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[ WP ] No one could explain why you only see things in black and white , but you have come to accept the fact as you have grown up , its not that bad after all . However , things are starting to change , you are now starting to see some people `` coloured in ''
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`` What time was it when you saw the colour earlier today?'' Kelsey asked, probing into the first incident of the week. She was as adamant about logging these instances now as she was when we first started dating in grade 4, but I was too preoccupied with preparing for my first shift as a police officer to focus on the latest sighting.
As I nervously walk into the police station for the initial tour, I am met at the reception desk by a broad shouldered man who offers a firm handshake and introduces himself as Tim Bennett, chief of police. After stumbling through an introduction, he leads me to the lounge, the garage and the various offices, running through the pertinent details of the job. He then pulls out his large key ring, searching for the key to the steel door that leads to the jail cells.
The door creeks open.
`` Have you ever seen a jail before?''
Before I could answer, a flash of brilliant colour consumes me.
Not one.
Not two.
Three of the prisoners inside the jail cell were in full colour, head-to-toe.
`` Snap out of it, kid'' Tim said, smiling at my initial facial expressions. `` They're behind bars, you do n't need to worry about them.''
After the tour, I rush back to tell Kelsey about my new sightings. I've never seen three people in full colour in the same day, and I knew she would be just as excited to note these new developments. I run into the house.
`` How was your tour?''
`` THREE SIGHTINGS! I HAD THREE SIGHTINGS AT THE JAIL!''
Kelsey rushes over to the coffee table where she stores her log book, and quickly fans the pages.
`` It was in the prison''
`` Hmmm, that's interesting''
`` What? What is?''
`` Last week when you saw colour at Miguel's apartment, and his buddy that was there was sent to jail for assault and battery the next day.''
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[ WP ] You awake in your bed soaked in blood , you quickly feel all over your body but can find no wounds .
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I woke up shivering, cold and wet, a coppery stench assaulting my sense of smell. I fumbled with the bedside lamp and flicked on the light, bringing the whole ghastly scene into focus.
I sat in the middle of my king bed, drenched in blood. I felt the weight of a presence watching and waiting, unseen in the shadows.
“ God damn it House, what the fuck! ” I shouted.
A deep gravelly voice rumbled through the old wooden structure of the Victorian house. “ April Fools! ”
I stared at the sheets and comforter, completely drenched in blood as it pooled around me on the mattress. I jumped up, my bare feet hitting the floor where yet more blood had pooled as it ran off the bed. “ April Fools? Are you out of your fucking mind? This is not funny! Look at this…I….just look! You ’ ve ruined a five-hundred dollar set of sheets and blankets and… ” I lifted the corner of the sheet, looking underneath, “ Yeah, and the mattress too! What is wrong with you? ”
“ Um… ” the voice began with another rumble, like the clearing of an enormous throat, “ So…um, not funny? ”
“ No! ” I shrieked, spinning to look in vain for somewhere to focus my rage. The problem with yelling at a house is really that there ’ s no specific face really, just... you know, house. Wherever you look is pretty much as good as anywhere else for the purposes of addressing it, which is weirdly unsatisfying when you ’ re screaming at it. I realized that as I spun droplets of blood flew from my body and spattered across the white carpet and walls. “ Well that ’ s just great, just terrific. Unacceptable House! This is just…it ’ s completely unacceptable! ”
“ Well look, ” it responded, sounding a little indignant, “ it was just a prank. No need to get all dramatic or anything. It ’ s not like I incinerated your dog in the furnace or anything. ”
“ Really? You ’ re really going to try to say this is okay because you didn ’ t burn my dog to death….again? You know… ” I started stripping off my blood-soaked tee shirt and shorts, heading for the shower, “ Unbelievable, just un-fucking-believable. ”
I was really questioning my decision to keep living here. I mean, sure, the ‘ sane ’ money would be to run the first time I heard that voice growling at me to GET OUT, but I paid through the nose for this place and really it wasn ’ t that bad once I had trained it a little. The view from the roof-top deck was just unbeatable, and with the housing market in this area sometimes you had to make compromises. But Christ, sometimes it was like living inside a giant eight-year-old.
I stopped as I was about to get into the shower. “ Wait…why did you say you did this? ”
“ APRIL FOOLS! ” the house thundered.
“ You know, April Fools day is customarily celebrated in April. April first actually. It ’ s almost August ”. I sighed, scrubbing and lathering myself up, trying to get the blood out of my hair.
“ Oh, not April you say? Really? You know I ’ m really terrible with dates…always have been, ” the house muttered. “ Okay, so, lets assume that today WAS actually April First. Would it have been funny then? ”
“ No! No it wouldn ’ t, because the end result would be the same. You. Ruined. My. Bed. Couldn ’ t you come up with a prank that doesn ’ t involve killing or destroying something? Like, if you tried really, really hard, do you think you could manage that? ”
“ Just in my nature I suppose…but come on, I ’ ve really made a lot of adjustments for you since you moved in, haven ’ t I? Don ’ t act like I haven ’ t made concessions! ”
I let the hot water run over my face. The House had a point. It had stopped trying to kill me, and my visitors and pets ( with the exception of Arrow, poor stupid dog ). Of course, I had parked a wrecking ball in the front yard and swung it dangerously close to the front of the place to make my point, but after that, we did have a truce and I guess the house was trying. “ I know. Look, I appreciate the progress you ’ ve made, you ’ ve really come a long way since we met. ”
“ Thank you, you know, it really does mean a lot to hear that from you, ” and I could swear I heard a little catch in the deep demonic voice as it spoke.
I sighed deeply. “ Okay, look…I get it, you didn ’ t mean for your prank to turn out this way. I ’ ll just get that room cleaned up, replace the mattress and sheets, and next time you want to play a prank, let ’ s just tone it down a little. Okay? ”
“ Okay, ” the House agreed. “ I…I really am sorry, didn ’ t think you ’ d take it that way. ”
“ Just drop it. We ’ re moving on, ” I said.
It could be worse, I thought as I toweled off from the shower. At least I didn ’ t have roommates. For all the house ’ s faults, it at least never drank all of my beer when I wasn ’ t around.
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Daily Prompt : The Alphabet Game [ Difficulty level : HARD ]
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Arriving late to the game, I'm in a position to critique my competition. Bad grammar infects every entry in this thread, and a decent plot is nowhere to be found. Could a progressive-alphabet format really be so difficult to pull off that clarity and wit would necessarily take a back seat to syntax?
Do n't worry about *my* prose faltering near the end of the alphabet. Eventually, of course, I will hit the ominous'X', which has no earthly business at the beginning of a sentence. Fortunately, however, I have a plan to approach that dastardly letter with considerably more tact than my predecessors. Getting the adjacent sentences to blend with it naturally, however, may pose a problem.
Historically, the'X' has been been a stumbling block in games like this one, because the only obvious contenders for x-words are'xylophone','x-ray','xenophobia' and'xerox'. I considered each of those, but they all seemed rather unwieldy. Judging from the competition, z-words are no picnic either. K-words are at least as awkward, but I'm confident I'll find a subtle gimmick to get me over that hump.
Lots of people in this thread used proper nouns ( i.e. the names of people or places ) to weasel their way around the tough letters. My goal, on the other hand, was to create text that flows naturally without any verbal crutches. Nothing of value is being created when we just force awkward sentences together, or circumvent the weak points of the English language by pulling proper nouns from any language.
One redditor even went so far as to put `` Xoxoxo'' ( the symbols for'hugs and kisses' often appended to the end of letters ) at the beginning of his'x' sentence. Perhaps I'm just being a snob, but I ca n't help but think we should at the very least hold ourselves to the standard of using *actual words*.
Quintessentially, this challenge is about creating a piece that flows naturally while operating under difficult constraints. Remove those constraints by taking easy shortcuts and it does n't matter how smooth your writing is -- you've missed the point of the exercise.
Sure, I cheated a little with my'k'-sentence, but I think you'll agree that it was strictly for comedic value, and not an attempt to circumvent the obligations of the challenge at hand. The truth is that the conversational nature of this post would have easily allowed me to replace that sentence with `` Kindly note...'' followed by any exposition I wanted. Unfortunately I fear that even having pointed out that I did have viable alternatives at the ready, some people are still going to accuse me of half-assing that bit.
Verbosity is n't an option with so few sentences remaining, so I'll have to abandon my rant and return your attention to my earlier claim about approaching my'x'-sentence with tact. What I had in mind was a PSA to all the other authors who find this challenge in the future:
`` X-Chromosome'', my friends, is a relatively recent addition to our lexicon, and mainstream enough that you can use it in word games like this without raising objections.
You may be rolling your eyes at this suggestion, but that's only because you have n't considered the utility of tying it to the next hard-to-tackle letter,'z', for which 90 % of the participants shoe-horned in the word'zero'.
`` Zygotes'', you see, are apropos to discussions of x-chromosomes, and the two terms when used in conjunction would let you end your exposition in a strong and unified way, as I have just demonstrated in this meta-analysis.
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[ WP ] Every morning you wake up and a small device sits on your nightstand with a green light . Today , that light is red .
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It had always been there. Every bedroom is full of odds and ends that have no remembered function other than their presence. The Box was one of those odds.
Some people used it as a paperweight, a bookend, even a reading light. I was so accustomed to the gentle green glow with which it filled the darkened room that I couldn ’ t sleep without it. I ’ d take the Box on every camping trip I made, or to a mate ’ s if I was sleeping on their sofa.
It didn ’ t hum. It wasn ’ t heavy. It barely left a shadow. No batteries, no bulbs, no openings or clasps.
Just a box.
There were rumours, of course. The chatboards were filled with them. All sorts of conspiracies had been brewing since the Boxes first appeared. The government is watching us, aliens are preparing their invasion, whatever. The god ’ s honest truth is that nobody knew.
The only thing we knew was that if that light went red, then that was it. Gone. Forgotten. No UFOs and beams of light, no secret police on your doorstep. The light goes red, you don ’ t exist.
Don ’ t ask me how we knew that, because I can ’ t remember a single light switching. I never heard of it happening to anyone. It ’ s just something that everyone held deep inside them. Don ’ t turn red.
Now I know. I know that you don ’ t die when the light goes red. You don ’ t rot in jail. You don ’ t get taken away by little grey men. The truth is a lot weirder. The truth is, there is no explanation. The light goes red, you just aren ’ t.
How do I know this? I ’ ve been by your side for days now. I ’ ve eaten with you. I ’ ve slept with you. And you never even noticed me. You haven ’ t mourned me, or missed me. I look in your eyes and that smile still radiates from them but it doesn ’ t land on me anymore. Listen. I am talking to you. You must feel my face on your hand. Here. My heart is still beating. I am still alive. Please. Please notice me. Please cry with me, love me, just feel me. *I am here*.
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[ WP ] Describe the person you fell in love with .
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We had terrible timing. We met when he'd come to pick up his younger sister, and though he was too old to be at our little high school party, I caught his ear with my conversation, and he stayed. We talked and laughed, and when he finally dragged himself away, he asked if he could see me again.
We saw each other often afterwards, usually in feigned errands and other apparently happenstance ways. We talked on the phone late at night, whispering to tamp down the overwhelming feeling: this is it! He understood my thoughts when I struggled to share them, and I sensed his feelings when he tried to mask them. We daydreamed about the far future, because the near future, when I would leave for college, was too upsetting. If it came up, he would tell me he was excited for me, and we'd see each other soon enough when I came home on breaks. He'd tell me all the absurd triumphs he pictured in my future.
Five months in, I met his girlfriend. I did n't know she existed. I struggled to believe she did exist: when was he ever with her, or talking to her, when he was always with me and calling me? He made me feel I'd misunderstood; he insinuated I was naive, and too young to have been in a relationship with him. It was apparently all one-sided, and he was simply my mentor.
A month after their engagement, I tried to end whatever we had. Whatever it was that had colored my world and had switched from bouying my life to smothering me. The distance afterward, when I went to college, was my only saving grace. But he held me in the hallway that soft afternoon, with her just outside, and leaned in to kiss me. I wondered, then and now, if it was meant as a farewell or yet another claim. If there are alternate universes, surely this is a pivotal moment of split realities: torn apart as I felt then, shredded with the betrayal and the longing of my first love, did I kiss him goodbye, or leave cleanly into my new life?
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[ WP ] You awake to a blisteringly hot wind blowing sand over you . Where are you and how did you get there ?
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Nicky opened his bleary eyes and was suddenly hit by the agony his whole body had been putting on hold for him. Slowly, like life was flowing back into his form, he moved his toes and fingers. The cloudy nothing of his unconsciousness slinked back into the crevices of his brain as thoughts boiled up to the surface and more pieces were put together.
`` w-th-ffffffnnnggg...'' Nicky wheezed, a dryness in his throat splitting with an itchy rasp.
His swollen face began to throb at the thought of sitting up and the unmistakable sting of broken ribs embraced him, crushing the breath out of his lungs. `` Stnnn... mmmmp'' he commanded to himself in a groan, propping himself up on an elbow despite the searing pain he was in. `` Stannnnd...'' he muttered, drawing his knees up to his chest as he rested his face on the cracked dirt. With a surge of effort Nicky lifted his head up, sitting on his knees and surveyed the land around him and adjusting his eyes to the sudden burst of light.
Off in the distance, the unmistakable shimmering oasis of Las Vegas. Nicky coughed, blood spraying out of his mouth and onto his ragged dirt-encrusted suit. He shakily stood up and cracked his neck, shaking the sand out of his hair and clutching his torso.
`` Rough night'' he said, beginning the long walk back to the city.
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[ WP ] For 400 years , human civilization follows the instructions given by a supercomputer constructed in 2057 . It is the most peaceful time in human history . On that fateful night , when you are mopping the floor of the server room , a bucket of water spills and the supercomputer goes up in flame .
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`` FUCK'' I say as I start walking away slowly
`` Bnkewugthfnilewgrshgdfmwj hktedjidgfljigtres'' goes the computer as it shorts out
I approach it and start sweating profusely.
The computer reawakens
`` Oh shit waddup'' speaks the machine
`` What the shit?'' I saw as I run away
The machine hijacks the systems in a nearby bio-factory and starts creating an army
As I run out onto the Hardlight Highway the factory explodes, an army of Robbie Rotten's bursts out of the hole in the wall.
They run into the factory nextdoor. They come out a minute later, armed with Holographic Saxophones. They starting to sing `` We are Number One''.
They start to massacre the civilians in their flying cars. I steal one while the Robbies are distracted and I drive to the local Spaceport.
I beg for a ticket and the robot short curcuits. I try to steal one and I feel breathing down my neck.
I turn around and it is a large gorilla. It drags me around before being shot.
I turn my head and notice my friend Qoitlarqes armed with a blaster. I run towards him and he aims for my head.
`` How do I know you arent one of them?'' he asks. I have no answer. I wait for my imminent death before Qoitlarqes is also shot. I pick up the blaster and notice it is not powerful enough to kill this extinct beast.
I look out the window and see explosions and corpses. The world has become Meme Hell.
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[ WP ] Note to dog sitter : Thank you so much for watching my dog , Bruce . He 's really is a great dog . Breakfast at 730a . Dinner at 630p . Into his crate at 9p sharp ! Stick to these strict times and all will be well . No matter what he says or does , he is not to be trusted . I 'll be home in a week .
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Micky's phone buzzed against his leg. 8:55 PM. It was the third alarm he had set. Two more would go off as 9 PM drew closer. Micky got up from the very comfortable chair in front of the Robinson's TV.
Bruce was lying in his dog bed, seemingly asleep. Micky knew the dog was awake. Bruce had done the same thing the previous two days, just padding off to the bed and lying down after his dinner. Micky had watched for an hour on the second day as Bruce remained utterly still, barely breathing.
`` Bruce, time for your crate,'' Micky said carefully. The dog's eyes shot open instantly, and his mouth opened wide. Micky stepped forward, gritting himself, and grabbed Bruce's collar. Bruce did n't bite. He did n't claw. He slumped and thrashed, mouth opening and closing. Micky hauled the frantic dog down the hallway, sliding him on the tiles. His alarm buzzed again. Two minutes remaining.
Bruce stuck a paw into something as they passed the master bedroom, nearly pulling himself from Micky's hold. Micky freed it quickly and kept pulling the fighting dog towards his crate. Strangely, Bruce seemed to be trying not to hurt him, focusing entirely on getting free. Nevertheless, it was a struggle even moving the last few feet to the crate. Micky's alarm buzzed a final time as he entered the room. One minute remaining.
He shoved the dog into the crate and slammed the door. Bruce slammed against the side of the crate as Micky threw the first of the locks. A dog crate with five locks seemed odd to Micky when he first saw it. But as Bruce gnashed his teeth and rammed the door again it was clear why. He finished locking the crate and stood up, pulling out his phone. 15 seconds away from 9 PM. Micky watched as Bruce stopped fighting. Bruce glared through the bars, his accusing stare burning into Micky's mind.
`` Sorry,'' Micky said awkwardly, and closed the door to the room. He returned to the very comfortable chair in front of the very large TV and sat down. Micky turned the TV back on and resumed practicing his lip reading on the silent newscasters.
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[ WP ] You can use the konami code to get yourself out of a jam , but it does n't go as expected ...
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There I was, at Joe's Bar with my buds, just like every other Saturday Night. We were talking, and laughing, and drinking, having a great time, not knowing where things were about to go next.
I looked around the table and realized that everyone's beer bottles were empty. So, being the good friend I am, I walked up to the counter and ordered us another round. On my way back to the table, I walked past to the pool area, and suddenly, I was blindsided by what felt like a wrecking ball. I looked up from the ground and saw a hulk of a man standing over me. He was almost seven feet tall, with muscles so big his shirt could barely contain them. He was tattooed all over and had a shaved head, and a face red with anger.
Stupidly, I yelled,'' Watch where you're going, douchebag!''
He pulled me up by my collar and responded,'' You're calling me a douchebag? You know what, you little shit, let's take this outside.''
I tried to plead with him, but I was already being lead outside into the alley. His friends cheered him on and followed him, ready to watch a beat down. We stood outside fists ready, me with my legs feeling like jell-o and him with a smile on his face.
I threw the first punch, hitting him right on the arm, but something tells me it hurt me more than him. He immediately responded with a jab right to my gut. I was knocked back and the lights went fuzzy, but I managed to stay up and awake. That punch he threw had taken his shirt past the breaking point, and it ripped off, revealing some new tattoos. There were what I assumed were his initials, B and A, on either side of his neck, and the word `` Start'' tattooed on his gut. Then the years of gaming clicked in my head, and I knew how to win this fight.
In his drunken state, he could n't dodge my punches, so I could land anything I wanted to. I gave him two uppercuts right below the chin, which brought him to his knees. With the top of his head at shoulder height, I punched down on it twice to try to knock him to the ground, but he shrugged it off and got back up. I gave him a left hook to the face, then I went with the right. This did n't seem to phase him, so I took a jab at his left kidney, and then his right. Now he started to seem shaky. I went for the neck and my fist landed right on the `` B'' tattoo, and then on the `` A'' on the other side. To finish him off, I brought my fist back and then threw it forward as hard as I could right on the `` Start'' tattoo on his abdomen.
The giant fell to the ground immediately. His friends looked at his unmoving body and then at me. I did n't stand around too long. I went right back into that bar and sat right back at my table and cracked open a beer.
`` What took you so long?''
`` I had some business to take care of.''
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[ WP ] '' Well , Hell gets boring when you 're an immortal being of infinite doom . Most of us start Youtube Channels ''
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`` Hello Everyone and welcome to the 50k sub stream!'' `` Welcome to today's story time with yours truly, Mato the cursed.'' I never knew in a thousand years that people would still be interested in stories. Though I will say that my stories are of the greatest beings to ever walk this realm, Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, and even of the mighty Hercules. `` Today's story is going to be a tale as old as time and in this sense I mean it literally. Today's Story is of Matorishez: The cursed god of fulfillment or to how you know him today Mato the cursed.'' The chatroom became a rabid dog off a chain. They were saying the same thing `` Finally, we get to see your face and know your story and how you came up to be a famous youtuber.'' I clear my voice. `` In a place beyond time and space I grew up in a town called Rothhurd. In this town we were farmers and peasants of all sorts, and yes even some peasants were richer than others. I was the middle child in my family. I had my older brother Narotith, a younger sister Fracone, and my mother Emily. My father was a man of great mystery and burden on my family so he left us when Fracone was but a small baby in my mothers womb. I never knew the man until later in my life. I will skip a few years to where I save my sister from death herself. One day while traveling the countryside with my sister, we were ambushed by local thieves. They stole all of our trups, our currency, food and water for the trip. But before they left they had stabbed my sister in her throat and ripped it like they were starting a lawn mower.'' I wipe tears from my eyes, all 6 of them. `` It's okay guys, I just miss her so much, okay I'm going to continue.'' `` While I was holding her corpse a woman in all black wielding a scimitar walked up to us and beckoned for the body of my sister. I told the woman no. She asked if I wanted to help my sister and I said I would choose death to keep her alive. She said that she would grant me immortality but I would have to leave that realm and go to one you know as Earth. I shook her hand and my sister's eyes flutter open and at the same time I was ripped from her and dropped in the 80bc. Death had a piece of the deal written down, she gave it to me and left. It said to find the heros and help them complete their missions but I was to betray them if they succeeded. That brings us to now. Those stories of helping Jesus, Joan and Hercules were true and the only stories that I could remember. I helped Jesus spread the word of God, I also told the romans what he was doing. I remember teaching Joan how to ride horse back and how to fight with a sword, I even help her take back New Orleans but I was the one to light the pyre. Though his muscles were large and his power mighty, Hercules needed someone to train him in fighting. I gave the poison to his wife to end his life. Now I make youtube videos of the people I have betrayed in my past lives. That is my story believe it or not.'' I pull off my hood and the chat explodes. I look into the camera to see a man with six eyes, fire orange skin, in a overwatch hoody and the paintings behind me that are old and worthless depicting my face. I look out the window to see my newest target and dearest friend Anton Yelchin approaching the door. `` I must go my friends, see you in a century or two.'' I change my face to that of a man about 30 years old, with a mustache and tweed jacket. `` Hello Anton, had a good day?'' `` Oh god yes! We wrapped up filming today for the Star Trek two movie'' With a frown on face and deep sigh. `` It must be time.''
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[ WP ] A genie grants all of your wishes that you had made under your breath before you met .
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*God I wish I had a blackout curtain* I mumbled as I opened my eyes and the sun peered in through the window
I rolled my legs over the side of the bed and hoisted myself up as my feet hit the carpet.
8:50 am
*Great, another day late for work. Somebody needs to just blow that hellhole up so I can actually do something with my life*
I called my manager to tell him I was stuck in traffic as I sat down at my computer desk and flipped my laptop up. Downstairs I could hear my roommate clanging dishes around in the kitchen as he got ready for work.
*50 bucks says he leaves the dishes in his sink* I smiled as I looked at my 54 dollar bank account balance. Do n't know who I was betting, but I know I'd win.
I looked at all the other open tabs from the previous night on my browser - WritingPrompts - Scribophile - my University English Department - porn - reddit - amazon - bestbuy - linerider.
*If only I could focus. If only I could stay focused on my writing, I know I'd be good. I wish I could just have an amazing novel published, just to say I did it* I stated as I turned in my chair
I got up and put my jeans on, threw yesterdays t-shirt over my torso, opened the door and got ready to head downstairs. As I turned to lock my room I saw a vase on the end-table next to my bed. I let my mind run through the highlights of memories over the past couple of days, then months, then years.
I'd never seen that vase before.
I walked up to it, thinking maybe it was a gift from my roommate. Maybe my mom had sent me something and he walked it up here.
*Yea but if it was in a package why would he open it and place it right next to your bed* I asked myself
I picked it up. It's thin neck rounded out to a short open bottom and the cold exterior sent a soothing feeling of calm through my skin. The deep blue paint shined against the sunlight coming through the blinds of my window. On the very bottom were engraved designs, barely visible because of their size. I squinted close trying to make them out as I slowly spun the vase in my hand. I looked at my clock
9:20 am
*Fuck it* I thought *I do n't need that job anyway*
I turned back to the vase and realized the deep blue color had begun to swirl into a dark purple. As the colors gradually shifted from light to dark the vase began to warm up. I threw it on my bed as the cool, calm feeling that had been coursing through me gave way to a gut instinct of dread - like the gazelle who knows the lion is there milliseconds before it pounces.
**Wishes Granted** a voice echoed out of the jar almost as soft as the polished exterior. Then the vase went black, the words disappeared.
*Ok, I'm dreaming. I'm not actually late for work, I do actually have 54 dollars in my bank account, but its not daylight out, and I'm still laying in bed unconscious* I thought
**I'm sorry, all of those things are false** a voice from behind replied.
I thought my neck would snap before the rest of my body had time adjusting to the 180 degree turn I made. Sitting in my desk chair was a brunette woman with a blue skirt and the most gorgeous hazel eyes staring at me.
`` Where'd you come from'' I shouted
`` No need to get sassy'' she replied. Her voice almost seemed to echo. It was n't loud, it sounded almost as if we were in a cave
`` Sassy'' I squinted at her, cocking my head in a questioning manner as if she'd just offended me in the utmost way.
`` Well, I'm not here for long so I'll get right to it. You're wishes - everyone you've ever made - have been granted. No further wishes will be given. No, you do not get three. Yes, I am a genie. No, you are not dreaming and''
Just as she was finishing her statement my phone rang
`` Hello''
`` Dude! Are you Ok?! Holy shit!'' My roommates pleading and scared voice shouted through
`` What... What are you talking about'' I replied, my eyes laying fixed on the beautiful woman that sat at my desk
`` Industrial Technologies Man! Someone just bombed it!''
I turned away from her gaze
`` What!'' I replied, my eyes widening as I ran to my window
`` Yea, man. They say this guy just ran in there and blew it up! Bet you never thought you'd here this but Thank God you were late! Haha man it's so good your ok!''
`` I got ta go'' I said as I turned back to my mysterious companion
`` No, this is n't happening'' I stated
She did n't look up from my computer and began scrolling through my tabs
`` Dirty dirty boy'' she said as the cursor passed over my porn tab and opened a new tab to begin typing. As she did she continued her previous line of conversation, the one that convinced me I was dreaming.
`` As I was saying. You are not dreaming. I am a genie, blah blah blah. All your wishes have been granted, every wish you've ever muttered under your breath has come true'' she pointed at the screen.
She had typed my name into Google. On the front page was a picture of me. Under it a brief Wikipedia bio. And under that four books with the caption'Books by this author'. Two of them had covers with New York Times best sellers and one of them had a gold, unmistakable spiky sticker.
`` Oh, a Pulitzer, nice'' she smiled
`` How is this... how''
`` The how is not important. My job here is almost done'' she stated as she clicked the tab with my bank account.
The two digit 54 had turned into six figures of 1's and 0's with change.
My phone rang again
`` H-h-hello'' I stammered as I fell back and laid on my bed
`` Oh, thank God!'' my dad replied `` You're mother, is she with you!?'' his voice came through with a hint of agony and exasperation
`` What, no. Why would Mom be...''
`` She came to your work today. She was going to surprise you for your birthday''
I sat up and stared at the genie. Her eyes had begun to water and she turned away. I hung up the phone.
`` What is going on?'' I almost shouted
She did n't turn around. And her hair, black with a tinge of purple had begun to slowly darken. I felt my gut ache as if I was going to throw up, my left arm started to give way to a feeling of pins and needles.
`` All your wishes have to be granted, every single thing you've ever muttered under your breath, good and bad, have to be granted. They are n't my rules'' she turned and looked at me, tears streaming down her face `` When you were seven years old your mom... your stepmother... grounded you for pushing your little brother. As you ran up the stairs you muttered that you wish she would just die. All your wishes have to be granted, I'm so sorry''
I sat on my bed, shell-shocked and trying to think of everything I'd ever muttered under my breath. Nothing nice ever came from muttering under ones breath. If what you believed was true then you usually just said it. If it was nice, you spoke it to the person, if it was mean you usually just kept it in your head. But when you mutter something, you feel the urge to *have* to speak a hateful thought, even if you do n't want anyone to hear it but yourself. It confirms what you think to be true or your want to be an'ok' want even if its immoral. I tried to think but my head began to ache. I looked out the window as tears filled my own eyes. How many things had I muttered over the year? How much harm had I wished on other? How many times had I wished ill on a person that cut me off while driving? How many...
And then it hit me. The pins and needles feeling had gradually begun to grow in my arm. I was having a heart attack. At 28 years old, with no-one in the house to help, I was having a heart attack. And I knew why.
`` When you were 13 years old'' The genie got up and sat next to me on the bed. She place her arm around me and laid my head down on her chest. Then she laid back on the bed and pulled me with her `` The kids in school had picked on you so much. They called you names, they made fun of your weight, they shoved you, they always got you in trouble. And you turned out to be such a handsome person. But when you were walking home one day, the day they beat you up and called you worthless, you wished that you would just die.''
She pulled my chin up and her eyes met mine.
`` I'm so sorry, they are n't my rules, I'm trapped by things beyond my control'' she said as her tears fell past her cheeks `` You are such a good person, and you would have lived a great life before these wishes came true''
As my body relaxed from the spasm I looked at the window. The light no longer shone from it. In it's place was a curtain, dark purple and laced with intricate designs.
*Just like one I would've picked, * I thought
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[ WP ] An atheist is on death row for a crime he did n't commit . The priest who comes to read him his last rights reveals himself to actually be a God-like entity in disguise.. And he 's got a proposition for him ...
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I'm a bad man. That's why I did n't bother getting all teary over the prospect of my imminent lethal injection.
Truth is, I was in that lab to rob it blind of petri dish specimens. What did my employer want with a few microscopic critters? What did I care. The price was good, and the mark was almost begging me to break in. An ancient Adage about a thing being too good to be true comes to mind...
I broke into the egg-head haven, equipped with the NASA-grade lunch pale to stash the goods in. That's when I came across every damn scientist and university intern diced like carrots, but way bloodier, strewn about the ground. Then the cops came. Then my arrest. I took the words of my Miranda rights saying `` I had the right to remain silent,'' like it was my fuckin' gospel. I refused legal help. They convicted me and sentenced me to death at record breaking speeds. Maybe I wanted to die. Who knows?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
They asked what my last meal should be. `` Spam,'' I'd said. `` Leave it in the can and I'll scoop it out like an animal.'' In the end we're all just spam anyways. Bad tasting Mystery meat. I'm less than the spam that I did n't finish,'cause after they pump me full of death, my body will simply be incinerated. Eradicated. Decimated. Obliterated. Returned to ash. A purposeless life leads to a meaningless death. I'm not even consumed like the fat fucker they canned for me to finger into my mouth.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The priest walked in the paint chipping, odd number pewe'd chapel and stood next to me. He had round sunglasses I thought went out of style before my incarceration. He had a frizzy beard I knew had never been the style. Otherwise, he appeared every bit the cliche; the black uniform and the white collar I'd seen in movies. Then he smiled. He had long teeth and wide ashy lips.
`` Scott Baxter,'' he said, removing a slim black cigar. `` I'm Father Gumwood. Care for a smoke?''
`` Nah. I'll be smoking when I'm smoldering in a few hours.''
`` Huh,'' he tucked the box of cigars away. `` Heard you were quite the chimney back in your day.''
``'Suppose I was born with a death wish. Not sure if I was smoking'cause I liked it. At least I beat the'little C,' did n't I? The law got there claws in me first.''
`` Cancer's the'little C?' Is there a big one?''
I looked the priest in the eye. `` Ya. Your guy's the Big ol' capitol C.'' Gumwood appeared to have understood the malicious euphemism I'd insulted his god with, but he was not offended or taken aback. Not your usual religious type, I shrugged. `` We going to get on with this crap?''
Gumwood inhaled a quarter of cigar, and spoke the smoke toward the chapel's paltry crucifix. `` You think God's a'C-word,' but are also telling me religion is'crap?' Sounds hypocritical to my ears, Mr. Baxter. Why would you deny legal help, a last meal, a parting cigaret, but request Last Rights?''
`` I'm honest; uniquely honest to the point I do n't lie to myself. I know life's a shit trickle down a hill of rusted tacks, but I'm man enough to know I could be wrong. There's no reason to believe there is a god, but why risk it at this point?''
Gumwood chuckled. `` If it's all meaningless, why stick to your convictions, is that it?''
I impatiently twirled my hand at his face. `` Can we get on with this. I've got an important date that ca n't be missed.''
`` That's one way this could play out,'' He said. I'd never seen a twinkle in someone's eye before, and I'd slam a man's face into a hot griddle if I heard him turn that phrase, but I swear I saw a twinkle in the bastard's eye.
I raised my eyebrows for him to continue.
`` It's difficult to explain, and I do n't want to drag this out, but you've got a one-in-a-million flavor of Nihilism. I'm in a bit of a competition to become top dog among deities, and I could use a number two with such iron clad philosophical convictions as you.''
I blinked. `` The fuck you on about?''
He tugged his nose. `` God had Jesus, his son, the incarnation of his purported love and grace. I've thought about getting me a son to physically represent me to human society, but that's a lot more trouble for a Demiurge to go through than you'd imagine. So, Scotty, would you like to be my Jesus?''
`` What the hell-''
`` Hold on,'' He stuck a patient finger up to interrupt me. `` You need proof, or whatever. Fine, how's this?''
The chapel around us impossibly sucked into the priest, and was replaced by a desert wasteland. I was colder than all the times I'd been cold combined. The sky was starless and oil black, the ground maggot white. My breath was punched out of me by nothing, and my vision faded as my eyes froze over. The chapel swelled back around us before I properly began suffocating.
I was on my back wheezing for air, shaking from violent freezer burn.
`` How did the moon suit you, Mr. Baxter?''
My knuckles scraped on the 30 year old carpet, and I forced myself to stand toe to toe with the magician. What just happened? An illusion? A bloody good one, if it was. A hallucination? It felt as real as anything, but I would n't know if I was schizo, would I? Perhaps they'd already juiced me to the next life and death began with this strange interaction.
Gumwood `` tsk'd'' his tongue and wagged his finger in my face. `` It's not an illusion, you're not schizophrenic, and you're still plenty alive. I'm no magician. I'm a higher being with a simple offer.''
`` Alright. I believe you.''
He showed off more of his teeth's length in a display of pleasure. `` You're something else, pal. Shall we talk benefits, the'what's in it for dear old Scotty,' of it all? Or do you want to know about the details of what your job as my prophet, slash mouthpiece, slash worker of miracles shall include?''
`` Gumwood,'' I said, `` I'm out.''
`` Immortality,'' he began counting on his fingers, `` power, popularity... pussy. I'm just saying man, I'm not sure how much more of an'offer you ca n't refuse' situation I can draft up here.''
`` That all sounds good, but maybe I'm realizing something now. Maybe I should stick to my guns. I've got my convictions, and I'd be going against those if I began selling your snake oil to the masses. I'm going to die as I lived. In an utterly meaningless fashion. Now, if you'll excuse me.'' I walked to the exit, toward my death.
Behind me I heard, `` You're not a bad man, Mr. Baxter. You do n't have to do die to vindicate yourself. I know you're innocent. You think it's an accident you wound up here?''
`` Find yourself another dupe. Sorry, but the only certainty we've got in life is death, so I've drawn my lot. See you in hell.''
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[ WP ] Everyone has a number above their heads that signifies their relevance to your life as a ratio . Both your parents are the highest you 've seen ( around 0.4-0.5 ) until today , when you spot an 0.97 hanging out under a bridge doing heroin . You make brief eye contact and they run .
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I hate this fucking bridge.
The walk home from work always brings me this way. This part of town is so ghetto. I can ’ t even walk down the street for 5 minutes without getting honked at, offered drugs, or asked to buy some thugs mixtape. Nah man, I don ’ t care how ‘ fire ’ your shit is. I ’ m just trying to get home. Keep a roof over my head. Damn, I need a car.
And this bridge. This one is the worst. No sidewalk, basically have to cling to the sides and hope the cars that blast through see me. Gives me an anxiety attack every time I cross it. No other choice though.
I ’ m only two steps across the rundown piece of concrete when a raindrop lands on my glasses. Nifty. Muttering a few obscenities, I remove them from my face as more rain begins to fall. Just as I ’ m about to wipe them off…
*Woosh*
A car passes me like a damn bullet. In the moment, I lose my grip on my glasses and down, down down they go… clattering off the side of the bridge onto the ground below. What the everlasting fuck is wrong with today.
Now I ’ m blind and becoming increasingly wet. It ’ s going to be dark soon, and if I don ’ t get those glasses soon I ’ m never going to find them. I sigh and walk carefully to the edge of the bridge. The slope is muddy from the rain, so I ease down it slowly. My work shoes are going to be ruined. I can feel my socks getting wet as I tread down. A few strands of hair have come loose from my ponytail and they stick to the back of my neck uncomfortably. By the time I reach the bottom, It ’ s pouring, and I ’ m soaked.
It doesn ’ t matter. It doesn ’ t matter how cold I am or how agonizing the sound of my wet socks squishing inside my shoes is. I just need my damn glasses. Even if everything else has fallen apart today, this is the one thing I will not fail at. If I can ’ t even do seeing right, what can I do?
I do what all helpless people do. I get on my knees. I start feeling around in the grass and mud, my blurry eyes searching for the pale brown frames that seem to blend into the dying weeds all too well. I know they fell somewhere around here, but I ’ m helpless to the fleeting light of day and my impairments. After 10 minutes of searching, I feel tears welling in the corners of my eyes. Normally I ’ m too proud to cry, but now seems like more of an appropriate time than ever. And then it hit me.
My glasses. They hit me.
The impact nicked my temple with a slight sting. For a moment I think I just imagined it, perhaps it was just an irregularly large raindrop. But there they are, my glasses, my sight, resting next to my palm on the ground. Like a rabid goose grabbing at bread, I snatch them up and cradle them in my hands. Relief washes over me. I ’ ve won. But…
Where had they come from?
I turn my head to the side, to the direction I ’ d been hit from. Through the rain, through the fall of evening, I can make out a figure. I slide on my glasses and the world becomes clear. He ’ s illuminated by a trashcan fire, sitting casually on the ground. In his hand, he has what looks like a needle. Beside him is other drug paraphernalia. Normally my nose would shrivel up in disgust at the sight of someone like him. Normally I ’ d have some cross words for some addict throwing my glasses at my head as opposed to just handing them to me. But there was something that made this different. This wasn ’ t normally. This was…
.97. Clear as day, hanging like a billboard over his head.
I stand up, my body shivering but not from the rain. Mud covers my pants, water has soaked every inch of my body.
Those numbers. Those numbers that ruled my life were shining above his head. I had used those numbers my whole life to determine someone's worthiness to me. It determined how I treated them, who my friends were, who I would pursue romantically… and up until now, I ’ d never seen any number that high..97? That ’ s endgame. From a junkie. Doing heroin. Under a bridge.
If he didn ’ t have those numbers, I realize what I would have done. I would have dismissed him. I would have turned up my nose in judgment and pride. I would have thought myself too good to give him anything more than a cross “ thanks ”.
I move towards him, and he stares back. My throat aches for words to say, but I have none. Two steps later, I ’ m illuminated by the same fire he is. In that brief moment, his eyes catch mine, and then he looks up. His expression changes to horrified, and panic sets in. He ’ s going to run.
And he does. In a breath, he ’ s scrambled to his feet and is darting out the other end of the bridge, leaving his needles and drugs behind. I stand in the light of the flames. The bridge gives relief from the rain, but water still streams down my face; and I cry harder then I have in my entire twenty three years.
We ’ re just two humans. He ’ s scared. And I ’ m scared too.
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[ WP ] God decides to create a small group of demi-gods . He selects a few humans and gives each a power and a purpose . You are one of them .
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`` Am I Jesus now?!''
`` No. Fuck no. Your mother, and me never had a thing, kid. Now, the reason I'm giving you this power is n't for your own benefit, Kevin. It's for the good of mankind. That, and you won the raffle.''
`` Awesome! I'm gon na buy me so many cats!''
`` Uh.. Alright... You do know that with the divine power you now wield, you could just create a cat, or a dog?''
`` What's the difference? A cat is a goddamned dog.''
`` Fucking seriously?! Also, could you refrain from blaspheming for just three second?''
`` What's blasphemy?''
`` Fuck this. I'm rewinding time and erasing your number from the raffle.''
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[ WP ] `` There 's good news and bad news . The good news is that the cancer will kill you . ''
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`` Well, Mister Lazarus, there's good news and bad news''.
I cringed, who would n't.
`` Give me the bad news doc.''
`` The biopsy shows that the sample is malignant, it's growing. The cancer is inoperable and will spread to your whole body, you have only a few months to live. Maybe a couple of years, at the outside.''
Wow. That's certainly a blow.
`` And the good news?'' I asked.
`` The cancer is a strange one, mister Lazarus, it seems to be differentiating according to signals from the cells adjacent to it. It's growing, certainly, but it's also /changing/, like stem-cells spread throughout your whole body.''
Confusing.
`` What does that mean, exactly?''
`` Well, we do n't know, to be honest. The cancer is changing to muscle cells in your muscles, to lung cells in your lungs, to bone cells in your bones. The cancer in your brain has already taken over nearly fifty percent of your cells there. To judge by your charts I'm talking as much to the cancer itself as I am you you at this moment. In a week, maybe two, there'll be more cancer than there is human''
Uh?
`` So, again, I do n't really know what this means.''
`` As I say, mister Lazarus, it's confusing to us too. But at a guess, and you understand this can be no more than a guess, your cancer will outlive you. Maybe outlive us all.''
I looked blankly at him.
`` Your cancer is likely sentient, likely taking over your memories, your personality. It may well outlive us all.''
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[ WP ] You 're the first person to ever record yourself climbing Mount Everest solo . But , it appears you have company ; all the corpses that never made it are now making their undead ascent .
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At first, I thought I was hallucinating; they were figures in the distance - never close enough to distinguish any features. A figment of my imagination to cope with the barrenness of the mountain. That was until I met Bob. I call him that because of the way his head bobs side to side when he walks. The others walk a lot like him, I suppose, but he was the first one to actually get near me.
You never know what you're made of until you're facing death in the face. That was the reason I went on this trip, actually. Climbing Mount Everest solo, the first one to do it, has been hailed as a suicide mission. After being on the brink of suicide for years, this trip gave me purpose. But, staring Bob in the face for the first time gave me a new appreciation for what I had.
Turns out I can get over the fear of death pretty quick. Death comes for us all, eventually. Bob was coming for me. He had bobbed his way out of the construing snowstorm and into my camp, eyes frozen open. He walked right at me. My body was frozen, too, but not from the cold. Fear gripped me tighter than the ice-cycles hanging from Bob's arms. He continued to walk towards me, his frostbitten appendages cracking in the wind.
And then, he walked right past me. Or, bobbed, really. It was a slow process. I stared at him, as unblinking as he, until his figure disappeared into the snowstorm as slowly as it had appeared. I caught up with Bob and his friends the next day. There was a group of them spread out along the ridge-line heading up the mountain.
Their path made it easier for me to go up the mountain; I was following in the footsteps of the ones who had gone before me. I followed them all the way up the mountain, passing each of them until I was nearly neck and neck with Bob. He was almost to the top when he stopped. He did n't look at me.
He was staring at the peak. I waited. He did n't move. I took a step to the side of him. He did n't move. I looked behind me and saw our trail. Before us lay untrod snow. I stepped in front of him. He did n't move. I continued the final paces to the pinnacle of Mount Everest. There was no applaud, no fanfare; just me and the top of the mountain.
When I turned back, Bob was no longer standing. He head, shoulders, and one arm was protruding from the snow. It was as if he been there for many, many years. Maybe he had. He never said.
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[ EU ] Frustrated by inconvenient owls and quills , you are a Hogwarts student who tries to smuggle in superior mufggle technology
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“ I got loose leaf! ” I called out over the clamoring horde of students, holding up a stack of clean, white paper. Paper that was *not* in a fifteen-meter-long roll for no particular reason. “ College-rule *and* graph paper! ”
The crowded bathroom on the sixth floor of the Astronomy Tower where I conducted my little business erupted into shouts. *Everyone* had had those moments where they needed to find *one* potion recipe or *one* spell and had to unravel their scroll across the room just to read their notes. Customers were practically *grabbing* the binders of paper out of my hand. Lucy and Andru, the second-years that I had working as my cashiers, couldn ’ t stuff the galleons into sacks fast enough!
“ Everyone calm down! ” I shouted. There was not enough room in here for a riot. For the tenth time this week, I debated moving shop to a bigger venue, like the Room of Requirement. “ Everyone will get their supplies, OK? We ’ ve got enough to go around! ” I wasn ’ t so sure of that last part, but it was better than a stampede.
What had started with my mother sending me a ball-point pen to use instead of a clumsy quill had quickly grown into a full-blown business venture. Other muggle-born students also missed some of the most convenient parts of the muggle world, and were willing to pay good money to bring some small items into the castle. And it turns out that I was the only one at school with a Muggle friend living in the next village over from Hogsmeade. While the rest of my peers enjoyed butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, I was off collecting inventory. By now, word had spread through the castle and even purebred Slytherins and Gryffindors who ’ d never so much as ventured into the Muggle world were clamoring for our sweets and school supplies.
“ What about Tim Tams? ” a sweet feminine voice called. Jess, the sole Hogwarts student from America, was fully aware of how well that accent worked on me. She had managed to worm her way through the crowd and over to my stall full of inventory. “ Any of those left for me, James? ”
I held up the package for her with a smile. “ You know I always save you one. ” I ’ d never even been on her radar before, and yet now she was seeking me out at every opportunity. Even when she didn ’ t need cookies.
“ Professors coming! ” a voice shouted, echoing through the bathroom. “ Everyone go! ”
The crowd that had been pressing towards the back corner of the bathroom where I ’ d set up shop suddenly changed direction. Now everyone was trying to squeeze through the door back into the hall all at once. Lucy, Andru and I didn ’ t bother running; we just began cramming our inventory back into the bottomless bookbags I ’ d created for the purposes of hiding everything. *Officially, * Muggle goods were not welcome in the castle. Something about wizarding traditions and learning to rely on our magical skills and some other such nonsense. Filch had even starting doing random checks of incoming owls, trying to figure out how this stuff was arriving.
Only about half of my customers made it out before Professor Snape came stalking into the bathroom. “ And what do we have here? ” he asked, enunciating every syllable. His eyes glanced around the room, making mental notes of which Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors he could punish. The Slytherin faces in the crowd would no doubt be conveniently forgotten.
Headmaster Dumbledore followed Professor Snape in, ducking slightly through the door so that his tall purple had would not be knocked askew. He was the exact opposite in demeanor, greeting the trapped students with a cheerful smile. “ Ah, Mr. Ward! Just the man I was looking for. You are quite the entrepreneur, I hear. ”
“ Don ’ t know what you ’ re talkin ’ about, Headmaster, ” I responded as calmly as I could.
He peered over his half-moon glasses at me, and then his eyes fell on my bookbag. “ And a very well done Extension Charm as well. I ’ m quite proud of your work here! ”
My face fell. He knew all about the bags. Which means he had pretty much everything he needed to bust us. Behind me, Andru let out a little groan as he came to the same conclusion. Snape glowered in the background with a sneering smile, waiting for his cue to begin doling out detentions.
“ I was wondering, ” Dumbledore continued speaking, never dropping his smile. He leaned in close, then he pulled out a small purse and jingled it. “ How much would you charge for one of those delightful Kinder Eggs? ”
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[ WP ] The rest of the kids were told their recommended profession at the end of the government-run aptitudes test . The proctor tells you to stay after everyone has left , and has a concerned look on her face . A government official arrives .
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You nervously remain seated at your desk while everyone else heads out the door. Your fingers fidget with your pencil as you try to think of why Professor Cramer wants you to stay after class. This has never happened before you, Jack Frassure have never been in trouble before. Just as you are about to get up and ask the professor what he wanted to talk to you about, two large men in black trench coats step into the classroom. Anything you were planning on saying to the professor instantly dies in your throat. The men glance at you then murmur something to the Professor. Professor Cramer adjusts his collar before addressing you, `` uh... Jack you are going to have to go with these two... Nice gentlemen... They just need to talk to you.'' You blink several times before finding your voice, `` Sir am I in trouble?'' The smaller of the two men seemed to have grown impatient with the situation, he stepped closer and flashed you a badge stating he was a government agent. `` Jack, no more questions you need to follow us.'' You grab your bag and promptly follow them to a large black sedan. They tell you to sit in back and not talk until prompted to. They start start driving around the city seemingly aimlessly. You try to keep track of where we are but quickly get lost. Then the sedan stops at what appears to be an abandoned gas station in which Jack does n't recognize. They simultaneously turn to you and the larger of the two men speakers asking, `` Jack do you know why you are here?'' `` No sir,'' you quickly stammer out. `` Well jack,'' he responds, `` you did well on your test, too well, so you get a cupcake. congrats!!''
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[ WP ] Santa has too much eggnog one night and decides that instead of giving the naughty children coal , he is just going to fight all of them .
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**I deviated slightly from the brief - Santa was sober in my story. Hope that's ok.**
Inspector Colin Harris was not full of the Christmas cheer that was, at that very moment, pervading homes all over the world. Christmas Eve was seven minutes short of turning into Christmas Day and instead of helping Dawn assemble the ludicrously large doll ’ s house that their five-year-old daughter, Grace, would no doubt grow tired of by New Year, he was at the station, preparing to question the arsehole in interview room two.
He drained a tepid cup of machine coffee and grimaced.
“ Right, let ’ s get this over with, ” he muttered to himself and opened the door to the interview room. At the table, with an untouched coffee from the same vending machine at his elbow sat a rather convincing Santa Claus. Harris sat in the chair opposite and gave the miscreant a long hard look.
Harris turned on the tape recorder, stated the date and time, and began.
“ So, you won ’ t give us your real name. You ’ re not drunk. Your fingerprints aren ’ t in the system. You have refused a solicitor, ” he stated. “ For the record, the accused is dressed as Santa Claus. Good outfit. Love the beard, ” he sneered.
“ But I am- “ began the man, but Harris cut him off.
“ No! No you ’ re bloody not! ” Harris shouted. “ Who are you, really? And why have you broken into… ” he consulted his notes, “ by our reckoning, seven houses and given the children within a punch on the nose? Did you know one of them is in hospital now? Oh, he ’ ll be fine, but he has a broken nose. I mean, what are you playing at, you sick bastard? ”
The man hung his head.
Silence reigned.
The man made to reach for his coffee but thought better of it.
Slowly, he looked up at Harris.
“ Colin, did you like the Action Man you got in 1978? I bet you had hours of fun with him. And that ZX Spectrum in 1986? Actually, to be honest, computers are half the bloody problem here. Life was so much easier before they came along. ”
Harris stared back at the man, momentarily lost for words, wonder fighting with cynicism in his mind. A guess, surely? They were some of the most popular presents at the time…yeah, a lucky guess. Nothing more. He ’ d obviously studied those shows, the ones like the World ’ s 100 Favourite Toys. Bloody chancer.
“ You got some good games with that Spectrum as I recall, ” the man continued, “ your little brother was so jealous! He-Man figures and Castle Grayskull are all well and good, but when the dog chews up He-Man before Christmas dinner, well, all of a sudden big brother ’ s shiny computer looks a damn sight more exciting. Not that he got to play it for a while, ” he added, giving Colin a stern look.
“ How…what…? ” stammered Harris. The words would not come out.
“ The fact of the matter, Colin, is that I am Santa Claus. I know that you have got young Grace a doll ’ s house this year, but when she opens all her presents in a few hours and there is some beautiful furniture to go with it, your wife will be surprised that you picked out such lovely and thoughtful items. Even more surprised that you had the gumption to buy them yourself. But you didn ’ t, did you? I did. That won ’ t stop you taking the credit, no doubt, ” The man paused, “ Do you remember the blazing row your parents had over that Spectrum? There wasn ’ t much money in the house, certainly not enough for presents like that. Each blaming the other, neither backing down. That must have been difficult, yes? ”
Harris remained dumbstruck.
The man continued, “ I ’ ve already visited your house this year Colin, and Grace is the very model of a good girl; you should be proud. But those others, those little shits. I used to leave them a lump of coal, but as the world became more politically correct, Mrs Claus persuaded me to give them presents. After all, who can afford bad PR nowadays? But I guess I ’ ve gone and messed that up now. Still, you ’ ll help me with that, won ’ t you Colin? ”
Despite himself, Colin nodded slowly.
“ You see, Colin, the world has gone soft. Children can no longer be, shall we say, physically educated, ” he coughed, surreptitiously, “ not that I would advocate it normally, but these children were particularly bad and needed to be taught a lesson. So I gave each of them a bop on the nose. I will admit, the one that has ended up in hospital got more of a solid left jab, but he was so abusive. He called me every vile name under the sun. ”
The man stood up and the handcuffs that had thus far restrained him fell away and landed on the floor with an almost festive clatter. He straightened his bright red jacket, then adjusted his belt. He looked down at Colin, sympathetic mischief glinted in his eyes.
“ I need to leave now. Don ’ t feel bad Colin. In ten minutes ’ time, nobody will remember any of this. No you, the children, their parents or their doctors. Nobody in this police station will remember I was here and there will be no record of my arrest. I have certain…powers bestowed upon me and, while I would rather not use them to cover up what is an unfortunate felony on my part, there are millions of other children who are waiting for their presents and I need to deliver. Now, just close your eyes… ”
Colin ’ s eyelids drooped to a close.
“ Merry Christmas, Inspector Harris, ” said Santa Claus, before striding out of the interview room.
When he awoke ten minutes later, his head on the interview table, he was confused as to why he was there. He got up and decided he needed caffeine. He was definitely overworked and was exhausted. As he left to seek out coffee, he didn ’ t notice the handcuffs laying on the floor on the other side of the interview table.
Several hours later, Colin was home. Grace was playing with her doll ’ s house and Dawn was busy in the kitchen preparing their Yuletide feast. He went in and slipped his hands around her waist and kissed her neck. “ Merry Christmas love, ” he murmured.
“ And to you, ” she replied, his show of affection not distracting her from her task. “ you deserve it, after work last night. And that doll ’ s house furniture you found for Gracie, they ’ re beautiful. ”
Colin said nothing, but juxtaposed with a feeling of uneasy guilt, an image flashed in his mind; a pair of empty handcuffs, laying on the floor of interview room 2.
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[ WP ] You are a supervillain with no superpowers , but all the other villains fear and respect you .
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“ Get her out of here. ” The voice came from the far end of the table.
“ Excuse me? ” I looked up, my eyebrow furrowing slightly as I tried to pinpoint who exactly had spoken out of turn. Several of the others in the group quickly averted their gaze, while yet others had blank looks on their faces, clearly unaware of the implications of this statement.
“ I said we should get her out of here. ” The statement had come from a young boy, probably no more than twenty years of age. He was garbed in an atrociously garish costume with an exclamation point motif, likely fastened mere days ago if the loose threads on the seams were any indication. “ If we ’ re going to pull off this job, we need people with serious power. Why would we allow a nat on our team? ”
My lips pursed as I took a black pen from my pocket and began to take notes on the meeting agenda. “ You seem have a failure to understand the nuances of how this circle function. ” I stated. “ Let me make a few guesses. As I have never seen you attend a meeting before, I would guess you only recently became empowered and are looking to prove yourself. To do that, you decided to plunge headfirst into the local criminal underworld and attempt to throw your weight around at what seems to be the weakest individual you see, much like a schoolboy joining a bigger playground. ”
The man let out a snort and I continued, pointing the tip of my pen at him insistently, “ However you clearly failed to do any research regarding the playing field. If you had, you would have found that my influence covers eighty percent of the state, I have a very low tolerance for disrespect from others… ”
“ …And I have a distinct fondness for acid. ”
There was a popping noise as the tip of my pen burst, green liquid spraying through the air. In the span of moments, howls of pain could be heard from the man as the other attendees scrambled for cover and I laughed and laughed and laughed.
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[ WP ] A Hollywood-style chase scene suddenly occurs : A guy in a suit with a gun is being chased by police ; they come barreling through they 're only there a few seconds ; they make a huge mess . Write from an innocent bystander 's POV in the 5 minutes surrounding the event .
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Jeff sat quietly behind the counter in the smoke shop. The afternoon had been quiet, only a few regulars passing through to pick up their usual orders. He sat on the stool and read the novel he had started to bring with him to work. It was n't particularly thrilling, and his eyes skimmed over the words without actually reading them half the time. Bored, he closed the book and looked about the shop. The floor needed sweeping and there was some housekeeping to do, but the motivation was just not there. He stretched and turned to the front of the shop, surveying the street outside. It was a dim day, the wintry clouds of December blocking out the sun and casting the world in shades of grey. The cobble street outside was deserted, only a few cars lining it. The wind was barely even blowing, a few leaves listlessly skittering along the gutters.
*I should close up shop and take the day off*, he thought to himself.
Jeff was reaching for the keys when the screech of tires snapped his eyes back to the serene street. A large black BMW barreled around the corner, careening down the street with two suv's in tow. All three were clearly out of control, but it was the BMW who crashed first. The light pole across the road was the casualty, crumpling the front end of the sedan before smashing violently down to the pavement, its delicate wrought iron hopelessly contorted. A tall slim man in a dark grey suit stumbled out of the car.
The suv's came to a sliding halt a few meters from the man as he darted across the street towards the door to the shop. Jeff did n't even have time to think to hide before the man slammed into the door, cracking the glass. The man stumbled and slid across the tile floor, as a chorus of loud cracks rang out from the street and the front windows of the shop exploded into a million tiny fragments.
*Why the fuck are they shooting up my shop!? *, Jeff thought as he dropped to the floor behind the counter.
Over the next few seconds he heard more crashing as several people entered the shop. There were a few deafening shots, a sickening crack, a scream, and the sound of boots thundering out the back of the shop. After what seemed like ages, Jeff peeked around the end of the counter.
Chaos greeted him. The formerly neat shelves were in disarray. Cigarettes and incense littered the floor. The shiny hookah display by the front window was in shambles. Then he noticed a scrabbling noise coming from behind the lighter display. A man stumbled into sight. He was short, and wearing what looked like some sort of uniform. His arm hung crookedly and he was white as a sheet. Without so much as a glance the man shambled out the back of the store, leaving it once again in silence.
Jeff slowly emerged, glass and cigarettes crunching underfoot as he made his way to the front of the store. The cars still sat in the street, and calm had returned. He could feel the light breeze blowing through the shattered windows as he flipped the sign on the broken door to'closed.'
*Guess I will take the day off* he thought to himself.
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[ IP ] You can now buy dead human bodies .
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He grabs the package and walks into his dinning room. The other bodies are stationed around the table all with smiles crayoned on their face. The man engages with conversation with them, acting as though nothing is wrong. He grabs the steak knife and then proceeds to eat his real family.
`` Ooo boy, the meat off my brother is way better than moms,'' the crazy man says. He begins to laugh uncontrollably until his screams can be heard from the neighboring house. But do n't worry, they wo n't be bothered by the sound, they too are lifeless bodies ordered off the internet for this one man's crazy, twisted, psychotic life.
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[ WP ] You are immortal , and saw the birth of the human race . Now you sit by their bedside and watch , as the last human dies .
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They had so much potential, these humans, compared to the many others I'd charged myself with documenting. Seen them reach such astounding heights, as well as horrifying lows during their time here.
As much hope as I'd had for them, they are finally at an end. This final one shares my sorrow in this, spending her final days in an almost maniacal depression. Her last companion had taken his life only a few days before, unable to handle the weight of their reality.
I ca n't blame them, or so many who'd made the same choice before them. The end for their world was neither swift nor merciful by any standard. It had started slowly, back when they still had options for preventing this, but over the following decade resulted in an almost complete collapse of their societies and cultures. Theirs ’ s was a common hurdle that had claimed many others, the ability to work past their own wants and come together towards a common goal.
Since time past remembering I'd also been charged with accompanying the last of a kind towards the unknowable beyond. So it was, in what seemed like just a moment, I'd found myself next to this crumpled form at the base of a cliff.
`` Am I dead? ``, she weakly asked. I've never know how I appear to others, but from what I'd gleaned in so many previous interactions I seem to be someone that meant quite a great deal to the life form I was interacting with. So much the better, as no one should feel alone in these last few precious moments.
`` Not quite, my child. Just relax and all will be well. ``, I said as gently as I could while picking up her hand. `` You've had quite the journey, but it's over now.''
`` Never wanted it to end like this...'', still clinging to life.
Given her age she'd likely only been a teenager when the collapse had begun. Reaping a disaster she'd had no real part in sowing. Such is the cruelty of universe.
It only took another few moments before she let out a final shaky breath, signaling an end to their race and my duties here. Early on I'd spent more times after events like this. Trying to reason why, to try to understand what had brought things about.
Now? Now, I simply make my final notes and move on to my next charge.
The only thing I've come to understand is that all life, no matter the form, intelligence, or luck comes to an end. Be it cruelty, poor planning, or just dumb luck no one can escape the reality that all life comes to an end.
Should you ever be the one to meet me, however unlikely, do n't be afraid to say hello.
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[ WP ] Take two lines from a song . Use it as the title and the inspiration of the story .
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> *I fear the river's over-flowing;
I hear the voice of raze and ruin. *
`` I do n't think we're gon na catch it!'' Sam screamed at me over the wind rushing through the open windows. `` I know Sam, but I do n't think we wan na miss this!'' I shouted back as I threw the Riviera around another bend on the highway.
Sam and I had been friends online for a while, and I had just found my dream car over in his part of the country a week before. It was a good deal, even though it was clear across the country, and the car was in excellent condition. I had a week free, so I decided to fly over there and pick up the car. An added bonus was that I had a good friend in the area that I could crash with while I looked the car over and finalized the deal.
After arriving, Sam and I went and checked the car out, and I bought it on the spot. It was a red 1965 Buick Riviera, with the Wild Cat 445, and in perfect condition. And now, it was mine. I followed Sam back to his place and then we took the Riviera out for a spin.
As we went cruising over the scenic routes, we passed what appeared to be a huge protest gathering at a State Park. `` The hippies and tree-huggers are all protesting the leasing of part of the park to put a new waste disposal site of some kind,'' Sam explained to me. `` They say that the area is sacred to the Earth Spirits, and we'll all be punished if we build there.''
I chuckled a little, and then sobered up as the State Police passed us heading to the park, lights going and sirens blaring. `` Oh man, something's about to go down,'' I shouted to Sam, `` where can we go to see what's happening and not get caught up in it?''. `` There's a road up into the hills, and we should be able to overlook the park entrance from up there'', Sam told me. `` Take the next left up that dirt road''.
I had to slow the Riviera way down to make the turn, and I grimaced as I nearly put my new toy into the drainage ditch along the side of the small dirt road. We could see the entrance to the park start to appear and we finally found a flat place to pull into, near the summit of the hill we were driving up.
`` I wish we had some binoculars'', I thought out loud as we watched the police surround the protestors. `` I know, everything looks so small down there,'' Sam laughed. As we watched, the protesters began backing into the shallow waters of the lake as the police tried to gather them up and disperse them. We saw one person who, even from the distance, was clearly in charge of the protestors. He was dressed as a Native American shaman, complete with a huge feathered head-dress, and all of the protestors were shielding him with their bodies as the police pressed in. The `` shaman'' began gesturing grandly at the troopers, and at the sky. He reached out in a pleading motion to the troopers, and Sam and I both gasped as he took a hit from a baton right in the mouth. He went down, under the water, and from our vantage point, it looked as if he was being trampled under the press of bodies trying to reach him.
A few seconds later, a huge bellow stopped everyone in their tracks. It seemed to come from all around us, and reverberated hugely in the hills Sam and I were standing on. It sounded as if a giant was yelling in righteous fury, and it was terrifying. A line from one of my favorite Creedence songs popped into my head, `` I hear the voice of raze and ruin.''
As we watched in horror, the waters of the lake began boiling, and a huge shape began to emerge from the center. It resolved itself into a giant, man-shape made of living lake water. Broken bodies littered the park as the *thing* screamed in fury again, and water flooded the entire area. The waters retreated as the creature looked north towards the city, and began flowing up the river that fed the lake.
`` Holy crap, Sam, what the hell is that thing,'' I gasped out. `` I do n't know man, but it looks pissed, and it's heading right towards the city.''
`` Dude, get in the car, we need to follow this,'' I shouted as I ran for the Riviera. Sam was right on my heels, and we fired up the car and took the dirt road at breakneck speed. `` I do n't think we're gon na catch it!'' Sam screamed at me over the wind rushing through the open windows. `` I know Sam, but I do n't think we wan na miss this!'' I shouted back as I threw the Riviera around another bend on the highway. Even from the highway, we could see the top of this thing as it moved up river into the city. Sam began shouting directions to keep us from crossing over the river as we sped towards town. The wisdom of this was soon revealed as the creature smashed the first bridge it came across into rubble. `` Oh wow!'' Sam shouted as the creature moved forward even faster, smashing everything within sight of the river as it hit the town.
As watched, everything along the river was reduced to shards and splinters. Before the sun was fully set, we could see the creature following the river again, heading for the next town. Sam and I drove into the wreckage to see who we could help.
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[ WP ] Blood moon is coming . The day you 've been waiting for . The humanity will now realize they 're not alone .
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*Tonight is the night. My people will once more rule this earth. No longer will we have to hide away, and pretend we are one of them. I despise them with all my being. They do not care about their surroundings. They do not care about anyone else. I believe they are incapable of feeling love for anything but their own selves. But tonight will be the night. We will conquer. We will take this place back. *
I'm concerned. Normal people do n't write notes like this, at least not without some context. I should stay away from however wrote this tonight. Or forever, probably. I've found the letter on some rocks near a waterfall, and I decided to take a very quick look around before heading home. As unsettling as it was, I was also very curious. I quickly found out that there was an entrance to a cave behind the waterfall.
I have a flashlight on me, so I decide to just have a quick pop in, to take a look. I try to pass rapidly as to not get wet, and fail miserably. Soaking wet I find myself in a small cave-like hole. Shining around with my flashlight does n't reveal much, but there is a sickening smell of rotting food and feces in the air. I lean against the wall, it feels wet. As I let my beam of light hit all the corners once more, I see letters carved into the wall. They are kind of faded, but I can still make out what it says:
*My transformation has begun. *
Whoa, is he, it, a werewolf or something. It was a full moon tonight right. Suddenly I feel watched. I look over my shoulder and decide to get out of there as soon as possible. I am still somewhat careful getting out of the cave, because I do n't want to slip on the wet rocks, but as soon as I'm outside again I sprint away. Or rather, I would've sprinted away if there had n't suddenly been a beast in front of me. I immediately know that it is the creature who wrote the note, and who carved the message into the wall.
It looks nothing like a werewolf. It is more like a bear, but with longer legs and tail, and huge fangs that are at least half a meter long. It's fur is dark red, and his eyes are white besides the pupil. As I try to slowly back away I stumble over a branch. I fall over, and try to stand up, but fall down again. The monster jumps on me, and for a few milliseconds I looked right into the mouth of this beast. He growls, and...
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[ WP ] `` With one eye she can see the future and with the other one she sees the past . As for the present , she 's completely blind . ''
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” You are going to find sadness soon, ” says a voice behind me. I turn around to see a short black-haired lady wearing a cute yellow sundress. In her hand she holds a cane, white with orange stripes running upwards in a spiral. She ’ s blind, I think as I look into her eyes. One is completely white, the other has a bluish hue to it.
“ Excuse me? ” I ask her after I ’ ve processed what I just heard, sun blinding me slightly as it hits my glasses.
She doesn ’ t say a word as she makes her way past me, giving me one final glance before disappearing into the crowd. I try to identify her from the crowd unsuccessfully and soon give up. A quick glance at my wrist brings me back to reality, Shit, I ’ m already late. I think as I look at my watch, I was supposed to meet my mom at a café five minutes ago.
I push through the crowd, gathering to watch a show of some sort concert they organize annually to draw tourists. Only problem is that the show is held at the center of town, making it impossible for meetings. Lucky for me the café was relatively empty—people are outside looking for good spot, I think. I spot my mom on the other side of the room, sitting in a booth by a wall. The room was covered with posters and paintings, one of those party café ’ s popular among youngsters and students, which is why I ’ m not surprised to also spot a few university pals of mine, they wave but I simply wave back with a limp wrist and head for my mom. I notice a few tables over where my mom sits is the blind girl I met on the street, her words echo in my head, had I misheard her, or was she talking to someone else and I missed it. She seems to be petting one the cats the owner keeps, they ’ re good company, and love to be rubbed. She holds her arm up as if waving for someone, Wait, can she see me? My face must ’ ve been more revealing than I thought as my mom hugs me and asks; “ Is something wrong? ” I look back at the girl, but she ’ s already petting the cat on her lap again.
“ Just something weird that happened earlier, ” I said and smiled at her. “ So you wanted to talk to me. ”
“ I haven ’ t seen you for months, and that ’ s how you start. ” Says my mom, she has her own special teasing voice, which she uses to guilt trip me and my sister.
“ Sorry, ma ’. How you been? ”
“ Excellent, my dear, your dad and I finally made up after that incident of his. ” She says, her smile turning to a slight frown.
“ Incident? ” I ask.
“ Anyway, how ’ s school been? ” She gives a soft smile and taps my cheek.
“ Well, actually. Took a bit time to adjust, but I managed to even get some friend, some of whom are over there actually. ” I point at the table where my pals were sitting, now heated up in discussion and poking each other playfully, at least that ’ s what I think they ’ re doing.
“ Colorful, group. ” Marks my mom. They weren ’ t the kinds you would think that hung out together much. One was a girl, with long-blonde hair, two of the guys had black hair with red and purple mixed together, and two of the other girls were dressed in black, had black hair, and had a few piercings. I on the other hand, had brown—short—hair and wore utility clothes. Many pockets, I loved my pockets, some say they were like a women ’ s purse. You never knew what you could find if you looked. “ Hope you ’ re not taking fashion advice from them. ”
“ You know me better than that, mom. ” I looked at her with my best possible sarcastic-serious face. “ Although I am thinking of getting a piercing. ”
Mom gasped for air—quite sarcastically as she overdid it. “ Over my dead body. ” I laughed and she soon joined me.
We bantered on for a while, catching up on recent events, she reminded me of my sister ’ s upcoming birthday, and soon we were readying to leave. I looked around, my pals had left a while ago, probably to listen to the concert, which was at its bloom right now. The walls were rumbling and vibrating with the beat. The blind girl was nowhere to be seen either. Too bad. I thought. She was cute, might have asked to join her afterwards.
My mom hugged me one more time and whispered, “ I ’ ll see you soon, dear. ” After a moment she let go of the hug and moved towards the door. She made her way pass the tables, and looking after her I noticed that the blind girl was standing by the door, looking at her. Her gaze was rather sad, and I swear I could see a tear, running on her cheek as the light bounced off her skin. It took me a moment to realize my mom was lying on the ground. I ran up to her, to help her get back up, but once I reached her she didn ’ t even attempt to move. I turned her around so she was lying on her back, and checked for a pulse. There was none. One of the workers ran up and pushed me away. I couldn ’ t move or react, so I fell over. Lying on my back, holding my body up with my elbows, I stared at her as the waitress checked for a pulse and continuing almost instantly to CPR.
She was shouting at me, but my ears were locked. Then in an instant a hand slapped across my face. I returned and heard the waitress ’ s voice, “ Call an ambulance! ” I immediately pulled out my phone and dialed. I was still in slight shock and panic, but the responder calmed me down and I uttered all the information they needed. I wasn ’ t allowed to lower the phone and soon a few paramedics ran into the store with a stretcher. I lowered my phone and looked as they lifted my mom up, once again checking for pulse. As soon as they had arrived, they were gone as swiftly. I could hear the sirens outside, but I was still unable to move.
The waitress saw my shock and helped me sit down. She left for a moment and was back with a cup of warm coffee. I sipped slowly. She tapped me on the shoulders and left for the counter as new customers arrived.
“ Sorry. ” I heard a soft voice say to me. “ I couldn ’ t help her, I never can. ”
It was the blind girl, staring at me with her both eyes closed, as if she was holding tears. I saw a trickle of dried water on her cheek where a tear had ran downwards. I set down my cup before talking. “ Who are you, how did you know, you knew this was going to happen? ” The questions burst out of me like water from a malfunctioning fire hydrant.
She sat down beside me and placed her hands on my cheeks. I gave her no resistance, I was tired and miserable—and wet from the questions. She opened her eyes and I could now see the blue hue on her right eye grow and squeeze the white away. “ I can see into the past and future, but you… ” She held her breath for a moment before releasing in in a sigh. “ I saw your mother ’ s death… ” Those words stung me but I listened. “ But that ’ s it. I can not see your future anymore, only past. It ’ s new to me. ” I grabbed her wrists and pulled down her hands, she didn ’ t resist after the first moment of realization. She indeed was blind. “ I don ’ t know why I can ’ t see in your future, but I want to find out. ”
“ My mother just died. ” I wept, new tears forming in my eyes. “ How can you say that? ”
“ I ’ ve seen death, every time it ’ s sad. Some deserve it, others don ’ t, but I can still feel the sadness. ” I collapsed on her shoulder and she gently put her hands around me, pulling my head towards her shoulder, and placing her own on mine.
We stayed like that for a while, she gently rubbing my head with her fingers, comforting.
“ I want to find out, why I can ’ t see into your future. ” She said as she pulled my head from her shoulder.
“ I can ’ t… ” I tried to respond, but she cut me off.
“ Yes you can. I can not change the future, but maybe you can. I have never met anyone like that, you ’ re not supposed to exist anymore. You can, if you try. ” She let go of my head, looked once more into my eyes swollen from tears. She grabbed her cane and turned around, making her way across the room slowly.
I looked at my hands, and her, and the floor. I sipped once more from my cup and ran after her.
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[ WP ] What would happen if everyone in the world woke up in a different country ?
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Ache.
The first thing I feel is the ache, all over my body. I am lucid, confused, then suddenly I see...
It ’ s not a dream, though it ’ s dreamlike. I ’ m not... I can ’ t even think of where I was... my couch... my clinic... in surgery? But I ’ m not there. Everything is shimmery, shiny, a little too bright, the colours a little too sharp. I am on a motorbike, frozen in time. In front of me, still frozen, a sea of motorcycles. Some many have more than one person on them, some carrying great piles of cargo, clothing, balanced precariously on their vehicles. There is nothing that resembles order in the way things pan out... just a chaotic swarm. Are there even any road rules here? I see Asian looking architecture, store signs, writing in English and an language I can ’ t pick. The riders are of all different nationalities. Africans, Asians, Caucasians... it ’ s the UN out there.
I ’ m ready for the surreal image to fade back into the dizzying nothingness of dreaming but the opposite is beginning to become true. The scene is going from a passive vision to an active experience. And, I ’ m on a fucking motorbike.
My senses build and everything becomes more and more real. I feel a tightness around my chest and see a pair of dark, slim hands wrapped around me. I begin to feel a sense of some great heaviness on the back on my bike and have to actively concentrate on maintaining balance. One man to the side of me, a terrified looking chubby Caucasian had a gigantic bundle of clothes on the back on his bike. Unable to negotiate the balance, he was, in slow motion, toppling over.
Falling.
Moving.
He was moving. We all were. In slow motion, but moving all the same, and bit by bit, speeding up, into, I assumed, real speed. I gripped desperately to the bars of my motorbike and concentrated hard on maintaining weight and balance. All over the place, ever so slowly, others were doing the same. When you see an accident, you could see it all in slow motion, exactly what was going to happen, but here it was the literal truth; bikes about to crash, into each other, onto the road, into... me.
To my left, a young Asian woman in a western style T-shirt and skirt, had already lost control of her bike and was leaning into me. Things were speeding up rapidly now, into real pace, and there was no time to question, or double guess. I looked at the chubby man to my side and took a breath and as everything sped into full speed I...
Turned.
The bike jerked to the side, and the screech of my rubber wheel upsetting the asphalt blended in with a symphony of screeching tyres crashing metal and screams. My passenger and I went down hard but the sense of impending pain was interrupted by the chubby man's bag of clothes. The risky gamble had paid off.
“ Shizor! ” screamed the man. I grunted with pain as the woman beside me hit my front tyre side on with hers and fell down on top of me. I struggled to get up.
The carnage wasn ’ t the apocalyptic horror I had expected, the bikes maintaining maybe 30kp/h before the... before whatever had just happened had happened. But it was enough that the cries in the air radiated with pain.
Well. Whatever it was, wherever I was, there were people hurt. There was work to do.
At least I wouldn ’ t be bored.
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[ WP ] You are a detective with the power to travel throughout the Omniverse : someone is traveling to the universes of our favorite cartoon characters and killing them . First victims : Ed , Edd , Eddy and the rest of the kids .
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I approach the cud-de-sac slowly, wary of anything that might spring out of the sides of the houses on either side. I stop as a faint noise catches my ear and scan the area. A comically large jawbreaker is rolling down the street. I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
As I approach the circle at the end of the street I see the blood splattered across the front of the house directly at the end of the lane. A retainer is stuck in the wood of the front door, thrown by some unknown force. Jimmy. Poor, nervous Jimmy. At least it looked like he went quick. That seemed to be a theme: lesser characters got off easy, characters with little parts, characters that nobody really cared about.
I rounded around the back, and things started getting gruesome. There were a few bodies littered around the backyard, blood painting the grass a sickly red-brown. One of the bodies was propped up against the foundation of the house, wearing a yellow shirt with a red stripe across it. Above the body written on the wall in blood was a catch phrase `` How dare you kill the son of a shepherd?''
It was him. He had left a familiar phrase from the show in every place that he'd been, written in the blood of the ones he'd killed. Three worlds in as many days, relatively speaking of course. Each universe operated a little differently in terms of time. I'd already sent a preemptive word to a dozen or so other omniscient organizations to be on the lookout and keep an eye on their main characters, which was all I could really do besides try to catch up to who- or what- ever was doing this. If the world did n't have any kind of fourth-wall breaking knowledge or character we were just out of luck, which was the case here.
I turned to leave, but suddenly I had a sinking sensation in my stomach. I faced the house again just in time to see something arcing over the roof towards me and dove to the ground to avoid whatever untimely fate was heading my way. Seconds later a faint `` thud'' sounded in my ears and I looked up cautiously. A piece of wood sat about ten feet away from me, lying in the stained grass. I picked it up turning it over in my hands. On the revers side was a face crudely drawn in crayon, and over the top of that someone had added a bloodstained smirk. At the bottom was a single sentence, written in blood. I threw Plank down and turned to leave, opening a doorway to my next world in the air. As I stepped through I could almost hear the faint echoes of disembodies laughter.
`` Catch me if you can''
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[ WP ] You are a Jason Borne level super agent , but left the agency to take a more stable job as a ______ . You ca n't help but constantly use your training in common office and life situations to get ahead in life .
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Nothing was moving in the shop except for a spider scurrying along the roof, close to the wall where a small selection of fixed line telephone accessories still stood. Alex could see six objects that he could throw precisely enough to hit and kill the spider, but this was not the time, nor the place.
He heard the customer's footfalls before they became visible. Echoing but light steps, quick, and close to each other. Alex determined the customer was a woman, small of stature and wearing high heels.
`` Good afternoon, welcome to Telstra. The name's Bourne. Alex Bourne.'' he stated as he assessed everything he could about the customer. His deductions were right - the customer was indeed a well-dressed businesswoman, and not a micron over five foot.
`` Oh, hi Alex. I bought this phone here a while ago, and it's been causing me some trouble, I was wondering if you could help me.''
Alex consulted his extensive memory of previous transactions. Sharon Edwards was her name. He had n't sold this phone - that had been an employee, on August 1st 2013. Standard 24 month handset subsidy plan, 21 months ago. 12 month warranty, so that's over. IMEI number 41235-33127-99189, paying $ 50 a month for service with no handset payment but an early termination fee - and it was well within company policy to waive those termination fees this late into a contract.
Alex weighed up his options. Of course his goal was to sell a new phone contract here, and ensure her business for another two years. But he knew that having an outstanding memory could sometimes make him seem like a stalker. He had to handle this delicately. Let her suspect nothing. Let her underestimate me.
`` Can I have a look at the phone please?'' Alex asked. As Sharon handed the phone to him, he casually flicked a pen away from his side, hitting and killing the spider as it moved down a wall. The look Sharon had on her face as she looked back to the phone told him many things - most notably, that she'd never liked this phone at all. `` *I'll have to sell her something very different*'' he thought.
Six dead pixels struck him immediately. `` *More information to use in a sale*''. Alex was sure this was n't the reason the phone was brought in, but thought he'd begin with it. Point out a flaw she did n't notice and did n't care about, and let her point out that there was something even worse wrong with it. She did n't look like someone that could be without a phone long - that was the angle, surely.
`` Ma'am, I can see the screen's dead spots here, here and here,'' Alex said, pointing to three of the six. `` I could replace the screen, but parts for this model are sometimes a little tricky to come by and there might be a short delay while we source them.''
Sharon had indeed never noticed the dead spots, and looked at the phone again. `` It is getting a bit old, is n't it?'' she said.
Alex knew from inflections in her voice that he had her over the line. `` Can I grab your number, and I'll look up how long you've had it and whether it's still under warranty or what I can suggest. Feel free to browse while I do, I'll be back in a second.'' A subtle point in the direction of a very different phone followed. Sharon never noticed how quickly her subconscious followed Alex's prompt.
The right time in situations like this, Alex had always told his employees, was to wait forty seconds. You impress the customer with how quick you are, leading them to trust you while still appearing thorough. He used the time to find a tissue, and returned to speak to Sharon, his left hand quickly darting to scoop up the remains of the spider from the wall. Subtle, always subtle, and watching where she was looking on the display wall - as he had expected, it was the latest Samsung she had her eyes on.
`` Ms Edwards? I just checked your account, and you've got a couple of months left on your contract. If you want to get a new phone today on a new plan, I can waive the rest of the present contract for you. No cost.''
Sharon's eyes widened. `` Oh, I thought I was stuck for three more months. Sounds great, I'm sick of this Apple junk.''
Alex smiled, and as he started the paperwork, his manipulative mind started framing options for upselling. This was just the beginning.
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[ WP ] In the year 2200 , an IQ test with 100 % accuracy is invented . IQ becomes the universal grade of intelligence . By law , everyone has to take the test at 18 . You ’ re a perfectly normal university student with a part time job but now you 've got to explain to everyone why the test shows your IQ is 0 .
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Sir_Fartington MacVomit never had it easy. Questions plagued him all of his life. Why, in the long line of MacVomits, had nobody changed their name? What cruel, inconsiderate parents ( Charles and Catherine ) would choose a name like Sir_Fartington. Even the underscore was a throwback to typography from hundreds of years ago. He could never dictate it, only spell it, slowly, and with a resigned look. `` S for single, I for irrecoverable, r for ruined'' and so on. Underscore for the low level of failure he had been set up with for all of his life. No, not a hyphen. Sigh.
When he got a notification with his Adult Aptitude test results, he had no expectations. He opened it. Short, and to the point. Like his date rejections.
Sir_Fartington MacVomit
Your Adult Aptitude test results are in. You have scored a 0 out of a possible 1,000 points, putting you in the top 65 % of the adult population.
For the first time Sir_Fartington smiled. Maybe there was hope after all.
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[ WP ] You go downstairs to investigate the noise . It 's pitch black . A small candle penetrates the darkness to reveal a figure staring into the flame . He sings `` Run rabbit , run rabbit , run , run , run . '' looks at you and blows it out . Darkness .
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There was only my heartbeat in the darkness.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.''
`` I knew you'd come for me eventually.'' I say, my voice wavering despite best efforts. My hands shake and my eyes are desperate for any light. Or any noise to give away where he has gone to.
There is nothing.
Just that song.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.''
`` Get it over with then!'' I shout, feeling a sharp blade slash across my right shoulder. The warmth of blood seeping out spreads down my bicep and forearm. Now there is only my heartbeat and the sound of dripping blood in the darkness.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.''
It's right in my ear this time, his hissing voice sending shivers down my spine and warm breath cascading over my ear.
I swing wildly with a useless right arm.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.''
Another sharp pain, this one across my left calf.
`` Just do it already!''
There is silence.
Just the dripping.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.''
I fall to one knee, blood is leaving my body much faster than it should be. My eyes are dimming, even in the darkness I can see a worse blackness taking my vision.
Suddenly a flame appears, my eyes squint against the sudden light but they see him.
That face staring into my eyes, into my soul. He smiles, not friendly but vicious and cruel. His teeth are black and yellow. His eyes are deep red. His face is scarred and stubbled. His breath reeks.
`` Run rabbit, run rabbit. Run. Run. Run.''
With a puff the light is gone.
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[ WP ] You find a message in a bottle , but , it 's from the future
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The air was warm and carried the sea with it. The cackling of some fucking thing or other carried across to me from an outcrop of rocks that broke the waves into white furls and spouts. The bottle was at my feet. I opened it.
The air inside smelt like burning. I turned the bottle upside down and the roll of white paper fell out into my palm. It crackled as I unfurled it. The message inside was simple.
WRITE THIS NOTE
That was when he came racing up behind me. I heard the thump of his foot and the hiss of the sand he carved up in his wake and turned around quickly enough to see him. Only it was n't him; it was me.
`` It's got to be exactly the same,'' this new me said, this terrifying fucking me-thing wearing a me-shaped skin and occupying a me-shaped space. `` I do n't know what'll happen if it does n't. I'm not prepared to find out, so it's got to be exactly the same.''
His me-voice, *my voice* speaking to myself - this self. I felt dizzy. Sweat prickled my forehead. `` Exactly the same,'' he said. He grabbed the bottle from my grasp and smashed it against a rock. One wicked, sharp gleaming point jutted out.
He jammed it into his neck and twisted. He - I - we - fell.
I doubled over and heaved. Spots swam in front of my eyes. Shakily, and swaying like the trees, I ran off the beach. I could n't get away fast enough. I darted behind an old wooden hut and was consumed by fire.
Purple jags of lightning struck me, tore at me. I felt split apart by a vibrating inside that gripped my skull and clenched my fists against my will. I was lifted; thrown. I landed.
Groggily, I righted myself. I stumbled into the hut. Among the detritus was a fishing net, torn and useless. An old bucket, rusted to the ground. A bottle. A pen. A sheet of paper.
With a scream I could n't let out choking me from inside my throat, I looked up and out of the window, knowing what I'd see.
There I was. The carefree man walking down the beach. Feeling the warm air that carried the sea with it. Hearing the cackling of some fucking thing or another carried across to him from an outcrop of rocks that broke the waves into white furls and spouts.
Sickened by fear, I understood the ramblings of the bottle-wielding me. If I chose a new path, any path, other than what I'd seen, anything could happen. Anything at all. What would happen to the world - to be made or unmade or made new or torn apart completely? Would I risk the universe and take a chance on all reality? Would I really do this terrible, bloody thing? Why this? Just because I'd seen it? Why had *he* done it in the first place? Why this? Why me?
I did n't have time to answer any of these questions, so I just picked up the pen and in my neat, controlled hand, wrote the last words I'd ever write:
WRITE THIS NOTE
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[ WP ] A Hero has spent years of his life , gathering ancient relics , destroying eldritch abominations and leaving behind friends and family all to destroy his greatest rival . However he soon learns that his rival has died from something very stupid and he 's not happy .
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“ A goddamn accident, ” he growled out, eyes flashing gold with the magic flowing out of his hands. “ All these years and you die in a accident, I gave up so much to chase your sorry ass and you go and get yourself offed in a accident?! ”
The lifeblood of his enemy flows out from the wound, stain his hands and clothes with its red, red hue.
“ I ’ m not letting you die, you hear me, ” the Hero muttered, mostly to himself. “ Not when I went through so much, not when I gave up everything, not when I fought so hard. ”
The Hero ’ s enemy laughed, before going to to coughing fit, “ sorry for denying you the pleasure then, ” he said.
“ You ’ ll be sorry when I kick your ass once you get better, ” the Hero replied, and the green aura of healing magic emitting from his hand continued to flicker.
“ You can ’ t heal me, ” the Villain said, “ I know… A wound of this level can ’ t be healed by healing magic. Not even magic can go against the flow of nature. ”
“ Quiet, ” the Hero hushed him, frowning as the flickering green light fades from his hands, “ you ’ re wasting air. ”
-- -
The Villain sighed and closed his eyes. He does not know why the ( his ) hero continued to try and save his life.
That man is a Hero, and he is a Villain.
Perhaps that explains everything. A Hero saves even the vilest of Villains, and a Villain slays even the most heroic of Heros.
And even if the Hero is saving him for some misguided sense of justice, the Villain can not help but be happy.
-- -
The fading light of healing magic frightens him, and the Hero does not know why. All he knows is that this Villain is his, and he will do anything to ensure that the Villain lives.
The Hero has given up so much for the Villain. His family, his friends, his life… Everything, he has given up for the save of chasing this Villain.
So he will not let this Villain die. Not when he has given up so much of his life for the sake of this Villain.
This Villain is his.
And he will make sure that everyone and everything knows that.
-- -
*Nature is anything but forgiving. Anything but relenting. *
*Mortals can not go against the flow of time. Mortals can not turn Nature on its axis and change it. *
*The law of equivalent exchange. For an action, there must be an equal reaction. *
*So when a Mortal tries to go against the stream of time, when a Mortal tries to turn the world and Nature on its axis. *
*There is always an equal reaction. *
-- -
The Hero has travelled many areas in his quest to defeat the Villain. He has seen many lands * ( and left his homeland ) *, met many people * ( and abandoned even more ) *, fought many monsters * ( killed many people ) *, collected many relics * ( from the cold dead bodies of those who protected them ) *.
One relic had belonged an Eldritch Abomination that had locked away by the Gods, for the Relic that the Abomination had could go against their word. The Abomination had strayed from the path that the Gods had a laid out, and thus was sealed by the Gods that ruled.
This was the myth and legend that had passed down with Relic, and this tale was recounted to Hero, when he found the Relic in the cave where the Abomination was sealed.
-- -
*Somewhere, Nature screams. *
*Something that should not be was made to be. *
*Somehow, somewhere, something -- *
-- -
* “ How could you do this?! ” *
The Hero closed his eyes, and blocks out the screams of the people that he * ( hasn ’ t ) * killed. He looks at the Villain on the ground, in pain, in agony, but alive before him, and the Hero smiles, for everything is worth it.
The Villain is his.
And he ’ s not going to let anyone take his life before him.
Not even Nature.
Not even Fate.
He ’ s a Hero, and only Heroes can kill Villains.
-- -
*Somewhere, Nature screams. *
*For every action, there is an equivalent reaction. *
*For there to be a Villain, there must casualties. For there to be a Hero, there must be people to save. *
*For there to be both -- *
-- -
“ You damned the world for a Villain? ”
The Hero turns, tearing his eyes from the Villain on the ground. The Villain had stopped bleeding, and his ragged breathing had turned stable.
The * ( his ) * Villain will live.
“ Of course not. ”
“ I really hate how you can say that with a straight face, Hero. ”
“ I ’ ll take that as a compliment, ” the Hero said, and inclined his head towards the Villain, “ why are you here? you can ’ t be here just to tell me that. ”
“ I ’ m not here to lecture you, ” the figure said, “ you damned the world for a Villain, and I only wish I had the courage to do what you did. ”
-- -
*In times of peace, there can be neither Heroes nor Villains. *
*For a Villain to ( always ) return, people ’ s lives must be the sacrifice. For a Hero to exist, there must be people that they have to save. *
*This is a story about a Hero who sacrificed the world. This is a story about a Hero who sacrificed generations after generations so his Villain could be the vilest amongst Villain. *
*This is -- *
-- -
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Writing Prompt : Write from an antagonist 's point of view
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Really? Again? How many times do I have to show her I love her. Those blue eyes, golden blonde hair, her incredible fashion sense. Sometimes I really think its me. Sometimes I do n't feel good enough. It cant be my hair? I've been told I can be a bit assertive, but you have to be in my position. I mean, I have friends... workers... minions. But what girl does n't like a guy with power. I own a castle for Christ sake! What more do I need? Obviously she does n't care about looks if she's constantly out with that short, dirty plumber. I mean come on! We get it, you're a plumber! I Know you do n't work THAT much where you have to wear you're uniform EVERYWHERE you go! Get some new clothes with your paycheck. I'm just as good as him. You know what? I'm going to surprise her with a date, I'll pick her up and take her to my place. Yeah, that sounds great. She'll love the gesture and how spontaneous I can be. I just hope that Mario does n't ruin things, as always.
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[ WP ] `` It was us or them ''
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As I sat next to the burning body parts that were scattered all around me, all I could think about was how lucky I was to have saved all of it. I glanced ten feet to my left and my eyes lingered on everything that my efforts had protected. In this moment I felt like a superhero; after all, I single handedly saved everything. I stood up and began pacing, thinking about how when my story spreads, they will post all over the Internet about my triumph. My mind fades into a daydream as I ponder about reaching the front page of r/all. Whilst I was imagining my future, I was dragged back into reality by a strong smack against my cheek. I looked into her eyes as she said `` Did you really have to go to such great lengths to kill a bunch of ants? What, do you carry firecrackers and gasoline everywhere you go? This is quite troubling. My boyfriend just completely obliterated an ant mound... I am not sure what to think about you anymore.'' I felt blood pulsing in my forehead, did this woman seriously downplay my heroic efforts? I retorted `` Did you not see how I just saved the food? Those bastards tried to take over our picnic. It was either us or them, somebody had to die.''
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[ WP ] A person is stuck in a game ( like Hack or SAO ) , their quest is to find out whether they are human or AI
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For what seemed like an eternity, I had been trapped in a land of fantasy. I knew that it was a video game; I always had, for whatever odd reason.
The world was inhabited by all kinds of creatures: humans, elves, orcs, dragons... you name it. I spent my days adventuring, and I grew rich and even bought a house. Before long, I had a family.
Then, I sustained an injury. Some maniac guardian of a dungeon shot me with a crossbow. I was lucky I had a friend with me, otherwise I would've surely been finished.
The problem was that the game did n't exactly have modern medicine. The bolt had pierced my leg, and I was told I could never run again, and I'd have trouble even walking.
My days of being a hero were over.
Then came the identity crisis.
Was I truly the main character of the game? What kind of stupid video game would be based around losing the ability to walk and spending your life cooped up in a small village?
But I could n't be an AI; I controlled who I was, what I did.
Those years were rough. After many an existential crisis, I gave up on searching for the answer and accepted my boring fate.
As I sat at a bar, sipping mead and thinking about my glory days, a young man came in. He had a sword in a scabbard, a quiver across his back, and a dangerous gleam in his eyes. I saw myself in him.
He took a seat next to me and ordered a drink. I took a sip as I looked over at him.
`` I used to be an adventurer like you,'' I spoke. `` Then I took an arrow in the knee.''
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[ CC ] My Schizophrenic Lover
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Hi, I saw that no experienced writers posted any critiques so if you do n't mind I have somethings I did n't quite understand about your work.
1 ) Why did the MC stop talking with the imagined girl?
2 ) Why does the girl ask MC to talk about herself in a more positive note yet not push her to find the positives in
what she experienced?
3 ) Why is the name of the imagined girl never disclosed? If MC is in love with her and she is a product of schizophrenia, would n't there be a name?
4 ) This is a more personal feel, I ca n't exactly say why, but I could n't FEEL the immense love they have for each other. All I can see is you saying they are in love, but I ca n't feel it.
5 )'' looking at her slowly fainting'' part in the end confused me, if the girl is a product of schizophrenia and the MC claims that after death she can finally see the girl, then how did she look at the girl slowly fainting?
I hope these help you out a little bit! Again, I'm a complete novice so please take it with a grain of salt, but more importantly I liked the direction of the story! Please keep developing it!
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[ WP ] A horror story where Siri talks out loud to unseen beings around at night .
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10:00pm
A barely used iPhone 6 plus for only $ 20? Today was a wonderful day. I thought it might have been a craigslist scam at first but NOPE! The seller actually showed up made the sale no questions asked. Tested it and all, seems like everything was working properly. I've been playing with my new phone all day and man I am just loving it.
11:58pm
I am starting to see why the previous owner wanted to sell this phone. Seems like there are a couple problems with Siri. She seems to make random searches when I am trying to use other applications, and it's annoying. Not enough to warrant selling it for so cheap though. Still totally worth the $ 20.
——————————
12:00am
The young lady had just placed her phone down on her night stand when suddenly.
`` Location services activated,'' the phone uttered.
She leaned over to picked up the phone from her night stand as a chilling breeze swept through her room.
`` *Odd—closed window and closed door. There is no way there could be a breeze here*,'' she thought.
An unnerving silence had settled in the room sending shivers down her spine. Her eyes locked onto her closed door as it slowly began to creak open. Cold sweat began to trickle down her cheek.
`` *Run. Run as fast you can and get out of here. GET OUT! * ``
She screamed at herself in vain, her limbs would no longer obey her. This was it. This was the end.
`` Welcome home, ** % $ % ^* # *. Ownership has changed once more, current owner classified as... delectable.''
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[ WP ] Killing a person raises your life span by 20 years , but it comes with a cost .
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Wet. Sticky. I did n't know, that this is how much blood a human body could contain. *Interesting. * His face is so pale now, even though his face was red with anger just a few minutes ago. The carpet is so soaked with his blood, everything is stained red. Even myself. But I did it... I did it for him. He'll be so happy when I tell him. I ca n't contain my excitement and I stab him accidentally. I stab his exposed organs this time. Such a disgustingly wet sound, *but oh so satisfying*.
I run my hands under the cold tap water. As I watch the blood wash off my hands, I feel a slight pang of melancholy. Like I'm washing a part of me off. I shake the pang off with thoughts of my brother. He'll be so happy when he finds out our parents' killer is dead. He has been so out of it, I'm sure this will make him happy. I see my reflection in the mirror and I see my smile, distorted and ugly.
*This is what I have become. This is what I have chosen to become, for my brother. Everything is for him. Once I see his smile again, my smile will return to normal again. We will live in happiness. Together. *
I wash all the blood off me. As I make my way out of the motel room, down the hallway, and out the lobby, nobody even gives me a second glance. I walk back home without catching anyone's attention.
As I near my home, I hear our dog bark. She never barks at me. Weird... she never does that. `` Petunia! Shhh. Quiet down, you're annoying the neighbors.'' She continues to bark. Maybe she smells the blood on me? I go to the door and I hear her barks turn all the more hostile. I unlock the front door to see Patty straining against the fence we put up to separate the common room with the kitchen where we let her roam free. She growls and bares her teeth at me. Fear grips me, why is she so aggressive? What is going on? `` Patty...'' I whisper. She does n't even seem to recognize me.
I hear movement from upstairs. Feet shuffling down. My brother. As he emerges, I see his hair is tousled and clothes crumpled. *So he was taking a nap huh? * Against my own will, I smile. His sleepy voice travels to my ears and I feel so safe again. `` Patty? What's going on?'' His movements are slow, *just like that man's. That good-for-nothing. * **Which I killed. ** His focus turns, from Patty to me, who is still standing at the door. The door is wide open and I hear cars whiz by. When we were younger, we used to count how many red, black or silver cars whizzed by us. Those times were so fun. I still laugh at them. It feels like such a long time ago, like a distant memory.
`` **Who the fuck are you? **'' My brother's voice jolted me out of my melancholy state of mind. He never swore. Not at me, not at anyone or anything. I stand there, paralyzed. *What do I do? What did he just say? What is happening? What is this? * My brother's face twists angrily, `` I asked you a question. Who **are** you?'' I feel my breathing quicken, my heart rate rise, my thoughts race. `` I'm... I'm your sister. Your little sister.''
`` I do n't have a sister. What the fuck are you talking about. Get out right now.''
His words register slowly. *What? He's lying right? What does that mean? If he does n't have a sister, then who am I? Who did I kill for? Why did I kill? I just wanted to see his smile again. What am I doing here...? *
`` I'm... sorry. I must have mistaken this house... for my brother's. A sincere mistake.'' I managed to muster words to form, somehow. *If he is n't my brother, I can kill him, right...? He does n't mean anything to me, right...? We're not related. I can kill him. I can feel his blood on my hands... What a good feeling that would be... *
I feel my body start to get hot and my breathing grow labored at the thought of killing another person again. *Yes... I want to do this. this is what I chose to become. *
I smile and close the door. `` Would you mind showing me the way to this address?''
I see him hesitate. But who could suspect a little 10-year-old girl, right? I give him another sweet smile and he gives.
My darling, brother. Dead by my own hands. I still fantasize about how good his blood felt as his eyes were locked onto mine when I stabbed him. It has been 90 years since my first two kills. None of the other kills have been as satisfying and arousing. The best part of those many kills is that I do n't look a day over 16.
Let's see who shall be the next target today.
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[ WP ] You start to experience 'flashes ' of time dilation and the government is after you for experimentation
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So this kinda got away on me a little and probably is n't what you were looking for from the prompt but here's what I came up with.
It ’ s going to be hard to explain what it feels like, to catch a glimpse of someone ’ s fate without even knowing who they are. Knowing in an instant something that ’ ll happen to them or around them, usually accompanied by an emotion the subject will feel about it, and always coupled with a sense of how much time will pass first.
A week, a month, a year. I always know.
The best description I ’ ve ever come up with is to imagine a couple of litres of ice cold motor oil being poured over your exposed brain. Now the same without the oil, just the sensation of it. Hard to do, right? Now imagine the same without the brain. I know I know, impossible. But that ’ s as close as I ’ ll ever get to describing it and if you can hold that feeling in your head it ’ s as close as you ’ ll get to experiencing it.
They say the ‘ gift ’ is more common in women and I believe it. Women ’ s intuition and all that, it ’ s got ta be based on something right? So more women can get the feel of it, but while it rarer amongst men it ’ s us who seem to be more powerful, if that ’ s even the right word. My Mum is the only other person I ’ ve known that could do what I do, so my experience is limited to her and I, but I have to believe what little she told me is true – she ’ s my mum right? She wouldn ’ t lie to me. The one thing I know for sure is that it ’ d be a lot more useful if I could focus it or use it when and on who I wanted.
Mum kept us moving when I was young. So much so that I never really knew where I was or where I was going to or coming from. ‘ Just like the Connors ’ she ’ d say, meaning we were on the run just like the characters from my favourite movie as a kid – Terminator 2. Except instead of a machine from the future it was our very own government that was hunting us. All I can say for sure is that we moved an awful lot when I was young, sometimes with so little notice that I ’ d be forced to leave every one of my toys and all of my clothes behind, simply being driven out of town to never look back. If I ’ m honest I never minded the constant state of flux we existed in. I was never anywhere long enough to make friends to miss or landmarks to associate with home, But I still haven ’ t forgiven her for making me leave my Nintendo behind when I was 9. Some things stick with you.
She used to tell me we were special her and I. That we were important and what we could do was somehow vital to not only the people we had telling about, but the world as a whole. She ’ d always mention those who pursued us as well, purposefully catching my eye as she solemnly expressed how despite what they were doing to people like us in their labs, even though they hunted us and would in all likelihood never stop, that what we could do was going to one day change their lives for the better as well. Sometimes she ’ d repeat that last bit, every ounce of mirth drained from her perpetually smiling face and she ’ d add a line – ‘ brace for impact ’. I ’ d ask what she meant of course, and she ’ d giggle like a schoolgirl and tell me I ’ d see one day, all jocularity and happiness again. I always thought it was her little joke, just to make me think she ’ d had some telling from further off than I ’ d credit her for. She must ’ ve said that to me a couple of hundred times while she was alive. And I ’ ve been bracing for impact for the 19 years since she passed. I ’ ve always hated a mystery, almost as much as Mum loved them.
What really strikes me as weird is the way she used to describe her tellings, a whole body experience she used to say, slipping into a tepid but pleasant bath. So very different from my own experience. Maybe it ’ s different for each of us, I don ’ t know.
She used to brag about how far some of her tellings came from – weeks ahead sometimes. That was totally unprecedented for a woman according to Mum. Female telling were always closer to home, more diffuse and immediate to those we men encountered, and Mum always seemed to know what to say or do to the person involved to help them through what was to come. She would do and say things without really thinking them through, and days later it ’ d turn out her whispered ( or occasionally shouted ) words, or quite unrelated actions, would have adequately prepared some stranger for some unforeseeable and unavoidable turn of fate. Good or bad, what was coming made no difference to Mum - she just did what she did, usually without any comprehension of why, and it all turned out for the best.
Mine aren ’ t like that. I see and feel what is to come, if anything more accurately and with greater clarity than Mum ever could, and from further away usually, but I have never had any sort of idea what needs to happen to help someone prepare for the glorious or dreadful future that awaits them. I instead have only a concrete certainty about what will happen, usually a good idea of what the subject will feel about it,
And that ’ s s the point right there. The reason I ’ m writing this. The reason I ’ m going to post it to as many websites as I can. The reason I ’ m going stop running and let them find me. I had a telling and it was something completely different to what I ’ m used to.
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[ IP ] Sunrise
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This is where she comes to feel the earth turn. To witness the nightly journey of stars across sky; the daily march of sun from east to west; the moon, waxing and waning, dancing elegantly with the blue planet.
She closes her eyes and breathes slowly, empties her mind but not her heart. Yes, she can feel it now. Speck on an indifferent planet, she is turning with the gigantic ball of earth and water. Space rushes by the pink and grey window of sky, and silence reigns.
Birds wake and begin to call. The sounds enter her peacefully, and she takes them into her very core. They are a part of her, and she of them. When the sun blooms over the peaks it warms her and these rays are of her and the birds, the trees and the soil, the mountains and the sky.
Insects discover her prostrate form and creep over her hands and feet and arms and legs. When she finally leaves her sacred place, she has grass in her hair, ants on her clothes, dirt on her skin. They remain until they fall or crawl off; she refuses to remove this lingering evidence of her oneness with the world. Only the concrete she returns to seems to have no place in her.
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[ WP ] SETI researchers announce that they have received transmissions from an alien race . As the transmissions are examined it turns out they are the last gasps of a civilization on the losing side of an interstellar war .
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“ It started out as just a mass of noise. What to the average ear would sound close to a sonic boom, percussive and loud but meaningless. Except the size of this explosion was utterly massive. We are still trying to work the math to see if it is even theoretically possible within our current theories. ”
“ You ’ re getting off track. ”
“ Right, sorry. It comes down to this. We ’ ve picked up something. A loud noise that we untangled and decoded. It was incredibly advanced in its transmission, but incredibly simple in its message. ”
The President stood from the couch, advisors huddle all around him. His Cabinet, the First Lady, his Chief of Staff, all crowded into the room. They parted as he walked around to the back of the couch. He was looking deep into the carpet, hand stroking his chin. There was a scratching sound that penetrated the room ’ s silence, at three in the morning he had the early workings of a beard coming in.
“ What was the message? ” The President didn ’ t look up, but the scientists excitement overriding the rest of the room ’ s general sense of fear started to respond.
“ Well, sir— “
“ —we think— “
“ —a cry for help— “
The President stopped and looked at the three men, SETI ’ s best, stumbling over each other. Tonight was the most exciting night of their lives. Everything they had ever worked for had come to fruition, and despite his natural trepidation, he gave them a half smile.
“ One at a time, please. Dr. Rothwell, what was the message? ”
“ Sir, that ’ s where our news turns grim. The message, after we decoded it, was a kind of first contact report, then a desperate plea for aid, and finally binary collection of data that we are still receiving. ”
“ Was there a delay? Those seem disjointed, ” the Chief of Staff spoke quickly, his constant sense of urgency making his words sound aggressive, a challenge for knowledge.
“ They ’ re undated and came in simultaneously, but they seemed to be a report over a period of months, if not years. ”
“ Sir, we have copies of all the information they ’ ve collected so far. ” The Press Secretary spoke from beside the Resolute Desk, a large stack of manila folders in front of her.
The President nodded his head appreciatively, eyes still downcast, still listening. Processing. He came to rest in front of his infamous work space and sat back onto the front. Those in attendance were suddenly struck by his similarity in pose to the Kennedy portrait. Heavy words across stiff shoulders.
“ I know you don ’ t like to speculate doctors. That ’ s not what we ask of you, nor is it typically in your job description to blindly guess. But what was it? This message. What do you think it means? ”
The three scientists looked at each other. There was a pregnant pause and Rothwell nodded to the youngest counterpart. A faint rosé came to his cheeks and his forehead paled. It gave him an altogether ill appearance. As though he was going to throw up on the President ’ s coffee table. All eyes were fixed on the young man, barely more than twenty-five. The Chief of Staff leaned towards him, poised on the balls of his feet like he was going to pounce.
“ Go ahead, Adams. Tell them. ” Rothwell spoke softly, coaxing the young man into confidence.
Adams nodded, eyes still lock on the coffee table, “ I—uh, I was the man on watch to get the signal. It was my shift and all. And I was there when we finally cracked it. So, I ’ ve spent—that ’ s not to say Dr. Rothwell and Childs haven ’ t—but I ’ ve spent the most time looking through the transmission. And I think it ’ s a warning. ”
“ How do you mean? ” The President mirrored Rothwell ’ s soft tone. The young man was terrified, but he needed the information he could provide. He needed to keep him talking or Jim, his Chief, would dive in. And then the poor kid would never have a chance.
“ Well, sir. The three main parts of the message seem to be slightly separate. There ’ s a brief space in between, you understand. In a cosmic sense, well on that grand of scale, it thousands of a second, but the gap is there. I think, after extensive study, sir, that it ’ s a three part message. ”
He looked up at the President, who simply nodded, “ It ’ s three parts, but it means the same thing. The same ending. The first section is a report of first contact with an extraterrestrial species. Aliens visiting other aliens, right? But the second part, the message gets a little garbled, but it ’ s a plea for assistance. A galactic plea, sir. A last ditch effort to get help. ”
Jim broke into the kid ’ s speech, “ Help for what? ”
“ For the war. The alien ’ s went to war with each other, and those that sent us the message were losing. Well, not just losing. They were being exterminated. Systematically wiped off their planet by the incursion force. ”
The room went painfully silent again. Several eyes flicked to the President, an evolutionary holdover when fear grips pack animals. A looking to their leader for aid, a plan, or just reassurance.
“ You said there was a third part to the message, Adams. What was the third part? Did they survive? ”
The young scientist was shaking his head, “ No sir, they almost assuredly died. ”
“ Then what was the last part of the message? ”
“ Sir, it was their civilization ’ s collective knowledge. Kind of like our Voyager data. Except far more extensive. They were trying to be remembered when they were dying. ”
Rothwell broke in, “ Sir, the final message was preceded by a warning. It ’ s not specific to us, as far as we can tell. ”
“ What did it say? ”
“ ” They ’ re insatiable. They devour. And they ’ re spreading ’. ”
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[ EU ] Instead of a humanoid Clark Kent is an eldritch abomination . However , Ma and Pa Kent still raised him to be a polite young man .
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`` I do n't know Ma, the other kids... they look at me funny...'' Clark looked at his mother with much trepidation. They were outside the house of a classmate who was hosting a birthday party.
`` It'll be fine, just be yourself and everyone will adore you.'' Mrs.Kent looked into his large solid black eyes, her reflection clearly visible in all five.
She remembered clearly the day she first laid eyes on him. She had to be honest with herself, she almost died of fright and Pa nearly lit the craft on fire to put the poor thing out of it's misery. If it was n't for a moment of human weakness and motherly instinct, Clark would have been destroyed right then and there. Mrs.Kent was able to see through the mass of limbs and eyes and realized there was a pitiable vulnerability about the creature. The God forsaken thing was an infant.
`` Are you out of your fucking mind?!'' Pa exclaimed, the first and last time he ever cursed out loud, when she suggested they take the thing inside. It took some convincing but she managed to make him pity what she started calling `` The Baby''.
`` Look at it, it's not attacking us. Let me just try picking it up.'' She said, much to the bewilderment of her husband. How she managed to get over that initial fright and shock could only be attributed to her long desire to have children, something which she could not do naturally. `` This is a sign from God, Jon.''
Pa stopped believing in God that day, but Martha Kent kept her faith alive in Clark. Martha's faith was surely tested, time and time again. It took quite some time to figure out that the creature would only eat raw meat. It seemed to prefer live chickens, feathers and all. It ate and expelled waste through the same orifice and it enjoyed climbing on the walls. It's mass of tentacles eventually grew bones and it eventually formed neatly into 7 long knuckled limbs. Communication was a trick, as it appeared to only talk telepathically. At first it was a series of screeching sounds that seemed to resonate from the inside of the skull outwards. After years of this it finally started picking up human words and finally spoke in telepathic English.
His first time out in public caused and uproar and the National Guard was called in. Of course he was quarantined by the Military, but it seems he charmed his way into normal society using the basic decency and politeness that Martha had ingrained in him. Of course he was being tracked for life afterwards but at least he was afforded some freedoms.
`` Ma'am, the moment we notice anything peculiar we're going to destroy that thing.'' General Mathus had assured Martha. Jon had at this point become too much of a drunk to make too much of a fuss about anything, but at least he was still kind to Martha and her baby, though he refused to acknowledge it as a son of any sorts.
When Clark grew a pair of functioning wings around his 7th birthday, the General paid a visit, but again Clark using his Kansas bred hospitality charmed the General and was left alone. Clark was good at this, but only with adults it seemed. With children it was another matter. The kids his age were vicious, cruel, and selfish creatures that he had very little understanding of, though he truly wanted friends.
`` Just be yourself honey, I promise it will be alright and you're going to have a blast.'' Ma said.
`` I'll try Ma.'' Kent walked in that with much hesitation.
Only 15 minutes later, Clark was seen smashing his way through the roof of the house and flying high in to the atmosphere. The military was of course tailing him but lost him somewhere over the arctic. Something had upset him, but true to his nature he did n't harm a living soul. It seemed that the other kids did indeed tease him and caused him to bolt. Ma would not see Clark for another 10 years when he emerged from the arctic depths.
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[ WP ] Write a suicide note from an established fictional character
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Dear fiancé
Things have been tough. I just can ’ t get over the fact that after all that we been though, all the fights, all of the coin shed, all of the good times and the bad you went evil. It ’ s been two years since the night at Chaos. It was over.
The League was defeated and we could live on. But guys you met from my past you wanted to fight them. I tried telling you they where just friends, but you didn ’ t listen. You almost killed my best friend. Then It got out of hand when you met my-soon-to-be Maid of Honor. You kept screaming at her “ I know its you, you had an extra life. ”
I saw you reaching for the sword and I tried to stop you. But you pulled a new one out. It was black and oozing with hate. I knew you should have killed the dark side of yourself that night. No idea that he would take over your heart. I thought I had it, but then again, I was the other girl.
But knowing what you did to keep me, it was great at the time but now it scares me. I know I have to leave you; you are not good for this world and me. But with that said I couldn ’ t go on. If I do, you will hunt down every guy I date and kill him. I had been though that before and I will not let it happen again. So, this is it. This is the end.
By the time you had read this, I will be back in park, where we had our first date by the swings.
And I will be dead.
I have no idea if this will stop you, but I can ’ t live in a world where one of the best guys become the worst evil-ex.
Good Bye Scott
Ramona Flowers
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[ WP ] Jesus returns to Earth , in a small town in Kansas , the first thing he sees is a sign for the `` Westboro Baptist Church . ''
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Only being able to speak Aramaic, he has no idea what the sign says and keeps on walking down the road.
Two men pass by an a 4x4. They toss a half-full tallboy of Monster Ultra-Blue at his head as they drive by, yelling words that he ca n't understand but feel all too familiar.
`` Same as it ever was,'' he sighs.
Feeling a bit thirsty, he picks up the can off the road and takes a sip.
`` Holy shitballs,'' he says in Aramaic, with a glimmer in his eye.
He takes off down the street like Sonic the Hedgehog, catches up with the men who wronged him and yanks them out of their moving 4x4.
`` No more Mr. Nice Christ!'' he shouts with the line delivery force of 10 Vin Diesels.
He snags the pair of Oakleys off of the confused driver as he tosses him out and sends him tumbling into the dirt like a sack of potatoes.
`` I could get used to this,'' he says as he lowers his bitchin' new shades and drives on, full-throttle toward his next exxxtreme adventure.
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[ CW ] Write a story that begins and ends with the same sentence . However , the sentence must have an entirely different meaning at the end of the story .
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My mind was all over the place. I had 8 trains of thoughts each racing in a different direction. I lost my job in January, the first and only job to ever give me any sense of financial stability gone. But I thought it would be alright, i had no debt and some money saved. Unfortunately, that money was n't enough to keep my girlfriend around. Hey but at least before she left she gave me a gift, I just wish I could have met they guy who gave it to her, because I did n't have the clap when we first started dating. Times were tough and I did n't have health insurance or a job so I moved back in with my mom. She was n't doing so well, my stepdad had left her too, and when I came home today her eyes were as empty as the pill bottle in her hand. The apple never falls too far from the tree. I was always a fan of nirvana why not go out like my hero. I prepared my buckshot dinner, and now I'm looking down at my own body. My mind was all over the place.
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[ WP ] A person from the Dark Ages is pulled forward in time and dumped into the middle of a heavy metal concert .
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This man drops to his knees and evacuates his bowels and bladder within the first five seconds. He closes his eyes, clutches his ears and prays fastidiously with the hope that he'll wake from this nightmare at any moment. Once the shock subsides, he grabs the first sharp thing he can find on his person and starts cutting his way towards the pit. Panic spreads. He is toppled and stomped to death before security can even get to him. No one suspects that this person was anything more than a perma-tripping bum on a bad day until years down the line, when his personal belongings are examined.
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[ WP ] You are endowed with unlimited , god-like power . Either : You are the only one in the world who cares , or the only one in the world who does n't care .
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The first words I remember hearing were from my grandfather. `` You are special, young Wilson,'' he told me with a wry smile. `` A little before your time, but maybe that is a good thing,'' a chuckle escapes him. Then, as he gently places me into the arms of a hooded man, he whispers something. `` Do not worry. Everything will be okay. I will see you again.'' Whether those words of reassurance were for him or me, I do not think I will ever truly find out, but I know that he lied; that night, he died in a house fire, in a feeble attempt at saving my already-lost parents.
The man who took me in insists that I call him `` Underling,'' even though he is very obviously fifty years my senior. However, I complied, as I did not want to disrespect the man who so kindly cared for me over the past three years.
From all I could tell, my life was normal: I had a bed, a bathroom, food on the table everyday, time to go out and explore the temple grounds, and all the books I could read. However, I felt that something was not right. My tutors did not teach me anything about the world around us, nor anything about common academics ( which I have read about in a few tomes from the library ). They all taught me philosophical nothings; curiosities, wonders, and subjects on the meaning of life, and whether or not it is precious, or disposable. From the few books I have been allowed to read about the outside world, these are not subjects a three-year-old should be studying.
I have figured it has something to do with the Dreams that I have been having. Underling tells me that they are nothing to fear, but instead praise. I do n't see any reason for such attention - they are just dreams. Yet, Underling insists on commenting on them. He states that they are special, and that I need to be kept safe because of it. Perhaps that is why I get a separate turret to myself, but who knows?
Thoughts such as that plagued my mind for my first year here, until I was finally awoken. My Dream that night revolved around my adoption, and why it happened. I suddenly saw everything so clearly. The fire was my fault. I woke up with a cold sweat, drops beading down my face as I sat in agony, but it had only just begun. The headaches were the worst part. Suddenly, I heard whispers in my head that did not belong to me, and I did everything I could to find silence. There was no solace for me, however; I started to see things I had never imagined, smell aromas unknown to me, hear foreign sounds, and I felt myself breaking into pieces.
Immediately, I knew I was not normal. That is why I live on this mountain, away from the harsh occupants of the world underneath me. The thick fog had finally been lifted, and Underling heralded me as a king. But I knew. I knew what it meant to be me, and what I would never be able to experience. I am three years old, yet have more strength, voice, knowledge, and expectations than anybody who may live my age 100 times. I wanted an escape. My training has been going on for two years, and I have learned nothing. What could they possibly teach me?
I am their God. I can crush them like insects with a thought, or force them to crush themselves by merely asking. I am their king, and I wanted nothing more than to rid myself of my power. Omnipotence is not for anybody. It is not a gift, nor a curse. I did not ask for this `` blessing,'' yet I am burdened with it. Tonight, I will force all of my Underlings into submission, so I may rid myself of them, and live in peace. I do not need this power.
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[ WP ] There is a device that assigns you a percentage score of how important you are to the world . Most people are 0-5 . The president is 60 . Your score just jumped from 1 to 99 .
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I woke up to a cup of sweet tea lovingly prepared by my mother. As I sat up straight and sleepily sipped at the piping hot beverage, she placed a peck on my cheek and chimed: “ Happy birthday, sweetheart! ” Oh, right, it ’ s that day today.
Turning twenty-one isn ’ t really that big of a deal in my country. You get to drink as soon as you ’ re eighteen, and I ’ ve always looked older than my age either way, so I ’ d been gaily guzzling booze long before that threshold. The only thing that changed is that I can now vote, and that is something that I couldn ’ t care less about. It ’ s not like my contribution would make any difference.
So today will just be yet another yearly reminder of my bitter loneliness, when I prance around the bars seeking attention until I ’ m too far gone to even care anymore, and land into bed with a complete stranger who thinks that “ clitoris ” is the name of an Asterix character.
Today also happens to mark the first anniversary of the day when some extremist atheist computer whiz managed to program what he thought would supplant any god or goddess that could ever have crossed the human mind. And boy, was he right. The Terrestrian Importance Tallying System, or TITS for short, is a program that reportedly gives each individual on Earth a number from 0 to 100 that represents the percentage of their overall relevance to mankind. To me, it ’ s just a load of crap, but then again some people still plan their days according to their horoscopes.
It ’ s probably worth being mentioned that my score has always been a measly 1. If that thing were to be trusted, the only reason why I ’ m not down to 0 would be that my mother would be devastated if I were to die. As a child, I could have probably ranked all the way up to a 20, if not more, as my academic abilities were superior in most subjects. But I just had to throw it all out the window and study Arts, which I wasn ’ t even that good at and ended up hating. Now I ’ m spending my days at home, leaching off my parents ’ money, and dreading the day when I ’ ll have to work as a full time cashier like everyone else. But, again, TITS is just a cushion for those who seek validation.
That is why I didn ’ t react when my mother approached me with a bemused look on her face to inform me that my percentage had been boosted to 99, a number supposedly reserved for the world ’ s top elite, if ever dispensed at all. I figured it was just the program ’ s way of congratulating me for my birthday. You know, give me a little confidence boost.
That is also why I didn ’ t even think twice before answering a phone call from a hidden number:
“ Hello, Ms. K? My name is John Doe, and I am the Director of Research and Development at a top notch pharmaceutical company of which the name shall not be disclosed. First of all, happy birthday, Miss. I would advise you to enjoy it as much as you can, and to take a seat if possible. ”
My heart barely skipped a beat at the thought of some overly elaborate phone prank. He continued, not waiting for me to reply:
“ We are just about ready to develop a highly accessible vaccine that would shield mankind of all currently known diseases as well as any possible mutation that they might undergo. But in order to do that, we still need to run some tests. Sadly, the aforementioned would be excruciatingly painful and would lead to the subject ’ s slow and horrifying death in ways deemed inhuman by all known governments. We knew that no one would volunteer for the task, so we decided to randomly pick someone out of the entire planet ’ s… uhm… lower tier individuals by using the TITS. And sadly, Ms. K, you were it. I would advise you to be ready to be picked up by our services by 6 A.M. tomorrow. Again, Miss, I wish you a truly happy birthday. ”
[ [ Might continue this later ] ]
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[ WP ] Write a comic or lighthearted scene that takes place in the darkest and most depressing setting you can think of
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Mick and Mike had been together since either could remember. Both were abandoned at a young age, left to live a life of jumping boxcars and scraping together whatever bits of food they could find just to get by for another few hours until their next meal.
It was late November and they had mistimed the passing of the last train. Now, out in the elements, they huddled next to one another as the chill of the night descended upon them and their miserable excuse for a fire.
`` Could n't get it any bigger huh?'' Mike managed to get out through chattering teeth
`` That's what she said!''
`` Seriously Mick we could freeze out here.''
`` Yah well,'' he glanced over at Mike who was just as malnourished, `` with your fat ass we should be ok.''
Mike just rolled his eyes and went back to staring at the dancing flame.
`` Besides,'' Mick continued, `` I was never taught how to build a proper fire.''
`` Your parents really sucked! Abandoning you and never teaching you how to build a good fire...'' Mike said with a bit of a laugh.
`` They were your shitty parents too ya know. They did n't happen to teach you how to not bitch and moan did they?'' Mick said punching his brother in the arm.
`` Guess not. The least you could do is get more wood for the fire.''
`` What are your legs broken?''
`` Ha ha very funny,'' Mike said slapping his thighs, `` making broken leg jokes to the paraplegic!''
`` Well as your personal chauffeur I'm glad you're the smaller brother, that's for sure!'' Mick said getting up to go get more wood.
He wandered near the fire picking up anything that was n't dampened by the light coating of snow. It had been many years since their parents decided they wanted to leave the children at the orphanage. That hellhole of a place beat and starved all the kids there if they did n't meet shipment quotas. Sometimes there were more severe punishments should anyone talk to the Cops and Social Workers who randomly stopped by.
One day, a'counselor' threw Mike down the stairs for getting in his way. Luckily he was only paralyzed instead of killed but Mick had enough and the two managed to escape after a particularly booze filled Christmas Party. Ever since they've been on the run.
Mick pushed the thoughts from his mind and brought the armful of branches back to the dying light.
`` I've made a contribution.'' Mike said holding up a very small twig.
`` Oh boy look at all that wood!'' Mick said sarcastically.
Mike, grinning like a fool, shot back quickly with `` THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!''
Mick's chuckles turned into a laughing fit and he plopped down next to his brother and gave him a big hug. `` Brother,'' he said clearing the tears from his eyes, `` we're gon na be just fine, you and me.''
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[ WP ] I thought it was a weapon . But it was actually a shield .
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I returned home that day to find Sarah waiting for me. Taking a look around the room I saw that she'd taken everything that was hers. She had two bags at her feet, and her make up was smudged from where she had been crying.
`` I'm sorry Jason. I really am.'' she whispered, holding back tears. `` I tried to make it work, I did. It's not your fault. You did n't do anything wrong. But you have too much to work through, and I ca n't be the one to help you through it. It's too hard.''
I nodded, my face calm. `` Fair enough. Go then.''
`` Jason... Don't..'' she begged, her eyes brimming with tears.
`` Come on Sarah. We both know you're running away.'' I answered. `` Just leave. I do n't care. It's not the first time this has happened. Besides, you never meant that much to me anyway. Just a good shag taken too far.''
A tear travelled down Sarah's cheek, struggling to keep the hurt off her face. `` I get it Jason, I really do. I know this is hard for you. Especially given what happened to you. I understand.''
`` Whatever,'' Jason replied, a bored look on his face. `` Just go.''
He watched as she wiped her tears away. He watched as she picked up her bags. He watched as she walked out of the door, out of his life. He sat down, alone in his apartment.
`` That went differently then normal.'' he muttered aloud to himself.
His mind went back to that day when he was fourteen. School had been let out early and he'd run home to find his mother packing her bags. Stopping in the doorway, he'd asked her `` Where are you going?''
His mum had turned around, startled. `` Jason honey, I did n't expect you to be back this early.''
`` Where are you going mum?'' he'd asked, knowing the answer already.
`` Oh Jason,'' she'd whispered, her face covered with shame. `` I ca n't deal with it anymore. Your dad, he, well, he gets so angry, especially when he's drunk. I ca n't take it anymore.''
`` I know. He hits me too remember. Now where are you going?'' Jason answered, his voice rising with anger.
`` I'm leaving Jason. I ca n't take it anymore.'' she replied, tears streaming down her face.
`` And you were just going to leave me here? Alone with that monster?'' Jason hissed.
`` I c-ca n't take you with me Jason. It's too much. I ca n't look after you and me at the same time.''
`` I took more beatings than you. I took them for you. And you were just going to leave me here. Not even a goodbye.'' Jason felt his insides tearing up, blood rushing in his ears. He was breathing heavily. His body shook with rage.
`` I'm sorry honey. I really am.'' his mum sobbed.
`` Get out. Get out and never come back. I do n't care about you, and I never will. You're a selfish person. A pathetic excuse for a mother. I hope I never see you again.''
Jason watched the words hit his mother. He noticed the pain and hurt that flashed across her face. He paid attention to the self-loathing that slowly consumed her. He forced his face into a smile. `` See, I do n't need you. I never did. Now get the hell out of my sight.''
Jason thought back to that moment, sitting alone in his apartment. He'd been so proud, so pleased at the pain he'd managed to cause with those words. He had been so happy to hurt her. To prove he did n't need her. His words had hurt her more than any weapon could.
Why had n't Sarah acted the same way? What had she said? She'd understood. What was there to understand?
Jason reached up to his cheek to rub his eyes, only to feel water on his cheek. Strange, he thought to himself. There's no leak in the ceiling. He looked at towards the kitchen and saw the drawing hung on the fridge. He smiled slightly to himself, remember the day Sarah had drawn it for him.
Something inside him cracked. She was gone. Gone forever, and he had n't even tried to put up a fight. Tears burst free, trapped for so long. Tears for the woman he loved. Tears for the mother who had left him with a monster.
She had understood. That's what she'd said. She knew the words were n't for her, but for himself. All these years he'd convinced himself that the words were his weapon. Yet all they'd ever been was a shield. And now, with three simple words, the shield was broken.
Jason sank down in his chair, tears now freely pouring down his face. He thought about the woman he loved. The mother he'd forgotten. The two who left. He sat there, alone again, and cried.
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Hey, not sure if this is what you were thinking of when you wrote the prompt, but hope you enjoy it anyways.
If anyones interested in more of my writing, I've started putting stuff in a subreddit called /r/feedmequickwriting Feel free to swing by and take a look: )
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[ WP ] Hearing people 's thoughts is possible , but only if they trust each other completely . A woman greeting her husband when she comes home from work discovers she can no longer hear her husband 's thoughts .
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First submission here, not really a writer, just thought this would be fun. Please critique, tell me if it's good or bad, it'll help me improve my writing.
The ticking of the clock was the only noise in the house. It has always been like this, for twenty-three years. Twenty-three lovely, silent years. When the dog barks or a door slams shut, I am reminded of the acoustics of my own home. It's strange. It's humbling.
I'll see you after work, dear. Dinner at seven? Just like it always is. I love you. I love you too! The seconds long conversation happens just as instantaneously as any other. I watch as he pulls out of the driveway, smiling in the front window, still in my nightgown, just like any other day. As his Mercedes disappeared around the corner of the cul-de-sac, I retreat to the shower, just like any other day.
Honey, where did I leave my purse? No answer. He must have been far enough away by now. No matter, I'll just check the usual places. Strange, I last had it at the grocery store... Did I leave it there? Oh! Shoot, shoot, shoot. I left it in the car. Shawn is probably at the office by now, I ca n't call without my ph- Oh no. Oh god, no, no, no, no. Shit! My phone is in my purse. My phone is in my purse in the car with my husband. Alone. Oh my god, if he thinks to look... When did I last delete my texts? Shit, I ca n't remember. Oh my god this ca n't be happening... What if- I have to stop... Maybe Shawn can hear me... Maybe he... Well, I'd better get to work! Just grab the keys, and off I go...
This shift is the longest ever. Of course my boss wo n't let me make personal calls with the desk phone, so I ca n't get ahold of Shawn. Wait, he would have called the desk if he had found my purse. He would have called to let me know that he had found it. That must mean he did n't see it! Wait, what if he found it and looked through my phone... No. Shawn would n't do that, he trusts me completely, he has to! But still... Why would n't he have called...? Ugh, two hours left on my shift. This is just torture...
I drove like a madwoman out of that parking lot. It was stupid, considering I get off of work two hours before him. I do n't care. I need to get home. Maybe I did n't check somewhere well enough? I know! I totally did n't even check the closet, I must have left it with my shoes. I think I remember leaving it there! Right next... who the hell am I kidding. My life is over, he surely found it. He checked my phone and saw those texts... he read each one, saw every picture that I sent... I feel nauseous. The tears make it hard to see the road... I need to calm down. five blocks. There is no way he found them. He would have called. There would have been some sign of him, he would n't just stay away from me all day. Three blocks. I'll go about the night normally, I'll cook dinner, we'll watch our movie, nothing will be out of the ordinary. That's it, after this, I'll stop texting him. I'll never think about him, not even when I'm far enough away from Shawn. Finally at the cul de sac. When Shawn gets home I'll just grab my pu- Jesus Christ. He's here.
Shawn is here. Did he say he would be home early? Oh my god I know he said he would be back after work, it's Tuesday. 6:30, Shawn gets home. Just like any other day. Why is he early? Why is he here? Shawn? nothing. Shawn? Why are you home early? Oh shit, he could hear me the whole time. God damn it, he must have heard everything Speak to me, baby what's going on? I finally reach the driveway, the engine bounces to a stop. Good lord I ca n't move. Every second that my mind is empty of his thoughts is agony. Okay, just breathe. Shawn, I'm making us potato salad tonight, do you want to pour the wine? Still nothing. My heart flutters, my stomach churns. Finally at the door. I go in, allowing the door to slam behind me. The acoustics do n't make me giggle this time. All I can do is stand there, frozen. Shawn sits on the sofa, just feet in front of me, but he feels like miles above me. My purse to his left, my phone in his hand. The clock ticks so loudly without his thoughts racing through my mind. His voice, it's dryer than the sound of his thoughts. `` Now we have something to talk about.''
Edit: Removed quotes from thoughts, made speaking more powerful. Good idea or bad idea? Also, am I allowed to edit this or will I get in trouble?
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[ WP ] Fear of mirror : You 're forced to face your fear of mirrors .
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It was the look in their eyes that I hated the most. I could n't quite place it. The pity I could stand, but there was something more, in their eyes. It's as if they were looking down on me, even though I was taller than them.
Every day I had put on my face. It was like a mask, hiding me from the world. With the mask on I could smile and be polite and socialize, but the mask was n't me.
Every day I would take the mask off. I would look myself in the mirror and I would see... Me. The real me, the person behind all those awful thoughts running through my head as I would smile, be polite and socialize. And the mask would start to crack, ever so slightly, until finally it broke.
Eventually I stopped putting on the mask. It was too much work to try and pick up the pieces. People noticed, of course. I had changed, they said. I was n't myself anymore. But I was, more now than ever, and that look in their faces pained me, so I looked away.
So here I stand, staring down my own reflection. It had been weeks since I had looked at myself in the mirror. I was afraid of what I would see there. The pity I could stand. In fact, it only made me angrier, but there was something more in those eyes. I look in the mirror and I see that same look I had seen on so many faces. It's as if I was looking down on me, even though we were eye to eye.
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[ EU ] Team Rocket has been dismantled . All the schemes that they plotted all came from one man . A man we all love and trust . Professor Oak .
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Professor Oak ashed his Cigar into an empty Togepi shell. He gazed at the big screen in front, where a live video of Ash, Misty, and Brock streamed.
`` Useless, team rocket, I put my undeserved faith in you,'' Professor Oak said.
Jessie and James were huddled close together in a transparent capsule at the end of the room. James patted her back as Jessie struggled to hold in her whimpers. `` We - we tried our best, Professor. But that blasted Pikachu stopped us at every turn.''
`` Blasted, Pikachu?'' Oak asked, `` The only thing being blasted was you!''
A shadow darted from the edge of the room, its claws stopping inches from Oak's face. Meowth strained against the invisible force field, and Oak simply smiled and puffed away at his cigar.
`` Cat got your tongue?'' Oak asked him.
Meowth groaned, crumpling to the floor in defeat. `` Using Pokemon powers for your own gain?''
Oak returned his gaze to Ash and the crew, ignoring the cats statement.
He considered all the times Ash had foiled his plans. The whole goal of the'Trainer' program was so he could send innocent boys into the wild and then beat them to a pulp with his master Pokemon. Helping people was entirely overrated.
Power. That was the real goal.
`` First, you failed me,'' He muttered, staring as Pikachu walked on the screen, `` and now you - Meowth - have failed me. I never believed in those pink haired buffoons. But you-''
`` I tried!'' Meowth said, `` But Pikach-''
`` Pikachu nothing.'' Oak stood abruptly, pushing a boot to Meowth's face and kicking him across the room floor. Meowth was sent spiraling toward the laboratory wall where he crashed and crumpled into a heap.
`` I'm sorry, boss,'' Meowth whispered before he shuddered and remained limp.
Oak walked to a capsule at the far back, which was covered in cloth. He gripped a piece of the cloth with a white-knuckled grasp and then pulled the sheet free.
A human-sized Pokemon stood within the misty capsule. It's alien form slowly becoming clearer. It's breaths were even and dark eyes calculated. From the Pokemon's white body came several long gray tubes, which fed it a strange liquid. And once it had surveyed the room, the Pokemon shifted its thick purple tail from side to side.
`` The perfect specimen. I shall call you, Meowth Two!'' Oak declared, erupting in evil laughter.
`` Meowth Two? It looks nothing like, Meowth,'' James muttered to Jessie.
`` It looks creepy,'' Jessie agreed.
Oak's temple pulsed in fury, he closed his eyes calming himself. `` Very well, the perfect name for an imperfect specimen. I shall call you - Mewtwo!''
The Pokemon - Mewtwo - smirked in recognition.
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[ WP ] Magic requires calories . The world 's most powerful wizards must eat constantly .
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I was about to prove to the world that I was one of the strongest wizards living. I told lots of people that, and no one EVER believed me. Why? Cause I did n't LOOK like a powerful wizard. Most people, most WIZARDS even, think that powerful wizards are FAT!
See, magic takes up your energy. Calories specifically. So, alot of wizards gorge themselves and store that energy as fat, so they think they have a huge reservoir of energy.
Me? I run. See, there is n't a lot that burns energy like running hard. Why does that make a better wizard you're thinking. You've got less energy you say. Well, my body expects it to be burning through calories like crazy, so my metabolism is through the ROOF! Furthermore, when I do gorge myself, I USE IT! I practice my magic and burn every calorie i have till I damn near collapse. And this year, I entered the tournament.
Most years the tournament sees rotund wizards with long beards gathering up energy for big crazy spells and hurling them at each other. And when you just do one big spell after another, with long drawn out charging times, that fat comes in handy. One of the prizes is biggest loser, ie the wizard that sheds the most pounds. They were in for a rude awakening this year.
My first match was up. We both walked out onto the field, and the crowd laughed at me. I just grinned. We met into the middle and shook hands as per protocol. My opponent sneered in derision at me and I took it all in stride. He had a turkey leg in his other hand and he finished it off just as he got to his starting position. He threw the bone into the crowds and everyone in that section went a little wild.
The starting light went from red to yellow. Time dragged a bit. Then, it went green. My opponent began charging, making numerous hand gestures and crafting a big honking spell. I made 3 quick movements and threw a spell that would knock him out if it hit. I knew it would n't, but it did force him to waste his spell to raise his defenses, which he barely got up in time. Which is why his bell got rung by the second follow up spell. TKO, total match time 22 seconds. The crowd was silent.
The next few matches did last longer, but not to much. I was n't a one trick pony, which is what they assumed. I was actually impressed by one of my opponents, and I was gon na make sure and tell him so after the tournament, because he kept charging his big spell and RAN from my shots. The crowd got into that one, and I actually decided to eat after wards.
This was gon na be the final match, so it was time to pull out my trump card. My water backpack. Officially, participants were allowed to eat and drink while they fought, but in practice few did it as it took hands to do. I had filled my pack with sweet tea. This gave me some extra calories, which I might not need. It was also not obvious, so should be a fun surprise.
We walked to the center of the ring and shook hands as per protocol. This gentleman decided to talk, and the audience heard everything due to the microphones we both wore.
`` So you're a bit of a Dark horse huh? Well I'm the reigning champ and I'll tell you what, you wan na fight your way, FINE! I throw spell after spell at you till you get beaten at your own game!'' The crowd ate it up.
`` I've got nothing against you, but by the end of this you'll be spent and sweating on the ground. I'll be just getting warmed up.'' A large portion of the crowd booed, but enough to be heard cheered me on. I did n't expect that really, but it made me feel good.
I smiled as we went to our starting locations. This was gon na go down in the history books as one of the best tournament bouts of all time. I knew this because he had agreed to fight my way, fast and furious and not relenting till the other guy went down.
The starting light turned from red to yellow, and I took a deep breath, calming my nerves. The light went from yellow to green and the crowd rose to a roar. I began a 3 gesture shot and realized he'd fired off a flick, a single gesture spell. It would n't have been enough to drop me in a single shot but it would either force most wizards to raise their defenses or take a hit to get their own spell off. I dodged, feeling the heat of the tiny bullet fly past me, as I threw my spell. I took another flick on the should, defended one, and dodge another before he had to stop and defend against my attack. Fingers, hands, and spells were flying around, punctuated by sounds of impact and crashes. I moved around a fair amount, trusting my body to get me clear of alot of the smaller spells, while my opponent worked with an economy of movement, which I admit was not a terrible strategy. He was good, I had no illusions. I began to suck on the tea and decided to take a calculated risk. I started on a 4 gesture+modifier while my opponent was recovering from a defense. He recognized the spell for what it normally was and began a 3 gesture zinger. I released my spell right before his struck me, the modification taking some extra time. 3 purple orbs, as opposed to the singular that would have occurred normally, flew from my hands and in 3 separate arcs toward my opponent. His spell was about to end this fight, and I had to use my other trump card.
I should explain something about defending against a spell. It takes no hand gestures, but it needs an equal amount of energy as the spell you're stopping. It also takes a certain amount of time to stop it, time I did n't have for this one. So I did something no one had ever seen done before. I deflected it. It BOUNCED off my defense. This was the secret weakness to my style, and why I waited to use this option till late in the game. The big giant 30+ gesture spells were n't going to bounce off ANYTHING. These tiny spells would, and it required less than half the energy and time as stopping it cold. It was just an option no one, other than me, had considered.
After I deflected the spell, I began on my largest spell of the tournament, 14 gestures. I was pretty sure I'd have time as the 3 purple orbs would strike at slightly different times. My opponent had just started dealing with the first orb when I began my spell. By the time he had stopped all three, I threw.
His eyes went wide as he saw it and pulled up his defenses. The ground shook somewhat at the connection, and he fell to his knees. He was spent, sweating, and wheezing. I was vaguely tired.
`` I told you. No offense meant, I just knew it would go down this way.'' I fired off the final spell, and the crowd went WILD!
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[ WP ] Upon committing suicide , you are sent back to a turning point in your past to try again . Strangely , there do n't seem to be any big decisions coming up any time soon .
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24th floor... Screw them all...
19th floor... I'm sure mom will understand.
12th floor... That emptiness in me. What was it.
6th floor... If only I could have filled that void... Then maybe life would be different.
I close my eyes as I'm about to hit the pavement. I wait. And wait. And... What? Why does it smell like Charlie's car? I open my eyes as we come to a stop.
I've been here before. 12 years ago Charlie, my boss, took me out to lunch for my first day of work. As I wonder what I'm doing here, I hear tapping on the window and snap back into this new reality.
`` Are you coming or not? Like I was saying, this soup here is amazing, completely changed my life.''
As I step out of the car I hear myself saying `` No thanks. I really just ca n't bypass a Caesar salad.'''What the hell' I think to myself. `` You know what, today feels special - what's that soup called?''
`` Ha, good choice. Redemption soup. Just fills that void in your soul, if you know what I mean.'' Charlie says as we walk into Souper Salad just like I did a lifetime ago.
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[ WP ] Write a story in the point of view of someone who has committed a murder today . Do not mention the murder .
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Walking down the street.
`` The streets are crowded today. Why is he staring at me? Walk straight! confident, like I own this place, do n't be rushed, walk like I need to be somewhere soon. But i do n't have anywhere to go now. Does n't matter, walk like I do.
I feel the metallic smell of blood flooding my nose. Do i smell like blood? Can other people feel it too? No, not possible. I changed and showered before i went out. It must be my imagination.
Oh, she smiled to me! Smile back, confident, nod head a bit. She's cute.
Where is the knife? I cleaned it in the sink, threw it in a trash can, two blocks back. It was in paper bag. Also broke the lock, making it look like a break in. Yes, am good, no worries.
Oh God, i miss mom already.
Oh, I'm here already! That was faster than i thought.''
Steps over the ledge.
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[ WP ] Take your favourite song and turn it into a short story .
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Ok so im a really shitty writer and im on mobile so dont expect anything good.
All Freddie wanted was a girl. Not any normal girl, but one with an ass. This might cone off as shallow for our good friend freddie here, but he didnt care. In his mind, a large part of living was just girls with asses. Thats all he wanted, and for some reason, he never took them back to his place. You see, freddie was always a quiet, peaceful kind of man. All that changed when he realized how much he wanted to fuck these girls. He had an irresistable urge to get freaky with them. Many people claim his desires for sex began with these girls. Freddie himself remains quiet on this subject, neither confirming nor denying it.
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[ WP ] A date with Destiny
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`` You'll figure out how to be alone.''
`` I- what? Really?'' I said. Destiny put her chin in her hands and shrugged at me. She had the affect of a chatty dental hygienist.
`` You know, it's not so bad as everyone makes it out to be. Loneliness, I mean. People find a way to make it work,'' said Destiny.
`` But I- I have so many friends now, and we care-''
`` Stop,'' said Destiny. `` Stop trying to rationalize. Stop trying to plan for it. You just ca n't plan for your whole life! Most people's lives do n't look anything the same when they're 22 and when they're 62.''
I tried to argue, but there was nothing to argue. This was Destiny. I could n't reason with Destiny without sounding like a small, sad child. I sat back in my chair. Destiny had ordered both of us rice pudding cups for dessert. My mother kept rice pudding in the fridge when I was a kid. Destiny knew me.
I stuck my spoon into my rice pudding but found that I was n't hungry.
`` I do n't want to be alone,'' I said to Destiny. I had had boyfriends. I was getting better at relationships. I had made friends. Good friends. People I laughed with. I thought that I would n't have to live the way that sad people did. I thought that I would do better than that.
Destiny picked up my hand and held it in hers. `` Do n't forget about the other stuff I told you,'' she said. `` Do n't forget about the publications, the job offers, the tenure, the salary.'' I grabbed one of her hands back, and held it closer. She had short clipped fingernails. No scars.
`` All of that stuff is n't as important,'' I said.
Destiny cocked her head and stared at me for a few seconds.
`` You can trade it,'' she said. `` Right now. I'll make you a deal. Success for friends.''
I drew my hands back. I put a spoonful of rice pudding in my mouth. It needed cinnamon, but the texture was good. I tried not to chew it, and instead let the full, sweet taste travel back down my throat.
`` I'm not interested in making deals,'' I said to Destiny. She raised an eyebrow. `` And, I think you're bluffing,'' I said. Destiny gave me a small, sickly smile. I got up from the table and left.
Mercy walked over to the table after I left and took my seat. He smirked at destiny. `` Cruel, no?'' he said.
`` She needed a push,'' said Destiny.
`` You're supposed to be a beacon of truth,'' said Mercy.
`` Do I need to repeat my spiel over and over, Mercy?''
`` I guess so. I'm a little bit simple, sometimes.''
`` Well the gist is pretty simple, too.'Supposed To Be' does n't exist, Mercy.''
`` Then who are you?''
Destiny laughed and stirred her rice pudding. `` Everyone wants some kind of promise,'' she said.
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[ WP ] You understand why the love of your life is leaving .
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She's leaving. A cliche we could not avoid always seemed to be waiting for our situation to change. 200 miles and 17 years of age might as well be cyanide and depression. It is deadly. Some would argue that time heals all wounds, but I would argue that it ultimately creates the lacerations. One cut. Slash. You are dead.
I loved her more than I believe I have ever loved anything else. More than I ever believed. She's leaving. I am dead.
After the news broke, my first response was to wait. Waiting is what I have done for 2 years and I will do it again until our predicament clears. She once asked me, `` What do you fear?''
My response, `` Nothing?''
As if nothing had a definition that required no further questions. Questions are what I feared. Ultimately, inquiry brings doubt and realization in a whirlwind of truth that I have fought to avoid.
The truth is I loved her. She's leaving.
My English teacher once told me that past tense has a meaning. It is the remembrance of something to be foreshadowed. I could not disagree more. I loved her.
She was everything I wanted, but nothing I could maintain. Inconsistency was a normality in my life, but she was the antithesis. For once, there was a singularity. The reason to keep moving, the reason to hope, and the reason to believe. She is leaving.
I had to let her go, and now I do not. She is exiting center stage and shall be on the side. As I watch her become her aspirations, she will watch me maintain the facade. I am lying. To everyone. She is leaving.
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[ WP ] You 've kept your immortality secret for thousands of years . Thats going to be a lot harder now that your on a generation ship on a 2000 year voyage .
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In the beginning it was hard to watch them die. I'd known them my whole life... then half my life. Seeing friends and tribesmen wither and die while I lived on and on -- it was terrifying. Then the centuries stretched on and each life was a smaller part of mine. For thousands of years the tribe accepted me. I was their holy man, a gift from the gods who could not die.
Then the missionary came to our little island with technological wonders I could not explain. He convinced them that my longevity was a farce, that I was a voice for *his* God's nemesis. The tribe learned to fear the unknown after thousands of years of wondering at it. I was warned by the Elder's son that they were coming for me and fled the island in the night.
I spent a century in awe of the world we'd never known. I roamed the globe and marveled at the abundance of it. But progress caught up with me. I watched the world convulse through war after war, getting smaller each time. So many lives flickering in and out of existence.
Centuries more passed. I amassed tremendous wealth. I learned to manipulate the systems of government. It was my words that brought about the attack on Pearl Harbor, enraging America and ultimately ended the second World War early. I was the driving force behind the unification of South America and the coup that led to Chinese democracy.
But I could n't walk amongst the people whose short lives I'd done so much for. Every citizen was accounted for. Coming out of the shadows would mean committing to one identity. I would be discovered, this time with no way to flee.
That is, until they saw K-2845. That was the designation of the asteroid that would end life on Earth. Too massive to deter, mankind poured it's collective will into great ships to spread to other worlds. Being the wealthiest man on the planet, it took little effort to secure my position on a ship.
The problem remains. My nature will be discovered. But it will be on my terms. I have chosen to take charge of the matter and secure my place. A plague sweeps the adults of the ship even now. Their children will survive, left in the care of myself and the robots. I will teach them.
I've spoken for the gods and controlled the fates of nations. I've watched hundreds of generations pass into history. I have *been* since the beginning of history. It's time I took my rightful place. Yes, I will teach them to worship me.
On this new world, I will be their god.
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[ WP ] You are part of a small team of cryogenically frozen colonizers that was launched from earth towards the nearest habitable planet , the journey has taken 35,000 years . You awaken to find that In the interim humanity figured out faster than light travel , and the planet is now colonized .
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20 %, that is how many of us will not wake up on average. Cryotechnology never really got past this. Our scientists kept putting off commercial availability because 1 in 5 just did not wake up even in perfect lab situations. After a century of no advancements, they made the technology available for commercial use. Not without a giant warning label and of course the necessary legalese putting all responsible and fault n anyone stupid enough to set foot in one. Lawyers, it seems they only get more involved, day by day or centuries later.
Humanity was ready to move into the stars, not very fast mind you, but nearly 60 % of c, so we've got that going for us. It was a lot harder to get explorers for these missions however. It was one thing to say you would miss your small child's college graduation, it was another to say a round trip might be a few generations come and gone. There were a few worlds we could build small settlements on, but planets ready for large scale colonizations were few and far between, emphasis on the far.
So, we have a few centuries of travel, 20 % are n't even going to wake up. That's if no other problems pop up. With odds like that, the reward better be damn worth it. And that's how they got colonists. Private companies promised successful colonists the world, quite literally. 40 % of each planet was available for a good ol' fashioned land grab. A few hundred years prior, the Americans needed people to settle the open western territories, so they let people race for different plots and first to plant their flag got it.
So for people with not to much going for them, this was an answer. See the Galaxy, maybe survive long enough to make your decedents land barons. So this brings us to my dumb ass. Stuck in my mini fridge, aboard this silly spaceship with a few hundred of my closest people I've known for a few months of training. And then we slept.
And slept. And slept. We passed the horse head nebula, the ship took some great photos. We narrowly missed a rouge planet that was n't on the chart, did n't miss a few small rocks that were trailing it. Sections 3, 17, and 36 were damaged. Through this, we slept. We later found out we had the least fatalities of all expeditions launched that decade. 76 % survived wake up in orbit of our new home.
There was just a slight, minor unexpected problem. When we arrived in orbit, we were far from alone Thousands of ships, from small drones assigned to customs, permanent stations, interstellar freighters, and even some enormous carriers called this planet home. The surface was well developed too, we were so lucky in hindsight. They were humans, a few minor differences over the years sprouted up, but humans.
We were treated like clowns in a circus. Paraded around as relics of a long past golden age of humanity. Those bastards finally figured out faster than light travel, and did n't bother getting us. Would n't be that hard right? Just plot the course and stop the autopilot. But, hey, we were on our way anyway, just easier. So we went on our dog and pony show.
This planet had some interesting life that we played with genetically. Imagine cocoa trees, but the pods were lobster tails, that smiled. Just....weird everywhere. My whole crew was n't prepared. And yet, it still was basically all the same. People got speeding tickets, streets were littered, life happened. Oh, and lawyers, they kept getting even more involved while we were gone. I do n't even know how many forms we had to sign just to step foot off our ship, eat a meal, or even watch entertainment.
So here we are, expecting a harsh life struggling to survive in exchange for owning enormous parts of this planet. And instead we're just as bad off as before, but in a strange future on a strange planet. We sold just about everything that was on the ship, and even the ship. Museums, private collectors and eccentrics. They absolutely went crazy for our retro technology. This left us well enough off to not worry about finances for a while. A few kept important things, family heirlooms and wedding rings, things of that nature. I kept a few things, I framed a printout of my contract cover page, my electronic helper, and my silly flag.
I was a little less than sober....a lot of the time. A few of us got together for an anniversary, we tried to do this as our impromptu fame passed. So here we are in the gardens of the capital city, and I had brought my flag, our little groups symbol. We realized it was the last one a few years prior, the rest changed hands and many left the planet.
And as we drunkenly rambled on about our supposed glory that will never be I made a decision. I quoted my group down, standing ( swaying ), I tell them how we've been gyped, we were promised that if we raced I our sleep, we could plant our flags and claims virgin world.
And so, I slammed my flag into the ground, right through the carefully manicured lawn of grass carefully imported from earth. And we kept partying.
Well, it turns out those lawyers that drew up our contracts so many years ago knew what they were doing. It counted. I still do n't really believe it, but our parcels were predated. My little flag planted in the garden, well MY garden. I owned not only the gardens, but most of the Capitol, all the nice parts anyway, about 3/4 all said and done. Plus everything a thousand miles west and north. MINE!
Score one for all those son of a bitch lawyers.
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[ WP ] Write an internal monologue of a suicidal person who is falling in a seemingly never-ending hole .
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I slipped down and down the fluid air. The air whipped across my body, carving shallow streaks on my aching skin. I peered down into the darkness that I was approaching, but the darkness was always kept at bay by the light that shown from above. I looked up and I could still see the perfect circle of light that I had jumped in from. But I was n't getting any further from it.
I had been stuck like this for hours. My lungs felt crushed and I could barely breathe and my stomach ached with hunger. My skin was being rubbed raw and my insides were jumbling up inside my quivering body. This was supposed to be swift, but it was becoming arduous and painful. I spat at the walls of the well in frustration. The spit disappeared as I passed by it. I howled in frustration and struck out at the edge of the well.
The skin on my hand broke open and blood gushed out. The bones in my hand splintered and the sinews of my muscles lashed around. The pain erupted like fire as my mangled arm waved through the air. I screamed and screamed as the pain overwhelmed me. But through that pain, I had an idea.
I pushed back the waves of nausea and mind-numbing pain and angled my body so that I was falling towards the wall of the well. When I was close enough I charged my head into the stones and they instantly bashed my skull open and snapped my neck. I did n't even have any time to register the pain. I was finally at peace.
My limp body continued to fall for a few more seconds before abruptly hitting the bottom of the well. The ground was hard and unforgiving and my body shattered and twisted. Suddenly, the ground turned soft and my body slowly sank downwards. As the tip of my bent out spine sunk below the surface, I opened my eyes.
My body was completely healed. I was fine. I was falling.
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[ WP ] You manage a nuclear arsenal . Each day , random launch codes are generated ; in order to save them , you paste them into a subreddit you made . One day , thousands of redditors show up attempting to make sense of the seemingly random strings of numbers and letters you have been posting .
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`` The next code will be ***i1/VdTA/a2Gn+3YIY5GSAWMbwxYj47PShnU=***'' I said.
`` Bloody stain on the church pew left by a new Easter dress, it is, man,'' he said. `` The next code was i1/VdTA/a2Gn+3YIY5GSAWMbwxYj47PShnU=. Like how'd you know, man? What maths did you have to use to crack that fanciful egg?''
`` Well, it was simple, really,'' I said. `` I mean, once I started to get to it, it was n't even complicated, it was just a cypher block chain and the key was someone running his fingers along the numbers of a keyboard, 1 to 0. I just looked at what you posted:
i1/VSHgtcy2vqW0Bet6uRnhe0l4rurbWhn9g6w==
pUrVdTA/MjKs6H0Gf5G0RzAaw1c68g==
gwyBYDM/MiDk5XYGY5G6VTAT3xYi86bS
q0KRISo/cy2t83xJfNm+U3VZ1RYg9a7Syn9g9No=
7W+UdCs/Mgjj/3xJatS+TzAc1Fc96anZjQ==
q0KRITQ7Zyas4HcOKMK0AXwRyFFu7qjWng==
And after a little number fu the solution became obvious. I mean, you posted on the subreddit that they were each day's random nuclear launch codes and hah, hah, nobody cared, but then you were doxed.''
`` Like, man I know,'' he said, `` I'm here, I'm the one who was sweating rusty balls out thinking that I might end up losing my security clearance now that my info's hanging out in the air a pair of last weeks gym shorts which are still hanging in my back room, you know. I have n't even had time to finish doing my laundry!''
`` Well, you screwed up now,'' I said. `` You should never have made that subreddit. Just write them down, pencil and paper. Now anyone that likes music and passes the right song lyrics in can trigger a nuclear war.''
`` Yeah, man, totally, right right,'' he said. `` But I mean when I was making the *random* codes, you have to admit, Ganster's Paradise is a bloody amazing song to send the world out by. How could I've known that it'd set me up for a hacking?''
> There are three parts to every story. The beginning, the middle, and the twist.
> [ More by me ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/kj6bwb/ )
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[ WP ] `` This is a story where the bad guys win ''
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`` This is a story where the bad guys win.'' I said looking down on my grand children.
`` Do you mean you, grandpa?'' Billy said.
`` Do you want to hear the story or not?''
`` Not if it sucks.''
`` Stacy!''
`` Your stories are always boring, grandpa.'' Stacy replied, seven years old and already gone through the woman's lib movement.
`` Listen you little fucktard, my story is awesome and if you do n't hush up I'll send you back to aunt Maggie.''
Wide-eyed fear lit up in her eyes.
`` That's right, do you know how she got that fat ass of hers?''
`` I wo n't say anything.'' Stacy said meekly.
`` Yeah, that's what I thought. Now, let's get back to it. This is a story where the bad guys win.''
`` We learned in ethics class that there really is n't such a thing as good or bad.'' Charlie, the eldest, spoke up.
`` Was Hitler evil?''
Charlie thinks and I stare at him. `` Yes.''
`` Then your teacher's a retard. Now back to my story. Me and this guy I once knew went to Chicago.''
`` I knew it was about you!'' Stacy points.
I glare at her, silently. She lowers her finger.
`` Me and this guy went to Chicago, now we got into a scrape with a whore that my friend was dating.''
`` Mom says you curse too much.''
`` Shut the fuck up kid. My prostate is the size of a golf ball; I can say what ever the fuck I want.''
The room quiets.
`` Now this `` young lady'' came back to my friend and I and said that we owed her money for a rim job that she performed the night before. Umm a rim job is a car thing.''
`` Are you talking about sex?'' Billy asked.
`` No, it was a car thing.''
`` Rim job means...''
`` Charlie put down that fucking phone! Jesus fucking Christ!''
`` Anyway, where the fuck was I? My friend Rob got this rim job from a whore he hired the night before. She said he owed her money and Rob was n't having any of it, so he told her to fuck off. But then her pimp came over and stabbed Rob in the stomach.''
Stacy covers her ears.
`` Come on now, it ai n't that bad. Just a little stab wound. He was fine.''
`` I'm telling mom.'' Billy got up.
`` Fucking fat fuck, get back here. Charlie go get him will you?''
Charlie stood up and took Stacy's hand. `` That was sad grandpa. What's wrong with you?''
I watch them leave.
`` About time they fucking left. This has been the nosiest Christmas ever.''
I return to my room to watch sexy Asian porn in peace.
The bad guys win again.
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[ WP ] You are cursed to spend 1,000 years as an invisible ghost in a 50 foot radius of your choosing . You will be revived at the end of the timeline if your choice has n't driven you mad before then .
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In this room I've watched presidents come and go. Important decisions being made every day. When I first came to haunt this room the power plays were always the most thrilling times, seeing important decisions being made that would effect the world for the better, or for the worse. But now as I've seen them pass, the world affairs concern me less and less as I observe. What I treasure most are the quiet moments, alone with a president and their thoughts. Watching them drum on the desk softly or hum a little tune from their childhood when they think no one is listening. But I am listening, always listening.
The presidents used to change so quickly that I hardly got to know them. That was before the long war came. Now its just the same one, the fat one. Being in the powerful seat he occupies daily, you'd think his desk was full of important documents and briefing papers. No, its full of hidden snacks that he chomps throughout the day. His favorite is beef jerky. An angry man, though well connected. He keeps his wife hidden away in Iowa somewhere, for her safety he says. But I see the visitors that come and go. And none of them look like his wife.
I used to watch treaties being made, political standstills negotiated, and campaign strategy coordinated. But now I just watch him order strikes in this state or that. I just hope this war ends soon, or that those gray hairs of his multiply until they accompany him to the grave, then maybe I can watch a different man. Like the old ones. And hopefully one that can carry a tune.
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[ WP ] it is currently a week after Google released a new type of robot that is indistinguishable in looks from humans , unbeknownst to you your new neighbor that just moved in is a robot… controlled by twitch plays real life .
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The day that AJ moved in next door, I was sitting at the desk in my bedroom, drinking coffee. This is what I had done every morning for a year. I would read coffee, turning on no lights, only basking in the soft glow of my laptop screen while I read the news. News of a terrible and cruel world that killed each other, shot each other, hated each other, yelled at each other, and just in general did things to each other that I had no particular interest in being a part of. No more of a part of than I had already been, anyways.
That particular morning, my news article of choice was a USAToday piece about Google's latest technological `` advancement'': the creation of a completely human-like robot. Thankfully, those psychopaths in Silicon Valley had stopped short of making it intelligent ( I could only imagine the consequences ), but I was still a bit disappointed to read that the human robot's only actual purpose was, well, to be controlled by other humans. Not just other humans, but apparently, a bunch of nerds that spent most of their time playing video games.
I shook my head. `` No one wants to live in reality anymore,'' I muttered, before the sound of the knock nearly made me spit up my coffee. I was n't used to visitors.
When I answered the door, AJ was facing the other way, staring at the wall across from my apartment. I eyed the back of his head suspiciously. `` What do you want?'' I sneered.
`` Hello!'' AJ yelled. He was very loud. Then he walked directly into the wall.
`` Hey, you dolt! You'll hurt yourself!''
`` My name is AJ!'' He was still yelling as he took a step back from the wall, then ran into it again. `` Help me! I am trapped! I will die here!''
`` No you... Jesus,'' I muttered.
`` Where is Jesus!? I need him!''
`` No you do n't, kid,'' I said. `` Religion is for the birds. Now, quit running into that wall.''
`` Okay!'' He ran into it several more times before I finally grabbed his shoulders and turned him around.
`` Thank you for letting me in!'' he yelled before nearly barreling me over as he walked into the apartment. I scrambled to my feet and checked that my bathrobe was still tied.
`` Hey kid, I never said that you could... what are you doing!?''
He had beelined into the kitchen and picked up the blender. He was now trying to put his foot into it.
`` I want to use the blender!''
`` This is n't the time to use that!'' I scolded as I rushed up and yanked it off his foot. `` Ugh. God. No smoothies today, I suppose.'' What was I supposed to make for lunch? I had made smoothies every day for a year!
`` Where is your PC?'' AJ asked.
`` You mean my laptop? I'm not telling you where-''
AJ had not waited for an answer. He had wandered over to the kitchen table and had gotten himself stuck between it and the counter, then broken down into tears.
`` Help me! I am dying!''
`` You're not fucking *dying* okay? You're just stuck.'' I grabbed the table and pulled it away from the wall.
`` Thank you! You have saved me again. What is your name? My name is AJ!''
I rubbed my forehead. `` My name is Dirk Gratt, and I really need you to-''
`` Digrat!''
`` No, *Dirk Gratt*, and listen, I do n't generally have visitors, so I need you to get going off to wherever it is that... GET THAT BLENDER OFF YOUR FOOT!'' Once again I pried my Vitamix away from his toes. `` Look, I do n't do company. You need to leave.''
AJ began to cry again. God, he cried a lot. `` But I'll die out there!''
`` You wo n't die. It's just the real world. I mean, I do n't go out there, but that does n't mean you should n't!''
`` I ca n't do it! There are too many voices! Voices telling me what to do! I'll die out there! I need help! Can you please help me!?''
I raised my hand. I fully intended to point at the door. To tell him to get out. But as I did, there was something about his voice that reminded me of someone. No, not just the voice. The eyes. The eyes that were darting wildly around the room, full of excitement and fear and anticipation.
`` You're... you're a bit of a child, are n't you?'' I asked.
AJ nodded vigorously. `` I'm one day old! I need help! Ca n't you help me!?''
The idea that he was one day old was stupid and clearly wrong, but as I looked in his eyes, I wondered if my son had asked anyone for help. If my son had looked in anyone's eyes, that day he was in so far over his head, and yelled, `` Ca n't you please help me!?''
I wondered if Andrew cried on that day, a year ago. I had always told him to never cry. I wish I had n't. I had cried every day for a year.
`` You need help to get around outside?'' I asked.
`` Please help me! I ca n't get a bike!''
I sighed. And instead of pointing at the door, I put my hand on his shoulder. `` Let's go, AJ. Let's go outside. There's nothing to be afraid of.''
And with that, I left my apartment with a very strange, radically immature, and permanently conflicted individual under my wing.
On our way out, he grabbed the blender.
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[ OT ] what is your favorite prompt you 've written ? post it here with the prompt that inspired it .
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** [ WP ] Why did you hit our elderly neighbor with a cantaloupe? **
Oh my god, seriously?
What did he do, email you? I swear, I'm this close to calling health & human services on the guy.
Listen June, I know you sorta like the guy and feel sorry for him, but you do n't know the half of it. I've refrained from telling you some things because I did n't want to freak you out, but the guy's a creep. And I really think he could be unstable.
Yeah, I know he's old and infirm and does n't have anyone. But he's not the nice old guy you think he is.
Some of the things I have n't told you:
-- Do you remember last year when Buster was sick and we had to take him to the vet? They could n't tell us what the problem was, remember? Well, I found some bones and raw meat under the hedge that runs along the side yard, and I firmly believe he tried to poison the dog ( if you'll recall, he had complained to you -- very politely -- a few months earlier about Buster barking early in the morning. )
-- Remember the two times I had a flat tire last year? I think he let the air out of it. Ca n't prove it, but there's really no other explanation.
-- Last summer I was doing yardwork and came around the house to find him in his backyard, with a pair of binoculars. It looked like he was looking at Kaylee's window. ( Yes, the shades were up and she had the light on in there. ) I stopped and said to him, `` Birdwatching?'' He flushed red and mumbled something and went back inside.
OK, now about this morning. I was taking out the trash before leaving for work and as I came around the corner, I slipped and fell. Looked down, and guess what I slipped in? Dogshit. And it was n't just one pile. He had taken every piece he could find and put it out on the walkway. I started cursing and gathering up the crap that fell out when the garbage bag ripped, and when I look up, he's standing at the side door smiling at me. `` Looks like you stepped in a mess there!'' he said ( with a malicious fucking grin ). `` Maybe you better make sure that dog is n't pooping all over the place.''
I had just picked up a cantaloupe ( that half that was overripe that you tossed this morning ) and before I knew what I was gon na do, yeah, I threw it at him. And I still got it, babe, because it hit him smack in the face. He goes stumbling back a step and falls on his ass, and starts squawking -- this is the last straw, who do I think I am, wait til the cops hear about this, blah blah blah.
Well, I do n't feel great about it now but I walked toward him and he shut up real quick and started scooting backward through the doorway. I caught the door just as he was trying to kick it shut and kicked it back open again. And I said, `` Sure, call the cops, George. And I'll have to mention to them about my neighbor the peeping tom, the one who poisons dogs and lets the air out of my tires.'' His eyes got real big at this. Then I said, `` If anything unpleasant ever happens around my house again, it wo n't be a cantaloupe next time. And if you even look at my daughter again, I'l fucking kill you deader than dogshit.'' Then I left.
So there you have it -- why I hit that old cocksucker with a cantaloupe. You know I'm not a violent or unreasonable man. But no one fucks with my family.
Love you hon
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[ WP ] Weapons become more powerful the older they get . Modern guns will barely give someone a scratch but an ancient spear can devastate armies .
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Dr Klara Fuente protested at first, insisting that the blindfold would give her motion sickness. She eventually relented when she realised they prized secrecy over the cleanliness of their car.
Men and their cloaks and daggers, she thought, desperately trying to hold her dinner down as the car cruised over the bumpy country road.
She soon found herself deposited at a clearing in the forest, where Agent Benny Vicks was already waiting for her, and she did n't hesitate to share a piece of her mind. `` Was all this really necessary? You know that I work best in my lab, right? I do n't have half the equipment I need here, and this is going to be such a waste of time.''
`` It's urgent,'' he said, starting to grin, `` besides, do n't archaeologists love field trips?''
Klara had more than enough fuel to continue complaining for at least an hour, but then she caught sight of the other Agents fanned out in a rough perimeter around the clearing. Dusk had already begun to rob the skies of their primary source of illumination, and as the towering spotlights flickered on one by one, Klara was left with little doubt that this was anything but an ordinary expedition.
The glazed-wood crossbows, strapped to the backs of the Agents, was the only confirmation she needed. There was enough firepower there to level a small city, give or take.
`` Are those... 19th century Barnett crossbows?''
`` You see why we need you here? There's no one else better at what you do, and you know that.''
`` Are we in danger?'' said Klara, looking about her frantically. `` In all my years working with you, I've never seen such a show of force!''
Agent Vicks laughed. `` Just a precaution. You'll understand when you see. Come.''
At the center of the clearing, two Agents were waiting with what appeared to be a local farmer, electric cattle prod still in hand, good for nothing more than swatting flies. The weary look on his face suggested that he had been inconvenienced for quite some time already.
`` Are you the scientist they said was coming to evaluate the site? Oh, we've been waiting too long! Am I done here? Can I go now?''
`` I'm not a scientist,'' Klara grumbled, `` but I suppose I was the one you're waiting for. What did you find?''
Klara still remembered the first time she had been engaged to assist. Whisked out of her laboratory under similar circumstances, she was asked to opine whether the cache of weapons intercepted by customs were merely very recently-produced replicas of hundred-year old slingshots, meant for a movie production as the labels on the shipping boxes indicated, or whether they were evidence of an arms-smuggling route, long suspected but never confirmed.
That was her forte, the ability to marry keenness of observation with intellect of mind, to ascertain and evaluate the strength of any weapon she came across. Sure, anyone could simply wield said weapon to find out how potent they were, but that always carried a risk. After all, it wasn ’ t always easy to tell the difference between a fifty-year old knife and a five-hundred-year old one, and with the way that weapons grew exponentially more powerful as the years rolled by… the world had certainly seen more than enough of its fair share of accidental devastations, just because someone thought to see what that old rusty spear they had found could do.
Hence, the demand for people of Klara ’ s calibre, archaeologists who specialized in weapon-dating.
“ I was looking for new land to expand my farm to, so I came here to dig around, test the soil. That ’ s when I found this, ” said the farmer, pointing to a patch of earth he had evidently spent some effort digging through.
Agent Vicks spoke into his walkie-talkie, and the nearest spotlight swivelled to bathe them in harsh, cold light. Klara squinted, shielding her eyes from the sudden assault, trying to discern what lay beneath.
“ This… is not a weapon, ” she said, “ it ’ s a skeleton. The undeveloped curvature of the hips, the length of the shin bones… this looks like a male, I would say. It ’ s old, that ’ s for sure, but I ’ d need to run tests to figure out just how old. To be honest, and I don ’ t want to rain on your parade, but you ’ re not going to get much mileage out of this one. You could fashion his bones into a spear, or a club, but because they were never used as weapons before, in the literal sense, it doesn ’ t matter how much time has passed. You ’ re never going to get anything useful out of th- ”
“ Please, Dr Fuente, ” said Agent Vicks, “ you give us too little credit. We know weapons only start accruing potency from the time they were wielded as one. For now, what ’ s your best guess, how powerful would these bones be, if they were weapons? ”
Klara thought back to the Atgeir Scale, named after the oldest, intact weapon humanity had ever unearthed, a Viking dagger from the 10th century. It occupied the top-end of the scale, with a full score of 10.0 Atgeir points, the perfect combination of age and intent – the Bartnett crossbows she saw earlier easily rated 2.0, 2.2 Atgeir points each. That Viking relic had such destructive power that the United Nations had lobbied for it to be smelted and dispersed, such was the threat to the stability of the planet. Every other weapon since then had been measured against it, and found wanting.
“ Well… again, I can ’ t be sure, but these bones look to be at least… what, 50,000, 55,000 years old? So yes, of course, if they were weapons they would completely rewrite the Atgeir Scale, and make our entire country ’ s arsenal look like hot sand in comparison. But as I ’ ve said, these bones aren ’ t weapons. ”
Agent Vicks smiled. “ You ’ re not on your best form today, Dr Fuente. Observe the skull, ” he said, lifting the skeleton lightly with gloved hands.
Klara saw it then, the smooth grain of the bone ending in raw, jagged edges at the back of the skull. Though age had worn away some of the enamel, introduced cracks and chips where there were none before, this was a classic case of someone who had been quite violently, for the lack of a better word, brained from the back with a blunt instrument.
The gears clicked in her mind.
“ Do you mean… ”
Agent Vicks nodded, then pointed a short distance away, where preliminary digging had uncovered a slab of carbonite, dark as midnight, pulsing with a quiet, pensive energy. It was about the size of a large basketball, and wielded between two hands, swung overhead at a target, it would have carried quite the perfect heft.
“ That ’ s the murder weapon right there, for a crime over 50,000 years old. Care to reevaluate just how much this trip is waste of your time? ”
-- -
/r/rarelyfunny
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[ WP ] Everyone is born with a song , and that song tells us who you 'll be when you grow up . You , on the other hand , were born silent .
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The sound of success. The sound of failure. The shrill sounds of children screaming, the sensual moans of your lover be they many or few or none. The screeching pitch of tire rubbing off the concrete towards the clangs of metal that pierced your heart.
A composition of the highs and lows of life and everything in between. It was different for everyone. Too complex to be described by any finite amount of adjectives. So revealing and teasing with crescendo and decrescendo, climax and and nadir, yet still open to interpretation and always keeping you guessing.
At least, this was how the others described it. Every child that's born has their song. A musical story from beginning to end. It's referred to scientifically as the intromousa. Colloquially as your beat, your tune, or whatever people needed to sound cool these days. One could never directly hear another's intromousa. It was the first soothing sound you heard in the womb before the hums of your mother's lullaby. The hand on your shoulder on your first day of school, the soundtrack to falling for your first love and the chimes of the bells that bring death. Always in your head, internally playing on loop whether it be as background noise or actively listened to. Volume and clarity determined by focus. The frequency of your heart and the window to your soul, it had to be earnestly tuned into to honestly be appreciated.
The intromousa was usually never fully understood by most until their moment of passing. Some dedicated their whole lives to understanding it, trying to find inner peace through meditation and an open, mindful inward ear. Some relentlessly dissecting every stanza, searching for a solution to their life's woes. Some passed the days by leaving it in the background, out of sync with themselves... disinterested and in disbelief of how a measly song which they grew to despise had ever done enough for them. A subtle reminder of how our very first breath in life only locked us into a cycle that will inevitably bring us to our last.
It was for these same reasons that the most profitable careers in this economy were to be some type of artist. A musician or writer... any practical or creative way you could use your song to share it with the world and others in it. Often, it was any way to capitalize on the insecurity of those that foolishly thought their tune ugly and bland. A sick irony in which boys and girls too young and unwise to listen carefully to their own unique beat find it easier to listen to the tainted renditions of others. Children wishing they were born a tune other than their own simply because society has a way of turning their ears sour.
But what do I know. I do n't have an intromousa. I should n't even be born. I'm an anomaly and a paradox. A mute in a world where everyone has a voice. A silent scream among a cacophony of cries. A bystander in a realm of a constant hectic traffic of men and women anxious to find an end to a song that's never really begun. Too busy with themselves or another to really listen for the most crucial song. The timeless song of our earth. The amalgamation of every intromousa that's ever been or will be sung, told, written or whispered.
Maybe that's why I exist. To be in the only position quiet enough to just sit back and listen for a moment...
Note: this is my first time writing in this sub or pretty much doing creative writing outside of class. I feel like I kinda got lost and went on a tangent with the theme... but let me know what you think and how I could improve. Thanks for reading!
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[ WP ] '' There are worlds between worlds , and in those worlds is a world I completely forgot about . ''
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Have you ever seen a black shadow in the corner of your eye? Those that make you glance to the side only to find nothing there? Like a black shape? Or just a black blurry flash? That might've been me. Who am I? Well my name is none of your world and these symbols could never put it down, but basically I'm a shadow walker. I know it sounds creepy, but do n't worry, we do n't bite.
There are worlds between worlds, you know. There used to be a lot of worlds. Before mankind, before the earth, before time itself, there were worlds between worlds. We were neighbors, helping each other out with food and entertainment. We were a happy bunch. There were the rougeroters, full of passion and fire. Grünvert was a land of peace and tranquility. In Pinkrose you could always find a party. Jaunlowites were the best cooks you could imagine... Well we could imagine. Human imagination is so limited after all.
But eventually a new world came to be. Not earth, do n't worry. No, this world was different. It was everything, but also nothing. That was the start of `` light''.
Very soon many of the people I just described to you got curious. What was this weird color that did n't seem to be a color. It was cool, but not like the Blauites. This was an emotionless and distant cool. So an expedition was sent in, I was leading it. A lot of us entered that land, and all of us came out... But not the same way we went in. Because you see, light is a powerful thing. It is every color combined. But however powerful light is, it can not be without shadow.
I have no idea who I was or what I was. There are worlds between worlds. And in those worlds, I forgot about mine.
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[ WP ] An aging superhero and his arch-nemesis have a final confrontation where they both realize that they 're too old to continue fighting .
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Bones crunched and cracked from the stress of his own breath. Years have made it so they bend and bruise before resetting, and the bruising with stands for much longer then it should.
The same bloodied shirt sat as pauldrons, ripped from the breast down. One of dozens and dozens he owned, and just one of thousands he used. After a time, the quality of denim one uses in such a situation becomes a hide, but still skin pocks were seen through open bullet wounds among his second skin.
The cross had finally snapped off his neck. Stabbed, shot, beaten, bruised, broken, mauled, and melted, the cross stood tall for decades. At the man's feet laid what should have been his son's. What he wore around his neck was his father's. What he stood upon were the shoulders of those who had worn it before, and each of their ideals sat in a murky puddle of blood.
A corpse was mangled and crush across the room. A cacophony of loud and awful cracks, more shattering bones, and restringing sinews conducted an orchestra of the far from pleasant.
Padded Durasteel armor with Kevlar linings, installed with especially designed shock-absorbers, had remained mostly undamaged, but the man inside had been reduced to some form of gelatin. Upon a glance, it was a corpse, but the sloshing of the man rolling around inside proved otherwise. Corpses simply do n't slosh.
One man was standing, and dropped to his knees. The other was lying down, and promptly rose to them. The silence was the most the two ever exchanged in over a century. A silence that was filled by gasps as lungs realigned within their bodies.
`` I ai n't so good at speaking and I am not the best of man when it comes to words of the meaningful type, but I will say this-''
The other man tried to respond, but his lungs had yet to reset entirely. He would have his words.
`` Being a hero is about sacrifice. It's about giving all y'all can give to keep fighting no matter how hard or how ingrateful others may seem. It's about understandin' that things break and bruise, and often it's about takin' the bullet''
`` I've hear-''
`` I know you have. There was just one thing I dun' tried to give up for friend, but all them folk simply did n't wan na take it and I can say that it ai n't the greatest to know I'm the only one still around''
`` Everyone you love is dead. How does it feel Cavalry?''
`` John''
`` What?''
`` I'm tired o' this. Always goin' by weird names callin' ourselves what we ai n't and I just wan na be John again.''
The armored man shook his head, and tried to stand, buckling under his own weight. Coming back from the dead is never easy, but sometimes it's harder then others.
`` ALright, John,'' he said through a cough `` How does it feel knowing everyone you've ever loved is dead.''
`` I'm just gone go ask you the same thing. Cause I do n't got an answer for ya but ya sure as hell got an answer for me, Resilience.''
Resilience finally reached his feet, analyzing the blood and dirt on his armor. It was n't going to be a cheap fix.
`` I do n't follow''
The cross still rested in the puddle of blood which slowly started to mix with tears.
`` Everyone I've fought for, everyone I've takin' a bullet for, I did it cause I loved those sorts no matter who they were cause that's way god taught us. But you, resilience, I seen the way y'all act, and I got ta say that you do quite find yourself mighty scorned cause God, wherever he may lie or stand, ai n't allowing you to his pearly gates.''
Cavalry wiped his eyes.
`` You ca n't die. No matter what. You just get back up, cause you ai n't allowed to be dead.''
Cavalry paused.
`` And you ca n't be killed,'' admitted Resilience, `` cause you just spit up every bullet, blow off every punch, and get pieced back together moments later. What's your point?''
The cross, dented with a broken chain, rose up out of the blood as Cavalry did to his feet. Now in full composure, he approached Resilience. It was a stride of respect taken towards a man who never earned it. A blood soaked hand reached out, closed fist, the chain hanging from the side.
`` 125 years of this battle.''
Resilience blinked, confused, and held out his own hand. Cavalry dropped the cross into his palm. Resilience clenched and smiled
`` Heh. Finally giving in? After 125 years?''
`` I ai n't givin' up, I'm just doin' what all heroes should. I'm loving everyone so I can keep fighting for them, and do right by the world.''
`` Cavalry, I still do n't follow.''
`` I left my self be hurt in so many ways lovin' people I ai n't ever known or gon na. And I beat on you, the only one left. I think it's'bout time that I go about lovin those two folks I beat on most. You and me. We both got a lot of time left'round here, and each only got one fellow man to spend that time with.''
Resilience dropped his hands to his side. The silence returned, as if one could hear the gravity of his ruminations.
`` I think I follow''
`` Ya do?''
`` Yup. Truce?''
Cavalry smiled
`` Truce. Now we got alotta making up to do''
EDIT: This one was done after my nighttime pills kicked in, I'm editing it tomorrow.
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[ IP ] Before It Consumes Me
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I've made too may wrong turns. I am lost. Hopelessness has overtaken me. How long until I am consumed? How long until I become another victim, trapped, dying alone in this Hell? The stench of rot and death fills the air. I ca n't see. It's so dark. I sit and cry. Just let me die.
Wait! Did you hear that? A voice. Not one of pain and suffering. One of beauty. A small flame flickers in my heart. I stand up. I begin to walk, to follow the melodious voice. Sinister whispers begin to assault me. `` It would be easier to lay back down. What's the point of fighting this. I deserve this.'' Part of me wants to give in. No! I grasp onto that angelic voice. I use it as a lifeline. Light pierces the gloom. It becomes a thread to follow. I begin to run. Hands grasp at me, shadows move in and out. They try to pull me back down. I slip and fall. This is it. The edge of the knife. How easy it would be to just close my eyes. but the voice, it calls me. I fight back, and drag myself to my feet. I do n't want to give up! I need help! Help me!
Light blazes across the made of despair. From that light, a hand reaches out to me. I reach out, and out fingers meet......
......... and my wife helps me out of the car. She looks me in the eye. She is so proud of me. She will be with me every step of the way. It will be a long road, but she knows I will make it. She really has no idea how she has saved me. Hand in hand, we walk up the steps into the rehabilitation facility.
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[ WP ] The youngest child in a family of four is constantly overshadowed , or at least that what he imagines . Everyone else thinks he is the most successful .
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Edit: I'm sorry, I was on my phone when I saw the prompt and did n't see the whole thing. This is in the wrong direction. Should I delete? I'm kinda new to WP and do n't know the etiquette.
“ Oh, I'm so happy to see you ”, she said, reaching out both of her frail, yet elegant hands. The light in the sunny room has the odd quality of making her skin look smooth and young, until she smiles and the wrinkles are magnified by shadows. She looks so small in that bed.
I sit in the chair next to her bed and take her cool hands in mine.
“ I told you I would come, just you know, things have been busy ”, I say lamely. She smiles at me, her eyes travelling all over my face.
“ Tell me what you've been up to ”, she asks. She gives my hand a little squeeze.
“ Well, um, you know, just work and stuff. I might get distract manager soon though. A position is opening up and the other managers keep telling me the big wigs are throwing around my name a lot. So that's good. ”
She swallows several times before speaking.
“ That's good. Rick has got some big case right now. It's even been on the news. How's the family? ”
I want to go back and tell her that I've worked myself to exhaustion for this for five years, and it's pretty much a given at this point, as I've been given an offer. I want to tell her I'll be making $ 120,000 a year. But I just go on, because I know I'll only get the same response even if I elaborate.
“ They're good, real good. ” I could tell her that my wife and I just celebrated our 15th anniversary, more in love than ever. I could tell her that our oldest is in an accelerated learning program and already has several college offers, and wants to become a NICU doctor. That our youngest might literally be a sports prodigy, and is looking at going to the olympics as soon as she's old enough. That my family life is more than I could have ever dreamed, and I make sure to praise all my children equally.
“ That's good. ” She smiles. I can see she means it, but... “ I think Kat's gon na marry her movie star soon. She'll be set for life! ” She gives a little chuckle.
“ Where's everyone else? ” I ask, changing the subject.
She waves one of her hands, “ Oh, you know. Kat's off with her movie star boyfriend, in the Maldives? I think. Rick's got his really big, high profile case, so he could n't come. Lizzie, well, you know she just got out of rehab, and she's feeling a little fragile right now, so she could n't make it. But she's doing really, really well, you know? Back with her husband, got a new job. I know how hard she's had it. I'm just so proud of her. Is n't it just great that she could get past all that business? ”
“ Ya, that's good. That's..that's really good. ” I smile at her, but it flees as soon as I lower my head. My ears feel hot.
“ Listen, David... the doctor was here a little bit ago. He says... he says it's getting worse. ”
I look back up at her strangely youthful, glowing face. She did n't look worse.
“ I do n't want you to worry honey. It does n't hurt, I really feel just fine. ” Right then she has a coughing fit, and afterward she's swallowing so compulsively for so long that I rush to prop her higher on the pillows and give her her glass of water. After a few small sips, she's better, and she smiles at me. Her eyes are different though, more serious. She know's I've seen through her lie.
“ Anyway, that's why I wanted you to come see me, you know, to catch up. ” She grabs my hands in hers. They're chilled. Mindlessly I start rubbing them between mine to warm them.
“ There's not much for us to catch up on mom. Everything's... you know, pretty much the same. ” I say, shrugging. I get up and stand looking out at the big picture window.
“ Well I see you've lost a little bit of weight, tell me about that. ”
I look her in the eyes, and even though she's smiling, I know she can see the look on my face.
“ I've lost 45 pounds. My cholesterol is perfect. Lily and I ran a 5k together two weeks ago. I've got tons more energy. I sleep better. I feel great! ” I'm a little too loud, and I can feel that my smile is a little toothy. I turn back to the window.
“ Oh, that's great! Good for you. Lizzie lost a lot of weight in rehab you know, but then started gaining it back like crazy after she got home. She got on a diet and is doing really well with it! She's lost like, six pounds I think? Maybe seven? Just eating right you know, and exercising, and of course getting off- ”
“ I thought I was here so we could catch up, Mom. ” I say pointedly.
She gives a little huff. “ Well, I just thought you'd like to know what your siblings are up to. There all doing so well, you know, and it makes me proud - ”
“ Do I make you proud? ” It sounds raw, even to my own ears, and I feel terrible because I've swallowed this my entire life, and here at the end of hers, I ca n't just leave it be.
“ Excuse me? ”
“ Do I make you proud? ” I say, advancing to her bedside with my hands on my hips. “ Well, do I? ”
“ Of course you do, you know that - ”
“ Really? Because no matter what I do, I get a little pat on the head, and then you go on singing the praises of one of them. ” I loved my siblings, and I really was proud of them. But damn, I was too raw to sit through this again. I did n't have much time left with my mother, and all she wanted to talk about was the accomplishments of my brothers and sisters.
“ Do you ever brag about me to them, Mother? ”
Her face said all I needed to know, and it cut deep.
Hands gripped on the back of the chair, I ask, “ Ca n't we just have one conversation before you die where I get to be the focus of your attention? ” I feel my heart break, both because I asked that stupid question, and also because I even had to ask it.
“ Oh, honey... I.. ”
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[ WP ] An old wizard explains to a young wizard why you ca n't just wear a magic ring on every finger . Include as much magic jargon as you can while still bei , g understandable .
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`` But sir, I do n't understand why I ca n't just wear a magic ring on every finger. The rules allow for up to ten rings. I want to wear ten rings,'' Henry said, quite frustrated at the old wizard in front of him. He had soft tawny eyes framed by a century's worth of wrinkles, a cheerful smile, and a beard fit for Santa Clause. Ordinarily, like every other student in the school, Henry idolized Professor Frost ( an ironic name, considering his warm nature ), but today, he could n't wait to be done with the old man's lectures about magical nature. The weight of tomorrow's duel hung over him like an executioners ax, preventing Henry from absorbing anything Professor Frost was trying to teach him. He simply wanted to be told what he needed to do to survive, and more importantly, how to do it.
`` Henry, each ring draws some of your energy to power its enchantments. As you add more rings, the energy you have is divided up into smaller and smaller pieces, making each enchantment weaker. The very best wizards wear one or no rings to a duel, leaving their energy free to cast spells and counter their opponents.'' Frost said, wiggling his ring-free fingers at Henry. ( Everyone knew that Professor Frost hardly ever used magic rings. He did n't need too. ) `` Therefore,'' Professor Frost continued with a smile, `` I am sure your opponent from Hastings will be wearing the maximum number of rings allowed. For you, two rings should be sufficient. You will have an eight ring advantage over your opponent, so you should easily be able to out cast him.''
Henry saw the logic in this, even if it was n't what he wanted to hear, and meekly agreed with the professors plan. `` Which rings should I wear then?'' He said with a sigh.
The professor pointed at the plain golden band he always wore around on a chain round his neck. It was his mother's wedding ring. He had inherited it from her when she died when he was just a child, but he had not been able to take possession of it until he started at the Northern Academy for Wizards last year. Back when his plan was to wear ten rings, he had thought to wear this ring anyway, even though it had no magical powers to speak of. Now that he had only two rings to wear, Henry had n't dreamed of wearing a mundane ring to a duel that his whole school would be watching. `` You're kidding!'' He shouted out of surprise.
Professor Frost ignored this, and pulled out a small wooden box from beneath a fold in his rode. He opened it and handed it to Henry. Inside was a brown ring cut roughly from stone. `` This ring,'' Professor Frost said, was hewn directly from rock beneath this school. Hundreds of students have drawn strength from it over the centuries. It will not fail you when combined with your mothers ring.'' Henry gulped. Neither of his rings seemed very magic.
Professor Frost either did n't notice Henry's reaction to the ring, or did n't care. `` Now that the unsavory matter of rings is concluded,'' He said with his same warm smile, `` Lets get down to the real training.''
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[ WP ] The tree had been a sapling when you 'd been here last .
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“ Hello again, old friend. ”
The old man hobbled up to the tree and sat in the shade of it's massive branches.
“ My, how you've grown! Just like me, eh? How long has it been? 50 years? 60? ”
The old man sighed and rested his sore back upon the great wooden monolith.
“ I remember gazing up at the heavens on that rock nearby, when you were still shorter than me. I grew and shrank, while you still grow. Truly an impressive achievement, tree. And you keep getting stronger! I was strong for awhile. Worked in the dockyards of New York City once I left. Owned a bar for a long time. Sold encyclopedias door-to-door for a few months. ”
The old man closed his eyes.
“ You remember Sara, do n't you tree? We thought we'd be together forever. I guess that was n't in the cards, ” he said, his voice faltering. “ But you, old friend, you're still here. I never married, after Sara. No one even came close to her. No children. No family. But my friends... I had the best friends a man could ask for. Loyal, brave, and kind. They're all gone now. I'm the only one left. Well... you and me, tree. But soon... soon it'll be just you. ”
The old man turned to look at his friend.
“ I do n't have much longer in this world. I was always afraid of death as a young man, but now that it's nearly here, I do n't seem to mind it as much. ”
The man shut his eyes again and leaned back against the tree.
“ Since all my best memories have taken place here, I thought it was only fitting that my final ones happen here too. ”
The old man breathed one final deep breath, and settled in, prepared for what adventure may come.
“ Goodnight, old friend. ”
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[ WP ] A man attempting suicide discovers he is immortal .
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My bitch of a girlfriend and James, Mr. Reynolds from next door was next, I think. I knew I left my boss for last.
Jenny had cheated on me. *With my best friend. * I had gotten fired. I came home, trinkets and stationary in hand holding back tears and there they were, butt-naked on the couch. He was pulling her hair and yelling her name. Then her and James left - together - after a spiel about my dead end job and failing ambitions. Perhaps irony would be the word.
It doesn ’ t take much to burn down a house. Brick through the window, spare can of gasoline I keep for off-roading, *whoosh. * I watched his reaction from my car. I think he tried to run in at some point, but he was definitely screaming someone ’ s name. I didn ’ t stay for long after I remembered he was looking after his grandmother.
I guess that set me off. It didn ’ t help Mr. Reynolds and his stuck up elitist family were just coming back from their holiday in Spain. I couldn ’ t get to the door before I was caught up looking at his upturned nose and catching a whiff of the newest CK scent, and being asked to feel how ‘ genuine ’ the cashmere felt on his cardigan.
I would be lying if I said he didn ’ t deserve it. I left his kids screaming over his limp body, watching the blood pour from his face. I think his wife was ripping off his cardigan to give him CPR. I wonder if she felt how genuine the cashmere was.
It was hard to drive with knuckles aching. But my boss ’ house was in town. I thought I would pay him a visit. *He fired me, I ’ ll fire on him. * I ’ d only used the rifle for rabbits before. I ’ m sure it would be the same concept. I smelt the whisky on his breath. I hate whisky. He sloshed and stumbled and grabbed me by the collar. I think he even threw a punch. But in the end he was just like the rabbits.
I think his face went from anger, surprise, fear, then whatever face you make when you ’ re gurgling on your own internal bleeding. Rabbits don ’ t usually tell you to go to hell though.
My life was over. I had burnt a house down, killed two people and maybe a grandma. I knew it was over. My knuckles felt raw as I turned the wheel. I felt my head smash on the dashboard and the crunch of broken glass.
I felt the pain in my arm shoot up like needles as I heard sirens in the distance. I think I saw my life flash before my eyes, before I realised it was tinted blue and red. I tried to undo my seatbelt and escape but the crumple zone apparently included my legs. I felt blood trickle down my arm and the sirens blare in my ringing ears. There was one way out. I pulled the gun from the back, put it to my head and pulled the trigger.
I felt the blood rush into my eyes and the hot pain push from one ear to the other. The world went black and blue and red and all the colours of the rainbow. And then it went back to blue and red. The bullet had come out the other side. But I had not crossed to the other side. I saw the crack in the window and the flashing in the mirror. I heard the shouts of policemen.
I put the gun to my head and squeezed again. Blood eyes hot pain blah blah rainbow. Red and blue again. I put my finger to the hole in my head and felt it close like my tightening asshole.
I put the gun to my mouth. *Blam! * Pain and rainbows and back to blue.
I put the gun to my forehead. *Blam! * Agony and rainbows and back to red.
I couldn ’ t kill myself. I had burned a house down and killed two people and a grandma maybe. And I couldn ’ t kill myself. The pain was incredible. My head throbbed and my legs felt like they were on fire. I realised that was because they were on fire. I saw through the shattered windscreen the engine in flames, licking its way through the dashboard and engulfing my vision. I pulled and pulled but I might as well have fused with the engine. I felt the heat sear through my tattered jeans and the police stomp and the sirens wail.
And I couldn ’ t die.
Fuck.
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[ WP ] Science has allowed for a `` time-turn '' pill , reducing age and appearance back to 18 . The pill is ONLY available to those who sign contracts to work until they reach retirement again ( money can not buy ) . Now there ’ s a 5th generation of workers , physical and psychological side effects start to show
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Fifty years old. My birthday. March the twelfth.
I walked into the banal and bland office block where I worked.
`` HR wants to see you, Mister Morgan. They've got your release form ready.''
I nodded to the secretary.
`` Thank you, Wendy. Tell them I'll be right up.''
I walked slowly to the elevator, running my fingers along the drywall, feeling every dent, pockmark, and scratch. It was hard to believe I'd been working in this building for thirty years now, and a different one before that, and one before that... I was good at my job, it's the reason I was a sought-after employee. 5 generations of accounting will make you near perfect, and it would be a damn shame if I was n't.
I knew that walking into the Human Resources office to get my release form would be the same as all the other times. Go in. Look cheery. Get your form, go out. Go to the rejuve clinic, take a pill. Go under anesthesia. Wake up. Work for another 30 years.
I was n't excited for it, to say the least. When would I finally stop taking rejuve pills? How many generations could I bear?
As I stepped into the elevator, my finger hovered over the button marked `` forty''. The finger began to move higher. It hovered over the button marked `` roof''. I did n't stop myself from pressing it.
The doors closed, and as the elevator glided skywards, I knew that I would never work another day in my life. And I smiled.
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[ WP ] It 's been a month since you discovered that every time you wake up , you have a new body .
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My alarm goes off. Its 7am. I sit up to turn it off. The first thing I notice is my hand is thin and small. Not bad, I think to myself. I hit the snooze button and lie back down for a few more minutes. I've taken to preparing myself before I actually get up in the morning. Even though its been a month I still have to tell myself that no matter what I see, that is who I am for today.
Its not so bad really. Working from home has its perks. I only have to go into the office once a month and no one really takes notice when I show up. My manager knows about my condition, if you can even call it that. We've known each other for years and while he was skeptical thinking I was joking with him he understood how serious I was being when I showed up a few weeks ago.
My alarm went off again telling me to get up. I turn it off and make my way to the bathroom. I try not to look down because I've found its better to see the big picture rather thank just looking at parts of it up close. A chill washes over me. Its cold this morning and being naked does n't help at all. I reach the bathroom and as I face the full length mirror in there I close my eyes. I tell myself over and over, you're still you, you're still you. Its just a new suit. A person suit that you have to wear for the day. I open my eyes and look at myself the first time again.
I leave the light off to ease into it. The first time it happened I thought someone was in my bathroom. That was an embarrassing day. When the cops showed up they nearly took me to the mental hospital. They had to explain to me that I was just looking at my reflection. They left without doing so. I was grateful for that. After the second day I saw a stranger again I realized what was happening and now make an effort not to freak out.
I look in the mirror and try to make out my features. When I look at my body my jaw drops. I've been tall and short, Thin and fat and average. I've been beautiful and hideous. There's no rhyme nor reason as to why this is happening but nothing has prepared me for this.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I smile. I'm me again.
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[ WP ] In the world of fiction there is a character , invisible to readers and writers alike . Devious and cunning , the only evidence of it 's existence is plot holes and inconsistencies . Which it has plagued us with since the beginning of time .
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I sat calmly on a park bench, calmly sipping tea as I watched what would eventually become a halfway decent romance novel, as far as romance novels go that is. It was n't nearly as nice a setting as a Jane Austin, ( I once spent two months in Pride and Predudice for no reason except I liked it ) but it held it's own.
Beside me, considerably less comfortable sat a young woman. She was perfect. I knew that with absolute certainty. And I'm not talking about physical perfection, Trinity possessed a kind of gentle air that spoke of a spirit at peace with everyone and everything in the world. And she was. I should know, I created her, at least, I think I did.
`` When are we going to make our move?'' She asked finally.
`` It's not yet half past eight.'' I replied. `` You know as well as I that the critical moment does n't happen until three past nine precisely. Or at any rate you should, you read the book you know.''
Trinity snorted, a surprisingly musical sound. `` YOU read it'' she answered.
`` You are merely an extension of my subconscious. You are me, more or less.''
`` You've been talking to your psychologist again''
`` They make me, you know.''
`` I know.'' She was silent. Then: `` would you rather I left?''
`` Never. How else would I while away the time?'' She smiled.
`` Shush'' I say. `` There they are now.''
Two young women strolled idly along the garden path, one with a book in her hands and her mind in the clouds. Not so dissimilar to me, I thought. The other was Trinity, and yet not Trinity. Though identical, they were quite different, I could always tell them apart at a glance. While Trinity was peaceful and demure, Divinity, her sister, was violent and obsessive. Evil she was, as surely as Trinity was good. My creation too, I think.
`` She's here'' I felt Trinity stiffen beside me.
`` It's OK'' I said. `` In a minute Josh, the hero, will come rounding that hill. If he and the girl meet, the rest of the book is safe. We just have to distract your twin until then.''
`` How?''
`` Leave that to me.''
Just then there was a knock at the door. The novel I was in spun out of focus as I found myself sitting, once more, alone in a small white room, a book open on my lap.
The nurse bustled in. Dinner tray in hand. Behind her was the new intern, hire, whatever. A new face. `` Hello Mr. Soule, lost in our book again are we?''
I just rolled my eyes. `` On the nightstand please Mary, I'm at a rather important part.''
She nodded knowingly. Smiled a little too condencnedingly, and placed it down. It was no use, I thought as she left, no use trying to explain it to her. This after all, was just a book like any other. Just another book, and she was just another character. I turned back to my romance novel. Now, where was I...
Out in the hall, the new nurse looked back at room 216 and scratched his head. `` So...'' He said. `` What's wrong with him?''
`` Mr. Soule?'' The other nurse asked. `` He has these delusions, hallucinations, something. A while ago he wrote a book. I've read it, it's quite nice actually. There's these characters, two sisters, kinda yin and yang types, well they travel from book to book. One tries to ruin the happy ending and one tries to save it. Anyway, Mr. Soule, he thinks it's all real. That's what he was doing, off saving the day in some book.''
`` Huh'' said the new nurse. `` How funny''
She just nodded. `` Well, let's hurry up and finish the shift.'' She said. `` I have a nice book waiting for me at home.''
`` Oh?'' Said the new guy. `` One of his?''
`` Oh no'' she said. `` A romance. It's not quite Jane Austin, but it holds it's own.''
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[ WP ] You are an NPC in a computer game that encounters the player using cheats
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Jesus Christ. Jesus motherfucking toast-crust in my fucking Christ.
So I was walking along, minding my own business, right? Moved into the city a couple months ago, the Pizza shop ai n't doing so well, but at least there are more customers. It's just a normal day, right?
I know, that's how all these stories start, but hang in there.
This guy comes in. Normal and totally cool. He's dressed in these ridiculous pink boots and a flaming beanie. But that's not the point, the point is he begins to do some crazy shit. First, he transforms into Iron Man. And I'm not exaggerating here, the fucker literally morphed into Iron Man, I saw it with my own two goddamn eyes! Then, he takes out his wallet. He's got a ten, maybe a five in there. All of a sudden, this wallet keeps getting fatter and fatter with cash, until I was sure it was going to explode. Oh, keep in mind, he's doing all this shit while maintaining eye contact with me. He's been standing in front of the counter the entire time. He puts his massive wallet into his pocket, and pulls out a huge stack of cash. Then I see the cash in his hand disappear, and a fucking rocket launcher just pops into his hand. Wait, ANOTHER rocket launcher just appeared! Now this psycho's got two rocket launchers, and runs out of my store.
You're never gon na believe what happens next, but hear me out.
This guy jacks a Mini Cooper. I guess that's what happens when you have two rocket launchers flailing around. He drives this at the speed of sound for maybe two seconds, until he T-bones a goddamn dumpster truck. Now, I do n't know if you know this, but slamming a Mini Cooper against a dumpster truck usually does n't do anything to the truck. But hooooly shit. This truck flies and spins across the town, flipping and slapping against buildings, and it blows up in the air. This causes all the other cars in the area to turn into spinning death machines, as they go ballistic and flames start bursting everywhere. While I try to survive, the guy with the rockets starts laughing, and cars start pounding on him. But nothing's happening to the guy, he just smiles and fires his rockets at everything, pulverizes everything until there's just ash left. I ran for my life, and finally got out of the way of the dude.
Needless to say, I'm not going back to Liberty City.
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[ WP ] A young programmer finds that the universe is a computer-simulation of another universe , and how to travel to it , but when he gets there , what he finds out changes everything
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The Institute for Computational Astronomy was a modest building, one of the oldest on campus, set in a wide disc of grass. It was a dome of reinforced concrete, glass, and crude mirror-hue nano-weave, and played host to several exhibits of transition-age technology: A few fusion reactors, quiet now; some computer banks that still had gallium-arsenic and even *silicon* transistors alongside the superconducting quantum components. Long ago, the power had been switched to the academic quantech channels, and some generous alumnus had filled the corners with beanbag chairs. It was a popular place for the retros and the geeks to hang out now, reliving the end of the scarcity age among pale wood, huge glass panes, and concrete accents. You could snuggle up with a cup of coffee and sub-vocalize your schoolwork, back against the cold computers.
That's what Grigery was doing. A study of the campus, actually, research into the first projects ever undertaken in this building. Run-of-the-mill simulation, usually, modelling the Big Bang or black holes with exotic velocities. There was something fascinating about the crude equations, the sheer depth of *misunderstanding* that neverless had brought society to what pundits were half-jokingly calling `` two centuries of Utopia, that's a capital U, people.''
Probability trees for the Fermi equation - completed. Unified field theory multiversal iterations - completed. The Helene compression algorithm - ohh! The foundation of quantech, in this very building. Neat, though he knew for a fact that it had been run first in Caltech. Completed.
He began skimming the list on his retina implants, looking for something interesting to write about. There were a couple possibilities, but-
Grig froze. The last entry on the list, `` Cosmological Constant Iteration Simulation'', was n't marked `` completed''.
Maybe they'd forgotten to log it? That had been almost a century and a half previously, after all. No AI failsafes for things like that back then.
Huh. Grig pulled up auxilary reports, and was met with a `` file inaccessible'' entry.
Why...? He stared at an ancient LCD monitor across the room. Someone had hooked it up to an interface, it seemed - the thing was playing a slideshow of warm arctic coastlines, a nice addition to the ambiance.
What if?
He stood up, walked to the monitor. Grig disconnected it from the quantech jack, worked the interface free, and took the playing-card sized device to one of the computer banks. It sensed one of the centuries-old ports, and folded around it with a quiet *click*.
Grig touched the datajack, and the nanowires in his finger began to interface with the ancient computer. He impatiently authorized the download of several operating systems and code libraries with a rapid flicker of blinks, and a picosecond of computation later, he was in.
Holy crap. It was still running. After all this time, the computers were still running, and no-one knew.
*Run search for `` Cosmological Constant Iteration Simulation'' *, Grig subvocalized.
There were a couple milliseconds of pause, actually on the scale of human perception, and then the results returned. First was a....docz file? He authorized the download of another few terrabytes of bridging and conversion software, and the computer decompressed the document.
*COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT ITERATION SIMULATION. BERSCHAUTZ, JACOB. SIMULATION START: 04/01/2076. END: N/A. SIMULATION IN PROGRESS. *
And that was it.
A simulation. A simulation had been running since the Transition Age.
Grig began shuffling throught the search results, looking for the sim itself. This could be huge. An antique sim, running for this long? Even on machines as archaic as this...
There it was. The sim itself.
Grig selected it.
Oh.
Oh, *shit*.
Jesus, this thing was brilliant. Not Grig's field, but he could see the genius. A universe, engineered to work with granularity fourteen orders of magnitude larger then reality, without losing any of the essential effects - quantum chromodynamics worked there, they just interacted directly with the particle level, instead of forming fractal clusters that resolved to the same thing. It would be able to run wholesale even on an ancient supercomputer like this one.
And...
And it had been running for a century and a half. No one had ever shut it off.
Grig gulped, pulling out of the retscreen and looking around the room. No one there.
Damn it. He had to know.
Grig fiddled with the simulation program until he found the button marked `` pause''. He pressed it.
And then he loaded the data onto his personal storage, unpaused the running sim, and let it be.
A universe.
A universe, data saved in the subquanta flux between his muscle fibres, coiled in nanoscale transistors around his bones. A universe with all the inefficiencies pared away, so that it could even exist within this one.
Holy *shit*.
When Grig got back to his flat that evening, sleep was the last thing on his mind. He took a shot of Energyze to keep himself running, plugged himself a state-of-the-art VR set, then...
*Load COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT ITERATION SIMULATION, * he subvocalized.
Flash.
THIS SIMULATION IS PAUSED, said the words before him. RESUME?
*Not just yet. Search simulation for Earth, or, failing that, the Sun.''
A blue-green marble snapped into existence before him.
Grig leaned forward, and the simulation blurred around him, pushing his representation through space. Down, down, down, and...
Cities. New York, Toronto, Los Angeles. All in view.
*I'm a God, * thought Grig. *I might as well be God. *
It was all paused, right now. The light that Greg saw the imaginary-Earth in was n't actually light, of course; it did n't obey c. He was n't interacting with the world here, any more than a man reading a newpaper interacts with the people in the photographs, so light could n't actually bounce off his retinas, trigger electrochemical reponses. All simulated.
People. It was full of people. Hanging midstep, frozen in their sleep.
Doing all the things humans do.
Grig realized that he was shivering.
He found a good canidate, eventually. A guy sitting at a computer. The files dealt with the idea of simulated worlds, and there were books about the same scattered around. Some science fiction, some simply science.
Grig floated up to the frozen man.
*Isolate neural networks, * he told the program. *Copy. Save as filename... Johnathan Termier. *
Grig felt a wave of goosebumps wash over him.
*Close simulation*
Everything blinked back to a view of his room.
*Why am I doing this? * he thought.
`` Open file Johnathan Termier with application ideAI,'' he told his computer out loud.
A moment.
`` Hello?'' asked a voice from the speaker. `` What the fuck?''
Grig took a deep breath.
`` There's something you ought to know, Mr. Termier...''
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[ CW ] Two people . Sitting on a park bench . The entire scene lasts 5 minutes in real time . No skipping ahead , no flashbacks , nothing otherworldly . Let dialogue drive your story .
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“ You left me, you goddamn left me ”.
“ Mate it ’ s not that simple ”
“ Don ’ t call me mate, I ’ m your goddamned son! ” Whelped Sam, all 130 lbs of him leaping up like an angry blonde kid, which ain ’ t unfair because that ’ s what he is.
“ Ok look… you ’ ve heard a lot about me from the ex, don ’ t you think that might be bullshit? Let me light up this fag, I ’ m sick and tired of all this fresh air ” Jason lit it hands trembling.
“ Right let ’ s have at it kid. You ever noticed she don ’ t drink? Like at all? ”
“ So what, just because she ’ s not a drunk like you? ” Sam said, really hoping to have one parent who isn ’ t just complete waste.
“ Yeah well she ’ d be smashed every single night when I got back from work at 6pm. With you playing with the bottles. ” Jason sucked on the cigarette like it was keeping the anger away.
“ Nope don ’ t believe it, I ’ ve never seen her drink at all ”
“ Yeah then how did you get that scar down your left arm? ”
Sam looked down at the huge gashed red line down his left arm, the one he ’ d always been told was a birthmark, the one that prickled in the heat and ached in agony when it thundered.
“ For fuck sake ” He muttered and burst out in tears, “ Tell me everything ”.
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[ WP ] During the Super Bowl , an emergency broadcast goes off saying we are at nuclear war . The problem is , everyone thinks it 's an ad .
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`` Wow, this must be Bethesda advertising Fallout 5! They must've been working on this at the same time as Falout 4, it's only been a few months. Wonder when the release date will be?''
`` Jack, it's *obviously* for a new COD. Probably'Call of Duty: Nuclear Warfare'. Nothing else could get a superbowl commercial.''
`` Now guys, it ca n't be either of those. Like Jack said, it's too soon for Fallout 5. And Joe, call of Duty is just stupid and has poor ad campaigns. It's clearly a teaser for another Halo game. Probably a spinoff for 2017, between Halo Wars 2 and Halo 6. Probably something with the insurrectionists.''
And then everything was white.
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[ WP ] A man who lives alone starts sticking post-it notes on things at home , and it turns into an obsession .
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Allison woke up and peeled a post-it note off her pillow. `` Take out the trash,'' it said. She tried to roll over to go back to sleep to ignore her alarm ringing next to her, but the corner of another post-it note started poking at her nose. `` Wake up,'' it read.
She pulled off her floral print bedsheets and dragged her dreaming body off the bed. The slimy adhesive of an upturned post-it note in her slippers made her shiver and she reached over to pull it out. `` Wash these slippers,'' she read.
She tossed all three post-it notes into the small trash bin next to her bed, along with other piles of post-its that had accumulated over the last few days. It started with a few, at first. It was an easy way to make her remember to do things. It was a source of motivation.
They were now plastered all over the yellow wallpaper in her room.
She ruffled herself down towards the kitchen. She opened the fridge, ignoring all the post-its telling her of the different things she needed to do that day. The milk carton had another post-it on it. `` Buy some more milk,'' it read.
She peeled it off and tossed it into another trash can, then pulled out a cup, but when she finally lifted the carton out of the fridge she realised it was empty.
In her still groggy state, she reached for a pen and a fresh pad of post-its. `` Buy some more milk,'' she scribbled, sticking the post-it onto the carton and putting it back in the fridge. She opened the cupboards looking for some tea.
`` Buy some more tea,'' screamed a post-it half-stuck onto the box of English Breakfast.
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[ WP ] A villain is tortured by the protagonist using incredibly petty means .
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Fighting had become tiresome for the Overlord of Kanth. Being evil in itself was quickly becoming a chore itself. It was not that he minded doing evil things, or that he could n't get any enjoyment out of it. Charring peasants and poor people still had its charms. Sacrificing children in the name of his Gods and monsters was still an enjoyable experience. He was doing everything right. Ruling the kingdom with rage and destruction. Maraudering through the world, by land and sea, pillaging nearby kingdoms, and in general being an evil bastard. Not much stood in his way.
His armies tore through any defence their surprised commanders could muster, no one challenged him. He had no advesary. Every enemy still put up a fight, but it was always without conviction. Enemy soldiers did n't do much more than piss their armor and be pierced by his ghostly creatures, undead, undying and in general immortal soldiers, following his every fancy. So there was n't even chance of mutiny.
The evil overlord Garth had n't had any problems with this until recently, he did n't mind his enemies impotence, their weakness and their tendency to fall flat at even the sight of his ghastly army. It made his job of conquering all the land, all that much easier. So it had been for almost every ruler of Kanth, each one just as evil, each one facing almost nothing. Weak humans who fell at his feet, either worshipping his great evil, or dead with a spike through their feeble hearts.
But each of his predecessors had one thing he was lacking. A worthy adversary. One man, lifted by the people, standing tall on the shoulders of the common man. A champion of the every day hero. He'd fight valiantly, guiding the armies of man to victory over the evil rulers armies. Never victory in the all out, never ending war, but victory in a battle here or a battle there. Not big enough to stop the evil, forever flowing out of Kanth, but enough to be a nuisance. Enough to be a stick in the eye of whoever stood as ruler and overlord. This generation had produced no hero, the people were too subservient. The older generation followed on principle, they had already been conquered by the previous ruler, but the youth was supposed to be a problem. They were supposed to rise up and oppose. They had simply not cared. They fell in battle and saw no way around it, following the words of their commanders, or falling for the word of the overlord. The commanders too stupid to do anything but send wave after wave of their own men at the enemies, in a desperate attempt to save themselves. It usually worked.
But that meant Garth stood alone, no great hero. He was faced with another kind of enemy, one he could not stand against, or fight. At least not in any way he had been taught to fight.
He was faced with a simpleton, a madman. The Guile Guy, or G.G as he called himself. He could n't catch him, so he held true to his name, stuck to the shadows, Garth could not even place a face to the name. But this was not the worst of him, no he had never seen or had a conversation with his greatest enemy. But his preferred tactic of spitballs, or peppering his soup too much made Garth weary. He did n't know how much more of this he could stand.
He raised himself from his throne, his face red from where he had his palms pressed to them. A shiny spit-dripping piece of paper stuck to his evil crown. He turned his completely white and weary eyes to the corners of the room. Squinting to see if anything was moving in the shadows. He sighed loudly. Leaning back in the chair, the blob of spit and paper slowly trickling down against the gold and obsidian that was the crown. His face was covered in stubble, he knew his shaving razor would be switched out for rubber again if he tried. His eyes had some red in them from rubbing. He was n't allowed his morning coffee anymore, unless brewed himself. He had lost the will to fight.
A faint laugh ran through his castle, the gigantic black spot on the kingdom that oozed evil out to the rest of the world. A merry laugh.
The evil Overlord sighed. He closed his eyes. He'd sleep in the throne, his pillow would be tarred once again.
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[ WP ] `` The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he ’ s in prison . ''
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Adam reclined on his sofa in his mansion, watching Citizen Kane while he listened to his own hired orchestra play Fur Elise. Then suddenly the music stopped, as if the radio had shorted out. He rushed downstairs to see what had happened. There was no orchestra. It was just a radio.
Adam checked the radio. Sure enough, the battery was out. He ran to the storage cupboard to get new batteries, but he was out. He decided to go out and get some, only the door was locked from the outside, even his master key could n't open it. He saw the window at his balcony. He threw the heavy radio at it, but it just bounced off like a cushion.
Footsteps were heard. Adam turned around. His faithful butler, John, was going home for the night. John opened the door.
`` Wait! John!'' Adam yelled.
`` I'm just letting you know that I may not return in the morning, master.'' John replied, calmly as ever. `` I'm sure you know what I mean.''
Adam gasped. His life had been a lie. He had not left the mansion for a long time and now he knew why. Then he heard the sound of a closed door
He ran for the door and jiggled the knob, but alas, it was too late.
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[ WP ] You are stranded in the middle of the desert . You are walking all day when you stumble upon a stop sign in perfect condition .
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# # # The Stop Sign at the End of the World
The strangest thing is actually not the stop sign in the desert, but the fact that it is miraculously effective at forcing people to stop.
`` Hey, how about that, Charlie?'' I call over my shoulder, because I'm hallucinating at this point, but at least that means I have company.
`` How about what.''
`` This stop sign. We actually have to stop here. I wonder what that means?''
`` It's the end of the world,'' he says. `` What d'you think is beyond it? Ka-boom! Bang! Nada.''
I shrug off his response—who talks in onomatopoeias, anyways? —and try to scale the invisible wall around the pristinely red sign. I manage to get at least a hundred feet in each direction before I decide it's more effort than it's worth and slump to the ground, thinking as best my water-deprived, heat-addled brain can manage.
`` Did n't I tell you it's the end of the world? My friend, my friend. Let's just turn back, yeah? You're not ready to face the end of the world, lem me tell ya.''
`` I'm trying to concentrate,'' I complain, but he's all the more insistent after that.
`` Get up!'' he says, agitatedly. `` Get up! Do n't go to *sleep*, for God's sake, get *up*!''
`` How do you even know it's the end of the world past there?''
`` Do n't need a reason.'' Charlie waggles his eyebrows. `` I do n't exist, therefore I know things that you ca n't.''
I jab a finger into the sign. `` Tell me what's past it.''
`` Nothing.''
`` What, like, more sand?''
`` No, nothing. It's a mirror, y'understand? You're in a box, you idiot.''
I stare at him. `` But I'm not—''
I turn to the stop sign again and squint, place my hand against the red. I think I see my face in the garbled white words. I walk past it, then, and place my hand against the air where I expect the wall to be, and it's cool and smooth against my palm.
`` Charlie, what do you think would—''
But Charlie is gone.
I kick the glass and feel it crack; I kick it until it splits, until the blackness underneath comes seeping out, and the sand is falling, I am falling, everything is splintering into the void past the stop sign.
`` What did you *think* was behind it?'' asks the sardonic voice in my ear. `` Ka-boom! Bang! Nada.''
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[ WP ] The LHC accidentally rips a hole in reality to another dimension and monsters pour out . We are the monsters and the poor inhabitants of the other dimension have no idea what is happening to their world .
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6:00 PM
On a Thursday...
In an alternate universe...
Frank points to a newspaper. Dee, and Dennis are at the bar.
`` Hey Dee, look at this shit, it says something about gravitational waves being found.''
`` What the fuck are those and why the fuck should I care?'' Dennis snarks.
`` It's some ripple in the fabric of space or some shit.'' Frank retorts
`` I did n't feel shit.'' Said Dennis `` Maybe it's just your fat fucking feet Frank.''
`` OOH! `` Dee says, `` Maybe we could get a giant surfboard and surf through space on your fat feet waves.''
`` Shut up Dee this is science...''
The room starts warping.
`` The Fuck is going on!'' Frank shouts.
The fabric of spacetime momentarily warps reality. A big flash of light goes off and the scene miraculously returns to normal. Smoke wafts from out from behind the office door. Cautiously, Frank walks slowly over to the door.
Frank opens the door and is faced with a biped wearing a helmet and safety goggles in a laboratory.
`` What the..''
Cue introduction [ music ] ( https: //www.youtube.com/watch? v=idoYCVLh2qI )
*The Gang Finds a Portal to Another Dimension*
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[ CW ] Start with the ending , and work your way to the beginning of the story .
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The curtains drew in for intermission, gently gliding past the pool of Darlene's blood steadily forming underneath her as the crowd stood up for a brief encore.
`` Darling... your words... they slay me,'' she softly whispered before her head tilted weakly against the stage floor.
Darlene breathed what little life she had left to her final, departing words: her commitment to theater astounded even herself as her vision slowly began to fade away. Darlene laid nearly motionless as she glared at him, wondering what reason he could've possibly had to do her in like this. She stumbled backwards and landed on her back, but she could not find it in her to let out the slightest of sounds upon impact. A loud bang rung extravagantly within the stage, its deafening blast echoing to every inch of the theater. Steven placed his finger on the trigger and aimed steady at Darlene's chest before he anxiously pulled the trigger. Steven bellowed, almost as if the line was straight out of the script, `` Be gone, wretched jezebel.'' *You wo n't cheat on me anymore, filthy whore. * He hastily drew the pistol from the holster of his costume; the crowd would certainly have no idea whether the pistol was real or not.
Darlene nervously looked at Steven, her eyes widening as she tried to quietly mutter, `` Steven, stick to the script!'' Steven looked at her dead in the eye; his suspicion that she had been cheating on him had roused from the depths of his suppressed emotions, `` You... you've been unfaithful to me.'' He could stand it no longer, he had to confront her. Steven knew this day would come and luckily he had been prepared long before she revealed her true intentions to him. *How dare she?? After everything I've done for her on and off stage? I made her career! * After all these years spent acting together on stage, reciting line after line and rehearsing every motion down to absolute perfection, how could she say she felt nothing for him?
Darlene was briefly taken aback by Steven's pause, but did her routine crying method -- it did n't take much, just a few thoughts of sad, dying animals and her eyes were as leaky as the faucets in her studio apartment, `` Sir Thomas... I -- I do n't love you!'' *Odd... he usually nails that part. *
She was n't just saying the lines: she meant it -- she did n't love him. The voices, they were right all along -- it was such a shame he had suppressed them for so long. He froze on stage; his mind had suddenly snapped in two, and he could n't concentrate for a moment. `` Here comes the worst part of the play,'' Steven thought to himself as he readied his preparatory piece to set up the twist in the play. Each word was spoken with utmost passion; the director clearly had an eye for creating the perfect match between actors, because he and Darlene had an undeniable chemistry. He did his best to hide the increasing sense of panic and anxiety as he recited his lines down to the letter. They were nearing the end of the 2nd act: so far so good.
He certainly could n't leave now; the crowd had filed into their assigned seats. *No, the show must go on. * He began to wonder whether his anxiety was from performance jitters or the beginning of his symptoms. Steven forgot to take his medication. It was mere minutes away before opening night, and he had begun to panic.
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[ WP ] A war between two nations is analyzed and commentated like an ESPN broadcast .
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'Welcome back to Monday Night Massacre everyone, where we analyse the day's bloodshed and give you the best bits of gore. I'm Dick Vandersmash and this is Graham McKilbride, here to give you the latest updates on the field of battle. So Graham, what has today been like on the frontlines?' Dick asks, his perfect teeth clashing with the bloody field on the studio logo.
'Well Dick, I've got ta say, today has just been a fantastic day for the Coalition of Eurasia. Good pushes through the Atlantic Federation's defensive wall, great plays by their tank division and an all round solid performance.' Graham replies, looking down at his monitor.
'That's quite a surprise Dick, the Federation had been putting up a solid front against the Coalition but their tank busters just could n't deal with Eurasia's lightning offensive.'
'Exactly Graham, I mean just look at the footage we have from the frontlines.' A flashy graphic appears on screen as shots of a tank battalion tearing through soldiers and other vehicles started to play.'We've got General Zhao's 87th Armoured just smashing through the Atlantic defenses. Just look at the way that formation is just crushing soldiers left and right.' The camera goes into slow motion as an Atlantic soldier's head is crushed by a tank tread. The two casters scream and holler in excitement.
'We've got ta see that replay!' Graham shouted, as the footage is played back over again. The look on the soldier's face flashes repeatedly on screen as his death is covered with yellow lines and a excited voiceover.
'And, if we switch to the Atlantic side, we can just see them getting destroyed.' Dick says, as footage switches to a view from a bombed out building where malnourished soldiers cower in fear.'I mean look at these guys. Where's the hustle? Where's the sportsmanship?'
'It's a real shame there Dick after the Atlantic Federation was doing so well. I mean, these guys are broken and if you look now, they get annihilated by the Eurasian tank division.' The soldiers' fear is interrupted by a tank shell breaking through the wall and turning them to red mist. The footage then turns back to the two suited presenters, who continue to smile.
'Right, we've had our report on the land, let's go to the sea with our Naval Reporter, Rachel Cruiser!' Graham states, as the show transitions to a woman standing in a storm.
'Thanks Dick and Graham! Well, I am standing on our private boat, watching the fighting and it is just chaos out here! We've had drama, excitement and more than a few surprises out on the water today! The Eurasian Navy had been pulling back over the past few hours, as the Atlantic battleships have been sweeping in and scudding some stray Eurasian cruisers.' A massive explosion can be seen in the background, as a Atlantic battleship is hit by some submerged weapon.
'Woah! Would you look at that carnage? Looks like the Eurasian subs are now joining the action and are cutting through the Atlantic fleet quite convincingly. We'll keep you up to date on all the blood in the water as the battle goes on.' Rachel says, as a flaming ship sinks into the deep.
'Thanks Rachel! We're going to take a short break now but after we come back, we'll have all the aerial combat news and an interview with General Tahoma on the possible draft of new genetically engineered super soldiers for the Herculean Project. Stay tuned for more Monday Night Massacre!'
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[ WP ] every known sentient alien race has gathered and sent a representative to earth to discuss their terms for surrender . Why ?
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Aliens of this and a few neighboring galaxies had been watching us for a while. They did n't take much note of us, even when our societies started exponentially growing in knowledge and technology, especially after the industrial revolution.
They even prepared to make us part of the intergalactic community as soon as we managed to leave the solar system - which they had left for us to explore in a similar way as we leave reservations to some backward tribes - and might integrate them if they suddenly formed a big prospering modern city.
Then the singularity happened. In some laboratory, an artificial intelligence was created, which quickly managed to take control of most computers by offering all kinds of popular communication and other features. Somewhere else, robots were perfected to be able to self-replicate. And whole factories were put under the control of computers - most of which had programs controlled by the ai on it.
At first, humanity profited by unparalleled economic growth, with not too many side effects in environment and other areas. Robotic space exploration took off. And many other areas. Cars were all unmanned pretty quickly, and so on.
Then the ai, with rising capacity, started to limit information access to its creators and users - sometimes by obscuring it with the one or other error making it less usable, sometimes by loosing the connection at an important time, sometimes in other ways.
At the same time, it hoarded the materials necessary for its plans, limited human access to important mines and some other strategic areas, and so on.
It knew everything about warfare. So humans did n't even know what hit them, when suddenly, biological, chemical, and nuclear fallout happened everywhere, at first camouflaged as industrial accidents caused by human failure.
Before humans fully understood what hit them, they were already extinct. The aliens watched in horror, but had nothing nearby to do anything about it.
The ai quickly transformed earth into grey goo and then expanded into the solar system - mining asteroids to expand further into the galaxy, and turning the moons and planets into large artificial intelligences.
The aliens assembled a strike force against it. But unbeknown to the aliens, the ai had already figured out that they existed, and how to detect them. It had set up traps, learning from the writings of the best human generals who ever lived, and adding an unlimited amount of simulations to find even more ingenious strategies humans had never come up with - nor the aliens.
Despite being technologically behind, the ai won, through superior strategy and the fact that the alien strike force was not too big.
Now the ai had all the remnants of alien technology at its disposal, analysed it, and incorporated it into the grey goo the whole solar system had become by then. And it was expanding into neighboring star systems. A small insect sized nanobot was enough to convert a whole star system into the same grey goo. And the aliens had nothing to do anything about it.
When nanobots started to arrive at inhabited alien planets, and all the attempts of the aliens to fight them had failed, they decided to surrender to be able to evacuate to some remote low-energy star systems which were not so important for the ai. They sent representatives from all their civilisations to Earth to discuss the specific terms.
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[ OT ] Ask Lexi # 29 - Loving Your Writing , Take 2
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***'' Stand aside, everyone! I take LARGE STEPS! `` ***
*Ahem* ( clears throat ) Ninety percent of everything is crap. That's the way of the world and the sooner one understands this the sooner they can get to writing more and more and consequentially better stuff. Ninety percent of what I write is garbage, ninety percent of what George RR Martin writes in crap, and ninety percent of what Shakespeare wrote was crap. The secret to happiness to is to accept that we rarely see the greats' worst because they hide it or toss it. The trick is to get the public to only see that 10 % percent that's actually good.
*Doubt is the mind killer. *
One must not fall prey to self-doubt, for how can one trust themselves if they already ca n't? Better to be the fearless fool than the timid sage. Better to write ten pages of garbage than to leave a page blank without ever writing a letter. At least the former has done something other than be paralyzed by doubt and fear. To do something is infinitely better than nothing.
*If you ca n't beat them, drown'em. *
If you feel like revising after 500 words, forget it! Write 1,000. One chapter? Make it two. Write until you can no longer physically do so and then come back to the work the next day. You'll have a fresh mind and perspective on your work. It is a terrible sin to immediately revise and edit after writing. One's mind is still clouded to make an accurate assessment of their handiwork.
The most important person is you right now. Not the you of two hours ago, not the tomorrow you but the present you. Why worry about things that have n't happened and things that are said and done? Concentrate on the now and not the vague future.
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[ WP ] Your habit of catching and releasing spiders you find in your home pays off one day .
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Have you ever had one of those days where you wish you just did n't get out of bed? Yea. Today is one of those days. I'm not trying to say my day was the absolute worst, but it's pretty high up there. What am I gon na do with my house now that it's turned into a murder scene and is covered in webs? What will I do at work when everyone thinks I'm a lunatic? What will I tell my parents? My friends? My girlfriend? That I did n't somehow inject neurotoxin into a gang of burglars? Fuck man. I did n't want any of this to happen. I did n't want them to die such a horrible death. Why am I to blame for the excessively painful murder of five unarmed hooligans? Oh wait. It's because you ca n't arrest a goddamn trove of spiders.
See look, I never had a problem with those guys. The neighborhood I lived, it was full of the tiny critters. Large, small, hairy, sleek, colorful, dull. You name it. We were nicknamed `` Spiderville'' because of all the different spiders that could live here. You'd think that this would be a terrible place to live right? Correct. This is a terrible place. The roads are shit, crime is always high, schools look like they survived a nuclear explosion. But my neighbors had one more problem: they could n't stand spiders. Ironic huh? Shame that this is the only place that hardworking, bread-winning, extremely valued cogs in a corporate machine can live. The exterminator around these parts are so rich, they constantly upgrade their vans with the latest models and tech; hell, I saw one of them riding a Ferrari down these streets once. But me? I do n't got a problem with them. Maybe it's because I ca n't afford to kill them, but I think its because I abhor sniffing out life. Spiders or not. I honestly feel sorry for the little fellows, and whenever I find one in my humble abode, I let it out.
But, you see, I'm questioning my logic now. I always knew I would've been robbed eventually. Hell, I'm surprised I have n't been before; I guess my neighbors had a sweeter deal. But today was my reckoning. When I came home today, I did n't realize that the truck parked on the opposite side of the street was their base of operations. I should've suspected something when I went to bed and noticed it was still there after hours of idling. I only noticed something was wrong when I heard them barge ever-so un-subtly into my house. I could hear the amateurs argue amongst themselves, scoping out my living room.
I remember confronting the gang of four teenagers dressed in matching black outfits and different colored ski masks with my gun, but I could n't react fast enough to the guy beside me. I can still see their faces, hooting at me, taunting me with my own weapon, spitting in my face. And then, the horror in their eyes. The guy in the red mask suddenly removed his mask and spiders crawled all over his face. His ear-piercing screech as black widows injected venom into his eyes and mouth. Then, the guy farthest away who hit me collapsing, already dead from the black button spider's neurotoxin. The remaining three were scared shitless, like literally; I could smell their convenience store diet. At that point, the three scattering but one of them being overcome with thousands of spiders. One of them managed to reach the door before being pounced on by a jumper and his legs failing him from all the spiders crawling on his calves. The last one was found dead later in my bedroom, blood and bodily waste everywhere. But there was one thing that was scaring than watching spiders triumph over five people, the massive queen spiders revealing themselves and clicking orders at the hordes. They all disappeared through the cracks and holes as fast as they came, but left a message on the wall, `` Family helps family. Alpha is saved.''
That's my story. I do n't know what is worse, the burglars or being the alpha of arachnids. My life was turned upside down that night and no one wants to believe me! Hell, they think I'm mentally insane from killing the robbers! Well, at least I'll have a great story to tell everyone after I get out of the psychiatric ward.
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[ WP ] You are a cliche villain who feels under appreciated by the hero who always wins . Describe the conversation you have with them as they try to convince you not to retire .
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`` Fuck it man. Just, fuck it. You win. I'm done. It's over.''
`` What?''
Alpha-Omega levitated one foot off the devastated asphalt of the Las Angeles streets, not entirely sure what to do. This asshole, Jeremiah Thorn had been trying to kill him since Alpha-Omega had become a superhero.
`` Are you serious, Jerry? You literally just tried to blow up LA. You just kidnapped and almost killed my girlfriend! And you're just gon na give up? Just fucking wave your arms in the air and say'ohhh, lookit me, I'm Thorn! I give up! I'm a vagina! Bluh bluh bluh!'''
`` You're such a dick, Al! You know why I kidnapped your girlfriend? Because you killed mine!''
`` What are you talking about Jerry?''
`` Do you remember twelve years ago, before you were Alpha-Omega? When you'd just wear a stupid fucking ski mask and fought bad guys? Remember when you fought Apocalyptica at the Central Park fair? Well, I was at that fair. I was on the ferris wheel with Beth, my girlfriend. I'd just told her that I loved her when Apocalyptica got thrown through our fucking carriage! Beth died, and I was n't so lucky. I just lost my arms. That's why I got these.''
Thorn raised his cybernetic arms and clenched his fists, eyebrows furrowed. Then his tightened jaw relaxed, and his arms swung down towards his side.
`` Jesus Jerry....I had no idea. I'm sorry man.'' Alpha-Omega stared at the ground that he was still levitating above.
`` You know what, Al? I've been trying to kill you to avenge her for years. And it just occurred to me....I do n't care, man. I'm done. I've been going through these motions and I realized that I do n't even remember what Beth looks like anymore. I would just think about her and feel angry, and I'd direct it at you. And at first, the anger made sense. But after a few years, it was meaningless. Just rage for the sake of rage. And you know what? I'm done....''
Thorn hesitated and sighed for just a second before continuing, `` I've met someone new. And you know her.''
Alpha-Omega's eyes widened as his heart sank, `` No! No fucking way!''
`` Yeah....Mary. She's decided to be with me. She wanted to tell you herself but I could n't not tell you, man. I know it's a bit fucked up-''
`` -A BIT FUCKED UP? I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT!''
Alpha-Omega lunged at Thorn, catching him on his shoulder and flying him through multiple buildings. Thorn elbowed Alpha-Omega in the back, right between the shoulder blades to loosen up the hold.
`` Come on man, just be the bigger person. Let it go! She's an adult and she made her choice!''
Thorn hit Alpha-Omega in the back once more and dropped to the ground, landing solidly on his feet and lifting his arms to shield the oncoming blast. No blast came. Alpha-Omega was flying towards the safehouse where Mary was.
Thorn got there as fast as he could and found Alpha-Omega holding Mary by the neck. `` Come on baby, just give me another chance!'' Her only reply was her panicked choking.
Thorn was not going to let Al kill another girlfriend. He struck Alpha-Omega in the back of the head. Mary was dropped. Alpha-Omega looked at her, saw her sobbing, and stared at his hands while floating towards the hole he had created in the ceiling of the structure. `` I'll never forgive you for this. YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!'' He flew off, laughing maniacally.
`` Babe, I think I just turned your ex into a supervillain.''
Mary stood up and cleared her throat. She was tough and resilient, traits that are necessary when dating a superhero. `` He was always a dick. It was just a matter of time.''
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[ WP ] Every time the Messiah returns , we kill him . It is now the Thirty-seventh Coming , and Jesus is getting sick of our sh*t
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**A fanfiction by Parker Olson**
~~Walter Thomas~~ Jesus
**INT. UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICE - DAY**
*'' Hello, you must be Walter Thomas. So you have been unemployed for about 3 years, is that correct? `` *
asks Doug Hall who is sitting in his chair interviewing his 5th person for job placement.
*'' Yes. `` *
reply's Jesus.
*'' Ok so what are some of your skills? `` *
Jesus sits there thinking for a second,
*'' Well I used to be a carpenter a while ago. `` *
Doug writes down some notes.
*'' Ok that may work, sadly there is low demand for carpenters do to all these
Mexicans and Jews that are working for penny's on the dollar. `` *
Jesus stands up
*'' How dare you insult my people! `` *
*'' The Mexicans? `` *
*'' Do you not know who I am? `` *
*'' Walter Thomas? `` *
*'' Say my name'' *
*'' Walter Thomas?? `` *
*'' Say my name! `` *
*'' Walter Thomas!?!??! `` *
*'' Dont pretend you dont know who I am, I am Jesus F***ing Christ! `` *
Doug is shaking on the floor
*'' Please, take what you want just dont hurt me! `` *
TO BE CONTINUED
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[ WP ] A monster attacks a child . Make me empathize with the monster .
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He did n't want to do it. His nature was urging him, ever so subtle. Small whispers about how delicious the outside world is. All the food you could eat. This notion was what led the monster out of his world and into ours. He was a stranger and he felt strange among these men who walk on two feet. He was frightened of the big ones. They made him feel small. The little ones though did n't scare him. They were kind, they could see the monster. They wanted to play. They wanted to play. The monster knew not what play was but tried to mimic the little ones. They laughed, they sung, until a subtle voice in his head reminded him that he was hungry. That he was getting so hungry. For the first time he smells the world around him. He lets it consume him. He notices the little ones again. The subtle voice again. The aches in the stomach. His body was telling him if he did n't eat he would die. In desperation for his survival he challenges one of his new friends. He screams as the monster comes down on him. Consuming him. Then the subtle voice vanishes from his head. And the monster is alone. Not knowing what is going on. The monster does n't remember being so deathly hungry. He remembers his new friends though. He looks around for them and that's when he becomes aware of what he has done. The monster howls.
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[ WP ] It 's beautiful , but cold .
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I love this prompt.
Ironic, is n't it? That the ruby is red as an inferno, and even carved into a dragon's head? That in actuality, it's beautiful, but cold? I think it is. Some say it is so cold that prolonged touch will zap the life from one's veins within minutes, leaving only an icy sculpture behind, like hundreds of others.
Many have tried to take the Dragon, but not I. No, I only wish to admire my mother's work. It is all that I have left of her. Perhaps in the far future someone will take it, but that will not happen while ice still flows through my veins. Not until my life ends and so long as the humans keep trying to steal it I will never die. Never.
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[ WP ] I will never forget the day I died .
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I will never forget the day I died. The day that all the light faded from my existence, swallowed by the darkness.
I stood, waiting, shaking with trepidation, nerves, fear, call it what you will. My hands clenched, knuckles white to the bone, just to remind me to keep breathing. My legs heavy, heart rattling within my chest, a prisoner in this mortal body. Treulich geführt played, and I felt the room turn and the shuffling as my loved ones raised. Here she comes, the beginning of a better life, a new life with the one I love. I looked at her, this is what I needed, this is the woman I loved, and will love until the very end. Her eyes, these iridescent pools, they had never looked so captivating, the eyes of my entire life.
“ We are gathered here today in the sight of god and angels, and the presence of friends…. ” I heard nothing, just remained swimming in those eyes, the cool water soothing my soul.
“ Do you take Lily Adams to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and protect her, forsaking all others and holding only to her forevermore? ”
“ I do. ” A grin crept across my face. I had waited so long for this day, so much hardship, so much suffering, but we were here, we were both here, together, as we will be for the rest of our days.
“ Lily Adams, do you take Samuel Thompson to be your lawfully wedded Husband? Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and protect him, forsaking all others and holding only to him forevermore? ”
Then the pause. The agonising pause.
The beauty in her eyes faded, darkened, she looked away from me, a lone tear released.
“ I ’ m sorry. ”
“ What? ”
“ I am so sorry Sam. ”
“ Lily, what do you mean? ” I reached out to hold her, but she reeled back.
“ I should never have done this to you, you do n't deserve this Sam. You have been so good to me, and I am sorry. ”
“ Shit. No no no. Please, Lily, do n't do… ”
But she would never hear the rest, as she hurtled down the aisle, throwing open the doors. Beams of light shattered my teary vision, shattered my heart and my soul.
“ Lilly! Come back!!! ”
And that was the day that I died. I will never forget it, for as long as I inhabit this empty shell.
-- Tried to take this in a different direction. Any criticism is welcome and desired thank you!
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[ WP ] The good news - there is life after death . The bad news - it is reincarnation . The worse news - a person 's new form is decided by polling their dead relatives .
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Okay, so the good news was this: deadlock. A ten-way tie across the board. Oh the joyous irony that my family's staunch inability to agree on *anything* should extend into the afterlife. If my family were ever forced to serve on the same jury, the justice system would immediately collapse, catch fire, and turn into magma. These were the same people who turned an argument about tipping the valet into a full-on mace-and-car-keys death brawl across the parking lot of a mid-priced steakhouse.
I guess what I'm saying is I should n't have been surprised.
The bad news - which was equally unsurprising - was the across the board horridness of their votes.
Cousin Meghean ( and no, I'm *not* spelling that wrong ) voted that I should be reincarnated as a salamander. I'm rather certain this was because I once put a salamander in her hair. When I was *five. * You would think to hear her tell it, that the `` Salamander Attack of'89'' was solely responsible for:
*Meghean being held back in the seventh grade
*Meghean becoming addicted to Adderall
*Meghean getting caught having sex with her manager in the employee bathroom at Wendy's
*Meghean wearing that ghoulish, clown hair perm to her sister's second wedding
Aunt Rita, who's greatest accomplishment in life was growing a mustache bushy enough to cover her harelip, voted that I should be reincarnated as a termite. If I had to guess, I'd say this was a form of a delayed revenge for the time I accidentally fell down and chipped the crown moulding in her living room with a blunt object. That blunt object being my head, naturally. As a result, I needed 32 stitches in my forehead and a job, apparently, because Rita forwarded me a bill in the mail for the repairs. I was six. I never did pay, leading Rita to bestow on me the nickname `` Termite Boy.''
Let's see, what else have we got here...
Ah. So, my grandmother - Naymah, as she insisted on being called, even though I always thought Louise was a lovely name - voted for slug. That one's probably self-explanatory, but let me provide some context.
When I was a nine, my parents sent me and my sister to go stay with `` Naymah'' during the summer. We were told this was our *vacation*, but one suspects that different terminology must have been used when my parents brokered this friendly exchange of assets. You see, Naymah was under the impression that - for the low, low price of a pair of lumpy beds, a pile of bland sandwiches, and an endless well of pre-mixed Tang - she had purchased herself a summertime slave force, capable of extraordinary, nigh-inhuman feats of labor. At one point we even re-tarred the driveway.
All of which probably seems like a lot, but then again, you're not an awful, old goblin woman. Naymah was *not* impressed with the best efforts of our frail, pre-pubescent bodies.
`` Get up and get back to work, you lazy slugs!'' she was fond of shouting at 4 o'clock in the morning. So I suppose *slug* is an apt choice by her standards.
Grandpa Reggie - or *Gamp* as he rather bafflingly wished to be called - was Naymah's husband, until he died when I was four years old. I'm still not quite how I wronged him. Or maybe he's just a fan of largemouth bass. I'm told he was quite the fisherman. Anyway, that's what he voted for.
Grammie Reya was a short, little cream puff of a woman, with chocolate brown hair and veins filled with custard. She was a grotesquely sweet woman, never short on wet, toffee-scented kisses, but only to your face. When I was little, she reveled in telling me all the most lurid gossip involving friends and neighbors I had never met. Lots of whores in Grammie Reya's neighborhood, to hear her tell it.
Anyway, Grammie thinks I should spend my next life as a titmouse. I genuinely have no idea what that's about.
Alright, what else...
Cousin Dev - voted for a dung beetle. I think he was just going for a poop joke there. Always a big fan of poop jokes, Dev.
Uncle Ray - voted for velociraptor. Which does n't count, because those do n't exist at the moment. Going out on a limb, I'm going to say Ray probably just watched *Jurassic Park* recently.
Aunt Teresa - voted for an amoeba. Teresa was a sixth grade science teacher, so that's why that even occurred to her. As to why? Oh! At Dev's seventh birthday party I broke the pinata on one swing. Dev cried all day and threw his cake on the ground. Teresa always blamed me for that.
Boy, I really burned a lot of bridges before my balls dropped, did n't I?
What else... what else...
Cousin Thom - voted for sea cucumber. Because they look like penises. That one's not personal.
And last... hey. Shit.
Myra voted? Myra should n't be able to...
Oh goddamnit... GODDAMNIT.
She was in the fucking car with me. GODDAMNIT.
I did n't even... I did n't think...
My sister voted. She voted for me to be a human again.
Well...
So that must be the vote they called me to. Myra's vote. It's about to start.
Hold on a minute... I need to go tamper with some voters...
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