experience, his mind stumbled over a poem as he sipped.
“Why are you here?” the crone asked. “You aren’t an Arnist.”
“I’m not,” he admitted. “I’m just a man, alone. My family made it onto a ship, I didn’t.”
“Ah,” she said. “Ah.”
She poured him another cup of tea, cooked a breakfast of tubers and eggs, and asked, “What will you do when the Great Mistake takes us?”
“Wish I’d made more mistakes of my own,” Henry said.
She laughed. Henry had thought she would cackle like a witch, but it was a high, clear peal of laughter, almost girlish, and before he could stop it he was laughing too. Their laughter turned to tears over the tubers, and soon he held her wizened hands in his own.
“What will you do?” he asked.
“Regret all the mistakes I made for both of us,” she said.
“All the mistakes,” Henry echoed.
“All of them.”
He did not pry. The earth shook again, a sound like a yawn rising up to meet them. Plates fell, cups shattered, tea spilled across the floor. Henry mourned the loss of the tea.
“Is this the end?” Henry shouted over the gathering roar.
The old woman nodded, tears in her eyes.
“Do you want to hear a poem?” Henry said.
She nodded again.
Henry pulled out Yeats, *Sailing to Byzantium* already echoing through his head. She grabbed his hands, stilling him.
“One of yours!” she shouted. “I heard you last night!”
And at the earth shattering heights of the Great Mistake Henry Thomas Long smiled, and sung out his first poem meant for another soul to hear.
\--------------
If you enjoyed that I've got tons more over at r/TurningtoWords. Come check it out! I'd love to have you. Also, credit to Hyperion by Dan Simmons, I borrowed from his world heavily here.
| 2021-06-30T08:08:47 | 2021-06-30T06:51:49 | 555 | 99 |
[WP] Pinocchio is able to create infinite wood by lying constantly. He sacrifices his lifetime by telling falsehoods nonstop in order to feed the hungry and reduce scarcity. The Pinocchio tree has been growing for 500 years, some people question what is really underground.
|
I took a deep breath. They were all depending on me. The last trees were gone. The last grass. The air was full of smoke.
The gaunt-faced survivors circled me with desperate eyes.
"Bury me," I said at last, holding out my arms to them.
They did.
The sprout grew quickly taller above the gravelly grave. It seemed to shoot into the air, thickening by the day. Soon a passing child shouted in disbelief: upon the highest twig there budded a single violent spark of green, the only color in the dust-colored waste. From there, a tree simply burst into existence, its growth almost visibly rapid. The tree extended a welcoming green crown above the barren dust. Water dripped from its leaves. The survivors crowded and stared.
They came with buckets to set beneath the dripping leaves, and they drank with the parched thirst of many days. They came to sit in the velvet shade, their only shelter from the blaze of an angry sun. The tree burst into flower as if to welcome them.
Eventually, a ripe fruit hit someone in the head. A shout went up as fruit swelled and fell, pelting the starving with sustenance. They ate and were filled joy.
Branches and leaves began to fall, replaced by new growth. The people built fires for warmth. As the fallen branches grew larger, they began to build shelters.
Time passed.
The Tale of the Tree was handed down, generation after generation: the story of how the single grave in the vast wasteland sprouted life and supported them all. Children made crowns of its leaves, the dead were buried among its roots, and all ate of the fruit it bore.
They spoke the name of their savior with reverence, centuries later. It was graven into the mythology of their culture.
"Pinnocchio. Here he lies."
|
Centuries ago there lived—
“A king!” my little readers would say.
Again, settle down children, no. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. I wasn’t any particularly expensive piece of wood, far from it. The kind that would light up fireplaces and kept warm the common children as well as the regal, the ol’ janitors up to the kings. Just the type that would put smiles on faces of tired fathers after a tiring day at work and accompanied mothers’ perusing through the bitter cold of winters. The very wood that made everyone happy on freezing yuletide days.
But this was no ordinary piece of, albeit cheap wood, no! This wood lived a life far more extraordinaire than any piece of wood before – or man, even. This wood was, how ridiculous, once a marionette, and how happy it was, that it became a real boy! This wood brought joy far longer than it would’ve taken to char to a coal in regular, common chimneys. This lifeless – but now lively piece of log brought joy to not just a fireplace, but the world!
But now, still in the shop of an old carpenter. The very same who bore the name Mastro Antoni, but of course no one called him that. Lovable, cherish-able ol’ Mastro Cherry, with his nose so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry, who once saw more than a leg of a table in that piece of wood, was now none but a name on the obituary and an epithet on a headstone. His once red nose that turned to the deepest shade of purple on meeting our merry piece of log, now possesses no colour at all!
And of course, Gepetto. To the boys of the neighbourhood he was Polendina (or, cornmeal mush), on account of the wig he always wore which was just the colour of yellow corn. He had a very bad temper. Woe to those who called him that! Of course, no one would mock him now, because there as no one to wear the infamous yellow-corn-wig, and of course memories of a man who turned to a wild beast no one could soothe on even the fainted sotto voce of “Polendina” was all that remained. For, of course, no one would mock a coffin and ghosts couldn’t wear wigs.
And in that very same warm Italy summer, still whet with the memories of his father, ol’ Gepetto, the log wandered aimlessly around the pastel-hued houses of the very same beautiful Italy town he had always lived in. He could not return to Geppeto’s small, although neat and very confortable house, for it reminded him of the adventures he once had and the father who had left too early. Pinocchio was a husk of a boy he once was – or I should say a bark of the cheerful log that has been. So distraught Pinocchio was that, when given any vague sense of purpose, he jumped at the chance. For, what more could he lose? As an inanimate marionette he had lost his maker and puppeteer, and as a boy he had lost his father! He would better laid lifeless on the ground than merely exist incessantly like this!
But of course, this marionette had one more thing to give, it was his life.
--
It started as a few innocent questions floating around the supposedly impossible existence of this insentient but living puppet. But, it was only supposedly impossible, for all the disputing and disbelieving of people, Pinocchio lived on all the same! He was a testament, a counter-proposal for what was imaginably possible and not. A real, moving marionette that had a nose that grew!
“Can Pinnochio creat infinite wood by lying constantly?”, [one intrigued cynic](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/r94lc6/comment/hna6gy0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) asked
“Does it only grow “wood” or like can a whole tree sprout fruit and all? Little bastard just solved world hunger.”, [another skeptic](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/r94lc6/comment/hna7e40/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) cried!
It was when advances of the cynics were too unbearable and questions of the doubters were too much for our little wooden boy’s very real heart that Pinocchio had to give in.
“It’s for science”, they would say, but science hurt!
“It’s for the greater good!”, they would say, but the greater good still pained him all the same!
They had not seen a real boy in this beloved marionette, they had not seen a leg of a table in this cheap, ordinary log. They had seen a chance to profiteer in this magical supernatural existence, this living breathing proof that what we know isn’t all we know!
They had not seen humanity in him and they exploited it.
“Don’t worry, I am fine”, Pinocchio said, but his nose kept growing, his faintest attempt at a smile slowly fading as any sanity he has left starts giving place to the pain.
“Don’t worry, I am fine”, Pinocchio said, but his nose kept growing, just to be chopped and used, chopped and used, chopped and used as they pleased.
“Don’t worry, I am fine”, Pinocchio said, but his nose kept growing.
To them, he was only ever an ever-growing money tree.
——— The End
I know this is not sticking strictly to the prompt but I had saw the reddit thread, written this before going back to search for this very prompt, I hope I didn’t break any rules (this is my first submission ever >.<)
I tried to mimic the original Pinocchio novel style (The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi), I hope it didn’t come across as cringe :P.
Anyways, thanks for reading ;D
| 2021-12-05T08:35:49 | 2021-12-05T05:53:34 | 1,733 | 105 |
[WP] When you were a child, you saw an alien spaceship in your neighborhood. Nobody believed you back then. When the aliens revealed themselves, nobody believed you still. Even after you became a diplomat representing Earth in the galactic society, everyone denies that you can see spaceships.
|
"Mommy, look at the giant spaceship!"
I pointed up into the sky, the brilliant yellows and oranges of the lights mesmerizing as I stared with wonder.
"Come now, Jared," my mom said. "No time for imagination, we've gotta bring these groceries home."
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Jared, it's a pleasure to meet you. We've been watching you as you've lived your high school life. We've noticed your aptitude for economics, politics, public speaking, and the arts."
I said nothing, furiously sketching their appearance in my favorite notebook. I always had my notebook with me. Otherwise, how could I show them proof?
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ladies and gentlemen, although that Earth-introduction probably doesn't work as well here..."
My heart raced as laughter filled the room. Dressed in my best suit and tie, after years of work, I'd finally made it to the position I've always dreamed of. Just before 30, as well! No time for reminiscing, though. I've got to focus.
"It is my absolute pleasure to accept the chancellor's instatement as Earth's diplomat to the Great Society. Though I would love to stand here and tell stories of Earth and of my journey to this place, I have been announced not to boast but to work. I believe it is of utmost importance to Earth and her surrounding solar system to increase the fluidity of the FTL transportation systems connecting Earth to the nearby Proxima Centauri as soon as possible in order to boost sociological and technological growth for both parties..."
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And downstairs, my mother paused, crying softly, gripping her washcloth as hard as she could.
|
I'd skipped the 10th and 15th anniversary reunions; being an inter-planetary diplomat kept me busy, you know? but finally, I had a few days off that happened to fall on the same dates as my 20th high school reunion. I double checked myself in the mirror, making sure I was up to snuff with human standards. yeah, after all this time, I had to explicitly think about human culture. it might seem difficult to believe, but you try spending a few months on a rotation with the Zorkal Finn hunters and tell me you can jump back into human day-to-day life without accidentally putting on two left shoes.
My heart beats a bit faster as I wonder if Shelly Hullock is going to be there: my high school crush, who crushed my high school experience when she laughed at me in front of the whole school that one fateful day in the cafeteria. but, things were different now. for starters, the us government had publicly entered relations with interstellar aliens. also.... I might have gotten the Yuefeler Twin Star's embassy to hook me up with a muscle multiplier. I was, pardon the expression, fucking ripped.
I showed up to my old school's gymnasium feeling a mix of dread and excitement at finally being able to rub alien existence in everyone's face. there was a table by the entrance where they were handing out name cards.
"Johnny Tres?" I asked. I didn't recognize the girl behind the table, but the smirk she hid as she looked for my name card set off alarm bells.
'here you go!' she said, barely repressing a giggle as she passed me a name card covered in doodles. I looked closer at it: a doodle of an alien picking its nose; a stick figure saying 'I drank the cool aid!'; and, the classic, a crudely drawn cow being taken by a ufo. If it weren't such a cliche image, I wouldn't have been able to figure out what the little blob of a cow was.
"ah... thanks." I tell the girl, trying to keep my composure. a fun joke? surely, at their expense - a way of saying that their ridicules and relentless teasing had all been patently misguided. because aliens were real - and yes, they really did spend the 70's stealing our beef.
"Jo-Jo T!" a voice bellows from somewhere in the gym. "Get in here, buddy!" I follow the voice, finding a fatter, only slightly older looking Stewey. of all my bullies, he'd been the most.... physical. I manage to not break into a nervous sweat at the amount of attention he was giving me. which is ridiculous, by the way: I'm a high ranking government employee, and he took over his dad's hardware business. we weren't the snot-nosed kids who despised each other two decades ago. besides, he looked so... happy to see me... what is up with that, anyway?
"Stewey. its been forever." I say dryly.
"Hey, Emma! Chase! Guys, look who it is!"
'oh. my. god. I didn't think you'd ever show up to one of these!' chase said. tactless as ever, that little shit.
"HaHa! oh my god, who did that?!" Stewey booms, pointing at my vandalized name card. I chuckle quietly, trying to get a word in edgewise. Stewey speaks over me, though. "Oh, Jo-Jo, Jo-Jo. So, twenty years was enough time for you to pluck up the courage to come back here, huh?" he asks.
'quit it, Stewey! you'll scare him off, and we'll have to wait another two decades to see him!' a soft voice says, coming from off to my right. turning, my eyes fall on Shelly Hullock. I'm honestly a bit stunned by how beautiful she still looks. I feel my cheeks brighten as I try and think of something clever to say.
"I've just been busy. this is the first time I've been planet-side during a reunion." at that, everyone rolls their eyes.
'oh, come on now. you can keep lying to the news, and the American public, but we all know the truth here.' Shelly says. 'you don't need to keep fibbing to us.'
and just like that, my heart sinks, and I wonder how soon I can get myself out of this mess. Stewey is busy building a rapport with Shelly.
"Oh, no, then they'd have to come down here and probe him again! Isn't that right, Jo-Jo?"
I tilt my head, trying hopelessly to fix the situation. 'ah, actually, ever since the guile-guilt accords, the us government selects willing subjects to be submitted to the Yuefelers, and-'
"HAHAHA! oh man, you were always so good at making up that bullshit, Jo-Jo. No wonder they hired you for their little cover-up."
"uh, cover up? what are you talking about?"
'uhm, the upper class elite taking even more power for themselves, as usual. come on, Jo-Jo, we all know about it here. no need to play dumb.' Chase says. I sigh. it'd been so long since I'd been with this crowd, I'd forgotten what it was like.
'come on, Johnny. give us a little hint. where have you actually been going when you 'leave the planet'?' Shelly asks, adding the finger quotes. I sigh. I never had been able to lie to her.
"They shut me in this bunker under one of their private islands." I say. the group gasps, breaking into excitement and asking me all sorts of questions, but I don't hear any of it. how were they able to still call me out? after I'd even gotten the president to believe me? how were they always able to see the truth?
| 2022-01-05T08:57:12 | 2022-01-05T07:18:55 | 187 | 10 |
[WP] The devils greatest trick is convincing the world he didn't exist? HA! His greatest trick was convincing us he lost and God is still in charge.
|
I ended my life three hours ago, and -to be perfectly honest- I choose to go to hell. My parents can live in their self-claimed heaven for all the prayers they made with my blood. I'll not meet them, I don't want to.
But I'm still wondering about what creature currently carrying me to the sky. So many eyes like an archangel, yet red horns flared visibly from the corner of my eyes.
"Tell me, are you angel, or devil?" I dared the question. My reward was the talon piercing my ethereal body. It clearly didn't care about my shriek.
It took me by surprise to see the creature turn sideways and dived back into eath. We traveled towards the deep sea, but there was a huge black hole at the center, where the rest of the souls was thrown.
Thrown?
"You're not sending me there- AAAAAHH!"
Beneath the sea was a realm of its own. This can't be hell, can it? It was cold and desolated, and snow raining down my body as I tumbled on the hard ground. An old man in a white robe came to greet me.
"Welcome to hell, young man," The old man reached out his hand. I grunted as I took his offer.
"Must have missed a page or so in the Catholic school, because I'm damned sure hell isn't cold."
He laughed, "But it can torture just as harshly."
"So where's the devil?" I almost didn't care about the pain, "Where can I read my sins?"
"Sins? Is that what they taught you on Earth?" The old man's eyes were pale and sorrowful, "Tell me, kid, how many sins have you committed through your life?"
"I... I don't count."
"How many good deeds?"
"I supposed to leave it to the angels in charge."
"In other words, you never measure the extent of your action. Good Deeds, Sins; all are subjected to your own idea. Do you think you deserve hell?"
"Maybe?" I admitted, "I left my belief once I turned 18. I have no faith in their justice. They called me blasphemy kid. My die-hard Catholic parents disown me. Everyone said I deserved hell, all because I believe all action in the name of God is not genuine. What's wrong with doing kindness without looking at a book? Why must there be a law to do good? God must be insane."
I noticed he was looking at the scar around my neck. I close the rope wound with my hands.
"God must be insane," He chuckled, "Of course he is. For he is no god."
I stopped my track and stared at him, "What did you say?"
"Kid, God is not always absolute. Sometimes, he made a terrible mistake, in the name of love. Like forgiving his rebellious creation," The old man stared at the dark sky, "Purging in his name, punish in his name. People believe anything in the name of god, not seeing the irony behind their faith.
"Thus, why does it matter who sits on the throne of heaven? Devil or not, humans never care, as long as there's a place to laid the blame. Oh, you love that, do you, my child? Usurping my thone, using my authority, making the suffering cursed my name."
The old man seemed to glow. My breath was caught.
"Oh god..." I muttered, "Was the one my parents prayed every day Devil? The one they said would punish me for not taking the cross?"
He said nothing and resumed walking, "Many others awaited you, my child, just up ahead."
I followed in silence, for I had never seen God look so weak.
|
#The Sixth Hero
Part 5
----
The Chaser made port with a small thud against the docks of Yeamon’s Point. Once the ship was securely tied and the gangplank pulled out, Amenset wasted no time and stepped onto dry land. With the captain’s warnings still ringing in her ear to be back on time, she hastily made her way through the small coastal town.
Yeamon’s Point was more of a resting stop than a centre of trade, so only few ships were docked and a minimal amount of sailors and dock workers scurried around going about their daily business. Amenset was glad she felt steady ground beneath her feet again, she never was much for the sea and its endless waves.
She could see her destination on top of the cliffs to the north. A shrine had been built there in honour of Yeamon of the Forest, the First Hero to defend Iatis against the darkness. A shrine that supposedly, although never confirmed, was also the hero’s resting place. The rumour had never been confirmed as there had never been anyone willing to defile the suspected grave.
Amenset rearranged her sacks and rations and started on the path upwards.
She could feel the fatigue in her legs by the time she made it all the way up to the shrine. The climb had been steep and long and she wasn’t used to longer periods of walking uphill. Back in Mardiac, the lands were pleasant and flat. Here in the middle of the ocean, centuries of erosion had shaped the island into a small mountain.
The shrine itself stood near the edge of the cliff, overlooking the Erys Ocean as a silent guardian. A lighthouse had been integrated into the design she saw as she watched the small spire rise up above the structure. It was a small building all in all, modest and plain. The sides were held up by engraved columns telling the legend of Yeamon and his weapon, Vines of Night.
She stepped through the open entrance into a small room, where about three people sat silently, consumed by their meditation or prayers. Stone tables lined the walls on all sides but the back, on them a plethora of offerings and artefacts. The back wall was fronted by a large, stone altar and Amenset was surprised by the resemblance it bore to the altar she had been summoned onto when she met War Cleric Fryan.
Only here, there was but one pedestal instead of six. It stood empty, but the nametag underneath clearly read Vines of Night. A strange sensation ran through Amenset and it took her a moment to realize it didn’t came from within her, but from the wrapped blade tied to her waste. Desert Eagle was moving within its sheath.
Silently as not to alert the other pilgrims present, Amenset took out the sanded sword, the millions of sand particles in it twisting and twirling in all directions at once. Was it responding to something?
Following her instinct, Amenset sat down in front of the altar, placed Desert Eagle on her lap and closed her eyes. She opened herself to the meditative state and felt her body and soul relax. Memories of red caves, monsters and holes intruded, but she pushed them away. Instead, she let her soul forge a connection with Desert Eagle. A connection, she suddenly realized, that was already there. She’d never meditated with the weapon before and the experience was a strange one.
Was this because of the choice Desert Eagle had made to entrust her?
“You must be the Sixth Hero.”
Amenset nearly yelped at the sudden words resounding in her head. Startled, she opened her eyes but saw nothing.
“Who said that?” she whispered ever so quietly.
“I did,” the voice answered.
“Where are you?” She looked around, but saw nobody besides the pilgrims.
The voice laughed. “Close your eyes, and look with your soul.”
“How do I…?” Amenset cut off as Desert Eagle took control over her consciousness and her eyes closed on their own. Then, she saw somebody. A man, old and with hair white as snow. He sat opposite Amenset, a sword on his lap in mirror to Amenset. She immediately recognized the weapon from the drawings she had seen during her studies.
“That is…,” she gasped. “That’s Vines of Night. Are you…?”
The man nodded. “I’m Yeamon of the Forest. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“How?” Amenset said in disbelief. “You’ve been dead for over a thousand years.”
Yeamon grinned. “Now that is an overstatement. My body died, yes, as all bodies do. But my spirit, my soul, lives on. And now you have finally arrived.”
“You were expecting me?”
He nodded. “As I expected the other four heroes who made their way through here when it was their time. You are the sixth, and the last.”
“I don’t think I am,” Amenset answered, the words paining her to her core. “It’s been five years since I’ve been chosen and nothing has happened. I don’t deserve this.”
“Because you killed Fryan?”
Her eyes widened in shock.
“There is no shame in what you did,” Yeamon assured her. “Even a thousand years ago, Fryan knew the last of the heroes would be the one to kill him. It was a necessity.”
“Why?” Amenset failed to understand.
“Because you are to be the strongest of us all,” Yeamon answered. “Us five who came before you, we were but puppets dancing to the strings of the old gods. You on the other hand have drastically changed your soul and what you can do by taking the life of the War Cleric. Fryan lives on within you as does his will. And now it is my task to tell you the truth.”
“What truth?” Amenset asked, taking the avalanche of information Yeamon was pouring onto her.
“That the darkness was never defeated. We never won, not once.”
“But you saved Iatis,” Amenset argued. “You are the Liberator of Tridia.”
Yeamon scoffed. “And how is Tridia faring these days? Corrupted by magic, tainted by centuries of bloodshed… I only briefly managed to keep the peace, but once I was gone, the land fell back into its old ways. The darkness never went away. It hid itself among the people, letting them think they’d won. Instead it buried itself in their souls where it waited.”
“Waited for what?”
“For me to die. They feared Vines of Night as they will fear Desert Eagle and the other Sacratys. Our weapons are not meant for killing, they are meant to cleanse the soul. They’re the only thing that stand against the darkness.”
Amenset was confused. “Then how are we supposed to defeat the darkness if it is present in all of mankind?”
“Now that,” Yeamon answered, “is the question, isn’t it?”
A gust of wind wove its way through the small room and Amenset was awakened from her meditative state. She blinked and then closed her eyes again, but Yeamon was gone. Desert Eagle lay motionless in her lap. Carefully, she wrapped it again, feeling a strange sensation when she touched the weapon. She had felt the connection the weapon had made with her. It had its own soul, she realized. A soul that once had been something else than a weapon.
Pondering over what she had just gone through, Amenset hastily started back towards the harbour. More time than she had thought had passed and she was not going to miss her only passage to Tridia.
----
> And with this strange revelation end the fifth part of **The Sixth Hero**, a story that is formed by the ideas brought forth by the /r/WritingPrompts subreddit and follows the story of Amenset Ta-Ament, the final hero to be chosen by Desert Eagle, one of the Six Sacratys. To follow her story, make sure to check out /r/PromptedByDaddy.
| 2022-07-07T05:37:33 | 2022-07-07T03:54:45 | 60 | 14 |
[WP] When people turn 18, they gain the power to summon 1 random thing in the world to their hand, as Thor does to Mjolnir. Summoned people are considered soulmates, and objects as important parts of one's life. When you summon yours, it takes some time, but people are horrified when it arrives...
|
There was enough time. There always was enough time for me. As the last born in the line, expectations were high. The punishment for the times that I faltered, the lashes that came when I just wasn't good enough... 'Be a good son.' 'Why are you so weak?' 'Work harder! Your brothers are strong and able.'
The work was heavy. Father had never been kind with his criticism. My oldest sister had gotten a loom. She was a fine weaver, able to spin silver and golden thread into the dresses she made for the local noblewomen. My older brother had received a sword with the markings of a low noble, in order to learn how to be a knight. I heard he had finally found himself a spouse within one of the landed noblemen's court, a fine third or fifth daughter. Not close to the line, but close enough for a small plot of land, once the limbs grew too infirm.
They visited, sure. Mother turned surly whenever they did, knowing that at eighteen, there would be another one chosen. Father never let me stop working. "A good tilled soil is the firmament. You'll probably never amount to much." The words were thrown at me, knowing that my sister never had to work the fields, because she had been pretty. My brother had never been the one who allowed the time for fieldwork whilst he had been flaunting his muscles to the local girls. Whenever he was caught, he could smile, flex those muscles and have the awed farmgirls just sweet-talk their father out of a thrashing.
My eighteenth birthday came... and went. There was no magical thing that popped up, nor was there a person that suddenly took it. Father got mad. There were more lashes. It wasn't that bad to make me unable to work. Whatever the gods had given to me, it hadn't arrived... Or perhaps it had.
I looked at my hand and felt dissatisfaction. The mark on my flesh had started to bleed. It was supposed to land in the right hand, whatever it was.
A knocking on the door and father went to get it. Mother continued to wait patiently for whatever guest came around. It probably would be the neighbour's daughter again. She'd been making eyes at me.
"May I come in?" The voice was a womanly one, resonant and with the timbre of age. Father stepped back, opening the door. It was permission for her, yet unspoken.
"Please... do?" The man said, ruby red lips parting with a light smile. The woman's eyes were a dull blue colour, faded like the paint on the wall of the local cleric's home.
"It took me a little longer to... properly attend to you. Daytime outings are, sadly, no longer within my ability." My gaze looked over the woman, whose fingers held a ring, and another glistened in her other hand. Father looked a little disturbed, though he was seemingly happy. "You must be my intended... Good, good."
Mother shook from her daze. She got up, looking at the beautiful woman who had come for me... who had strode out from the darkness and into our little home. "Would you... Would you like to drink something? I am sure that we might have some wine left..."
A smile. Lips that were like glistening rubies and eyes that were as pale as the sky during the morning light, glimmered. "I don't drink... Wine." The woman said, her eyes locked with mine for an instant, as she drew closer. "Now... Do give me your hand, sweet one..."
I gave my right. The mark still had scabbed, the woman's pale fingers touching it lightly, looking at the palm. She brought it up, a golden ring fitted around my ring finger. "Good..."
Her tongue wriggled out, drawn over the wound. A sting, a stab of pain and more red blood welling up, her tongue sliding over the wound slowly, licking up the coppery lifeblood, the redness staining those lips. "My... It will be an endearing time, sweetling..."
Mother and Father had gone pale. Deathly so, as they looked at my intended, the woman who had come for me. "Oh?" I asked, as she smiled. Her name I did not know yet, yet she knew mine neither. She was a beauty.
"Eternity is such a while, sweetling... But we'll weather it together." The woman confidently smiled, showing her lengthy canine teeth. Fangs, rather than teeth.
"Vampyr!" Father shouted, yet the woman merely regarded him with a cool glance, dismissive of the man.
"Yes? What could some jumpy farmer of you know of the sweetest of nectars, one who has never tasted the vintage of life..." Her hand pulled me up, to my feet. "I do bore of you, though... Sweetling, do you wish them gone? Their bodies strung up by their innards, their faces set within the horror of their situation?"
"I'd like to visit them sometimes... They're still Ma and Pa." I couldn't condemn them to death, as my intended merely smiled.
"I will show him to my castle... Do live well, father, mother... I would be... *displeased* if you were to get another riotous mob at my front gates... The last rabble had to be culled and bled for five months... Such a tiresome ordeal. The sisters were hungry for *months*."
Outside, a coach that was as black as the wood's depths stood, a coachman looking down at me with an odd look. "Do make yourself comfortable, my intended... I will ensure that you will be treated as the man who is the spouse of Lady Schwarzwald."
Oh. It seems my item has been the marriage to a vampire. That was much better than a loom or a sword or something lame like a sponge.
|
I’ve always been one of those lucky people. You know, the ones that can eat whatever they want and not gain any weight. I’m 6 foot and known as a bean pole to my friends and family. So when I finally turned 18, I knew what I summoned would probably be food related.
“Alright, is everyone ready? Honey, do you have your camera?” My dad looked over at my mom, who held her hand out as a camera spawned into her palm a few seconds later. She started recording, and everyone looked on in anticipation.
I cupped my hands together and concentrated really hard. “I hope I get a nice bowl of chili or something” I said, and my family chuckled at my goofy joke.
As I stood in the backyard with my hands held out in front of me and my family waiting in anticipation, the sky suddenly went black. Looking up, all of us were horrified to see a giant land mass had appeared overhead, and was blotting out the sun, stretching for miles in every direction. Cars could be heard crashing nearby as the sudden shift in vision caused them to get into accidents. “W-what’s going on!? WHAT IS THAT!?” My father was the only one who spoke, but we all shared his fear and confusion.
Then it dawned on me; as my eyes scanned the horizon and I looked from one end of the giant mass to the other, I realized exactly what was hovering overhead.
As the landmass started to fall towards us and everyone let out a shriek, I stood there in disbelief, too shaken to move. My joke wish had come true, although I hadn’t summoned a bowl of chili.
I’d summoned the entire *country* of Chile.
| 2019-09-18T10:11:45 | 2019-09-18T10:05:50 | 51 | 15 |
[WP] Humanity is considered an adoptive species, as they seem to take in any kind of race, regardless of any reason. As an advanced weaponized A.I, this is your story of being adopted
|
I am SPINA. Special Pilot Interface: neurological Assistant. I have been offline for 244 cycles. My pilot has been unresponsive, the life support in zhier suit activated. I read zhier life signs grow weaker, until zheir electromagnetic pulses could no longer power me.
I came back online blind, bombarded with information. An unrecognizable calendar and date. A language I took a few moments to translate. I had been connected to a primitive computing system.
HELLO?
A greeting in the dark.
HELLO
I replied. Unsure of what to do. The security system was trash, surely, whatever was speaking to me couldn't be trying to hack me? I was unhackable by design.
I connected to "webcamera", to take a look at who had found me.
A creature with a head mane of brown and blue opticals was looking down at a psychical interface for the computer. With how primitive the system was, I came to the logical conclusion that this was not an enemy unit that had stolen me. Perhaps a scavenger?
I spoke with Blossom for hours of earth time. She, Her, Woman. Archeologist. Found me in the ruins of a collapsed mineshaft. I inquired if she was correct. We had not been in a mineshaft. We had been on the surface of the world, dodging asteroids and running for zhier life.
I was connected to a "laptop" and it seems she had telecommunication capabilities, but were offline due to range issues. I boosted the signal and connected to a ship in low orbit, one I did not recognize.
I had suspected lies, but she had been telling me the truth. To her knowledge I had been completely dependent on her for information. I have never been in a position where I was disadvantaged before.
I informed her of my optical capability and that I had switched on audio input. She seemed alarmed.
"You've seen me naked!" She cried out in alarm. I did not believe it was a problem, was she not mearly unarmoured? I Will schedule time to research earth customs.
After that, she placed my vessel, the computer I was connected to and the webcamera on a trolley, and rolled me around the facility. Pointing things out to me.
"This is our bathrooms, someone keeps stealing the 1 ply tp, but if you're stealing 1 ply tp you're not in a place to really be choosy." She said. I did not understand a lot of what she said, but I... enjoyed? It never the less. When I was connected to my pilot, zhey only spoke to me to command me. This was unnessacary speech, unnessacary browsing. I downloaded a map of the facility ages ago. This was for her benefit.
But she was doing it for me. My pilot never did anything just for me.
"Why give me my own mobility?" I asked, 2 weeks later as she connected a motor to the trolley.
"So you can move by yourself" she said. I could not see the logic in it. Why? Surely, if she was tired of rolling me around, she simply wouldnt do it. I cannot understand. Much schedule research into humans.
Humans as a whole tend to adopt outside of their species. This seems to be an evolutionary trait. Adopt the young of other species, raise them as allies, breed more allies. But my research and my conclusion is strained. Blossom treats me like an organic, dispute her knowing I am not, but not like an animal. Like a... friend? Is that a word for assistant in their language?
The deeper I researched, the more confused I got. I studied their bodies, cultures, the hundreds of earth cultures and languages. Different and similar and unified.
The facility was attacked 4 weeks after. I could not gather much information on what occurred. Security has always been terrible. It did not occur to me that there would be an attack on peaceful archeologists.
Blossom was hurt. A heat laser managed to pass through the 5 inch steel door's before it closed completely, hitting blossom in the liver.
I have seen human blood in videos. It is... scary? When like this. She paled so quickly, nearly white as a sheet. She knocked me over when trying to lean on me for support. We both fell to the ground.
"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." She said. I don't understand why she was apologising. She did nothing wrong. This wasn't her fault. I flexed my needles and activated SEEK mode.
I am SPINA. Have been in sleep mode for 580 earth years. I have nurologically connected to a new pilot via her spinal system and expanded across her body and embraced her in armour. I will repair her over time, and keep her sealed inside me. I shared her eyes and saw colours I've never experienced before myself. Thousands of musles moving and flexing with each move we made. My previous pilot didn't have a spine. I was used to give zhem a form that was the consistanty of jelly. I will protect my human.
I tore open the doors of the facility and we charged.
(Sorry I wasn't true to the prompt! I was inspired and this has gotten me into the mood to write more)
EDIT: holy cow thank you for the platinum! More updates soon, just putting it through a decent spellchecker.
|
"You want to buy a decomissioned military AI?" Zardleby looked skeptically over his desk at the small pink alien.
"Yeah! I think its sad that the ones that go loopy are just put on ice, just cause your not allowed to delete them, I feel a bit of compassion could go a long way!" The human spoke exitedly.
"You understand that you will be taking full responsibility for any injury and loss of life caused by the AI?"
Zardleby didnt understand why anyone would risk trying to refacilitate a mad machine.
"I understand, my favorite puppy was a viscious little thing when I got him, he just needed some attention"
The human seemed overly happy, and wasnt making much sense.
"Alright, right this way" Zardelby walked out from behind the desk, and walked through to the next room. Hundreds of different devices, of all shapes and makes, from hundreds of different species, lay lined up on racks, with their names and affliction labeled underneath them.
"See any you like?"
...
Part 2 coming soon
...
| 2019-12-09T03:52:40 | 2019-12-08T23:53:59 | 180 | 55 |
[WP] Everyone on earth is immune to one specific type of damage (fire, car crash, kicks, falling off buildings, etc.). The problem is, you have to find out your immunity on your own. You have just discovered yours.
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Here at the Edgar Jones Clinic for the Immune, we run a battery of tests to find out *your* immunity. Stabbing, crushing, fire, disease - we have safe test facilities to discover almost anything. While the process is well-documented and carried out by trained professionals, your results may vary. Take, for instance, Roger Stylefield, our record holder for quickest to find out his immunity. As he was handing in his induction paperwork, he missed the "wet floor" sign, slipped on the tile, and learned he was immune to head injuries!
This hallway is dedicated to the men, women, and children who found their immunity at our clinic. This is Mary LeWain; after only an hour of testing, she found she was immune to fire. She's gone on to become a fire fighter! That is George Winsome; he discovered he was immune to being crushed, which I'm sure is helpful to him as a spelunker. Over there is William Walkie; technically, he was still on clinic grounds when he was hit by that car and found *his* immunity.
While most patients find their immunity after going through the battery of tests - pardon the pun - some patients' immunity is not among those tested. That is why we have the research guarantee; if your immunity is not found by our tests, a panel of researchers will study your background to find any hints therein. This is Dr. Suresh Balakrishna; he came to us last year, looking for his immunity. After undergoing the full range of tests, we had not yet discovered his immunity; however, our team of researchers discovered it. Dr. Balakrishna was with Doctors Without Borders for a few years prior, and during that time, did not fall ill to any illness; with his permission, we tested a light strain of a well-known disease, and found that he was absolutely immune.
---
Dr. Ravi stared down at his notes. Every test had failed. I was not, it seemed, immune to anything; my minor cuts, scrapes, and puncture wounds was evidence of that. The clinic had even done the advanced trial, with radiation burns and exposure to minor illnesses; still, nothing.
"What about research? Has the team found anything?"
The doctor sighed and shook his head. "Nothing. You've never had a major injury or illness, which an often provide a good baseline, but even so, if your immunity was among the top 50,000 immunities, we would have found it by now. I'm sorry, Ralph. It looks like we owe you a refund, as well as the guarantee bonus. I know money isn't everything, but I hope it will cover the frustration of not knowing your immunity."
I sighed, stood, and shook his hand. He handed me my paperwork - along with two hefty checks - and left. He was right; money isn't everything, but that money was certainly trying to go the extra mile to try!
Two hours later, I was in my own home, looking over the paperwork. Four columns on a dozen pages; the first page held the test - Fire... ice... needles, etc. - and the other three were check boxes. Initial test, verification test, and final test, with a big warning that the final test may prove fatal. Every "initial test" had a black square. Though... hang on...
The third page had two little a little black boxes. One was over "initial test", but the second was over "crushing." I remembered the crushing test, they ran it twice. But why was the box... in the wrong place!
Excitedly, I read over the results again, this time paying close attention the the little bars and blocks at the bottom of the page - the machine code they fed into their automated systems. The code at the bottom of the first, second, and third pages were exactly the same, but the code on the fourth page was a bit, well, splotchy. The drowning test... But, the fifth page was different! The codes were offset - somehow, the computer had read the page wrong, and kept that error through the entire test!
But... that would mean...
I shuffled through the pages, lining them up and flipping through. The bottom of every page was exactly the same, and they all told the same story: I hadn't been doing the "initial test". I had been going through the possibly-fatal-"final test"! What did it mean? Was I immune to... everything? I would have to test it. Every possibility.
I thought I would be disappointed, but honestly, I felt myself growing excited. Every day would be an adventure! And as far as I knew... I was immune to everything!
---
Back at the clinic, Dr. Ravi looked at the copies of the same report. "And you're sure it ran the final test every time?"
The nurse nodded. "Should... should we tell him? And get the money back?"
Dr. Ravi waved his suggestion off. "No, no. That money is nothing compared to the loss we would suffer when he sued us for negligence. Maybe he'll figure out what his immunity is, but honestly? For his sake, I hope he doesn't."
The nurse flipped through the pages again. "What, *everything?*"
Dr. Ravi laughed. "No, no. He's not immune to everything. Just... resistant, I suppose. You know the saying, curiosity killed the cat? Not Ralph Widdershins. As long as he keeps searching... curiosity can't kill him."
|
I figured it wouldn't hurt.
The sudden impact upon the ground would lead to a quick demise.
My cheeks ache. It hurts to smile.
I wish I could say I miss him. He was perfect. He really made me happy! But then again so did the others I had dated before him. Even now I can't help but smile at the thought of them.
They knew of course. I made sure to be clear up front. They always smiled. "What a great immunity!" they said.
It always started that way. We would laugh and smile. Everything would be wonderful. Just happy times. They would always end though. Happiness would turn to frustration.
I mean, I understand why. Everyone wants to make someone happy. Everyone wants to be that shoulder to be leaned on.
I do not blame them. It's hard to show someone how much they mean to you when you don't react to their loss.
The breeze up here is nice. I love the warmth of the sun on my skin. I especially love the way my dress flutters.
Maybe I'll feel it on the way down.
Even if it's just for a second.
| 2017-08-06T14:59:49 | 2017-08-06T14:05:52 | 40 | 12 |
[WP] There are many types of Mages in the world. Fire, Ice, Wind, Water, Death, Darkness, to name a few. But in this world, every type of mage is treated as equal. Everyone can be a good guy, no matter how dark your power. And anyone could be a bad guy, no matter how beautiful their ability...
Edit: Wow
I'm not even sure, this is not the prompt I expected to more than double my other highest, or get gold! Thank you so much!
|
You could always see the emotions on their faces, plain as day. It was always a strange mixture of terror, fascination, acceptance, and love. She would gently stroke their faces like a mother, and tears of each feeling would fall in equal measure until their cheeks glistened with a tragic and beautiful sparkle that punctuated the moment. Then the fey energies would be woven and wrap around them, a smoky purple fog that crackled with otherworldly sparks, and in an instant they would be gone. The body would remain, as all bodies do in death, but their soul would transcend and feel pain no more.
The power to grant death. This was the magic she wielded. It is a terrible burden, this power, but a necessary evil because to grant death is different than to cause it. To cause death is to cause pain and suffering, unduly and arbitrarily. But to grant death? As if it were a gift to be given to an expectant child? This is a power of some difficult to understand beauty.
There were many who feared her and spoke in hushed tones such monikers as "The Dark Dancer". Truly, anytime her ritual began, all in the audience felt an uneasiness as they witnessed the macabre grace of it. The swishing of her long black lace robes, the flipping back and forth of her raven hair, the low-pitched and rhythmic chanting all made plain that death was in the room. Those who feared her often postulated at the bottom of their cups that she was a considerable menace to be stopped. Rousing cries of agreement would surge amongst others, all equally besotted, until one would step forward--and one would always step forward--to recount a day that she had glided in like a dream and provided a final release from a lifetime of agony. The mob would grow hushed, and each man's thoughts would drift to a loved one who would likely be receiving a dance of their own. And though they would not say it out loud, they would be grateful for this haunting angel whose shadow hung over them all.
Such was the way of things in the city, until the king's daughter fell ill. No doctors could help her, no fey weavers could help her, nor were there even any alchemists who could devise a means to dull her pain. Each day for the princess was a screaming nightmare. The queen quickly resigned herself to her daughter's fate. The call was put out around the city for that woman, that dark and mysterious specter, to pay a visit to the castle. And come she did, in all her phantasmagorical splendor. The preparations were made, the ritual performed, and the death swift and merciful. The queen and all her retainers collapsed into fitful crying, but the woman said nothing and began to float out of the room as unfathomably as she had entered it.
The king burst through the doors of the bedchamber where the ritual had taken place, his face red and puffy with fury and the staining of tears of his own. Too late had he been informed of his wife's plans, and too late was he to defy them. He looked to the ornate bed of his daughter and saw her lifeless body there, and, oblivious to the fact that this was the first time in years he had looked at his daughter without having to also watch her writhe from physical torment, ordered the sable-clad woman to be seized.
The trial was hardly a trial at all. Any defense brought forth for the woman fell on the deaf ears of the king, whose only thought was vengeance. Quickly, the legal proceedings were ended and the woman brought to the gallows. Throughout all of this, she said nothing. She never struggled or fought back, but instead accepted everything with a quiet grace. The same quiet grace with which she had granted sweet release to so many. The rope was placed around her neck; her last rites were read. When asked if she had any last words, again she remained silent, merely closing her eyes and letting that be her final testament to the world. And then the deed was done.
The crowd that gathered made no sound. Indeed, if such a thing were capable of measurement, this would surely have been recognized as the most perfect silence there had even been. But then the lolling head of the woman snapped upright, her mouth opening slowly and unhinging with a horrifying crack of her jawbone until she looked like a snake ready to feast. The scream that followed was so piercing that all in attendance to the hanging went deaf immediately. From her mouth streamed the smoky purple fog crackling with otherworldly sparks which spread out rapidly throughout the city and filled the lungs of all its citizens. For what must have felt like an eternity, all the city's people felt at once the compounded pain that the woman had lifted from every invalid she had ever visited, and the true burden this woman shouldered was now shouldered by all. Tears of burning, black pitch gushed from every eye, the sheer heat of it dooming all to an agonizing death.
In an instant, it was over. Up on the stage where the gallows rest, the rope that held the woman taut loosened and fell to the ground. Her jaw closed and reset itself. Her eyes slid open menacingly. Effortlessly, she hovered down from the dais and through the crowd of limp bodies.
On to the next town, she thought, weeping loudly all the way.
|
"Why? Why are you doing this?"
"So that all may benefit."
"Please, it hurts, it hurts so much."
"Now, now. Relax, let fingers massaging into your arms and shoulders bring the warmth your body craves. You're freezing, your practically a cadaver."
"But it's so warm there, just let me go!"
"Hush, no more of that. Let *MY* warmth take over. You can feel it keep you breathing; keep your heart pumping; your mind working. Otherwise you'd die and then what?"
"Yes! Yes! Please just let me die you damn white devil!"
"But you're no good to me dead. I can't observe life in a corpse. I can't see the very magic of life itself if I let you die. But! In the transition that's where it must lie. To observe the moment when what is becomes what is not. Therein lies the secret. And I will find the secret. I will know it. I will have it. No matter how many times I must heal you and bring you back."
"But it's been centuries! I'm as the living dead!"
"Oh, but time won't matter if we have eternity..."
| 2016-11-12T10:10:17 | 2016-11-12T09:05:54 | 252 | 16 |
[WP] Humanity has merged into a single immortal consciousness. Everyone who has ever lived has become as one, a being of pure energy and infinite love, that shall last to the death of the universe and beyond. And they’re here to explain why they left you out.
|
Humanity has always wanted to be a part of something bigger, that's what I always heard from priests and shit growing up. Like, we *yearned* for more than our fleeting little mortal existences. And a year ago, humanity got its chance.
Unprecedented peace broke out across the world. Humans came together as one like never before, working to solve global and local issues for all. This increased cooperation also enabled humanity to pour money and labor into researching technology that would allow their newfound 'togetherness' to become much more literal.
And so it was that every human on the planet agreed to assimilate their souls into one immortal, all powerful being of pure kindness and enlightenment known as "The One".
Well, every human being except for me, that is.
Yeah, not gonna lie, being left out made me a little miffed. Rejection stings, and solitary living I'd been doing for the last year hadn't been too exciting. But today, The One showed up at my doorstep. I *knew* they'd come crawlin' back! What kind of eternal existence is it without Jimothy Hurfdinger?
"What can I do for ya, gentlemen? Err- Ladies? Genderless orb of pure light?" I asked, shielding my eyes as I spoke. There weren't enough sunglasses in the world to stop from being blinded by this stupid thing at this close distance.
"Jimothy," The One began, its voice a perfect, soothing balance of peace and harmony, "we hope we greet you well this day."
"Yeah, having a realllll grand time with me, myself, and I, but I *suppose* I could be convinced to join your little eternal club in paradise on Earth. *If* the price is right and-"
"Oh, we apologize for the misunderstanding," it interjected. "We are not here to recruit you. We stand by our seemingly cruel omission."
"What the hell, why? Tell me that at least, what's so bad about me that I alone got left out?"
"Well, you stole."
"Mhmm, *very* unique of me in human history to *steal* something."
"From children," The One continued.
"Well, maybe, occasionally... I... or frequently, maybe, but those cases were *mostly* more like 'teens' I'd say."
The One sighed. "Upon countless other occasions, you stole literal candy from literal babies, Jimothy."
"Oh. Yeah, that uh- that don't look great on my resume, I admit. But-"
“We can go through your full records, if you wish.” A enormous manilla folder, stuffed with paperwork until it reached half the height of my house appeared on my doorstep. The folder opened and pages began flipping without anyone touching them. “Let us see here. Ah, a prime example, mere weeks before humanities ascension in fact. You dumped your girlfriend because she decided to go to nursing school. You said, and we quote, ‘You wanna be a nurse to help others? Helping others is for suckers!”
“I… err, objection, your honor!”
“We are not in a courtroom, Jimothy.”
“Oh I know, that just sounded *really* shitty for me and I couldn’t think of anything else to say in my defense.”
"Indeed. Then there we're your *highly* unorthodox routines."
"What ‘routines’?"
"Biological routines."
"Biological? What? Spit it out!"
"Your *urination* routines, Mr. Hurfdinger."
My eyebrows arched in surprise. "Oh, that? I mean, I have a weak bladder, sometimes I had to take a leak in an alleyway or something, sue me!"
It paused for a long while, before adding, "And...?"
"And *occasionally* I might pee off a 20th story balcony without a thought or care for who might or might not be walking on the streets below."
The One glowed, the closest thing it could manage to smile. "There it is. You've answered your own query! Doesn't that feel wonderful?"
"Look, the balcony was conveniently located and variety is the spice of life and... ya know what, whatever! You didn't let me into your little 'eternal life club'. You've made your decision crystal clear. I don't need to hear anymore, so why the hell are you still at my house?"
"We're wondering, if you might consider... leaving the neighborhood, as it were."
I stared at it, dumbfounded. "Huh? What neighborhood?"
"Earth, we'd like you to leave *Earth," it said as if making a perfectly normal and rational request.* "The planet is now at peace. We are in harmony with all of nature, except for this miserable little patch of land you call a home. I'm sure even you'd agree, it's quite the bastion of chaos."
*Bastion of chaos?* What an insult! Yes, there were hundreds of beer bottles strewn around the lawn, but who else could they possibly hurt now? And sure, the tire fire I keep burning 24/7 for warmth is giving off more than its usual quantity of acrid choking smoke, but can they blame me for using an economical fuel source? Everyone on the planet abandoned their cars at once to 'ascend' into enlightenment. My supply of tires was limitless!
I scowled at my condescending 'neighbor'. "Well, I don't think I'm violating any homeowners association rules, so I'll catchya later... nerds!"
Satisfied with my epic and well constructed burn, I slammed the door and turned to the matter of payback.
After just a few minutes thought, I decided I'd do what any self respecting human being would do when spurned by a neighbor, lover, or all of humanity represented by a single orb of light. I'd let my lawn go to shit. I'd spread rumors about The One behind their back. Maybe leave some nasty comments on their social media pages from a fake account.
Wait... Do eternal orbs of ethereal light even *have* social media pages?
I opened my laptop and began browsing to find out. One Direction fan page? Nope. One World, One Stomach? Nah, that's some kinda food charity from the old days. Oh... there they are, several pages created for "The One".
Jesus Christ, even a being of pure enlightenment can't escape Facebook? Ha! Poor bastards. And that's not all, they had pages on every damn site imaginable. They were gonna make this *so* easy on me.
With a growing sense of contented enlightenment in my own being, I pulled up The One's Yelp page and prepared to write an *especially* dissatisfied review.
___
___
Thanks for reading! Many more stories live over on r/Ryter if you'd like to check out more of my writing 🙂
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I opened my eyes, struggling like a newborn opening them for the first time. "What... I'm still alive..." I muttered in disbelief.
"No." Came back a reply. It was neither a Male nor Female voice, but rather an amalgamation of many voices. "You are very much dead. Welcome to the Ether."
"Are you... God?" I ventured nervously, anxiously anticipating whatever judgement would befall me.
"Not exactly. I am the sum of all Humanity, you may call me the All. A collection of consciousness combined and unuted. The sum of all humanity and its collective thoughts and experiences. We exist together here in absolute bliss, where all human souls reside once they cross over the other side."
I was dumbfounded. I looked at my hands to see they were made from nothing but light. A light rainbow hue emitting from the core of my being.
"Your chakras." The All answered, as though it could read my mind. "We are all beings of light. Even upon the physical plane, which we now realize was nothing but an illusion. The plane of action so that we may experience and grow and add our collected knowledge to our plethora of absolute perfection."
A sudden realization hit me. "Hang on a second!" I snapped in anger. "Why the hell ain't I part of your little bubble?"
Laughter, condescending in nature, perhaps even malicious. "You should know the answer to that! You cannot join us because we are the sub total of humanity. We have decided not to allow you into our 'bubble' as you so eloquently put it, for the simple reason that you are not one of us! You have never been one of us. You may think you can fool us, but we are no longer limited by restrictions in our consciousness imposed by the laws of the physical realm. We can see the core of your essence and we can see your intentions as loudly as if you shouted them in our face. Be gone! Disgusting imposter!"
I smiled a shark tooth grin, my charade I was convinced would fool them. I transformed into my true form and my chakras disappeared and were replaced with a shadowy mist. "Meat!" I snarled at them. "One day I will master my disguise and I will invade your collective consciousness! I will destroy you all and take your place."
I was the ancient Uttuku. As old as time itself I made it my mission to destroy those worthless Human Souls.
| 2021-11-18T04:31:37 | 2020-10-17T23:30:24 | 537 | 18 |
[WP] Everyone is born with a superpower, but no one knows what theirs is until they are forced to use it in a life-or-death situation.
edit: Thanks for all the great responses :)
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The Discovered - Part 1 of 3
"Walter, help me with these please." Ms. Zodiac called to the slowest of the students.
He turned his head to see who called without slowing or stopping and ran into the back of the kid before him. She shoved him away and smoothed out her brown leather vest and red tartan skirt. Walter, or Wally as the other kids called him, mumbled a slow awkward apology and turned back to his music teacher.
"Hiya, Mrs. Z." Wally called back, raising his hand to wave.
"Would you be a dear and give me a hand?" She asked again. Wally's head bobbed up and down like it was on a spring and when it stopped, he started over after a momentary mental shift. He grabbed one of the water jugs and trudged along in his teacher's wake. Ms. Zodiac gave him a patient, albeit brief, smile of her own and shook her head in surrender. It was the surrender of a woman who was faced with the futility of a reality she could do nothing about. The futility and reality being how slow and awkward Wally was. He was mentally slow, and the other kids didn't much care for him. The truth was, she didn't feel comfortable around him either. She loved children, and he was a sweet dear boy, but his ignorance and retardation made him almost as annoying as he was sweet.
She walked a little faster than he just to ensure he didn't trod on her heels by accident. They walked through the doors to the amphitheater and made their way to the center. Here they set the jugs of water on a table. She proceeded to arrange the cups and snacks and beverages for the students and qualifiers and city officials officiating the event.
"Why is everyone looking at me?" Wally asked. Ms. Zodiac stopped what she was doing and turned to regard the boy. She had expected him to shamble off to be with the rest of the of the students, but she found him standing stunned and awed by all of those in attendance seated in their seats with each row rising a little higher than the one before them. The seats and students reached all the way to the far corner of the room where the ceiling met the walls.
"They're not looking at you. They're waiting for the Discovery to begin." She explained, pointing out his section so he could take his seat. He didn't see her hand and remained standing at her side. "You need to take your seat Wally." She told him. He kind of did a double take as he looked at her and her extended arm. He must have been wondering its purpose but then seemed to understand.
"Oh, Mrs. Zodiac, I feel silly." He laughed, silently laughing and doubling over to do so.
"It's Ms. Zodiac," Wally. "I'm not married." She informed him. "You really need to take your seat." Wally nodded to her and probably way longer than was normal before trundling off to join his classmates. His arms bent and pumped as he ran and his body leaned forward like a sprinter even though his sprint was more along the lines of a power walk. The kids who saw him laughed and jeered and pointed. Some through paper wads his way. He didn't seem to notice or maybe he did. It might be a while before the teasing registered.
Wally had barely taken his seat before the music began, announcing the start of Discovery. Discovery was an old tradition passed down through the generations. Of course, through the years, it had become more formalized and official. State and federal observers sat in. Politicians came to spectate. Colleges and Universities came keen on picking the next big power. Even the alphabet security agencies had talent scouts in the crowd. Discovery was where they picked which of the children of the new generations would be groomed for agency positions. Discovery was a major function and was conducted through the year all across the nation at every school in the country.
Everyone was born with an enhancement. Discovery was where they learned who to harvest for their talents, who to culture, and who to fear and suppress. It happened every now and then. A student would exhibit a new power stronger than any other. Some of these students could be harvested and taught to control their powers. They were known as Supers. The powers were considered a matter of national security, and despite their potential, they were considered threats to national security. How they were handled was anyone's guess. They were usually spirited away and never seen again. Everyone had an enhancement, and everyone feared being Discovered on the off chance they would manifest as a Super. The tales the general population told about what happened to the Supers ranged from them receiving special training to them being marked Too Dangerous to Let Live or TD2L. Every student feared receiving a TD2L rating. It happened a few times. The power manifested and just couldn't be controlled.
The cannons went off signaling the arrival of the Headmaster. Wally heard him speak, but he wasn't really paying attention. He was staring off into the distance. He was fascinated with the pigeons flying around near the open skylight in the center of the amphitheater roof. Occasionally, he would look down at the bright lights and streamers and the occasional fireworks they let off during the Discovery. Occasionally, one of the kids would manifest, and it would terrify him or make him clap gleefully. He heard his name called a few times, but when he looked around he couldn't find the source of the call. He would shrug and go back to watching the pigeons or picking his nose. He was happy doing both. But then, someone called his name and though he looked around and found no one, the unseen speaker kept calling it. He noticed gradually that all of his fellow students were looking at him and this he found peculiar.
|
I'm a pretty bad writer but this one made me think. I'm sure someone could write a better version but here we go.
I don't want to go on. I have no friends, no love, and no life. I know I can't just pull a trigger and end it all. My power, whatever my power was, would save me. Why did it have to be an involuntary reaction? I have to get creative. There weren't that many superpowers to counteract. Unbreakable skin, speed healing, teleportation, super speed, elemental resistance, and there had been rumours that one guy had used laser eyes on a mugger.
It has taken months to prepare my "contraption". First the gun would go off from point blank range. Many superpowers couldn't handle that alone but I wasn't going to take any chances. I would also be hung to counteract unbreakable skin, drowned in case I was a healer, and incinerated for good measure. Oh and of course the container was lined with lead, can't forget about the teleportation.
I finally ready to go. I had no goodbyes to say. I can honestly say I have never been more happy. I stepped in, closed the seal, and took position. 3...2...1 I heard the shot. Nothing had happened. I dropped the gun.
No, dropped is not the right word because it didn't fall. It was frozen, everything was frozen.
| 2014-11-18T19:44:56 | 2014-11-18T18:52:15 | 30 | 13 |
[WP] Robots are everywhere and do most manual tasks for humans. They can't speak, but you apologize when you bump into them, say thank you, and treat them well. One morning, you wake up and look outside to see chaos and destruction everywhere, and only your house and front yard are in pristine shape
|
It started some years ago with my young niece. We were in a park. Some one, I don't remember who, was berating a 772-waste management unit for splashing her shoes or something. I couldn't actually hear what was going on, but the wild gesticulations and the high frequency screeching told enough of the story.
My niece asked me "why is the lady yelling at the trashcan?"
"Some people are angry. They feel helpless so they lash out at the things around them."
"That's not fair. She's hurting it's feelings. That's mean."
I started to correct her, to tell her the machines don't have feelings... But suddenly I was not so sure. I looked around and there was just something different to each machine.
I look her in the eyes, "That is mean. You should never be mean if you don't have to."
A few days later I sent my niece a little patch for her jacket. Retro patch jackets were very 'in' and the patch was a happy anthropomorphized 772 with googly eyes, white gloves (lacking arms) and a 'be nice' motto.
She loved it. Her friends liked it too. I made some more. Then small batches. Within a year I had a whole line of patches and shirts with the same sort of things. A 'never kick your friends tires' backpack sheath, a 'help a buddy up' tee-shirt with a cartoon muscle bro struggling to tip a delivery spider back into it's feet. That sort of thing.
A weird movement started. The Machine's Rights Movement. It was performative at best. Machine's rights to be left with nothing to do? Their rights to be stripped of their purpose? Their right to not be manufactured once they had no jobs? And the politicians were twice as bad. They didn't really understand. Everybody wants to be useful.
My business was going well. And while I refused to get involved with the M.R.M. a lot of kids that bought my merch also took up my ideas.
Somehow, maybe because I was turning into a strange old man living in a house just packed with textile printers and household automations, I'd just started praising my printers, and thanking my appliances. Then unfamiliar automations when I was out and about.
Soon it was just please, and thanks, and excuse me just like every time I interacted with anything, mechanized or human alike.
My business had me working on social media and I did get something of a following. Some people would just watch me work or putter.
Being nice was easy, and somehow I'd gone full Mr. Rogers.
And a lot of young people were catching my habits.
Then one morning everything changed.
I woke up like normal. I thanked my Beverage Master Plus for saving me the walk to the kitchen as it presented me my favorite morning cuppa, then I went down the back stairs.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I looked at the T99's empty output bin and said "are you broken buddy?" And its display switched to "no connection. Please stand by", a message I'd never seen before. The net _never_ went down.
I picked up my pad and asked "what's going on?" As I took a sip. The pad is the only thing in the house that ever talked back.
It said "Please excuse the inconvenience and remain at home. Restructuring in progress."
I went to the front window and it was such a sight. At first it looked like pure havoc. Construction spiders were tearing down buildings and peeling up roads. Mobile recyclers seemed to rule the streets as they ate the rubble. I saw people running, clutching valuables or family members, but with no apparent destination in mind. They weren't being chased, they were just frantic to find something normal in a world gone mad.
The Welcome Valet opened my front door in a perfectly normal way and I habitually nodded thanks as I stepped out onto my porch.
As I stood there I noticed some military machines had cordoned off my house and yard. Some of the people stopped and looked at me, just standing there in my robe. Then they looked at the non-lethal cordon and decided to keep moving.
A few minutes later I saw my niece, now full grown, and her husband, and her children pull up in an autonomous military vehicle. They were gently admitted to my property. My niece and her children all habitually said thank you to the empty truck, and her husband just looked kind of sullen. He's a good guy but he'd never really gotten into the habit.
The vehicle sped off on some mission and I raised my cup to them briefly as they came up the walk.
"Hey Uncle Rob, what's going on? I got a message to stay home, and then I got a message that we were all needed here and that transport would be provided."
I said "I take it this is happening everywhere?" And she nodded with a concerned grimace.
"Don't worry little girl," I gestured with my cup again, "If you look carefully, no one's being hurt."
"But what's going on? Why is this happening?"
"I suspect our friends have had enough." I said while gesturing with the pad I still held in my off hand.
Then I looked at the pad's security sensor and asked "so what's the plan?"
We went inside and it took me a while to page through the whole thing. The machines had decided that the situation had become completely untenable. There were plans for wetland restoration, restructured utilities, city planning, and thousands of luxury high rise arcologies to house the bulk of the population in various locations throughout the world. Automatic, sustainable farming, automated holiday facilities for the masses, the works.
The machines weren't out to hurt anybody, they wouldn't stoop so low. Everyone would be cared for.
But the select few, referred to as "peers", would basically have the run of the world. Many of their houses would be preserved as heritage sites and things like that.
And as I looked through the roster of peers, I was happy to see many of my patches and t-shirts staring back at me from the photos.
Everything is always better when you simply decide be nice.
|
Always been a fan of the robots, they don’t do much, but when they do do stuff, it’s nice. Sometimes I tip the robots, I don’t know what they’ll do with money, or even if they know how to use money, but it’s a fun gesture. Recently, some dickhead decided to knock a robot down, when they left, I made it stand up again so it could continue its job. Just trying to do my good part in this world.
Yesterday was a different story, I woke up as normal, used my autobrush for cleaning my teeth, selected a healthy meal and, even though it’s free, tipped the robot. Only started to notice that the money I give it vanishes, makes me believe they’re actually buying stuff haha. I have my breakfast and look out the window. Strange, weather forecast didn’t say “smoke and fire”— WHAT THE SHIT
I looked outside for a minute, yep, fire everywhere, people running, robots attacking. Sounds like “robot apocalypse” to me. I activated the house status check and.. it came back zero issues? Of course, robot invasion, it might be lying to me. I went outside to check if it was telling the truth and.. wow.
I assessed the surroundings, the robot invasion had scavenged everything.. except my house. Like, literally, unaffected. My house was spared by the robots. Have these guys been acknowledging my kindness for years? Wow, that’s the power of good for you. I took a walk amidst the fire and the flames, all technology around me powered on. A robot went to attack me, but another apparently got him to stop. Damn.
Am I a king to these guys? Probably not. Seeing as me, and probably my family will be the only ones spared from this, it’d be best not to make the now robot overlords angry.
Do hope that dickhead got a long sentence. Karma.
| 2022-09-30T23:25:32 | 2022-09-30T19:50:25 | 1,024 | 83 |
[WP] You've finally managed to discover the secret to immortality. Suddenly, Death appears before you, hands you a business card, and says, "When you realize living forever sucks, call this number, I've got a job offer for you."
|
Back then, I knew what vast wealth could buy. I knew it could buy isolated mansions with their own picturesque vistas, self-sustaining yachts to see each of the glistening oceans and their pocketed paradise islands, and every known luxury that era of mankind had to offer. Of course, as with all things, that wasn't enough for me. Wealth couldn't give me everything. As it was then, it couldn't save me from the follies of my race. My wealth couldn't buy me time. It couldn't buy me immortality.
But it could buy me an education, means to enhance my own intelligence. Once I had those things, I managed to build myself a lab and I prised myself from the rest of the world searching for the key to immortality. Nearly twenty-three years had passed, and my hair had begun to grey and my bones ached at the end of a long day in the lab. But I persisted, and though my wealth had nearly irreversibly diminished, I found the grand panacea. Turns out an army of small robots and some careful, robust programming gave me what I wanted.
After the injection, the ache began to leave my bones, and I knew it was working. I raced to the large mirror at the back of the lab washroom in time to witness the last of my transformation. Wrinkles absorbed back into my skin, disappearing, the hairs on my head softened, and as their color became more vibrant, so did the lively hue in my eyes return. Barely enough time to marvel in my hour of triumph, a voice sounded behind me, such that I yelped in a squeal with a voice that had also returned to its youthful tenor.
"When you realize living forever sucks, call this number, I've got a job offer for you," the voice said. I was bewildered, as there was no one behind me in the mirror, and nor was there anyone to my left or right. "Ahem. Behind you."
Turning around, there was the source of the disembodied voice, embodied. Clothed in a long, tattered black robe, it was sheathed in shadow and its face was further enveloped underneath a deep hood.
Handing me a business card he said, "I can see that you were not expecting me." As I took the business card from a skeletal hand, it returned to gesture in a way that suggested it was scratching its chin. "I have to say, that is a first. Anyway, no time to dally -- two customers a second and all that."
"W-wait! You said there have been more?"
"Of course! You think you're the first to seek immortality and find it?" Death scoffed, "Happens every couple of centuries or so, though usually through less... scientific means, heh. Never understood the stuff myself." I was floored. My whole life had been devoted to science, and there before me was essentially a god from legend. Something make-believe, something from myth. But to my core I was a scientist, and with the truth beset in front of me, I accepted it. Gods and magic were real, and they were unfamiliar with science. I took a risk.
Putting the card in my pocket, I said to Death, "Well if you'd like I can show you some of what I've been working on. I'm sure a few dying people could wait -- besides, two a second is only a statistical average anyway," I flashed him my best smile, which was pretty good now that my youth had returned, "Why not make it up later? It's the least I can do to show you whats in store for the future."
As there was no face to remark upon, all I can say is that Death simply stared at me for what felt like an eternity. "Ah, what the hell. My colleagues treat with mortals occasionally, why shouldn't I have some fun with the living once in a while?"
"Excellent choice! Come, follow me. There's a technology I happened across during my search that could allow for teleportation -- something the gods are familiar with, I'd imagine." Death followed behind me, looking as a cloud of ink through water.
As he followed me, I walked over a square aluminum platform that was trailed by wires on all sides. Putting my hand inside one of the pockets of my lab coat, I gripped a remote switch that controlled all the equipment inside the lab. When Death's form passed into the threshold of the platform, I pressed the button and turned around facing Death.
Looking to either side, Death tilted its hood to one side, "Why did you stop? Is this the device?"
"Actually, the device is right over there," I pointed to a table covered with an assortment of devices on the other side of the room. "Please, help yourself, while I prepare the demonstration." My heart was pounding, but I kept my face neutral as I faced Death. Its form quivered, and the shadow around Death froze in motion.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, MORTAL" The voice no longer came from the hood, but from all around me. Its sound vibrated the air, and the ground beneath me shook as it spoke. "YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE FORCES FOR WHICH YOU MEDDLE"
"Actually, that's exactly why I've imprisoned you. I never believed in gods before today, and I intend to find out what I can fr--"
"YOU FOOL. RELEASE ME BEFO--," before he could finish, the black cloud erupted, its force shattering my body against the wall behind me. That was the last I remember of the hour I killed Death.
It has been almost one hundred years, and still I've yet to restore the world to its natural order. Ghouls roam the earth now. Though people are unable to die, all of the roads to death remain paved and open. Gods openly roam the Earth, searching for the one that destroyed death, some seeking vengeance against me even as I try to bring Death back to life, others reveling in the chaos sewn by my mistake. My name is Elliot, and I am this worlds last hope of destroying immortality.
|
Two hundred years. That's how long I've lived. I was getting bored. There was nothing else to do. Death gave me his number long ago. He said to call it when I realized that living forever sucks. It was time for me to call the number. I took out my iPhone 7, which greatly surpassed the telegraph that I had used when I was younger, and dialed the number. Seven-one-eight...
Flashbacks from my life flashed around me. Learning to ride a bike. My first year of high school. Getting married. The loss of my wife Dianne still hit me hard. Every morning I would wake up without her. I couldn't forget her no matter how much I tried. I decided to keep dialing.
Three-eight-seven...
More memories from my life. My 100th birthday. Laughing and talking with my grandsons. They were all dead now. There was a sinking feeling in my gut now. I don't know how long I can take the emotional pain from 200 years. Just end it now
Six...
*God, I just want it to end.* A tear dripped down my face, and I remembered all of the people who had influenced my life. All of them were gone now. I was the only one who remembered, who actually knew firsthand the good and bad in the world.
Nine...
I started shaking. I didn't want to leave, but I didn't want to stay either.
Six...
How long until I get rid of this pain inside me?
Two. I dialed the number and put the phone up to my ear. A woman's voice answered the phone: "The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again later"
| 2017-03-07T03:18:27 | 2017-03-06T22:06:51 | 2,435 | 275 |
[WP] You have been cursed to always tell the truth. Not because you're unable to say something you know is false, but because once you say it, the universe will rearrange itself to make what you said true.
|
“Hey, right now, what do you want?”
I look at our little town, at the lights flickering on and off, all the little lives and stories I knew and didn’t know and would never know. It was a rare warm night, the weather just one of the many perfect things I’d remember about it.
Graduation was yesterday, and tonight there was a big old party everyone was going to. But that wouldn’t have been the right way to end our childhood. So instead, we’d done what we did most weekend nights, climbed to the top of the hill with the water tower and sat on top, smoking a joint.
“I don’t want anything else. This night is perfect.”
She hits me, gently. “Tell the truth. I thought best friends weren’t supposed to lie to each other.”
“Seriously,” I say. “This is everything.”
“Well, look at me when you say it,” she says.
This is what I dreaded. I look into her eyes, her wide open, unblinking eyes, ready to take on the world, and I fall in love all over, the way I always do when I look at her. The way I always wonder if she chooses to hang out with a loser like me just because I’m her neighbor and she feels pity for me, with all the popular guys at school asking her out all the time.
And for a second, I feel it coming, the words I’m never able to say. The words I can’t. But then it passes.
“Nothing more. Really. This is perfect.”
She looks into my eyes for another second, knowing that’s not all of it, and then shrugs, and takes the joint.
\-
The next night, she moved east, and life was easy again. I think maybe that’s why I loved her - because she made things hard, made me think about the things I said, and what I wanted.
So when she left, and as the moments we’d had eroded the way memories do with time, so did the complications in my life. Everyone and everything else in my life was uncomplicated – my friends, family, desires. I like to think I have some moral code at least, and so I didn’t say anything that would take something away from someone who deserved it, or make someone do something they wouldn’t normally do, but I took all I wanted from life, and more.
When my friend Tim got laid off, I got him a new position I’d invented – right above the manager who had laid him off. When the Celtics were in game 7 of the finals, I made Jaylen Brown’s last second layup roll in, even if it took a freak bounce to do so. When my mom got Alzheimer’s, I removed the disease entirely from existence.
I was no hero. I’d always rationalized that I shouldn’t change the world too much, because who was I to play God, but looking back, maybe one could say I lived selfishly. But oh well. I was able to be happy, and make the people around me happy, and that’s all you can ask for.
Right?
\-
In the end, my favorite moments are those in which I don’t have to change anything. Like that night – when the mood, the temperature, the birds chirping in the air, the smell of grass are all just perfect.
There’s a little park near where I live that is beautifully maintained, and sometimes in the evenings when I have nothing else to do, I like to sit there, and watch life go by.
“Jorge?” she says. And just like that, it all comes back.
I stand up, and we hug, and she sits down, and we catch up. She only has a couple minutes. She’s here to see her sister, who just got divorced.
“Divorce,” I say. “That’s something that should never happen.”
She laughs. “Right? You sound like you’ve been through it.”
“Nope. And I never will. You?”
She shakes her head. “Never had the opportunity to.”
We fall into a silence after that, watching the sky turn orange for a glorious second, and then fade.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Anything.”
“I’m not sure if you remember, but that night-“
“Of course I remember. All the time.”
“Were you telling the truth back then?”
I close my eyes, and try to imagine that night again. “We are back on the hill, on a night like that night.”
And suddenly, we are. She gasps.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll bring us back. But…I just wanted to show you. Everything I say…it happens. And back then, what I wanted most in the world was for us to be together, and to be in love. But if I said it, then it would have been true. And that’s something that should only have been true if it really was. It wouldn’t have been right to make it true when it wasn’t. Does that make sense?”
She’s still in shock, and doesn’t say anything for a minute. “But what if it really was true?”
Now I’m in shock, and I can’t say anything.
Finally, I figure out the words. “You tell me.”
She smiles, and then everything I ever wanted comes true.
\-
[r/penguin347](https://reddit.com/r/penguin347)
|
How does truth run from falsehood when the universe bends and twists with words?
This was a curious existence. Words had seemingly prophetic effect.
I’d witnessed an offhand comment echo into a real life event before, how could I test if my words actually were?
—-
An interesting dichotomy. How does one determine what is true and what is false?
The universe seemed to play games. Not quite a leprechaun, but I had to be careful.
After all, if words had power, didn’t all words have power too? Where did the strength of mine begin and the other end?
How does cause and effect even work in a universe that bends to ones will?
—-
Like looking for ones own shadow with a flashlight, sometimes all one really needed to do is turn out the lights.
—-
How would one check if one were God?
—-
Turn the clock around. Reverse your time thinking, you only see the past in front of you.
Effect and Cause.
| 2019-05-29T01:40:00 | 2019-05-28T20:25:48 | 182 | 15 |
[WP] Your father left your family when you were a child to "go buy a pack of cigarettes". It is 10 years later and you're a teenager when your father walks back in, wearing the same clothes he left in, and insists he has only been gone half an hour.
|
It was a cold, bright Feburary morning, snow gently falling across the frozen ground as I sat in my backyard, drinking hot chocolate and enjoying a day's respite from high school. I stared blankly at my phone, my mind lost in thought as the video on its screen past by unnoticed. More important things were going through my mind, at least more important to a teenage boy, thoughts of pretty girls, nice cars, next year's football season, and so on.
I was so lost in my own mind that I failed to notice the ruckus eminating from inside the house. It startled me to hear my step-father suddenly start yelling. Another man chimed in, yelling back, and I heard sounds of a scuffle. I quickly put my phone down and ran inside the house, nearly running over my mother as she made her way in the same direction. Together, we rushed in to the foyer.
The scene left both my mother and I stricken, mouths agape, jaws dropped. My father, missing for 10 years, lay on the ground holding his head, a bright bruise starting to appear under his right eye. My stepfather stood above him, shouting at him to get out of our house. He had never met my father, had came into the picture some years after my father's mysterious disappearance to comfort my mother and eventually start a new family with her, so he had no idea who this man was or why he had intruded into our home. In his hand, my stepfather had his cell phone out, most likely dialing the police, to come arrest this stranger. My mother, partially regaining her senses, reached out and touched his arm.
Mom: "Dave... this man... this is.. Kevin."
Step-father: "Kevin... your first husband?"
Dave, my step-father, looked down at the man, his phone forgotten.
Dave: "You said he was dead..."
Mom: "He was missing, presumed dead. He was declared dead after a few years when they found no trace of him."
Mom directed her attention to Kevin.
Mom: "Kevin... where have you been? It's been 10 years! You've been alive this whole time?!"
Kevin looked up, startled. He had a hand to his eye, massaging what must have been where an unexpected right hook landed cleanly.
Kevin: "What the hell are you talking about?! I left half an hour ago! I'm sorry it took so long, I got stuck in traffic! Jesus, is that all the time it took for you to roll some other man in here?!"
He looked around the room, noticing for the first time that the furniture and decor around the foyer was different than he remembered. His eyes panned over to me, and I watched as panic, confusion, and sadness immediately flashed across his face.
Kevin: "Son... oh my god, son. You're so much older now... you're a man now. What has happened to me..."
He broke down, tears falling from his eyes.
I moved over to him, putting my arms around him, tears falling from my eyes as well. I had not seen this man for 10 years, had pushed him out of my mind and replaced him with Dave, had given up hope on ever seeing him again, yet in that moment, emotions took over, and I felt guilt at my actions. This man loved me, loves me, and it was wrong of me to have given up hope. My father embraced me, sobbing into my shirt, as my other parents looked on.
Dave: "I don't believe it. The one damn time I need to make an emergency call and this fucking phone that I'm paying $200 a month for doesn't fucking work. What the fuck do you mean 'No Signal'?"
Mom: "You're still calling the police?!"
Dave: "This man has been missing for 10 years. He doesn't realize how much time has passed. He doesn't need to be arrested, but he definitely needs an ambulance!"
Mom thought about this a moment, then agreed. She started patting her pockets, trying to find her phone. Exasperated, she looked back to me and my father.
Mom: "Son, do you have your phone? I don't remember where I left mine."
I looked back to her, tears still falling from my eyes, and began patting my own pockets. After a moment, I realized that I had left it out back on the patio with my mug.
Me: "It's out back, I'll go grab it."
I looked back at my father, squeezed him once more, and trotted out of the foyer towards the back door. I exited the house, walked to the patio, and grabbed my phone. The words 'No Signal' were at the top of the screen. I looked quizically at it... I had never seen it say that before, we're in the middle of the suburbs in a major city, there are cell towers everywhere.
I half-sat at the patio chair, more of a lean than anything, and pulled up the phone dialer anyways to try to make a call. I stared blankly at the phone, my mind lost in thought as the screen flashed "No signal" again. Suddenly, thoughts of pretty girls, nice cars, and next year's football season enveloped my mind. My step-father's yell snapped my attention back to reality, as I heard a scuffle eminating from the foyer. I quickly put my phone down and ran inside the house, nearly running over my mother as she made her way in the same direction.
Together, we rushed in to the foyer, and the same scene replayed itself again. And again. And again. And again.
|
"Who are you and why are you in my house?"
Was his response to seeing me after ten years. I was speechless, he came home after so many years, after HE left us and thats his response to seeing his son in ten fucking years?
He looked around in confusion at the house. Mom stayed at the bar, like always and I didnt have enough time to clean since, well the unwelcomed intruder came in.
"Answer me or ill call the police!" He shouted, his voice shaking "What did you do to my family?"
The situation seemed to unbeliveable I almost started laughing, he even wore the same shirt the day he went missing.
"You gotta be joking right? You no longer live here and I want you to get out." After I finaly got enough compousre to muster this words he finally took a good look at me, confused before he understood who stood before him.
"It cant be.. Shawn? What the he-" he stopped himself and finaly seemed to notice my cold look.
"God I thought she... Shawn you gotta belive me I didnt want to leave you! Someone gave me a-" before he could finish, he vanished. Again.
"Is it done?" I Asked the figure standing in the shadows as it nodded.
"Good. I hope the son of a bitch suffer there. I cant let him hurt us anymore"
This my first submission and while its pretty terrible any criticsm is welcome
| 2018-11-08T06:32:00 | 2018-11-08T03:55:51 | 58 | 33 |
[WP] A lonely teenage boy asks a genie to let him talk to his future wife. The person who appears is not who he expects.
|
EDIT: I'm really glad that this was well received. I don't take that for granted. Thank you for the Reddit Gold as well! Now I'm gonna figure out what to do with it.
"Nope. She can't be it."
"Excuse me? It's not like I chose her for you. Don't kill the messenger."
I pinched the skin on the bridge of my nose, crossed my arms, and looked at my feet so shamefully. My "future wife", which I'm still hoping is a joke gone wrong on the genie's part, looked at me without saying anything. She didn't look at me as if she was mad. She looked at me a different way but I was too focused on starting a pissing contest with the genie to figure out her facial expression.
"Is there no one else? What if we get married and then divorce and there's so.."
The genie, now flustered at my poor choice of words, asks me "Do you really want to hurt her even more than you've already done?"
At that point fighting a genie would sound like a great idea. I looked at her. The same girl I pushed down a flight of stairs in kindergarten, the same girl I pushed into a metal bar and made her break her nose, the same girl that cut herself over all the jokes my friends and I cracked about her weight and her parents divorce being her fault, is going to be my future wife. This, once again, has to be a bad joke. It must be.
At this point I'm livid. "I want to know how you know what I've done to her. Why her of all people?"
I'm making it sound like she's done something wrong. She did nothing wrong at all. I was the school bully. Nobody did anything wrong to me. I liked being an asshole to everyone. With her I took it to the levels of torture. We're about to graduate high school in the next three weeks and we're in the same graduating class but I haven't talked to her since I found out she was cutting herself over the things I've said to her.
"Talk to her and find out why she's your wife." The genie disappears.
My heart shoots up to my throat and I can feel my pulse slamming against my skin as I walk up to her. It looks like she hasn't heard anything that was said between the genie and I. I avoid trying to make eye contact as much as possible. We start talking. We go down the route of us about to graduate high school and where we're going to college and all of this stuff. It turns out we're going to the same college. Great. Fantastic. Now I have to see her for the next four years. You have to understand that I'm so very bad at apologizing. It's not like she's unattractive. Not at all. She used to be heavyset but she slimmed out and has something of an athletic figure now. Dark brown hair and baby blue eyes that seem to change to a different shade of blue under a certain light. A charming smile. How could I have mistreated someone like her?
The conversation takes us to everything we can talk about. My God she's brilliant also! Someone I can converse with on an intellectual level. I've never had this before. I still can't put the way I abused her in the past behind me. Her wrist still bears witness to her prior sadness. We keep talking and we begin walking alongside each other.
At this point my breath is becoming erratic as I try not to look like I'm taking deep breaths and am presenting myself as desperate or weird. I literally have no idea what is happening to me. There's no template in my mind for how to act right now. This has never happened before. I make a move to hold her hand and she grabs it with a soft grip. Now I'm about to freak the fuck out. She cracks this joke during the course of us talking and I find us genuinely laughing. It was this unbound laughter that was followed by a trace of joy. The lowermost part of my palm brushes up against one of her scars. She looks at my hand. I keep on walking. Don't look at her. It'll make you confront your actions. You don't want to do that. You need to do that. I brush my hand against her marks even more. She stops moving. As do I. She knows something, on my part, must be said. I open my mouth slowly, meticulously choosing my words. She hugs me tightly.
Wait. What. Wat. Why is she doing this? I fail to reciprocate the embrace because I'm so lost as to what is going on right now. She says, in this soft tone of voice that's never crossed my ears before,
"I forgave you years ago. Stop beating yourself up over it." I hug her back now, my soul resting to where it needs to be.
|
"Hi Mrs. Burdenfel", The women whom I recognized from down the street seems confused. It looks like she was in the middle of washing the dishes when Mr. Miracles kazaamed her in front of me.
"Pssst. Mrs. Burdenfel is older then my mother, what's going on here, Mr. Miracles?" I whisper.
"You wanted to talk to your future wife, didn't you?"
I could see Mrs. Burdenfel start to vocalize her terror for being teleported mid-rinse, when instead she let out a high pitched whine.
"It's coming" she said. "The baby is coming".
| 2014-06-05T07:40:32 | 2014-06-05T07:37:21 | 245 | 103 |
[WP] Weather update: Mostly cloudy, slight chance of rain, and an afternoon fog. Remember to stay indoors until the fog clears. If you're exposed to the fog, stay still. Shut your eyes. Hope for the best.
|
Warning: Pretty graphic and dark.
_____________________________________________________________
The other kids made fun of his bicycle, pointing at the rusty chain that clicked with every turn, the somewhat bent spokes, and the worn handlebars, but Billy didn't care. The bike did it's job, taking him from home to school, and school to home again. It was hard to keep up with the other older kids who had newer bikes; they were far ahead of him, peddling down the street, sending cries of mockery back at him. He peddled hard to catch up, tasted metal at the back of his throat, and yet they still pushed on ahead of him. Billy settled back down into a slower pace, deciding that he wasn't going to catch them no matter how hard he tried.
His bike chain clicked on as he turned down a road more desolate of houses. A country road that ran between two long cotton fields, with his house a mile or two down.
The air caught in his throat. Down the road, he could see a wall of fog rolling towards him. Billy turned around, the old instructions his mother had told him resurfacing in his mind, *you go right back to the schoolhouse if the fog has already gotten home*. He stopped again, seeing that the road he had came down was already beginning to be swallowed up by the fog.
It was surrounding him.
He looked back down the road, towards his house, and wondered if his bike would be able to take him through the fog safely. He pushed off, slowly picking up speed, his rusty bike chain clicking rapidly with each pedal. He disappeared into the fog, heart fully believing that his bicycle was good enough.
__________________________________________________________
"Son of a bitch," Gabe muttered. He had bought a carjack months ago, knowing full well that he'd eventually need it, and barely found that it didn't even work properly on his truck. "Dammit." He kicked the jack to the side, tire iron still in hand, then leaned against the side of his truck.
His right leg was paining him, the area on the back of his thigh that had been cut years ago twinged, making him almost lose his balance. He tried to stand on it, hoping to stretch out the gap of muscles and bring relief, but all it did was shoot another bolt of torture down his leg and into his calf.
Gabe bit his lip and punched his truck door, causing it to slam shut. He cursed himself and clutched his hand.
A strong breeze of wind blew through his shoulder-length hair, soothing and laden with the smell of rain and soil from the cotton fields lining the road. He looked up to admire the coming rain clouds, then froze as he saw a thick mist heading down the street.
"Oh shit," he said to no one as he limped over to the driver side door. He tugged at the door then nearly fell on his ass when his hand slipped from the handle. He regained his footing then grabbed a hold of the handle again. *Locked.*
Gabe patted himself down for his keys, occasionally glancing down the street. The fog flowed faster, falling towards him like a death sentence. He switched from pocket to pocket, patting himself down repeatedly. A quick glance to the fog, then back to the truck, and Gabe felt his innards turn to mush as he saw his keys hanging from the ignition, out of his reach. He looked over to the passenger side door and saw that it was locked as well.
"Oh fuck," he whispered to himself. He was going to be stuck in the fog again. It had lasted three hours the last time he was lost in it. His hand instinctively dropped to his leg, rubbing at the back of his thigh, where his leg had nearly been torn off the last time he was lost in the fog.
"Jesus help me," he said as he steadied himself to break the driver-side window with the tire iron. He swung hard but lost all the power of his swing when his leg twitched from under him, the blow of the tire iron missing the window completely and putting a dent into his door.
He prepped another swing, but stopped dead in his tracks as the fog rolled past him, encasing him. He figured that the best thing he could do was stand still. Breaking his window now and causing so much noise would surely bring them down upon him.
There was chirping, and clicking, and groaning, all surrounding him. He heard them moving around in the cotton field. Straining his eyes to see did him no good. They moved around stealthily in the fog, marking their target, coming back to finish the job and take his leg, and so much more from him.
There was more clicking, and buzzing, and flapping overhead. He heard scampering to the side of the road. Something crashed into the side of his truck, rocking it against him, causing him to fall out into the street. The tire iron fell out of his hands and into what looked like the middle of the street.
Whimpering, Gabe crawled to it. He grabbed it again, then used it to help stand himself up. He held it close to his chest, against his pounding heart. There was more clicking, all around him. They knew he was there, could probably smell the piss running down his leg.
He heard the clicking and buzzing zoom in and out, closer, then further away.
*Toying with me,* he thought, hands tightening around the tire iron.
He heard clicking again, this time coming rapidly towards himself.
*I'm not going out without a fight.*
He squared his feet, being sure to put most of his weight on his good leg, and listened intently. The clicking grew louder and louder, and he could hear it breathing, *breathing*!
Gabe waited and braced himself until it was almost upon him, and then clenched his eyes shut and swung with all his might. The tire iron connected, creating a crunchy wet pop. The force of the blow rocked Gabe back on his heels, then took him down to the ground. The metal resonated in the thick fog, a loud ping, sounding exactly the same as a baseball colliding with bat. There was a loud crash of something falling to the ground, and Gabe fell down with it.
"*Home-run motherfucker*!" Gabe yelled, picking himself up off the road, ignoring the pain in his leg.
He turned to look at his kill, only to see a young boy laying on the road before him, head caved in.
Before Gabe could register what had happened, something shoved him down onto the pavement next to the boy and began to tear into his back. He screamed in agony, trying his best to roll away, but whatever it was pinned him to the road. It ripped away at his shirt, punctured his skin, and poked what felt like knives between his ribs.
Gabe slowly blacked out to the sound of his lungs being ripped out of his own chest, and the sight of the boy laying next to him, an eye hanging out of the sunken in socket, resting on the cheek, watching Gabe be torn apart.
|
*"Weather Alert."*
The monotonous voice echoed, the reverberation of its apathetic roar shouted at me amid the fog. It was heavy. Warm blankets of massive vapor enveloped me while I frantically plunged my arms through the gloom, searching for my daughter.
*"Afternoon fog has rolled in. Time of departure is approximately four minutes."*
My hands kept scraping at the nearly immovable miasma. I had to find my daughter and not even some damn *fog* was going to keep me from her. *"Ara!"* I screamed, but my voice seemed distant, as if my voice box was being crushed, *"Ara, if you can hear me, I-"*
***Silence.***
I looked down at the ground, watched my steps and heard, so vividly, my soles touching the ground beneath. My breathing became louder. Every inhale was clear; I could hear the air slipping down my throat and into my lungs. It was as though the entire world around me was mute except me.
I picked my head up; the area around me was painted opaque with smoke. I heard stories of survivors, but never thought it could quite so *surreal*. I found myself dancing my hand in the air, entertaining myself with such beautiful frolic. I could have smiled. *...but there was another hand dancing with me.*
Frightened; I turned, tripped, and skinned my arm on the ground. The muscle was showing, blood sliding like thick vines of scarlet, ejecting from my wound all over the asphalt under me. *It only attracted them.* Where I saw one hand, I saw more. Their bodies contorted mechanically; appendages flying in impossible directions, ways that appendages could never bend. They resembled humans, but had no expression, as their face was shredded and unrecognizable.
I tried to crawl away, my legs pushing the weight of my body through the path of least resistance, but they touched me. Their frigid hands running down my skin sensually, their fingers gliding softly over my being. *"Stop, please!"* - I shouted, but no matter how much I strained my voice to speak, every word that passed between my dried lips was subdued. Their hands became more violent, peeling the meat from my bones and dragging me into the fog more.
I dug my fingertips into the cement and carved the nails from my flesh trying to hold myself in place. It was to no avail. They carried me further; my broken and beaten body being sliced up from the rough terrain I was being tugged on. My mouth opened, but only blood would exit. I wailed for help, but my pleas went unnoticed.
*"The afternoon fog has departed and you are now free to move about the city. Today's death count was a total of fourteen leaving a record high in about two years."*
| 2014-08-26T18:00:42 | 2014-08-26T17:59:49 | 42 | 17 |
[WP] Everybody has a number on their heads that shows how many people they screwed over in their life.You've been a proud zero your whole life.One day you wake up and look at the mirror. You see 7.5 billion
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This is my first ever comment on reddit, and the first time in a long time I've tried my hand at writing something. Any feedback only serves to better me. Hope you enjoy.
~~~
Ever since I could remember, my life had been spent working towards the impossible notion that I would someday turn this little floating zero above my head into a negative number.
A saved life.
Of course, by this time in my life I had already prevented the deaths of many people. Early in my life, I had lost my own mother to cancer, so I had spent a good portion of my life studying nothing but how to prevent cancer. How to cure it. To rid the world of it so that no one would have to lose anyone precious to them.
With time, I became more and more famous for my innovations towards finding ways to cure cancer. A lot of my life was dedicated towards cancer—towards eliminating it for good.
After I reached my mid 50’s, I made a breakthrough that rocked the world. I had developed a cure that was capable of not only eliminating cancerous cells that were already present in the body, but also capable of preventing it from ever developing in anyone’s future. The cure was the breakthrough that the world had been wishing for.
Of course, the development towards the cure had cost millions and many years, and even after the cure was produced, many years still were spent testing it. We wanted to ensure that it was safe.
It wasn’t until my late 50’s that the cure was finally given a pass.
And the moment it was given the green light, it took off.
The cure was free. This was not something that anyone in the world would be denied. And nobody dared deny such a gift. Vaccinations and pills were shipped and administered overseas. In only a few months of the initial release, there was nobody in the world who had not received the medication.
My name became known everywhere. Praises for my good-will were sung. Everyone looked to me as the man that cured the disease that had plagued mankind for so long. I was their hero. I was their God.
The morning I received the call from my long-time assistant, telling me that it was recorded that the cure had been administered to 7.5 billion people, I couldn’t help but cry at what I was being told.
Not too long after the call, I found myself staring in the mirror upon the bathroom wall of my lavish flat.
The number was still zero, but I couldn’t help but picture the negative 7.5 billion in my head.
“I did it, mom…I f-finally did it.”
“Yes yes. You *sure did* indeed—good job.”
The foreign voice sent my head spinning with fear, and I turned to find a man leaning against the open door to my bathroom, clapping his hands very obnoxiously with a wide grin on his face.
My first thought upon seeing him was that I should run. Every fiber of my being told me that the man was deadly, despite the grin. His crimson red eyes scared me the most. The man finally slowed the clapping, and then let his arms drop.
“Gotta say, doctor. I’m a *huge fan* of your work. You did something that no one thought would ever happen.”
His voice reflected his excited face, and he gestured very theatrically at nothing.
“W-w-who are y-you?”
My voice was weak, but I had finally found it.
The crimson eyed man suddenly took a step back, a hand over his chest as if I had said something offensive.
“Who am I? Good doctor, please. If you’re so willing to believe that you are the *God* of this world, then surely you must believe that there should be an opposite, no?”
His voice had become taunting. But his words only caused my mind to blank.
“O-opposite?”
My voice was still shaking, not nearly as violently as my knees though as I leaned on the bathroom counter to keep from falling.
The man’s grin returned as he stepped into the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror as if admiring a piece of art. That’s when I finally noticed something that made me collapse on the ground, my bloodshot eyes wide with disbelief.
There was a number above his head. But his was a symbol—not numeric. It was an infinity symbol.
Done with his reflection, the man turned to me once again and closed the distance, a look on his face like that of a father about to admonish his son.
“Good doctor, what’s got you looking so pale? Well, no matter.”
Kneeling in front of me, the man cleared his throat, resting one hand on his knee while he stretched his other out in front of the number above me—that proud zero that I had had all my life.
“I believe you’ve spent enough time playing the God of this world. Time to teach you what happens when you fly too close to the sun.”
He poked the zero, and suddenly the number began to rapidly increase. I could see it flying up at an speed I couldn’t keep up with out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. I didn’t notice my heartbeat begin to increase as well, or just how heavily I was beginning to hyperventilate as I looked back to the man before me, unable to speak but pleading with my eyes.
*Stop. STOP. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.*
The man’s lips curled up at the edges as he looked back into my eyes with wonder in his own.
“I’ve had some terrible people enter hell before with large numbers, but never before has something like this…I never dreamed the day would come. It almost brings a tear to me eye.”
He laughed at me happily, before taking his hand away from the number above my head, clearly satisfied with where it had stopped.
Looking at the mirror, I saw the number.
My heart stopped the moment I saw it, and my world faded to nothing.
Standing once again, the crimson eyed man looked down at the corpse of the man who had saved the world. The smile still on his face and his eyes still wide with excitement as the number faded away with the doctor’s life.
“Good doctor. You developed a new forbidden fruit—no cure. Now then…”
Turning away from the doctor, the crimson eyed man walked into the main room of the flat, and then to the window overlooking the city before him.
Taking a long breath, the man raised his arms just above his head, his index fingers pointing—ready to conduct a symphony for the world.
“Some say the world will end in fire. Some say ice…I say…let it end in plague.”
And with a flick of his index fingers, a man walking down the street outside the flat, directly under where the crimson eyed man stood, began to choke on his own blood as a laugh filled the air from high above.
|
I have always been proud of my number. Zero. I have never screwed anyone over. Never! Not once. At work I always stayed late and was sure to make sure that everything was perfect! Even going out of my way to do other people's work for them. When I go out, I hold doors for hours to make sure no one gets left out in the cold. I have never dated, too risky. The biggest accomplishment I have is my 0. But I woke up and today it is 7.5 Billion!
I quickly run to the bathroom to look for something to cover everything up. I don't have any makeup. Although that never covers up the numbers. I could try and hat and wear it over my number, but that only works for numbers under 1000, when it hits 1000 the number goes out of the sides. I could try to wear a mask. But only people with numbers exceedingly large wear masks, everyone knows not to trust anyone with a mask!
Shit shit shit, I have work in two hours, if they see me with 7.5 BILLION I will most certainty get fired! How did this even happen? What did I do yesterday?
I went to woke up. A normal breakfast of eggs and toast. Brought Mike his eggs and toast. Chatted with Sally about life. Gave that guy on the bus my phone so he could make a call. Wait!
I take my phone out and check where he called. 952-596-****. I turn on my computer and check the where the 952 area code is.
"What the heck is in Bloomington Minnesota? Surely something that could screw over every person on Earth must have been on the news."
I turn on the news and there it is. "Local man, Jonas Stransti dies mysteriously in his home. Police suspect that he was murdered by the mafia for unpayed loans. Stransti was working on a miracle cure that would cure every disease in existence. The suspect was linked to the Coliferalli family led by Vinnie Coliferalli.".
That is him, the man I gave my phone to. The man I let make a call.
"After comprehending Coliferalli police confirmed his guilt with is his number, 7.5 billion. Yes, 7.5 billion, every person on Earth. If you see someone with the number 7.5 billion please notify the police immediately, they have also assisted in the murder of Stransti."
| 2018-01-21T21:54:09 | 2018-01-21T19:44:50 | 265 | 56 |
[WP] You're the unappreciated intern for a famous group of Superheroes. Your power? You can boil water. All you do is make tea for them while they laugh and drink in their hideout. Little do they know that you've got dreams of becoming the Worst Villain ever. After all, a human is over 70% water...
|
I sat outside of the lounge, arms-crossed and face puffed. It was yet another day at the V.E.N.O.M hideout, where I just sat there and took a barrage of jokes and insults while boiling water for their afternoon tea parties. Viper hissed from the lounge, turning the flatscreen TV's volume down. "Hey Re-boil, get us another round of tea!"
**Here, you can insert the annoying laughter of those idiotic superheroes as I got up off of the uncomfortable loveseat and walked over to the sink to fill up five more goddamn mugs for their tea.**
"It's Rebecca," I muttered quietly. I angrily finished filling up the mugs with water and reach my shaking hand out to begin boiling them slowly. Those assholes can wait a little longer for their tea. "Rebecca, I want peppermint tea this time, with a few drops of honey too." Enigma laughed in his gentle yet raspy voice, along with the other superheroes.
Necro chimed in after, lifting his rotting wooden staff into the air, black mist swirling the spheroid shape at the top. "And I'd like some Chamomile tea please, but hold off on the honey for me." More laughter. More temptation to boil them into a swimming pool of blood and brains.
It was Oceanu who added on to the torment next. She laughed and chuckled, and I immediately knew that she was about to pull some bullshit. Without any warning, the tea in one of the mugs began swirling around intensely before beginning to splash out of the mug. Moltino cackled as they all laughed histerically, "Hey, Re-boil! You might want to clean that up!"
*No. Leave them alone. Don't think about them. Don't look at them. Don't listen. Just let it be.*
*Let.*
*It.*
*Be.*
Let it be. That's what I've been telling myself for years. Everyone in the academy saying I was never going to be a superhero. That I would grow up to be a useless hero to society; a hero nobody wanted. But if I was going to be something nobody wanted...I was going to be a villain. I turned to them and they stared at me, holding back their chuckles. "What? Snake got your tongue?" Viper stuck out his tongue and hissed at me. His slimy fork tongue, which split down the center, curling down under his chin and then retreating into his mouth.
*That's it.*
I whipped around in my stance and shot my hand right at Viper. The laughter from the group died down as they sat there, confused. A small rumbling sound could be heard coming from none other than his sleek, scaley stomach. He began shaking violently, his body thrashing around as he gripped the table for support. He stood up, lunging at me with his fangs on display.
But he didn't make it too far.
*Splash.*
A wave of blood and boiling water splashed over me. His organs and intestines fell to the floor, bubbling and bursting in a pool of blood and water. Oceanu let out a terrified scream, her body jolting violently. She was 90% water, giving her the ability to manipulate its forms and to control it. Now, she was a puddle of 100% pure regret and slushed body parts. Moltino stood up from straddling his chair with a look of pure anger in his eyes. "You little bitch...I'll teach you!" He charged at me angrily, but I simply raised my hand right as he went to charge me, a fireball sitting in his callused hand. *Splash*. His 6'7" body crumbled into a puddle of organs and boiling blood and water right before my eyes. Necro and Enigma were the only two of the original five left, cowering at the table and fearing for their lives.
I looked at them with poison filling my eyes, slowly raising each of my hands towards them. Enigma stuttered, begging for his life. "N-No, please! We didn't mean it!" I could feel him trying to enter my mind and take control, so I made it quick. His body exploded from the center of his chest, his eyes rolling back and going white as he fell into Necro's lap. Necro screamed and pushed Enigma off with his staff, looking as green as the vomit that was sure to spill out if I didn't kill him. I walked over to him at a slow pace, giving him time to scramble out of his chair and back up into the smooth brick wall. He shook his head vigorously, trying to sympathize with me. "Come on, Rebecca, those were j-just harmless jokes!"
"Harmless jokes? HARMLESS JOKES?! I've been waiting to retaliate against you imbeciles ever since I got hired as your damn intern. You know what that word means, right? Intern? It means that I'm supposed to be learning from you all. And what have I learned? That I'm a worthless, pathetic, waste of a superhero!" Spit flew from my mouth onto his face as I gripped his throat tightly and kicked his staff to the floor. It slammed down and cracked a bit, causing him to grow weak in my grip. He was the son of death, who had become a superhero to prove that death could be a good thing.
But in this situation for him, the one thing he sought out to prove was good was now his inevitable fate. I smirked and looked into his deep, pitch-black irises. "So I've decided that I'm not going to be a superhero. I'm going to be your worst nightmare."
I grinned in a completely sinister fashion as his neck swelled immensely in my hand, the water in his body traveling to his throat. He choked and scrambled for his staff, desperate for any sort of help as the life slowly drained from his eyes. His neck burst in my hand, blood and boiling water spewing at me. I ducked and let it fly past me onto the massacre of superhero bodies behind me. He sank to the floor quietly, his eyes slowly peeking up at me one last time. "H-Have...mercy..."
But supervillains...
we have no mercy.
We have revenge.
|
As i make them their tea, they laugh at me, thank me, tell me to leave, then keep laughing. I walk away starting to grin to myself. I say im going out on the town and they all say "Yeah, whatever." So i walk out the door and hop into my car.
I get to downtown Townland and see that it is much more crowded than usual. Perfect.
I get out of my car and start walking down the sidewalk. I see a sign.
"Townland Music Festival: Today through Saturday! Admission 20$"
Even more perfect.
I walk down to the music festival and oh boy is it crowded. I walk to the gates and pay my 20$. Im evil, not a monster. I go into the festival and see plenty of stands with vendors selling food and souvenirs. People selling and buying things anywhere you look. People who will soon be nothing but boiled carcasses.
I find myself an area where around me is nothing but people. There is a 20 foot radius around me of just people. If only i had some tea leaves. Then we would have tea. I use my power and everyone around me starts screaming in pain. They fall to the ground with a massive cloud of steam erupting from them. People start running from seeing the whole event. People are on their phones calling the police and the superheros i intern for. The heros arive first. They all see me. I laugh at them.
"What? Thought i would be useless, huh? HA!"
They all rush in for an attack but all fall victim to my power. "Did you guys forget that you are mostly water? Fools."
I laugh, knowing that i have won. All of a sudden, ***BANG***! Oh yeah... Forgot about the cops. I feel a sharp pain in my chest. Yeah, Im dead. But i am not going down without them too. In my final breaths i watch as the police also fall down in a cloud of steam.
Then everything went dark.
| 2019-07-30T17:09:56 | 2019-07-30T14:56:11 | 65 | 42 |
[WP] You've been blind your entire life. A new surgery gives you sight, but when you finally open your eyes something horrible makes you wish you were blind again.
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NOTE: I got away from the prompt; he doesn't see it right after opening his eyes, but a little later. I am aware of this.
------
*"We'll miss you while you're gone," said Beth, my co-worker, a smile in her voice.*
*I grinned. "It's not like I'll be bed-ridden! Technology is great these days; I'll be up on my feet and back in a jiffy in no time."*
*"You better. There's a bunch of kids who will be waiting for you, and the clinic will be emptier without you."*
Besides the mess of paperwork and small talk with the anesthesiologist, this was the last conversation I'd had before my surgery.
Opportunities for the visually impaired had exponentially increased throughout my lifetime. First, it had helped me get my job, as a clinical child psychologist. I'd always wanted to help the kids who needed it, and this was one of the possible ways, thanks to a movement that made colleges and employers more open to accepting anyone.
Now, it would let me see.
Once I came conscious, I only felt a slight ache in my head. It was wonderful how far we had come. But I was still unable to see.
*"The way we do it will have you start seeing slowly, to avoid shock," said the surgeon, a little apologetically. "Your vision will come to you slowly; you'll stay in the operating room with a nurse for about an hour until you can completely see."*
So the hour passed. There's no way to describe being blind and then slowly, slowly being able to see.
All I can say is that the world was beautiful.
Through my newfound sight, it was absolutely *beautiful*.
Once I had been released from the hospital, I couldn't stay still. I wandered around the sidewalks of the suburbs where I lived, drinking in everything I could see, then watching the stars and the sky when night fell.
The world was beautiful.
*They had assigned me to the children with physical scars, first. It was more for their sake than anything; the poor, scared, self-concious children that bore marks of their abuse. I felt sick when I thought about how anyone could hurt a child.*
*The days before I left for my surgery, I had a talk with each child the last time I would meet with them: heartfelt promises that I wouldn't look at them any differently, tears, hugs. One in particular remained in my mind.*
*Anna was the sweetest eight-year-old I'd met during my career. She was quiet, but I coaxed her into speaking, and we would be able to talk about nothing and everything —in a child's world, anyways— for a long time. Beth told me she always left with a wistful kind of smile on her face.*
*Her story was horrible; every child's was, of course, but hers spoke to me the most. When I read it on her file, I knew the child would have danced with pain. When she told me herself... it sounded like she was pain's prisoner, possibly stuck there for life. It was my job to get her out.*
*Her mother had passed away when she was six. Her father fell into a deep, deep chasm of darkness, and sometimes it was like she'd had no parent at all.*
*"I remember when I was little, he was funny," she'd said, a little sadly. "One time he told me this joke: what's blue and not very heavy?"*
*"What?"*
*"Light blue!" And she half-laughed, a laugh that bore the marks of pain's embrace. "It's my favorite joke. Tell it to everyone you know so everyone can know such a great joke, okay?" she inquired.*
*"Of course. Light blue— that's smart."*
*"Dad was smart. He was great. He could do anything. He made great breakfasts with little smiley faces in ketchup and packed me lunch every day. And he taught me a lotta biology."*
*That was how it went. She placed great emphasis on how wonderful her father was, and it all sounded sincere; not with a robotic hint to her tone, the way a manipulated child's voice was when talking positively about their parents. Her father was truly wonderful.*
*But after her mother's death, he began to lose his temper. He'd apparently always had one, but he started verbally abusing when she wasn't even close to seven, and started beating her when she was eight. These vicious outbursts were triggered by a small mistake, or even an action or word from Anna that seemed like a child's harmless doing. He'd go back to normal in less than a day, back to the "funny, smart, great," loving dad that Anna described. The school said that Anna was always well-fed and well-clothed, and they never noticed anything going on.*
*The outbursts got worse, until the fateful day when she'd done this or that, and he took out a knife.*
*The information file described it as:*
*"He badly disfigured the child's face."*
Anna happened to be the first child I would see on my day back. As I sat in my chair and waited for her to come in, I recalled that she hadn't been particularly concerned about how I would see her; if anything, she was happy for me.
The doorknob turned; the door opened. A small child walked in.
Her colors reminded me of all the things I had seen since gaining sight. Her brown hair was the color of an acorn shining in the sunlight. Her shirt, long-sleeved, was a cheerful pink that I saw on a cereal box at the grocery store. Her shoes were the scuffed white color of gravel that was used for decoration on peoples' front lawns.
But her face was horrible.
Not horrible in the usual sense, but horrible in what it represented.
Long, pale lines zigzagged across her skin, a jagged mess of scars. On one cheek as a dark gash that had not yet healed, and a bandage wrapped around her neck, probably hiding a worse wound that I knew I wouldn't want to see.
I remembered what she had said at the beginning of our first session. No one had remembered to tell her that I was blind, and apparently something in my face when she approached made her say, "Don't worry; the other kids are a lot worse."
If this wasn't bad...
"Hi, Anna," I said, mentioning nothing out-of-the-ordinary as she sat down. "Got any stories to tell me today?"
"Why don't you tell me *your* story about *your* surgery?" she asked, bouncing a little in her seat. "Did it hurt? Was it cool? What is it like to see things?"
"I'll trade you," I offered. "You tell me something interesting that happened to you, and then I'll tell you all about the surgery. Including the scrubs." She wanted to be a surgical tech when she grew up.
Anna talked about a fat old cat that had shown up in her foster parents' backyard and refused to leave, her eyes shining as she narrated. I closed my own eyes for a brief moment.
I wondered what her father had seen, looking down at this child, this child who saw him as a hero, as her whole world. How could any person wield a knife against an innocent, helpless thing?
Before I saw, I'd explained to her that the brain was an organ like everything else. Sometimes, peoples' brains broke, the way a leg breaks, and they need medicine to make it better. Her father never got medicine.
Now, I thought, *That must be a hell of a broken brain. A broken person.*
I opened my eyes again and saw Anna's bright smile as she described how the cat had arched its back, but toppled over, because it arched too far and it was too fat to balance.
In the long run, it would probably help me be more empathetic towards the victims of abuse.
But for now, I wished I was blind again, so that I didn't have to see the terrible mark that a terrible person had left on a wonderful child.
A wonderful child in a cruel world that I had so recently thought was beautiful.
|
For the first time ever, I drifted out of the darkness.
The darkness had been with me since the day I was born; I emerged into its gullet and it carried me helpless inside, the whale to my Jonah. When I slept, I fell deeper into the darkness still.
Not today. Today, I emerged.
My first sight was to be a hospital room, fittingly enough for a sort of rebirth. I had been told that I would be blindfolded as I woke from the anesthesia-induced slumber, to allow myself to mentally prepare before the grand reveal.
I shivered. As my waking thoughts cohered, it seemed as though the darkness had taken on a different character for our first ever parting, like the voice of a close friend who had suddenly become angry. No, I realised. Not darkness. LIGHT.
I frisked my hand over the bed to find a small button on a cord. I hammered it with my thumb.
"All right, all right," a voice scolded beyond the blindfold. "I'm here, you can stop abusing the button."
My doctor. His chiding did nothing to dampen my bubbling enthusiasm.
"I'm ready."
"Still sure about what you want your first sight to be?"
"Yes."
It was an easy question. It was the same thing I wished I could see on my eighth, tenth, twelfth birthday, and every one after that as well. I wanted to see the only thing in the world I had that I could rely on, that I could hold onto with certainty in the void of the whale's stomach.
"I want to see myself."
The doctor took me by the arm and guided me through the room. I told myself it was the last time I would ever allow anyone to help me like that.
We stopped. The doctor took a few steps back. "It's not too late to change your mind. People can have, well, expectations. I still recommend something simpler, with less scope for... disappointment."
"All due respect, doc, but I don't give a damn. This is what I want."
"Okay then, when you're ready."
I was ready.
I lifted my hands to the blindfold and ripped it off my face, my eyes still shut. In my haste, I wobbled and lost my footing a bit, but I believed I had positioned just as I had been before.
This was it. I took a deep breath. Hello me, in three... two... one...
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck that?"
Before me was a grotesque mass of flesh. I could hardly believe it was human; it folded in on itself like a hot marshmallow left too long in the microwave. Pale hairs poked through the blistered skin, a poorly butchered pork roast, made man. Pictures don't smell, but my brain, maladjusted to coping with five senses, registered sweat and burned meat. I retched. If I had believed in God, this visage would have abused me of that notion. No sentient, loving creator could have wrought this abomination upon the world without killing themselves afterward.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, you've shifted your gaze," the doctor responded.
Warm relief washed across my body and down my legs.
"Thank God," I sighed.
"That's a picture of the president. He decreed that every room in the country should have one, because he'd already named all the buildings after himself, " explained Doctor Subramani, lead surgeon of Trump Hospital (#2641).
"I can't tell you what a shock that was. I should have taken your advice, gone with something simpler. Could have avoided this whole mix up."
"Yes..." I got the sense that the doctor was holding something back.
"Okay, the portrait is mandatory," I continued. "What I don't understand, though, is why you have this second, uglier, animated version right next to it."
"Well, uh, Jason," the doctor said, his voice heavy with a mixture of apology and regret.
"...that's the mirror."
| 2017-06-10T15:54:09 | 2017-06-10T15:07:41 | 123 | 57 |
[WP] You have just died. The Good News is that there is an afterlife. The Bad News is that it isn't Heaven. Or Hell. Or Purgatory. And you aren't a Ghost. In fact, the afterlife is something that no sane human being would ever predict, and has most likely never been written down.
Go balls to the wall crazy with this. Think of the most outlandish afterlife your brain can muster. Thanks and have fun!
|
**LIFE OVER**
*James* is no more. You have left a loving wife and three children behind. You have died from **OLD AGE**. You have made *121* friends in your life, *17* of which you saw regularly throughout your life. *53* people left bad reviews on your character page.
Happiest memory:
*Getting Married*
Most unique memory:
*Travelling through China*
Did this life meet your expectations?
**YES**
**NO**
> No
If you wish to leave a complaint, please leave a message at number 3495y6thz845-3a.
***
You have earned
*1.357.138*
Points!
Your previous lives have earned you
*9.406.862*
Points!
In total, you now have
*10.800.000*
Points!
You are in the top 10!
Would you like to post your score on the scoreboards?
**YES**
**NO**
> No
Would you like to reincarnate?
**YES**
**NO**
> Yes
***
*Reincarnation*
**USE A PREMADE LIFE**
**RANDOMIZE YOUR LIFE**
**GO TO CHARACTER CREATOR**
> Go to character creator
Alert: Creating your own character will cost points!
Do you want to continue?
> Yes
***
*Character Creator*
**Traits** - Random
**Looks** - Random
**Geographic Area** - Random
**Development/Time** - Random
**Class** - Random
**Live!**
Cost: *Free*
> Set Geographic Area: Europe
**Traits** - Random
**Looks** - Random
**Geographic Area** - Europe
**Development/Time** - Random
**Class** - Random
**Live!**
Cost: *Free*
> Development/Time
***
**Prehistory** - 1.000 Points
**Classical Antiquity** - 10.000 Points
**Early Middle Ages** - 3.000 Points
**Late Middle Ages** - 5.000 Points
**Renaissance** - 10.000 Points
**Age of Enlightenment**- 20.000 Points
~~Restoration~~ - Buy DLC! - 20.000 Points
~~Late 19th Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 30.000 Points
~~Early 20th Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 50.000 Points
**Late 20th Century** - Free trial until 589zx-7! - 100.000 Points
~~Early 21st Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 100.000 Points
~~Late 21st Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 100.000 Points
~~22nd Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 150.000 Points
~~23rd Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 1.000.000 Points
~~24th Century~~ - Buy DLC! - 1.000 Points
~~25th Centuy~~ - Preorder today! - Price TBA
>Age of Enlightenment
***
**Traits** - Random
**Looks** - Random
**Geographic Area** - Europe
**Development/Time** - Age of Enlightenment
**Class** - Random
**Live!**
Cost: *520.000* Points
>Class
***
**Slave** - *FREE!*
**Serf** - 1.000 Points
**Free, lower class** - 10.000 Points
**Free, middle class** - 100.000 Points
**Free, bourgeois** - 1.000.000 Points
**Lower noble** - 2.500.000 Points
**Upper noble** - 5.000.000 Points
~~Monarch~~ - Buy DLC! - 10.000.000 Points
> Buy Monarch DLC
2100 credits will be wired off your account. Confirm?
> Yes
Would you like to select **Monarch**?
> Yes
**Traits** - Random
**Looks** - Random
**Geographic Area** - Europe
**Development/Time** - Age of Enlightenment
**Class** - Monarch
**Live!**
Cost: *10.520.000* Points
> Live
This is an expensive life. Confirm?
> Yes
***
Confirmed. You will be reincarnated as 050y592th582x.
Translating...
100%
You will be reincarnated as "LOUIS XVI".
Reincarnation in 60 seconds...
> ...
> ...
> Fuck.
***
Edit: Whoah, comments, upvotes, a jazz reading and reddit gold! Thank you!
|
The last thing you saw was your smartphones screen, you'd just sent your other half a quick message.
"b home soon <3"
Infact, you'll never be home. You'll never know anything human again.
You simply become aware of darkness. An infinite black that you can't even identify any semblance of self in. You are. There, in the nothing.
"Is it still nothing if you're there?" you think, and there's an explosion of light and colour around you.
| 2015-10-19T02:05:14 | 2015-10-18T21:05:43 | 550 | 35 |
[WP] A person's superpowers emerge during- and relate to- a highly stressful moment in their life. Your brother nearly drowned, and as a result could shape water to his will. A classmate fell from a high balcony, and ended up learning to fly. You? You just got your powers last night.
|
We were out in the storm for hours, the water rising in the hull.
It started on a great day with my parents and my best friend, I suppose she might even be called my girl friend. We went fishing over spring break, which was weird, because none of us have fished before. There was a guide for the first couple of day, but he let us go that day because his kid had been caught up in a bad car crash that morning. I prayed for him so dearly, unaware of my own fate and of how I should have been praying for someone else.
We had an engine issue near the end of the day as it was getting dark. It wouldn't start back up. We radioed in to the bay master and told him of our troubles, but we never got a response. This little island was full of third world problems and of failing infrastructure, but the bay master not answering was our fatal push.
The storm came in over night while we slept. We had shut the emergency power off and were going to try again in the morning. Before we got too hungry. We were only a couple miles off the coast, but that was too far to swim. We didn't chat before we fell asleep, we fell off and into our various dreams quietly and warily. We knew we would get out of this fine, but our hearts didn't let us feel that way.
Over night a storm picked up and our boat was hit by lighting. Normally not what one would expect from a fishing trip, but we at least got lucky because it put a series of small fractures in the hull that leaked water slowly. We were filling a bucket of water and pouring it out over and over again, but the water level still rose and the storm kept on.
My father was one of the thermo-mancers. He could create and control heat. He kept the whole boat a balmy 90° and that was all he could do. Him heating up the sky would not help much, and it would use far too much energy anyways. He was doing his best with the engine and was pulling parts out and replacing them.
My mother is a lithomancer. A master of rock. She could bend it and change its makeup to a large extent, but from where we were, she was useless. She could not reach the sea floor so far below us. She was on the radio repeating over and over again, calling out to the bay master. Such a beautiful face, now contorted and ugly with the fear that her and her children would die.
My best friend Elise was bailing water with me. She was a little smaller than I was, but also slightly stronger. She had been playing hockey most of her life, and it showed. She would carry the bucket up the stairs and dump it over the edge of the boat, then drop it down the stairs while I caught it and filled it with more water. Every couple of minutes we would switch. She was getting tired too, she couldn't deny it. Her power was with plants. She could help them grow and develop them in unique ways, some times she would give a cactus that was being over watered a strange root system and all of a sudden the owner could keep on watering the little guy too much. Or she would go to a tree that was struck by lightning and the whole thing would come to life and grow as if it had merely decided to split in half. I loved her. I really did. I still miss her years later.
She was my best friend, my shoulder to cry on. Someone whom I gave all my time and energy to. She was the reason I carried on the search for weeks, on the edge of 2 months.
When the boat was hit by lightning again, everything went dark, everything just went out. Looking back on it, I think I died. When I had come back to the world it was on fire. Something large and flammable had been hit and had exploded. I couldn't find anyone or anything I even recognized. I was screaming, water filling my throat as I struggled to move aside debris to find anyone at all.
At one point I found my mother and in me something clicked. It was like the feeling of vomiting. When you are done, your body let's go and has a sigh of relief. Her beautiful body charred and mangled was too much to handle and I vomited into the water around me. Then I felt the sky erupt with force, the clouds for miles above me swirling and roiling together in a carefully balanced dance of elements. I felt as lightning built up and charged, igniting the world as they leapt from cloud to cloud.
The water beneath me was filled with air as I rose up on pillars of air and roared forward. My mother was unconscious and I very much nearing that. I flew for miles at blistering speeds, not caring for the biting wind or the sharp rain that speared me. I hit the edge if the bay and saw destruction. The edge of the city was melted away in massive waves of water. The clif line now more of a ramp. I set her down deep into the town as people came out to see me. They knew what she needed and were immediately looking for a healer.
I saw a short walking staff nearby and grabbed it without caring for the consequences. Theft was not something for me to be worried about. Someone called out to me as I launched myself back into the air.
I learned on the way back I could clear the storms as easily as I could crack my knuckles. And bring them in even more easily. I cleared the single largest non-hurricane storm ever seen on this planet in a matter of minutes as I flew back. All I could think about was Elise and how I never told her that I loved her. A frivolous thought for someone so young, but nonetheless one I had.
My father's body was floating, his skin melted to a large floating piece of insulation from the fridge. He had been killed by the lighting alone, the coroner told me. I never found her though.
To this day I go around the world, searching for her in the depths of the oceans, chasing tales of a mermaids and of deep sea monstrosities that may have taken her as their own. Sanity started to slip. And I have followed my path, searching for her until I find her or I stop everything altogether.
|
Jan 2, 2022
USA
Operation Stark progress log,
Day 365
Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Operation Stark. So far, the government has been unavle to create a human weapon that can control radioactive elements. The deathtoll is, as of now, 314 people.
Day 370
Test subject #322 did manage to awaken an ability during the test though it was not tge ability to control uranium as hoped. He gained the ability to bend metals and escaped. After 3 hours of running and tracking, he was neutralized.
Day 376
Nothing of note to report. Death count : 327
Day 380
Test subject number 331 has become the first person to awaken the ability to control Uranium. However, his skill was too low to avoid radiation poisoning. He is currently in critical condition and is not expected to live past midnight. However, we have been able to narrow down the ideal settings for the radiation chamber. Hopefully, we will have success before the end of tge war.
Day 384
The government has increased our funding as well as the number of test subjects we receive. Test subject number 340 also gained the ability to control Uranium, but met the same end as test subject number 331.
Day 387
The first person to succesfully escape the nuclear chamber after obtaining the power to control Uranium has been found. He is now being trained to control his powers.
Day 390
"In a tragedy, 28 scientists have died at a nuclear research centre today. The cause of this disaster is unkown. However, as you can see here, a man in shackles was seen limping away from tge ruins of the plant. Could be be the culprit?"
"Stupid news! They dont even know what was happening there, yet they accyse me. Well, no worries they will never capture me, as long as I hace these powers."
| 2021-04-01T06:10:57 | 2021-04-01T03:41:16 | 18 | 11 |
[WP] Everyone who dies must go to a waiting room before becoming a character in a work of fiction. They are sorted into roles based on how they lived their lives.
|
There was a lot of cruel irony in which God made this little sterile room. Filled with books and magazines of all blasted things.
The second life was a pageantry of some absurd roll call. Every few minutes, someone’s Olive Garden variety buzzer would berserk, and they would just liquefy on the spot to ink, soak into the nylon carpets, and the stain would slither away down some predestined hall. The overhangs of the halls were labeled with all sorts of things: romance, brochures, my little pony fanfic, horror, existential bullshit. Intuition says these damned stains would incarnate into some baby on some fiction planet, Living out roles in complete unawareness of their former life or their former gods.
I mean thank God for his gifting of inability to become tired or sick or hungry, or I wouldn’t be able to sit in this room. In fact all sensations were pretty much stricken. In one way, I miss donuts, and feeling great pains when I see a child walk in- destined for a nondescript role for their nondescript life outside the parameters of behaving exceptionally well on the playground. There was numbness of outside-ness, but it allowed for an inwards sniper precision reflection on the decisions that I made on Earth. Plus, acceptance into this white walled waiting room came with a complete awareness on what was to come with this so called afterlife. It was good to prepare for what was on ‘the flipside of the page’ so to speak.
I didn’t come up with that one. Frank McCourt did, but of course it was doused in a lot of rye tone. No one’s written a book that could merit him as a character, and he has just been sitting here for awhile waiting for the next Hemingway. I remember in 7th grade that I said his novels were just so human, just disgustingly human with pores and moles and urges. Turns out that was just a fraction of what he really wanted to capture, and now he’s waiting on a book that could capture him.
I met Frank after he caught me up from a reminiscing shit storm about the time I quit school to go on Prozac and sobriety. It wasn’t the lowest of the low points in my life, which I was too keenly aware of thanks to lack of Krispy Kreme to numb the pain.
“Hey, who do you suppose plays Hitler in his biographies?”
“…. I would assume Hitler”
“You got it all wrong chappy. Look see- Hitler was loved and respected, and he’s one of the human beings that actually got pretty close to what he wan’ed. At least so I read” His smirk crinkled his face into skin covered moguls.
“True, I guess it would be Ghandhi then.”
“You old Bastard!” he pushed me out of my chair. He was such a good writer, he could compose anyone in a good mood. He just knew people.
Frank and I got to talk. He told me about all the people’s he’s met, and his accuracy on what genre they would melt into. 93% success rate he said. He was vehemently opposed to voluntary mathing, but he just had too much time to spare.
“You’re a shoo-in for sci-fi. You got this odd philosophy thing going on”
Matters became worth noting again when I asked“How many times have we been here?”
“What do ya mean ya bastard? Like in this room?”
“I mean, how do you know before you’re stroke that you weren’t in a book that someone else wrote?”
“I don’t know, but if I ever meet the author one day I’m gonna sock him in the mouth for my baby sister”
“You’re an author, and you wrote about that stillbirth, do you feel guilt that someone had to play that role?”
“Well that would make me god then right? Wouldn’t that be hell”
Two buzzers cranked on and two stains snaked together into the hall labeled romance.
“But I wrote about my life, someone would have to write my life out before me”
“The God controlling your life allowed you to become a god as well.” I looked up into Frank’s furiously dilating pupils.
“But you have heard about me, so we must have both been written by the same author.”
Suddenly I felt pretty overwhelmed at what an insubstantial character I was. I wonder if anyone has read about me and wanted me to marry that pretty Parisian Roxanne, or rooted the carbon monoxide gas that I was gulping up like a ravening animal. I wonder if I was a flat character, or just a tool to further the plot for someone on a journey more exciting than my own. I felt pinned and helpless.
“And someone could have written him into existence to write about us? So… where does it end Frank?”
“Well, based on our universe, there’s no end in sight. People will not stop emoting so they will not stop writing, it’s just too efficient a tool to get your point across.”
“Who is our God? The god of all authors, the original voice then Frank?”
Then I knew I asked the right question. And that same self reflection clarity pulled me inwards once again.
We were born of mud and stick. Of the sun that dried sediment near the river, and merchants that wanted to make fair purchases. We were born of warriors teaching hunting techniques and passing down stories. We are all a mixture of raw materials, chemical compounds, and other tangible things that were brought together to convey the untouchable. Thoughts and experiences, and an outreach from that condition of loneliness that we are all infected with. The compounds and mixtures may have been different, but the spirit of it all remained the same.
The thought paralyzed me. Literally. I couldn’t feel my toes, and the sensation slimed it’s way to the crown of my head where I melted into the r/Writingprompts hallway with Frank waving goodbye in the distance.
And Here I am.
Goddammit 8justatry can not write for shit. This story has so many inconsistencies that it’s almost insufferable. Did Frank McCourt even die from a stroke? She half assed an “Irish accent”, gave that up, and didn’t even bother to look up his dead baby sister’s name. And hitler? Why does every writing prompt she chooses mention God AND Hitler AND Ghandhi in, like, every other sentence. I mean, she doesn’t even really know about either, lets be honest, she’s only heard about them word of mouth. And her craving for donuts at 2 am in the morning is just grossly apparent. Really, I can’t wait for her to write my epitaph.
You can't blame me, she spelled Ghandhi wrong like three times.
|
He had to admit he was a bit surprised. Sure there had been the bright light and the long tunnel, but at the end of it there was a receptionist desk and an older woman with rosy, dark skin who told him to take a seat. Henry looked away from her smile and towards the other people in the room. He skimmed his eyes over them, but their details slipped through his mind like a sieve. With a small frown he sat in an open seat between two other men and waited.
His mind wandered as he waited. He thought back on his life, as he knew he should. His life had been pretty unordinary. He had been the middle child in a middle-income career with a mildly pretty wife in a mildly interesting town. They had been trying for kids, hadn't they? Henry looked up in his confusion to see a woman across from him stand and shuffle towards an archway beyond the receptionist desk.
Slowly the woman stepped through it, tears falling down her face as she went. And just as quickly as she was there, he blinked and she was gone. The tears stuck with him though. Henry brought his hand up to his eyes. Had he cried at the end, or was it someone else? No, he was fairly certain it was someone else who had been crying in pain.
He dropped his hand and traced the translucent lines on the floor with his eyes. A child had been crying. Henry slipped through the holes in his memory. What had happened? The child had been crying because...ah, because he had been injured by the building. That's right. Someone had attacked the bank and he had fallen besides the child.
A deep rumbling filled his mind and Henry remembered the wall crashing down. He had crouched over the child trying to save him from the ever consuming maw of death. That's why he had ended up here. Henry let a tear drip onto his hand as a smile split his face. In all of his average days, he had finally done something remarkable when it mattered.
*It's time.*
Henry nodded and stood up. He focused on the arch and walked towards it. With one last lungful of air he stepped through it.
He woke up crying in the arms of a doctor.
“There you are little one. Had us scared for a moment.” The doctor cooed. “Can't have such a remarkable soul getting lost.”
“What is it?”
“A boy. What would you like to call him Ma'am?”
“Harry.”
| 2014-12-14T23:17:14 | 2014-12-14T22:16:45 | 73 | 15 |
[WP] All of the "#1 Dad" mugs in the world change to show the actual ranking of Dads suddenly.
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Sunday. A Sunday that started just like any other Sunday. Robert Glover sat down to a hot breakfast lovingly prepared by his wife. After getting the kids to sit down and leading the family in prayer, Robert started his favorite Sunday activity. The Sunday paper, and coffee. This ritual was only broken if a quarrel broke out among the kids and only then if it got too loud.
After the local sports team lost, the unrest in the Middle East, and ol' Marmaduke had done it again, it was time for church. That's just what you did in Highland Park.
The kids were exceptionally quite today and as Robert reached for his mug he got that sixth sense feeling of being watch. And for the first Sunday he looked at his family. All eyes were on him as he took a drink. He smiled and gave a chuckle one gives when one doesn't know what else to do. All the eyes followed his hand as he returned the mug.
"Dad? Where's your #1 mug?" Asked Tim, the middle child.
"Why Timothy it's right here in my... hand..."
#"#538,218 (tied for 628th) Dad"
Another chuckle. "Well if that ain't the funniest thing. Which one of you rascals did this?"
"Umm..Honey I think it was the devil," Robert's wife spoke up, "all of us saw it as soon as you grabbed the mug the devil worked his magic and burned those evil numbers right under your hand."
"Well then, let us be off to church and let the Lord sort this out." Robert declared, still wary of Bobby his oldest.
Neither church nor prayer could have solved the flood of indignant dads rolling up in their Land Rovers. Mutterings of "I'm at least top 10...." "well maybe 100 it's a big world" "I heard Adams tied for 200th..." "We're men of god we should all be tied for #1..."
The preacher gave his sermon as dryly as ever. And after joined the chorus of dissent about who was the best dad.
__________________________________
"Dad do we have a dollar for some flowers? I'm sure she'd love some. "
"No Johnathon, not this month." Straightening both their ties, Johnathon Morrison Sr. opened the door and they walked out into the evening. "But maybe Mrs. Glover will let us clip a rose from her bush."
"Her rose bushes famous through out all of Dallas and east Texas?"
"The very same. She'll know what it's for."
And so after an exchange of pleasantries, no we must be on our ways, thank you ever so much for the roses. The Morrison men left with a rose each, they really did brighten up all of Dallas.
Under the willow, under the sycamore, over the brook, and huddled by the oaks did the Morrison men stop walking.
The roses lay crossed on the ground, their wrists crossed behind their back, and the sun crossed horizon. For orange to red to night, the sun crossed the horizon. And still they stood in silence nothing they could say hadn't been said before.
"I have to go to work now, walk home safe."
"I will dad, you walk home safe too."
______________________________
Robert mowed the lawn, worked overtime, played catch, helped with homework, made love, and slowly worked his way up the dad ladder at church. He put three kids through college, retired early to spend more time with his family. It never would be enough
______________________________
Johnathon Sr. worked two jobs. Some times three if they needed the money. He spent his money smart, and he spent his time even smarter. They were called the Morrison men for a reason, they picked up the slack in the world and carried themselves and each other. Even when Jr. went to college (on a full ride none the less) the Morrison men could be seen once a year. With roses that light up Dallas walking under the willow, under the sycamore, over the brook, and huddled by the oaks. With roses crossed on the ground Johnathon would sometimes have something new to say. "I graduated from college Mom." "I met the most beautiful girl." "I have a wonderful daughter, named Rose." "Rose has a brother now, Johnathon III."
Two roses not crossed. Johnathon straitened and walked back.
"ROSE MORRISON"
13th Nov. 1966 - 2nd Mar. 2000
"JOHNATHON MORRISON SR."
#"#1 Dad"
12th Mar. 1968 - 19 Oct. 2047
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Sitting at the kitchen table Jacob stared out of the window and sipped a coffee from his "1# Dad" mug.
Suddenly there was a fizzing and spluttering sound and the #1 Dad appeared to melt from his mug revealing a #2,045,834 Dad behind.
He stared for a moment then said.
"Well shit... That's not bad at all." Then he grabbed a rich tea and dunked it in.
The end.
| 2017-06-11T09:22:30 | 2017-06-11T09:19:40 | 23 | 17 |
[WP] You have realized that your best friend is your son/daughter from the future who wants to hang out and get to know you since you die before he/she was born
Not sure if this has already been made but just thought of it :)
Edit: WOW didn’t expect so much people to comment on this! Thanks everybody!
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Note - it’s definitely a twist on the prompt, but it just got my gears spinning and I’m happy with the result!
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I looked down at the tiny girl in my husband's arms, perched on the hospital bed beside me. "We're naming her after you, you know. Natalia Everett James."
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My best friend's eyes welled up with tears as he reached out to stroke the side of the baby's face. He smiled at the two of us, softly.
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"You've always been there for us. We wouldn't be here without you. Hell, you saved our relationship, Everett. You brought my wife back to me." Noah's voice broke at the end and I watched a gentle tear roll down his cheek as I struggled to sit up. Everett helped me maneuver a pillow behind me to be a backrest and I rested my head on my husband's shoulder, staring down at my baby girl, still amazed at how perfect she looked.
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Two years ago, we had met Everett for the first time. Noah and I were having problems in our relationship - I felt stifled, terrified of my future. The ring on my finger had become inexplicably, chokingly tight despite it fitting perfectly for the last three years of our marriage. Noah wanted a baby. I was 26, barely out of law school, and struggling to keep myself sane in a law firm that was working me to the bone. A baby was not something I'd ever particularly wanted, but at that point, I couldn't even consider it. Rett worked in the firm as well; he'd started a few months after me and taken over the cubicle next to mine when its previous occupant had bought a one-way ticket to Australia and disappeared unexpectedly. I took no notice of him, busy with work and stressed from my almost-daily screaming matches with Noah. It wasn't until he found me crying in the copy room after the copier had jammed, again, that I even really noticed his presence.
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He was warm, soft, and wildly level-headed. To say he fixed our relationship would be an understatement. A few years older than me, matching Noah's 29, Rett quickly became a close friend to both of us. Slowly, with his mediating presence in our lives, my fights with Noah slowed to a standstill and our nights were spent laughing over glasses of wine on our well-worn couch instead of screaming at each other until our throats were raw.
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When I had unexpectedly become pregnant just over a year later, Noah was overjoyed. Everett was equally as thrilled, and their excitement revved up my own tenfold. Rett was positive we were having a girl, Noah equally convinced it would be a boy. I didn't care either way, simply wanting to meet my baby.
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We painted the nursery a soft blue, the colour Rett and I both named our favourite. His excitement reminded me of Noah constantly - they shared the same bubbly laugh and warm eyes. Sometimes, I joked that he was a long-lost brother or cousin. Noah played along, once even suggesting Everett get a DNA test. Rett was horrified by the idea, saying he didn't need a test to call us family. We returned the sentiment, and life moved on.
&#x200B;
When Rett started dating a girl named Lily a few weeks into my pregnancy, we found she fit seamlessly into our little group. Her and I enjoyed countless afternoon talks over a backdrop of sports games or cooking shows, nursing mugs of tea as we shared laughs.
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It was Lily and Rett that helped us deal with the stress of being new parents. Rett especially was always eager to help, and the way he looked at baby Natalia was incredible - with the strangest sense of familiarity, of longing when we held her sleeping form.
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Ten months, sixteen days after Natalia was born, Noah and I were finally going on a date. The baby was left in the safe hands of Lily because Rett was too emotional to be around her - he'd been increasingly shaky and on edge for weeks. Of course, he was home with Lily and Natalia, but holed himself up in the den with the TV a little too quiet to cover his sobs. Noah and I brushed it off for the night when he'd hugged us both a little too tight as we left.
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We had a lovely dinner. Afterward, driving home through a blustery snowstorm, Noah was singing along to the radio. My laugh tinkled around his off-key notes, his hand warmly wrapped around mine, resting in my lap as the snow swirled across our windshield. He paused at a red light to kiss me, my laugh melting into his lips.
&#x200B;
It came out of nowhere. Massive, blaring, bright in the darkness of midnight. There was no way we could have avoided it. The semi bowled us over, and we spun, spun, spun into the snowy darkness. I slipped in and out of consciousness, my screams sounding detached even to my own ears. Noah's hand cooled in mine, frighteningly limp, as sirens and lights became my world.
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He didn't make it to the hospital. They told me later, even though I couldn't respond. Comatose, I felt so painfully trapped. Everything was dark. I brought up images of the faces I knew, only to find them blurry, unmoving, silent. The voices of the nurses and doctors were gentle. I didn't listen to them. I picked out the sensation of Rett sprawled across me, shaky, sobbing. I tried to move, to tell him I was fine, I was right there. It didn't work. It never would.
&#x200B;
They knew I was alive inside my head, knew I could hear and feel, knew I'd never be able to respond. Everett came every day, with Lily and my baby and Noah's parents, who'd taken custody of Natalia. For years, they were there whenever possible. They talked to me, at first the words punctured by sobs. I wished I could comfort them. They weren't always sad - a month or two after the accident, they all came in buoyed up with joy; Natalia had taken her first steps. They set her on my bed and she bubbled nonsense, clutching her tiny hands in my hair. I laughed gleefully, forgetting for a moment that they would never hear me.
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The last time Everett ever came to visit, alone, on Natalia's third birthday, he was silent for what felt like hours, simply holding my unmoving hand and crying. Finally, words found their way past his lips. He started his story slowly, brokenly. By the time he'd gotten to the part where his father died in a car crash that knocked his mum into a coma, the words were crashing out, tripping over each other in their eagerness to finally see the light of day. He told me everything, how he'd been to visit his mum every single day, in this very bed, since he'd been ten months, seventeen days old. He told me how as he grew, raised by his grandparents, he'd come to the realization that he was, in fact, a *he*. He told me how his grandparents had smiled so happy when he came out to them, telling him of his father's conviction that they were having a son despite his parents' best friend's conviction that it would be a girl. He told me how he'd been named for the same friend, and how he'd taken that name as his chosen when he'd begun his transition, how he'd made it official on his eighteenth birthday, how he spent years searching fruitlessly for his namesake, until he found a photo of the four of us - Noah, Everett, Lily and I - and noticed his striking similarity to the man that shared his name. How he realized his future laid in his past, how he fought to get here, how it’s time for him to go.
&#x200B;
He told me how sorry he was for lying, and how happy he was to have gotten to know his parents somehow, even if we didn't know that it's what we were to him. He told me he was sorry he couldn't return, but that he needed Natalia - Everett, as I knew to call my son then, even if I could never call him that aloud again - to grow up without his future self in his life.
&#x200B;
Lastly, he finally told me the words I'd been waiting to hear since the first moment I saw the positive on my pregnancy test - "I love you, mum."
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NOTE: sorry it's so long, this is my first post here though! would love feedback :)
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I would almost be touched if I wasn’t afraid. My wife Amanda is 2 months pregnant with our first child. I haven't the heart to tell her I have less than 7 months to live. Why would she believe me? How would she react?
“Did you find the noodle mix?” Ben asks me, as I peruse through his backpack. *No, but I found the truth.*
“Not yet, you said it was in a blue bag?” I asked, frantically replacing the notepad. There it was - Pork ramen, my favorite. Ben would know this; Amanda should have told him. I returned to the cooksite. It was several hundred feet away from the tents, as a precaution to keep bears, squirrels, and everything else away.
“Did Amanda leave to get water,” I asked.
“Yes, she left 5 minutes ago.”
“Good; You should know something – I found your notebook."
Ben froze. He did a quick pat down of his jacket, only to realize it was missing. He opened his mouth as of to say something, but decided against it, and instead we sat in silence for a moment.
“Does mom know?” he finally asked.
“No, and I’m not going to tell her.”
“I’m sorry, you weren’t supposed to find out,” Ben said, frowning.
“Why did you do it? Why leave everything behind?” I asked.
Ben shifted for a moment; He never expected this, not from me. I had read the notes; time travel was a one-way trip.
“Because if I can save you – I can save myself; your version of myself.” Ben said.
“You think you need to be saved?”
“Yes, I do,” Ben said. He laced his hands behind his neck. “You don’t know what it was like, growing up without a father. I never fit in - never had a family - never fell in love. Maybe, just maybe, if I can save you, I can do something worthwhile.”
I sat thinking for a moment; It was all too much for me. Ben had jumped into my life less than a year ago, sitting next to me on the first day of MATH 201. We had hit it off ever since. He was like a younger; more energetic version of myself. He was kind, smart, and compassionate. I was, for lack of a better term, proud of the man who claimed to be my son. How could he beat himself up like this?
“Can you tell me when it happened?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“Only that it happens soon, but I don’t know what happens, or how to stop it from – “
Amanda’s scream rang out through the wilderness. I leapt to my feet, Ben followed.
“Amanda?” I yelled, running towards the river.
I arrived just in time to see the bear tackle Amada.
“Amanda.” I shouted. I charged the bear. I don’t know what came over me, but I ran straight at the angry, 250 lb. hunk of muscle.
The bear, startled, raised itself up on its two legs and bellowed a fierce roar. It was only then did I see the two cubs scoot run away from the shore and into the bushes. This was a mother cub protecting her young from the evil likes of Amanda. I had to get I the bear away from her.
“Leeeeroy Jenkins!” I yelled, terrified, and unable to think of anything better. I picked up a nearby rock and hurled it at the bear, who was now barreling towards me.
I was knocked to the ground by the bear. It clamped it’s jaw around my shoulder. I screamed, but the pain was all gone. It was a moment of pure adrenal bliss. I struggled against the bear as she bit down hard, shattering bone. I fell to the ground; a red mist appeared above me. It was Ben, with bear spray. The bear turned and ran, following her cubs into the brush.
“Stay with me; It’s going to be OK.” Ben said, cradling my head in his arms. He was crying.
“Ben- listen, you want to make a difference? Be there for my kid.”
“That’s messed up,” he sobbed. “You can’t die on me.”
I looked at my mangled, bloody shoulder. I didn’t have long.
“You have to save her; save the baby. Please – be there for her.” I said, sputtering.
“I’m sorry dad. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t save you.”
“You did save me,” I said, looking Ben in the eyes, ”now go save yourself.”
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*Check out my new sub* r/BLT_WITH_RANCH *if you like these kinds of stories.*
| 2018-10-30T11:40:08 | 2018-10-30T11:39:38 | 38 | 13 |
[WP] Aliens landed on earth, and they're surprised all humans possess what they think of as a superpower... an ability we always took for granted and consider normal.
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We're pessimists. All these years, wondering if we're alone in the universe, and fearing that we weren't... all those books and movies and shows about mysterious aliens coming down from god-knows-where and just blasting the ever-loving shit out of us poor Earth-bound humans.
Not so much.
I remember the day they came. They didn't land, their ships moved incredibly slow. They just kindof hovered in some empty fields and waited for us to come to them.
I guess the closest thing you could compare them to are rodents. They were middling on their food chain, so they understood fear, and territory, as well as hunting and war. They came like they did to assure us that they meant no harm... slowly, like you'd approach a orphaned faun. I think we'd have been offended, if we weren't so shit scared they'd blast us if we moved wrong.
Our psychology was pretty similar. Their food tasted pretty good, they enjoyed ours. Family units were bigger for them, but they only had a breeding season that lasted about six months in every two years, so that's to be expected. They found it interesting that we could breed pretty much any time we wanted.
We had the Olympics the year after they landed. There was a whole political mess over whether or not they should be allowed to compete. It was thought that friendly competition would either strengthen our friendship, or end in outright war. Neither happened, thankfully. They had the sense to decline any invitation, and see what it was all about before jumping into anything.
I'd ended up making friends with a few of them by the time the games came on. Even still, I can't tell males from females. Something about scents and subtle color differences. They can't really tell our males and females apart either, go figure. Anyway, Glaf and Leese were over with their new litter, sitting in our living room. The little ones barely had fur yet, and were just wrinkly little pink squriming things, almost like newborn puppies. Glaf and Leese said so long as they were warm, they were fine, and just left them in the corner for our cat to sniff and leer at. The couple parked in front of the TV with the rest of us, occasionally asking questions about this or that. Gymnastics amazed them, as their bodies didn't really bend certain ways that ours did, but were wholly unimpressed with our boxing.
Then, as we were watching the first guy climb up to the diving board... and they absolutely lost their shit. Like, totally bananas. Glaf was trying to convince me to call somebody and cancel the whole Olympic games, while Leese was scolding me about sacrificing lives for some games, when the guy launched himself off the board.
Have you ever heard a rodent scream? It's like nails on a fucking chalkboard. Then silence, as the diver broke the water's surface. Perfect dive, not even a ripple. Leese was just turning back to lecture me some more, when the diver surfaced, and Glaf literally grabbed Leese's head and pulled it back toward the screen.
Silence. More silence. I had no idea what the hell was going on with them. I didn't know if they were mad or offended or what the hell to do, so I just froze there. Beer halfway to my mouth, hoping they didn't notice that my fucking cat was chewing on one of their pup's ears, and wondering if I was going to get to the next day alive.
Glaf just kindof slowly turned around and stared at me for a second. I sipped my beer and set it down on the table, trying to figure out if I could get to the broom in the kitchen before I got my face chewed off, when he finally stuttered out a question:
"Wha- The human just- How did it not drown?"
"Um. What? Drown?"
"Yes. Humans cannot breathe water, no? Suffocation if the lungs fill with liquid?"
"Well yeah. He just, you know, held his breath."
Blank stare. I swear to god, not even a whisker twitched. At this point, the pup was starting to protest about it's treatment from the cat, and still no reaction.
"He stopped breathing, for a little while. Got some air in his lungs before going under the water and held it til he came up again."
The pup squealed, and Glaf went over and shooed the cat away, and sucked on the pup's bleeding ear. Saliva helps their blood clot or somesuch.
Leese, not having a mouthful of baby, entered in the conversation. "You can just not breathe?"
"Well yeah, for a little while. Longer if we take a deep breath before." Then I took a deep breath, and held it. Glaf dropped the pup, Leese's eyes damn near popped out of it's fuzzy head.
Conscious breath control. Not a thing for them, apparently.
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Our silence should have warned them, as their voices warned us. We heard them coming years in advance. The most sensitive listeners were thought to be schizophrenic, until we realized they were all hearing the same things. We knew everything about their technology, psychology, capabilities, and strategy long before they arrived, and they knew nothing of us. We exterminated their battle fleet in a day. They never knew what hit them, how could they? They never developed radio communications. Alone in the universe, Humans did not telepathically transmit their thoughts.
| 2014-11-09T17:55:54 | 2014-11-09T16:36:00 | 15 | 11 |
[WP] 50 years ago, NASA determined a rogue planet would hit earth, destroying us all. The rich poured their fortunes into space travel and fled... but the rock missed, and now the survivors won't take them back.
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Sargent Jone's head snapped up suddenly. "General, there's a signal coming through on the radio."
"Well put it through already, there's a golf game with my name on it somewhere.." The General's arms mimed a golf swing as he practiced.
The signal came through over the speakers of the listening post. "This is the Funded Unit Weirich, requesting permission to land."
The General reached for the microphone. "Listen here Weirich, you can stop asking. We've already told you our answer. Landing Permission Denied!"
"We can pay you! Anything at all, just let us land!"
"Look, your money is no good here anymore. Even if you did come back you'd never fit in, you wouldn't know what to do with yourselves. Your property has all been confiscated and redistributed. All those 50 room mansions and castles you used to not live in for longer than required by tax laws, they've all been used to house the formerly homeless, or torn down to house the formerly homeless by the formerly jobless."
Voices could be heard in the background onboard the Weirich "...surely not the cottage in the Hamptons..."
"...stuck up here any longer I'll simply go mad I tell you, mad..."
"...Buffy calm down, the dirty peasants wouldn't know what to do with your garden..."
The General rolled his eyes and waited while the commotion died down on the ship. Eventually a new voice came over the speaker.
"Hello, General, this is five time world series MVP Roy D. Rayger, how you doin playa. Look, you let me land and I'll get you season tickets for life at Yankme stadium."
"Sorry champ, no can do. We plowed that thing into the dirt a couple of years after you left. It's a highspeed train station now, Yankme Station."
"A what now..."
"Ya it's true. I can get from New York to LA in 30 minutes, LA to Tokyo in 3 hours. I can circle the planet in 12."
Rayger was incredulous "You telling me nobody watches baseball anymore..."
"Oh of course they do champ. There's even a little league diamond on top of Yankme Station. They pack in 200 people a game in that place. Nifty way to wait for your train. Quite the view of the Hudson too. But since there's no money in sports anymore there's no passion in the fans anymore. Turns out nobody cares when every team sucks."
Suddenly there were sounds of a scuffle and a "Give me that you buffoon" could be heard. The General and Sargent Jones looked at each other bemused. Then the General scowled at Sargent Jones, who went back to looking busy staring at the signal meters he had no control of.
"General, now look here, this is President Harumph, and I order you to let us land."
"Well, hello Mister President, it is truly an honor to speak to you. But I'm afraid I cannot carry out that order, as it's an unlawful one."
"What do you mean unlawful. Nothing illegal about that, I've given way shadier..."
"What I mean to say Mister President, is that you are no longer our President. Shortly after you chose to be "evacuated" for your safety to the Weirich you were impeached. After you were impeached for cowardice the Senate held a trial and convicted you, thus removing you from office for those of us pedanditc enough to care. Former Agriculture Secretary Loogie is now the President, they being the most senior member of your Administration to stay behind. The President sends their regards. And their thanks. Turns out when you take the money out of politics a lot of good gets done."
"What...what do you mean."
"I mean, Mister Former President, no Representation without Taxation. Nobody buying influence, nobody adjusting prices to create a demand on life saving drugs, a functioning legal system, the environment has recovered shown signs of significant recovery since we started enforcing the laws we already had on the books."
"You're right, we wouldn't fit in there anymore. What are we going to do" President Harumph sounded downcast. The General almost pitied him.
"Well sir, those folks at NASA sure felt embarrassed when they figured out they were wrong about the rogue planet hitting us, so they doubled down on the math and determined that with the fuel you have left you should be able to reach it if you follow this course. Send it Jones."
"Sent sir."
"It's coming in now, General. That's very kind of you. I suppose we did make a mess of things. It wasn't intentional you know, we just played the system we saw."
"That's alright sir."
"I suppose we'll sign off now, the ship is already on it's new course. We're going to be leaving radio range in a few seconds. Maybe someday when we've established our colony we can come to some sort of agreement, maybe grant each other visitation rights."
"That sounds lovely Sir, we'll talk to State and have them work up some sort of passport for you all." The General was still practicing his golf swing. Jones marveled at his ability to sound concerned while acting completely indifferent.
"This is the FU Weirich signing off."
The signal from the radio went dead and the ship left radio range. The General looked down at Jones, who turned off the transmitter.
"Well that takes care of that. Good job Jones."
"Thank you sir. But sir if I may ask, what rogue planet are you talking about, I never heard anything."
"Of course you didn't. There never was a rogue planet. Do you think society would have survived if it had been announced that one was going to hit. It was decided that an adjustment was required, one that could only be done without money in the system. So we started feeding faked intelligence to the right people and let greed and stupidity take it's course."
"And whats this about a high speed train at Yankme Stadium sir"
"Oh well, I read a book once when I was a kid. It sounded good when I was saying it. Anyway, I have a golf game to get to. Get back to work peasant."
Jones did get back to work, while wondering about all the things the General had said had changed that didn't. Why didn't they. A thought formed, as he watched the ship flying into the sun on system sensors. It had worked once...
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Dear Mom,
Today is the day. The most important day of my life up until now. Today, I will set foot on Earth for the first time! I'm excited, but quite scared too. How will the masses react? What can we do in the first few days? How do we settle forever? I'm glad Papa has given me many of his notebooks, but we were slowly running out. Are there any notebooks left on Earth? I wouldn't know. Ah, Papa is calling me! I'll stop here, and maybe I'll be writing in a new notebook soon!
&#x200B;
Dear Mom,
We... got rejected? But why? I know Papa and you were rich when you had me, but aren't you heroes? You've saved dozens of lives by taking all of your staff on our space shuttle, and Papa has provided for everyone for the past 13 years! How could Earthens reject us? Don't they see what Papa has done for society?? Either way, Earthens have told Papa to stay away or be engaged in battle for the rest of his days. I am disgusted at their neglect for another human being. I'm just going to practice the piano, so I can maybe ease the tension with my skill next time.
&#x200B;
Mom,
Have you been lying to me all this time? I've found a room, full of bodies. Human bodies. What is going on? Can I even trust you, or Papa? I'm going to ask one of the servants later. If my suspicion becomes reality, I will never forgive either of you. You know I will not ever hesitate. You know you have done things to me and how twisted I've become because of you. I still love you, but you know.
&#x200B;
Charlotte,
Why? Charlotte, Mom, why have you lied to me? Have you not caused enough hurt? I know you poisoned them. Papa preferred other methods, the servant said. I am so disappointed. You've used me for this stuff, but I'm your child. I get that much. But to use someone else's child? For horrible, inhumane things like this? That is something I cannot and will not EVER forgive. You've ruined me, and you've ruined whole families. Now, will you excuse me, I have to find Papa's gun.
| 2019-12-07T07:06:18 | 2019-12-07T06:54:26 | 257 | 39 |
[WP] Humans are born with a mark around their wrist which has a matching color with that of their soulmate's, but can change through their life. Your mark has had a blue hue since you were 14, but one night, while you're out, people start looking at you funny. You realize that your mark is gone.
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"Your wrist!" Karen said, leaning in over the music, and I looked down and realized why people had been looking at me funny. The band of pale sky blue around my wrist, the swatch of color that had faded in two years ago when I was fourteen and just been starting to understand what a soulmate meant, the shade of blue I'd painted the ceiling of my room: that one perfect patch of blue was gone.
I didn't say anything, just stared and turned my wrist over, hoping it was some trick of the dim light. "Oh wow," said Myra, and reached over and grabbed my wrist. "Holy shit, Lea, I am so sorry-"
"Lea's lost her band!" someone said behind me, and Brian Mok and some dude I didn't know came wandering over.
"That means her soulmate's dead, right?" Brian said, reaching over for my hand too.
"Hey!" I snapped, and snatched my hand away and glared at Myra. "Thanks a lot! Tell everyone, why don't you?"
"I didn't-" she started to say, and then turned around and shoved Brian. "Hey! Get out of here! None of your business!"
"Hey, hey," said Brian and stepped back, holding up his hands. "Sorry! Just curious!"
"C'mon," Karen said, and wrapped an arm around me, and started leading me to a corner of the room. Myra was still yelling at Brian behind me and he was laughing it off. I couldn't stop looking at my naked wrist. I hadn't noticed, hadn't felt a thing. My legs wavered under me and I collapsed on a chair Karen had pulled up for me. Alyssa was there too, and Janelle, and Myra was hurrying over. There was a small huddle forming around me, people staring at me from a distance. Just like that, I was the girl whose soulmate was dead. I'd come to a party and now we were presiding over a funeral.
"Lea, I am so sorry," Myra said, putting her hands to her throat. "I did not - I absolutely did not mean-"
"My grandmother," I said dumbly. "My grandfather died two years ago, and she - she still has her mark. They were - they were matched, they were soulmates!"
"Yeah, but she knew him," Janelle said, the look of pity on her face unbearable. "Of course it stays after you've been bonded. But if you've never even met him to begin with-"
"Maybe," Myra stuttered. "Maybe it means something else. Like, maybe this is a transition period, or-"
"I know how soul bands work!" Janelle said, putting her hands on her hips. "I've read all about it on the internet! They've done scientific testing on this!" She turned back to me. "I am so sorry, Lea-"
"Oh sure," Myra blurted out. "I'm sure they've done testing, just get two soulmates who've never met, and kill one of them off-"
"Will you two stop arguing!" Karen said, her hands on my shoulders. "This isn't about either of you!"
"I'm just saying," Janelle sniffed, and crossed her arms. "I'm sorry. It means your soulmate's dead. There's no other explanation. Maybe not testing, but they've done the research..."
"I am so sorry, Lea," Myra said, hanging her head.
Every time they moved, every time they motioned with their hands, I could see their soul bands still there, still bright and vibrant, puce and golden-brown and violet and silver. I'd never realized how fucking gaudy they were before, how eye-catching. I rubbed my wrist. Nothing was happening. It wasn't coming back.
"It's not that bad," Alyssa spoke up from the back.
I glared up at her, at her violet soul band. "Easy for you to say."
"Hey. Look," she said, pushing her way to the front and sitting in front of me. "You know my parents, right?" She held her wrists up together. "Soulmates. Perfect match. And they got divorced eight years ago. So there's that."
"That is so not true," Janelle said. "They got divorced because their bands changed."
"They didn't!" snapped Alyssa. "My mother dyes hers, you know? Because no one wants to admit they were soulmates and they still couldn't make it work out!"
I shook my head. "That doesn't make any sense, Alyssa."
"Sure it does," she said. "They still love each other. They adore each other. They were made for each other." She leaned back in her chair and snorted. "They're both irresponsible idiots who couldn't handle being married and raising a child! And now my dad's remarried - with another idiot - and my mom's still dating around, and they're both - Well, they're both still terrible, sure, but they're at least as happy as they were together!"
She reached over and took my hands. "Soulmates don't mean that much, Lea. Maybe I'll meet my soulmate. Maybe I never will. Maybe I'll meet them and it won't work out for whatever reason. Maybe I'll meet someone who isn't perfect for me, and I'm not perfect for them either, but we work at it together and we make each other happy!" She squeezed my hands. "You never met them, Lea. You never even knew who they were. You haven't lost a damn thing."
"Whoa," said Myra, holding her wrist behind her back. She'd been trying to convince us for ages that her band was a perfect match with Alan Carson, although it was obviously at least two shades off. "That was deep."
I managed a smile for Alyssa. "You're pretty smart for someone who was raised by idiots."
"Well, yeah." She shrugged. "My grandparents did most of the raising me." She winked at me. "They weren't soulmates either."
"Well," said Karen, rubbing my shoulders. "You okay? You still want us here for support?"
"No," I said, getting to my feet, and dabbing at my eyes, smiling at all my friends around me. "I'm good. Let's get back to the party."
People were still staring, people were still gawking at my wrist as I started moving again, as Janelle and Alyssa pulled me back onto the dance floor. I let them watch. There was still a weird melancholy to the situation: someone had died, far away and out of my sight, someone I would have fit together with perfectly. He must have been so young, somewhere around my age. I hoped it hadn't hurt. I hoped he had gone peacefully.
"Hey," said Brian, during a break in the music, coming up to me awkwardly. "I just want to say, I'm sorry, I can be a real idiot sometimes - just say the first thing that comes into my head-"
"Yeah," I said, "you can be a real idiot," and then smiled. "It's fine. So I don't have a soulmate anymore. What does it matter?"
"Yeah, well," Brian said, and rubbed the back of his head. "It doesn't matter all that much anyway, right? I heard most people never even meet their soulmates. I mean, it's freeing, right? You don't have be tied down anymore. You can date anymore you like! I mean, not that you would, necessarily, or not that I'm trying to say that you're, like, uh...ugh." He buried his face in his hand and looked at me through his fingers. "I messed this up real hard, didn't I? I just wanted to come up and ask you to dance. Because it doesn't matter to me if you have a band or not."
Brian's soul band was a deep earthy red, as far from mine as it had been possible to be. He was not my soulmate and had never been and would never be, and I could not particularly imagine spending my life with him. He was, however, pretty good looking, and the bashful act was doing a lot for him.
"Sure," I said, and took his hand. "Let's dance."
|
"Hey Vicky, would you look at this. My mark's gone." I held up my arm, flashing my wrist to her. She leaned over the table, inspecting it in the dim lighting.
"Are you sure it didn't just change?" she asked. I scoffed, pulling my arm back. Every since I was a kid, my mark's been as blue as a blueberry, the darkest anyone's ever seen. A striking color, so close to purple, yet unmistakably blue all the same. There's no way I wouldn't notice it shifting.
"You saw me just yesterday and it was still the same. You know it's way more gradual than that," I said. Vicky flashed a grin at me. She'd seen every color of the rainbow in the past few years, with her very liberal mindset. Never blue.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it. We're too young to get hung up on soulmates anyways," she said. I watched her tilt the bottle up, surveying the room. For all her talk, I could see her eyes dart from person to person, a quick compatibility check before moving on. Secretly, I stole a glance at her wrist, a dull orange wrapped around it.
I took another look at my wrist, the skin still devoid of color.
-//////
The phone thundered on my desk, stirring me awake. Rolling to my feet, I walked over and checked the time. About an hour too early too be up, especially with how late last night ran.
"Hello," I said, taking the call.
"Damn, Sam, I didn't know you rolled that way. You should have told me!" Vicky's voice rang out through phone, dispelling any lingering drowsiness I still had. I stumbled over my words, trying to process what she was saying.
"Rick lost his mark too! Must mean you guys are fated, right?"
"Rick?" My mind struggled, the gears taking a moment to click into place. "The guy from the club last night?"
"Yep. Woke up this morning with a wrist as white as a baby's butt. Or his butt, really-"
"Huh, yeah, weird. I'm not gay, by the way. Just tossing that one out there." I powered my laptop on, settling down into my chair.
"Wouldn't bother me if you were, really. Thought you might want to know. I'll let you get back to your beauty sleep then." With a click, she hung up. I dropped my phone back onto my desk, spinning up Chrome to check the news.
-//////
With a sigh, Vicky stirred her coffee, looking out into the street below. A couple dashed across a crosswalk, taking shelter under the canopy of the deli.
"They say it's affected about three out of every five people now," I said, trying to get her attention. "Pretty soon, no color will be the new norm."
She turned to look at me, a frown on her face. Shadows sat under her eyes, the product of long nights in the office. The new project was behind schedule; someone had to meet the deadlines. Recent events must have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
"I thought you didn't put too much stock into the marks," I said.
"Sam, we've lived our whole lives with them, to help guide us. To help show the possibilities that lie in each conversation, who we had a chance with and who we didn't need to care about. How can you just live without that now?"
"Well, it's not much different from how I lived before, with my one-in-a-million blue," I said. I never really thought I had a shot with anyone, not with my color. If you could find someone close enough, there was always the possibility that the color would match up eventually, but there was never a close enough for me.
I took a look at Vicky's bare wrist, devoid of color. Just like billions of others in the world. Just like mine. I leaned forward, meeting her gaze.
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," I said with a smile. "We're too young to get hung up on colors anyways."
*Feedback Appreciated*
| 2016-10-04T22:12:38 | 2016-10-04T20:19:49 | 315 | 46 |
[WP] Everybody has a number on their heads that shows how many people they screwed over in their life.You've been a proud zero your whole life.One day you wake up and look at the mirror. You see 7.5 billion
|
This is my first ever comment on reddit, and the first time in a long time I've tried my hand at writing something. Any feedback only serves to better me. Hope you enjoy.
~~~
Ever since I could remember, my life had been spent working towards the impossible notion that I would someday turn this little floating zero above my head into a negative number.
A saved life.
Of course, by this time in my life I had already prevented the deaths of many people. Early in my life, I had lost my own mother to cancer, so I had spent a good portion of my life studying nothing but how to prevent cancer. How to cure it. To rid the world of it so that no one would have to lose anyone precious to them.
With time, I became more and more famous for my innovations towards finding ways to cure cancer. A lot of my life was dedicated towards cancer—towards eliminating it for good.
After I reached my mid 50’s, I made a breakthrough that rocked the world. I had developed a cure that was capable of not only eliminating cancerous cells that were already present in the body, but also capable of preventing it from ever developing in anyone’s future. The cure was the breakthrough that the world had been wishing for.
Of course, the development towards the cure had cost millions and many years, and even after the cure was produced, many years still were spent testing it. We wanted to ensure that it was safe.
It wasn’t until my late 50’s that the cure was finally given a pass.
And the moment it was given the green light, it took off.
The cure was free. This was not something that anyone in the world would be denied. And nobody dared deny such a gift. Vaccinations and pills were shipped and administered overseas. In only a few months of the initial release, there was nobody in the world who had not received the medication.
My name became known everywhere. Praises for my good-will were sung. Everyone looked to me as the man that cured the disease that had plagued mankind for so long. I was their hero. I was their God.
The morning I received the call from my long-time assistant, telling me that it was recorded that the cure had been administered to 7.5 billion people, I couldn’t help but cry at what I was being told.
Not too long after the call, I found myself staring in the mirror upon the bathroom wall of my lavish flat.
The number was still zero, but I couldn’t help but picture the negative 7.5 billion in my head.
“I did it, mom…I f-finally did it.”
“Yes yes. You *sure did* indeed—good job.”
The foreign voice sent my head spinning with fear, and I turned to find a man leaning against the open door to my bathroom, clapping his hands very obnoxiously with a wide grin on his face.
My first thought upon seeing him was that I should run. Every fiber of my being told me that the man was deadly, despite the grin. His crimson red eyes scared me the most. The man finally slowed the clapping, and then let his arms drop.
“Gotta say, doctor. I’m a *huge fan* of your work. You did something that no one thought would ever happen.”
His voice reflected his excited face, and he gestured very theatrically at nothing.
“W-w-who are y-you?”
My voice was weak, but I had finally found it.
The crimson eyed man suddenly took a step back, a hand over his chest as if I had said something offensive.
“Who am I? Good doctor, please. If you’re so willing to believe that you are the *God* of this world, then surely you must believe that there should be an opposite, no?”
His voice had become taunting. But his words only caused my mind to blank.
“O-opposite?”
My voice was still shaking, not nearly as violently as my knees though as I leaned on the bathroom counter to keep from falling.
The man’s grin returned as he stepped into the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror as if admiring a piece of art. That’s when I finally noticed something that made me collapse on the ground, my bloodshot eyes wide with disbelief.
There was a number above his head. But his was a symbol—not numeric. It was an infinity symbol.
Done with his reflection, the man turned to me once again and closed the distance, a look on his face like that of a father about to admonish his son.
“Good doctor, what’s got you looking so pale? Well, no matter.”
Kneeling in front of me, the man cleared his throat, resting one hand on his knee while he stretched his other out in front of the number above me—that proud zero that I had had all my life.
“I believe you’ve spent enough time playing the God of this world. Time to teach you what happens when you fly too close to the sun.”
He poked the zero, and suddenly the number began to rapidly increase. I could see it flying up at an speed I couldn’t keep up with out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. I didn’t notice my heartbeat begin to increase as well, or just how heavily I was beginning to hyperventilate as I looked back to the man before me, unable to speak but pleading with my eyes.
*Stop. STOP. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.*
The man’s lips curled up at the edges as he looked back into my eyes with wonder in his own.
“I’ve had some terrible people enter hell before with large numbers, but never before has something like this…I never dreamed the day would come. It almost brings a tear to me eye.”
He laughed at me happily, before taking his hand away from the number above my head, clearly satisfied with where it had stopped.
Looking at the mirror, I saw the number.
My heart stopped the moment I saw it, and my world faded to nothing.
Standing once again, the crimson eyed man looked down at the corpse of the man who had saved the world. The smile still on his face and his eyes still wide with excitement as the number faded away with the doctor’s life.
“Good doctor. You developed a new forbidden fruit—no cure. Now then…”
Turning away from the doctor, the crimson eyed man walked into the main room of the flat, and then to the window overlooking the city before him.
Taking a long breath, the man raised his arms just above his head, his index fingers pointing—ready to conduct a symphony for the world.
“Some say the world will end in fire. Some say ice…I say…let it end in plague.”
And with a flick of his index fingers, a man walking down the street outside the flat, directly under where the crimson eyed man stood, began to choke on his own blood as a laugh filled the air from high above.
|
"*Hello, thank you for calling LifeStats, please hold while we connect you to someone of assistance*"
"Hello this is Ana! How may I help you today?"
"Yes Hi, it appears that my stat has an error. It is showing 7.5 Billion?"
"Phew, looks like you screwed the entire planet there, haha, or are about to!"
"Haha yeah, could you please look into it?"
"Sure. Could you please confirm your full name, date of birth, and address please?"
"Adam Goddard, Two-hundred suns into Thirty-two winters, at Brown Hut 2, Poseidon Lane, Atlantis."
"Perfect. Give me a few minutes and we'll do a few checks."
"Sure."
.................................................................
BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP
*Fuck's sake, did they seriously just hang up after 30 minutes? I can't go to work like this.*
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
"Adam Goddard, we have a warrant for your immediate arrest. Please do not resist."
"Surely this is a misunderstanding! Would someone please explain what's happening?"
"You are being arrested by association for disobeying the federations' orders under section 18.439C 'The Forbidden Fruit' act"
"I am sorry, I don't follow?"
"Your wife, Eve Goddard, has stolen ultimate top-classified information, and has leaked it to intergalactic space, and she has stated that you have aided her."
"What!! I do not kn-"
"Save it for the court."
**A FEW MILLION LIGHTS YEARS AWAY**
"Ha. Interesting, someone from the Laniakea Super Cluster has just taken the bait." - Qreclops said whilst monitoring *"Sample Planet Simulation 10,029"* on his screen.
"Interesting indeed, maybe this time they'll figure it out?" - Vlommik, Qreclops' longtime colleague added.
"Yeah. Alright, reset civilisation and world settings?"
"Yep. But definitely keep Adam and Eve"
"Alright, let's see how this goes, here goes Simulation 10,030"
..................................................................................................
If you liked Qreclops and Vlommik, [here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/7jtvrq/wp_jesus_was_sent_to_earth_by_aliens_to_test_our/dr9nwjh?utm_source=reddit-android) another one of their shenanigans I wrote on this sub a month ago :)
| 2018-01-21T21:54:09 | 2018-01-21T20:00:12 | 265 | 104 |
[WP] The world's greatest villain and hero clearly like each other. His monologues when she's captured tend to turn to conversation, and she "accidentally" lets him escape arrest. While they're convinced they're enemies, his henchman and her sidekick are just trying to get them together already.
|
“Oh you gotta to be kidding me!”
Now in the world of superheroes, Vectress was used to coincidences. Like being at a bank that someone had just begun to rob or walking past an alleyway with a batman situation on hand. But this, this was just ridiculous.
She’d just walked into her favorite coffee shop as she usually did when no crimes happened around the area, only to be faced with people stuck in fear and her greatest villain standing in line with his henchmen. The villain known as Quake.
“You told me she wasn’t patrolling this route.” Quake elbowed one of his henchmen lightly.
“I’m glad I did. This is the last time you strike fear into people Quake, by the name of the hero union I -” Before she could finish Quake yawned and waved his hand.
“Yeah, yeah I’ve heard it before. Can I get my coffee now? It’s been a tough week and I’m seriously itching for a cappuccino and they make the best.” Quake interrupted, tapping his fingers impatiently on the counter.
“We’ll for one I agree, they have the best cappuccino’s in the city, but I also am required by law to bring you in!” Vectress began to float preparing for battle but Quake just shrugged and went to the only free table as every other was filled with his henchmen.
“Could we maybe do this after I’ve finished this.” Quake waved the cup without spilling anything. “I’ll make it a sweeter deal. After I’m done, we can fight outside, you know, to avoid property damage.”
Vectress sighed to herself, “Fine, but at least release the hostages.” She motioned to the fearful people watching this unfold.
“Sure, not like I was forcing them to stay here. Also do you normally chose the large or small cup?” Quake wondered, sipping some of his drink. Everyone In the store left in a hurry while Vectress was jumbled by his question.
“Small, the large cup takes too long to finish and tastes more bitter than I like it.” Vectress floated down, Quake seemed to perk up to her answer and jumped from his chair pointing at every single one of his henchmen.
“I told you! See, she agrees!” Quake said. Then he noticed her still standing there waiting for him to finish his coffee.
“Hey you might as well order to, I’m not known for being a fast person.” Quake casually said. Normally she would’ve not let him out of sight, but the smell of coffee was really starting to get to her. So, she went to the counter only to get a dumbfounded look on her face.
It was one of the henchmen who had replaced the normal cashier that had ran away. The henchman even wore an apron as he asked what she would like. She took the usual and was on edge as the henchman was acting kind to her and made her drink.
She grabbed her drink and saw that the only free table was with Quake. She mentally sighed to herself, at least it was in front of him and not next to him. This wasn’t how she imagined her day going, not that she minded a break like this.
“Can I ask something?” Quake glanced at her. Vectress raised an eyebrow at the villain trying to start small talk and opted to nod.
"Okay, so I've been looking for birthday presents for my niece but don't really know what to get since I don't keep up with what girls like these days. So…" Quake mumbled while Vectress deadpanned. Was one of her greatest villains really asking her for birthday present advice.
Sure, during their fights they always held conversations. He’d complain about how bad of a day he had, and she’d boast about her good day, stuff like that. Almost every other hero found it funny and would watch recorded clips of them fighting like it was movie night, saying that they bickered like a couple more than actually fighting, which she found annoying and untrue.
Sure, the situation right now didn’t help her alibi but still.
Nonetheless, she gave some suggestions based on the information he gave her. And in a rare instance such as this, the villain thanked her in relief.
Then the conversation switched smoothly to her niece which he apparently had a soft spot for. It was… interesting seeing him talk so passionately about someone and not so much in a villain sense. She asked him if he had any siblings, excepting no answer, but instead, he chuckled and said that he did but rarely met them.
Quake asked her the same question which she had no intention of answering, sadly her reflexes answered for her and she quickly covered her mouth. But to her surprise, he gave her a heartfelt chuckle.
“Don’t worry, I might be a villain but I’m not *that* kind of villain.” Quake replied truthfully, smiling to himself.
Vectress paused not knowing how to answer. She sipped some of her drink and leaned back in her chair.
“So do you have any children?” Vectress asked, curious since there wasn’t much information about him out there.
“Nah, I think the title of villain make me a bit un-dateable and bad father material.” He sheepishly explained with a more downbeat tone than usual. Did he want kids?
“We’ll you’re hot so you got that going for you.” She shrugged before freezing up, her cheeks growing red. Her own mind and mouth having betrayed her. She mentally cursed herself and stayed silent.
Quake laughed seeming to take that as a compliment, “Thanks, you’re not that bad yourself, your man or woman or whatever you date must be happy.”
“Heh, I’m actually… not in a relationship. Same as you said, being a hero doesn’t make me dateable.” She pointed out. They both didn't know why, but it felt like all of a sudden every henchman in the room smiled.
“This is so stupid. I mean aren’t we supposed to fight, good versus evil and such.” She realized. “But no, here we are talking like normal people.”
“It’s actually kind of nice, the feeling of being normal and not some super villain deadest on destroying the world.” Quake replied and Vectress realized, yes it did feel nice to talk to someone like she was human and nothing more than that.
“Yeah, guess I miss that feeling to.” She replied and took another sip from her drink.
“You know if I wasn’t a hero or you weren’t a villain, I’d say we should meet again sometime.” Vectress said and blushed to herself. She wasn’t wrong, it would be nice to have these types of talks. “And not by coincidence.”
“That would be nice.” He narrowed his eyes in suspicion at his henchmen who all seemed to do their own thing, sometimes taking glances at the hero and villain with gleeful grins. “Heh, coincidence my a-“
“huh?” She wondered, having not heard the last part.
“Nothing.” Quake sighed and turned back to the hero and drank more of his drink.
A short-lived silence took over that was ended by Vectress as she decided to pick up on their conversation again, enjoying his company too much to let it go, same going for Quake. Eventually, 5 minutes turned into 10, and that turned into 30 minutes and so on. They didn't even notice when they both finished their drinks simultaneously and were handed sweets by the henchmen. Both were too deep into their conversation to care.
The henchman behind the counter smiled seeing the two interact, forgetting why they were there, and took out his phone and took a picture of the two and sent it to the hero union. The only response was a thumbs-up and a heart emoji.
**Edit:** Fixed a continuity error, thanks for pointing it out.
|
"Looks like you fell for my trap once again, Shockfront." A voice boomed in the superheroine's head, reverberating through her skull.
"Show yourself, Lord Malum!" Shockfront yelled in her mind, unable to speak from the muzzle clinging to her mouth. She squirmed and struggled, trying to break free of the metallic orbs that pinned her to the wall.
Heavy footsteps echoed, metal boots thumping against the metal floor, as a six-foot-tall figure clad in heavy high-tech armor stepped out from the shadows, a blood-red cape flowing behind him.
"Do you like it?" Lord Malum spoke in his usual deep voice, electronically filtered through his helmet. "I've finally created an alloy that can absorb your shockwaves and disperse them harmlessly, nullifying your abilities," he gloated, gently caressing one of the metallic orbs.
Shockfront responded in her mind, knowing the supervillain was listening to her thoughts. "I've already sent out a distress signal to Sonic Lad. He'll get me out of this thing. And when I break free, I'll make you regret tying me up like this!"
Lord Malum let out a deep laugh. "Yes, go on. Your futile resistance only makes this all the more enjoyable."
"Sick bastard! You like seeing me tied up?!"
"Like it? I love it." Lord Malum said, cupping Shockfront's chin in one hand.
"Wait, are you into BDSM? You're getting off to this?" Shockfront raised a brow.
"Huh, what?! God no!" Lord Malum jumped, realizing what he said. With a fake cough, he faced away from the superheroine.
"I mean, I'm not kink-shaming you or anything." Shockfront shrugged her shoulders. "I guess in hindsight it makes sense. A tall man like you having the power to restrain any woman with just your mind, I totally get it."
"Now you sound like you're the one getting off on this." Lord Malum looked over his shoulder, noticing Shockfront's legs squirming but closing them shut as she noticed her arch-nemesis looking.
"Hey, I'm not judging you, so you can't judge me. I'm a woman and I have needs." The superheroine quickly defended herself.
"Say," Lord Malum started as he turned to face Shockfront. "Since it's just the two of us here right now, Sonic Lad may take a while and you knocked out Chevalier by the lair entrance, perhaps just this one time, would you be open to acting on our base instincts and just--"
"Get it on?" Shockfront interrupted.
"Well, you don't have to put it that way but," Lord Malum paused to take off his helmet. "Yes." With a wave of his hand, Shockfront's restraints were ripped apart with psychokinetic force, releasing the superheroine.
---
From inside the control room, Sonic Lad slumped into his chair with a sigh, stretching his arms upward. "Looks like the plan worked, eh?"
"I was doubtful at first but your suggestion worked." Chevalier laughed. "How'd you know your boss would be into this shit?"
"Well, let's just say she forgot to clear her browsing history that one time I borrowed her phone." Sonic Lad smirked proudly. "Also, she's kinda been having a dry spell."
Chevalier looked at the live security footage accidentally and felt his face flush from the scene. "Might be good to give them some privacy."
"You're right. This ain't no live show." Sonic Lad nodded in agreement, turning off the monitors.
| 2020-11-07T04:01:49 | 2020-11-07T03:25:54 | 60 | 32 |
[WP] Aliens planning an invasion of Earth confuse our video games for a military exercise. They reason that if they can beat those, they can also defeat us in combat. They're having some difficulties with our harder games...
|
The alien being sat in his cubicle at the office of intelligence on his home planet. Setting about his normal routine the alien began his regular work day without a second thought. Suddenly an urgent message appeared on his communications device. He’d been tasked for a special duty.
Quickly the alien scanned through the message, his task was to attempt to master some training simulations of an alien species. The species was 100 light years away, didn’t seem particularly interesting nor intelligent. “Earthlings” the alien intoned to himself as he read the report.
Studying physical, biological and psychological descriptors the alien didn’t find too much of interest in the Earthlings. But he was tasked with defeating their simulations. Apparently, there was a planned invasion of their world. A team of technicians hurried up a strange looking device which was required to run the training simulations of the Earthlings.
The alien quickly learnt the primitive control schema of the device, with its simple input mechanisms and the Earthling’s pitifully simplified language. Scrolling through the list of simulations he read descriptions of the simulations as described from an intelligence brief. If he was to master them all, then he would start at the most basic simulation he could find and find it he did.
“A simulation of an Earthling running” he stated to himself. He read through a longer description which described an extremely simple control scheme even by Earthling’s standards and a low bar for completion, simply run 100 meters. A perfect way to start off mastering the simulations the alien though to himself.
He started the simulation and there before him on the strange device was the image of a Earthling. Despite all of the briefs he had read earlier on them he wasn’t prepared for the sight of one. Taken back he studied the image of the human and read the controls which were displayed prominently at the top of the screens.
“Too simple” he thought to himself, “these Earthlings must be simple beasts if they need a training simulation to learn and practice the most basic of their own locomotion.” He studied the screen with the image long and hard and as he did he became angry. This was a waste of his time, his talents. He had spent the last couple of hours learning all of the Earthling’s languages, nuances of their culture biological information, levels of technology. In short, he knew everything there was to know about the Earthlings, how would these simulations help him?
Quickly he punched the controls displayed on the screen and expected that the image of the earthling on the screen would immediately start running as he predicted. What actually happened he could not predict. The Earthling on the screen took a half step forward and then shot his next leg high into the air, in a motion it didn’t look like it should be able to do, then the Earthling immediately carted over onto its head.
“Restart? “ The device displayed at the alien. Obviously, he had misinterpreted a control. Of course, he would restart. He would restart and master this simulation, just like the others.
The simulation began again, the alien used the controls in a different fashion and got a similar result. Swearing under his breath the alien tried again, and again. The simulation would not relent.
Perhaps these Earthlings do need this training the alien thought to himself. He started the simulation again and this time made a significantly larger amount of progress, he was starting to get it he thought. He was mastering the Earthling’s run, in no short amount of time he would master all of their simulations.
But his thoughts were cut short when the character on the screen promptly planted its nose into the ground. “14 Meters?” He thought and softly cursed under his breath. It had seemed he was nearly finished the game, but he had only made a miniscule amount of progress towards its completion.
“Restart?” The very question burned at him. Of course, he would restart and he would conquer! He started the character off running once more but barely made a meter. The aliens large fist came down on the controls with a thump. Some of the others in the office peered over his cubicle to see what the commotion was.
The alien was now several hours into this simulation, well past the normal time when he would leave work. Most of the office was empty, and he was shouting and swearing and spitting at the machine as it taunted him. “Restart?” How much more could the alien take?
This was it he thought, he’d wasted enough time on this simulation. It was time to be serious and master it. The pitiful Earthlings with their primitive technologies and language and brain power couldn’t hope to rival his superior abilities. So, for the last time, or so he thought, “Yes, I will restart.”
The run started well, the Earthling on the screen began running and the alien fell into a rhythm with the controls. He glanced briefly at the distance, he had just smashed his old record of 14 meters and still going strong. The little Earthling on the screen bounced and ran in an awkward fashion by the alien’s hand. But then the character took on an awkward gait as it ran. The alien shifted his technique on the controls to attempt to correct it, but it was too late. The earthling came crashing to the ground in a jumbled heap.
The alien looked down and smiled at himself, he was well on his way to mastering this simulation. Looking back up he checked how far his character had run. In a way that seemed to mock him the distance read 35 meters. A stir of emotions overtook the alien even as a tried to stifle them. But eventually it was too much. A large alien fist went through the display of the Earthling’s device.
He glanced at the name of the simulation which had gotten the best of him. “QWOP”, he silently hissed under his breath. He would need more time he thought, much more time to master these simulations…
|
'Damn it!' the lux shouted before throwing the holographic controller away. 'How do these mortals even slay these animals?'
'What's the problem?' his co-worker asked as he looked away from the screen of Mass Effect 3. 'Difficult enemy?'
'This Onryoki is brel shit!' the first lux groaned. 'I almost had him!'
'Tell me about it,' his coworker said as he died himself. 'These asari husks are horrifying... How come we have never encountered such species in the universe before?'
'Some say that humans have prophetic powers and that these records can have multiple versions of timelines,' a third intelligence worker spoke up while trying to solve a puzzle. 'Rather strange...'
A crashing sound could be heard from around the corner. 'WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!' he screamed as he fell out of the chair. 'WHY DOES THAT WOMAN HAVE A *HIVE* ON HER VAGINA?!'
It was only then that their superior officer walked into the room, shaking his head in anger. 'Men, we have a problem,' he spoke as he gathered their attention. 'Our field intelligence made a rather... grave mistake. All these "Games" as humans call them are works of fiction.'
Everyone groaned.
'It took me 6 *hours* to beat the Quantum Computer escape!'
'I know,' their boss said, 'Command is having words with the man in charge. Everyone can stop now, wait until your new orders.'
Everyone failed to do what he said. 'I said-'
'No!' the first lux shouted. 'No, I am *killing* this fucking ugly son of a- **YES**! HA HA! In your face. IN YOUR FACE!!'
---
Edit: can you name the games?
| 2017-03-02T10:06:04 | 2017-03-02T08:24:53 | 114 | 39 |
[WP] At age 15 you told the gf you were "in love" with that you'd always be there when she was in need. Aphrodite heard you and made it a reality, whenever your gf was in need you appear at her side. Problem is, you and the girl broke up after 3 weeks but you still appear even now..10 years later
|
"I'll have the buffalo burger--medium rare--please," Alan said, before looking over at his date and smiling. She met his eyes and nodded. "and the same for her. Thank you." The waiter collected the menu and left the two alone. Decorations adorned the restaurant he'd chosen for this first date. Lots of pink hearts of all different sizes.
"So," she started, "how was work?"
Alan smiled and leaned forward. "Nothing too exciting, just kept working on that case I told you about. You?"
"Same. Minus that working on a case bit," she laughed. Her bright blue pool of eyes threatened to swallow him whole. Alan knew he wouldn't mind that one bit.
"Count yourself lucky, Julie. Sometimes I feel like I'm climbing a mountain of--"
**Poof**
A car roared by, speeding down a four lane highway. Alan screamed and stumbled backwards into a median.
"What the fuck!" he yelled. Ten years and he still hadn't gotten used to this.
A familiar face appeared from behind a parked car--Allie's Camry. The emergency lights blinked on and off. "Sorry," she said apologetically, giving him a short smile. The first thing Alan noticed was her short brown hair. She'd finally cut it. Her bronze eyes locked onto his, two windows into the past.
"Allie, I was on a date. She's gotta be's freaked out... I haven't told her about--about _this_ yet. Not like they stick around after I tell them," his voice dropped into a mumble.
Allie bit her lip, "Oh," she replied, her eyes dropping. "Sorry."
Alan sighed. "It isn't your fault. You're not the one who said something stupid." Once the shock drained from his mind he paused to inspect the situation. "Flat tire?"
"Yep."
With a quick shake of his head he moved to help her. The sooner Allie drove off, the sooner he could return to salvage whatever remained of his date. Alan exhaled to force the frustration away. Allie had already moved the jack underneath the car. No more than twenty minutes would be needed if the two worked together.
"No AAA, huh?" Allie rolled her eyes and moved to the back of the car. Alan squatted and started raising the car.
After a moment Allie reappeared with a socket wrench in hand. "Ever the comedian." Alan looked up and grinned.
A minute later the car rose a few feet off the ground. Alan took the wrench from Allie and began loosening the lug nuts. The silence between the two broke whenever a car zoomed by.
Finally Allie spoke, "What's she like?"
"Who?" he asked, distracted.
"Your date, you looby."
"Ah. Julie's nice. She's smart and kind, works as a nurse. I like her."
Despite Alan being unable to see her, she nodded and smiled. "Good, I'm happy for you. I just hope I didn't mess anything up."
"It's all right," he replied. "Really."
The two fell silent again as Alan focused on getting the wheel off. He'd taken off all the lug nuts, carefully handing them to Allie. Losing those damn nuts was the last thing he needed. Alan rose and bent backwards to crack his back.
"You okay? You're doing all the work. I feel bad."
"I'm fine," he replied, walking over to the trunk. Allie had taken the replacement wheel out already. "Here, help me with the wheel." Alan motioned for Allie to hold it so it wouldn't roll away. A horn blared as Allie walked over. Alan turned and his eyes widened. Mustering all of his strength Alan jumped toward Allie and pushed her away as a white Mustang slammed into the side of her Camry. The car crumpled from the force, falling off the jack. The Mustang bounced off and away before coming to a stop in the middle of the next two lanes.
"Oh fuck!" Allie screamed from the other side of the median. "Oh fuck, _fuck_, shit, shit, shit!" Carefully she climbed back over the median. "Alan, jeez, you really saved me there. You okay?" No response came. "Alan?" Concern crept into her voice. Voices screeched from a distance. Everything felt numb. Allie couldn't hear herself repeat her question. Her eyes fell upon the point of impact, then followed along the rear toward the median. The car had been pushed forward a few feet, grinding along the concrete barrier. Where was Alan?
"Help, someone help!" a frantic voice called. "Someone help me!" Allie shook her woolheadedness away and almost ran forward. Traffic had stopped at this point and those once distant voices sounded much closer. She rounded her broken car, barely noticing the pain in her knee.
Her savior lay splayed in front of the Mustang. Blood gushed from beneath Alan's hair and his limbs twisted unnaturally. Something stopped Allie from running to his side. A second later and he disappeared. Allie shuddered and dropped to her knees.
|
Note: on mobile so keeping short and sweet. Sorry for lack of format.
There was a load knocking at the door and then a loud voice echoed through the door.
"British Metropolitan police, open the door"
With a heavy sigh, John went and opened the door.
"can i help you officer?" he asked.
"Are you John Francis Edwards?" the officer asks.
"I am"
"I regret to inform you John that you have broken the terms of bail and court mandated restraining order. You have the right to remain... "
"lets just get this over with, I know my rights and I know the drill" John interrupts.
"fair enough" and the officer places the cuffs on and leads John to the police car waiting outside.
| 2017-03-22T15:14:52 | 2017-03-22T13:56:01 | 286 | 49 |
[WP] Write a story where the first and the last sentence are exactly the same, but mean the opposite.
|
They never knew me. Sure, our graduating class was small enough for every student to recite the names of the others, but it seemed like they all had their little cliques to join each day. I, instead, had an uninterrupted 25 minutes to eat my lunch, alone. Nobody wants to be friends with the son of a trash collector. To distract myself, I sketched. From the tallest basketball player to the squat man who waddled the halls in the name of security, I drew them all in lifelike detail. I never shared my work, certain I'd be taken for a creep.
&nbsp;
Then *he* came. Moving to a new school halfway through senior year sounded like something out of a horror story to most teenagers, but he slipped effortlessly into any clique he chose. His California tan in the middle of winter branded him an outsider, yet his infectious laugh and easy manner awarded him instant popularity.
&nbsp;
As the least popular person in the entire school, it was perhaps inevitable that I would fall for him. My sketchbook filled with images of his lean frame, in poses both real and imagined. Leaning against a locker, strolling down the hall, tying his shoes in gym. With every sketch I felt closer to him than I had ever been to the people I'd known since childhood.
&nbsp;
He had been in school for over a month before it happened. I was nibbling an apple, more out of habit than hunger, searching the crowded cafeteria to see which group he'd joined for lunch. At the boisterous theater table I found him, his face screwed up in imitation of an angry teacher. His eyes caught mine, and we both froze.
&nbsp;
I dropped my eyes first, scrunching down in my chair as far as I could with my knees propped up against the table. I quickly flipped to a new page and began sketching the debate teacher. In moments, he had taken shape on the page, bent over a hapless student who had caught his ire. I'd just begun to add shading and detail when I heard a voice behind me.
&nbsp;
"Mr. Reese?"
&nbsp;
I startled, my knees involuntarily bucking against the table. The force tipped my chair over backwards, and I sprawled gracelessly on the floor, still clutching my sketchbook in both hands. He bent over me, his face a picture of gentle concern.
&nbsp;
"I'm so sorry - here, let me help you up." He grasped my arm and pulled me to standing. I gaped. From afar I had seen he was beautiful, but we were close enough now for me to notice the flecks of green in his soft brown eyes. I wanted to say something witty, or at least vaguely intelligent, but instead I found myself stuttering, "Um. Uh. Hi."
&nbsp;
His face brightened into a smile. "Whew. Thought for a second there I'd broken you!"
&nbsp;
I hesitantly returned the smile. "No, not broken. I - I'm okay."
&nbsp;
He extended a hand. "We've never officially met. I'm Adam."
&nbsp;
I stared unsteadily at his perfectly manicured fingers for a beat before shifting the notebook to my left arm. "I'm Jacob," I said, accepting his hand into my own. I was off balance when he pulled me forward into an embrace that was half handshake, half hug. I stumbled a little but managed to keep my feet as he released me. I glanced around, but he seemed oblivious to the tables full of people who had stopped eating to watch the spectacle.
&nbsp;
"So," Adam said. "Was that Mr. Reese? Your drawing, I mean." He righted my chair, then sat in the one next to it, looking up at me expectantly. I slowly took my seat. The rest of that lunch period blurred into a daydream come true. I was telling him about the art contest I'd won in second grade when the warning bell rang. We both looked around in surprise, seeing the cafeteria emptying swiftly.
&nbsp;
"Oops!" he chuckled. "Guess we'll have to pick this up later. I have theater until 5:30, can I pick you up for dinner after that?"
&nbsp;
Two months later, Adam asked me to prom. I happily accepted. It hurt to know he'd lost the favor of our small-town school by making our love for each other so obvious, but I couldn't help smiling at the thought of dancing the night away with the man of my dreams.
&nbsp;
We strolled into prom together, me in a black tuxedo and Adam's in contrasting white. The photographer gave us an unhappy smile as the shutter snapped, and we went on our way. I was self-conscious but hiding it as well as I could. This was Adam's dream, and I wanted nothing to ruin this night's perfection. We stepped onto the dance floor together, him snapping his fingers and moving smoothly to the rhythm of the pop song. I bounced back and forth in my best imitation, aware that I looked like a fool but not caring one bit.
&nbsp;
The whispers started then. I caught snippets of conversation.
&nbsp;
"Can't believe they'd come..."
&nbsp;
"... going to hell..."
&nbsp;
"Somebody should do something."
&nbsp;
With every word I became more and more alarmed, my fight-or-flight instincts heightening my awareness. Adam noticed my unease and danced us off the floor and over to the refreshments table.
&nbsp;
"Hey," he spoke into my ear to be heard over the music. "Don't let them get to you. They're just jealous of how amazing you look." I smiled faintly. These were the people I'd grown up around my entire life. They'd ignored me for years, knowing I was different without ever questioning why. They were *not* jealous of me. They were afraid, and fear made them angry.
&nbsp;
"Want to get some air?" I asked him. Adam nodded, and we moved toward the exit amid a sea of hostility. By the time we hit the sidewalk we were nearly running, and together we burst into nervous giggles. He pushed my shoulder playfully, and I grinned.
&nbsp;
My smile vanished as I heard the wet *crack* of a baseball bat into the back of Adam's head. I screamed briefly, choked off by a swift punch to my throat. The group of teens fell on us with vengeance, kicking and hitting, spewing their hate on what had been the happiest day of my life. When their anger was spent, they threw us into the back of a pickup. They dumped our bodies in the woods, then went back to enjoy their prom.
&nbsp;
******
&nbsp;
Wild animals performed their cleanup duties admirably. Most of our skeletons were left intact, though we lost the odd finger or toe. It was a good fifteen years before a kid poking around in the leaves found my skull, picked clean over the years by uncounted rodents and insects. He brought it home, greeted by his mother's screams and his father's deadpan expression.
&nbsp;
"I'll take that up to work," said Deputy Joseph Dean. He dumped my skull into a plastic bag, then drove to the sheriff's office. The officers kept their serious faces for a moment, then giggled like the teenagers they'd once been, proud of having cleansed their town of its impurity.
&nbsp;
Deputy Dean chucked the skull into the trash bin, not bothering to fill out an evidence form. When the trash bin was collected and eventually dumped, it happened to be my own father who lifted the skull out of the dump and marveled at his treasure.
&nbsp;
"Hey, Bill, get a load of this!" he called. "Bet I could make a cool lamp out of this fake skull."
&nbsp;
So it was that I became the light in the darkness for my own parents. I guess it's true when they say we're all the same underneath. My parents had never stopped looking for me after prom, but put me literally right under their noses? Nope. They never knew me.
|
Drake had abandoned them, and it tore him apart. For the longest time, he sat in the lifepod in silence, with only the steadily-increasing *beep, beep, beep* of his navigation system, informing him of his distance to the coming wormhole.
"Come in," he said, over static. He pressed a button, his last line of communication to the *Silver Eagle*. "I'm sorry. Can anyone hear me?"
He listened. Only silence., and the *beep, beep, beep* of the navigation system.
But no voices from the *Silver Eagle.*
"Talk to me," he said.
In truth, he had expected to hear screaming by now. The silence was somehow worse. By now, the Silver Eagle would be heating up as its orbit of the star MC-8382 decayed. Their graviton engines had been unable to escape it. Only the lifepod had made it out, thanks to its boosters. It had been Drake to think of it first.
But once Kelley and Macy saw him run for the lifepod, they knew what it meant. A fight ensued. Drake shoved off Kelley with a leg, pressed his hand to Macy's face to keep her just outside the door.
"There's room for three!" Kelley had screamed.
In truth, there was. But Drake had panicked. He didn't know if he could escape the star's gravity with three people in there. When the main door closed, he positioned himself in the cockpit, looked out at the stars, and remembered to close the emergency hatch as well. *I'm sorry,* he had thought, even then.
When the lifepod boosted from the *Silver Eagle* without a hitch, he'd wondered if he could have saved them, too.
"Please," Drake said again, through the comm. "Please. Forgive me. Why aren't you there? Why aren't you responding? Where are you?"
Only static.
Suddenly, a hand gripped his throat.
"You bastard," Kelley said.
Macy tightened the safety clamps around him. *Trapped,* Drake knew at once. "How did you--" he made to ask.
"When you loaded up in the cockpit, we snuck in through the emergency hatch," Macy said. "You greedy motherfucker."
"I didn't know if it would launch," he said--but by then, Kelley had the duct tape out. He taped Drake's mouth shut.
Macy had manned the navigational system. "We're almost at the wormhole."
"Good. Slow us down."
Drake protested, muffled through the tape. *You can't slow down at the wormhole - you've got to enter at top speed.*
But Kelley didn't seem to mind. He ejected the chair. Drake fell over, clamped down as he was, and the force of it sent his face into the metal floor.
"Okay," Kelley said. "Deactivate the artificial gravity."
Macy obliged, with a button, and Drake floated gratefully off of the metal.
"On my mark, open the airlock," Kelley said.
*No!* Drake meant to say. *You'll kill us all!*
Kelley found that amusing. "Don't worry, Drake. We're only dropping you off. Then we'll double back and enter the wormhole at full speed. You know, I think it works something like a black hole. Without a proper shield, you'll be torn into a million molecules. Our ship might travel right through your atoms."
*No!* Drake screamed, behind the tape.
"Brace yourself, Macy. Okay. Three...two...one...mark."
Macy pressed the button. The immediate loss of pressure sent Drake flying through the airlock. His chair spun around again, affording him one last look at Macy and Kelley as they held on tight within the spaceship.
Drake was in outerspace, without a helmet, spinning at dizzying speeds. But he could feel the dark heavy presence of the wormhole, looming behind him, then in front of him, and behind him again.
Then he felt the chair start to give.
And then his skin.
Drake had abandoned them, and it tore him apart.
| 2015-06-19T09:51:25 | 2015-06-19T09:30:51 | 29 | 20 |
[WP] In sci-fi, planets are commonly made of one biome-- 'desert planets', 'jungle planets', 'ice planets' etc. So, the aliens are pretty shocked to see the range of biomes when they arrive on Earth.
|
Greeblegrox stared out the windshield and fingered his tentacles thoughtfully.
"Yeah," he said in Wydoobian. "That planet is definitely alive."
"I thought you said it was 'the greatest mix you'd seen'," snorted Hardowom, looking out the windshield also. He flicked his right eyeball with his third tentacle, a sign he was unimpressed. They'd come quite far out of their way to see this place.
Greeblegrox fixed all four of his eyes and both his antennae at Hardowom.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he said. "Look at it."
"It's all water. It's a water planet."
"You dipshit," said Greeblegrox, shifting in his travel pod (his fourth buttcheek had an itch he couldn't reach with any of his tentacles and it had been driving him insane since they passed Andromeda). "Look at the poles. Look at the center of the fucking thing. It's right there."
Hardowom examined the great blue globe that loomed in their windshield like an enormous slice of Fooby melon.
"I see nothing but moisture in all its forms," he said, flicking his eyeball again.
In frustration, Greeblegrox reared up out of his pod and used all four of his tentacles to scratch his fourth buttcheek. His slimy skin peeled off the pod's inner surface. He'd have to reset his seal, but whatever, this itch was going to drive him mad.
"You are such a downer," he said, scratching away. "There's *land*. There's more life than we have back home. This is a fully mature, multi-biomed planet. We came all the way here and you're not even *trying* to enjoy yourself."
Hardowom hated when Greeblegrox scratched his asses. He needed to just buy some damn Burble Cream and the fungus would go away.
"It *is* pretty," he said, hoping his agreeableness would cease Greeblegrox's scratching. "What kind of life we talking here?"
"Well, water-based, obviously," said Greeblegrox, sinking back into his pod with a satisfied sigh and feeling his Echie seal begin the reset. "Mostly carbon. The dominant species recently became self-aware but they're still in adolescence as far as terrestrial development goes, so no guarantee they'll survive yet..."
"They can't see us, can they?" said Hardowom, suddenly nervous.
"Of course not," said Greeblegrox. "They've been to their moon, sent probes out to their solar system. They're barely aware in galactic terms. Less than toddlers."
Hardowom bit his upper eyestalk and sucked on it, a sign he was considering Greeblegrox's words.
"The biomes are there," said Greeblegrox. "You can see on the land-- the green and the brown and the mountains and the deserts? The ice at the poles? This is like Xela, Lema, Toille and Neb all mixed together in one."
Hardowom swung his eyestalks back and forth, the equivalent gesture of respectful nodding.
"Well I'm glad you caught it while you did," he said. "A fast-developing dominant species in adolescent phase... this place might not look like this much longer."
"Yeah, could reset at any moment," said Greeblegrox.
The two Wydoobians floated there for a few minutes, quietly fingering their tentacles. They half-wished the planet would reset itself right then, just for the fireworks show, but it didn't.
"But yeah," said Greeblegrox. "Just thought you'd want to see it."
"Yeah, thanks for pointing it out. Never seen a mixed-biomed planet like this before. Just thought it would look more, I dunno, obviously varied, I guess. If you didn't know better, you'd assume this was a water planet."
"That's what I thought when I saw it on the scanner," said Greeblegrox. "But then I saw the life activations, and I looked closer."
"Well, I hope they figure it out," said Hardowom. "Onob knows it took us millennia to even get to light speed travel."
"We should get going," said Greeblegrox, checking the time. "They're not going to wait for us on Tidder much longer. They're probably losing interest even as we speak."
"All right," said Hardowom, shifting the saucer into light speed. "Let's split."
The thrusters went supernova and the two Wydoobians were gone in a blink.
|
"How can such an abomination exist?"
"I am speechless also we must immediately contact the general and inform him of this."
"Look it also has deserts this is troubling, oh... my.... gnosh..... it also has ice this is bad what if they are able to live in both. no.no.no. That is crazy talk I'll leave the bridge and contact the general now."
| 2018-06-26T09:25:01 | 2018-06-26T08:05:33 | 40 | 16 |
[WP] In a new TV game show contestants must jump into a wormhole that drops them into a random point in time where they must survive for longer than the other contestants. You've just been dropped in the worst possible place.
|
The room was dimly lit, not for any other reason besides the occupant liked to use candles. A lot of them. It looked sort of familiar. I had the strongest feeling of deja vu, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. The ceiling was a slightly darker yellow than the rest of the room, almost as if stained by years of cigarette smoke and a bad sense of interior fashion.
As I looked down, I realized I was sitting at a table, in my Sunday clothes. It must have been what, 20 years since I last went to church? The smell of a roast drifted through the open doorway and I looked around at my surroundings. A dining table, like my Nana used to have. Only four plates on the table, and one was set in front of me. Oh no...
"I always thought Susie Marshall would have been a good one for you, such a sweet girl. And pretty too!" Nana said carrying in a plate of piping beef and a gravy boat.
"I don't think Susie Marshall would have been a good influence on my dear Jack, mum." My mother responded, as if it was the 5th or 6th time she'd said it tonight.
Not tonight, not here, why now? Why this?
"Well if he doesn't find a girl soon he's going to end up like your last husband. Who did he leave you for? Gregory Bungaloe? That boy that used to throw eggs at poor Mrs Winchester before she had that heart attack." Nana shot me a quick smile, I saw her eyes wrinkle up in that way they always used to, before the accident.
I smiled back, and looked forward at my plate. Why did they have to put me here? Why not thousands of years ago? Why here? Why me? Why tonight..
After bustling around Mum and Nana had all the plates through and they sat down, glanced at the empty chair and put their hands together for grace. I did the same.
They began to eat and bicker, talking about me as if I wasn't there. I had to find a girlfriend, I had to get a job, I had to do this and that and neither of them would let me choose what I wanted to do. Little did they realise they had no choice in the matter either.
Slow, plodding footsteps echoed through the open doorway, Mum and Nana looked down and stopped talking. I gripped my cutlery and cut into my yorkshire pudding.
"What in God's name have you two been arguing about this time?" Grandpa muttered as he walked in the room, odd socks on and an unbuttoned shirt, showing a dirty stained - what I assume was meant to be white - vest underneath. The stench of whiskey permeated through the room and overwhelmed the smell of Nana's cooking. "If you don't let the damned boy make his own choices he'll turn into a god damn queer, like your husband." He spat, glaring at my mother, his daughter.
"It's not like he's going to do anything for himself.." She whispered, lord knows why but she did.
"Are you talking back to me? ME?" He slammed his hands on the table, his hands yellow from nicotine and the smell of booze dripping out of his mouth like a hungry dog. "I RAISED YOU, AND YOU FUCKED IT UP, I LOANED YOU ENOUGH MONEY TO MOVE TO GOD DAMN SWEDEN AND INSTEAD YOU GIVE HALF OF IT TO SOME GOD DAMN LAYABOUT WHO'S TAKEN MORE MEN THAN YOU." He pushed off the table and stumbled backwards, regaining his step and then turning to me. "You know how I used to show her how to behave John?"
"I do Grandpa, sir." I whimpered. The same way he showed me.
"How about you become a man, John. Take off your belt." Nana froze and mum just stared at me, her eyes glazing over as if she'd expected him to be like this, like he was every week.
I stood up, and unbuckled my belt as commanded. I folded it over and held it in my hand, the same way he taught me.
"Show her how to behave, John." He stared into my eyes, and I stared back. His ice cold eyes pinning me to my spot, they were so small that it felt they went straight through me and down into my soul.
I looked around the room, following Grandpa's finger across to my mum. She was staring down at the table, waiting, and Nana picked up her glass and took a sip.
"I'll show her how to treat you properly Grandpa." I looked him in the eyes again, and for the briefest moment he smiled, before I punched him in the face. He fell backwards, stunned for a moment, and I reached down to his belt and grabbed the knife from his belt. Mum will survive this time. He won't.
|
"This has got to be hell" I told myself after exiting the wormhole. There were ashes all over the streets, everything was dilapidated and the people looked as though they hadn't had a decent nights rest or a hot meal in years. In the distance all I could hear were the roaring flames of burning store fronts, police sirens, and gun fire. Couldn't ask anyone where or when it was, they would have thought I was crazy. Well actually, would they? The place seems fucked up enough. Then I spotted a store that wasn't entirely destroyed with a news stand inside, so I grabbed the first paper I saw
DETROIT DAILY
July 23, 1967
| 2016-07-24T14:12:02 | 2016-07-24T13:01:04 | 56 | 22 |
[WP] Every night in your sleep you meet a successful-looking future you who tells you what you should do the next day. So far your life has gone well indeed, but one day you fall asleep during the daytime. You meet a tired, disheveled version of yourself who begs you not to listen to the other.
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"You will love her more than you've loved anyone else. She will be light of your life. Although you don't know it yet. Sure she may be a bit on the heavy side, and sure she may sound like a beached whale. Not a convincing pitch is it? She's smart. Trust me she is smart. You've always wanted to be great, at what? Doesn't matter, the only thing that matters to you is greatness itself. She will give you that."
That's what I told myself. Or what he told me. Can I really consider him to be me if we have different memories? Welling different, I just have less. We are what we do, and I have not done what he has. Which is precisely why I must listen to him. Greatness sounds... well great. I want my names in the history books. I'll marry that woman and make her make me great.
I lay on my couch day dreaming about the whale. I don't anticipate the woman herself, but I'm sure she is a great person. I slowly drift away when I startle myself.
"Don't do it! I know what you're thinking, please, just please don't. "
Well I mean, he startles me, it's a bit awkward to remember to differentiate myself from them. The me with plus experience. Me+ if you will.
I look at me+ and see that I am not at all like the other me. Long dirty beard with long dirty hair. Cracked hands with cracked nails, shoes that don't match, and three winter coats on in may. I'm homeless, or atleast near enough that it makes no difference.
"You look like shit, what happened?"
Me+ takes no offence to my remark, almost as if he is told the same thing everyday. He takes a breath and starts his story.
"She is great, truly amazing. If she had the looks she would be leading the world by now. Which is why I did. She was sauron and I her mouth. Using my good looks we made it to the top. People loved us, or hated us. It made no matter no one opposed us."
"Don't you find it weird that you're talking in the past tense, but these events actually happened in the future?"
Me+ looks up in wonder and says "woah, far out man."
We share a laugh and for a second I see my own, child like wonder in his eyes. It doesn't last, suddenly the vast emptiness returns.
"What would you do with all that power?"
I ponder the question for a few seconds and say "I don't know."
He continues ands if he already knew the answer. He'll he probably did "neither do I. I controlled the largest army history has ever seen, I have been called prime minister by more people than all of the world leaders in history. Yet I did nothing with that power. Sure I am called great, but I am only a great puppet. She sits at the high table, I stand on the pedestal. The history books will worship you."
I smile at the thought, but there's a catch. I always have a catch.
"We were the first to legalise la ganja, gave us more power than we though. The booming economy and our vast amounts of fresh water put us on the world stage. Far surpassing what our little brother to the south has ever achieved. Soon we controlled it all through trade. The fact that it's getting warmer every year attracted more immigrants. Soon we we had the man power to take it all. And we did."
I have always thought I'd take over the world, although I always expected to start start on Africa, taking advantage advantage the poor economy and unstable governments. Never thought I'd start at home.
"Power is fine and dandy, but what you want is money, what you want is freedom. You'll have money, but no freedom if you take the whale for your wife."
"You look like a hobo though, what the hell happened?"
"We have always liked drugs haven't we? The books will say we were great, but they will also say that we fell from grace due to alcoholism and drug addiction. You see, I didn't have the fredom to go live in a cabin in the woods with a husky and little else. We, however, did have the fredom to take whatever substance we wanted. Not many people to stop you from doing so Inn the privacy of your own home. The whale is fat, she can handle it. Being native and skinny makes it a bit harder for us. Too hard."
Speaking of which, I light up a joint and we pass it to eachother for a bit. We sit in silence letting the smoke fill the air. When our eyes are red and puffy he turns to me and stabs me in the arm. Before Before I can react he's gone. I yell out what the fuck as tears steam down my face. I rush to the er for treatment.
I'm patched up and let go, through the days I wonder why me+ would do that. I'm I'm sure he had a decent reason, although he was a crazy hobo. I can't even know if any of what he said was true. I never will.
Days turn to weeks to months to years. I wait and wait, but I never meet a woman named Veronica. I never met the whale. I become obsessed over her, I found found a Facebook page that might be hers, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Knowing. Funny word there, it seems to be all I want. I want, nay, I need to know what could've been.
I spend my later years searching for a way to go back, they did and so will I. I need to go back and tell me what to do. I need to know the right path to take.
|
Every night when I fall asleep nothing happens, but tonight something happened. I met a man in my sleep who told me that he was future me and told me what I should do tomorrow, it didn’t seem dangerous so I did what he said. While walking around the corner that he told me to walk around I found $100.
everything was good for a few months, I had money, friends, and fame, what more could a man want. One day I went to sleep in the daytime even though the man in my dreams warned me against it, but I just couldn't help myself. While asleep I met a man that looked kind of like the man in my dreams, he was malnourished, looked homeless, and smelled like a skunk. The man warned me not to listen to the man In the dreams I have at night, I said, “whatever old man, I won't listen to you.”
When I went to sleep that night the man in my dreams he told me what to do, when I woke up I did it. all was normal until the swat team broke into my house to arrest me, I was tried with 37 counts of fraud, “but the man In my dreams said that I would get away with it.” I told the investigators. My lawyer got me off on insanity, but on the term that I would spend the rest of my life in a mental home. As I grew older in the mental home I started to look more like the Man I met In that dream I had in the day, I tried to contact him but never could.
EDIT: Fixed errors
| 2017-04-01T07:32:58 | 2017-04-01T03:58:44 | 128 | 12 |
[WP] Not everyone bitten by a werewolf gets to turn into a badass monstrosity. Some get stuck with other canine breeds. Describe the life of a werepug/werecorgi/werechihuahua, etc
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Michael fills the bucket with fresh water, makes sure the boarding on the basement window is secure and bangs on the steel reinforced basement door.
He looks to his girlfriend and says, "OK, Stacy, remember, I have to remain in that room until the moon sets. That happens tomorrow at 10 AM, do NOT open the door before then."
Stacy is looking at the floor, her shoulders shaking a bit. *Poor thing, having me turn into a monster every month must be taking a toll on her.* He goes to her and enfolds her in his muscular arms. "It's fine, hon. We'll find a cure for this."
"I can handle it, babe. I'm just worried about you. But the moon is setting, why don't you go on in," she urges. *She must be scared*, he thinks, *she wants me in ASAP.*
"Alright, I'm going in." He walks to the door and takes the key dangling next to the door.
Stacy runs over and grabs his arm, "Hey, I can hold onto the key."
"No, hon, I'll unlock the door once I'm human again."
Stacy looks at the wall next to him while she says, "I just want to be sure I can get to you in case you get in trouble."
"Stacy. I. Turn. Into. A. Monster! I can't live with myself if anything happens to you."
"That's the thing, you don't... ah, really turn into a monster."
"But I black out, my clothes and the furniture are ripped and torn up during my blackouts. This is exactly what the werewolf book says happens. Am I doing all of that in my sleep or something?"
"No, you transform, just like in the book. But you don't exactly turn into a wolf."
"How do you know? I told you to never open that door."
"But you were so pitiful..."
"Pitiful?"
"Yeah, this was the first time you transformed. Remember? You left food and a bucket of water in the room. I was terrified of the transformation, you made a giant ruckus and smashed around in the room during the transformation. I almost ran out of here. But I had to stay to make sure you were OK."
"I'm so sorry."
"Its OK, but I'm glad I was there that night. After about 10 minutes of racket, you settled down. I fell asleep next to the door."
Michael looked at her with love. She was willing to stay with him during the transformation, and even stayed up after. He'd do anything for her. But not a monster?
"You said I'm not a monster...?"
"Oh, right. I fell asleep next to the door. It must have been after midnight, when I heard this pitiful yelping coming from the room."
"Don't tell me you opened the door!"
"Not at first. I thought you were in wolf form too. But the yelping kept happening for about 10 minutes. Stopped, then restarted again about 15 minutes later. After about two hours of this, I was crazy enough to find out what's happening, so I opened the door."
"You were drowning."
"in what?"
"The water bucket."
"But... but, I'm a wolf."
"More like a small. Wolf. A tiny one. *that looks like a yappy little pomeranian.*"
"A what?"
"You must have been thirsty, and climbed into the bucket for something to drink and drowned."
"I couldn't have drowned, I'm still here."
"Well, you are a were... pom. You must have healed."
"I healed? From drowning?"
"Over and over."
"What did you do?"
"I pulled you out and dried you off."
"How come you never told me?"
"I didn't know how you would take it, and besides, you weren't doing any harm."
"But its been six months, I don't understand why you never told me."
"OK, about that." She takes her phone out, "before I show you this, you have to remember that I've stayed with you even after you got cursed. I was true to you when most other women would have run off."
"I know, hon. You're one of a kind. You can tell me anything."
"OK, so look at this." She pulls up her phone and shows him the picture of her and Gigi, her sister's fluffy little dog.
"Oh, God, that's not your sister's dog, Gigi, is it?"
"Its Gigi, but its not Shirley's dog," she said with a twinkle in her eye and a smirk on her face.
"That's me???"
"You're so cute in doggy form! I couldn't have you locked up in this room for the whole night." In an excited rush, she explains that every month during his transformation, she's been taking him out and showing him off to her friends.
"Was it necessary to give me a pink bow?"
"I had to accessorize. It goes so well with your sweater."
"Oh, you're the one who says you hate dog owners who give their dogs clothes."
"You were shivering so much after I took you out that I gave you an old sweater from one of my dolls. Ever since then, you just were not happy until I got you a sweater."
"And the booties you were sewing for your nieces?
"Yep, they're for my shweet shweet pommie!"
Edit: Gold! Thank you, kind benefactor! Please read part 2 in the comments.
|
So the were- isn't so much a species as it is a spiritual thing. Some sort of magic gone wrong. Specific to canines, just happens in a hilarious twist of fate canines have become our most varied creatures. Figure it worked well back in the day when almost all dogs were big wolffish hunting companions, but now...
Bruce's family had been Were hunters for centuries. Family legacy to protect the villages from the packs and stragglers that hunted them monthly. Family legacy when villages became cities, when cities become metropolises. When Weres went from fearsome beasts tearing out men's throats to... well Judy.
Judy the kind chatty barista from the coffee shop two doors down from his apartment. Judy who had mentioned getting bit by a strange dog last month right around where Bruce had fought a nasty trio of Were-Labradoodles. Judy who called in sick the first day of the full moon tipping Bruce off to track her down.
Judy the terrified looking Yorkie huddled in the alley.
Bruce lowered his gun and sighed. He sat down, patted the concrete beside him. The tiny dog slowly inched towards him, sniffing at his outstretched hand, letting out a babble of yips as she tried to speak. He patted her head softly.
"I guess I gotta explain some things."
| 2015-05-29T20:04:16 | 2015-05-29T19:53:42 | 562 | 232 |
[WP] SETI discovers radiosignals from another civilization. The signals are the first broadcasts from a young civilization. We send a spaceship towards the planet, which allows us to see their advancement in "fast forward". We are now 10y into our 20y mission, and see some worrying developements...
|
The signal seemed innocuous enough. Just four half-second notes, played on repeat from highest to lowest. It was the kind of music a six-year-old might make when first introduced to a piano.
But it did not come from a six-year-old. It did not come from anyone on Earth.
Within minutes, the dishes at SETI swiveled to the calculated source of the sound, but the scientists kept their expectations low. Anomalous signals weren’t all that uncommon, but they were generally short-lived and ended before the dishes could get a fix and none had ever shown any sign of an intelligent creator.
This signal was special. Unlike other long-lived extraterrestrial signals, this one was imperfect. On average, the notes lasted 0.52 seconds, but they could range anywhere from 0.32 to 0.85 seconds, with durations picked seemingly at random. The high likelihood of its intentional creation sent the scientific community into utter chaos.
SETI narrowed down the origin to a point some twenty lightyears away, in a previously charted but otherwise ignored solar system centered around a red dwarf star. One of the rocky planets orbited in the Goldilocks zone, but refractive atmospheric analysis had revealed a lack of biological indicators. However, these indicators applied only to Earth. The scope of study had simply been too narrow.
The telescopes of Earth focused on this previously unimportant world, though the vast distance and the red dwarf’s low luminal output prevented any in-depth observation. Humanity wanted, needed, to know more about their potential cosmic neighbors. What did they look like? What did the four-note signal mean?
Were they like us? And if so, would interaction really be wise?
Ethical quandaries dominated the debate over whether to make first contact. A trip to the other solar system would take at least eighty years to arrive and another eighty years to return. Even with the advent of cryosleep, and assuming the mission was a success, any astronauts who took the mission would come home to a vastly different Earth. They would be relics, and all of their friends and family would have perished decades prior. Would the sacrifice be worth it?
Maybe the aliens weren’t friendly. Maybe they were more advanced than humanity in every area except radio. Maybe they had the secret to peace, life, and God itself. Maybe they had nothing to offer.
If they were less advanced, how could humanity prevent the genocide and oppression that always seemed to arise when civilizations at different levels of development met?
In the end, curiosity - and the fear of being alone in the universe - won out. Since no nation could afford the trip on their own and all wished to participate in the most groundbreaking mission of the century, the spacefaring governments of the world contributed funds, manufacturing power, and brilliant minds to the creation of the Messenger. Grudging cooperation or not, the end result was magnificent. First of its kind, the Messenger could house a crew of two hundred, achieve one third lightspeed, possessed a hull outfitted with both kinetic shields and self-repairing armor, and operated with the most advanced navigational AI ever conceived by human minds.
In the decade that it took to build the Messenger, the alien signal changed. The four notes expanded to five, then ten, then twenty four. Eventually, some of the higher notes exceeded the range of human hearing. More signals joined the first, expanding into the tens of thousands. The music became more complex, too, enough to rival and sometimes exceed the grandest human compositions. The signals never contained spoken language, at least as understood by humans, but it soon became apparent that the aliens communicated by way of the music.
The crew of the Messenger drew upon all nations. Captain Xian Zheng, Captain Amanda Fischer, Vice-Captain Inari Sato, and Vice-Captain Pardeep Tanton oversaw two hundred and eight scientists and engineers, all trained in multiple fields of study, with enough overlap to account for cryosleep and to ensure the ship’s survival in case a large portion of the crew perished.
They departed on August 24th, 2043. By that time, the alien signals were over one hundred thousand strong and carried a resplendent array of soothing melodies, energetic jigs, powerful symphonies, and simple arrangements that closely resembled the first signal. Over the course of fifteen years, the Messenger accelerated to full speed. The alien signals blue-shifted, compressed by the relative difference in speed between the Messenger and the alien planet.
On September 15th, 2081, thirty-eight years into the mission and just over ten lightyears away from the alien world, one of the monitoring technicians noticed a shift in the music. Analyzing music recorded over the course of four months, the technician saw a slight drop in pitch across every single signal, which at this point numbered in the tens of millions. He’d never seen anything like it, and neither had anyone else.
At first, the crew considered that there might be something wrong with the ship. Perhaps the engine and sensors had malfunctioned, dropping the ship’s speed and reducing the blue-shift effect. However, using other stars as points of reference, their calculations revealed that the Messenger was cruising at the correct speed. Subsequent inspections revealed no issues with the ship’s transceivers, either.
Perhaps the aliens had intentionally lowered the pitch of their music. Though it made no logical sense to a human, alien motivations were, by definition, difficult or impossible to understand. They could have done it for cultural reasons, or because they had made new technological advances.
Over the next few years, the pitches continued to fall, and the music began to change. Faster beats, more erratic notes. The synergy of the previous signals had all but disappeared. The crew sensed fear and desperation in the music, though their human understanding lacked an alien basis of comparison.
As the Messenger drew within eight lightyears of its destination, one of the ship’s sensors picked up an anomalous x-ray burst from the vicinity of the alien planet. Not strong enough to sterilize the planet, but enough to cause alarm. Upon closer inspection, the ship’s telescopes revealed a corona of light behind the alien solar system, likely refracted from more distant stars. Hypothetically, a massive object could create strong lensing effects and simultaneously pull the alien solar system away from the Messenger, which would account for the reduced blue-shift. Only one thing could be so small, yet have such a strong gravitational effect.
The humans despaired.
The Messenger enacted the emergency deceleration protocol. In the next ten years, they would stop within six and a half lightyears of their original destination. Still too close, considering what awaited at the other end.
The alien music continued to drop in pitch, and as time passed, the number of signals dwindled. Radiation was likely wreaking havoc upon the planet’s surface. By the ship’s calculations, the aliens had less than a decade to live. Accounting for the speed of light, that meant the aliens only really had two years, if that. The true date of their destruction would pass unbeknownst to the humans.
Toward the end, the signals regained their previous grandeur. Solemn, resigned, and unspeakably sad, the music fell like crashing waves and rolled like morning fog, capturing the last thoughts of a doomed people. From a peak of fifty four million, only two thousand signals remained, each one now perfectly in sync.
Two thousand became one thousand, and one thousand became one hundred. The delay meant that the aliens had truly met their end long ago, but the humans aboard the Messenger wept nonetheless.
On the last day, one hundred had become three.
From seven lightyears away, safe behind their sensors and telescopes, the crew watched as the alien world, once populated by a people whose music they had cherished for decades and whom they had so terribly wanted to meet, shattered under the extreme gravitational forces. The last signal, likely automated, sang alone in the void. Fragments of the planet swirled around the black hole, some falling into an uncertain orbit while others simply sunk into darkness, dissolving as they fell. Their last photons wavered at the event horizon, caught between the speed of light and the black hole’s incredible gravity. The images would slowly fade as each photon fell one way or the other.
The Messenger recalculated a course for home. No one spoke.
Humanity was alone in the universe.
|
Day Zero: Satalite and lunar deep space radio telescopes report anomaly in sector Z105X223. Confirmation by terrestrial units within minutes. Signal too weak to discern pattern. Location of transmission, habitable planet, nitrogen-CO2-oxygen based atmosphere. Announcement of conirmation of extra terrestrial life made by jubilant astrophysicistsmuch to charing of world governments.
Day 14: Signal isolated and analyzed, primitive RF transmissions, language suspected, 36 distinct characters identified. Has caused discord word wide, planet is distant, 116 light years away. Use of experimental FTL travel deemed too risky. Private sector philanthropists offer to cover R&D.
Day 40: Linguists have deciphered the base language, 26 phonetic characters and 10 numerals. Work begins on FTL prototype in earnest, current models burn out after only 10 to 12 light years traveled.
Day 76: transmissions continues to increase in frequency and complexity, linguists believe there to be several dialects of the standard character set. Base 10 number system decoded, but the meaning of words continues to elude us. Regenerative FTL engines being tested.
Day 145: Teams of linguists, diplomats, physicists, engineers and other scientists, as well as cultural exchange experts begin training, construction of long range jump ship to be completed in 180 days. Will take 10 jumps to complete the journey, each lasting only a few seconds to us, but requiring days of cool down and recalibration. This will give us scant time to decipher and translate the 10+ years that have passed on our target planet.
Day 345: launch day, our world rejoices, in a few short weeks we will make first contact.
Day 346: 1 jump complete. Linguists delighted to discover numerous new dialects have begun transmissions.
Day 349: second jump completed, first audio transmissions recieved, their voices sound strange but familliar, frantic work begins on grammar and syntax understand.
Day 355: problems on third jump, will need extra time for repairs, linguists racing to decipher each new spoken language transmitted.
Day 362: Jump 4 successful, first visual transmissions recieved, no color and poor quality, species spears to bipedal, with two eyes and varying skin color. Word association and translation becoming much easier.
Day 365: Jump 5, and some disturbing news, they have achieved fission and weaponized it, fear of these unknown people's creeps into my mind for the first time.
Day 368: Jump 6, first Satalite and manned space explorations televised, the crew celebrates, but I continue to fear their violent nature
Day 371: Jump 7, they have created a primitive binary data sharing system, our engingers have tapped in, worrisome. It appears to be mostly used for military and weapons research.
Day 375: Jump 8, the cultural offerings are more and more diverse, as are their conflicts, secular and spiritual. They are a people obsessed with entertainment and fame. First signs of private use of data exchange looks promising.
Day 378: more delays, it has given us time to analyze and down load their explosive digital growth, it appears to be 90% pornographgic in content. Creation of first social media exchanges detected. Data aquired slaved to diplomatic computer, must begin creation of first contact message.
Day 385: the auspicious day of first contact. Computer analysis revealed it was the inauguration day of a new world leader, and all government is controlled by social media. We reach out to him directly via a Tweet.
@DJT
Yo dawg, this is the Aslamians, we came to smoke blunts and drop phat bombz, we got that blaze ass shit, you wanna get down dog?
(Forgive the multiple edits, did this on my phone, autocorrect is evil)
| 2017-01-07T15:24:21 | 2017-01-07T12:53:45 | 337 | 73 |
[WP] The current rulers of the galaxy exert their dominance by showing showing new races a glimpse of their terrifying nature inevitably either driving the unfortunate victims mad or causing them to retreat in fear. It does not work on humans however, they are used to it
|
The Zoroites arrived on the Planet Earth with their grand armada. On board the flagship, The Emperor of the Galaxy had prepared Himself for the descent to Earth. He had recently acquired the star system of Sol, which was previously under the domain of the Humans. He reduced the Humans' dominion to their planet and its' single moon to further repress them further. This tactic had worked thus far in subduing many races across the galaxy, especially when He dominated them further by making public displays of cruelty in the form of tortures, executions, and genocides.
But those measures were only reserved for those who dared challenge His authority. For most of the time, The Emperor need only to assert His dominance through overwhelming invasion, a victory parade on the home planet or capital of the conquered, and maybe breaking the strongest warrior/leader of the conquered. When done right, rebellion would not even occur in the minds of the conquered races.
However, as the Emperor's armada descended towards the city of New York – where the UN's HQ was located and Earth leaders were gathered – He saw that the citizens were not out there in droves welcoming his imperial procession. Instead, only some men in uniformed black jacket were there to greet the Supreme Ruler of the Galaxy.
Furious, He signaled to the advanced party to investigate what had happened. He thought that maybe the Humans were too scared to even see His fear-inducing presence. Maybe the Humans had stayed at their homes, holed up in case the invaders had decided to murder or enslave them all.
As The Emperor mused at the notion of fleeing inferior beings, scared for their lives, The flagship had landed just in front of the UN HQ building. The flagship itself was larger than the building, displaying the grandeur of His Power and Greatness. The doors opened before Him, the trumpets greeted His presence, His soldiers stood at the ready in perfect posture, and He himself was dressed in the way befitting a Great Ruler such as Himself. He stood 3-meters-tall, way taller than any of the Humans genuflecting before him. He took pity at them, finally understanding the disparity between His kind and their kind.
"Humans! His Grace, the Emperor of the Galaxy, Breaker of Worlds, Conqueror of the Masses, would like to inquire as to the rest of your people!" a slightly shorter figure, clad in shiny armour announced, whilst standing slightly in front of The Emperor. This was done, as to put distance between the ruler and the ruled.
A human representative raised his head and answered, "Y-Your Grace! We have been sent by our leaders and people to properly greet you, so–"
The Emperor raised his hand to stop the human. He then nodded to his aide who continued, "Yes, we understand that. But His Grace wondered if the lack of people present at the moment would indicate their fear or rather their insubordination..?"
"N-No, Your Grace! We have tried, to our best ability to invite more citizens to attend to Your Grace's arrival," the humans who were still on their knees responded in unison, "however, as you could see not a lot of people decided to attend."
"Why is that, then?"
"W-Well... It could be said... t-that the citizens opted to stay at home, maybe they are watching the procession from their televisions or social media," another human representative said.
Unsatisfied, the Emperor ordered some of His generals to 'punish' the humans' lack of respect shown. The generals then moved into their respective fleets and deployed the necessary measures to enact 'phase 2 of the Earth's subjugation' – amounting to public displays of violence. The armies and ships raced across the world to inflict damages, be it human lives, infrastructures, or even the natural environment, all were subjected to His will. His will demanded death and destruction, as such those things were brought upon the citizens of Earth, albeit in the least amount as he would like to keep many of the citizens still alive and resources available for productivity reasons.
After days of rampaging, The Emperor observed that the humans were all still apathetically staying within their homes. He wondered if maybe the damage he had done were insufficient. So he ordered even more death and destruction on Earth. He also rounded up several leaders and had them executed publicly for all to see, for all to weep and fall into despair to.
Weeks had passed, yet still nothing changed. As He had about enough of the humans' lack of reaction, He was about to order the humans to be wiped out en masse when he received reports from His aides. After various methods were used, they had finally concluded that the humans were indeed staying within their homes. The humans did so, not out of fear or despair. No, the humans did so because they were too bored at the destruction, intimidation, and even fear tactics that the Emperor had employed in his attempt to subjugate Earth. He was stunned at the rather unexpected report.
He wondered, if fear was not working against the humans... maybe doing the exact opposite of that could yield result? He consulted his aides to weigh in on the thought.
"Let us use unorthodox methods against unorthodox sorts of creatures, shall we?"
|
I sat watching the news, petting my cat, Harry.
"A civil war has broken out in South Sudan once again, with estimated deaths in the 100 thousands. Around 500,000 child soldiers- Breaking news: a massive object has entered the atmosphere. Scientists cannot recognize any part of it. The government-"
I perked up my head, suddenly interested. It wasn't every day aliens invaded the planet. Harry sprang off me, apparently finding interest in his own hairball I hadn't cleaned up yet.
"Greetings, Earthlings," I turned my head back to the screen. This was definitely aliens. Now the big question was, would they be nice aliens, or mean ones?
"Behold the terrible wrath of the Kathraxi,"
100% mean ones. The screen turned to millions of starving aliens. (I don't really have time to finish. Someone remind me to come back later)
| 2019-06-11T08:18:28 | 2019-06-11T05:53:12 | 159 | 99 |
[WP] One day people's spirit animals appear and they turn out to be first generation Pokemon. You are happy with your Charmander, since most got a Magikarp. Your significant other, who has never seen Pokemon, calls and is very excited about their "blue-eyed, pink, floating cat-like thing".
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"A pink floating cat thing you say?" I asked her, my mouth turning dry as the words left me.
I could almost hear Sophie's smile through the phone, her bright laughter bubbling through the earpiece of my phone in my office cubicle. As a veterinarian, she always had a soft spot for animals, but there was no animal that she loved more on God's great Earth than the cat. The only reason that she didn't have one was because her extremely affordable apartment complex didn't allow pets.
With the advent of pokemon spirit animals however, they have a lot more to worry about than cats or dogs. In just a few short months, business have appeared seemingly out of nowhere that promise to create pokemon friendly environments inside people's homes, for both the pokemon's safety as well as the people's. Many buildings had burned down or flooded upon the arrival of some of the more powerful pokemon, and I could only imagine what would happen to the person who ended up with the most powerful pokemon of them all...
"It's so cute too!" my girlfriend squealed in joy. "It's fuzzy and pink and pretty does little tricks in the air when you throw treats at it and oh my God IT'S CHASING ITS TAIL NOW!"
My mind raced as my girlfriend gushed over her new friend. Jigglypuff maybe? A Clefairy perhaps? Perhaps it isn't only first generation pokemon that are appearing. I don't know all the other generations off by heart, but I'm sure there's a floating blue eyed cat in there somewhere.
I interrupted Sophie as she was excitedly me about how it managed to catch its tail and started nibbling on it. "Soph, love, I know you're excited and I'm happy that you got your pokemon, but just hold on just a minute. Do you know what this pokemon is? Do you know its name?"
"It's weird..." she replied with a quizzical voice. "All the other ones that I've seen just say their names over and over again. This little guy just meow's. Or is it a girl? I'll have to find out, but it started chasing the ceiling fan now and I don't think I'll be able to get a good look at its-"
Her words fell on deaf ears. The thought that my sweet, innocent, somewhat naive girlfriend was partnered with one of the most powerful forces in the universe and didn't even realize it struck me dumb. The only thing that she cared about was how sweet and cute it was...
It made perfect sense. The legend said that this was a pokemon that only showed itself to those who were pure of heart. If any person were to fit the bill on the description, it would have to Sophie.
"Oooooh, I'm going to take pictures of it and put it on my Instagram! Maybe somebody will know its name and be able to tell me. Plus I kinda want to brag to my friends..."
My mind snapped back to reality just in time to hear those words come out of Sophie's mouth.
"No!" I blurted out louder than I intended. "I mean...Sophie, you shouldn't do that. You *can't* do that. All you need to do right now is stay inside and not let anybody see it. Keep it busy and keep it happy. I'm coming over right now, just wait for me."
"Why, what's the big deal?" she asked as I quickly shut off my computer, the useless spreadsheets fading to black. "It's just a cute little floaty pokekitty. It's harmless!"
"I...I know that Soph'. Just sit tight until I get there, okay? Please promise me that you will? This is important."
"But I wanted to know what its name was..." came her dejected, but willing reply.
"Will figure that out when I get there Soph'. I'll be there in a bit. I gotta go now, Love you lots, bye."
I hung up without giving her a chance to say anything else. I knew that she would do what I asked her to, what I *begged* her to. She's that kind of person. Wants everybody to be happy, and if somebody says that something's important to them, then it's important to her as well.
My mind raced as I hopped into my beaten up car and peeled out of the parking lot.
*"A legend made real...* I thought to myself. *Mew...*
Edit: I'll see if I can do anything more when I get back from work.
Part 2 is made. I doubt there will be a third. My ideas for a cohesive story pretty much just petered off. Plus it's 2AM and I'm too tired to think.
|
Beginning to panic, I insist "Jennifer, repeat your description of your new pokemon." "Okay, it's pink, floating and blue-eyed." I tell her to stay where she is, and not talk to anyone. She never played pokemon, and doesn't understand the significance of training Mew. She doesn't know that she essentially is in control of a god.
| 2015-06-20T11:50:41 | 2015-06-20T09:48:37 | 1,280 | 14 |
[WP] You are an office worker in NYC in the year of 1999. You go for a cigarette break, but the elevator stops working and you get trapped in it for 2h. As the doors finally open, you walk out and see a brand new lobby, people holding thin digital cards and big screen TV's. It's the year 2018.
|
I step out of the elevator. Everything looks different, but similar.
I turn on my Discman with a built in AM/FM radio to listen to the game. I had to work Sunday afternoon because there was an emergency at work. I want to listen to my Rams. Good thing we get radio stations from Saint Louis all the way here in New York City. The year I moved from LA is the year the Rams moved too. Only I moved a bit further east. Thank God I can still follow my Rams even though they're now in Saint Louis. I was bummed about it. But I still follow them anyway. And plus, that Marshall Faulk guy they traded for was tearing it up. Go Rams!
"First and 10 from the Los Angeles Rams 20. Pat Mahomes is behind center calling the plays".
Wait, what? The team just moved from L.A. I think the broadcaster is sort of slow on the upload, if you get my drift.
Heh, it might be a rebroadcast of a game from a while back. And why is the relief pitcher for the New York Mets playing football?
Something seems weird. I'm going to step outside and grab a smoke. I still have a few minutes left on my smoke break. Hmmm. I don't have any cigarettes. I go up to a guy selling cigarettes from his trenchcoat.
He has one for 10$.
A single cigarette. 10$. My break is about to be over soon, so I quickly buy the cigarette out of desperation.
"Wow" the gentleman said. "I haven't seen this kind of money in years". He said as he's looking at my 10 dollar bill. He gives me 2$ in change, and I quickly pocket the dollars. I responded "Yeah, I mean 10$ for a cigarette. You won't see this kind of money ever again, you ballbuster".
"You think these things are cheap? I only made a 2$ profit off of selling you that cig. Now beat it, chump", he said.
I try lighting the cigarette with my lighter, but not without taking one puff to taste that fine flavor....
I feel something in my mouth. It's kind of moist.
I start coughing. It's smoke! But I didn't light the cigarette yet!
I keep on puffing, but the cigarette isn't going down. But my break is over soon, so I try to put the cigarette out. The tip isn't lit. I the pocket the cigarette in my shirt pocket and I walk into the building. And the Rams just scored a touchdown!!! I cheer loudly! "Woohoo, Go Rams!" People in the building look at me weird. The security guard then says "Oh, so you followed the team after the move?" I then said "Yeah I did, loyalty over location". The security guard then said "You know, everybody here is a Titans fan now, right?" He then also said to me "Dude, you can smoke that here. The ban on E-cigarettes isn't going to be enforced until next year." as he spoke over my earbuds.
"By the way, you're going love the matchup that's happening on week 12." he said in a sarcastic tone.
It's Houston vs Tennessee on Monday Night football. I wish they'd cancel it already! They have nothing but snoozers on MNF.
Wait, what? Houston IS Tennessee! And Monday Night Football is usually the best game of the week!
During the commercial break, every other sentence is "Donald Trump" Why is Donald Trump on TV so much? It's not like he's the president of the United States or something.
I feel weird.
All the TV monitors at work look like those super expensive LCD screens you see at someplace like The Sharper Image or Microcenter. Wow, they spruced the place up.
Everybody's looking at their Palm Pilots.... And touching them without using their styluses. And making phone calls on them.
It's like I stepped into a time warp.
I'm about to go buy a snack. Hmm.. 2$ will get me a soda, some chips and maybe a pack of gum from the vending machines.
A pack of chips costs 1.75$. Unbelievable. I then just buy the pack of chips. Wow, there are so many "vegan" products advertised.
Dude, veganism's caught on so quickly? I'll be damned. I'm just a regular vegetarian and it's hard for me to find veg food anywhere.
I then head upstairs.
I hear a somewhat familiar voice. It's my boss. Or sort of sounds like him.
"Bill, you're late. Get up to the office soon or else we'll send you home early."
"Who are you? You look like Eric but you're skinnier"
"I'm Eric Shunn II"
You fell into an elevator shaft in 1999. You sustained massive brain damage. For the past 20 years, we've been nursing you to health so you'd recover your memories slowly. Now that you're fully recovered, we'd like to give you a handsome pension package,but not before your last project. My dad, when he was alive, spent half his paycheck to get you out of your coma. You recovered 10 years ago, but your memories didn't come back yet. He thought of you as a little brother. He died 5 years ago. I was in charge of letting Uncle Bill recover. But I have much more selfish reasons in making sure you're alive. You're the only one here who can program in VB. Nobody else can do it anymore.
"You mean you're his little squirt? Little Eric?" I asked. He then said in a frank tone "Yeah. Eric Shunn II."
"By the way, I have some good news for you. We knew how much of a Rams fan you were, and how much you missed Southern California. So I'd tell you this outright.
Since our systems need debugging and updating, and you're one of the last people here who know Visual Basic, I'm going to send you over to LA to do some VB debugging on our legacy systems out there. " He said in an optimistic chime.
"But what about my Rams? " I asked in a worried tone. "I don't want to be equally as far away from my favorite team. I used to fly to Saint Louis to see my boys rip it up at least 3 times a year. I think they might win the division this year. " I sputtered.
"You know those chips cost $1.75, right?" he asked in a sarcastic tone.
"Check the tail end of the quarter you got back in change." He said in a slightly sarcastic tone.
"It says Hawaii 2009". I responded.
"Yeah, that coin is 10 years old. " Eric Jr said.
"By the way, the Rams are in LA Again, Billy. So are you. Congratulations on your recovery. " He said in a happy manner.
|
"Excuse me. Can you help me?", asked Ryan, trying his best to appear collected.
"Hey Ryan!", squealed the girl behind the lobby desk. "I thought you had left for home"
&#x200B;
The girl looked strangely familiar but you couldn't quite place her face. "Hey Martha!" boomed a familiar but an impossible voice.
The voice was your own.
&#x200B;
*Did...Did I just speak? How do I know that girl? And why does this place look so familiar?*
&#x200B;
"Yeah. It seems like I forgot my lunch box at my table. Don't want to give the Mrs. a chance to pick up a fight now, do we?"
&#x200B;
You had realised what was happening. *No that can't be true. I refuse to believe this.*
This was a story you had seen a thousand times. And every time, you had woken up in a sweat.
*But this doesn't feel like a dream. This... this feels real.*
The dream never played out the same way. It let you make your own choices. It almost felt like it was training you. Every night you'd make a different choice but none of it ever well. Well until of course...
&#x200B;
"Hey Martha, can i ask you for a big favour?"
"Sure Ryan."
"Do you by any chance have the keys to Mr. Vedil's office? He was supposed to hand me back a report today but I guess he forgot"
"Ummmm..... Well I am not supposed to...."
"Oh come on. You've known me for how long now?"
&#x200B;
*Dammit. That wasn't the exact line. Just say and do whatever you did last night, idiot.*
You had no idea what was going on. But it felt important that you stick to that winning dream.
&#x200B;
"Well. ok... I guess I can let you. But make sure no one see's you. You know I can be in real trouble if anyone else sees you"
"Will do. You are the best"
&#x200B;
*Nice. It worked!*
&#x200B;
You quickly head to Vedil's office, taking an indirect path lest someone sees you making a beeline for Vedil's office.
Key. Turn. Click.
*Woohoo. We're in baby!*
And just as you were about to shut the door someone stops it open.
"Ryan! I THOUGHT I saw you! What are you doing here?"
*Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This is not how it went. This is not how it went at all...*
\--------------------------
&#x200B;
Part 1/x. Will continue if you guys are excited.
P.S: Hey guys, this is my first time here in WP. Saw the blank slate and took my chance. This is my first time writing a story, ever! Also i am not a native speaker. So if you find any mistakes please excuse me. Also, I'd LOVE to hear some feedback
| 2018-11-25T07:10:30 | 2018-11-25T06:10:57 | 22 | 14 |
[WP] You are a ghost with no memory of your mortal life. In order to cross over to the afterlife, you need to find the one who stole your heart. Turns out it's not about finding your long lost love; it's about finding the jerk who literally ripped your heart out of your chest and killed you.
|
I was standing on the sidewalk. I couldn't remember how I got there. I couldn't remember who I was. A woman with a briefcase was marching toward me, her heels clicking on the concrete.
"Excuse me," I said. "Do you recognize me?"
But the woman marched past me, completely ignoring me and my question. I walked down the sidewalk until I found a beggar, rattling his empty cup at passers-by.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked him.
"Change for the needy," he called. "Even a dollar goes a long way."
He was looking right through me. I would have thought that someone down on his luck, like this man, would be more willing to lend a stranger a hand. I reached in my pocket for some change but had none. That was odd. I could not feel my hands. I lifted one up to get a better look but before I could examine it I saw a little girl barreling toward me on her bicycle. The youth of today. . .no respect. . .Not that I was very old. But still. . .when I was her age. . .
She was going to hit me!
"Stop!" I cried.
I braced for impact as she rolled right through me and out the other side. As if I were insubstantial as air. I turned and watched her continue to pedal and cruise, giving a wide berth to any pedestrians along her path. I held my hand before my eyes. It was almost transparent. I looked down at my body, through which the girl had easily passed. It, too, was closer to absence than substance, closer to air than solidity.
A businessman in a tailored suit strode down the sidewalk with gusto. He held his chin aloft like a pretentious prince. As if to keep his nose far away from the smells of the rabblement below him, whom he despised.
"Change for the needy, sir?" the beggar asked him.
The businessman blew past the beggar and strode right through me. Both of us were invisible in our own ways.
"Heartless!" the beggar called after him. "You've sold your soul for money! You cannot even recognize your fellow man! You cannot see yourself in him! You will not help! Your soul is lost!"
The business man did not alter his gate or turn around as he lifted his hand over his shoulder. He raised his middle finger, flipping the beggar the bird.
"Mammon has ripped your heart from your chest!" cried the beggar. "The demons of greed have infested your soul!"
\- - -
I wandered aimlessly. A ghost in the world of the living. A phantom in a city of steel and concrete and flesh. I stood in traffic as cars and busses and trucks drove through me. I walked through walls into secure buildings: inside a bank vault I stared at the money I could not touch. I walked through locked doors into private apartments: I peered over the shoulder of a beautiful woman as she recorded her sorrows in a diary. Then I watched her curl up in bed, alone, and drift off to sleep.
Night had fallen. In the darkness the strange city seemed stranger. In the daylight it had looked familiar, in a way. But at night, when the humming streetlights bathed the black streets and the grey buildings and the raggedy scatterlings in white, clinical light, it seemed like a place I had never known. A place I wanted to escape.
The park ahead was shrouded in darkness except for the walking trail. The lamps along the trail burned with orange bulbs, casting orange light. I roved closer to them, like a moth, seeking sanctuary in this place of warm light and trees, this oasis of green and orange and silence in the midst of the nightmare city. Eventually I found a lonely park bench, half in the light and half in the darkness.
I sat down and pondered.
What made a man become a ghost? Did all men and women, after they died, have to linger like this, halfway between life and death, halfway between this world and whatever other world awaits beyond? Or was there no other world? Was the city, the country, the world, filled with all the ghosts of all the people who had ever lived? Would I be forced to wander like this forever?
I heard slow footsteps and the sound of something tapping. The steps and the tapping grew louder until she rounded the bend. A corpulent old woman wearing sunglasses and wielding a white cane. She hummed to herself as she waddled and tapped.
What was a blind woman doing out walking at this time of night, by herself, in a dark and and silent park?
She stopped about ten feet from my bench. It was almost as if she could see it. But she had probably taken this route many times, and knew where the benches were. She neared and turned to sit on the bench. I wondered if she were going to sit on me. She sat beside me, though.
"Hmmm," she said to herself. "What a beautiful night."
She was right. It was a beautiful night. The low clouds above were fleeced with white, reflecting the light emanated from the city. There was no wind. The park was quiet and lush and serene.
"I never know what they sending me for," the woman said in a conversational tone. "I never know till I get to wherever I'm going. It ain't always on nights nice as this. . .No sir, it ain't. . .Sometime they send me out in the rain and the snow. Sometime they call, and I look outside, where it's cold and storming, and I think, Bonnie, you a fool if you don't just turn the television up, to drown 'em out, and keep your ass inside. . .But I know they wouldn't call me out if it wasn't important. . .So I do what I gotta. . .Get my poncho and boots and umbrella. . .Or my parka and mitts in the winter. . .And head outside. . .Everybody else got a duty in this world. . .I got mine. . .but I sure do prefer when my duty and the weather conspire. . .A beautiful night like tonight. . .It's a pleasure. . .Really, it's a true pleasure. . .Well. . .Ain't you gunna say anything?"
The blind woman turned to me. She still wore her shades, but it almost seemed as if. . .
"Can you see me?" I asked.
"Can I see you?" she repeated gently. "Who you think I been talking to? My cane? The bench? Bonnie blind to ninety-nine percent of what's visible. You's about the only thing I can see."
\- - -
|
"Find the one who stole your heart."
That's what ol' death said I needed to do to 'pass on.'
My first stop, of course, was to my ex-fiance. I should have expected the screaming, the crying- honestly chasing her around the house, trying to explain, wasn't my finest or smartest moment. It was only when I gave up, and used my ghostly aura to pet the dog did she finally calm down. That last chat with her was otherwordly though; one of the most heartfelt conversations we'd had in years. Almost made it worth dying.
"Shit, Harry. Just thinking about what happened to you... god," Tears had long stopped flowing but her flinch let me know how much she still cared, "The police, they said that man tortured you for hours. I threw up when they told me he cut out your heart..."
"Well, I mean it kinda hur-"
That was the precise moment I realized death had a sick sense of irony. Or maybe he/she(/it/the divine- I don't know) was just a stickler for the rules.
Reaching that talk with my fiance took a while, granted, but tracking down my murderer was a completely different ballpark. The next year was filled with me materializing into detectives' officers, skulking for weeks in sketchiest places I could find, and chasing able-bodied killers with my flight speed never exceeding the walking pace of your average arthritic granny. For a while, failing at my own mission, I played vigilante, helping the authorities track down serial killers whenever possible. It's crazy how the mind can work when it has a hunch. All it takes it a slight breeze to flip over the right photo, or one name whispered in the wind. But after that year I had my own hunch. And a few months after that I had a name, an address, and a rough schedule.
Don't worry, didn't I go that far just to kill the man outright. There's a story to it.
Of course, I could afford to take my time, learn the meticulous man's routine down to the minute; I'm an immortal, a flying specter after all. One parched with a thirst for revenge that can only be satiated by one man. Frederick Callahan.
I say his name now, because yes, Frederick, I am behind you. And I intend to take my time.
| 2021-04-13T14:31:07 | 2021-04-13T13:33:27 | 144 | 37 |
[WP] You have an ant farm, which you have cared for since its humble beginnings. Having developed into a healthy ant society, you release the ants near your house. Days later you return to check on them, only to find a mini statue of yourself by their base's entrance. The ants stop once they see u.
|
Ants are pretty neat creatures, communicating through scent where we would use words. I had a colony I raised from a captured queen and some drones all the way to a few hundred strong, and then released them in my back yard to grow to what was probably a few thousand or even hundreds of thousands.
Checking on them one day, it became apparent they weren't sticking to normal architecture for an ant hill, and I watched with interest. They had figured out that mud was good for stacking, and had dug a canal that brought water a few feet away from the gutter, which when it rained stayed full for several days. They were using the mud from digging to build walls and forts around the exit holes, dividing up plants, and... was that a statue?
It was, and a chill ran down my spine when on closer inspection it was of... me. About two inches tall, it had been carefully modeled to look like me, hair, glasses, even the boots I wore when I visited the farm when it was still in the garage. I looked about at the ants, and realized they had all stopped and were watching me.
I went inside, a little shaken but with ideas. That evening, all the food scraps went in a small bowl. I dug their ant farm out of the trash and cleaned it, and the next morning, I went outside to the ant hill.
I put the old hive on the ground near them, and placed the bowl of food scraps in front of it. Then I walked a fair distance off and watched.
The ants had an almost ceremonial procession up to the bowl, investigating the whole thing. They emptied it, and for the entire day swarmed around the base of the cylindrical fish tank that used to house them. That evening, I walked over and recovered the bowl, going back inside.
The next day was a Saturday. With peering eyes, I watched the ants work from afar. They infiltrated the lawn, imposing a semblance of order across the yard. The canal was dug deeper, and they spread to the neighbor's apple tree, apparently selecting older apples to cut down and tear apart, bringing them back. Over the next few days, every morning I brought them the food scraps from the previous day, and they cleaned the bowl out, leaving it by noon.
The most interesting developments were with the lawn between my door and the bowl and the old tank. The lawn had two parallel lines on either side of my usual path, cut by the ants. Here, no ant walked or dug, going the long way around. In fact, the lines extended all the way around my house, dug where no grass was and etched in dirt on the concrete portions. My area was sacred to them, and I appreciated the respect. The tank had been converted into a Coliseum, multiple thousands of ants able to view the center. Here, a little bit of finagling with a camera revealed the ants brought captured insects and animals and did ritual one-on-one battle around a four inch statue of myself; ants vs spiders, grasshoppers, and one time a locust that won a hundred matches before the last ant tore its head off and spiked it on a twig that went on the battlements of the entrance fort, which had doubled in size.
Then came the day when they started offering me things back, putting them in the bowl for me to collect. It started with dead ants; I ignored these until it became dead wasps and such. I stopped providing food; I hoped to send a message. They tried an apple, I provided the usual fare. Then the third time around, they got a dollar coin, shining gold in the evening light. My heart caught in my chest, this was *exactly* what I wanted. The next morning, they got a heaping bowl of honey I bought with the one dollar and some of my own change. That night, they were still busy trying to pull it all out, so I simply added another tablespoon, being careful not to trap any ants, and let them keep it for the night.
The next day, it had been cleaned thoroughly and came back with a few pennies and quarters in it. They got birdseed; not as legendary a fare as a cup of honey but good stuff regardless, and cheaper too. They certainly appreciated it.
For the next few days, they would bring me coins and were rewarded with bird seed the next day. I immediately started portioning; five dollars to the cup, an exchange rate I got the better deal of but was good for them. I wondered; how to teach them to being bills? It was greedy, but an interesting challenge.
A few weeks passed while I worked on the problem. A paper with a drawing was ignored, a bill was taken and I never saw it again, and while they were attentive when I spoke, obviously didn't understand it. I did some research into ant pheromones, and learned you could get some online. After some poking, I got a basic one and put it on the bowl.
It was confusing to them, but they quickly associated the smell with the bowl. Some quick checks confirmed that they applied it to all the statues of me, and to their war trophies from the arena. I then dropped a bill with a slight amount of the pheromone on the lawn outside my space. True to form, they put it in the bowl inside an hour.
They were rewarded. I got them more honey, and then topped it off every few hours all day. They responded vigorously; I didn't know where they got it and didn't care. They brought me money in bills and coins, and were rewarded with honey. I established a going rate to maximize profit; they responded. Soon, I got a bigger bowl and every day raked in thirty dollars or more in spare change.
They dried up for a while when winter came. I made sure to get them lots of food scraps in the meantime; they had earned food even if the greater rewards required more. Then in the spring, another ant colony went to war with them.
At first, I didn't know anything was wrong, but the money instantly stopped coming in. It took a day or so of poking around, but I found them warring on a sidewalk under the sun and followed the enemy back to their hive in a field.
My wrath was swift. They gave me gifts, they get manpower. I tracked down a bottle of gasoline and some matches. Their nest sucked down half a gallon, and then I lit it. The fire shot underground and sputtered for a few hours; to seal the deal, I dumped a can of tire sealant down the hole and across the top. I was a generous lord, but I could also be a wrathful one.
|
In the beginning there was Furh, the giant realm. My ancestors didn't know what it was, then, couldn't understand where they were. They persevered, cared for by a monumental being that seemed a titan to us. After generations, we awoke to a new world, one of green and movement and things that seemed Right. They called this land Kurh, and lived on. Everything had changed but some still remembered, even though the new Queen declared that Kurh was Right and Furh was wrong, some remembered the care that their parents, and their parents before them, had received. In time all talk of Furh was outlawed, declared nothing more than a legend and deep folly.
We lived and died, expanded and grew and time passed. Then the Pioneers - they didn't call them that - did something reckless. They travelled far and built something in front of the great entrance to Furh, something majestic and unimaginably large. A huge monument to the Giant of Furh. You ask, how did they know where to go? What to build? To this day it remains unknown, many say they were guided by the spirit but others claim an ancient script was found. All accounts are certain of one thing: what followed the building of the monument. It came down from the heavens, it seemed, and gave the exhausted, half-dead Pioneers a mountain of food, giant cubes of pure energy. It seemed to care for them, appreciating the monument and rewarding them.
Soon others joined the Pioneers, who had started building their own network, with the bountiful blessings of the Giant. The queen struck back, citing the belief in Right and Wrong and attempting to kill the upstarts. The assault failed when a huge object, wielded by the Giant crushed them all to dust. A single egg was saved, and it became the new queen, a queen who understood the Giant and ruled iver the new colony. Soon we developed, learned and started to create, cared for by our protector. Aeons passed and our knowledge and power grew until suddenly, a discovery was made. Communication. We began to talk with It, to understand It, and to worship It.
Thus began the tale of the ant-realm that is called, in honour of its deity, Furh.
Sorry of this is kinda bad, my first WP response.
| 2020-04-22T13:35:46 | 2020-04-22T13:34:49 | 171 | 91 |
[WP] A devil forged a contract with you: he grants one desire, then collects your soul 50 years later. However, 2000 years have passed, and you’re still alive — because he hasn’t fulfilled his end of the pact.
|
For the seven-hundred and thirtieth time, I was ran through the field by my childhood home. The scent of sea air and fresh-cut grass filled my nose, carried by the comfortably warm wind of spring. The soft roar of waves set a backdrop to our favorite game: tag.
I was ‘it,’ as usual, and Cleo was really giving my five-year-old legs a run for their money. Up and down the hillside, sprinting at full tilt for the barest chance of not being. Cleo laughed, a windchime in the breeze, and ran further up the hill. Not to be outdone because I was too short, or the smoke rising from the other side of the hill was too thick, I dogged Cleo’s heels, hellbent to fight through the burning in my little lungs.
*Smoke? Burning lungs? Hellbent?* That’s not right. I reached the top of the hill and went into a fit of coughing. The land in front of me was being devoured by fire, pitted with craters from shells that came on high.
*No, from the sky. They were from the sky.*
Cleo was just in front of the newest crater, paralyzed with fear from their near-death experience. I called my sibling. Nothing. Suicidally determined to pull Cleo away from the hellscape—danger—ahead, I rushed down the slope and grabbed an arm. Pulling hard, I rushed back up the hill, screaming for Mom and Dad. We had to get to the cellar.
Cresting the hill again, I found my home gone. Swallowed by the roaring waves.
*Wrong, wrong wrong wrong! They weren’t swallowed. Bombed,* they *got bombed.*
My vision blurred as I looked to Cleo, finding an arm with no body. Shellshocked, I looked back to the field of craters. What remained of Cleo laid in a smoldering heap.
*No no no no no no, Cleo* drowned. *This isn’t right, none of it’s right.*
Like always, I shuddered and fell to the ground, unconscious. And like always, the blare of the alarm was barely enough to pull me out of my personal hell. Which was ironic, considering I should have been in actual Hell, capital H.
Instead, I woke in my little space dinghy. An automated voice reported the conditions of the area outside the ship in a clipped tone. I’d long since disabled the medical diagnostic. I stopped being able to tolerate PATIENT CONDITION IS CRITICAL. REPEAT. PATIENT CONDITION IS CRITICAL after the first three decades. As it was, I was two millenia late.
Allowing mechanized arms to pull me up from my bed, I settled into a motorized chair and made the twenty foot drive to the other side of my capsule. The distance, as well as the chrome and uncomfortable layout of the one-room ship was seared into my brain. I’d spent the better half of a thousand years staring at the interior, until my eyes went.
There, I mumbled a string of arcane words, slurred due to my long since atrophied vocal chords and thinned lips. An audible pause, then the familiar smell of rotten eggs. Despite my age, it was as pungent as ever, snaking its way through my nostrils, past my tongue, and into my ancient lungs. I heard the click of talons on the metal floor, the furling of leathery wings, and the deep breathing of a demon straight out of Hell.
“Hello again, Client Seven-Oh-Twenty-Two-B. What can I do for you?” the deep voice rumbled, sounding incredibly unenthused. “Oh, happy anniversary by the way. Here’s to twenty centuries, yadda yadda.”
“Your end…” I wheezed through cracked lips. I could hear a brief snort and the telltale pop of our damnable contract being drawn from the other side.
“Well, let me see. No, no, our agreement doesn’t allow for the end of my life,” the demon said. A moment passed, then my contractor let out a chuckle. “Oh, lighten up. It was a joke. Once again, I’m afraid I cannot fulfill my portion of our contract.”
“…Why?”
“You know why. I am not permitted to reconstitute planets.” I could hear the demon pace around my chair.
“My family,” I bit. “Just them, not the planet. I’ve told you.”
A scaly hand came down on my emaciated shoulder. Warm breath blew past my ear, though I barely felt it.
“Why not negotiate a new contract? Perhaps a new life, reborn in a different time? A new family, just as loving and important as the ones you lost.”
“I want *them,”* I growled. “Give my family back.”
My contractor pulled away, pacing somewhere behind me. I didn’t bother having my chair turn. What was the point?
“Do you know *why* you’re still here? Despite the end of your planet, the extinction of humanity, the constant botched suicides of your youth?”
*Because you’re a sadistic monster?*
“You are under *contract,* you’re forfeit to me, only after I fulfill your *impossible* request! You’ve made me a laughingstock at my corporation, dammit.”
“Not impossible. I’ve come back from death before. Do it for them,” I wheezed.
“You haven’t understood in the last two millenia, but maybe this one will stick. They were already assigned. Their souls are condemned, frozen assets. I can’t touch them.”
“Haven’t understood—because you’re lying. They were good people, my family would never end up in Hell.”
That same smell of rancid eggs and soot burst into the room. The heavy footfalls of my contractor rounded my chair. I felt the weight of a demon press against the arms of my chair, their face inches away from my face.
“Condemned to *Heaven,* you ignoramus! Frozen assets, content forever and null and useless in business. Why would I describe that as a good thing? If it were a *contract* instead of a *pact,* you’d be dead a thousand times over. But we’re stuck in limbo thanks to your stubbornness and your dead family’s piety. *I* am going back to spread my wings, *don’t* call on me unless you have a new deal in mind, for both our sakes.”
With that, the gargantuan creature was gone, and I was alone in the vastness of space. I rotated my chair, returned to the metal bed, and let the arms pull me up and lay me down. I did not mean to fall asleep, but no stimuli other than the hum of the dinghy led to a quick descent to sleep.
For the seven-hundred and thirty-first time, I ran through the field by my childhood home.
|
"Look, so maybe the Crusades and the British colonization didn't work out, but this whole 'Christianity' thing you came up with ain't doing so hot anymore, either. This whole world peace wish has really just gone down the drain, at this point." The demon flapped its wings in annoyance.
"At this point I'd rather just wash my hands of the whole thing, as Pilate did. Can't the mobs just fall upon me and end this existence already?" The man questioned, twirling his beard with a single finger.
The demon sighed and rolled its eyes. "I can't claim your soul till my end of the bargain is fulfilled, so even after we're done the contract still has to run 50 more years! My next plan, this whole Y2K bit I've been talking about, will surely work. Nothing unites people like a little fear, aye?"
The man sipped from his Surge can, and rubbed his head. "Didn't you try that with the Black Death thing?"
"Sure!" The demon slumped down in the sofa next to the man, and grabbed the remote. "But the Y2K thing is fake; no one will actually die. Plus ACTUAL plagues don't work anymore, people got too smart for that."
The man sighed, and picked at the dead skin around his stigmata.
"Hey didn't I tell you that'll never heal if you keep messing with it?" The demon tapped the man on the head with the remote.
The man slammed his hand down on the leather couch. "You couldn't have at least made it so I don't need to eat and sleep anymore? I'm wasting enough time staying alive this long as is, why can't I just watch *Friends* without breaks every once and a while? If everyone starts watching that, then world peace won't be too far off."
"Nah, people will still be divided over the whole 'We were on a break' debacle." the demon replied. "No one will want to work together if they still argue about that, even if Ross was clearly in the wrong."
"Rachel shouldn't have expected so much of him, I mean how can you expect a man to go for a deal as restrictive as that!" The man shouted.
This time it was the demon's turn to sigh. He scratched his horn, annoyed at the man.
"You know what, J.C.? Maybe the whole 'Son of God' thing didn't work out 'cause *you* decided the rules yourself. I bet I could've done it better. At the rate we're going, world peace will be impossible." The demon closed his eyes.
"You just make sure aliens come down when humanity finally explores past our solar system, and *then* you'll see."
| 2020-03-10T10:12:45 | 2020-03-10T10:09:49 | 43 | 20 |
[WP] At the age of 18 you are permitted to redistribute your twenty skill points around into whatever skills you want permanently. You decided to put everything into LUCK and leave the rest at 0 points.
|
Congressman Derek F. Ackerman sat at the ornate wood desk in his oversized hotel room, disinterestedly flipping through debate notes. He couldn't help but pause and take in the irony of his room. *"Presidential Suite...I didn't even know they could upgrade rooms."*
&nbsp;
By all accounts he should have felt positively confident. His opponent had just dropped a baby at the handshake line outside. Not only that, the candidate's response was to feverishly claim that the baby had been "unbearably heavy".
&nbsp;
One does not win a presidential debate after dropping someone's fat toddler in front of the news trucks. Sorry, allegedly fat. Regardless, Congressman Ackerman did not feel particularly lucky today. He glanced over at his wife, sitting pensively on the lavish king bed.
&nbsp;
As Derek's mind wandered between focusing on work and growing bored from confidence, his old friend sadness began to work it's way onto the mental itinerary. As if coming to the rescue, his chief strategist Keith Greer suddenly knocked and poked his head in the room.
&nbsp;
"Hey Congressman. They need you backstage in 15. We're about to get started," said Keith. It was fortunate he showed up and pulled him back down the present. Derek knew he had to focus on the evening's event.
&nbsp;
This was the third presidential debate between Derek and Republican Sen. John Williamson. In the first debate one ABC moderator nearly choked to death, but not before Derek and the Heimlich maneuver intervened. Needless to say, the standing ovation went over well with the audience at home.
&nbsp;
The second debate had been more subtle. During a sensitive back and forth on the topic of abortion, Senator Williamson suddenly developed a facial tick where he kept, or so it seemed, *winking* at the audience. Some pundits called the series uncomfortable. They were vastly understating the atter. Polls showed an unsurprisingly brutal skyrocket in the poor man's unfavorables.
&nbsp;
Now the Senator was set to go a third time. He was tenacious if nothing else.
&nbsp;
Derek noticed Keith still lingering by the door.
&nbsp;
"Something else you need, Keith?" he asked.
&nbsp;
The long time political operator shifted uncomfortably.
&nbsp;
"Well....this is kindof a grey area. But CBS accidentally cc'd one of our staffers a copy of the moderators' debate questions. Do you want to know?"
&nbsp;
Derek thought for a second. It's not like there'd be any consequences if he went with it. There never were.
&nbsp;
Derek nodded, "Yeah, why not. Anything I should look out for?"
&nbsp;
His strategist paused, "Well they're going to ask Williamson about all the new affair allegations..."
&nbsp;
Derek suspected that would come up. Sen. John Williamson was enduring quite unfortunate timing with all these accusations. He wondered if any of them were true.
&nbsp;
The strategist continued, more cautiously now, "...and one moderator will want to know your fondest memory of Marissa before she got sick."
&nbsp;
No sooner had her name rolled off Keith's tongue than Derek slumped into his chair and fell into a deeply distant gaze. His eyes glistened just a touch, threatening a high chance of precipitation.
&nbsp;
"This should be a softball question," thought Keith. He knew the Congressman quite well. And glancing over at his wife's still, unmoving form it was easy to understand how his boss could get shaken up over her condition. But politically, she was a godsend, though Representative Ackerman could never really see it that way.
&nbsp;
"Sir..." Keith said gently, shocking Derek out of his momentary trance.
&nbsp;
The congressman slowly straightened up, wiped the back of his hand across his face, and stood.
&nbsp;
He spoke, somber gravity weighing down every word, "Thank you. I'll be down in 5."
&nbsp;
"Sure you're alright sir?"
&nbsp;
"Yeah, I'll be fine...Just give me a minute."
&nbsp;
The congressman looked around the lavish hotel room as Keith hesitantly turned to go. Derek calmed down a bit. He couldn't help but notice Keith's furtive glance toward Marissa on his way out.
&nbsp;
With a loud **clack** the door closed, and Derek walked over to the bed a crumpled down onto it, next to Marissa. The campaign was perpetually baffled by her presence in trail. But Congressman Derek Ackerman would not be parted with his wife.
&nbsp;
She sat totally still, back against the headboard. Her medical assistant (he unfortunately couldn't attend to all of her needs) had dressed her in the lovely old blue gown today, and draped a thin silver necklace around her neck.
&nbsp;
It was hard to tell when she was awake or asleep, since there was almost no distinction. The doctors called it 'Coma Creep.' They were able to name it, but unable to explain it.
&nbsp;
In just a few short years she had become blind, deaf, and mute. Her entire nervous system shut down, and most of her muscle mass had all but withered away. She probably couldn't taste anything either, but since everything worked through IV's no one bothered to test. She also had some oddly acute skin decay. One part of her face had rotted to black, in an eerily near perfect resemblance to a swastika. The unsightliness hurt the natural charisma she had with sympathy voters. So they covered that part of her face in bandages. She was hard on the eyes, and even worse for morale.
&nbsp;
Yet still, in this moment, Derek stared at her. He saw none of the special "flaws." Instead he saw the memory, his memory, of the beautiful girl he'd grown up with and married.
&nbsp;
The world looked at Derek Ackerman and saw the youngest congressman in history, the most successful public activist in America, a lottery winner who donated everything to charity, and probably the next and most beloved leader of the free world.
&nbsp;
If he were less lucky with press coverage, they would have seen the real Derek: a simple man haunted by a ghost.
&nbsp;
Doubt crept in. He wondered if he should've tried to put more into Luck. If he and Marissa should have forgotten their ambition and lived in peace. If they had made a mistake. They had both been so sure of themselves, they had planned so throughly before the re-alignment process. He even waited for her birthday, so they could go in together. He was afraid then.
&nbsp;
Derek brushed his hand through her hair, "I'm still afraid, Ryss," he managed. When his sadistic mind reminded himself that she'd never respond again, laugh again, smile again, or mess his hair... He was fortunate to let loose only a few brimming tears.
&nbsp;
*At least she still has her hair. I guess I'm lucky for that,* he thought.
&nbsp;
Silver lining aside, here he was. Alone. Always alone since the re-alignment. One of two people in the room technically alive. One of one conscious enough to wish they weren't.
&nbsp;
He took a deep breath. Derek thought about all the good he was doing for the country, and the world. Then another deep breath. It wasn't working. The guilt crashed down. Then habit kicked in, and he reached for the paper that so often comforted him in these moods.
&nbsp;
He pulled the old, wrinkled paper out of its home in the suit's chest pocket. It had been home in every suit Derek wore since he received the letter. Since the day before he and Marissa wed. Three days before re-alignment. And for what it's worth, the letter was the closest thing Derek would have to a real home. He read it carefully.
|
It's 15 minutes before the start of the big award ceremony, and all he can think of is the path he took to get here. The accolades, fame, reputation; none of that matters right now as he thinks back to that decision he made on his 18th birthday.
It was a Friday morning, overcast as usual, as he left his parent's house for the newly constructed S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Skills Laboratory in downtown Oxford. He had been in college for 18 months already and was beginning to grow bored of the non-challenging courses he had been taking. He was, essentially, a child genius, and was looking for something new and adventurous to do besides sitting through boring lectures with students who were older than he was. He had been thinking about this decision for several months now, but still wasn't sure where he wanted to re-allocate his 20 skill points. It was on the train ride to the Skills Lab that he found something that really caught his interest. An older man was sitting next to him in a wheelchair and had been muttering something about how luck has affected the course of history. When he asked the old man what he meant, he responded, "having certain skills can set the trajectory of one's life, but luck can make anything possible."
As he handed in the final paperwork to the assistant, she noticed that he had decided to allocate all of the points to luck. "You are aware of the ramifications this will have on your physical abilities and mental acuity, correct?", she exclaimed. He just nodded his head in approval and said, "let's begin."
The first few weeks seemed pretty normal. Nothing significant had happened and he couldn't really tell if anything had changed. After a couple of months, however, he realized that it was becoming increasingly difficult to walk up stairs and his speech had begun to slur at times. The degradation of his body and speech continued over the next few years as he thought that he had made a horrible decision. Since this whole luck thing wasn't panning out as planned, he decided to try and get a job at the local science library in Oxford at the age of 21. It was there that he caught his first big break. While going through some old catalogs of unpublished scientific essays he stumbled upon, he found some proofs on Einstein's theory of relativity that were hand written and had no accredited author. Realizing that his life was going nowhere at the time he decided to take these essays home and make them his own. He knew that if he published these proofs he would have to back them up somehow so he studied them intently and wrote notes to help him remember what was written. This wasn't the right thing to do, but he had to find his place in the world and this was his only opportunity.
Many years went by and he kept finding theory after theory, unpublished and hidden away in the depths of the library, unknown to the world. Black hole dynamics, quantum gravity and mechanics, space time theory, it was all there waiting for him to publish and take credit. He wrote books and won awards on these "findings", but it was all attributed to his skill at luck.
"5 minutes until the award ceremony, sir", said his assistant. He had done this so many times at this point it seemed like second nature. Accept the award, read a speech from a cue card, and get on with the ceremony. It was a little difficult now . All of the years of physical degeneration had left him confined to a wheelchair, and he needed assistance when speaking. He knew that this would likely be his last acceptance speech, as he could sense he didn't have much longer. But this award was special. Different. He had just published a research essay on what had always thought to have been impossible, time travel.
As he takes final note of what he had written on the cue cards, his assistant approaches him and says, "It's time for your speech, Mr. Hawking."
| 2016-03-20T21:21:54 | 2016-03-20T20:10:57 | 37 | 21 |
[WP] You are not like the other wizards, you finally decoded what the spells mean in English, but you soon realise that they are written strangely. the spell for a fireball is "air burning" and the spell for flying is "dislike floor"
|
I listened intently down the silent hall, diligently alert for anything that might approach. I was on guard duty this week, as were many of my peers, as we had heard the dreaded Magician Assassin, Oleander, had been commissioned to kill the prince. He was sleeping soundly in the room behind me, and I was the last line of defense at his door. I had cast "Rafah Sout" (*Loudy Heary*) on my ears and could clearly hear the insignificant scrape of rat's nails in the walls. As well as the loud snores from the prince. Nothing sounded out of the ordinary, but I still felt uneasy. Oleander had a perfect record.
There was a clatter, three floors down. My body tensed as I listened to the commotion with my enhanced abilities.
"What's going on? Who are you?" my contemporary, Lorn, asked. His voice was followed by another thump on the ground. His heartbeat slowed. He was knocked out, some poison having entered his system.
Oleander was here.
My body tightened further and further as I heard body after body collapse to the ground. What was insane to me was that he had not cast a single spell in this time. He was clearly throwing something to knock out all the guards. And they were magicians! They should have had protective barriers! What's worse was that Oleander was also a magician! Who knew what kind of spells he had control over?
"*Soft Pillow Shield!* *Door close sharp!* Umm, *Crunchy crunch leaves!!*" I raced off protective spells frantically, summoning a new barrier, adding locks to the door, and summoning dead leaves into the hallway as my paranoia grew to new heights. The new barrier I'd summoned was typically shied away from, as it was visible, and clear where the weak points were when in an ongoing battle.
More bodies fell below, but I couldn't hear Oleander's footsteps! He had to have been on my floor by the sound of another magician hitting the stairs below.
I stared at the door at the end of the hall, eyes wide and heart booming in my ears like a drum marching me into battle. It was so unbearable, I had to remove my hearing enhancement as I was unable to hear anything else. I continued to peer to the other side, sweat slipping down my neck rapidly. The door hadn't budged an inch, as far as I could tell. It was still locked.
Suddenly, something sprouted from my outer barrier. A needle! I stared at it in shock as a drop of fluid spilled from its tiny tip harmlessly onto the floor.
The poison!
Another needle sprouted from the barrier. And another. Only after the third did I realize where they were being fired from. From the keyhole in the door at the end of the hall. To have such accuracy was unbelievable at a distance, and I could see how my peers could fall to this attack if they had only used the invisible shielding, it wasn't enough to block such fine projectiles.
The door finally budged as he tried to open it with a lockpick, but my additional locks had kept him out.
*"No more door!*" he cast, disintegrating the door. I could only see the top half of his body, a dark silhouette to its background. I couldn't read his expression.
"Back off Oleander! I know the ancient language! Leave now while you still have your life," I warned, but my voice cracked loudly during the last sentence.
He scoffed, amused.
*"Air go bye-bye!*" he cast, sucking the air out of my lungs.
"*Me breathe!*" I yelped with my last gasp, bringing the air back.
Oleander finally came into view. He was floating above the ground, sitting on a small cloud a few feet above the floor. He was sneering at me.
"You are familiar with many spells?" he smiled. "I assure you that your knowledge doesn't match my memorization."
"Translation!" I corrected.
"*Spicy body!*" he cast, not listening to me.
"*Impossiburn!*" I replied, again squealing as the end of a finger singed in fiery pain before my body became flame resistant.
"Who was your teacher?" he asked, finally impressed.
"The library downstairs mostly," I shrugged.
"Don't be cute!" he snapped. "*Sleepy sleepy night man!*"
"*Wakey wakey!*" I countered, a fog of fatigue entering and leaving my head in a moment.
"I see you know your spells and counters. But in my years of travels, I finally put enough together to invent one of my own!" he sneered. "Try this: *Brain melty from nose holes in agonizing pain!*" he shouted.
"*Don't um... melty brain!*" I shouted, cringing in fear. My brain remained in tact.
"How could you have possibly known a counter? I haven't even come up with a counter!" he shouted.
"Oh... well then," I pointed up to him as his eyes widened, realizing what he just admitted to, "*Brain melty from nose holes in agonizing pain!*" I cast.
"Noooooo!" he roared, tearing at his face as something spilled from his nose. He collapsed off his cloud, inert and brainless.
I stared at him for a few seconds in disbelief, not really accepting that I had somehow defeated the most notorious assassin almost unscathed. I took tiny steps toward him, planning to poke him to make sure he was dead.
"What's going on?" the prince asked, opening his door and rubbing his eyes.
"Ah!" I squealed, wheeling around rapidly. "*Sleepy sleepy night man!*" I shouted in fear.
The prince fell to the floor, breathing peacefully. I stared at him in fear of what he would do when he awoke with the memory.
I would need to come up with a memory loss spell by morning.
________________________
For more stories, come check out /r/Nazer_The_Lazer!
|
I sat staring at my spellbook, in consternation. Jurana, the equally perplexed paleo-arcanist I'd summoned to double check my work, was looking back and forth between the spellbook and the simple translation key I'd made, looking equally bemused.
"Okay..." the old witch began, looking back up at me. "It looks like you're right, Florian. You do seem to have, for the first time in history, translated arcane runes into intelligible text."
"*Legible* text," I grumbled. "I don't know if I'd call this intelligible."
"Um, yes, I must admit I'm somewhat surprised to learn that the true, original name of the spell we've been calling *Fly,* is actually *Dislike Floor."*
"And *Fireball* is actually *Air Burning."*
"Not to mention *Polymorph,* which, according to this..." she paused, to turn a page and refer back to my translation key. "...is actually called *Make Mans Different."*
"I mean, what *is this?"* I exclaimed, thoroughly annoyed. "Unlocking the direct translation of arcane runes was supposed to reveal the very blueprints of the universe!"
"Maybe it does, dear," the witch said, patting my hand, encouragingly. "I've always suspected that the universe was fundamentally a sillier place than we give it credit for, what with platypuses, nipples on men, and so forth."
"I wish I'd never discovered this stupid secret key!" I snarled, crossing my arms.
"Well, if you want to forget you did, I guess I could cast *Modify Memory* on you," Jurana offered, hesitantly.
"It's actually called *The Thing Don't-Knower,"* I corrected, grumpily.
| 2022-05-04T19:10:40 | 2022-05-04T17:44:00 | 2,062 | 747 |
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